Hailey
It took us a half a flight of stairs to realize that both of our hands were far too sweaty to keep holding on to.
Besides, continuing to walk around like we were America’s Most Wanted couple was ridiculous.
I wanted to make it very clear to him that I was perfectly capable of walking around everywhere else in the world but the bear-ridden Virginia woods without his help. So clear, that he’d ignore the fact that I’d held on to him this long because some impossibly stupid part of me wanted to.
Over the next twenty-four hours, aside from the possibility of police zeroing in on us, things would be almost normal. He and I would go back to pre-tree house status, while Mrs. Lee fed us sugarplum drops.
Georgia showed us into her wood-paneled, fake-fire-placed, hunting lodge of a guest room, complete with a tiny bed for two. Every fabric that wasn’t flannel had flowers on it, and the air stunk of cinnamon and pine. If Caleb and I died here, our spirits would happily possess the furniture. I’d take the flowers, and he’d take the manly stuff, like the fox pelts and dear antlers on the wall.
Georgia immediately introduced us to her powder blue, flower-tiled, mini-bathroom—obviously the most important room in the whole house, and pointed out the essentials.
“There’s soap and shampoo in the cabinets, towels on the rack, and a toothbrush to share if you don’t mind swappin’ spit.”
One of the things I’d started to admire about Georgia Jane Lee was her very innocent way of making everyone around her uncomfortable. Whether it was appearing out of total darkness with her rosy cheeks, windswept hair, and shotgun, or sending my blood pressure skyrocketing through her gingerbread rafters at the mention of swapping spit, she had a gift.
“We don’t mind at all, Mrs. G,” Caleb said, sort of half-smiling to himself, like rehashing suggestive topics was the most hilarious thing in the world.
“Good. I’ll have dinner and clothes downstairs for ya’ll in a little while.”
And with that, she left Caleb and I barefoot and alone to our own devices.
Following Georgia’s rules turned out to be trickier than expected. Especially, the “don’t touch anything” –thing, mainly because fidgeting with the candles, or potpourri, or rabbit skull on the mantle would’ve made for an awesome distraction. I walked over to the cornflower-curtained windows and stared at Caleb, staring at me through the shimmery black reflection.
“Guess, there’s no air mattress,” he said, running a mud-speckled hand through his mud-speckled hair.
“Guess, not. You wanna bathe first?” I asked.
“Do you?”
The idea had crossed my mind. Many times, in fact.
I hadn’t showered in three days. Instead, I’d been rained on, shot at, and covered in trash juice, but I wanted Caleb to go first. I could put up with smelling myself for a few minutes longer if it meant getting unlimited shower time.
Standing in hot water till I felt borderline-lightheaded was next to a spiritual experience for me, so the thought of Caleb waiting outside, pounding at the door for me to hurry up, was less than appealing.
“No, go ahead,” I said.
Caleb cocked his head to side and shot me one of those, “never-trust-an-Anderson” looks he and his brothers had boiled down to a science. But I flashed him a subtly political smile, and let him think my generosity was uncharacteristically Samaritan.
Caleb limped off to figure out how to work Georgia’s 1940’s style bathtub while I idled around the guestroom. He’d looked a little worn for ware since we’d gotten here. Georgia’d skipped the whole house tour altogether and sent us upstairs quicker than his body might’ve been prepared for.
Every now and again, he’d casually brush his hands over his bullet wound, or lean on Georgia’s furniture whenever she wasn’t paying attention. I’d been paying attention, and the longer he kept standing the paler he got. Even morphine has its limits.
It scared me to think that Caleb might’ve reached his.
Muffled combinations of curse words came hurdling out from behind the bathroom door. From the level of vulgarity, I assumed he thought I’d left. “Donkey piss,” certainly was a new addition to the dictionary, along with a slew of others I’d rather not repeat.
Something was wrong.
What, I couldn’t imagine, ‘cause not too much can happen between the floor and the bathtub. But no matter how many bumps, bangs, and thuds thundered out of that little blue room, he didn’t ask for help.
Not once.
Sometimes I wished he'd just lose the southern boy superman complex. The, go-it-alone-or-die attitude he'd happily take to the grave.
But after three days of being stuck around each other, he deserved to be left alone. So did I. We both needed our own time. Time to figure out how to figure ourselves out. But even though I knew all that, I couldn’t leave. My feet stayed stuck to the carpet, stuck to the quiet space between me, Caleb, and the bathroom door.
His shadow passed in front of the foot space where the light spilled into the bedroom. The sudden quiet made the hairs on my skin prickle, which was gross cause it felt like a lot of hairs. Maybe if I'd heard the creak and splash of bath water hitting the old tub basin, I would've left.
Or maybe I wouldn't have. Some part of me was stupidly curious about the Caleb on the other side of the door. The secret him, the boy behind the looking glass. So I loitered by the doorframe, and listened, hoping to hear something other than silence.
The bathroom door rattled to life out of nowhere and I bit my tongue just to keep incognito. Caleb thumped against the wood and partially slid down the other side. He didn't make a sound for a long while, aside from the occasional sharp sucking in of air through his teeth.
I didn't say word. Just stayed quiet and listened to him breathing on the other side of that door.
"You out there, Hailey?" he asked.
I clamped my hands over my mouth, as fast as my fingers could manage. Giving myself away would’ve been a total a copout after all the work I'd put into being a creep.
"I can hear you. Your nose sounds like a pennywhistle from in here."
"It does not,” I said.
Caleb opened the door and propped himself up against the frame. He'd managed to get one arm out of his t-shirt, but hadn't gotten much further on his own. My eyes drifted down to the half-exposed space just above his waistline like I hadn't seen him part shirtless before.
I mean, I'd seen him half-naked a few times, and it never was weird. But this was weird. Like, whole-body-buzzing kinda weird, and there wasn't anything I could do about it but try to say something crazy or random to keep his attention off how stupid I must’ve looked.
“Does my nose really sound like that?”
"Yes. I need a favor," he said.
His eyes steadied on mine, and I waited to catch one of his usual nervous blinks or twitches that made staring at him bearable if not slightly amusing. But he stayed cool, calm, and suffocatingly confident, like he knew how easy it was to tear off the paper-thin poker face I'd pasted on.
All the little muscles south of my cheekbones ached just trying to match his cool. He half-smiled at me through the half-light, but I withstood it like a pro, and forced the corners of my mouth to stay perfectly flat. Checkmate.
"Depends on what it is," I said.
My lips had definitely been moving, but the voice that slipped out sounded more like Angelina Jolie than me. Nervous breakdown blush creeped up the sides of my face like an angry poison ivy reaction. Thank God for the dark.
Georgia's warm but weak bathroom and guestroom lights weren't strong enough to expose the fact that I'd turned tomato at the sound of the subconsciously flirty me. Caleb didn't notice either. Fingers crossed.
"Can you help me outta this?"
He glanced down at his half-stripped t-shirt, clearly more disappointed with having to ask for help than his lack of progress. I fell into absolute silence, waiting for my shriveled, dead, Jiminy Cricket conscience to spring back to life and shout a resounding "No!" back at Caleb.
But nothing like that happened. My hands went numb, my mouth turned to sandpaper, and my feet, entirely of their own accord, slowly began dragging themselves across the warzone dangerous space between Caleb and I.
I deeply regretted missing out on my pre-shirtless opportunity to flee downstairs.
We shuffled into the bathroom without saying much of anything, like the two of us were suddenly strangers. The whole room hardly fit two people, so everywhere we turned was tight or too close for comfort.
Caleb stood on the terry cloth bathmat with his arms stretched as high as he could manage without hurting himself. He waited semi-patiently for me, looming over the tub like a messy-haired beanpole, with his eyes closed. Like closing them would make things less awkward.
"How attached are you to this t-shirt?” I asked.
"Well, it's nothin' special but it's the only one I--"
I shuffled around behind him, ripped out the Hanes label, and tore the fabric down the middle till the shirt came apart into two soggy halves. It’s amazing what adrenaline can do in the right situation. Caleb whipped around and covered himself, like a damsel in disarray, eyes wild and confused, like all the confidence he'd scared me with earlier had fallen to pieces along with his old clothes.
"What the heck are you doing?!"
"What you asked me to. You said you wanted help and I helped,” I said.
What else was I supposed to do with a guy who could hardly lift his arms higher than his waist?
"Yeah, but I didn’t say tear it! Geeze, what am I gonna do about a shirt now?"
"I don't know. We'll figure it out. Georgia said she had some things lying around for us."
He furrowed a stress trench between his eyebrows.
"What? Grandma clothes?"
"Well if that’s all she has, then yes. Besides, you could probably fit into one of her T's. She wears baggier clothes than you do."
Caleb crumpled his mouth tighter than balled up paper, shrugged off my attempts at making him grateful, and reached over me to turn on the faucet. He didn't get more than a turn and a half in before he had to steady himself against the edge of the bath.
All the skin up the left side of his back had bruised cosmic purple over the last few days. Nobody's body should ever look like that. I didn't know how his had even managed to make it this far without falling apart at the seams. Sometimes, some things are just so terrible you have to pretend they don't exist.
Caleb was excellent at that. On the way over to Georgia's, every time he walked a little slower than usual or faltered a bit he'd squeeze my hand, crack a smile, and keeping going. He’d always just kept going, even if it meant wrecking himself in the process.
Earlier, his t-shirt had taken over his usual job of hiding all the bad things—the bruises, the bandages, the bullet wounds. All his broken and missing puzzle pieces. All broken and all missing because of me.
"These pipes better spit out something other than cold water soon. I'm freezing my ass off as it is,” he said.
Caleb turned back towards me with his arms strategically wrapped around his waist so I wouldn't stare at the bloodied bandage over his bullet wound. I looked right at it, almost subconsciously, like staring long enough would change the fact that it happened.
Caleb tapped me under the chin before I had the chance to do what I always do around him, cry. But as much as he hated me getting like this, it was the only way I knew how to deal.
"What's wrong with your eyes?” He asked.
I didn’t answer, ‘cause my throat was doing somersaults just trying to hold back from losing it all together. He leaned in close enough for me to feel the heat of his breath, and that terrible tingly feeling hit me so hard my insides turned to Pop Rocks.
I panic-blinked until most of the tears floating in the corners of my eyelids dried themselves out.
Deny, deny, deny.
"I’m fine, it’s just…you smell, so can you hurry up and wash, I’m tearing,” I said, basking in all my breakdown prevention glory.
"God, I want to but I've got all these bandages on, my jeans on, and trying to get out of all these clothes all by myself is gonna take awhile."
He smiled a little too widely right then, with all of his Polaroid pretty teeth gleaming at me from between his lips. Picture perfect faces always mean trouble.
"I'll leave, if you don’t need help with anything else,” I said. I started out the door, and he snuck his hand around my wrist to stop me.
"I do."
I definitely stopped breathing for a World Record amount of time. Not long enough for me to pass out or anything. But my lungs tested the ropes. Shock can do that to people, or maybe Caleb just does that to me.
Either way, the hair-raising panic he’d caused with just the suggestion of having me take anything more off of him than I already had, could've been fatal. At the minimum, he’d shaved a good few years off my life.
“Does my hair stink as bad as I do?” He asked.
He leaned down to let me test his theory first hand, but I stopped him halfway.
“Yes.”
“Can you help me wash it, maybe? Like, you don't have to, it's just standing up for too long and moving around a bunch isn’t startin’ to feel too good. So I figured, that um—"
"Sure. Just put extra soap in the bath so you’re covered up and everything, and call me in when you're ready."
For a split second, ten-year-old Caleb gave me a toothy smile underneath all that dirt on his face. Sometimes he’d switch from a kid who didn’t mean any harm to a guy who made my legs go to JELL-O. As long as I wasn’t alone with the gelatin-leg-inducing version of Caleb, washing his hair would be simple.
But like before, nothing turned out like I’d hoped. As promised, I left the room, let him change, and came right back as soon as he called me. But the guy staring at me over a small mountain of frothy bubbles wasn’t ten-year-old Caleb--
It was JELL-O man.
He’d submerged himself up to his neck in cloudy water, cheeks flushed, hair wet, lips curled into an awful grin, and motioned me over with a bottle of Head and Shoulders.
The drop-dead draw of his eyes, daring me to cross the tiny square-footed space between us, had me teetering between fight or flight. But I stood my ground, praying away the static rush creeping up the back of my legs.
“Come on in, the water’s fine,” he said, picking a less than poignant time to tease me.
“Just close your eyes and lean your head back. The quicker we get this is over with the better.”
“Suit yourself.”
I splattered a handful of pearl anti-dandruff goop into my palm, and slapped it in the center of his mud-matted hair. I should’ve rinsed first, but I’d already committed most of my attention to not hyperventilating, so a few essential steps were sacrificed for my sanity.
“Take it easy up there, I’m not a ragdoll,” he said, grimacing through the suds sliding down his face.
But my hands were inconsolable. I scrubbed, and lathered, and rinsed until he reached up and stopped me.
“Are you nervous?” he asked.
“No.”
My lie felt flawless.
“Then prove it.”
Obviously, it wasn’t.
I stood there, with Caleb’s head in my hands, briefly paralyzed by my old reservations, lingering thoughts of Luke, and scarred over mistakes. But I stopped and looked down at Caleb, really looked, all the way through the covers of his closed eyelids and right into what felt like the center of who he was.
And all the tension tearing at me died away.
My hands softened and finally found the unspoken rhythm between his scalp and my fingertips, and he let out this sigh, like all the heaviness kicking around in his head was disappearing along with the dirt.
I rinsed away the rest of the lather with my hands, trying to figure out how to place the warm feeling that was bubbling in the part of my chest where the butterflies come from.
Caleb looked new and rosy, and once I’d stared at him long enough to believe that I really was going out of my mind, I grabbed him a towel, left it next to the bath, and walked out without a word.
I’d been running out of things to say in situations like these, lately. We both had. Maybe all that gritty, uncomfortable silence we kept running into was the world’s way of telling us to shut up and feel. So, I closed the door to that little blue room, leaned back against the hardwood frame, and tried to re-find that beautifully warm feeling I’d felt for the first time just seconds ago. The feeling my parents and people like Luke Davenport, nearly stopped me from believing in.
I waited, heart-churning hurricanes in my chest, and breathed in the steamy mix of cinnamon and pine and everything Caleb, and the rush came kicking, shouting, and dancing through my bloodstream as if to say—
I exist. I exist. I exist.