willow weep for me, bend your branches green along the stream that runs to sea
Exert from Black-Eyed Sinner's Pact, Pete's POV
When I decided to leave it was a Tuesday.
I am standing under a street light, two blocks away from the Sheppard’s house, from The Sheppards, from the basement, from my bed, from the house next door, from Patrick, from everything that hurt me and everything that I used to love. And I am ready to be a million miles away.
I have a small duffle bag and money I stole from Patrick for a bus ticket. I have my insanity and my insecurities and my demons too, but I’m convinced that I can leave them behind. Convinced that they thrive in hazy nights and humidity and California sunrises.
A truck rumbles by, big and loud and it frightens me out of my reverie. I blink and breathe in the thick, hot air that I hate and I realize that I’m not alone anymore. Patrick grabs me by the crook of my elbow wordlessly, ignoring my sharp gasp and he yanks me in his direction roughly. He drags me half a block before I say anything and all I can really say is his name.
He looks back at me and his eyes are livid. Blazing blue and hurt black and glowing white. I swallow thickly and I look down at my shoes. Somehow I’ve made an enemy out of someone that I’m suppose to love.
He observes my silence with labored breathes and then he puts a finger under my chin and forces me to look him in the face.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” He asks through clenched teeth, grip tightening on my arm so much that I wince.
“I’m leaving.” I tell him and even to my own ears my voice is small. My voice is so small it’s nonexistent compared to the vastness of his eyes, the openness of his face.
He stares at me blankly for several seconds and then he lets my arm drop like dead weight to my side. “I bet you think that’s going to solve everything don’t you?”
“Patrick-“
“You’re fucking delusional, you know?” Patrick snaps, taking a step towards me.
“Patrick.” I repeat desperately, trying to force my voice not to waver, ripple with betrayal and false and too real emotions like the tremor running out of my fingertips. “Please, Patrick, don’t.”
He looks at my face and then there it is, the new look that I created. He looks haunted and tired and sad and it’s my fault.
“I can’t stay here. I can’t.” I implore him frantically, trying to make him understand with wild hand motions that smack of the over dramatics that I know Patrick associates with my normal behavior. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
Patrick gapes at me in a way that makes me feel self conscious and naked.
“I just need a little time. Away. I’ll come back. “I lie feebly.
When Patrick laughs it tastes like defeat in the back of my throat. “Where are you going?” He asks. “If you’re not running away for good, tell me where you’re going.”
I steal my nerves and remind myself how badly I need him to believe me, to let me go, so that I can go, get out, get away. “I don’t know.”
Patrick laughs again, without humor. “You’re such a bad fucking liar.”
Another truck rumbles by, and I think that I see my chances at escaping thunder by with it. I watch it go until it disappears into the surreal orange sunrise in the horizon I should be escaping towards. I sigh and sit down on the bottom step of a stranger’s house. The cement under my fingertips is surprisingly cold and predictably rough. Patrick has his back turned to me and his shoulders are noticeably tense but also slumped. He looks ready for a fight he knows he won’t win.
“I’ll beg you.” He says, still facing in the direction of the house, away from my sunrise. There’s no wind for his words to get lost in, just thick, hot air for them to get stuck and simmer. “I’ll get down on my knees and cry and beg for you to stay. But it won’t change your mind, will it?”
Patrick turns around to face me and I shake my head, slowly, guiltily, but with enough conviction that I know he knows it’s the truth. There’s nothing he can do, nothing he can say that would replace the thrill in my chest that comes from wanting brighter lights and brighter cities and noisy bus stops and cold climates. Slowly, Patrick moves to sit next to me. He sinks onto the concrete step with silent anger, and a wispy breath. I want to tell him that I’m sorry for destroying everything but when I open my mouth Patrick quiets me with a kiss. It’s chaste and careful but my heart still beats too hard; a sickening, drumming series of thuds that I hate and imagine him being able to hear. He leans away after, his lips gone as quickly as they were there.
“I love you.” He says, looking at me like he’s in awe, like he’s lucky that I exist.
I swallow thickly and curse him in my mind for making this the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, for making it real too soon. Running without thinking is easy, missing someone before you even leave, that’s something that could rip you apart.
I stand up abruptly, but he reaches for me, grabs my sleeve. “I have to get going now.” I tell him softly, ignoring the look of defiance in his eyes.
“Not yet.” He says quickly, too quickly, and I know that the next thing he’s going to say will change both our lives, change everything, be too desperate and too good to say no to.”I’m coming with you.”
I don’t say anything, so he comes to stand beside me. He turns me around to face him and he presses our lips together again. It’s still soft, still careful. But it’s also a punch in the stomach, filled with repressed passion and gravity defying fulfillment. I pull away and he smiles in a way that’s somehow not sad and not ironic. He cuffs me on the chin playfully and it startles a short, high-pitched laugh out of me.
“So where are we going?” He asks in a voice that’s comically candid for the situation.
I marvel at the sunrise and I marvel at Patrick and I marvel at the fact that I have anything left to be amazed by. I feel warm and I imagine feeling warm somewhere cold all because Patrick is beside me.
“Chicago.” I say, and I let Patrick take my hand and lead me away.
He leads me back to our house and I almost think that this is all a trick, that he played me like a fiddle and now he’s going to lure me inside and tie me down to something so that I don’t leave tonight. And in the morning do everything he can to convince me that I should never go.
“Patrick,” I start warningly, pulling my hand away from him, “Why are we here?”
He just looks at me like he lost something. “Relax, Pete. I just want to get a few things.”
Well, it sounds reasonable when you say it like that.
“You can wait out here,” he continues pointedly, “And if I’m not back in five minutes, then you can run like hell. Fail-y arms and all.”
Patrick smiles at me softly, and I kind of half-heartedly grimace and duck my eyes beneath the shadow of my hood. His face sobers and he sighs, reaching out to rub my arm reassuringly.
“I’ll never forgive you,” I say suddenly, tone dark, “If this is a trick.”
Patrick practically reels back as if he’s physically been punched in the mouth. He grabs onto my sleeve tighter and looks at me desperately. “Could you maybe try to trust me a little, please?”
I shrug and jerk away from him, creating an arms distance between us. “Five minutes,” I reply softly.
He disappears into the house, which is still as dark and as silent as when I left it. It’s a house that’s asleep. I sit down on the front steps and pick at the peeling green paint of the wooden railing. I check my clock a few times, the digital white display casting an unnatural glow amid the early morning landscape. I frown. It’s been ten minutes.
I bend over backwards to look at the house I’ve lived in for the past eight years, biting my lip. It already looks foreboding, and foreign, like there’s a gauze over it, hiding a big gaping wound. Like I’m an unwelcome ghost, like I’m just haunting the place where I died. I guess my mind was already somewhere far away the last couple of weeks that I lived here, on a different plane of existence that wasn’t human. That was joyless and hopeless and desolate. I was already a lifeless apparition, a disquieting specter that roamed from room to room without acknowledging the living.
But maybe I didn’t say a through enough goodbye.
Restlessly, with nervous resolution, I creep inside. I tip-toe up the stairs and inch down the hallway as noiselessly as possible. It’s an old house though; it creaks and whines, like it has its own flawed personality. When I reach the end of the hallway, Patrick’s bedroom door is ajar, left wide open. I slip inside quietly.
There’s a bag open on his bed and it’s half full. Patrick methodically folds a few pieces of clothing and then stuffs them in with the other things.
My heart leaps out of my chest. It wasn’t a lie, it wasn’t false hope. Patrick is coming with me.
I watch gleefully as he looks around his room, eyebrows knit, trying to think of what he needs, what he can live without and what’s sentimental enough to take even though it’s not practical. He grabs a few more things, while I watch silently and then he catches my reflection in his bureau mirror. He’s shocked still for a second, his hand resting in midair with a pair of neatly folded boxers in it. Then he shakes his head and wields around to face me.
“You’re smiling,” he says in awe, surprising me.
I shrink down in height under his scrutiny, trying to hide as much of my face as possible with my bangs. “It’s been more than five minutes.”
Patrick shrugs, taking my every new idiosyncrasy in stride. “I’ve never run away before. I don’t have it down to an exact science.”
“Are you almost done?” I ask curtly, surveying the area behind me for the billionth time since I entered the room.
Patrick nods. “Yeah. Just go into the bathroom and get my toothbrush. I’ll meet you down stairs.”
I walk down the hall quickly and poke my head into the bathroom. The light is on but it’s empty. As I grab Patrick’s toothbrush I imagine something pornographic right where I’m standing. I imagine seeing it through someone else’s eyes. And I don’t know why these thoughts are popping into my head but I think to myself, this is the place where Brendon caught Patrick cheating on me with Gerard. I’m stunned to feel a sting of pain at the memory, instead of indifference. It’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. It never was. But it still hurts, even now. There’s something amazing about that. Something unsettling.
Patrick leaves his room, running his fingers over the doorframe with a distressed sigh. He looks up at me briefly, as if reconsidering all of this, and then his eyes get dark, determined. He follows me down the stairs and out the front door.
But then he takes the lead again. He tugs my sleeve gently and heads left, in the opposite direction of the bus station.
“Where are we going?” I ask, shielding my eyes from the first streams of sunlight breaking through the disappearing nighttime.
Patrick smiles coyly. “To ask a friend for a favor.”
Ten minutes later, we’re throwing pebbles and small rocks at Joe Trohman’s window. He opens it suddenly, his head peering out, disoriented. My last rock hits him in the forehead.
“What the fuck?” He mouths down at us.
Patrick just motions him to come join us.
Minutes later, Joe stumbles out, in mismatched clothing, normally untamed hair in complete and utter disarray. There’s a pillow mark running from his cheek down to his neck. He’s muttering something in….I don’t know what. Sounds like Yiddish. My grandmother spoke Yiddish a lot around me before she had her stroke. She’s probably dead by now, I think with a small pang of guilt. A small pang of bitter realization that this is the second life that I’ve left behind in my short seventeen years of existence.
“Its 5:30 in the morning,” Joe informs Patrick grumpily, “Whaddya want?”
We steel a glance at each other.
“Uh,” Patrick says, delicately, “Your van?”
Joe raises his eyebrows and leads us around back to his parents used car garage. Mr. Trohman was actually a real estate broker but he enjoyed fixing up old cars in his sparse spare time, so, to his wife’s horror he built a second garage in his back yard for the ancient vehicles he found in scrape and metal yards. For his sixteenth birthday, he gave Joe his labor of love, 1976 green and white Volkswagen kombi.
Patrick inspects it from top to bottom critically, tapping and kicking it to test its stability while I lean against the back bumper impatiently, my foot twitching wildly, rolling my eyes.
“So, why do you need my van?” Joe asks, watching Patrick with amusement.
“About that,” I say flatly, trying to hide my nervousness, “We’re taking your Hippiebus to Chicago.”
Joe blinks and rubs his eyes. “You’re kidding.”
“We’re not,” Patrick says shortly, kicking at the front license plate.
“Yeah,” I continue, making a dumb hand motion, to try to make it seem like a magical getaway. “We’re riding off into the sunset.”
We fall silent.
“But you’re coming back right?” Joe asks, concern leaking into his face.
“Well,” I say, exchanging another look with Patrick, who’s biting the hell out of his lower lip, “No. We’re not.”
Joe gawks at us briefly and then sighs. “I’ll go get the keys.”
It takes Joe an inordinate amount of time to locate his keys and Patrick and I are about to book it out of there, suspicious that our plan fell through and Joe’s gone and told on us, when Joe finally reemerges, creeping out his back door and closing it gingerly. He has his keys in his right hand and a suitcase in his left.
“No,” I say firmly as he gets closer, “No way.”
“Shut up, Pete,” Joe replies breezily, “I’m not letting you guys do this alone. There’s totally strength in numbers. And this is my van. It’s not leaving this garage without me.”
I look to Patrick for support, but he’s smiling fondly at Joe, grabbing his suitcase and throwing it in the back with ours. I whine at him indignantly, but he just pats my knee and gives me a pleading look. And yeah, I can’t say no to that. Not if it makes Patrick happy.
“We don’t have a lot of time to sit around arguing either,” Joe says, climbing into the driver’s seat, “You have to be up for school in less than an hour.”
I glare at the side window and I know he sees me. But then Patrick grabs me by the sleeve again brings me to the back of the van.
“Hop in,” He says gently. It’s more of a suggestion then a command because he’s being really careful not to upset me. Because he’s treating me like a china plate and if everything he does isn’t cautious when handling me, I might break.
Once the vans rolling, I feel a lot of tension exit my body in one huge wave, on the release of a single breath. Never had stale air felt this much like freedom; a small, closed space felt like liberation. Every one of my muscles, my brain, my heart, they’re all relaxing, lowering their hackles. I’m just an anonymous boy in the back of a van and nobody knows why I’m suffering so much on the inside. Almost nobody anyway.
I glance over at Patrick and I wonder if this is bringing him the same sense of relief it’s bringing me. Or if he feels like this small, closed space is a cage, a trap he willingly walked into. Did he feel liberated or did he feel like my prisoner? Only motivated by my emotions, willing to give an arm and a leg for my happiness. Or a home and a family. Patrick seemed like a big, tragic figure to me now. And that’s still my fault.
When I decided to leave it was a Tuesday.
I am standing under a street light, two blocks away from the Sheppard’s house, from The Sheppards, from the basement, from my bed, from the house next door, from Patrick, from everything that hurt me and everything that I used to love. And I am ready to be a million miles away.
I have a small duffle bag and money I stole from Patrick for a bus ticket. I have my insanity and my insecurities and my demons too, but I’m convinced that I can leave them behind. Convinced that they thrive in hazy nights and humidity and California sunrises.
A truck rumbles by, big and loud and it frightens me out of my reverie. I blink and breathe in the thick, hot air that I hate and I realize that I’m not alone anymore. Patrick grabs me by the crook of my elbow wordlessly, ignoring my sharp gasp and he yanks me in his direction roughly. He drags me half a block before I say anything and all I can really say is his name.
He looks back at me and his eyes are livid. Blazing blue and hurt black and glowing white. I swallow thickly and I look down at my shoes. Somehow I’ve made an enemy out of someone that I’m suppose to love.
He observes my silence with labored breathes and then he puts a finger under my chin and forces me to look him in the face.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” He asks through clenched teeth, grip tightening on my arm so much that I wince.
“I’m leaving.” I tell him and even to my own ears my voice is small. My voice is so small it’s nonexistent compared to the vastness of his eyes, the openness of his face.
He stares at me blankly for several seconds and then he lets my arm drop like dead weight to my side. “I bet you think that’s going to solve everything don’t you?”
“Patrick-“
“You’re fucking delusional, you know?” Patrick snaps, taking a step towards me.
“Patrick.” I repeat desperately, trying to force my voice not to waver, ripple with betrayal and false and too real emotions like the tremor running out of my fingertips. “Please, Patrick, don’t.”
He looks at my face and then there it is, the new look that I created. He looks haunted and tired and sad and it’s my fault.
“I can’t stay here. I can’t.” I implore him frantically, trying to make him understand with wild hand motions that smack of the over dramatics that I know Patrick associates with my normal behavior. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
Patrick gapes at me in a way that makes me feel self conscious and naked.
“I just need a little time. Away. I’ll come back. “I lie feebly.
When Patrick laughs it tastes like defeat in the back of my throat. “Where are you going?” He asks. “If you’re not running away for good, tell me where you’re going.”
I steal my nerves and remind myself how badly I need him to believe me, to let me go, so that I can go, get out, get away. “I don’t know.”
Patrick laughs again, without humor. “You’re such a bad fucking liar.”
Another truck rumbles by, and I think that I see my chances at escaping thunder by with it. I watch it go until it disappears into the surreal orange sunrise in the horizon I should be escaping towards. I sigh and sit down on the bottom step of a stranger’s house. The cement under my fingertips is surprisingly cold and predictably rough. Patrick has his back turned to me and his shoulders are noticeably tense but also slumped. He looks ready for a fight he knows he won’t win.
“I’ll beg you.” He says, still facing in the direction of the house, away from my sunrise. There’s no wind for his words to get lost in, just thick, hot air for them to get stuck and simmer. “I’ll get down on my knees and cry and beg for you to stay. But it won’t change your mind, will it?”
Patrick turns around to face me and I shake my head, slowly, guiltily, but with enough conviction that I know he knows it’s the truth. There’s nothing he can do, nothing he can say that would replace the thrill in my chest that comes from wanting brighter lights and brighter cities and noisy bus stops and cold climates. Slowly, Patrick moves to sit next to me. He sinks onto the concrete step with silent anger, and a wispy breath. I want to tell him that I’m sorry for destroying everything but when I open my mouth Patrick quiets me with a kiss. It’s chaste and careful but my heart still beats too hard; a sickening, drumming series of thuds that I hate and imagine him being able to hear. He leans away after, his lips gone as quickly as they were there.
“I love you.” He says, looking at me like he’s in awe, like he’s lucky that I exist.
I swallow thickly and curse him in my mind for making this the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, for making it real too soon. Running without thinking is easy, missing someone before you even leave, that’s something that could rip you apart.
I stand up abruptly, but he reaches for me, grabs my sleeve. “I have to get going now.” I tell him softly, ignoring the look of defiance in his eyes.
“Not yet.” He says quickly, too quickly, and I know that the next thing he’s going to say will change both our lives, change everything, be too desperate and too good to say no to.”I’m coming with you.”
I don’t say anything, so he comes to stand beside me. He turns me around to face him and he presses our lips together again. It’s still soft, still careful. But it’s also a punch in the stomach, filled with repressed passion and gravity defying fulfillment. I pull away and he smiles in a way that’s somehow not sad and not ironic. He cuffs me on the chin playfully and it startles a short, high-pitched laugh out of me.
“So where are we going?” He asks in a voice that’s comically candid for the situation.
I marvel at the sunrise and I marvel at Patrick and I marvel at the fact that I have anything left to be amazed by. I feel warm and I imagine feeling warm somewhere cold all because Patrick is beside me.
“Chicago.” I say, and I let Patrick take my hand and lead me away.
He leads me back to our house and I almost think that this is all a trick, that he played me like a fiddle and now he’s going to lure me inside and tie me down to something so that I don’t leave tonight. And in the morning do everything he can to convince me that I should never go.
“Patrick,” I start warningly, pulling my hand away from him, “Why are we here?”
He just looks at me like he lost something. “Relax, Pete. I just want to get a few things.”
Well, it sounds reasonable when you say it like that.
“You can wait out here,” he continues pointedly, “And if I’m not back in five minutes, then you can run like hell. Fail-y arms and all.”
Patrick smiles at me softly, and I kind of half-heartedly grimace and duck my eyes beneath the shadow of my hood. His face sobers and he sighs, reaching out to rub my arm reassuringly.
“I’ll never forgive you,” I say suddenly, tone dark, “If this is a trick.”
Patrick practically reels back as if he’s physically been punched in the mouth. He grabs onto my sleeve tighter and looks at me desperately. “Could you maybe try to trust me a little, please?”
I shrug and jerk away from him, creating an arms distance between us. “Five minutes,” I reply softly.
He disappears into the house, which is still as dark and as silent as when I left it. It’s a house that’s asleep. I sit down on the front steps and pick at the peeling green paint of the wooden railing. I check my clock a few times, the digital white display casting an unnatural glow amid the early morning landscape. I frown. It’s been ten minutes.
I bend over backwards to look at the house I’ve lived in for the past eight years, biting my lip. It already looks foreboding, and foreign, like there’s a gauze over it, hiding a big gaping wound. Like I’m an unwelcome ghost, like I’m just haunting the place where I died. I guess my mind was already somewhere far away the last couple of weeks that I lived here, on a different plane of existence that wasn’t human. That was joyless and hopeless and desolate. I was already a lifeless apparition, a disquieting specter that roamed from room to room without acknowledging the living.
But maybe I didn’t say a through enough goodbye.
Restlessly, with nervous resolution, I creep inside. I tip-toe up the stairs and inch down the hallway as noiselessly as possible. It’s an old house though; it creaks and whines, like it has its own flawed personality. When I reach the end of the hallway, Patrick’s bedroom door is ajar, left wide open. I slip inside quietly.
There’s a bag open on his bed and it’s half full. Patrick methodically folds a few pieces of clothing and then stuffs them in with the other things.
My heart leaps out of my chest. It wasn’t a lie, it wasn’t false hope. Patrick is coming with me.
I watch gleefully as he looks around his room, eyebrows knit, trying to think of what he needs, what he can live without and what’s sentimental enough to take even though it’s not practical. He grabs a few more things, while I watch silently and then he catches my reflection in his bureau mirror. He’s shocked still for a second, his hand resting in midair with a pair of neatly folded boxers in it. Then he shakes his head and wields around to face me.
“You’re smiling,” he says in awe, surprising me.
I shrink down in height under his scrutiny, trying to hide as much of my face as possible with my bangs. “It’s been more than five minutes.”
Patrick shrugs, taking my every new idiosyncrasy in stride. “I’ve never run away before. I don’t have it down to an exact science.”
“Are you almost done?” I ask curtly, surveying the area behind me for the billionth time since I entered the room.
Patrick nods. “Yeah. Just go into the bathroom and get my toothbrush. I’ll meet you down stairs.”
I walk down the hall quickly and poke my head into the bathroom. The light is on but it’s empty. As I grab Patrick’s toothbrush I imagine something pornographic right where I’m standing. I imagine seeing it through someone else’s eyes. And I don’t know why these thoughts are popping into my head but I think to myself, this is the place where Brendon caught Patrick cheating on me with Gerard. I’m stunned to feel a sting of pain at the memory, instead of indifference. It’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. It never was. But it still hurts, even now. There’s something amazing about that. Something unsettling.
Patrick leaves his room, running his fingers over the doorframe with a distressed sigh. He looks up at me briefly, as if reconsidering all of this, and then his eyes get dark, determined. He follows me down the stairs and out the front door.
But then he takes the lead again. He tugs my sleeve gently and heads left, in the opposite direction of the bus station.
“Where are we going?” I ask, shielding my eyes from the first streams of sunlight breaking through the disappearing nighttime.
Patrick smiles coyly. “To ask a friend for a favor.”
Ten minutes later, we’re throwing pebbles and small rocks at Joe Trohman’s window. He opens it suddenly, his head peering out, disoriented. My last rock hits him in the forehead.
“What the fuck?” He mouths down at us.
Patrick just motions him to come join us.
Minutes later, Joe stumbles out, in mismatched clothing, normally untamed hair in complete and utter disarray. There’s a pillow mark running from his cheek down to his neck. He’s muttering something in….I don’t know what. Sounds like Yiddish. My grandmother spoke Yiddish a lot around me before she had her stroke. She’s probably dead by now, I think with a small pang of guilt. A small pang of bitter realization that this is the second life that I’ve left behind in my short seventeen years of existence.
“Its 5:30 in the morning,” Joe informs Patrick grumpily, “Whaddya want?”
We steel a glance at each other.
“Uh,” Patrick says, delicately, “Your van?”
Joe raises his eyebrows and leads us around back to his parents used car garage. Mr. Trohman was actually a real estate broker but he enjoyed fixing up old cars in his sparse spare time, so, to his wife’s horror he built a second garage in his back yard for the ancient vehicles he found in scrape and metal yards. For his sixteenth birthday, he gave Joe his labor of love, 1976 green and white Volkswagen kombi.
Patrick inspects it from top to bottom critically, tapping and kicking it to test its stability while I lean against the back bumper impatiently, my foot twitching wildly, rolling my eyes.
“So, why do you need my van?” Joe asks, watching Patrick with amusement.
“About that,” I say flatly, trying to hide my nervousness, “We’re taking your Hippiebus to Chicago.”
Joe blinks and rubs his eyes. “You’re kidding.”
“We’re not,” Patrick says shortly, kicking at the front license plate.
“Yeah,” I continue, making a dumb hand motion, to try to make it seem like a magical getaway. “We’re riding off into the sunset.”
We fall silent.
“But you’re coming back right?” Joe asks, concern leaking into his face.
“Well,” I say, exchanging another look with Patrick, who’s biting the hell out of his lower lip, “No. We’re not.”
Joe gawks at us briefly and then sighs. “I’ll go get the keys.”
It takes Joe an inordinate amount of time to locate his keys and Patrick and I are about to book it out of there, suspicious that our plan fell through and Joe’s gone and told on us, when Joe finally reemerges, creeping out his back door and closing it gingerly. He has his keys in his right hand and a suitcase in his left.
“No,” I say firmly as he gets closer, “No way.”
“Shut up, Pete,” Joe replies breezily, “I’m not letting you guys do this alone. There’s totally strength in numbers. And this is my van. It’s not leaving this garage without me.”
I look to Patrick for support, but he’s smiling fondly at Joe, grabbing his suitcase and throwing it in the back with ours. I whine at him indignantly, but he just pats my knee and gives me a pleading look. And yeah, I can’t say no to that. Not if it makes Patrick happy.
“We don’t have a lot of time to sit around arguing either,” Joe says, climbing into the driver’s seat, “You have to be up for school in less than an hour.”
I glare at the side window and I know he sees me. But then Patrick grabs me by the sleeve again brings me to the back of the van.
“Hop in,” He says gently. It’s more of a suggestion then a command because he’s being really careful not to upset me. Because he’s treating me like a china plate and if everything he does isn’t cautious when handling me, I might break.
Once the vans rolling, I feel a lot of tension exit my body in one huge wave, on the release of a single breath. Never had stale air felt this much like freedom; a small, closed space felt like liberation. Every one of my muscles, my brain, my heart, they’re all relaxing, lowering their hackles. I’m just an anonymous boy in the back of a van and nobody knows why I’m suffering so much on the inside. Almost nobody anyway.
I glance over at Patrick and I wonder if this is bringing him the same sense of relief it’s bringing me. Or if he feels like this small, closed space is a cage, a trap he willingly walked into. Did he feel liberated or did he feel like my prisoner? Only motivated by my emotions, willing to give an arm and a leg for my happiness. Or a home and a family. Patrick seemed like a big, tragic figure to me now. And that’s still my fault.