(no subject)
Title: Untitled (How could this happen to me?)
Pairings: Jalan (x2) and Rexickie.
Rating: Um, PG 13. But just for swearing. All the slash is simply alluded to, but if anyone asks then you didn't hear that from me.
Notes: For pipry23 (wtf ever Kate, I wrote it anyhow.) I took liberties (read: wrote one in class and forgot that Kalan was my character) and so one of my perspectives is off.
Situation: JALAN PLANTING VEGETABLE SEEDS.
The sound of the gavel banging against the desk resounds thoughout the hollow room.
Case closed.
Ninety hours of community service, simply because one night Dave’s far too drunk to drive his 77 ‘vette home and Jake does it for him. So maybe he’d had a drink or two. He wasn’t drunk. He swears that the mailbox came out of nowhere - if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with the stick shift…
Well.
They give him two choices. Community rehabilitation or the Big Brothers program. He hates kids. They just don’t go with the badass rock star image, ya know?
He shows up twenty minutes late to his first day of duty. Smiles charmingly at the little girl working the park - no wait, boy. He doesn’t allow his smile to waiver. The kid speaks, he lets his shock register. Big voice for that little chest. Must be all lungs, he’d probably make a good singer. Toxic Kiss could use a new member…Tom’s been fucking up for awhile now. He looks at the kid again. It’d never work. The gold cross glittering around his neck tips him off. The kid thrusts a rake into Jake’s hand and he sneers. Isn’t there a desk job that he could be doing? He can work under it, if that’s what the kid wants. He watches the blush flood into the kid’s cheeks and feels an unfamiliar pang of conscience.
He sighs and heads outside with the rake. Eighty-nine hours, twenty two minutes to go. A girl with long dark braids talks on her cell phone as she nudges a chunk of grass down with the toe of her designer cowboy boots. The golden glitter of her eye shadow sparkles in the light. Great. He’s working with the fucking oriental Paris Hilton.
He watches two men sitting cross-legged beside a flower garden, one a square shouldered man and the other built like a beanstalk with raven hair. He watches for a moment longer - pansies, the both of them. Fuckin’ nancies.
He stares at the rake in his hand again. What the fuck is he supposed to rake? He leans it against the wall and digs in his pocket for a cigarette, popping it between his lips and reaching for his light.
It’s snatched out of his mouth in an instant, and there stands the girl/boy/waif. The stone cold look on his face simply spells out one thing - N.O. So the waif has backbone as well as lungs. Huh.
He coolly raises an eyebrow in his direction; the kid taps the badge on the left side of his chest. Kalan: Parkview Community Leader. He lets out a soft sigh before speaking, fitting for an angel of this sort. “I’m, um, going to be working with you today.” He drifts towards an empty patch of dirt, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that he’s being followed. Jake is taken by the look in his eyes - he’s used to fear or anticipation of the inevitable, all he sees now is a lack of expectation. He follows.
Kalan kneels down as if praying, a strand of hair falling across his face. He gently kneads the soil, fingers dancing over unseen ivory on Mother Nature’s most favoured instrument. He calmly explains to Jake that they’re going to be planting vegetable seeds before pulling packets from the unoccupied back pocket of his jeans - carrots, chives, peas. He thinks for a moment before handing the chives to Jake; “they’re not so picky”.
He opens the carrot seeds and carefully begins to sew them, biting his lip in concentration. Jake watches him for several minutes before Kalan catches him watching. He hurriedly looks away before making a large hole and dumping half the package inside. Kalan is too focused to notice, thankfully. He doesn’t need anyone to rat him out. No one said that he had to do his job properly. When all the chive seeds are gone, he takes off his jacket and leans back on his hands, taking in the sun. Kalan rolls his eyes and a package of pea seeds hits him squarely in the chest with a thwack.
Jake sighs exasperatedly and opens them before Kalan snatches them back. “These ones need care.” He gets an eye roll in returns, but this doesn’t discourage him from talking. He tells Jake about the other volunteers (the pansies are actually named Shane and Stephane, how fucking cute.) Kalan thinks gardening is therapeutic, Jake thinks he’s full of shit.
He whispers mutedly and Jake isn’t sure that he’s not his own intended audience. “It’s almost metaphorical, right? You plant something and love it a little, and then it grows beautifully.” He glances over at Jake then, and he can only read one thing in the twinkle in his eyes: he knows something that Jake doesn’t.
Jake shows up the next day, determined to find out just what that is.
Situation: KALAN/REX GOUDIE AT A HANSON CONCERT.
Kelsey buys the tickets and cackles madly as Kalan opens his Christmas present. A shared inside “joke”. Kalan being the fourth brother. He subconsciously tugs on his long blonde curls as he frowns down at the tickets. “Umm…thanks.” She only laughs harder.
Rex waits in the December cold for tickets, hands shoved deep inside pockets and brain warning him that he’s nuts. He doesn’t much care - he’d cut off his fingers for Teri if that were what she wanted. Luckily, this time she simply wants Hanson tickets. When the window finally opens, pushing from the eager preteens behind him causes him to jostle into the blonde in front of him. She turns around to look and then smiles shyly before shuffling closer to the window. Five minutes later, he’s clutching sixth row tickets in between his frigid fingers.
February 19 comes much quicker than Kalan expects, even with the constant blaring of Hanson music drifting through his bedroom wall from Kelsey’s as a reminder. She does her makeup and hair, much more dressed up than he’s seen her lately. He good-naturedly reminds her that it isn’t a date, that as dashing as he may be he’s still her brother. She makes a face and kicks one of her leather clogs at him, meeting its target by colliding with his left shin.
Forty-five minutes later, he’s sinking as low as possible into his far-too-close-for-comfort seat while Kelsey chatters on about the girl two rows in front of them and the lights and the roadies and the glow in the dark Hanson bracelet now wrapped tightly around her wrist. When the band finally comes out, he stays firmly planted in his seat while all of the girls around him dance. He squeezes his eyes shut and wishes to be invisible; he watches the second hand on his watch tick slowly closer to freedom. He dutifully takes pictures for Mackenzie when the digital camera is thrust at him. She has a violin exam, and at the moment he wishes that he did, too. Anything but this.
As soon as the house lights come up, he jumps to his feet. Kelsey is excitedly squealing with the girl next to her so he simply mumbles something about going to the bathroom and pushes his way into the throng of people moving upwards through the stadium. He continues on past the concession stands, past the merchandise carts and to the end of the cement hallway. He leans against the cool wall and flips open his cell phone to check for messages. “You too?” a voice questions from behind him. A decidedly male voice. He turns around to find dark eyes and darker features, perfectly contrasted to his own. The smile is nothing but warm and so he tries to mirror it, knowing that somehow his conveys more force and less validity.
He tries to muster the calmest tone that he can find from the depths of his chest. “P-pardon me?” He frowns inwardly - maybe outwardly, too.
“Yer woman madja come ‘long, eh?” Kalan wrinkles his nose at that, trying to decipher the meaning behind the accented words before understanding. He laughs slightly.
“No, my sister.” He blushes an interesting shade of pink. He should have just lied. He came to see Hanson with his sister? That’s the epitome of not cool right there. If you looked up “not cool” in the dictionary, you’d see his picture. Well, if not cool was in the dictionary. It probably wasn’t, not even those modern slang dictionaries. He commands his brain to stop; he’s talking again.
“’m Rex.” Kalan blinks at him for a moment before it clicks.
“OH! Kalan,” he states, reaching out a hand to be shook. It hangs in midair for a second before he realizes that most teenagers don’t shake hands. He draws it back as inconspicuously as possible, tittering awkwardly. “…Porter.” He nervously brushes a curl away from his eyes, a bad habit that he’s picked up somewhere along the line.
Rex nods and they let the silence drape them for a while longer. Rex leans against the wall and glances warily towards the arena. “Bloody girls. Mah ears ‘ave bin ringin’ wit all dere screamin’”
Kalan nods. Rex offers him a small smile and nods towards the concession line, which is shortly dissipating. “Beer soften ya up, b’y?” Kalan’s not quite sure why he needs ‘softening’ but he considers his options and nods anyhow. Hanson or beer? Tough call. Only it’s not, not really. At all.
“Sure, sounds good.” He tries another little smile and hopes that he’s slightly more successful this time. He follows him into the poorly lit lounge, sitting on one of the thickly padded bar stools beside him. Rex talks and Kalan listens. He’s really good at that.
Rex is from Newfoundland (Kalan nods a little too eagerly and Rex raises an eyebrow. “The accent. It just fits, is all.”) He’s left his girlfriend (Tara?) watching the show and he’d rather be at home playing his guitar. Tickets were an anniversary present; he thinks Hanson’s gay (Kalan only blushes a little bit then.) He pauses for a breath and looks expectantly at Kalan.
“Tell me ‘bout ya, b’y.”
Kalan taps a beat against the side of the bar with the toe of his shell tops. “There’s not much to say.”
“I don’ min’.” he drawls. Kalan smiles; he thinks of the violin and new strings, dew on the grass on a summer morning and the way that unworn shoes fit the first time you have them on. Rex smiles like a full storm cloud, merely waiting.
The opening strands of In a Little While start. They don’t head back just yet.
Situation: JALAN AT A HOUSE PARTY IN THE BATHROOM.
He presses against the cool tile floor, quite positive that he’s dying. The four shots of tequila in a row just didn’t sit so well. The music pounds through the floor and the beat mixes Kalan’s brain like it’s in a blender. There’s a knock on the door and he curls up tighter, hoping to sink into oblivion. No such luck. The impatient person bangs again. “Fuck, open up!” He wills the room to stop spinning and pushes himself into a sitting position. “There’s only one fucking bathroom, come on!” Something about the voice sounds familiar, but frankly he’s not caring too much. “Anna, if you don’t open this door, I’m going to have to…” Kalan opens his eyes at the next few words and groans before using the counter top for balance and hoisting himself up. He throws open the door and one hundred and seventy three pounds of Jacob Hoggard pounces on him.
He shrinks away and Jacob sees his error. “Shit, sorry man. Anna was just…” Kalan swallows and nods as casually as he can. Jacob’s hips are still dangerously close to his, one perfectly defined hipbone peeking out from under a beat up Carling shirt. Jacob takes a step backwards. “Look, I just wanna use the mirror, okay?” He doesn’t wait for a response. He’s clutching a box of hair dye in his hands, blonde bombshell. Kalan would actually laugh if the oddity of this situation weren’t accentuated by the fact that his stomach was emulating a cement mixer. He gets up to leave, to find Joshua and get the heck out of there, but Jacob keeps chattering.
He seems to have forgotten that they haven’t spoken in three years. That he plays football and that Kalan is the only male members of the school’s jazz band. That at school he wouldn’t be caught dead talking to him. His eyes focus on the Cold Shot in his other hand and he understands why. He’s probably forgotten that he isn’t Anna, or Shane or Manoah.
What Jacob doesn’t know is that Kalan’s mom still asks when he’s going to come over again.
He shoves his head under the tap and drenches it, shaking from end to end like a retriever when he’s finished. Kalan imagines the droplets of water now on the mirror connecting to form HELP. He looks nervously towards the door - isn’t Josh wondering where he is yet? Jacob’s mixing the dye and the smell is enough to make Kalan even sicker. Luckily, the remnants of anything that might still be left in his stomach are already gone. Jacob snaps on the rubber gloves that came with the dye and Kalan cringes at the noise. He mixes the bottle and leans over the sink, sloppily applying it to his hair. Kalan watches as a few drops fall to the green tile, instantly leaving tear shaped discolorations there. He bites his lip and massages his temple with two fingers, still quiet.
Jacob is telling him a story about Anna, interspersed with bits of Under The Sea from The Little Mermaid. Kalan doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but he doesn’t think that he would if he were in a better state either. He leans against the bathtub, resting his head against the retro sliding doors. He tries to send Joshua messages. Apparently he's still not telepathic. He thinks about sneaking out while his back is turned and glances towards the door, and when he moves Jacob’s eyes follow him in the mirror.
“Whacha doin’, sunshine?” Kalan winces again, this time for entirely different reasons.
“Don’t call me that,” he answers sharply, backhanding Jacob’s serve like he’s Pete Sampras in the ATP race. Jacob turns around slowly.
“Call you what, sunshine?”
He glowers, usual lack of nerve made steely by tequila and the hazy knowledge that Josh is somewhere below. “Fuck, Jacob. Don’t play games.” He looks away, suddenly disgusted. He remembers the boy who used to write elaborate rock operas at the spur of the moment, the one who always knew how to build the sturdiest snow forts. His friend.
Jacob blinks at him, a confused puppy that’s just been kicked.
“You haven’t spoken to me in three years.” Jacob laughs as if this is the most absurd thing he’s ever heard, as if no time at all has passed. Kalan squeezes his eyes shut tightly and he almost believes it. But when he opens his eyes again, he’s still standing there in front of him but not like three years ago. Not just because he has a plastic Safeway bag on his head, but because he’s got more piercings than the boy he was would have dreamed of, and because those fingers with their bitten-down nails probably haven’t touched piano keys in years. But the gaps in his teeth are still there, and his nose doesn’t quite fit in with his other features. That still stands. He swallows and looks away. “You can’t just…you can’t pretend that we never happened.”
Jacob stares incredulously. “We?”
“We were friends, once. Even if you can’t remember that now.” He purses his lips in the way that he does when he’s angry, and Jacob doesn’t fail to notice. He hasn’t forgotten that look, the way that his eyes cloud over like the sky threatening to rain. In fact, he hasn’t forgotten much at all.
But that still doesn’t fill the empty space between them, and it doesn’t change the fact that Kalan sits in the first row in Algebra and that Mrs. Carmichael asks him for the answers to the problems. It also doesn’t change the fact that Anna thinks she might be pregnant or that the only class he’s passing this semester is gym.
Jacob reaches up to run a hand through his hair and touches the bag instead, the crinkling of plastic matching the static in his brain. “Look, man. I’m sorry if you’re mad or whatever…”
It’s just not enough.
Kalan gets up and heads towards the door with as much veracity as he can muster in this situation, moving away from insincerity. He doesn’t look back. He doesn’t know that Jacob watches his retreating form until he’s disappeared down the stairs.
On Monday morning, Jacob watches the slim figure sitting front and center in Algebra. He watches the slender shoulders shaking as he hurriedly works through equations, the way that he pushes his curls back with his left hand when they’re in the way. His eyes rest on the empty desk beside him.
Maybe someday that’ll be his desk again.
Pairings: Jalan (x2) and Rexickie.
Rating: Um, PG 13. But just for swearing. All the slash is simply alluded to, but if anyone asks then you didn't hear that from me.
Notes: For pipry23 (wtf ever Kate, I wrote it anyhow.) I took liberties (read: wrote one in class and forgot that Kalan was my character) and so one of my perspectives is off.
Situation: JALAN PLANTING VEGETABLE SEEDS.
The sound of the gavel banging against the desk resounds thoughout the hollow room.
Case closed.
Ninety hours of community service, simply because one night Dave’s far too drunk to drive his 77 ‘vette home and Jake does it for him. So maybe he’d had a drink or two. He wasn’t drunk. He swears that the mailbox came out of nowhere - if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with the stick shift…
Well.
They give him two choices. Community rehabilitation or the Big Brothers program. He hates kids. They just don’t go with the badass rock star image, ya know?
He shows up twenty minutes late to his first day of duty. Smiles charmingly at the little girl working the park - no wait, boy. He doesn’t allow his smile to waiver. The kid speaks, he lets his shock register. Big voice for that little chest. Must be all lungs, he’d probably make a good singer. Toxic Kiss could use a new member…Tom’s been fucking up for awhile now. He looks at the kid again. It’d never work. The gold cross glittering around his neck tips him off. The kid thrusts a rake into Jake’s hand and he sneers. Isn’t there a desk job that he could be doing? He can work under it, if that’s what the kid wants. He watches the blush flood into the kid’s cheeks and feels an unfamiliar pang of conscience.
He sighs and heads outside with the rake. Eighty-nine hours, twenty two minutes to go. A girl with long dark braids talks on her cell phone as she nudges a chunk of grass down with the toe of her designer cowboy boots. The golden glitter of her eye shadow sparkles in the light. Great. He’s working with the fucking oriental Paris Hilton.
He watches two men sitting cross-legged beside a flower garden, one a square shouldered man and the other built like a beanstalk with raven hair. He watches for a moment longer - pansies, the both of them. Fuckin’ nancies.
He stares at the rake in his hand again. What the fuck is he supposed to rake? He leans it against the wall and digs in his pocket for a cigarette, popping it between his lips and reaching for his light.
It’s snatched out of his mouth in an instant, and there stands the girl/boy/waif. The stone cold look on his face simply spells out one thing - N.O. So the waif has backbone as well as lungs. Huh.
He coolly raises an eyebrow in his direction; the kid taps the badge on the left side of his chest. Kalan: Parkview Community Leader. He lets out a soft sigh before speaking, fitting for an angel of this sort. “I’m, um, going to be working with you today.” He drifts towards an empty patch of dirt, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that he’s being followed. Jake is taken by the look in his eyes - he’s used to fear or anticipation of the inevitable, all he sees now is a lack of expectation. He follows.
Kalan kneels down as if praying, a strand of hair falling across his face. He gently kneads the soil, fingers dancing over unseen ivory on Mother Nature’s most favoured instrument. He calmly explains to Jake that they’re going to be planting vegetable seeds before pulling packets from the unoccupied back pocket of his jeans - carrots, chives, peas. He thinks for a moment before handing the chives to Jake; “they’re not so picky”.
He opens the carrot seeds and carefully begins to sew them, biting his lip in concentration. Jake watches him for several minutes before Kalan catches him watching. He hurriedly looks away before making a large hole and dumping half the package inside. Kalan is too focused to notice, thankfully. He doesn’t need anyone to rat him out. No one said that he had to do his job properly. When all the chive seeds are gone, he takes off his jacket and leans back on his hands, taking in the sun. Kalan rolls his eyes and a package of pea seeds hits him squarely in the chest with a thwack.
Jake sighs exasperatedly and opens them before Kalan snatches them back. “These ones need care.” He gets an eye roll in returns, but this doesn’t discourage him from talking. He tells Jake about the other volunteers (the pansies are actually named Shane and Stephane, how fucking cute.) Kalan thinks gardening is therapeutic, Jake thinks he’s full of shit.
He whispers mutedly and Jake isn’t sure that he’s not his own intended audience. “It’s almost metaphorical, right? You plant something and love it a little, and then it grows beautifully.” He glances over at Jake then, and he can only read one thing in the twinkle in his eyes: he knows something that Jake doesn’t.
Jake shows up the next day, determined to find out just what that is.
Situation: KALAN/REX GOUDIE AT A HANSON CONCERT.
Kelsey buys the tickets and cackles madly as Kalan opens his Christmas present. A shared inside “joke”. Kalan being the fourth brother. He subconsciously tugs on his long blonde curls as he frowns down at the tickets. “Umm…thanks.” She only laughs harder.
Rex waits in the December cold for tickets, hands shoved deep inside pockets and brain warning him that he’s nuts. He doesn’t much care - he’d cut off his fingers for Teri if that were what she wanted. Luckily, this time she simply wants Hanson tickets. When the window finally opens, pushing from the eager preteens behind him causes him to jostle into the blonde in front of him. She turns around to look and then smiles shyly before shuffling closer to the window. Five minutes later, he’s clutching sixth row tickets in between his frigid fingers.
February 19 comes much quicker than Kalan expects, even with the constant blaring of Hanson music drifting through his bedroom wall from Kelsey’s as a reminder. She does her makeup and hair, much more dressed up than he’s seen her lately. He good-naturedly reminds her that it isn’t a date, that as dashing as he may be he’s still her brother. She makes a face and kicks one of her leather clogs at him, meeting its target by colliding with his left shin.
Forty-five minutes later, he’s sinking as low as possible into his far-too-close-for-comfort seat while Kelsey chatters on about the girl two rows in front of them and the lights and the roadies and the glow in the dark Hanson bracelet now wrapped tightly around her wrist. When the band finally comes out, he stays firmly planted in his seat while all of the girls around him dance. He squeezes his eyes shut and wishes to be invisible; he watches the second hand on his watch tick slowly closer to freedom. He dutifully takes pictures for Mackenzie when the digital camera is thrust at him. She has a violin exam, and at the moment he wishes that he did, too. Anything but this.
As soon as the house lights come up, he jumps to his feet. Kelsey is excitedly squealing with the girl next to her so he simply mumbles something about going to the bathroom and pushes his way into the throng of people moving upwards through the stadium. He continues on past the concession stands, past the merchandise carts and to the end of the cement hallway. He leans against the cool wall and flips open his cell phone to check for messages. “You too?” a voice questions from behind him. A decidedly male voice. He turns around to find dark eyes and darker features, perfectly contrasted to his own. The smile is nothing but warm and so he tries to mirror it, knowing that somehow his conveys more force and less validity.
He tries to muster the calmest tone that he can find from the depths of his chest. “P-pardon me?” He frowns inwardly - maybe outwardly, too.
“Yer woman madja come ‘long, eh?” Kalan wrinkles his nose at that, trying to decipher the meaning behind the accented words before understanding. He laughs slightly.
“No, my sister.” He blushes an interesting shade of pink. He should have just lied. He came to see Hanson with his sister? That’s the epitome of not cool right there. If you looked up “not cool” in the dictionary, you’d see his picture. Well, if not cool was in the dictionary. It probably wasn’t, not even those modern slang dictionaries. He commands his brain to stop; he’s talking again.
“’m Rex.” Kalan blinks at him for a moment before it clicks.
“OH! Kalan,” he states, reaching out a hand to be shook. It hangs in midair for a second before he realizes that most teenagers don’t shake hands. He draws it back as inconspicuously as possible, tittering awkwardly. “…Porter.” He nervously brushes a curl away from his eyes, a bad habit that he’s picked up somewhere along the line.
Rex nods and they let the silence drape them for a while longer. Rex leans against the wall and glances warily towards the arena. “Bloody girls. Mah ears ‘ave bin ringin’ wit all dere screamin’”
Kalan nods. Rex offers him a small smile and nods towards the concession line, which is shortly dissipating. “Beer soften ya up, b’y?” Kalan’s not quite sure why he needs ‘softening’ but he considers his options and nods anyhow. Hanson or beer? Tough call. Only it’s not, not really. At all.
“Sure, sounds good.” He tries another little smile and hopes that he’s slightly more successful this time. He follows him into the poorly lit lounge, sitting on one of the thickly padded bar stools beside him. Rex talks and Kalan listens. He’s really good at that.
Rex is from Newfoundland (Kalan nods a little too eagerly and Rex raises an eyebrow. “The accent. It just fits, is all.”) He’s left his girlfriend (Tara?) watching the show and he’d rather be at home playing his guitar. Tickets were an anniversary present; he thinks Hanson’s gay (Kalan only blushes a little bit then.) He pauses for a breath and looks expectantly at Kalan.
“Tell me ‘bout ya, b’y.”
Kalan taps a beat against the side of the bar with the toe of his shell tops. “There’s not much to say.”
“I don’ min’.” he drawls. Kalan smiles; he thinks of the violin and new strings, dew on the grass on a summer morning and the way that unworn shoes fit the first time you have them on. Rex smiles like a full storm cloud, merely waiting.
The opening strands of In a Little While start. They don’t head back just yet.
Situation: JALAN AT A HOUSE PARTY IN THE BATHROOM.
He presses against the cool tile floor, quite positive that he’s dying. The four shots of tequila in a row just didn’t sit so well. The music pounds through the floor and the beat mixes Kalan’s brain like it’s in a blender. There’s a knock on the door and he curls up tighter, hoping to sink into oblivion. No such luck. The impatient person bangs again. “Fuck, open up!” He wills the room to stop spinning and pushes himself into a sitting position. “There’s only one fucking bathroom, come on!” Something about the voice sounds familiar, but frankly he’s not caring too much. “Anna, if you don’t open this door, I’m going to have to…” Kalan opens his eyes at the next few words and groans before using the counter top for balance and hoisting himself up. He throws open the door and one hundred and seventy three pounds of Jacob Hoggard pounces on him.
He shrinks away and Jacob sees his error. “Shit, sorry man. Anna was just…” Kalan swallows and nods as casually as he can. Jacob’s hips are still dangerously close to his, one perfectly defined hipbone peeking out from under a beat up Carling shirt. Jacob takes a step backwards. “Look, I just wanna use the mirror, okay?” He doesn’t wait for a response. He’s clutching a box of hair dye in his hands, blonde bombshell. Kalan would actually laugh if the oddity of this situation weren’t accentuated by the fact that his stomach was emulating a cement mixer. He gets up to leave, to find Joshua and get the heck out of there, but Jacob keeps chattering.
He seems to have forgotten that they haven’t spoken in three years. That he plays football and that Kalan is the only male members of the school’s jazz band. That at school he wouldn’t be caught dead talking to him. His eyes focus on the Cold Shot in his other hand and he understands why. He’s probably forgotten that he isn’t Anna, or Shane or Manoah.
What Jacob doesn’t know is that Kalan’s mom still asks when he’s going to come over again.
He shoves his head under the tap and drenches it, shaking from end to end like a retriever when he’s finished. Kalan imagines the droplets of water now on the mirror connecting to form HELP. He looks nervously towards the door - isn’t Josh wondering where he is yet? Jacob’s mixing the dye and the smell is enough to make Kalan even sicker. Luckily, the remnants of anything that might still be left in his stomach are already gone. Jacob snaps on the rubber gloves that came with the dye and Kalan cringes at the noise. He mixes the bottle and leans over the sink, sloppily applying it to his hair. Kalan watches as a few drops fall to the green tile, instantly leaving tear shaped discolorations there. He bites his lip and massages his temple with two fingers, still quiet.
Jacob is telling him a story about Anna, interspersed with bits of Under The Sea from The Little Mermaid. Kalan doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but he doesn’t think that he would if he were in a better state either. He leans against the bathtub, resting his head against the retro sliding doors. He tries to send Joshua messages. Apparently he's still not telepathic. He thinks about sneaking out while his back is turned and glances towards the door, and when he moves Jacob’s eyes follow him in the mirror.
“Whacha doin’, sunshine?” Kalan winces again, this time for entirely different reasons.
“Don’t call me that,” he answers sharply, backhanding Jacob’s serve like he’s Pete Sampras in the ATP race. Jacob turns around slowly.
“Call you what, sunshine?”
He glowers, usual lack of nerve made steely by tequila and the hazy knowledge that Josh is somewhere below. “Fuck, Jacob. Don’t play games.” He looks away, suddenly disgusted. He remembers the boy who used to write elaborate rock operas at the spur of the moment, the one who always knew how to build the sturdiest snow forts. His friend.
Jacob blinks at him, a confused puppy that’s just been kicked.
“You haven’t spoken to me in three years.” Jacob laughs as if this is the most absurd thing he’s ever heard, as if no time at all has passed. Kalan squeezes his eyes shut tightly and he almost believes it. But when he opens his eyes again, he’s still standing there in front of him but not like three years ago. Not just because he has a plastic Safeway bag on his head, but because he’s got more piercings than the boy he was would have dreamed of, and because those fingers with their bitten-down nails probably haven’t touched piano keys in years. But the gaps in his teeth are still there, and his nose doesn’t quite fit in with his other features. That still stands. He swallows and looks away. “You can’t just…you can’t pretend that we never happened.”
Jacob stares incredulously. “We?”
“We were friends, once. Even if you can’t remember that now.” He purses his lips in the way that he does when he’s angry, and Jacob doesn’t fail to notice. He hasn’t forgotten that look, the way that his eyes cloud over like the sky threatening to rain. In fact, he hasn’t forgotten much at all.
But that still doesn’t fill the empty space between them, and it doesn’t change the fact that Kalan sits in the first row in Algebra and that Mrs. Carmichael asks him for the answers to the problems. It also doesn’t change the fact that Anna thinks she might be pregnant or that the only class he’s passing this semester is gym.
Jacob reaches up to run a hand through his hair and touches the bag instead, the crinkling of plastic matching the static in his brain. “Look, man. I’m sorry if you’re mad or whatever…”
It’s just not enough.
Kalan gets up and heads towards the door with as much veracity as he can muster in this situation, moving away from insincerity. He doesn’t look back. He doesn’t know that Jacob watches his retreating form until he’s disappeared down the stairs.
On Monday morning, Jacob watches the slim figure sitting front and center in Algebra. He watches the slender shoulders shaking as he hurriedly works through equations, the way that he pushes his curls back with his left hand when they’re in the way. His eyes rest on the empty desk beside him.
Maybe someday that’ll be his desk again.