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Splayed out over the broad meadow, Jeffrey could feel the garish sun cauterizing his skin, warmth broiling beneath his shirt and inducing the sweat glistening off of him. Beside him, Bill Bailey’s perched Indian-style, his slender fingers working briskly at some doll he’d picked up from the streets.
“What are you gon’ do with that anyway?” Jeffrey questions, bringing his attention back to the cerulean sky above them, clear of any clouds in such a way that Jeffrey’s could’ve mistaken it for a blue shield.
“I’ll give it to Amy. She likes things like these,” the strawberry-blond replies, his voice nothing but a slight murmur as his focus expelled into repairing the toy.
Jeffrey thought of just deserting the toy when him and Bill walked past it on their walk from school— not that school was over, but Jeffrey preferred skipping rather than drawing blanks and humiliating himself in all of his classes, and Bill had nothing better to do except following. The doll had sickly pale skin, along with hair as fair as the barley surrounding them. Grime stained the slight clouds of pink on her cheeks, along with the blue of her dress, however, Bill saw her fit to keep and Jeffrey decided against changing his mind. He was in no place to.
Stuck somewhere within his dreams and the rather sweltering reality he was stuck in, Jeffrey saw it fit to resume his daydreams of somewhere else; somewhere where things weren’t so mundane. He recalled listening to his Led Zeppelin records, imagining what it would be like to live out a dream like that. Just like Robert Plant, there was a feeling Jeffrey got when he looked to the west. He needed to pursue something, otherwise he’d just roll over and die without having the impact on the world he always imagined he could.
“Do you think we can make it out of here?”
“Her hair’s all tangled up. Can I borrow your comb?”
Jeffrey gives the older boy a pointed glare, however, Bill remains expressionless, his attention devoted to the doll. The former knew better than to believe it wasn’t a distraction.
“Don’t side-step, Bill...” Jeffrey sits up, quivering as he feels his perspiration trailing down the small of his back. The other boy looks at him briefly, as though a forewarning, although Jeffrey’s urge to prod doesn’t dare to cease. “You think about it, don’t you?”
Bill places the doll on the grass, folding his hands and exhaling harshly through his nose, as if he was frustrated just being in the other boy’s presence. Though, nothing was tense. In some obscure way, Jeffrey felt as though the thin ice they’d be walking on was melting away at last, allowing him to drown in Bill’s enigmatic aura. And there was some type of comfort in that.
“I want to know you, Bill,” he murmurs.
“I dream of something better, yeah,” he mumbles, as if the dialogue shouldn’t mean as much as it truly does.
But Jeffrey knew how to read between the lines, and Bill always read like a book.
“All the time?” He murmurs, though the words fail to transfer like a inquiry, and he was aware Bill didn’t perceive it as such judging by the blank stare he got in return. “Never mind—”
“You think about it all the time, too, what’s the difference?” Bill interrogates sharply, defensive in such a manner that Jeffrey pondered whether he’d ever be able to wriggle out of the trap he’d foolishly stumbled into.
He glances back at the doll, noticing the way Bill had meticulously wiped away the dirt on her face, along with her frail arms and legs. Her head seemed screwed back on much more securely than when they’d stumbled upon her, and for sure, Jeffrey was aware Amy would fall in love with the doll just the way her brother anticipated.
The seconds that tick by with every mindless conclusion Jeffrey makes while Bill awaits his reply almost grows disconcerting, and it’s then where the two silently realize that their dreams were of the same essence.
So he proposes, in the very moment that Bill’s sharp prismatic irises meet his own, “Why don’t we leave together?”
And the distasteful twisted expression that takes over the older boy’s face instantly makes Jeffrey wish he could inhale the words back into the pit of his stomach where he’d leave it to sicken him at any given second, only if it meant they’d never meet Bill’s ears.
But they did.
“I can’t leave, and you know that,” he affirms. “I can’t leave Stewart and Amy, I can’t do that.”
“Please just.. give it a thought? Gosh, it’s not like you’re happy living there!”
“You don’t know anything about me, Jeffrey,” he declares, standing up so quickly thats Jeffrey questioned how he wasn’t struck with any vertigo.
“I know that you’re unhappy,” he replies consciously. And there was nothing he regretted in that very moment. He saw the smile that never quite met Bill’s eyes. He knew of the scars that corrupted his back every time he changed into his gym uniform in school. He heard the bit of reluctance in his voice every time he sang. He knew there was something invested inside of Bill that needed to break free, another personality— perhaps his own personality that never had the chance to shine.
Bill clenches his fists tightly to where Jeffrey could see the whitening of his knuckles, and it’s then where he realizes that retaliating was plausibly the only option he had left. There was no swaying Bill and all the thoughts that went along with him.
“I’m leaving, Bill,” he murmurs softly. “I’m not able to stay here any longer. A-And if you’re not coming, then that’s fine. I won’t force you.” Jeffrey looks at the doll as he speaks, possibly because she was just as broken as he’d just made Bill. It was much easier to avoid the real thing.
Bill is quiet, too quiet, and maybe that’s what prompts Jeffrey to grab his backup and stand up. “I’m leaving tonight, Bill.”
And as he treads away, he gets no response.
That night, as Jeffrey packed up his battered suitcase and collected his records, he’d anticipated Bill with pure desire to show up at his window, his own bag in his hand. If he wasn’t so lucky, maybe just an exchange of goodbyes. But instead, two hours pass and the moon was close to sinking. And Bill never showed up.
Jeffrey didn’t know for certain what it was that made his heart so heavy as he hitched a ride from some trucker. Let it be the reminiscing of all he was leaving behind, or the idea that it was Bill he was leaving behind.
But somewhere inside of his own melancholy acumen, Jeffrey was sure he hadn’t seen the last of the older boy just yet.