Chapter Text
The light reflecting from the pool left a wavering shadow across our faces, as we (begrudgingly) were awoken by a beam light pouring from the blinds; one of us forgot to shut.
"fuck." a hoarse voice came from the nape of hair on the pillow beside me; the red light on Boric's alarm clock blared at 6:42.
"are we going to school today?" the rawness of his voice seemed to have dissipated back into the wilted, Australia-Russian accent I had become so used to. "fuck no", I replied. I still noticed patterns of the sun filtering through the windows, and I was sure Boris could too.
"going back to sleep", Boris groaned with a half-hearted wack on my left arm.
A few hours later, I woke up to the phone ringing. I felt a stirring close behind me. "probably school calling about unexcused absence ", he said, practically into the back of my neck, holding out bunny ears. Over the blaring noise of the persistent phone ringing, I could faintly hear my iPod still playing the music we had put on in a lazy, drunk daze. Someone had tried throwing it off the bed because it was lying right on top of Popchyk at the foot of the bed. 10:16 .
"Boris." I turned towards him to find him slightly closer than I had expected. He mumbled something in Ukrainian. (I was just learning how to differentiate the two), and I lazily punched him in the stomach. His eyes scrunched and opened slightly. "it's nearly 10:30. it's Friday. isn't that when your dad is coming back?" a hint of recognition in his eyes. Then panic.
"kurwa mać, why didn't you wake me?"
"why didn't you wake me ?"
Boris groaned, slackly got out of bed, and flicked my arm, already bending down to pick up the beer and vodka bottles off the floor.
"We put the bottles in the down-the-road neighbour's bin and then go to yours, yes?" he said, trying, and failing, to drag me out of his bed. "come on," he said, sounding more panicked this time, and I complied. We had been feeding on bread and out-of-date salami for at least four days, and when we both went to the bathroom to assess the consequences of last night (just a bit of puke and a fallen-over pill bottle, nothing we couldn't handle," we saw the shallowness of our skin and the dark circles that had gotten predominantly worse over the last few days.
"Theo," Boris said, in that same Eastern European twang he always did, where it almost always sounded a bit like "tee-oh" .
When we were finished cleaning the several messes we had made in and around the house, the clock above the sliding door (which I was surprised even worked) read 10:24. Enough time to dump the bottles down the road and hide out in the abandoned playground until we heard mr pavlikovskys' battered car pull into the driveway.
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It wasn't until hours later that we arrived back at my house for the first time in about four days. by this time, I was sure that my father and Xandra were staying in some shitty motel together (which was, years later, confirmed by Boris, who told me that he had seen the receipts on the kitchen island when it was just him and Xandra alone one morning) As usual, the driveway was empty and looked like it hadn't been used since much before we left it.
We were on our post-lunch vodka, which Boris insisted was good for your gut! It helps your body digest! I was unsure whether or not this was true. Still, I was always willing to jump at any opportunity to drink alcohol.
After I deleted the voicemail that Desert Heights High had sent my father, we spent the rest of the morning lounging on Xandras' tanning chair and drinking my father's beer until we heard a car pulling into the driveway. We threw the bottles onto the hard clay outside the fence and rushed upstairs, missing my father and Xandra's stumbling doorway by a second.
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