Chapter Text

For six months I couldn’t sleep.

With insomnia, nothing’s real  

Everything is far away. 

Everything is a copy

of a copy 

of a copy.

 ***

Hey, are you listening? 

Billy is a stray dog with dirty, matted hair, torn wisps of fur, and uncut, sharp claws. Billy's eyes are angry and his barking is even angrier, he snarls and barks at anyone who comes near him. He clenches his teeth and scuttles into the corner of the cage. Billy has a collar around his neck that digs into his skin so hard it hurts, rubs almost to the point of bleeding. The chain creaks with rust and jingles with every step, and Billy snarls, barks and clenches his teeth at it too. If a human hand reaches to undo the collar, Billy will raise a bark and growl menacingly low from the corner. If a human hand reaches out to feed him, Billy will bite at it. 

What are you looking at?

Billy sleeps bad, eats bad, looks bad, and copes bad as well. Billy has to cope for two, but he ends up being a stray dog. Billy's eighteen, he's a fucking adult. Billy knows how to be an adult, but Billy knows how to be an adult in the ”being a limp drunken body passed out on a vodka-drenched couch, rolling joints and getting home on the first morning bus" type of way. And Billy needs to be an adult in the "filling out paperwork and police reports, testifying against his own father, and choosing something he never chose" type of way. 

Are you planning on getting custody? 

Cus-to-dy.

It's easy to blame it on Max. It's all her fault. If Max hadn't suddenly decided she was a girl, if she hadn't come out and told Neil and Susan, if she'd stayed a regular long-haired skater boy, Susan wouldn't have gotten mad, Neil wouldn't have gotten even madder, everything would have stayed the same, and Billy would have stayed the same. Billy would have gone off to college, worked at some diner, and wouldn't have to testify against anyone. 

Except Max hadn't decided she was a girl, Max is the realest real girl there is. A long-haired redheaded g-i-r-l. Siding with her was the very first choice Billy had ever made out of the ones he never chose. 

It's very easy to blame Max for everything. And Billy does. Only it's not her fault. 

Grow up. Forget about the red plastic cups and the vomited toilet at the party. Take res-pon-si-bi-li-ty. 

Billy's gonna get custody, or Max will go into foster care. And then for adoption. Maybe Billy shouldn't get custody. Maybe it's better if Max will go into foster care and then for adoption. 

“Maybe it will be better if you will go into foster care and then for adoption.” Billy shares his concerns, staring up at the ceiling of the police station with his eye bruising red. 

“Of course it will be better. A couple of lesbians who are going to put me on pills to make my legs collapse and then fundraise for my treatment and renovate their kitchen with that money will do a better job of raising me than you will," Max replies, staring at the floor of the police station with her eye bruising red just like Billy’s. “At least they don't stink like you do!”

Max doesn't want to go into foster care and then for adoption. Billy wants to go to college. 

Billy wants to be a five-year-old boy on a beach in California. 

He's sore and achy and sleepy and everyone looks at him with sympathetic eyes, and so does the girl at the front desk. 

“I need to see Mrs. Byers," Billy asks, coughing. He leans against the counter because he's sore and achy and sleepy. “Is she free?”

Where the fuck is he? 

“She must be," Chrissy nods, smiling politely. 

Chrissy, her name is Chrissy. She's all ringing and thin and shiny and graceful and tender, like the first star in the night sky. Everything blurs in Billy's eyes, so Chrissy seems to him a set of features and sounds, and this set of features and sounds evokes pure unadulterated platonic admiration. Billy wants to look at Chrissy from across the counter like a little kid looks at a lady in a Cinderella costume, like humans look at constellations in the sky. 

Except Billy is not a little kid, and not much of a human, Billy is a stray dog with dirty, matted hair, torn wisps of fur, and uncut, sharp claws. Stray dogs like that are always hungry, looking at everyone like a piece of meat, cowering and wary, shaking and attacking. Billy should be drooling and staring hungrily the way other dogs look, the way he himself usually looks, but today his eyes are slick and Chrissy looks like Cinderella and a constellation in the sky.

Man up.

Chrissy squirms under his gaze. Billy looks down at her, properly. 

'Yeah,' she coughs and smiles, looking up from the computer. ‘She's in the office.’

Billy. Billy, Billy, Billy, Billy, Billy. 

Mrs. Byers always looks at him with a concerned look. If there's anything Billy has left in his memory from his mother, it's all turned out to be a part of Mrs. Byers.

‘So, sweetheart, how are you doing? Settling in? How's the apartment?’

Billy's confused. He's not a sweetheart, he's a stray dog. 

‘It's nice,’ is all he says. Leans his shoulder against the wall. 

With dirty, matted hair.

‘Really? Not too small for you two? Everything good? It’s just that I’m telling you: the whole building is full, and the bigger apartments, well, we prefer keeping them for larger families. Do you both have enough space to sleep? Is there enough room?’

‘It's okay,’ Billy mumbles again. ’Max is in the room, I'm in the kitchen.’

It's a small apartment, the smallest one in the whole foundation’s building. It's on the top floor. There's only a mattress in the room, and a couch and fittings in the kitchen. Billy sighed heavily and briefly. "I'm in the kitchen," he said. 'I miss the time we fought over the room,' Max replied. 

'I have to file custody papers,' Billy says, raising his eyes to Mrs. Byers. 'I need a paper. That I have… like, that I live somewhere. I asked you for it. Yesterday.’

‘Right,’ she pats herself on the sides and opens a desk drawer to rummage through it. 

Billy looks at the gray carpeting under her feet.

It’s a nice color. It’s calming and grounding. Kinda looks like wet asphalt. Billy likes gray.

‘Here,’ Mrs. Byers hands him a piece of paper, and Billy folds it into his bag. ‘What about the rest of the documents? I really recommend you talking to our lawyers, they're great guys, they'll for sure help you.’

‘I've got to get a job,’ Billy rubs his eyes. ‘And a work certificate. And our parents' disenfranchisement. I’m… working on it all.’

He wants to take a long long long nap. 

Or pass out from lack of sleep. 

Mrs. Byers nods, and Billy is ready to leave, but she folds her arms across her chest and tilts her head, and her eyes are so w-o-r-r-i-e-d that Billy doesn't know how to look at her back. 

‘Trouble sleeping?’ She asks understandingly. 

‘I mean…’

Passing out from lack of sleep would be embarrassing, sleeping in the middle of the day would be like he's a five-year-old boy. S-h-a-m-e. 

‘So, you remember where I live, right? Come to our place, no, listen to me. Come to our place, I've got my youngest to be home, ask for some peppermint tea,’ Mrs. Byers puts her hand on Billy's forearm and taps him every time he loses eye contact. ‘It's not just tea, it's a life saver! Jonathan, my eldest, has trouble sleeping, too, and this tea, one of the first wards often brings it to me from England, like a gift, you know? So this tea calms the nerves and makes it so much easier to sleep. You just really come and ask for it, tell that I told you to do so. Are you listening?’

I'm listening. 

Billy's pecking his nose. What? 

People have very weird ideas about communication. Going into someone's apartment and asking someone's youngest, who you've never seen in your life, to pour you a cup of tea just because you're having a bad night's sleep. Billy's brave in the sense of yelling at someone and swearing at them, not in the sense of asking Mrs. Byers' son for peppermint tea. Peppermint?

Mrs. Byers lives downstairs. 

‘Oh, Billy!’ she calls out when Billy's on his way out of the office. Did he say goodbye? 

‘Yeah?’ 

‘What about your sister, no girlfriends around here yet?’

Sist… oh. Right. Girlfriends. 

‘Um… no. No, no girlfriends’

‘My man's coming over to stay at my place for a week the other day, and he's got a daughter just your sister's age, and she's getting so, so bored every time she comes around!’ Mrs. Byers starts chirping again. ‘Maybe we should introduce them, don't you think?’

Why are you talking like that? We've only known each other for two days. 

Billy shrugs his shoulders confused. 

‘I don't know, I guess?’

And why are  you talking like that? We've already known each other for two days!

‘Exactly, I think we definitely should. Oh, and don't forget, we've got some donated stuff coming in today, so you and Max go to the warehouse tonight and look for things. Bedding, dishes, whatever you need, you know! Clothes, of course…’

Mrs. Byers talks long and loud like a sparrow, and Billy barely understands what she’s saying. The longer she talks, the farther away from her Billy feels. The warmer her voice gets, the more Billy freezes. The closer she brings her hand with food, the more Billy has the urge to bite her. 

‘Okay, okay, I’m done talking,’ Mrs. Byers waves her arms and pats herself on the sides. ‘All right, honey, go on, I won't keep you. If there's anything else you need, you can always come to my office or my apartment, don’t be shy!’

Billy wants to howl, but he won't, and he doesn't know why he should. 

‘Yeah,’ he nods, still glum and absent-minded. ‘Thank you.’

‘And don't forget the tea!’

All this balmy cinnamony buzz is b-u-l-l-s-h-i-t. Mrs. Buyers spins and jumps around like a yo-yo, and babbles and babbles like a talking doll with a broken mechanism that makes her babble and babble non-stop. She’s loud, hasty, always moving and she has to remind Billy of someone, but instead of a sharp and clear face that should appear there’s only beach sand and a white dress blown by wind. 

B-u-l-l-s-h-i-t.

Bitchass bullshit. 

Bitchass, bullshit, buzz, Byers, babble, broken, but, beach, blown. Bastard. Bro-ken. Bad. Bastard. Broken. 

‘Boobs, braces, baby, bicycle.’ 

Max looks out of the room and looks at Billy like he’s gone insane. 

Broken. 

‘Bumblebee, biscuit, bulldog’, - she continues. Billy blinks blankly.

Billy. Blinks. Blankly. 

‘Ah, fuck you!’ 

‘Bastard.’

Billy’s tongue goes numb. 

‘Did you get the paper?’ Max stretches out her neck to take a glance and looks like a snake now. 

‘Yeah.’

‘Cool, so it won’t be that bad.’

‘Don’t get too happy.’

Be. Bad. Bumblebee, biscuit, bulldog. 

‘Go to sleep, you look like shit.’

Billy looks like shit and feels like shit. The couch creaks when he lays on it, it's too hard under his head and too soft under his feet. It feels like shit.

17:12

Yesterday he and Max had noodles in paper cups, today Max had breakfast at Joyce's and Billy didn't go because he might throw up at the very thought of food and the balmy cinnamony buzz. There are no dishes in the kitchen and the drying rack above the sink stares emptily at Billy. Neil and Susan have broken so many dishes that they could fill the entire drying rack above the sink that stares emptily at Billy with them. Billy wants to throw up so badly that it feels like the vomit could fill all of the dishes that Neil and Susan broke that could fill the entire drying rack above the sink that stares emptily at Billy. In the house that Jack built. 

Billy is the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

Billy gets a heavy punch in the face. A gnarled fist falls on his cheek with all its ninety-pound weight and his teeth whine back at him with their disjointed howling chorus. It hurts bad, bad, bad and Billy can't even raise his hands to defend himself. 

Bad. Billy. Break. Bones. 

A loud breath wheezes out, forcing its way through his lungs and throat so that Billy opens his eyes and sees the white ceiling. The couch is too hard under his head and too soft under his feet. The drying rack above the sink stares emptily at Billy. 

When the fuck is this all going to end? 

17:59 

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen....

18:00 

So, what now? 

Billy doesn't have a single friend.

Why do you say that? He does. They stayed in Indianapolis. 

Because Billy stayed in Indianapolis, too. 

What? 

In-di-a-na-po-lis. That's a long word. Billy split in two. One Billy stayed in Indy to race cars with Tommy H, and the other Billy pushed Neil into a wall and is now lying there talking to himself. You ever heard of quantum physics and multiverses? If you load the drum of a pistol incompletely and shoot yourself in the head, two universes will appear at the moment of the shot: in one, the bullet goes out, and in the other, it doesn't. In the other, you're alive. Though are you even really alive if you want to shoot yourself in the head? 

Who the fuck are you talking to? 

Billy will be dead in six seconds. 

One, two, three, four, five, six. 

Not dead. In this universe, a pistol doesn't fire. 

Max knocks on the kitchen door. 

‘What?’ Billy answers. He's still staring at the ceiling. 

‘Did you see the texts?’

‘Nah.’

‘Let's go to the warehouse. We need bed sheets and clothes.’

Billy shifts his gaze to the drying rack above the sink that stares at him emptily. 

‘And dishes,’ he adds. 

‘And dishes,’ Max nods. After a pause, she adds: ‘You're not a bastard.’

That's all of a sudden instead of a “sorry." 

The statement is arguable. But he nods and rises from the couch. 

He looks down at Max and she looks up at him. They don't say anything, they don't even open their mouths. 

Max is the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

‘Taking it back, you are a bastard’ she mutters, turning around to head out into the hallway.

To sleep. To sleep long and hard. To cover the body with a heavy quilt and sleep long and hard. To lie down on a big lush pillow, cover the body with a heavy quilt and sleep long and hard. In the house that Jack built. 

Fuck Jack, how many times do we have to do this? 

I am Jack's broken heart. My father dumped me, Tyler dumped me. I am Jack's broken heart. 

Billy is the bags under Jack's eyes. Billy is Jack's clenched teeth. Billy is Jack’s unprocessed trauma and anger issues. Billy is Jack's broken heart. Billy is the house that Jack built. 

That's two different Jacks, you know? 

And you don't have a Tyler who dumped you. And you dumped your father yourself. You sold him out like the last traitor you are. Not a man. You couldn't just, like… take it?

‘Am I talking out loud?’

Max stops in the road and gives Billy a look. 

‘You’re not, thank God.’

It's cloudy but hot. The clouds are overhead, and the ground is a bathhouse. Dark, wet asphalt pulls the sky down on itself. Billy wants to lie down and die right here. It's a big, almost endless parking lot. The big, almost endless parking lot stretches from the big, almost endless multi-eyed, multi-story building where the dryer over the sink stares blankly at Billy, to the foundation building. The foundation building is comparatively small. Compared to the endless, multi-eyed, multi-story building. Five floors, maybe. Mrs. Byers' office is there, carpeted offices of every possible psychologist and lawyer, Cinderella at the front desk, and kids sculpting with self-stiffening clay. And the warehouse is in there, too. 

To sleep. To sleep long and hard. 

‘Billy!’

He's standing in front of a pile of bedding. We need two sets. Two sheets, two blankets, two comforter covers, two pillows, two…

‘You promised you’d come by and you didn't!’

Mrs. Byers walks in her straight jeans quickly and looks like if she always knows where to go. She looks up at Billy again, frowning, but smiling. 

Stares and doesn't say anything. What does she want?

‘I forgot,’ Billy mutters grimly. 

'And you, of course, didn’t sleep, did you?’

Stop that. That's enough. That's enough. Enough is fucking enough. 

‘WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU CARE?’ Billy yells, jagged voice tearing through his throat, scraping off red sticky mucous along the way, and the words fall out of his mouth along with chunks of it, then fall to the floor in big drops of thick blood. 

Billy is a dog with a hoarse bark that scares small children to tears. 

Dishes shatter in his skull. 

Misinformation. 

Mrs. Byers is still looking up at him below with kind squinted eyes. 

Billy clears his throat. 

‘It's all right.’

‘Didn't sleep, then,’ Mrs. Byers sighs, shaking her head indulgently. ‘Now, when you find what you need, I'll take you personally under escort, so you won't run away.’

She's short and thin, like a straight, thin tree with tiny bright green leaves, and she probably can hardly fight. Not much of an escort. 

‘Okay,’ Billy said, turning back to the pile of bedding. 

A huge mottled pile of multicolored bedding. A white and red plaid duvet cover, like a picnic basket. A gray elastic band sheet with a satin smooth "IKEA" label. A yellow cotton pillowcase with triangles that gently nestle into each other like the teeth of a scaling dog. Another duvet cover, white in a sparse thin winking black stripe. Another sheet, black with white polka dots. Black, white, black, white, black, white. Black and white makes colorful bedding seem even more mottled and even more colorful. A bright red pillowcase with rippling little zebras staggered a decent distance apart on it. 

A bright red pillowcase with rippling little zebras. A real treasure amongst the stripes, squares, polka dots and triangles. It makes colorful bedding seem pale and washed out. 

‘Dishes.’

Billy turns to Max. Stares blankly. 

She stands with a duct-taped box of plates and a huge pot. In the pot is another duct-taped box, the size of the utensils, and two mugs. Billy tilts his head to the tight bag at his feet. 

‘There's a frying pan, too,’ Max grunted as she carefully put the dishes into the bag. ‘I didn't have enough hands for that one.’

Max looks like a fox. Not a baby one, with ears bigger than her head, more like a teenager, bright red, quick, still figuring out what to do with her suddenly very long legs.

She'd already put the box in the bag. 

‘The zebras thing is mine,’ she says, watching Billy put the bedsheets in another bag. 

‘Kay,’ Billy says simply. 

To sleep. To sleep long and hard. On the floor, or in that big, motley pile of colorful bedsheets, or on the welcome mat, wherever, just to sleep long and hard. 

‘You're not putting up a fight?’ Max asks, frowning. She tilts her head and looks at Billy with squinted eyes. Billy lifts his head. 

A girl. A redheaded fox-like shithead girl. How did he not realize this before? 

‘I'm tired,’ Billy answers honestly. He folds the bright red pillowcase with the little zebras rippling on it in half and puts it in the bag. 

T-i-r-e-d. 

Max misses the time they fought over the room. 

Billy needs to get a job as soon as possible. Needs papers for custody. Also needs to go to the supermarket so there's something to eat out of the new plates. And to sleep long and hard. 

He puts the bag of clinking dishes on the hallway floor. Max puts the bag of bed sheets and clothes next to it. Even if he closes his eyes right now, Billy knows he definitely won't fall asleep. Billy isn't sure if he'll ever fall asleep at all at this point. 

Why even take off the shoes before entering the apartment?

Mrs. Byers unties the laces on her sneakers without stopping to chirp.

Where the fuck is he again? 

The hallway's full of shoes, a rack full of them and more on the floor. There are girls' sneakers with glowing soles and low sneakers in a checkerboard pattern, only one is orange and the other is green for some reason. Who the fuck wears different sneakers? 

There's so many shoes that it looks like Mrs. Byers has a whole town, not a family. Billy puts his sneakers next to the different ones. 

How many people do they have here? 

‘Okay, so we've got me, Will, Jonathan, Jonathan's girlfriend's been staying with us for a week, and the other day Jim and Jane came over... and Argyle, Jonathan's friend,’ Joyce counts, curling her fingers. ‘Seven, then.’

Jonathan, Jim, Jane, Joyce. Jazz. Jean. Jam. Not too many J-words. 

‘Seven,’ Billy nods absent-mindedly.

Did they come the other day or will they come the other day? She definitely said they will. Or did they come the other day? The girls' sneakers are already in the hallway. 

‘It's a crazy house, sure, a little,’ Joyce smiles, dragging Billy with her into the kitchen. ‘But that's all right, you know? There's always someone to chat to, everyone's around, everyone's together, never lonely, a real moomin house if you think about it that way! I wish we had blue speckled wallpaper! 

What's a moomin house? 

Chirping, chirping, chirping non-stop while the kettle wheezes and mumbles, searching the shelf for the unfortunate tea. She’s full of life. She’s full of life, short and skirted, she takes seven people to her apartment and a crowd more to the foundation, chirps, chirps, chirps, chirps without stopping, looking for tea and she’s full of life. And Billy barely exists. 

Not that he even wants to.

Prolonged. Pro-longed. 

Prolonged? 

Will Billy actually fall asleep from this tea, or nothing will help? He hasn't slept in three days. The kettle's bubbling with boiling water. If Billy could really sleep with that tea, it would be a real lifesaver. He hasn't slept in three days. The kettle's bubbling with boiling water. He's already thought about it, the thoughts in his head going in circles. Billy hasn't slept in three days. 

Hey! 

‘Mamá, has another dude moved in?’

Billy turns around. 

Who's that? 

They have very long black hair and they are a head taller than Billy. 

‘Hi,’ they breathe out, and extend their hand to Billy as if they already know each other.  

‘Hi,’ Billy repeats, confused for some reason. 

What the fuck? 

Shake their hand. 

Their hand is so warm it burns Billy’s eyes. California. It's either a sun-warmed beach and a salty wave or an oven and mom's strawberry pie. Argyle's got a big, hot palm. 

Argyle? 

‘Billy, darling, this is Argyle, Argyle, darling, this is Billy,’ Joyce smiles. She puts her hand on Billy's back and he twitches, not knowing why himself. ‘Billy and his sister live on the tenth floor.’

 Stop it. 

‘Cool,’  Argyle nods. Billy doesn't let go of their hand. 

Is that a boy or a girl even?

‘Yeah.’

Billy tucks his warmed up palm into his pocket, and suddenly it doesn't seem to be his, now it’s Argyle's. Billy's all cold and icy, like he's already dead, and Argyle's all warm.

Joyce takes a strangely shaped paper bag out of the tea carton and pours boiling water over it in a mug. Argyle watches this with half-closed eyes. Their eyes are red. Are they high? 

‘If it doesn't help, your buddy Argyle's gonna get you some Purple Palm Tree Delight,’ they whisper to Billy, leaning over him slightly. Yeah, they’re high. ‘It's the tension, man, the tension. You relax, you fall asleep like a baby! Nothing relaxes you like ”Purp…’

‘Argyle!’

‘Dang!’

‘It helped Jonathan,’ Joyce insists, handing Billy a mug. ‘It'll help Billy, too. Go on, don't mess with the boy’s head!’

And Argyle makes those eyes that Billy thinks it probably wasn't the tea that helped Jonathan. And Billy laughs. Okay, not laughs, more like snorts and curves his lips, but Billy feels like he forgot how to laugh at all in the last two days, so now even that surprises him. 

BANG! 

The door to the apartment slams, and Billy jerks again. Gotta hide something. 

‘ARGY-YLE!’ a girl's voice yells from the hallway. Someone stomps around the apartment and slams doors and Joyce smiles fondly, tilting her head. Billy looks at the mug in his hands.

The door to the kitchen opens slightly and someone's brown-haired head peeks in. 

‘Hi-i, where's Argyle? Are they here?’ the brown-haired head asks, out of breath. The girl fumbles around the room with her eyes, and when she comes across Argyle, she opens the door wide open. ‘Jonathan needs you like, right now!’

‘Right now?’

‘Right now, right now, right now!’

‘M on full speed, amiga,’ Argyle pats Billy on the shoulder for some reason, and Billy shrugs again, not knowing when it's going to end. With Argyle, the brown-haired head leaves as well. 

Billy's stomach twists because something is wrong. 

Hi-i, where's Argyle? Are they here?

‘They?’ Billy asks Joyce again. 

'They,' she nods. 

‘Argyle.’

‘Argyle. They.’

Billy doesn't question anything else. He thinks about the warm hand and the way they looked down at him. It makes him want to laugh. California. 

Billy wants to sleep.