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The cold has a distinct smell; much like wet earth, but crisper and more pure.
When he was small, Neil’s mother used to wrap him in coat and mittens and together they would plod through the thick Vermont snow to watch the robins skitter through frosted branches and to grasp each other’s hands as they tiptoed over icy roads. Snow days were Neil’s favourite. They were a chance for adventure; a chance for them both to see something more than the beige walls of their kitchen. Things were genuine then.
+
The first night Neil dorms with Todd Anderson is quiet and heavy. At first he tries to buoy the silence, but Anderson is so reserved it soon seems a lost cause. The strange blonde boy changes into his pyjamas quickly and facing the wall while Neil tries not to watch the shape of his soft abdomen and thighs. They turn off their lamps and greet their beds without saying a word. Neil listens to him toss and turn and ignores the impulse to reach out and comfort him.
+
Mr Keating introduces himself with a whistle and gets to know their names using witty quips and jibes. Neil has always been fond of poetry – he likes the way the words play tricks and deceive deeper meaning – but he doesn’t like where this lesson is going. “Meat for worms,” Mr Keating says. “Turn cold and stop breathing.” Neil grips his textbook tighter and tries to ignore the fact that he already knows all this. He knows it like he knows the ridges of his chewed-down fingernails because he also knows a lurking sadness that terrifies him like nothing else.
And he doesn’t know how to describe it, beyond a sense of grey that seems to stretch forever in every direction - so flat and yet somehow prickly and terse and sharp. It feels like walking along the edge of a cliff amongst thick, wet fog that blindfolds his eyes and sits heavily in his lungs. He can feel it encroaching; it works its way up his limbs, pulls the skin tight across his knuckles and cheekbones and knees and falls like a dead weight in his chest.
As they walk away from the trophy room he is the optimist. He doesn’t let them know, conversationally, that he’s held his breath before, just to see what it would be like to mimic a dead man.
Poetry.
+
The second night Neil dorms with Todd Anderson begins much the same as the first. Neil watches through half-closed lids as Anderson stares at the ceiling, his gentle features dramatic in the sharp blue moonlight.
“Truth or dare?”
Anderson gasps a little as his head snaps to find Neil awake and smirking ever-so-slightly.
“W-what?”
“Truth or dare?” Neil smiles in earnest now, because Anderson is still delightfully bewildered.
“I don’t really want to-“
Neil cuts him off. “Too bad, I’m afraid. Consider it a form of hazing.”
“T-truth, I guess?”
“What is your favourite memory?” He improvises quickly, not wanting to loose the oppertunity.
“I’m not sure, Neil-“
“Mine is the time my Mom and I went ice skating on the lake one Christmas. We had a big thermos of hot chocolate and we made snow angels. Can you imagine? My stiff and proper mother, flapping about in the snow.” A laugh he bubbles from somewhere nostalgic inside him. “Now it’s your turn.”
The soft, shy boy thinks for a minute.
“I guess mine would be-“ He stops himself, and Neil watches his eyes squeeze shut.
“I won’t think it’s silly. Promise.”
He tries again. “I guess it was when my parents took us to Manhattan for a night a few years ago. My Father had some fancy gala to attend in the city, so J-Jeffrey and I were allowed to stay in the hotel room and order room service as a treat. Jeff was soaking in the luxury, ordering chocolate puddings and stretching out on the big bed, but all I could do was stare out the window. I had never seen a sidewalk so busy. Looking at all those people, weaving through traffic in their winter coats, I realised that each one of them had an entirely different story to tell about their lives.” He falters a little. “I don’t know. It sounds ridiculous.”
Neil thinks ‘he is perfect’.
“You passed with flying colours, Todd.”
+
“How’s the roommate?” Charlie sidles up to Neil’s Bunsen burner one chem class, his white lab coat sleeves rolled effortlessly to his elbows.
“Todd?” He struggles to look disinterested, trying to ignore the pounding in his chest. “H-he seems like a sweet kid.”
Neil tries to go back to his conical flask, but Charlie remains, leaning mock-casually on the bench with a smirk on his lips. “Sweet kid, huh?”
“Yeah? I don’t know. He’s a nice guy, Charlie.”
There’s a long pause. “You’re far gone, aren’t you?”
“Charlie!” Neil whispers angrily, with a glance about them.
“Oh, relax,” He says in his off-hand way. “Invite him along to our next study group, why don’t you?” He begins to saunter back to a mildly disgruntled looking Meeks and their bench, but then stops and turns to mutter, “I mean- I get it. He’s got goddamn doe eyes. I wouldn’t be able to resist either.”
And Charlie is a pain in the ass, but Christ, he might be right.
+
Neil sits behind Todd in class and watches him; silent and hunched over, taking notes and hardly ever looking up for fear of making eye contact. Neil studies the way his tight shoulders are angled underneath his blazer and imagines running his hands through thick blond hair. He wants to gently lift and pull Todd – to allow him to unfurl for even just a moment.
+
He is on constant lookout for small rebellion – something to put oxygen back into his veins and siphon out all that toxic black hatred – so when Keating preaches the value of living full lives, Neil jumps at the chance.
One day he stays late after rehearsal for Midsummer, smoking backstage with the cast, and he can almost taste hope on the tip of his tongue. They talk about art, about politics, about everything and anything but prospects and responsibilities. A girl called Ginny tells him about her crush on another girl at Henley. He feels safe.
+
“Jeez Knoxy, you sound like John Keats on his deathbed,” Gerard says with a huff after they’ve all endured a particularly long session of vocal pining in the cave one evening.
“I’m sorry, was that supposed to be an insult?” Knox quips back, thwacking him with the ratty old lamp and evoking a rowdy chorus protesting such blasphemy.
“Well, I call shotgun on Lord Byron.” Neil declares because he feels giddy and bright under his skin.
“Are you kidding me?” Charlie squawks. “I even look like the guy! And Meeksie is that James Maxwell fella, you know, all scientific and shit.”
“Okay,” Neil says, “but can we all agree that Todd is Tennyson?” He watches Todd’s head snap up at the mention.
Meeks gives an approving nod. “At first to the ear, the warble was low and full and clear; and floating about the under-sky,” he recites.
“Isn’t that poem about a swan?” Knox asks, and then they’re all laughing and honking with their best swan impressions. Neil looks and Todd whose eyes are warm and comfortable, and wishes they could do this every day for an eternity.
+
Later, back in their room, Todd whispers into the early morning:
“When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do.”
Neil makes a questioning hum, and Todd replies, “Robert Frost. He’s your poet.”
+
He dreams of New York and Paris and tiny apartments with hardly any running water and windows that don’t latch shut. He imagines of Todd behind the counter of a bookstore; the cat they will own; the candles stuffed into the necks of wine bottles and jazz records playing softly in the semi-darkness. It’s so deliciously atypical, so potently contrasting with his father’s wishes that it feels like a challenge to fulfil in reality.
+
They’re too close to be friends. They touch each other’s necks in passing.
+
He wakes one morning and his entire body is made of lead. It is bad this time, so bad he can distantly feel hot tears rolling into his hair and so bad that no matter how hard he focuses, he cannot bring himself to do more than stare at the ceiling and listen to his blood pump past his ears.
Todd is one of the quietest people Neil has ever met, but his natural withdrawal also makes him the most perceptive, too.
Todd doesn’t shake him awake or yell at him that he’s going to be late for breakfast or ask questions that Neil wouldn’t be able to answer even if he wanted to. Instead he curls his fingers around Neil’s and squeezes ever so briefly, before ducking out of the room. When he comes back to collect his books he closes the door with the softest click possible, pulls a smuggled bread roll from his pocket, perches on the edge of the bed, and presses his fingertips to the back of Neil’s hand.
“I’ve told them you’re sick, so you can stay here today.”
Neil doesn’t know how the hell Todd’s managed it or what their punishment could be for this sort of deception but, God, he’s so relieved he can feel tears prick at his eyes again.
+
“How do you do it?”
Neil looks up from his playscript and over to where Todd is hunched at his desk, dragging his pencil around a page in a long spiral.
“Do what?”
“How do you pretend to be…” Todd seems to reconsider with a minute shake of the head. “I don’t know. Forget it.”
But Neil can’t forget it. “How do I pretend to be what, Todd?” He stalks across the room to lean over the other boy’s shoulder, and then absently remembers Todd’s anxiousness. But he’s anxious himself and so he doesn’t move from his place, just shifts a little from foot to foot.
Todd still isn’t looking up at him but is instead gathering courage from the narrowing tunnel he is drawing. “How do you pretend to be so happy on the outside?”
Neil stills. Todd’s pencil does too.
“I’m not pretending,” Neil says, but even as he does he knows it’s not true.
Todd looks up at him with a mix of scepticism and sympathy and all of a sudden Neil wants to throw his typewriter through the window. Instead he stands with his heels rooted to the spot and his fists furled and fingers twitching. “I’m not a liar. Fuck you, Todd. I’m not cheating anyone.”
Todd’s eyes go all saucer-like under his stupid (beautiful) blond fringe and Neil is ready to scream. He goes to leave but as he pushes past, a hand wraps around his forearm, and then Todd is standing; a human barricade. It’s a little disarming and there is an absurd moment where Neil is certain he’s going to be punched. Instead he finds himself wrapped in a hug that isn’t nearly as suffocating as it should be. There are gentle but strong hands pressed into his shoulders.
He lets himself soften eventually, resting his forehead on Todd’s collar bone. He knows well enough that this means ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘you aren’t a cheat’ and something far more intimate too. All the while Todd’s shirt smells like starch and school-issued soap but somehow is nothing but warmth. Neil finds all his anger is gone but his heart still pummels in his chest.
Todd pulls back after a moment, his eyes squeezed tight shut. His head is turned like it’s him that will now be punched.
On impulse (though he’s imagined it a million times over), Neil ducks slightly to find Todd’s lips, soft and questioning, then stronger and more desperate until they are gasping for breath.
Neil lets a grin play on his face and whispers “how do you do it?” and feels goosebumps rise on Todd’s side where his hand has found its way under the starched cotton.
+
It’s silly because sometimes he isn’t acting for them; sometimes he really is just that ecstatic, that passionate, that overjoyed to be inhaling and exhaling. Neil is sure as hell no poet, but if he were to describe his roommate, the closest he could get with words would be a ‘butterfly within an enigma’, which is silly and cliché but ridiculously accurate.
He feels the sunshine on the back of his neck and delights in the crunch of the dried-up oak leaves underfoot. Everything around him feels fresh, hopeful.
He thinks he might be in love.
+
They curl together whenever they are near.
It’s like some instinctual attraction; they press the sides of their thighs together under the dining hall table; hold hands as one writes and the other reads; link their ankles just slightly when sitting together in the cave in a way that makes Gerard do a silent double take and Charlie smirk. Whenever Todd seems on edge, Neil reaches out in some small way and a little tension drains from them both. They cling to each other despite the fear – the claustrophobia and the agoraphobia.
+
And yet.
+
When he looks in the mirror, he sees some sallow, sickly imitation of his self. His eyes are red, his skin is pale. He looks just like his mother with her Milltown prescription and quaking shoulders.
Charlie finds him amongst the group one evening on the way back from the cave. The adrenaline of the trip wore off quickly that night, and Neil is left with that same exhaustion in his bones. Charlie notices, of course, because he’s Charlie.
“Are you okay?” He murmurs as they trek through the trees, falling behind the others. Neil attempts a happy-go-lucky smile, but Charlie remains deadpan.
“Cut the shit, Neil. Is it bad?” Neil nods slightly and feels himself deflate as Charlie lets out a sad sigh and stops, grabbing Neil’s freezing hand and interlocking their fingers.
“Does Todd know how bad it is?”
“Not really.” He can already feel the tears welling in his eyes but he doesn’t have the energy to stop them. “I’m scared of the future, Charlie. What happens when the show ends?” How can I possibly contribute my verse?
“This doesn’t have to be our lives. When we get out of this shithole, we’ll make a plan. We will run away and live in artist’s slums and you can act in weirdo experimental plays and Todd can write poetry. We can live! We can do something bigger.” Charlie looks earnest and desperate.
“I’m just so tired.” And he is. He’s been playing their game too long.
+
Sometimes he loves too hard and with such fullness that it aches in his hands, like forcing a wild mass into the smallest confined space.
Poetry, with its romantic grandeur or bitter understatement. Acting, with its promise of a thousand lives to be lived.
Todd, with his gentle warmth, his quietness giving way to a loud and beautiful laugh, his head resting against Neil’s shoulder when they sit reading to one another on the dorm room floor, the way they move together in symbiosis, the whisper of ‘I love you’ as they drift off to sleep.
For each one he is fighting an enormous battle against the cage that he has been put in.
+
The cold has a very distinct smell; much like wet earth, but crisper and more pure.
The cold feels like a tight security that promised to never let you fall.
The cold is a cloud of breath that reminds you that you’re alive no matter how your lungs sting.
The cold is his arm around your waist; his hands in your hair; his lips ghosting your cheek.
Neil opens his window. He feels none of it.
++
Todd Anderson stands, ankle deep in snow, staring at the trees that are bent and warped by the storm.
Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold.