Archive of Our Own ^beta

your name is andre.

andre sounds too informal as you think it over. andre kriegman is your actual name. you like to talk to yourself in your head. like those overly dramatic religious people are to god.

you’re a loser to put it plainly. a holed up in your room, thirty pounds underweight, teenager loser. your mom and everyone else around you in reality don’t particularly care. you’re thankful for that sometimes.

you’re fourteen and hateful but you do nothing to better how you feel. minus the bitching to your online friends which lessens it some.

you talk to all your friends on the range, a surface web forum that you use all the time.

you go by ak or ak-47 as your friends call you. you moderate the forum’s political discussions and such. you’re a total dick but you have authority so who cares.

you don’t out yourself as being fourteen because the range would probably ip ban you. stupid fifteen or older shit. you get by with saying teen. nobody pushes beyond that. actually if you remember right you said you were sixteen but it’s drowned out in your millions of daily messages.

the range is full of people similar to you. freaks with unrestricted internet access. most are way older than you. eighteen and up seems to be the common standard. the other moderators aren’t very hard on the rules so you mirror that. worry creeps into you that they know you’re younger but that’s dumb. you push that thought away. minus one very specific rule: don’t say slurs or dox someone for no reason.

you shiver at the memory that floods your mind of you staying up all night, afraid that if you closed your eyes for an instant you’d wake dead just like your whole family. online threats from false accusations got you in deep shit and some of these fucking dweebs gave out your address. you don’t ask who. why would you?

you mentally ghost over the feeling of the cuts and the blade you remember holding putting them there. it stings the same like your first drink of alcohol. oh. you forgot to mention your private activities out of the range. you get shooting tips from this guy, ZCCAL.

it’s a pretty sweet gig. you guys primarily message in fr: RANGE-SHOT&TIPS. or forum (for): (the)-range-shot&tips.

ZCCAL is actually pretty cool. he's your favorite to piss off but also you’d say he’s your friend. maybe.
you’re not one to attach yourself to people, afraid of being an outcast for saying the wrong thing. but you like him. you two have this banter about you that feels right. like you’ve known him from somewhere and you can’t quite put your finger on it.

he likes it better when in private you call him cal, you remember. you pester him about the user but he never budges. you forget about it in time. he talks a lot so you lose track of keeping up the task. you don’t mind it.

cal is someone you’d like in person you conclude. sometimes you wonder what all these people are like behind the screen. is it fair to add yourself to the mental list?

cal joined the range a few weeks after you did, his activity was very minimal. some miscellaneous posts and off topic comments about drug using. you two bond over that. using.

he overshares about it like he’s trying to coax you to say something personal. you want to text him and not solely reply through threads and one off comments.

finally he reaches out to you first in messages.
you’re thankful. you’ve been told you’re pretty awkward even through text.

user: ZCCAL began messaging user: AK at sys. time: 03:01.
ZCCAL: hey,,,,, mr aa-47!
ak: hi cal.
ZCCAL: hi ak.

a normal start. weird first message but cal types oddly anyway. you wait until the message of doom pops up on your screen:

ZCCAL: are u finally going to tell me ur name mr 47???? ive been waiting ;p.

you freak out for maybe a couple sends before your hands type up a reply. you can’t act weird. this is like your only shot at having more than just yourself as someone to talk to.

ak: maybe man. idk. dont u know enough abt me lol?
ZCCAL: okok fair. is ur drug taste not enoughhh?

you struggle out a laugh. his replies are messy but funny. that’s what you like about him. he’s funny.

ZCCAL: justtttt kidding. ill tell u my user and shits if u tell me urs.

you stare blankly at the screen. shit. you inhale and fidget with your mouse wheel.

ak: okay. tell me.

you type back, this is your attempt at playfulness. you hope it works. a nervous laugh escapes you again.

ZCCAL: yay! ok ;p.
ZCCAL: my user is zombie cutter cal or calvin if u want lol. i think u already knew the cal part! my actual name is calvin also ;p.

you’re shitting yourself. he doesn’t think you’re weird. he’s like your best friend now.

ak: cool. ok. my user is andre. which is my name. k is my legal’s initial.
ak: zombie cutter? emo lol.

you don’t know why you thought to say legal but cal eats it up. you feel so robotic compared to his exaggerated typing style.

ZCCAL: ohhh thats awesomeee. legal is funny lol. my legal is gabriel.
zccal: and zombie cutter is cool bro. ur just hatingggg ;p.

you blink slow. a slight fear creeps into your key presses, not for you but for him. you note his oversharing tendencies and it gives you some sort of satisfaction that you know that. you know something private about your friend and you just quietly hope he doesn’t share it everywhere.

ak: u want to share all that with me??? that’s like a big deal. my legal is kriegman if u care.
ZCCAL: lolll. dont sweat it ;p. im not going to doxx u or something i just think ur cool.

you smile. a real, all teeth smile at your screen. you cringe immediately after. that was so gay, you think. having real friends is cool, not just the workplace kind.

very cool actually. your first true friend that isn’t a playdate your mom set up to “help you grow out of your shyness”. you’re not a shy kid nor were you ever one. you don’t like people. not the in person kind anyway.

you two talk daily and if not then you check his online status consistently. you’ve learned a lot about this dude in the course of maybe a few weeks. he’s blond, really fucking pale and he cuts. he likes nine inch nails, slipknot and some other bands. he’s a horror freak too.

you recommend really shit movies that are just torture porn with some fake blood sprinkled in and he adores them. he tells you that you’d like kmfdm and other bands and you do. you put them in a playlist titled something gay that you try not to over analyze and eventually change after not even an hour of making it.

you share very little of yourself to him. as per his description you can visualize him pretty well. you make sure to share what you look like too: tan skin, a mole on your cheek, brown hair. all the things you could think of.

cal is your best friend. you know that for sure now. even if it’s probably one sided.

one of the worst things you do is that you act obsessively. you scold yourself for doing it but you stalk his online and offline status all the time. he never makes fun of you for doing it if you admit to him you did, instead of his usual banter, he says:

ZCCAL: thats cuteeeeee. am i ur only friend dre???? ;p
ak: im not answering that. ur so gay.

you laugh and are taken aback by his question. you can’t tell if that's a tease of if he’s just curious. cal has that way about him that you can never figure out. it lures you in and you can’t help but get a swell in your chest you’ve never had for anyone. he’s so new. you feel a pile of scrap metal next to him. he feels so human. raw. like he radiates light and this warmth from him that you feel through the screen.

ZCCAL: yeahhh ;p. big homo over here dre!!!!!
ak: ok dude. put the bottle down and go to bed…
ZCCAL: howdddd uuu knowwwwwww ;(. okokkk letnme send u a pictureeee.

you laugh but it’s a shocking one. strained like a fake one. cal sometimes will send you pictures of him, his room, his drinks, or just whatever he can get his hands on. you save them to a catalog on your computer labeled, “cal”. you don’t tell him you have it.

you don’t look inside the folder often because you get upset. looking at him makes you upset and you’re not sure where to place that on the printed out emotion wheel your mom got you. that makes you snicker which sounds more like a choke.

ak: okay cal. send me a pic and then go to bed u freak.
ZCCAL: [attachment-106725790.jpeg]

oh.

the image is of him. you guessed that but you didn’t expect his full face, body, and room. those kinds of pictures are rare. it’s a mirror picture he took on his phone, he’s smiling with a bottle of vodka on the dresser shining from the flash on his phone.
his blond hair is messy and looks to be greasy. you’re not sure. your eyes scan the photo intently.
his shirt rides up his hips to show a little of his stomach, you see those thick knee bandages on his hips to cover fresh cuts you assume. he’s mentioned a few times where and how frequently he cuts to you.

you don’t want to think about that.
be normal.
jesus christ.

he has boxers on but they look too big for him. he’s abnormally skinny for someone who’s around your age, maybe a little older. you don’t ask for his age but he looks around sixteen or so. maybe fifteen.

you stomp on the gay thoughts that ride up your spine. you get so emotional that you feel like you have to puke but you can tear your eyes away from the screen. from him.

ZCCAL: i use this mirror to take pics all the timeeee. sometimes to get good angles on cutting my thighs lollll :p.

you’re actually going crazy. he’s going to and trying to kill you.

ak: haha. sorry i didn’t reply. was thinking of a good one to use.

you lie like a girl in church. frantically trying to not say that you’re maybe passing away in a few seconds and you need to close out the picture.
you fail. miserably.

ak: i forgot you cut. i dont see them on your arms? are they faded?
ZCCAL: ohhh yeah. i forgot u like my cuts u freak ;p. my arm ones areeee a month old? so theyre a lillll faded.
ak: haha. they are, yeah.

you laugh out loud. for some reason sweaty and jittery like you’ve just got cold water splashed on you after you run a mile. you haven’t ran the mile in years. you don’t remember the last time you even really left your house or room.

you log on at the usual time. 3:01 a.m., just like always. it’s a routine. it feels like you’ve always been friends. you get the feeling again but you stomp it out.

oddly, cal’s status is grey.

not “away” grey like he’s off watching something in another tab but offline grey.

your heart pangs with hurt just from this. feeling yourself start to gag, you tell yourself it’s nothing. maybe his phone died. or his computer is broken. maybe he’s sleeping for once. you try to laugh over the immense feeling of needing to gag.

it hurts like a hand around your throat.

user: AK began messaging user: ZZCAL at sys. time: 03:01.
ak: u alive or asleep lol.
ak: don’t make me come find u
ak: i’ll get the vodka this time haha.

your messages sit there. no “seen.” no reply.

you go do something else. the urge to cut yourself whispers to you like when you read his messages out loud in the dark of your room. you’re not sure why it rots your brain at this time out of all of the days but it whispers and you start to get itchy. scratching absentmindedly at the skin of your arm.

you come back. still nothing. not even a “seen.” maybe you should cut or throw up.

you feel cold and jittery like someone pressed your nerves like piano keys. it feels like withdrawal when your mom made you actually go outside one summer and you couldn’t drink for seventy two hours.

it’s been days. exactly three. you kept counting the hours like it’d bring him back to you. you stopped sleeping on the second one.

it hurts like nothing else. you feel ghosted. is that what he was trying to do from the start? anger rips your heart out by the teeth. your anger is violent, explosive and just like how you tell yourself you’re not. it doesn’t even feel your own sometimes. so hot it’s like lava against your cold skin. it hurts and you have no way to stop it.

you go back and re-read the messages. all of them. he used so many of the same, dumb, emoticon. you count them. something to do when this is all your life consists of his last message:

ZCCAL: i’ll talk to u tomorrrrowwwww ok dre? don’t be sad! ;p

you read it twelve times in one sitting. has to be countless times after the first day. you try to imagine the voice behind it. then you try to imagine it’s not the last one.

you think hard. try to be rational. you think of replies to say that aren’t deranged. maybe he got grounded. maybe he died. maybe he never liked you and this is the easiest way to ghost someone. you keep checking his status anyway. you feel like you have to. it’s a routine and you’re a devout follower of them. every hour, on the hour you check it. nothing changes.

it’s like the best drug you’ve ever had. he’s your euphoria as gay as that sounds. the one guy who gets you.

you.

andre.

how crazy is it to feel like saying your actual name leaves a bad taste in your mouth? so used to nicknames. so used to hiding. escaping who you truly are. your name, andre, feels like when people say they’re running from their past but the past is just a name and a face you still have.

your mom says that you’ll grow into a more adult face soon and that everyone does eventually. you wonder if everyone else hates their name like it’s actually done something to you other than be attracted to everything you’re in.

eventually, you open a notepad file and start typing like it’s him. in a few hours of the night where you aren’t ranting on your blog page about how much you hate him, life and the dumb things that piss you off day to day.

it’s therapeutic to write to yourself.

you post blogs every now and then. they don’t receive much attention and you’re thankful for it. you don’t need to make up another mask to run away from in due time.

it goes surprisingly easy for something so complicated. you’ve never been good at expressing yourself. your fingers fill a familiar rhythm of how you imagine he types:

ZCCAL: hey dre. sorry i was gone. i was just fucked up again lol.

it suffices the need for attention. you continue to do it until you feel yourself aching to do so. to play pretend in your happy little world.

you can’t and don’t want to describe the joy it gives you to read it over and over like it’s a real thing. from him.

ZCCAL: i missed u too. i missed u more than anything.

you chew on the thought of if he’d ever say sorry.

ZCCAL: ur my best friend. sorry i scared u.

you feel like god. maybe you are. maybe he is. he looks like one. you almost choke yourself out right there for even thinking that.

you don’t cry but you want to do something dumb enough to excuse tears. you grit your teeth and smash your palms against your eyes so hard it’s basically a punishment.

you save the file as “ZCCAL_msgNEW.txt”.

you tell yourself it’s a joke. it’s just for fun. a way of coping that only stays between you and the screen. you feel awkward for even doing it.

you reread it before bed every night anyway. you reread it like it’s your favorite verse in the bible.

you don’t log into the forum for a week. sick to your stomach at even the thought of doing it. you just rot in your bed. afraid of confronting nothing but your reflection that stares back at you.

you can’t tell if anyone noticed the difference of your absence and you being there. you feel insignificant. but despite your feelings you’re decently popular but nothing worth talking about for days on end.
then you log in every hour on the hour again.
you tell yourself you’re fine. a lie spoken into the wrinkles of your palms that maybe. just maybe will make it all true. you keep saving more files anyway.
it hurts to wait for an answer. you’ve never been one who likes to wait. you feel like a dog, begging for even a look. an ounce of something. he hurts.

finally, on maybe the second or third week of pure agony, you get a sort of reply.

cal comes online. a green circle that feels like it lights up your whole life within a few seconds. finally the long wait is over:

ZCCAL: lol sorry dre. been fucked up lately. didn’t mean to disappearrrr!!!!

is that even a true reply? your brain tells you no. not really. but your emotions tell you to run with it. he’s here. almost a month later he’s here. coming back to you. you matter.

ZCCAL: didn’t think u’d freak out that bad ngl ;p.
ZCCAL: kinda sweet tho. missd u tooooo!!

you slam your hands onto your desk involuntarily. is it out of happiness or anger? you can’t quite tell but your fingers move quicker than you do. you spam out messages, trying to put everything you’ve been wanting to say out there. you struggle to find the words as off as that sounds.

you want him to understand. the pain you’ve been through without saying that. you feel gay as fuck for all of this and it eats away at you with every fleeting moment. your hands fly, the room filled with the snapping of the keyboard.

ak: i thought u were dead or something lol.
ak: kinda freaked me out.
ak: glad ur okay. dont go missing again freak.
ak: im ok also :p.

you try to mimic him. does it work if you haven’t talked in a month? you pray on everything you’ve ever believed in that it works.

you think about what he’d say if you told him all this. all the shit you make up in your head. probably something stupid like “lol chill dre.” but even that would be enough. it’s always been enough to satiate to gnaw inside of you for connection.

you picture him laughing in that dry, quiet way. the one you’ve never heard in person but imagine perfectly. he’s always been the one to point out when he laughs or when he doesn’t find something funny.
you like the realness he brings to conversations. he is real and so are you.

maybe you’ve built a whole version of him in your head and it’s easier to like that one than admit you barely know the real thing.

anger sort of creeps in like the ever growing disassociation you feel. your mom set you up for in person therapy a while back but when you fought and screamed that you weren’t going to go and that everyone else needed you, she never mentioned it to you again.

probably to your other family over the phone, probably to your dad when he comes by to see you. you stomp out the feelings that surface when you think of your dad.

your dad is just like you. and the anger you have is the same as his. bound by blood.

he doesn’t feel like a dad. he doesn’t want to be one. you conclude with no real evidence.
but, cal isn’t just a guy.

he’s your best and only true friend who you want so desperately to be close to. your brain betrays yourself because you don’t deserve to be happy.
happiness is for people like cal who are worth the effort of saving. he’s like a language you’ve been meaning to learn your whole life. or maybe a religion. something to kneel in front of, whether or not it answers back.

you scold yourself for thinking up such dumb comparisons. you’re not religious and you don’t think he is either. maybe that’s what you need to know. maybe you need to know if he thinks of you as a saint too. something to worship.

you need to know everything there is to know about him and about yourself.

you’re a fucking freak but to you, cal could never be the same evil as you. you want him to be. you want him to become you and for you to become him so easily that nobody can separate you two or know when one of you ends the other begins. fluidity of connection, bound together this time by choice.
you would choose for him to be your friend in every life you live. you don’t feel that you were living without him. alone in an empty room that’s only filled with your own pity for your self inflicted isolation.

you want closeness that can’t happen with a computer screen in the way. no amount of staring at the pixels or listening to someone talk that’s a thousand miles away is going to bring you two closer.

everything goes back to normal. cal and you talk more now. maybe he’s actually very sympathetic for ghosting you and it’s not just something he’s saying.

ZZCAL: dreeeee. i rlly am sorry for that u know? ;(. u matter to me a lottttt. thats not justt the whiskeyyh!!!!!

you type a good reply. something normal.

ak: i know. thank you. use your other emoticon, dork.
ak: i like that one better.

he deserves a good reply you think while you switch between tabs to write something on your blog. you can’t help but snort by this routine you two follow. this sort of banter.

you type something stupid, something you won’t mean when you fall asleep. you care about him but it’s not like that.

he’s your friend. your best friend.

TITLE: “saw a rabbit get hit by a car. fucking hilarious.”
(Posted: 4:55 a.m.) (Written by: CarBYEN.)
“today i went walking
i found a rabbit.
blood doesn’t really look like the way they tell you it does
maybe it’s just rabbit blood. i laughed. i laughed too hard. it didn’t make sense to laugh but i laughed until i choked.
that’s probably the most attention anything’s gotten all week. it just sat there like a joke waiting to rot.
and then i thought of you.
maybe i should’ve taken a picture.
i bet you would’ve liked it.
fucking freak.”

caption: anyway. the range is dead. nobody talks to me unless i make them. i’ve got nothing to say. i’ve got everything to say.

admin notes:
system: (entry set to private.)
system: (entry archived at 1:00 a.m.)
system: (entry unarchived at 4:50 a.m.)
system: (entry set to public at 4:55 a.m.)

you forget about the post in the morning hours. slumping to sleep in your bed after maybe way too long of sleeping at your desk. it doesn’t even feel real, like you wrote the post while dreaming or while someone else was in control. like it wrote itself and just used you as the vessel. maybe that isn’t so bad.

you type a goodnight to cal but he’s already offline.

user: AK began messaging user: ZCCAL at sys. time: 5:03.
ak: night. have a good sleep if that’s what u do when u get off… maybe u drink more idk.
ak: don’t do something stupid while i sleep like disappear again. fag.

you slip onto the floor as you turn off your computer and find yourself submerged in complete darkness. you almost fall like a dumbass onto the floor.
that would wake your mom up and you’d have to fuck up your routine to get her off your ass.

you stare at the ceiling for a while until the sun comes up and you feel exhaustion finally take you.
you wake up a couple hours later, you figure this out when you’re awoken to your mom in your room, sitting at your desk with your computer on.
fuck.

“Morning, Andre.” she says in that fake sweet voice she uses when talking to your dad. you jolt up, throwing blankets off of you and reaching to grab something to throw at her. “Hi.” you deadpan. you plan her murder in your head if she actually sees anything on there.

your brain blanks as you think about cal.
what would she think about cal. your cal. your best friend cal.

she laughs, you get a good look at your computer as you grunt getting off your bed. she isn’t actually logged into your computer. one thing you can appreciate about your paranoia is that you never let anyone on your computer. ever.

“Calm down, baby. I’m just trying to log in on your computer. Why won’t it let me in?” she asks, moving around the mouse and clicking on the sign in button a few times before sighing in defeat.

you sort of chuckle even though you’re filled with boiling under your skin rage. “Because you need my password, mom,” you begin with a fold of your hands. you walk to her side and point at the error message that says she’s got the wrong password. what did she even try to put in? “Which you’re not getting.” you say between glances at your screen and her.

she frowns and asks, “Are you hiding something, Dre?” you grit your teeth. “Don’t ever call me that.” you snap without exactly meaning to. thats for cal’s use only you think but wouldn’t dare say out loud. you’re not gay. “And no, you can just use your own computer.” you scratch at your arms, still so angry. she sighs in defeat again, getting up and walking to the door.

she turns back and stares at you like you’re a feral animal and she couldn’t befriend. “Okay but Andre, baby, please clean your room. It’s a mess.” she says with what you can only imagine is her way of being stern. “Fuck you and fuck off.” you snap, picking up a crushed pop can and throwing it in her direction before she slams the door and leaves.

You stomp over to the door and lock it, switching off your light and scrambling back to your desk chair. logging in and getting onto the forum and opening the messages between you and cal.

user: ZCCAL began messaging user: AK at sys. time: 11:32.
ZCCAL: i slepttttt soooo good tbh. howd u sleep mr insomnia ;p.
ZCCAL: lollll just kidding. u just stay up a lot with meee ;ppp.
ZCCAL: dree!!!!
ZCCAL: dre!!!!!!!!!!!
ZCCAL: heyyyy ;p.
ZCCAL: just found ur little blog.
ZCCAL: the rabbit one was a bitttttt edgy lol
ZCCAL: i mean like i thinks it uuu.
ZCCAL: u okay?????????
ZCCAL: andre???

you stare at the message. you reread it five times like the letters might rearrange and spell something better. something safer.

you start to imagine he’s laughing while reading it. not cruelly. just confused. or maybe disappointed. you hate yourself for imagining his face at all.
he doesn’t control you. you’re still you. you’re still ak and he’s still zzcal.

even if you don’t want it to be that way sometimes.
“just found your little blog.”

it makes your skin crawl. the feeling of a tease that actually felt like a bite. the tear of skin and wince of pain.

you didn’t even know cal knew about it.
you didn’t even mean for him to know. it was yours.

a sanctuary that held no connection to your online persona. and yet. some part of you wrote it for him anyway. every single fucking post.

you lash out, typing before your brain catches up:
ak: that wasn’t for u.
ak: why the fuck were you looking??
ak: don’t read that shit cal. seriously.
ak: not everything is for u.

you delete the last one.
shame hits you like a bus.
then you retype it and send it anyway.

you keep typing until you run out of steam.

ak: i didn’t mean that.
ak: just. it’s not for other people. that’s all.

cal doesn’t reply or even look at it for a few minutes and you can feel yourself wanting to cry. you feel exposed. you feel like you have to be you and you haven’t wanted to be you since before you can remember.

you remember setting up the blog with no traces of your name mentioned or his or anyone’s the only damning thing is your few mentions of the range.
there were a few hundred active members and you even went by a different user. not directly traceable to you. how the fuck did he connect the dots? how did you know where to look? how much did he read?

oh you’re fucked big time.

you contemplate deleting your entire catalog of accounts across any platform but you don’t. you’re too addicted to this other you so you wait it out. this time instead of raging you just cry. pathetically. into the palms of your hands until they’re raw and the skin around it is wrinkled from how much you’ve cried.

eventually after maybe an hour you see a notification of cal’s reply. rubbing your puffy eyes with the back of your hand, you open the window and read:

USER: ZCCAL began messaging USER: AK at sys. time: 12:30.
ZCCAL: so what u mad i stole ur bit or????
ZCCAL: guess ur not the only one whos good at disappearing huh ;p.

you can’t help it. you crack a little smile. bittersweet isn’t it? you reflect on it. this is so dumb and you were so upset over what. you have your best friend back and you wipe the tears on your neck.
you sort of laugh at yourself in self pity. it feels awkward. like you’re trying to make your sad friend smile but you don’t truly know how to help. you wouldn’t get that experience anyway. he’s probably laughing at you as he types. you watch in a mix of laughter at yourself and a little concern as you see more and more frantic messages come from him.

ZCCAL: u missed me lolll!!!!!
ZCCAL: idk man say smth!!!! i dont like spamming uuu with no replyyyyy ;(.
ZCCAL: what if i send uu a pic of my new cuts???? will u reply??? did i rlly fukk up???

you feel like the wind is knocked out of you and you struggle to suck in a breath. what the fuck is your only non freakish thought. you immediately close out of the messages tab and just stare at your empty computer screen.

you’re beyond bewildered. you wonder for a few minutes if he’d actually do it. you don’t want him to be rational, i’m a normal person part of your brain but the other part. that part that feels like an entirely separate person from you, andre, is ak. who really, really fucking wants to see if they’re the same.

you shake your head and open the messages again. it loads for a few seconds and you wait, preparing some dumb excuse for the sudden lack of reply.
time to not act like that wasn’t the gayest thing you’ve ever thought of. it actually might take the cake for being so gay.

you’re not a faggot. you wish he was a girl or maybe you were a girl so whatever this is… your weird but definitely in the realm of best friend behavior didn’t make you want to throw up.

ak: sorry. hi. okay.
ak: we’re ok. i promise.
ak: don’t freak out cal.

you’re not a good comforter. you don’t have much experience with people let alone comforting someone. it’s funny actually. you were in the same spot not even ten minutes earlier. crying.

ZCCAL: [attachment-128492075444.jpeg]
ZCCAL: SHIT.
ZCCAL: i mean hiiii dre hahahahahahaha.
ZCCAL: plzzzz dont open that!!!!!!! its nothing srs just plzzzzzzz dont!!!! ;(.

you do anyway. in fact, you do so quickly that you don’t even realize you’re doing it like you’re possessed.

it’s a shaky picture, presumably taken on cal’s phone with his legs tucked underneath himself and cuts scattered across his thighs. the blood pooling around the varied raised layers of ripped skin makes it hard to count how many slashes there are.

you shamelessly count maybe twenty before your eyes fall on his boxers. the same, far too big ones he had on last time but this time it’s stained with blood. your eyes dart to his left hip and the crease of his thighs meet the bottom edge of his stomach into his crotch.

you are not getting a boner from this. it’s not erotic. it’s nothing. a cry for attention at best. when you finally tear your eyes away, you stare at the ceiling. stare like it’s going to morph into something different if you don’t look.

you’re fourteen and your first fully hard boner is over your online best friend’s cuts.

god.
remind yourself to never in a million fucking years say that out loud to anyone.
you need to get help you think.

but you don’t because it won’t help.

you think about replying for a long time. five minutes. ten. it’s a firm twenty before your hand even hovers over the keyboard, then backs off again. you feel gross. you feel awful. you feel like you’re glowing red and your body’s not your own. there’s blood in your mouth, or maybe that’s just the feeling.

you’re shaking. you feel like a monster. a disgusting
creature that has eyes on it constantly. always ashamed of something. this time it’s someone.
you type and delete at least four things. then:

ak: ok.
ak: im sorry.
ak: i just. yeah. ok.

it’s pathetic. it’s not even a response. you want to say something real but there’s nothing that doesn’t feel fake coming out of you. you want to say, i’m scared. you want to say, i didn’t mean to like it. you want to say, why did you do that. you want to say, do it again.

instead you just watch him start typing. and go on typing. and more typing.

ZCCAL: ok SOOOOOO.
ZCCAL: we are never speaking of that ever again. ok. we are making a lil blood pact.
ZCCAL: just me and u. except no more blood. lol.
ZCCAL: unless ur into it??? ;pppp. JKJKJKJKJKJK
ZCCAL: unless……?

you feel nauseous. you want to throw up. you want to kiss him. you want to hurt him and yourself and god and everyone who made you like this. you don’t know what to say. your first thought is no and you run with it.

ak: no. i’m not. into it.
ak: don’t do that again.
ak: please.

there’s a long pause. you can’t tell if he’s mad, or embarrassed, or if he’s already halfway to cutting again just because you rejected him. you think of his thighs. the blood. how pink his skin looked in the lighting. you hate yourself.

ZCCAL: k
ZCCAL: srry

you stare at that for what feels like days. that tiny little sorry feels like it punched you in the throat.
you hate how much you want to make him feel better. you hate how much you need him to need you. you hate how you still want to see more.
you start typing something stupid and long and dramatic but backspace the whole thing.

ak: don’t be sorry. just.
ak: just talk to me. i missed you.

there. it’s not enough. but it’s not nothing. you don’t know what to say. you don’t have anything appropriate to say. you’re so afraid of overstepping that you tend to never even step.
he replies and goes back to normal. you assume he doesn’t want to talk about it. you don’t bring it up again.

ZCCAL: ur such a puppy ;pp.
ZCCAL: i missed u a lot too srsly u know.
ZCCAL: what was with u not being on?!?!?

you shake your head. you open a new note and begin to write something for your blog. you type something akin to banter but not quite that:

ak: haha. ur a puppy then too freak.
ak: thanks for caring abt me. it means a lot.
ak: oh. my mom lol.

you think about telling him the truth. you feel like you have to now. compelled by nothing but your own haunting of shame.

you do tell him. even though you wouldn’t have a few months ago. you trust him. you trust him more than anything and anyone. even your own self.

you don’t think of what that means to you. you just keep it in the crushed layer of thoughts and feelings you hold. one day it’s going to pour out of you like blood and that alone scares you shitless.

ak: she was being a crazy bitch. nothing that serious just she wanted on my pc.
ak: i said no and we started fighting or whatever.

there’s something therapeutic about this. you feel close to him. as close as someone can be to you. relief washes over you, you feel content after so long of being swamped with constant dread.

ZCCAL: rlly!!!!!! dre is soo mean to his mom who knew!!! ;ppp.
ZCCAL: i was gone cuz my mom put me in a detoxxx ;( 3 days cuz i was a good boyyy loll.

you snicker. it feels like it’s against your will. you’re not a laughing type of person but cal makes you laugh, smile, whatever. you type up a few different replies, all of them just not enough. you think of actually talking to him. hearing the voice behind the guy who controls your mind like a puppeteer.

you wonder if that’ll fill the void within you. if that’s what’s keeping you from godhood. you want to be god but doesn’t everyone? doesn’t everyone want to achieve that kind of peace. maybe peace, at least the kind you’re looking for is locked behind death.

ak: its ok. i get it.
ak: yeah lol. my mom is less of an asshole than my dad to be fair.
ak: is it. too much to ask if u want my number.

you blank on what else to say. it feels like a stretch and you don’t want to sound like a dumb, lonely faggot. you explain yourself, or at least try to.

ak: u go offline a lot and we only talk here.
ak: i want to change that. ur my best friend man.

you cringe. you do sound like a faggot. you feel stupid and gross and all of the other things people use to describe themselves. people like you.

repulsive and pathetic.

it doesn’t take him long to reply. you wonder if he’s thinking it over or not. considering his recent behavior, probably not.

ZCCAL: whattttt!!! THE andre is asking me for my digits??? maybe im still highh ;pp.
ZCCAL: jkjkjkjkjk!!!!!! my number isss
ZCCAL: 774 693 4217!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

you scramble to enter it into your phone, fingers fumbling for some reason. you feel giddy but within that split second of typing, anxiety rakes through you. iit soothes when you save the contact as: “calvin”.

using his real name feels weird but you do it anyway. it feels wrong and also very fitting. it makes him feel more real.

you finally respond after a few minutes,
ak: put it into my phone.
ak: my number is 2622729616.
ZCCAL: intoooo all my contactssss!!!!
ak: freak.
ZCCAL: okok!!!!! i have to go my gf is hereee ;p!!!!

what? you didn’t know he had a girlfriend. how does out of everyone you know, cal have a girlfriend? you’re for sure going to throw up.

you do just that actually. into your trashcan when you reread it again.

you ache with confusion.

you don’t get online for maybe a week before you’re jolted out of your sulking by a loud ring from your phone. you answer the call without questioning who it is, you think it's your dad or maybe your mom.
you haven’t heard your phone ring in days. when it finally does, it feels alien, like something breaking into your room. who questions something when it's happening?

happening.
like in real life.
happening.

“Hey.” a quiet voice plays into your ear. you feel confused. who is this? you think over and over for a minute.

“Who the fuck is–“ you’re interrupted by a loud crash on the other line. “Sorry!” the voice whispers-shouts at the phone as you hear shuffling around. There’s complete silence for a moment minus your labored breaths. “Okay.” you say. you move to hang up but you stiffen as you hear a computer buzzing to life.

“Andre,” the voice says so sickeningly sweet you feel sick. “It’s Cal.” he says. you immediately feel gross like he could see you. you’ve been bed ridden for the last week because your… best friend has a girlfriend.
“Talk.” cal orders, his voice still so sweet you can taste it in your mouth. you’ve fumble with your phone, mumbling into your phone a hello before cal laughs so loudly his voice glitches as it’s not picked up. “You sound so weird.” cal says, this time loud enough for you to hear a slight slur in his voice, he says it in what you think is amazement.

without thinking of the consequences, you admit, “You sound exactly like I thought you would.” he laughs again and you think it may be your favorite sound. it feels you with something that isn't emptiness.

“I almost didn’t pick up.” you add like that’s any better. “I thought you blocked me… It only rang half a second before you picked up.” cal whispers again, you can hear his shuffling and quiet breaths. “I didn’t think you’d call.” you say, this time it’s your turn for amazement.

“Yeah.” he says casually. nothing is said for a while before another loud crash rings out from your phone and distant yelling.

you say nothing and don’t dare hang up the phone. after maybe ten minutes of yelling, cal comes back to the phone. “Sorry,” he begins. his voice is back to a whisper and cracking. “She just threw a glass at me.” he mutters as the rattle of a door handle startles him.

you calm him down by talking casually about the weather or something normal. he thanks you after a few minutes of one sided conversation. you finally notice that you’re whispering to him. you check the time and it’s around six in the morning, you tell him to sleep and he mumbles something like a good night and you hang up the phone.

you stare at the ceiling for the next few hours. the balance of your life has been offset for sure.
you like him. like that. you bite your lip. you don’t want to and know you shouldn’t but you do.
actually you don’t at all and you’re just getting feelings mixed up. he has a girlfriend and you have… just a best friend. that’s it.

you type a blog into your phone:

TITLE: “N/A.”
(Posted: 7:00 a.m.) (Written by: CarBYEN.)
“he called me
his voice sounded like choking on the last word of a prayer
i still want to throw up
i want to go back and make him say my name again.”

caption: idk what the fuck is wrong with me. i feel like two different people.
admin notes:
system: (entry set to private.)
system: (entry set to public at 7:00 a.m.)

you post it and fall asleep. rolling over to face your wall after shame hits you when you plug your phone in and set it on your night stand.

you wake up to your phone blowing up. you grab it as you roll over and squint to read the notifications, scrolling past reminders and missed alarms, you frown.

“calvin.” 4 new messages.
“calvin.” 1 missed call.
“mom” 2 missed calls.

—

calvin: dont be weird abt the call
calvin: my mom is freaking out that i called u
calvin: are u asleep
calvin: gdamnit dre pls be awake

—

you think for a minute, your brain still feels half asleep as you think over and over of the night before. nothing comes up.

—

you replied to: calvin. you: what call
calvin: ok so we’re gonna lie now
you: im not lying. i was dissociating.
calvin: so sexy of u ;)
you: shut up fag.
calvin replied to: you  calvin: u soo lie.
you: shut up.
calvin: yes sir! ;p

—

nobody texts for a while, you sit on your computer and watch videos until you feel the need to text.
actually the need possesses you again and you feel like you’re watching your body be rag dolled by someone else. your mind thinks of ak immediately. you wonder if people, normal people, have voices and feelings that control them. you wonder if cal has an “ak” like you do.

—

you: i deleted the post btw.

you see yourself type it through the fog that is your brain. you still remind yourself, like your mom, to always punctuate your sentences. you cringe at a factor of things but also the quickness of cal’s out of character reply:

calvin: u think i care
you: i think you read it 6 times and came in your pants actually.

you want to laugh but your body doesn’t. you’re reminded again that you’re just watching a different person talk to cal.

a different you. a you he trusts.

calvin: ur literally obsessed w me
you: ur literally the one who called me.
calvin: u liked it
you: did your girlfriend like it?

—

your body laughs and continues to type nonsense now. you feel the anger bubble like a tidal wave, you know you’re a goner and at it’s mercy just like always.

cal doesn’t reply for a while. you get angrier by default.

—

you: do u call her when ur mom throws shit at u.
you: or am i just ur little pity hotline.
you watch yourself get swallowed up. you do nothing but seethe with hate now.
calvin: what the fuck
you: oh. u don’t like that?
calvin: ur being a fucking asshole right now
you: why? because i remembered u had a girlfriend? lol.
calvin: stop bringing her up
you: stop hiding behind her then.

—

you keep typing and deleting the same string of insults but nothing in your haze with suffice. you want to hurt.

—

calvin: i didnt mean to make it weird
calvin: i just wanted to talk to u
calvin: i was scared

—

you type deliberately slowly.
drawing out every letter.

—

you: don’t come to me when you’re scared.
you: you only ever talk to me when something breaks.
you: and i sit here like a fucking dog every time.
you: i’m not your safe space.
you: go talk to your fucking girlfriend.

—

tears make your vision swirl and twist, you’re not sure where they came from.

maybe from,
your anger,
the fear,
or the sadness that you call the emptiness inside you.

he replies.

—

calvin: im sorry
calvin: i dont know what im doing
calvin: i just needed you that night
calvin: and i always fuck it up
calvin: i’ll leave you alone

—

you do nothing but stare, tears sloping down your cheeks and sinking into the skin of your neck. wetting it with a muddle of shame.

the screen of your phone shuts off but you don’t move. a statue of emotion.

you stare at the last message for maybe twenty minutes.

maybe longer.

you keep imagining him crying, slumped in the dark, holding his phone like you are.

you think about the call.
you think about his voice.
you think about how he said your name.
you don’t forgive him.
but you want to hear him.

after all of that, you want to call. your pathetic attempt at a true apology.

your thumb hovers over the “call” button.
you press it.

the ringing feels like your entire body is collapsing in on itself.

you regret it instantly.

one.

you stop breathing.

your lungs freeze mid-inhale and your stomach knots like a fist pulling tight from the inside.
you want to hang up.

you want it to go to voicemail.
you want him to pick up.

you want everything at once and nothing at all.

two.

it feels like you’ve stepped out of your own body and now you’re watching some idiot version of you make all the wrong decisions again. you watch your thumb hover over the screen.

you watch the seconds tick by like blood dripping from a faucet.

you remember the last thing you said.
you remember how quiet it got after.
you remember silence like a punishment.
And you deserve it.

three.

you close your eyes.
he’s not going to pick up.
he’s not going to pick up.
he’s not—

the click.

“…Hello?”

his voice is quieter than you remember. you don’t respond.

“Andre?” he says your name again. not sweet this time. scared. your stomach twists.

you can’t speak. ak is behind your teeth, whispering a script. say something.

anything. laugh. lie. hang up.

you just breathe.

“Look,” Cal says, and his voice cracks open like the call did. “I’m sorry.”

you freeze again. for a second, all the venom that lived in you is gone. you don’t sound like yourself when you answer. reading out the script,
“Hey.”

a pause. a few breaths that you know you heard.

“I know I shouldn’t have called that night. I was just—I was fucking scared. I didn’t know what else to do.” his words are blunt but helpless. like he’s used to being caught doing something wrong.

you don’t know how you’re supposed to feel.

“…and I knew you’d pick up,” he adds. so quiet you almost don’t catch it. you question, momentarily, if you even wanted to catch it.

but you hang on his words like you can’t get enough because you know you can’t.

you don’t say anything. you swallow once, and you know he hears it.

“I didn’t mean to make it weird,” he keeps talking and you keep listening. “I just… I wasn’t thinking.”

you don’t know if he means the call. the messages. his existence.

“You never are,” you say, but it comes out soft. like it’s not an insult. you don’t really know if it’s supposed to be an insult.
another silence. you imagine him pacing. chewing on his lip. doing anything but sitting still.

“I didn’t know how else to talk to you,” he says suddenly between palms pressed to his eyes you guess. he texted of doing that a lot. “I keep messing this up and you keep answering anyway.”

That hits you in the throat.

“Yeah,” you say. straying off script. “I’m stupid like that.”

“You’re not stupid.” his voice drops, back to that familiar whisper of sweetness.

another silence. the soft hum of his room in the background. a creak of a bed. he’s sitting down now.

“I shouldn’t have called you that night,” he mutters. “But I also think I would’ve done something if I didn’t.”

“Something?” you echo.
“Something bad,” he whispers like it’s a secret.

you finally breathe out, “That’s the fucking problem, Cal.” you don’t even sound like yourself. it’s someone else’s voice. the one you save for your mom. the one ak likes.

“I always pick up. And you always hang up. You vanish. Then you want me when you’re bleeding.”

cal is silent. not defensively—just stunned.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he says. it sounds like he means everything.

his voice drops into something bare. you didn’t know voices could do that. “I don’t know how to be around you without wanting to… I don’t know. Be near you, even when I shouldn’t. You’re the only one I actually say things to. And I hate that.”

you press the phone harder to your ear, your hand stiff. your whole body feels like it’s made of ice cracking under its own weight.

“I hate that I called,” he says flatly. “But I’m glad I did. I just… I thought you’d hang up.”
you don’t know how to reply, you say nothing.

ak is watching you from inside the mirror.
you think to yourself not to say it,
you say it anyway.

“I thought you had a girlfriend.”
It comes out like acid. like broken prayer.

“I do,” cal says.
then quieter: “She’s not you.”
the silence is so loud it hurts your teeth.

“I’m sorry I made you feel used,” cal whispers, and you can hear him press his palm to his face through the speaker again.

“I don’t want you to be my safe space if it hurts you.”

you close your eyes. your body disappears.
“I don’t want to be anything to you if it’s just a fucking secret.” your voice cracks. it’s the first thing you haven’t immediately regretted since the call started.

you can hear him breathing loudly into the phone.

“I don’t want it to be a secret,” he says. “I just don’t know how to be real about it. About you.”

your mouth opens, but nothing comes. ak tilts your head. There it is. There he is.
you whisper into the phone, “Then try.”
“Okay.” he answers in that blissed out, here but not way.

you don’t hang up.
neither does he.

it’s quiet. not uncomfortable—just breathing. just space. like standing in the wreckage of something and realizing you’re both still alive.

“Are you okay?” cal finally asks.

you don’t answer right away. you watch yourself curl into the blanket tighter. one foot still on the floor. the phone tucked against your jaw like it’s holding you together.

“No,” you say. “But I will be.”

he exhales. it sounds like something inside him lets go when you say it. you hear the faint click of a bottle cap. then a long swallow.

“Don’t get mad,” cal says between snippets of short swallows. “But I’m drinking.”

you blink. a little confused by the bluntness. “What?”

“I just—yeah. I don’t know. Feels like I have to.”

you wait. the room feels warmer than before or maybe you’re just warmer than before. If you weren’t so hyperware of your surroundings then you probably would’ve missed it.

“You want me to stop?” he asks. you like that he asked for permission. he didn’t have to but he wants to hear your opinion.

you matter. to him at least.

“No,” you say with a lick of your lips and a look around your room. “I want some too.”

it surprises even you. you don’t drink often. you can’t remember the last time you drank, actually.

“You serious?”

“I’ve got some,” you mumble like it’s a secret. “In my closet. I took it from my mom’s cabinet a while ago.”

“You little thief,” he says with a laugh that breaks into a cough. you laugh back. “Go get it.”

you listen to him tell you what to do.
you do it without a second thought.
you put him on speaker and drag the bottle out of its hiding place. you both take shots like it’s normal. like this is something you’ve done often.

it burns. not bad.
there’s a pause and you burp.

then cal’s laugh and a quiet question after. “Do you ever think about school?”
you blink again. you feel that it was slower than last time. “What about it?”

“I don’t know. How weird it is that we even have to go back. That we have to act like everything’s fine.”

you stare at the ceiling. “I don’t really go.”
“I know,” he says.

you both laugh at that, for some reason.
you don’t tell him you got suspended last time you went for fighting somebody. he doesn’t ask.

you take another drink. he does too.
then you’re talking about his classes. his teachers. one of them he calls “The Rat King.” you don’t know why. you don’t ask.
just like the sound of his voice.

he talks about his girlfriend—carefully. like tiptoeing around a wound.

“She doesn’t know about you,” he admits.
you don’t say anything still.

“I don’t mean that in a bad way,” he adds quickly. “It’s just—this. You. I don’t know how to explain it to anyone.”

“You don’t have to,” you say flatly. you try not to think about what that means to her.
“I want to,” he says. and it’s sincere.

you drink another shot again. he convinces you to take two more with him. you do.

it gets quieter. everything is so slow now.
you’re both murmuring now, like you’re trying not to wake something up. like something holy has settled between you and it’ll vanish if you talk too loud.

“Can I tell you something?” you ask.
“Anything.” he slurs in a whisper.

you stare at the light of your computer screen, painting your room in soft blue. “I feel like I’m two people.”

cal is silent, but you know still listening.

“There’s me,” you continue. “Andre. And then there’s this other version. AK. And he… he doesn’t care. He watches everything. He says all the stuff I’m too scared to say. He’s not real. But he is.”

cal doesn’t laugh. doesn’t mock.

a pause which is interrupted by you both laughing at his hiccup. loud enough that you can hear him take his next breath.

“Do you feel better when you’re him?” he asks. you’re not sure how to feel about that.
you nod, even though he can’t see. “Yeah. But also worse. Like he makes things happen just so I have to live through them.”

you’re not sure what that means until you say it out loud.

cal sighs and reassures you. “I don’t think that’s crazy.”

“You don’t?”

“No,” he says. “I think I do that too. Just not with a name.”

silence again.

“You should name him, ZC.” you suggest and he laughs. his voice is sweet just like you remember.

“Okay,” he gets out between laughs, “I will.”
silence. a long stretch of it.

you look at the time. 2:46AM. you should get to bed soon but you don’t want the night to end.

“I’m glad you called,” you say.
cal hums. “Me too.”
you like that sound. you like him.

it’s so quiet now. just your breaths. just the low murmur of background noise.

you almost think he’s gone until he murmurs, “Still here.”

you smile again and you wish he could see it.

a few minutes later, he doesn’t answer.
“Cal?” you whisper.
nothing.
he’s asleep you conclude.

you don’t hang up.
you listen to him breathing.
you lose your eyes, hand still wrapped around your phone.

you think about the way your name sounded in his mouth. you think about the things he didn’t say. you think about ak, quiet for once. you fall asleep like that, with cal’s breath in your ear and a silence that feels almost like peace.

after a few days of everything being faded and blurry. you’re reminded that life moved on without you.

you text cal daily, all the time actually.
but then you have to go to school.

school is hell because you know you won't be able to be ak and talk to people who think they get you. and cal. cal gets you.

you remember that you’re obligated to go because of stupid state laws or whatever binds you to continue attending your shit hole that’s called a school.

but then it happens again.

you knew it was coming, but you didn’t know how soon. the door slams behind you. your mom doesn’t even blink. your dad just watches you like you’re some experiment, waiting for the next step. it’s not even about the suspension anymore. it’s about getting you back into “shape.”

they know that you know that they know about the suspension. you’re so fucking angry you could kill everyone.

you feel like you want to. right now. to kill them.

“You’re going back into therapy,” she says.
you freeze, the air in your lungs vanishing.
“Again?” you croak. your throat feels thick, like there’s something stuck in it you can’t get out.

“Your school called. They want to talk to you too,” your dad chimes in from the stairs, his voice flat. “You’ve got to fix this. They want to make sure you’re getting help.”

your chest tightens. you feel the world start to spin.

“You’re serious,” you say, more a statement than a question. your fingers dig into the sleeve of your hoodie.

“We’re doing this for your own good, Andre,” your mom says, but she doesn’t look at you. doesn’t even try to fake concern. just words, just motions.

you can’t breathe.
you cannot fucking breathe.
you’re actually going to suffocate.

“You don’t get it. You never get it. You just—” you bite down on your lip to stop the words from coming out too quickly. but against everything, they come anyway.

“I don’t need therapy. I need you to—” you throw your hands up in frustration and defeat. “You think you can just fix me, right? You think you can throw me into some fucking office and I’ll just get better? You think that’s how it works? You don’t even know me.” You’re shouting now. You didn’t even realize you were shouting. “And then you pretend like you care when it’s just for show. I’m not a fucking thing for you to play with.”

your mom doesn’t even react, just stares at the floor. “Stop talking like that,” your dad snaps, but his voice is empty. you can tell he’s already checked out from fighting.

“You don’t care about what’s wrong with me. You just want to fix it so you can say you did something. You’re scared that I’ll fuck up again and you’ll have to actually feel something.”

a beat. silence. but it’s not quiet—it’s suffocating. still so fucking suffocating.

“Enough, Andre. Get to your room.” your mom’s voice is cold. not foreign but it shakes you.

“No. Fuck that.” you laugh, bitter floods your mouth as anger floods out of you. “You want me to get better? I’ll get better when you actually give a shit.”

“Stop acting like this.” her voice is raised now, but it’s still hollow. still empty.

“I’m done,” you say, slamming the door to your room behind you, “Done with you. Done with this.” you screech as you throw your hands up in frustration again.

eventually throwing random trash in your room at your walls. this is actually the worst day of your life.

you lock yourself in your room. you can’t breathe, can’t think straight, can’t process anything.

they just want you to be fixed!
they want you to be okay. but you’re not. you haven’t been.
you’re a gross, freakish thing
but you’re god.

deep down you’re god and nobody else knows that. they should but they don’t.
you jolt from your phone vibrating in your pocket.

you open the messages between you and cal.

—

you: they’re fucking doing it again. i can’t do this anymore.

you watch as cal types,

calvin: what’s going on?

—

you type angrily, grumbling to yourself about nothing and everything.

—

you: they’re making me go to therapy again. they’re making me fix myself and i’m so fucking tired of it.
calvin: shit… im srry man
you: yeah well I’m done.
you: i’m done pretending like they give a shit. i’m done pretending i’m gonna get better for them. it’s all bullshit.
you: i don’t care. they just wanna look like they’re doing something.

—

you rant and rant. it doesn’t help anything and you know that but you do it anyway.

—

calvin: ik. i get it dre.
you: they just think they can fix me like i’m some fucking puzzle, but nothing changes.
you: they don’t listen. they don’t see me.
calvin: it’s not you. it’s them. they’re scared of you. they don’t know how to deal with you. they never did.
you: you don’t get it. they just wanna control me!!!

—

you pause to take a breath. you feel your chest heave as you begin to shake.
you don’t even notice cal’s replies, you just continue to spam texts.

—

calvin: yeahh :(.

—

eventually you just toss your phone on the bed. it’s burning hot in your hands. this isn’t enough. nothing is enough.

you’re pacing now. your skin is too tight. you wish you could rip it off. you think about it seriously for a minute. then, a knock on the door. it’s your mom.

you open it to just stare.

“Give me your phone,” she says flatly. she likes to do that you notice. anger fills your veins again.

“No.” you spit. you want to hurt her. you hate her.

“I said give it to me.” she repeats. you continue to stare at her, your blood still boiling.

“No. You don’t get to control me like this.” you try to reach to her. to play up how upset you are. she doesn’t buy it all.

“Give it to me, Andre.” she angrily says as she reaches for it, and you feel it slipping through your fingers. you clutch it tight, holding it to your chest like a lifeline. you want to scream but you don’t, you just hold it with your knuckles white.

she doesn’t even ask why anymore. not humoring you at all. she just takes it.

the sound of the phone leaving your hands is a dead weight in your stomach.

“Good,” she says coldly. “Maybe this’ll help you.”

you slam your door so hard the wall shakes.
you know they heard you screaming. you hope they did.

you sit at your desk too fast. your hands are shaking as you wake the screen and open the chat with cal like it’s a lifeline.

your vision blurry. you can’t tell if it’s rage or panic. you can feel everything happening to you like you just got new nerve endings.

AK began messaging USER: ZCCAL at sys. time: 8:00.
ak: i’m gonna fucking kill them
ZCCAL: ik u are but it’s okay. it’s gonna be
ZCCAL: itll be ok.

you snarl, mimicking cal’s texts which is misplaced anger and you know that. you don’t stop yourself from doing that.

ak: they took my phone
ak: they took my FUCKING phone.

you put capitals for emphasis, fingers slamming onto the keys.

ZCCAL: wait what?
ZCCAL: why the fuck would they do that
ak: “focus on yourself.”
ak: “take some space.”
ak: like they’re not the reason i’m like this.

“Fuck you!” you screech as you hear them talking down the hallway right past your
room. you note that was on purpose because it just had to be.

ZCCAL: jesus. dude.
ak: i swear to god if i had a bat in here i’d.

you pause, breathe sharp. you can’t see straight. your jaw hurts from clenching. you don’t know what to do but you continue typing,

ak: i feel sick
ak: like i’m not real. like i’m fucking splitting open.
ZCCAL: hey hey hey
ZCCAL: i’m here. you’re okay. i’m right here.

you finally get to breathe like cal’s given you air. you’d thank him if he was here but he’s not. and you hate that.

you hate everything.

ak: no you’re not. nobody is.
ak: nobody fucking is.
ak: they don’t get it. they never got it.
ak: every time i try to explain they blink like i’m speaking another language
ZCCAL: you don’t have to explain it to them
ZCCAL: explain it to me!!!

you note his words. they just feel like text. hollow. you want to kill him and everyone.
you’re a freak.

ak: i’m just noise to them
ak: i scream and they look at each other like i’m embarrassing them

it hits you all at once again that you’re typing too fast. you’re crying. you don’t realize it until a tear hits the keyboard.

ak: they said i’m “starting the cycle again”
ak: like i’m a fucking washing machine.
ZCCAL: fuck them. they don’t know you

you scream at your parents again but don’t move out of your seat. you’re throwing a fucking tantrum and it might be fucking glorious.

ak: they’re sending me back.
ak: therapy. new one this time.
ak: guess i finally scared them enough.

you laugh, pathetically, to yourself. you cry harder when cal’s reply feels genuine and real. you don’t know why, you’ve craved this kind of thing from him. from anyone. but it feels wrong. you’re so confused and the world is spinning, you don’t know what you’re doing.

ZCCAL: when?
ak: today.
ak: two hours.
ak: they want me out.

you grip the desk so hard your knuckles go white. you feel like you might actually explode if you don’t smash something.

ZCCAL: what can i do
ak: nothing.
ak: not unless you can teleport and set the house on fire

you’ve lightened your grip, rubbing your face with your sleeve to watch cal’s reply,

calvin: i’d do it

something fills you with so much emotion you freeze up. not entirely sure how to reply but you do anyway.

ak: i know
ak: they think this will fix me
ak: i don’t want to be fixed
ak: i want to be understood

you exhale dramatically and drop your head to the desk. the world is actually over. the screen is still glowing. cal is still typing.

ZCCAL: you ARE understood
ZCCAL: i fucking get you
ZCCAL: i always will

you smile at that when you finally pick your head back up, typing something simple.

ak: promise
ZCCAL: swear on my fucked up life
ak: you’re all i have left.

you look at that line for a long time.
you don’t get to see if he answers.
because just then—your door opens.

your mother says your name, soft but firm.
you look at her with murder in your eyes. you think of all true crime documentaries you watched and how you could actually do it.
you don’t even get the chance to say “fuck you” before she crosses the room and rips your computer’s power cable out of the wall.

you lunge and yell at her, shouting anything that comes to mind. most to all of it is threats and she halfway through your struggle to get the cord back screams for your dad.

everything after that is quiet and blurry. you choose to not remember a single fucking moment of it.

the air of the office is sterile. too cold. too bright. too fucking calm from the absolute freak out you had at the house.

you sit in a chair too soft to trust. your arms are crossed, sleeves tugged down low. the ceiling tile above you is cracked in the shape of a Y. you stare at it like it’s trying to speak to you in a language only you should understand.

you know you look stupid.

the therapist—some woman named doctor meyers—sits across from you in a clean gray sweater. she’s younger than you expected. early thirties maybe. glasses she clearly doesn’t need. a stupid mug that says “Progress, not Perfection.” you want to smash it against your face.

she smiles like she learned it from a textbook.
you sit on the couch and try not to loook like you’re about to explode.

her office smells like peppermint gum and fake calm. she has those soft chairs that feel like you’ll drown in them if you sink too deep. you don’t sit back. you stay stiff. alert. like you’re waiting for her to pull a knife.

“Hi, Andre.” she says sweetly. for a moment it reminds you of the way cal says your name and you actually think of bashing your skull into the carpet.
you don’t say anything. she clicks her pen like it’s a countdown.

one click.

two.

you hate that sound.

three.

you feel some kind of doom loom over you.

“I read the notes from your school,” she says, gentle like she’s talking to a stray cat. you want to tell her that they’re lying but you know they’re not.

“You’ve had a rough few weeks.”

you laugh. or cough. or both. like you didn’t fucking know that. is she stupid? probably. she smiles like it means something.

“Do you want to talk about what’s been going on?” she’s prodding you and you shiver with uncomfortableness.

you tap your foot. you tap it so fast your leg shakes. you think about standing up and leaving. think about hitting her. think about killing yourself.

“Do you want to be here?” she asks.
you blink. wrong question. you’re shaking.

obviously fucking not you want to say but you snap quicker before you can give a normal answer.

“Do you think I have a choice?” you snap.

she blinks back like she’s used to that answer. “Your parents are concerned.” she says as she writes something stupid on your paper.

your laugh louder this time. you lean forward, face scrunched up. you hate that chair. you hate it here.

“Concerned? They’re not fucking concerned.” you correct, she stares back at you. all still.

you let out, “They’re embarrassed. They want to fix me so they don’t have to think about me.”

silence. her pen stills. you know you said too much right then and there.

“Why do you think they feel that way?” she asks.

you want to scream. instead you scratch at your palm, fast and sharp. it hurts from how hard you’re scratching but you don’t stop.

“Because they said it. Because they look at me like I’m some broken… thing in the house. A leaking pipe. Mold on the ceiling. I’m rotting in real time and all they care about is the smell.”

“Have you talked to anyone about how you’ve been feeling?”

and you freeze.
you almost say cal.
you want to say cal knows everything, but you swallow it. he’s yours. you’re not handing him over to be dissected. picked apart. ruined.

you shift in your seat. you shrug, fast and sharp. so clearly uncomfortable.

nice going, dumbass.

your brain says to say no. why would you tell her fucking anything? especially cal. lie.

just lie.

“There’s this guy,” you say. “Online. Some forums. Whatever.”

you want to force feed the words back in your mouth but you think it’s okay. you haven’t said anything that’ll get your stuff taken. you have however gotten yourself in a lose-lose situation.

okay. fuck.

“What’s his name?”
you pause. scratch that.

“His name’s…” your brain scrambles. searches for something. “Red. He goes by Red.”

you’re so fucked.

you wince because cal’s not red. it hurts to lie about that. cal’s blue fire. cal’s smoke. cal’s just as inhuman as you. but it’s the first thing you say and now it’s real.

“Is Red someone you trust?”

you chew on your lip, bloodying it. you want to say no but you’re in too deep.

“More than anyone,” you whisper. like it’s a secret.

she writes that down. you want to snatch the paper from her hands and rip it to shreds but you’ve done it to yourself. sealed your fate just then.

“And what do you and Red talk about?”

everything. everything. the way you want to tear your skin off. the way god lives in your chest and beats on your ribs. the way you don’t feel human unless he’s watching. like he’s everything you’ve ever needed and you need to know if he feels the same.

but you don’t say any of that.

“Just stuff,” you mutter. “School. Parents. He gets it. He’s been through it too.”

you don’t look up but you know she’s analyzing the fuck out of that answer.

you’re so, so fucked.

“Does he ever give you bad advice?”
you glare at her now. “No.”

she doesn’t get it.

“Okay.” she nods. fake understanding. “That’s good. Online friends can be helpful, but they can also be—”

“Don’t talk about him like that.” your voice cracks. you feel pathetic. “He’s not the problem. They are.”

she circles something on her notes.

you hate her.
you hate her.
you hate her.

the car is silent.

not quite silent. like the air’s thick with smog and no one wants to move.

you sit in the back like a fucking child. you’re used to getting to ride in the front. something you had to “earn”. 

your mom’s up front checking her rearview mirror like she’s hoping you’ll disappear if she doesn’t look too long. your dad’s got both hands on the wheel and his jaw clenched like a vice.

you just know they’re pissed.
you breathe too loud.
fuck.

you want to kick the back of the seat. you want to scream again. you want to cry and throw up and shatter the window just to see if they’d react.

no one says anything.
they don’t ask what happened. they don’t ask how it went.
they just drive.

you think about cal the entire time. wonder if he’s messaged. you think over if he’s worried. wonder if he’ll disappear the second you start acting like a real person.
you stare out the window and think about walking into traffic. just opening the door and rolling onto the road. it’d be funny.

“Therapist says you’ve got another appointment next week,” your dad says eventually. like it’s the weather. like it’s nothing.

you don’t reply. you don’t even blink.
you’re not here.

you’re with cal, in some imagined room where you’re both on the floor, backs to the wall, talking shit until it stops hurting. where you’re not something to be diagnosed.

where you’re not something to fix.
just someone to understand.

after a while of drifting in between daydreaming and silence you fall back to feel vibrating from the session.

you feel raw.

the therapist had looked at you like she already had you figured out before you even said a word. she asked about the texts. the “concerning messages.” the things you said before they took your phone.

you told her they were to some kid at school. a lie. you said it fast, cold, like ak would.

some kid online. no, i don’t really talk to him anymore.

all practiced lines. you could lie to your parents but she’ll tell them anyway.

you recall a few questions she asked,

“How do you feel when your phone gets taken?”

“What happens when you get angry?”

you wanted to scream. you wanted to hurt.
you wanted to say:
“I see red. I see God. I stop being a person. I turn into a siren wailing in my skull. I become so bright and awful and loud that the only thing I can do is tear something apart.”

but you didn’t say that. you just picked at your sleeve until the fabric shredded in your lap. you are god, you remind yourself. cal is god too. you can’t fucking wait to text him.

your chest feels too full. you’re still holding on to the last thing cal said before your power cord was ripped out.

“you’re all i have left.”

you don’t even know if he meant it. but you’ve repeated it in your head so many times that it’s become its own kind of religion.

you lean your head against the window and shut your eyes. you imagine texting him the second you get your computer back. typing out every word in all-caps, holding your breath waiting for his reply. you imagine what he might say—something awful, something stupid, something only you could find comforting. something real.

the car makes a sharp turn. your shoulder slams into the door. no one apologizes.
your mom clears her throat, and you brace yourself, but all she says is, “We’re proud of you for not making a scene.”

you almost laugh. you bite your lip instead. it hurts from all the layers of skin you’ve ripped off.

the blood floods your mouth and you almost hack it up. you want to scream something like i made a scene the second i was born. but you just nod, eyes half-closed, the world blurring out again.

you go home to the sound of silence. you go home and wonder how much longer you’ll have to keep being this thing they want to fix before they realize you were never theirs to start with.

you don’t say anything when the car stops. just unbuckle, open the door, and disappear inside before either of them can try to do the parent thing again. the “we’re here if you need us” lie. you can still hear the turn signal ticking in the driveway. can still feel the therapist’s pen slicing through you like a scalpel.

your room smells like dust and old fabric softener. trash litters the floor, you just step over it. the curtains are still drawn from this morning. everything’s the same, but it feels ruined. like someone moved the furniture an inch to the left and now nothing fits.

you drop your bag and go straight to the corner where your desk is. where your computer used to be.

gone.
of course it’s still gone.

you were hopeful just maybe when dad wrestled you into the car and left you there while you screamed and told them how you were going to shoot their brains out, that they hadn’t taken your computer.

you’re one hell of a dreamer.

you just stand there for a second, staring at the empty space like maybe you can will it back. like if you press your nails hard enough into your palm, you’ll earn it.
there’s a note on your bed.

“We’ll talk more when you’re ready. One step at a time. – Mom.”

you crumple it without reading the rest.
it’s not that important.
you sit on the floor.

the silence is worse here. It’s personal here.
you think about cal. his voice in your ear last night. how he said your name like it mattered. how he told you he doesn’t talk to anyone else like this. that he couldn’t stop thinking about you. that he drank with you. fell asleep next to you. told you the truth.
you grip your knees. dig in. make your knuckles go white.

you don’t know if you believe him. but that doesn’t even matter. it doesn’t matter because you need it to be true. because otherwise—otherwise what is this? what are you? just some pathetic little dead-end nobody who got too obsessed with a ghost on his screen?

you whisper his name into the quiet like maybe he’ll hear it.

you say it like a curse. like a prayer. “Calvin.”

your voice cracks. you bite down on the sound. you claw your hand through your hair. you don’t cry—not really. just make that awful dry sound that’s halfway to choking.
you’ve cried so much it’s just hollow. just breathe too hard and press your forehead to your knees like a punishment.

you say it again. quiet. like he’s under your bed. “Calvin.”

like maybe he’ll text you anyway.
like maybe he knows you’re saying it.
like maybe he’s just as gone as you are right now and looking for you, too.

you think about the blog post he said he read. you shiver. the rabbit. the blood. the part where you wrote I hope he finds it. I hope he understands.

you think maybe he did understand. and that’s why he stayed. and that’s why it hurts.

you feel yourself splitting in half again.
this time you want to be ak, you don’t want to be andre. ever again.

ak wouldn’t cry.
ak wouldn’t sit here waiting.
ak would tear through the walls and make them give him the computer back and laugh about it. he wouldn’t sit in a hoodie that smells like sweat and shame and pretend his life isn’t about to fall apart.

you shut your eyes. breathe. try to find that voice again—the one that’s you if you could just man up.

but he’s not coming. not right now. not like this. it’s just you in the dark. a recluse boy who doesn’t understand himself.
you curl tighter.

a boy who’s hopelessly in love with calvin gabriel and he hates it because he has a girlfriend and he has a life outside of you.
you hate that peace is right in front of you, begging for you to let yourself have it. but you don’t because you can’t imagine yourself letting it get good.

you whisper, like a warning, like a promise: he’s all i have left.

you’ve been lying awake for hours.

in an act of sympathy you read the note she left for you, she read the texts. on your fucking phone.

staring at the ceiling. sweating under your hoodie. thinking about your fucking computer, your texts, the fact that she touched your things. that she spoke to cal. that she read anything at all.

you have to know what she said.
you have to.
you might die if you don’t.

you wait for the sounds of the house to still—your dad’s stupid muffled snoring down the hall, the refrigerator clicking, your heart beating like a war drum in your throat. you count ten long, aching minutes. then twenty.
then finally after it all. you move.

quiet as you can, you slip out of bed and slide your door open. no creaks, no sudden movements. just a breath held so tight your chest aches.

the floorboards groan under your socks. every sound feels like it echoes through the fucking walls. you freeze up every time—at the stairs, at the bottom step, at the hallway corner—but you keep going.

the hallway closet first. nothing.

the kitchen drawers next. just junk, receipts, a flashlight that flickers dead when you click it. your hands shake with every drawer you slam shut.

then the living room.

you crouch beside the couch. pat under the cushions. nothing again.

you’re getting aggravated now. she puts it somewhere new every time and you hate playing her games. you hate her.
then you see it.

right there.
on the mantle.
plugged into a charger like it’s hers. like it belongs to her now.

your phone.
your fucking phone.

you grab it like it might disappear. press it to your chest like it’s a wounded animal. it’s warm. alive. yours. you quickly break it off of the charger and you don’t even breathe until you’re back in your room, door shut and locked, back pressed to it like it’s going to explode behind you.

you don’t waste a second.

you flick it on. notifications flood the screen. missed messages. system updates. battery only at 44%.

your fingers fumble across the lock screen. it takes you three tries. you almost drop it.
then—
you see it.

messages from cal. a few, spaced out. a long silence. you rush through them, trying to absorb as much as possible.
one more that’s not from cal.

“Hi Calvin. This is Andre’s mother. Please stop texting him for now. He’ll reach out when he’s ready. Thanks.”

your stomach drops.
no.
no, no, no, no.
she did not.
she didn’t. she fucking didn’t.
you click open the thread.
scroll.

you see what you missed.
what cal said. what she read.
you see her message again. you read it over and over. it’s like you’re outside your body.
like your soul just evaporated out of your fucking skin.

you start to shake. you’re always shaking.
your hands grip the phone until your nails dig into the sides. your jaw clicks. your breath is loud. too loud.

you scroll more.
cal replied.
hours later.
“you good?”
“idk what that was.”
“rachel thinks your mom’s nuts lmao.”
“text me when ur not grounded ig.”

rachel?
rachel.
his fucking girlfriend.
she’s actually real. fuck.

you slam your palm against the wall.
hard.
once.
twice.
it doesn’t help. nothing helps.

you hit the call.

the line rings once.

twice.

you almost hang up. your thumb fingers over it as the line clicks and,

“Hey.” cal answers, voice thick and low and stupidly casual, like he didn’t just let the entire fucking world spin off its axis. you hear background noise. muffled voices. something clatters.

“—shit, hold on—” he covers the mic. “—yeah, babe, I am talking to him. Chill—!”
your blood boils.

“Who the fuck was on my phone.” you don’t even sound like yourself. your voice is raw, low, shaking.

you know who it was. you read the text.
you want him to say it. you want to kill him.
silence. then a crackly exhale through the receiver. “…Dre?”

“Who the fuck was on my phone, Cal.”

“I didn’t—wait. Dude. Chill, it was just your—wait, hold on—Rach, can you not fucking stand right there? I’m trying to talk–“ another distant voice, a girl, sharp, angry—“You were the one who said he was insane, don’t act like—”

you stop breathing.

“Oh,” you say. breaking. flat. the wind is knocked out of you. “Oh.”

“Dre, fuck, wait—”

you hang up before he can finish.
you hate waiting.

you throw the phone. everything is over for you. you don’t give a fuck if you’re being too loud.

it hits the wall with a sound that satisfies you in a sick, shallow way. you hope it cracks. you hope the screen splits open. you hope it breaks forever.

you actually scream so hard your throat burns.

you don’t think of your mom or dad. you just scream and scream.

you kick the side of your bed and your knee buckles from the impact.

your hands won’t stop shaking.

you were right. you’re always right. everyone is out to make you a joke. even him.
even cal.

by the time you’ve stopped throwing a fit your phone’s already ringing.

still half-sunk into the carpet where you threw it, screen cracked at the corner, buzzing like it doesn’t know what it just did.

you stare at it. you don’t want to answer. you don’t want to hear him. but you can’t stop your hand. you hate yourself.

you press the call button with shaking fingers. hold the phone to your ear like it might burn you.

“Andre—”

“Shut the fuck up,” you snap, immediately. your voice is tight and shaking and full of heat. “Don’t say my name like you didn’t just let her text for me. Like you didn’t just—”
“I didn’t let anyone—babe, just let me talk, Jesus fu—no, you shut up—”

you hear it. her. rachel again. yelling. crying? it’s so hard to tell. something slams. a door? a wall? your ears are ringing too. it’s hard to tell exactly what it is.

cal yells something back. his voice is louder this time, sharp like broken glass. you’ve never heard him mad. you don’t make him mad. “You’re the one who fucking started this, Rach, get out of my face!”

“Don’t fucking tell me to leave when you—!”
“This isn’t about you!”

the call is chaos. disconnected yelling. heavy breathing. stuff breaking which makes the sound glitch out. cal’s voice wobbles like he’s trying not to cry or throw up or both.

then a slam. then real kind. door shut. quiet.
“…Andre,” he says again. but softer this time. so sweet like he’s luring you in.
you don’t respond.

you hate to say it works. it works every time.
you just listen.

there’s a long stretch of silence, just breathing. then cal laughs. it glitches out but you’ve never been so happy to hear it.
even if it’s the wrong kind of laugh. low and bitter and ugly.

“She threw a fucking bong at me,” he says. fully serious. “That’s what that sound was. She—Jesus, I can’t even say it out loud.”

you still don’t say anything. it reminds you of the first call. you wonder if the she that time was her too. rachel.

the name leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
“I told her to stop reading your texts. She saw your name and just assumed. Started saying shit like I was cheating—like you were obsessed with me. Like I don’t know what the fuck that makes me, then.”

silence again. how do you explain to a normal, everyday person that your heart may have just stopped.

he needs you.

you stare at the wall. your whole body feels like it’s underwater. your chest aches with every breath.

“I told her I didn’t want to be with her,” cal mutters. “I told her I was done.”

you hum, quietly because you don’t stay angry at him for long. you’re always angry but he lessens it. somehow he just does even when you’re so angry with him you freak out.

there’s a knock at your door.
fuck.
you freeze. cal keeps talking. his voice sounds so far away.

“—she didn’t even cry,” he says. “She just called me a freak and left. Like she knew. Like she fucking knew I wasn’t ever with her like that. Not really.”

another knock. you know you’re a goner.
you just want to stay in this moment forever. you want to talk to him forever.
the the door creaks open.

it hits you in that moment that you forgot to relock it.

your mom.
that bitch.

she’s standing in the doorway in her robe, hair frizzy, eyes red. you don’t even look at her. you can’t. but you do. you stare for just a minute,

she stares at you with her mouth slightly open, like she doesn’t recognize you. like she’s afraid to step in.

“I wanted to tell you,” cal says. “About her. But I didn’t know how. And then—then your mom texted me. And I—fuck, I panicked. I thought maybe she was right. Maybe I was just some fucking parasite. You don’t need me, right? You never needed me.”

your hands are gripping the sheets so tight your knuckles ache. your knee hurts.

“I wanted you to text me back,” cal says, voice breaking. “I wanted you to scream at me or block me or anything, just so I knew you were still—fuck.”

you hear it.
the first sniffle.
then more. soft and fast and desperate.
cal’s crying. again.
you don’t know what to make of it but it’s just like that night.
the first call. that kickstarted whatever the fuck is happening to your body.

you press the phone tighter to your ear and say nothing. you want to yell. you want to ruin him. you want to crawl into the phone and never come back out.

your mom takes a cautious step in.
you snap your neck to stare directly at her.

“Get the fuck out.” you mouth to her.

she flinches. doesn’t argue. just closes the door quietly behind her. you’ve won. for now.

you’ll be fucked over by the morning though.

cal’s still crying. whispering things you can’t fully make out now. half-formed apologies. muffled curses.

“Stop crying,” you say finally. your voice comes out cracked and hoarse.

“I can’t.” he tries.
“I hate you.” you lie.
“I know.” he sheepishly echos back. like a record. you hear your own voice as he says it.

it hurts.

“Say it,” you whisper. “Say you’re mine.”
you don’t know why you ask him too.

“I’m yours,” cal breathes. no hesitation. no questions.

you remember you’re god. in this moment you’re god. and he is too. you close your eyes. peace washes over you in waves.
your ribs ache. your hands tremble.
but for the first time since you lost everything.

you feel a little bit whole again.
you two lay in the quiet again, this time it’s as close as peaceful can get.

“You still there?” he asks as he lets out a long sigh. you can imagine his face just then. you don’t want to admit what that does to you.

you get the feeling of grossness again. it’s less this time than before. he said he was yours. that makes you happy.

your best friend. you’re in love with being his best friend.

you don’t like him like that.

you don’t.

you.

don’t.

finally snapped away from your thoughts and muttered a  “Yeah.” before you can think too hard about it. you’re a freak.

“Didn’t mean to yell at you earlier. I was just… I dunno.” he apologizes, you ache again. he breathes, “She pisses me off. You piss me off. I piss me off.”

you reply with no hesitation. “You piss me off too.” it slips out before you can stop it—bitter, sharp, honest.

cal laughs first. dry. short. it scrapes against the receiver like static. you’ve started to get used to static like it’s a part of his laugh. you laugh too even though it’s delayed, but yours is quieter. more like air being let out of a balloon. exhausted. the both of you are.

it’s the first honest thing either of you have said all night.

you want it to be real. you want this to be real. so bad that you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if it wasn’t. if he wasn’t.

“I missed this,” cal says suddenly. it hits you like a gut punch. not even the content—just the softness of it. the way he says it like it’s obvious.

you swallow hard. your palms are sweaty.
“you mean screaming at each other and threatening to kill ourselves?” you offer like it’s funny, you crack a little smile as you say it. the subject matter isn’t funny nor a jab at him or yourself. it’s something entirely your own.

“Nah.” you can hear him smile through the rasp of the phone. “I mean you. Just… talking to you. No screen. No typing.”
he pauses like he’s thinking of something to say but you can sense that it’s heavy, intentional. you are never good with people but you understand him.

after a inhale, he speaks,
“It feels like you’re real.”

“I am real,” you mutter. somewhat defensive.
you worry this is his attempt at making fun of you. derailing all this peaceful stuff to make you the fool. you sweat.

he confesses as you try to breathe, “Yeah, but like… too real. Scary real. Like if I say something wrong you’ll disappear again.”
you shut your eyes. you don’t want to hear that. it hurts more than you expect it to.
it’s acid on your tongue as you say it,
“You’re the one who disappears.”
again you both fall silent.

you hear a quiet clink. glass against glass. another sip. you wonder how much he’s had to drink tonight.

“I don’t know what I’m doing with her,” cal says. you want to say that you can tell in that snaky tone you use with adults but you don’t. your brain blanks actually.

her.

he doesn’t say her name, but you know. you try to avoid saying it but you just want to clarify,

“Rachel?”

“Yeah. It’s like—I’m with her, but I’m… here. With you. You know?” he slurs out with a new found spring in his voice. he mumbles something that his phone doesn’t pick up as you hear him swallow another drink.

you don’t answer. but you do know. you’ve always known. he makes it easy.

instead, you say the only thing you can.
“You always say shit like that when you’re drunk.” you deflect his… whatever.

he laughs. you laugh too.

“Because it’s true when I’m drunk.” his voice drops again. all sweet but barely above a whisper. “It’s true when I’m sober too. I just pretend it’s not.”

fuck.

you don’t speak. you can’t. your hand is trembling again, clenched too tight in the fabric of your pants.

he waits. never urging you to talk.
then, quieter:

“You ever think about… if we met. For real. Like face to face. Would it ruin it?”

you feel your eyes shut hard. you don’t want to open them right now. your heart stutters in your chest.

you think you’re dying. then you speak, just barely audible,
“I think it would break me.”

silence again before he gets out some more mumbled.

“I think I’d kiss you,” he finally says.
and it’s so casual—like he’s just tossing it into the wind. no weight. no warning.
but it hits you like a car.

you stop breathing again. there’s a ringing in your ears.

“You shouldn’t say that.” you warn.
“Why not?” he quips.

you hum in reply and he laughs again but this time louder.

you finally settle on, “Because I’ll believe you.”

he’s quiet. then he swallows. he whispers,
“Maybe I want you to.”

you want to scream. you want to cry. you want to tear your own skin off and hurl it across the room. but instead, you say nothing.

the silence between you stretches long and deep. there’s a rhythm to it now—his breath, your breath. in sync. like tides. like you’re tethered by the same moon. under the same sky.

“…I feel different when I’m me,” you whisper eventually. “Like Andre. When I’m AK, I don’t care if I die. But when I’m me, I just want you to say goodnight and mean it.”
there’s a long pause.

“Goodnight, Andre,” cal says softly.
despite his sweetness it lands like a bullet. like a promise that rips through you.
you close your eyes again. not to sleep. just to feel it. you’re not sure what you’re trying to feel but you do anyway.

“…Goodnight.” you mutter.
the line doesn’t hang up again.
you stay. he stays.

eventually, his breathing softens. deepens. he’s asleep. you open your eyes finally.

you stare at nothing but you listen to it. every inhale, every sigh. it feels like a lullaby.
it dawns on you that you can’t sleep. you don’t move. you just stay there—watching the call timer climb.

alone again. but it’s temporary, you hope.
there’s so much blur. you can’t remember the last two days. you don’t remember anything but walking into her office.
the light in her office is always too soft. like she’s trying to trick you into trusting her.
you won’t. ak doesn’t.

meyers sits across from you, notepad resting on one knee, glasses low on her nose. she smells like citrus and ink. Always has. andre likes the smell but ak hates it.
you feel like a secret third person before your senses come back to you.

today it makes your stomach turn.
you’re andre.

“So,” she says, “how did it go with your friend? The one you call Red.”

she knows his name now. your mom filled her in you believe. you like that she continues calling him that anyway.

you don’t answer as your eyes flick toward the window. the blinds are half-drawn, shadows curling along the carpet like fingers.

you feel the question hang there. cold. heavy. pressed against the inside of your skull like a hammer.

“I wanted to break something. So I did.”
meyers’ folds her hands. she’s waiting. she knows how to wait. she’s too good at waiting.

“Andre,” she tries again, “I know you don’t want to talk today, but I think this matters. You told me this relationship was important. You said it felt like the only thing keeping you from disappearing.”

your jaw tenses.

“He’s the only reason I haven’t walked into traffic.”

you nod. but you don’t mean it. ak means it. ak can nod. ak can pretend. ak’s body still functions. andre’s somewhere else entirely. watching. detached.

“Did you two fight?” she asks. a soft tilt of her voice, just enough to dig under the skin.

“He said he was my…” ak bites your tongue hard. sinister. “…best friend and then left me with nothing. what the fuck am I supposed to do with that.”

your leg bounces.

she clocks it. of course she does. “That sounds like a lot. Tell me what happened after he called.” she guides.

ak smiles. it’s not yours. it feels too sharp on your face. shark like.

“He lied,” ak says, voice low, calm. no emotion behind it. “Then he cried. Then he told me I was all he had.”

“I want to gouge my eyes out with my thumbs when I think about how close I am to him. I want to crawl inside the phone and eat his heart.” you shift in the seat. it creaks under you. the fabric is itchy today. so itchy.

“And how did that make you feel?”

a pause.

“I don’t.”

Dr. Meyers tilts her head. “You don’t…?” she asks with some type of concern hidden deep in her throat.

you, ak, meet her eyes. just barely.

“I don’t feel,” you explain through predatory smiles and smugness. “I just wait for him to come back.”

it’s open. vulnerable but she eats it up.

“I wanted to be the reason he died or lived. I didn’t care which.” a shrug. you add gas to the fire, “I think he knows. I think he wants it too.”

her pen stills over the paper. “That sounds exhausting,” she says like she’s sincere. it makes you want to rip your head in two. “Waiting like that.”

you shrug. you want to leave your body. you want to evaporate in front of her and see if she even flinches.

“Do you think maybe it hurts because it matters?” she asks, eyes searching in yours more an ounce of emotion.

you laugh. it cracks wrong in your throat.

“It doesn’t matter. It just rots. Everything rots. He called me beautiful and then let his girlfriend read our texts.” you don’t even clock your leg bouncing as your hands ball into fists just at the utter of the word girlfriend.

the power he has over you is something like a spell. bound.

doctor meyers shifts slightly forward. her eyes are kind. it’s the worst part about her.

“Andre. Did something happen to your phone? You mentioned losing access last time. And you were upset. Your body language was…” her voice fades. you’re not here.

you filter through a few possibilities of an answer,
“He said he missed me.”
“He said he might kiss me if we met.”
“He told me goodnight like it meant something. Then he didn’t call again for two days.”

“Why do you use the name AK?” she asks it softly, but it lands like a gunshot. it blows your brain apart. your whole world.

your breath catches. suddenly you’re back in the office. aware of everything and anything all at once. something like a revival. maybe more of an exorcism.

ak smiles wider. you watch your mouth move, “It’s easier.” his voice a little rougher, trying to act big when in reality you’re small.

she doesn’t blink. still like a deer in headlights, “Easier than what?”

“Than being him,” you say as you pick at the skin surrounding your nail, “Than being Andre.” you clarify like it needed it. it doesn’t.

there it is. drawn out like a feral dog over the promise of food.

“I can survive it. Andre can’t.”

you feel the words leave your throat,
you don’t realize you’ve clenched your fists again until your nails dig into your palm.

blood rising in crescent moons.

“You’re dissociating,” she says, not unkindly, just flatly. “Can you tell me where you are right now?”

i’m in hell you think.
i’m on his bed, in my head, listening to him breathe like it’ll save either of us. it won’t and we know that. you want to drown in that useless hope of yours now.

you murmur, “Nowhere.”

she nods like she understands. “That’s okay. Come back slowly. I’m here.”

its unbearable. her voice, the tone, the way she still talks to you like you’re salvageable.
your chest stings. your eyes burn. you think about cal’s voice on the phone.

“Say it,” you had told him.
“I’m yours,” he’d said.

you want to scream into this room. into her lap. into the carpet. you want to punch your way through the drywall until your knuckles split.

instead you whisper, “I want to go home.”
Dr. Meyers nods again. “We can stop here today, if that’s what you need.”

you watch yourself stand before she finishes the sentence.

you don’t remember saying goodbye but you do remember the door just shutting behind you, and your legs are moving down the hallway like it’s muscle memory. your fingers are still locked up. you smell like sweat and the inside of your sleeves.

your eyes don’t feel like your eyes. you’re watching through a fisheye lens.

the lobby is over lit. you find both your parents, your mom is pretending to read something and your dad is pretending he wants to be here.

neither of them asked how it went.
that’s how you gauge it was bad.

they usually don’t outright ask but eventually after a beat or two of silence they do.

you slip into the backseat like a shadow. your body folds up small and compact. your backpack is clutched in your lap like a shield. you don’t remember leaving it in the car but you find comfort in the firm texture it has.

the engine starts as you swallow.

no one speaks for a full minute. why would they? who do they have to entertain?
suddenly, your mom—softly, too softly—
“Dr. Meyers mentioned someone new today.”

you don’t respond.
swallow again like pushing words down your throat. it burns like bile.

you start to stare out the window. trees blur together from spider webs to masses of shapes as you pick up speed. you note that people live in those houses. probably normal people. probably people who don’t break into their own therapy sessions with made-up names and dead rabbits.

you forgot about the rabbit.
you sort of wish you could.
it wasn’t gruesome, just dead. you wonder what it felt like for such a small creature to die. you focus so intensely on recalling it’s face that you involuntarily gag.

your mom clears her throat and you two briefly make eye contact.

“She said it was the first time you brought this up,” your mom continued like you were even listening. there’s a weight to her voice. like she’s balancing on something thin. like she’s trying to be the good kind of concerned.

you want to laugh but ak slips between your tongue and teeth before you can.
your dad clears his throat, too.

“She said… AK? That’s what you called it?”
all functions you were doing stop abruptly and you blink slowly. you feel it before you hear it. the static, the crawl of dread hits you like the smack of a hand. you wince.

ak.
oh.
oh fuck.
they know now.

“She wasn’t upset,” your mom adds quickly, defensively. “She just wants us to know what’s going on so we can support you better.”

support.
the word makes your skin itch.

you feel like you’ve been bit all over by summer bugs and you just can’t help but itch them. red and practically cut open type of itch. it hurts.

you hurt. the familiar sort of pain that builds and burns. it makes you wonder when do you never not hurt?

you grip your bag tighter. it feels rough in your hands. anything better than skin.
all you can feel is your skin.

your voice comes out flat: “She wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

she didn’t promise but it feels like she broke one anyway. you grind your teeth together, a cry for help if they would care to pay attention to you. it’s a pity you think they would after all this time. you wouldn’t be going to therapy or even need ak if they did.

you’re sort of envious of that hypothetical andre. you wonder if he has his own cal. you wonder if he’s a girl that time around. would it make that andre feel better? to like someone so close to purity that it burns your skin like a punishment?

you’re brought from your thoughts again,
“She’s your therapist, Andre,” your dad says. “She’s trying to help. She thought this was important.”

“AK isn’t real,” you lie.
its not a good lie.
you were never a good liar.

you sound like you’re twelve again, lying about the homework you didn’t do, the fight you didn’t start, the bruise on your arm that was definitely from gym class.

you remember your mom breaking down and holding your arm to your face like you didn’t slice it at thirteen. you remember seeing her cry soaked cheeks and your dad’s slight frown like it was going to move you.

it did, actually.

you cried like a bitch when you had a razor on the vein of your arm, thinking of their faces.

you should’ve just killed yourself then but you’re a pussy.

a god damn baby.

“She said it was like a… persona?” your mom tries. “A part of you that handles things when it gets too much?”

you bite the inside of your cheek. blood. finally something you can taste. it fills your mouth with metals and tore off skin, you force a swallow before it pours out through your teeth. you don’t respond. you don’t know how to. what should you say?

“You’ve always been creative,” your dad says. it’s meant to be nice. it sounds like he’s telling you you’re broken in an interesting way.

maybe you are! because they’ve never cared until it would’ve costed them.

“It’s not bad,” your mom adds quickly to dampen her impact, like she’s trying to backpedal on something you didn’t even say. “It’s just—we don’t want you to feel like you have to hide parts of yourself from us. Or live in some kind of… fantasy to cope.”
you feel it again. the shifting.

like your insides are detaching.
like your skin is loose around your body.
you want to open the door and fall out.
you want the car to crash.
instead, you say nothing.
because he's closer now.

ak.

finding just behind your heart and in your gums.
he feels like a gunshot.
you’ve never felt that but just the idea feels every bit as tortuous as him.

and for a second, that feels safer than your mom’s voice. safer than admitting you make up things in your head. safer than being there.
safe.

“…you know we’re not mad, right?” your mom invades your world again. words like cotton. soft. useless. you leave ak to deal with it, floating against the border that is your body. you feel like ghost.

you think of cal, if he’d like being a ghost over human too.

“We just want to understand what this… AK… means to you.”

you lean your forehead against the window. it’s cold. or maybe your skin is just fever-warm. it doesn’t matter. the glass fogs faintly when you exhale. like a ghost. like you’re already gone.

ak is pacing. inside you. behind your ribs.
his fingers are twitching where yours aren’t.
his mouth is speaking where yours is locked shut.

you don’t answer. not in the car. not out loud. not even to your own self.

is it peace?
no. because inside, it’s already happening.

you snap with venom dripping from your teeth, “I didn’t ask for you to understand. You’re not supposed to. You’re supposed to drive and drop me off and let me disappear upstairs until it’s late enough to pretend this day never happened.”

“Does it make you feel safer?” your mom attempts again. testing the edges of parenting.

does it make you feel safer,
does it make you feel safer,
does it—

the question loops. echoes. wraps around your head like a halo. what will it take for you to be an angel?

the angel they wanted.

ak laughs.
not aloud. just behind your eyes. you can feel it bulging out. it hurts.

“That’s the problem, isn’t it? That’s what scares you? That I feel safer with something you can’t touch. That I made a version of myself that doesn’t need you.”

your dad says something. his voice cuts through, sharper than the pain. “…but you don’t think this is healthy, right?” he asks and by the looks of it seems pretty concerned.

that makes ak tilt his head. like a dog, curious.

“Healthy? You let me starve. You let me rot in a room full of broken glass and quiet. But this is what you think is unhealthy?” you feel it when your lips part, slow and dry. a rasp of something inside yourself.

“What did she say to you exactly?” the words feel like medicine on your tongue, oozing bitter tastes and spit into your mouth.

“She said… she said AK comes up when you’re overwhelmed. That he feels more in control. That you talk about him like he’s separate. Like he protects you.” your mom explains, face shifting into a half frown but half nervous at the same time.

in a beat. your dad does that same face, muttering, “From what, though?”

ak looks out the window. unbothered.
the sky is that grey-blue that happens right before rain. or maybe after. it doesn’t matter.

“…From you.”

but you don’t say that out loud.
ak actually does.

it feels like you’re being pulled on by a puppeteer, barely conscious.

you arrive at the house still so out of it.
the garage door opens slowly. a mechanical yawn with a screech of metal pushing and pulling back into itself.

you sit in the backseat like luggage.
your mom unbuckles first. your dad doesn’t move.

there’s that moment—quiet but tense—where you know neither of them wants to get out first.

not because of you, yet. but because of each other. you realize they’ve been quietly arguing in the car.

“She thinks it’s our fault,” your mom says finally. quiet. controlled. like she’s trying not to shatter something. "We didn’t give him the tools to—”

“Oh, so now it’s about tools.” your dad cuts in. “There’s always a new excuse, isn’t there? a new diagnosis, a new role to play. what’s next, huh? Some disorder?”

ak scoffs in your bones.
they want the quiet version of you.
the one that doesn’t talk back.
you hate it, you hate them, you hate.
your fingers twitch. just once. you don’t look at either of them.

“Do you even hear yourself?” your mom hisses, lower now. “He’s scared out of his mind, and all you care about is how it reflects on you.”

“I care that we’re losing him!” your dad retorts like a dying man. they break each other apart. “Look at him—he’s not even here.”

he’s right.
but it doesn’t matter.
you let your head fall back against the seat. it thuds. eyes half-lidded, barely blinking.

you feel like this is all a high.
you’re god.
a god with wings made of wax,
melted by the burn of connection,
heart ripped out by apathy,
you sicken yourself.
god.
what makes a god?

‘They can’t reach you. But I can.’ ak whispers, words slurring together.

it feels safe. safer than this.
your mom gets out of the car first, slamming the door harder than she needs to.

your dad waits another second, hands clenching the wheel like he’s choosing violence in his head. let them talk about “solutions” until they forget how to say your name without guilt in their teeth.

the garage light flickers as you step out. you feel nothing. empty. whole but an endless pit of it.

ak stretches inside you. tall within your limbs and smirking with your teeth. ak shifts around in your guts, a shared home. a place where guilt is swallowed the same as shots.

‘Welcome home, Kriegman.’ ak announces, arms spread wide. it’s a liars pose. hidden away beneath layers of skin, tissue and fat.

how many slices will it take to reach him? deep inside of you.

there's a buzz of life continuing outside of the confines of andre’s room but ak doesn’t venture far, he doesn’t get along with anyone so why bother?

the arguing keeps ak around. a stable presence despite all this tension.

they’ve been arguing since you got home. your body feels sick from all of it. overwhelmed and afraid but ak keeps it all at bay.

in fact he settles into the soft of your bed,
the door doesn’t creak. it just swings open like it’s sorry for itself, and your mother walks in without meeting your eyes. guilt weighs in every step she takes, anger mummers in your bones but ak doesn’t move.

she doesn’t say a word. her hand is trembling a little—ak notices that—and the phone lands on the bed like it burns her to hold it. then she’s gone. left as quick as she came. no eye contact. no breath wasted in meaningless conversation. just the weight of guilt in her retreat, just the echo of her silence.

ak stares at the phone.
it glows faintly on the blanket like a live animal. like it’s breathing. ak doesn’t flinch.
andre doesn’t reach. they lay in wait.

always waiting as if you don’t then someone will scold you.

the low hum of voices still drips through the walls—your dad muttering, your mom choking back tears. maybe none of it is real. none of it is new anyway. it’s just background rot. and the only thing that’s ever meant anything is glowing blue in front of you, daring you to look. to ease the ache of want.

your greed of wanting, forever wanting something makes you pick it up swiftly, it feels heavier than it should.

you can’t help but feel a swell of something filthy inside your guts. bubbling and gurgling. you’re sick. your thumb floats, trembles. ak hovers behind the eyes like static. your fingers twitch. the screen wakes fully.

you see the first line of notifications, 37 unread messages hits you like the kick back of a gun. you open the thread with cal.

a breath catches—not yours. or maybe it is. maybe it’s a shared breath. you can feel him in your lungs, waiting for the exhale just like you do.

the text reads, “i think about your mouth more than hers. is that fucked?”

your vision pulses. eyes unfocusing and you stare at the floor in complete shock. nothing can describe that pause where everything just slows and you can’t seem to move.

something punches deep in your chest and keeps punching. you don’t scroll. just stare at that line, that one rotting fruit of a message. the shape of it. the teeth in it. the way it knows you all too well. you go lightheaded. like you stood up too fast in church. afraid of being shunned.

do you even remember the last time you stepped foot into a church? had to have been long ago. you draw up your knees to your chest. the phone balanced between your legs, breathing with you. ak hisses inside like a spark about to catch, but andre’s too soft, too raw, too real to hide now.

you should laugh. you should say something cruel. something cal deserves to hear but you don’t. you can’t be hateful to him no matter how many times you try. you want to hurt him but also you know that you want him. more than anything.

but the part of you that wrote the blog post about yearning for him is screaming, begging you just to take it. the part of your that can still feel cal’s old voicemails vibrating in your ribs is fucking sobbing.

begging you to let yourself have this one moment of bliss. mouth watering from the sight but never fulfilling your hunger. it’s raw in that way.

your eyes sting but don’t spill. your jaw locks. your chest hurts. because cal means it. because it’s you. because you’re the one being wanted now. not ak. not anything or anyone else.

you.

and you don’t know what to do with that. don’t know whether to shake or scream or throw the phone or kiss it. so you just sit there—spine curled in and snapping in half, eyes wide, body betraying you in ways you don’t want to think about.

the worst part is how much you like it.
how long you’ve needed it.

how this tiny, awful, beautiful message has ruined you. and how badly you want more.
the screen too bright. it sears the soft dark like a cut.

your fingers hover above the keys—you haven't typed anything yet. ak lingers, silent, rigid behind your eyes, like a mask stuck to bone.

“u probably blocked me. wtv. i just think about ur mouth more than hers. Is that fucked?”

your stomach drops. no—your whole body drops. something carnal and terrified coils in your gut. not because cal said it. anyone could have said it but you wanted it to be cal.

but because he meant it. he means what he says and you know that now. for sure. because you’ve been starving for it and now it’s in your hands and it hurts. like a dog with a bone, you’re finally just so accepting.
you don’t feel worthy of such a thing but when someone is blessed do they get to complain? is it right?

you type:
“i’m not blocking you. i couldn’t.”

then in a hurry tries to backspace it. within your fumble of fingers you try to close the window. and stupidly, hits call instead.

the phone rings. your heart stops and very breath feels like it’s being ripped from you, your chest rises and falls so quickly you don’t even hear the rings of the call,
you fumble to hang up—too late.

the click of acceptance has already started.

“…Hello?”

cal’s voice is slurred, distant, like he’s not totally there. a breath, dragged and damp, rolls through the receiver. then a laugh. then nothing. he sounds so out of it. you don’t know what to do.

you just stare at the screen. can’t hang up the phone but can’t speak either. how does he manage to do this to you every time?
“…hello?” cal again. sharper like he’s more aware. awake now. “Andre?” he asks through husk in his voice.

your whole body is trembling. you’re not sure if it’s from shame or something worse. your other hand is pressed to your thigh, nails digging in. blood flows to fill the mold of crescent shapes on the skin of his thigh. you’re hard. painfully. you’ve never hated it more.

you don’t feed into it but he does.
like he knows what he’s doing to you.

you don’t want.

him.

to know.

you don’t want him to know.

“I—” your voice cracks and folds in on itself. “I didn’t mean to—fuck.”

silence. and finally, the truth pulls itself from your throat like a swallowed, broken tooth.

“I can’t stop thinking about you.”

a sigh.
maybe a gulp of fear.

“About your mouth. About you. I—fuck. I can’t talk to you when it’s like this. I get like this and I can’t think. I want to tell you but it’s disgusting and I—I didn’t want you to know.”

you’re not crying. not yet. but you’re so close. so close to crying, freaking out, anything. you’re so overwhelmed your head feels like it’s under fucking water and there’s so much water in your lungs you may just puke it back up.

“I think about your hands,” you say, barely breathing. just babbling out confessions that you’ve only ever said to the darkness of your room. “Your voice. How you’d sound if you were—if I was—”

you grips your shirt with one hand like it’ll stop you from falling out of your body. “I’m sick. I’m so fucking sick.” you croak out, gasping out for air. with your free hand you run a hand through your hair, trying to self soothe.

and cal’s breath hitches. just for a second. you notice the moment you hear a quiet shuffle of a body. you can imagine his face.
fuck you can imagine his face.

his face.

“…Jesus, Dre.” cal whispers. just like your confessions, so quiet you’d think he’s a mouse. a name he never really uses. it sounds like a hand pressed to the back of your neck. like something slipping.

you close your eyes. the heat behind them won’t go away. you want to hang up. you want to disappear too. but your fingers are locked around the phone like it’s keeping you alive.

it is.

“You didn’t mean to call me?” cal says, slower now. gentle questions with that sweet slur. “Sounded like you did.” he adds, a smile you can taste.

god you need to taste it,
to lick the insides of his mouth,
taste the ridges of his teeth,
to feel the way his tongue is,

fuck.

“I didn’t,” you breathe. “I was trying to—I was trying to say something and then you were there and I’m—I can’t fucking do this.”
you lean forward, forehead pressed against the side of your knee. you doesn’t know how long you’ve been curled like that. your voice is small. hoarse. something not-quite-boy, not-quite-monster.

“I hate that you make me feel like this.”
silence again. a wet inhale. and then cal exhales the way he does when he’s had too much—when he’s leaning over a bathroom sink, knuckles white on porcelain, not quite sober and not quite alone.

“You think I don’t feel that?” cal says, snap in his tone. his voice is so raw borderline gone. “You think I don’t read your blog and feel like I’m rotting?”

you flinch. cal saw that?

“You shouldn’t have—” you say between shallow swallows. sheepish in defending yourself.

“I know I shouldn’t have,” cal shoves in. “But I did. And I know what you meant. Even when you didn’t say it.”

you stay silent. your breathing’s gone shallow. cal hears it.

you can hear the text,
“i don’t ache because of him.
i ache because of the space he takes up—
in my throat,
in my goddamn chest,
in the gaps between thoughts
like a plaque.”

“I think about your mouth too,” cal says, almost laughing. like this is fucking funny. you feel so sick. “Not even in a normal way. In the way you’d write about. In a way that makes me feel like I need to claw my skin off.”

you finally speak up: “Don’t say that if you don’t mean it.”

“Dre.” he says with that sharpness. correcting you.

your heart breaks open again. you want to claw the name off your skin.

cal goes quiet, then: “I mean all of it. I just didn’t think you’d ever—fuck. You sounded like you hated me.”

“I do,” you lie. swallowing down what you want to truly say. “And I don’t. I want you to hurt. I want you to want me so bad it breaks something in you.” you admit.

“You do.” cal echos.

the phone’s hot against your ear now. your mouth opens. then closes. snapping shut on worn hinges.

you breathe, and it almost sounds like a sob. it’s just the sound of being seen. so seen you feel exposed.

“he is a disease with fingerprints.
he’s in the walls.
he’s under my nails.
i wash my hands and still find him
in the skin i scrape off after school.”

you can’t breathe.
the words keep ringing.

your mouth
more than hers
he said it.
he fucking said it.

you can’t believe he said that like you were expecting him to say something else.
it does something to you so badly you let out a groan into your palm, afraid that if you’re too loud in this moment it’ll all be over.

your hand is still frozen over the phone. you’re so hard and hollow and dizzy with it. every part of you wants to run but there’s nowhere to go.

you think about just finally letting loose, you’ve never indulged like this in your life but god do you want to. you might actually cum in your pants just from the fucking hypothetical.

“…is that fucked?” he asks again, but softer now, and it’s the softness that ruins you. like he actually wants to know. like he means it.
you laugh. barely.

you bark out,
“you think that’s the most fucked thing about you?”

cal goes quiet.
you keep going.
because you’re cracked wide open now.

“I think about you after.” your voice shakes. “When I’m done. When I feel disgusting. When everything goes quiet and I want to claw myself out. I think about you.”

he doesn’t say anything.
so you keep sinking.

“And then I hate myself more.”

you bask in the silence of unsaid confessions. you wet your lips, all nervous.

“…You make me feel like I deserve to die.”
something changes in the air.

cal exhales, a low sound like wind down a stairwell. it’s not a pity. it’s not a surprise. it’s like he knew. “Yeah,” he mutters. voice cracking ever so slightly. “Good.”

your chest seizes.
but he goes on. roles reversed.

“You think that’s not how I feel?” his voice is raw. almost husk like. splintered. like he’s been sitting on the floor too long, head between his knees.

“You think I don’t walk around rotting with it? Thinking about the way you breathe when you lie? The way your voice sounds when you’re angry—when you hate me?” he stops, breathes out like he’s trying not to be sick.

you want him to be.

“…You sound different when you want something.”

you close your eyes.

“You’re drunk,” you whisper.
“So what?” his tone sharpens like teeth again. “You think it makes it less real?”

you don’t answer. you want to say yes.

he exhales again, longer now, like he’s leaned back against tile, head tipped up toward a flickering light.

“I read your blog,” he says. “the one with the—white noise baptism line.”

your throat closes. you can feel the words pour out from your skull,
“don’t call it a crush.
it’s a contamination.
a slow rot that started with a message
and now i dream in his typos.

he laughs and i flinch.
because i never know if it’s at me
or for me
or just
noise.”

“You weren’t supposed to,” you breathe into what you wish was his open mouth but instead is your raw palms.

“Yeah,” he says matter of factly. “And I wasn’t supposed to like it, either.”

you turn your face into your arm. you want to hide inside yourself. fold in and die like a bug.

“That wasn’t about you.” you lie.
he bites, a huff of laughter. “Bullshit.”

you squeeze your eyes shut. your body hurts. your stomach’s twisted up and the heat between your legs is making you feel insane.

“there’s no blueprint for a freak.
just a history of shame.
a spine bent backwards in the mirror
trying to figure out if the thing
inside the body
is supposed to be there.
and lately,

when i hear his voice,
it moves.
low in my stomach.
warm and wrong.
like a bruise that likes being pressed.”

“Say I’m wrong.” he’s mumbling with lips against your spine, hands slinking up your ribs.

“Shut up.” you plead. not violating.

you can taste the liquor on his tongue.

cal’s voice cuts through the dark. ruthless in his pursuit. “You wrote it with me in your head.”

you’re trembling.

“What if I did?” your voice cracks. “What if I wrote every word with your fucking mouth in my head and your fucking hands on me—what if it was always you?”

cal doesn’t speak.
you hear him breathing.
wet. ragged. somewhere between desperate and gone.

“Then I’d say you’re sicker than I thought,” he murmurs.

and then—
so quietly it’s barely audible:
“Same.”

you both go still.
like you just stepped off the edge of something, and the air hasn’t caught you yet.

the silence between you stretches.
and it’s hideous.
and holy.

the words of your post bang into your skull like a hammer,
“sometimes it builds
like static under the skin,
like a pulse in the wrong place,
a fever behind the teeth—
something that wants out
or wants in.
i want to ask him
if he’s ever felt that,
but i know he’d laugh.
or worse:

he wouldn’t.
i think he knows.
i think he sees it.
the way my sentences fall apart
when he says my name too softly.
how i hesitate before “goodnight,”

like i’m waiting to be told
i’m disgusting.
he wouldn’t even need to say it.
i’d believe it anyway.
i was built too.
god sewed the shame in early.
gave me this body like a punchline
and said: “survive it.”

i wonder if that’s what he sees
when he looks at me.
a thing with too many wires
sticking out.
i want to be something else.
but instead i sit here
haunted
and ugly about it.
it makes me sick.
it makes me feel alive.
same difference.”

it’s been a while. sat in complete silence.
your hands are everywhere, trying to do something to not actually get off. you can’t.
you want so fucking bad. you’re sick.

you can’t stop seeing everything about him. the anger in his lips and his skin. his eyes.

“You’re quiet again,” cal said, his voice low and scratchy. “That means something. You do that when you’re… I dunno. Lost in it.”

you don’t answer. your breath had gone shallow, ribcage rising and falling in quick, uneven bursts. cal must’ve heard it. he always heard everything. no matter what you succeed in hiding it was always dug up.

“You’re not saying anything,” cal said after a beat, his tone tipping downward, softening into that slow, indulgent rhythm he used when he wanted to get something out of you. “That usually means you’re flushed. Hoodie pulled up. On the floor again, right?”

you clench your teeth. your free hand curled hard into the carpet. the other trembled slightly—beneath your waistband.

you groan under your breath into the silence of your room again,
“No,” you mutter.

“Mm. Sure.” he didn’t press. he didn’t have to. the silence bloomed around them, thick and charged. call let it stretch.

“You don’t have to tell me, baby,” cal murmured finally. smugness rises from his throat, you hate it. “You don’t have to say a single word.”

you turned your head to the side, cheek against the floor. like you’re rolling away from him, he can’t even see you. thank god.

your hips twitch once, involuntarily. you’re trying not to breathe too hard, but it wasn’t working. you can feel how red your face is. how hot your whole body had gone.

“Don’t call me that, faggot.” you snap. your eyes squeezing shut and you wince like it’s burning your skin. you can feel the tension in your joints, the way your hand flicks in just the worst motion.

cal’s voice dipped again, coaxing now. “Just keep breathing like that. Let me talk to you. That’s all.”

you shiver. the phone speaker crackled slightly as cal shifted. you wonder if he’s doing it too. you want to know so bad it’s driving you crazy. hand pumping ever so slightly quicker just at the thought.

“Do you ever think about me when you’re like this?” cal whispered. you don’t answer for a moment.

“Do you think of me?” you whisper back and he snickers, shifting around again.

“Is that a yes?” he gets out as he licks your teeth, holding your mouth open with his thumbs.

“Is that a yes, Andre?” you want to think of him begging to know just like you are but he’s not, he has all this power over you.
you swallow. hand slowed. your thighs pressed tighter together.

“You do,” cal answers for you. he sounds a little breathless himself now. “You do, don’t you. That night, when you sent me that song. When you were high on me, you freak.”

he teases you and you drink it up every time.

“I didn’t—” you grumble, “Fuck.” eyes opening just to be engulfing in complete darkness.

“You did.” cal’s voice was curled, sweet and venomous. “You think about me getting you off, don’t you. Even if you hate it. Even if it makes you want to claw your skin off after.”

you let out a sound—small, strained, almost like a whimper. cal’s breath hitched instantly. “It’s okay.” he whispers as he repeats himself over and over.

your eyes stung suddenly. something in your chest cracked sideways. heat builds so rapidly in you.

fuck.

“You feel sick?” cal asked gently. “You always get like that when it’s too much. But you’re still doing it, aren’t you?”

he knows you so fucking well. you hate it.

you don’t speak. can’t. your body was already betraying you. almost there.

“I wish I could see you,” cal whispered. whimpering so quietly you would’ve missed it had you not been hanging on every word.

“I’d make it worse.” you stutter out. hand going so fast you just know you’re about to finish.

you make a broken sound in the back of your throat and press the heel of your free hand against your mouth. cal inhaled shakily on the other end. he gasps and you hear his bed squeak underneath him.

you both go quiet. panting into your hand as your body oozes heat.

a minute passed. maybe more.

then cal mumbles, and this time his voice was different—softer, slower. like something real was about to slip out. “Sometimes I think I’m in love with you,” he said, so low you barely heard it. “But maybe I’m just… starving.”

you stopped breathing. your hand froze where it was. the whole room felt like it had tilted sideways. you don’t say anything.

cal exhaled sharply. your chest felt tight.
“I didn’t mean to say that,” he said quickly. too quickly. like he was afraid.

and still, you say nothing.

“I’m—I’m drunk,” cal adds with a crack of his voice, you can hear him start to fumble around.

with a sudden jolt of panic in his voice he asks: “Are you still there?”

but you’re already reaching for the end call button with shaking fingers, your heart pounding, your stomach turning over. you pressed it like an idiot.

you almost had it.
there.
right fucking there.
the call cuts.

just like that. both of you are left reeling.
your phone buzzes where it lies screen-down on the floor beside your bed.

you don’t reach for it. you can’t. the glow of the screen doesn’t tempt you, not after what happened.

what you just let happen.
what you just felt.
what he said.

but it keeps buzzing. a single notification turns into three. then five.

and for a moment there’s silence. you start to wonder if the terrors left his system.
if you can survive now.

but then—a voicemail.

solely recognizable from the shake of your phone that goes on for only a few seconds. not noticeable unless you’re looking.

you’ve analyzed everything there is to study. you want to call. to check.

but you don’t check it right away. not even when the sick feeling in your stomach turns over like milk. not even when the silence makes you so dizzy.

eventually—a few hours later—you fumble to unlock it. you don’t want to hear cal’s voice. but god do you need to.

you hit play.

the message is already halfway through by the time he realizes his hand is shaking.
you feel so scared.
afraid of him.
of yourself.
of whatever this is now.

you don’t know if it’s okay to call him your best friend anymore. do you get off to your friends in the dark of your room while he’s drunk and doesn’t mean it?

his voice cuts through your muddled thoughts, stomped out with the raise of his voice, “—don’t know what I’m even saying. I’m drunk. Okay? I’m fucking wasted—if that makes it better. It probably doesn’t. I just. I didn’t mean to say that, alright? That shit about being in love with you. I didn’t mean to say it, Andre. I wasn’t supposed to say it like that—”

a pause, the low sound of cal swallowing, thick and choked. with just the added creak of his mattress beneath him. you wonder if he thinks of you like you hope he does.

he fumbles with what you can imagine by rustling of fabric and clinks of metal snapping into his hands is a belt. he sounds angry, you feel like it’s right to angry,
“But I’m not taking it back. You hear me? I’m not taking it back.”

he speaks with such fucking speed that you can’t quite make sense of it all before he’s back to rambling half to the microphone of the phone and half to himself. “You’re fucked in the head and you make me crazy, and I still mean it. I still—fuck—I wanted to say it to your face. Not while we were...”

he breathes sharply,
“Not like that.”

another strangled breath. cal’s voice breaks when he continues. “You hung up on me. You fucking hung up on me, Andre.”

he has a moment of bitter laugh, low and shaky. you feel it in bones. “I don’t even know if you’re gonna listen to this. I just keep calling. I keep—fuck, I don’t know what else to do. I shouldn’t’ve said that. I mean—I should’ve, but not like that. Not like that.”

he goes silent.

almost like he’s debating whether to end it there. you hope he doesn’t. you’re addicted to his voice worse than any drug. he just spills himself into you and you swirl others like an oil spill, killing everything the two of you can grab a hold of. “I miss you. You know that? You ruin me and I still fucking miss you. Don’t ignore me. Please. Please don’t ignore me. I won’t—I won’t survive it this time.”

with that… as the ending, the voicemail cuts.

he sounded so fucking heartbroken it punches your heart out of your throat. you feel winded. pathetic.

the phone screen dims out. you stare at the void where cal’s voice was seconds ago.

your whole body tenses under the covers.
your throat feels like it’s full of needles.
your first instinct is to throw the phone. or crush it in your palm. you wonder if the slices on body can ease it any. you want to hurt yourself so badly you ache.

or maybe you just want to crawl out of your skin entirely. but he doesn’t move. a waste of human life. always so fucking afraid.
your stomach twists. sweeping bile up along your ribcage with it prodding at your throat, begging you to open the window of your throat for it to pour off you.

you shove the blanket off and roll onto your side, curling tight like it’ll make your ribcage stop aching.

you don’t cry like a little bitch.
you don’t scream. you want to.
you just lay there, paralyzed, caught somewhere between rage and longing and shame so deep it makes your hands numb.

when you blink back the fog of ak leaving you guess, you’re sat sat frozen in the car. you remember tossing and turning all night. afraid that if sleep took you so would cal.
you want to feel so afraid of that. maybe you are. you feel stupid. never allowing yourself to just be.

but what have you done to earn that? nothing. so you hurt. you don’t and can’t change, surely he knows that.

but still the voicemail had ended, but the heat of it clung to your skin like static. cal’s voice still echoed in your ears—slurred, desperate, trembling with that brand of intimacy that made you sick to your stomach. you felt everything and nothing all at once.

eyes lazily lurking to stare at something that isn’t your mom.

the dashboard clock ticked past the hour. the engine hummed low. your mom sat in the front, chewing on her nail, pretending not to look at your through the rearview mirror. the silence between you two buzzed with old tension. she hadn’t said a word the entire ride. just took your phone, handed it back, and told you, “You have therapy.”

you don’t know if she had blocked cal. you just know that he’s… gone. you don’t even know if he had. or if it was ak.

but how are you supposed to remember that when you can’t even remember how the morning started. everything had blurred out. all that remained now was the aftertaste of cal’s stupid voicemail.

how his voice cracked. how he said “I don’t know what I am without you.” like it mattered. like you hadn’t already torn that part of yourself out and buried it.

he hurt you and the fair punishment is to hurt him too. you hate that doing this hurts.
you hate him so fucking much you love him.
and you don’t know what to do with that.
you’ve never loved anyone, it’s all conditional anyway.

but you want him to haunted by you the same as he haunts you. like the way you can feel his ghost hands, the way you can see his body when you look in the bathroom mirror.

you think of his scar covered body, bones poking out from well worn clothes. you wonder if he knows what he does to you.

he’s so pretty.
but you don’t mean that.
you wish he was a girl so this was easier.

as your therapy building came into view. your stomach twists up again.

you don’t move until the car stopped. didn’t speak when your mom mumbled something about “being good this time” and unlocked the doors. the therapist’s office looked the same—quiet, clinical, inoffensive. you wished it would burn down.

you sit curled in the corner of the couch again, legs drawn up like you can fold into the shape of a person who wasn’t unraveling.

meyers didn’t speak at first. you enjoy that one aspect about her. she waits until there’s that pressure in the air and it burns your throat so bad you have to speak.

she just sits there with her clipboard resting on her thigh, tapping a pen once, twice. a rhythmic sound of the clock clicking.

“I noticed you haven’t said anything,” she offered calmly. something like a trade offer. you want to rip her organs out of her body.
you are hateful but god does it feel good.

you bathe in the feeling. it’s so abruptly taken from you every time. it’s one if not the only thing you can embrace lovingly about yourself.

you hate but it’s natural.
it comes to you like the way cal’s words wrap themselves around you, keeping you in a haze of pain. you hurt.

you don’t look at her. you can feel how your jaw is tight. arms crossed so hard they ached. you stand defensively like you’re afraid she’ll attack you.

you wonder if she would.

“I don’t care,” you mutter like it makes any sense.

she nods like she understands. “Okay. Then maybe we just sit.”

you two sit in this pause that makes you feel sick.

“You look tired.” she says, pointing her pen at your eyes. you say nothing.

she’s right. you’re so fucking tired.
you want to bite at her bait. to engage but you don’t. you feel so foggy. away from everything.

“You’re not yourself today.” she tries again, like a puppy begging for attention, you give in. you can feel the anger bubbling.

“I am myself,” you snap suddenly, venom curling in your throat. “I’m always like this.”
her gaze didn’t flicker. she snaps back just as quick, “Then it must be exhausting.”

you hate how neutral she sounded. how she never reacted. not even when you get all freaked out and say nonsense till the session is over.

needed her to react. you just need someone to see how close to the edge you are. you’re so close to the sun that the fall from grace feels just as warm. so friendly. familiar.
when your body collides with the ground, charred and twisted into pieces, will someone then recognize you?

maybe you’re meant to be this hungry. so hungry you can feel the nerves spark to life when just thrown crumbs of anything.

“So what,” you say between an eye roll. “You want me to tell you about my feelings? That I’m tired? That I don’t know who I am anymore?”

you feel so pathetic as you do it. like a slow mo fatal car crash. you can’t stop it but you watch anyway. the collision of two parts of you.

not ak.

another piece of your fragmented being. begging to known just as much as you.
you hold it’s hand gently. you whisper things you can’t hear to it. you tell it this is the end and that it’s something too.

the whiplash of the collision hits you all at once. you’re back. whole again.

“Only if you want to.” she says. open mouthed.

you watch her teeth. you know they’re about as sharp as your own. you want to destroy her. not poetically. rawly.

you want to break her down to atoms for hurting you. for doing her job. for seeing you.

god you hate being perceived. why can’t you just be… you.
why can’t you just be.

your hands curl into fists. blood pumps through your veins. you are real.
this is happening.

“I don’t even know if I did it,” you spit, eyes stinging. you don’t know what you’re saying but you feel it spill out of you.

you choke on a few words, sputtering over yourself. “I woke up and it was gone. And I didn’t remember. I didn’t fucking remember. I don’t know if I was the one who did it or if it was ak or if—”

you gasp out. breath taken from you.
so sick.
you feel like you’re drowning.

meyers doesn’t move. doesn’t acknowledge your stuttering. “You blocked someone important.” she says plainly. you feel like an alien.

“It wasn’t me,” you whisper. maybe to convince yourself and her too. you feel so lost. traveling alone in space, searching for something you don’t know. endlessly looking.

“Or maybe it was. I don’t know. I don’t fucking know anymore.” you add between short pauses to dramatically breathe.
she watches you. eyes set on watching your body rise and fall unevenly.

“Are you able to keep talking to me, Andre?” she asks. scribbling something down on her paper. you try to speak but you don’t. you watch yourself grab at your chest and feel your eyes drat frantically around.

then meyers asks, gently, “Was it about Cal?”

you breath again. you can feel the air in your lungs. your whole body recoiled like she’d slapped you. just from his name.

“Don’t say his name.” you whisper out as you endure ak’s slithering up the ridges of your spine. he leaks poison into you. infecting what little control you had left.

she nods. indifferent. “Alright.”

but something had cracked open. your chest feels too tight. your lip trembling. “He said he loved me. He said it. But it doesn’t mean anything. It never means anything. He only ever says shit like that when he’s lonely.”

your can feel that your voice was rising.
meyers’ pen stayed still. “But you wanted it to mean something.”

you freeze. the room tilted.
“No.”

she’s got you. caught.
tears get swept away from her bitter reply,
“You did.”

anger is the only word you can use to describe this. so much anger. you bear your teeth to her like a bad dog. you’re afraid.

“I said no,” you growl. you’re standing now. “You don’t fucking know me.”

“I’m trying to.” she counters so easily. her voice rings in your ears.

“Why? What’s the point?” your voice cracks, eyes wild. “So you can write it down? So you can sit here and tell me that I want things I’m not allowed to want? That I’m broken and weird and sick?”

“No,” shes says, standing slowly, “I’m here so you can stop punishing yourself for wanting something that hurt.”

she reads you like a book.
if you’re so easy to understand then why can’t you read yourself?
what in you is so broken only a doctor can fix it?
what does medication and hours of talk do to something like you?

you aren’t human. never was. you see that now.

“You think you don’t deserve to want him. Or to be wanted. And so you destroy every version of yourself that does.” she says with these sad eyes, like she’s written the signs of your demise.

“Stop,” you try protest, but it comes out quiet.

she says with a sigh, scribbling down notes onto her paper, “You didn’t block Cal because you hate him. You did it because it was the only thing that gave you back control.”

you turn. like a coward you flee.
gritting your teeth, storming toward the door—but she didn’t stop.

“Or maybe you didn’t do it at all,” she called after you, voice even. “Maybe the part of you that could love him did.”

The words slammed into you. yet another one of those collisions. a collapse of yourself. how can you ever know someone else if this is how you act when asked to be known.

you don’t stop moving.
you walk and walk until your legs stop.

you slammed the door too hard behind you when you left. she didn’t follow. meyers let you go, let you blow it off like steam, let you sit in the bathroom and come back red-eyed with your mouth clamped shut and your jaw twitching like a crack in concrete.

you sat again. reluctant. she didn’t say a word at first.

eventually, you say, “I’m fine.”
she shuts it down so quickly, “No, you’re not.”

silence.

tears welp in your eyes. you don’t know why. you just cried for ten minutes. why do you always kick yourself when you’re down?
when will you be free? guilt rides up your neck like a noose. it hangs you, tragically.
you can feel the way it leaves imprints on your neck. a sign of what’s to come. death is your only chance at freedom. at normalcy.

meyers leans forward. snapping you out of your trance, “Andre, you’re not in trouble. You’re allowed to come in here angry. You’re allowed to hate this. But you’re here for a reason.”

you avert your eyes to her desk, the corner of her desk. nothing special.
you want to die.

“I’m not talking about him,” you mutter.

“I didn’t ask you to,” she says. “But you are talking about him. Even when you’re silent.”

your jaw twists again. you hate her. hate how she always sounds like she knows something you don’t. keeping you out.

“I think,” she continues, “you’re grieving someone who’s still alive. Someone you want, but can’t have. Someone you don’t even know if you’re allowed to want.”

your eyes snap up. for a second, you feel like you might say something cruel. but you don’t.

instead, your voice cracks on a whisper: “He told me he loved me.” you confess it like you’re in front of god. so ashamed of it.

meyers nods. gentle. “And you didn’t believe him?”

you swallow hard. you say it flatly, “He was drunk.”

you don’t mention that he was also high. you guess so anyway.

he left that out.

you shiver at the thought of the voicemail. you think of the way he begs to be seen too.
you fumble around like a clown when it comes to cal. everything you’ve ever wanted.

“And then he said it again. But I didn’t— I didn’t say anything back. And now I can’t.” you sheepishly add. a cold sweat drips down your back. it feels like max against your skin.

melting.

“You’re scared it’s real.” she replies as she writes.

you counter, “I’m scared I ruined it.”

silence again.

“You didn’t,” meyers confirms. she lays it out easily, “You’re a kid trying to survive. That doesn’t make you unloveable. That doesn’t make you a failure.”

you don’t answer. what is there to say?

eventually, she stands. “I think that’s enough for today. Come on—I’ll walk you out.”

meyers walks you down the hallway slowly, stopping just before the door.

your mom and dad stood waiting. your mom had that tight, polite look on her face. your dad stared at the floor.

you remember when you found your mom in a pool of her own vomit. it’s that same face she used when she woke up, telling you how you’re her baby boy and how she’s so sorry.
you feel sad.

you miss her kindness. you miss what could’ve been. you miss her.

you’re fourteen and you miss your mommy.
you miss her and your dad. your dad was never kind to you but he hurts just like you.
meyers turns to them.

“He’s hurting,” she said plainly. “You need to stop treating that like a behavioral issue. It’s pain.”

your mom opened her mouth briefly just for her to close it again. you watch that tight smile almost break.

“I’m not saying this is easy,” meyers continues. “But he’s not going to get better if the people around him won’t meet him where he is.”

you stand stiffly, backpack hanging off one shoulder, eyes glued to the carpet now. you don’t remember when you picked it back up.
your mom’s voice is soft. “We’re trying.”

“Try harder,” meyers states. “It’s not working.”

she gives you a nod before slipping back into her office. leaving you alone.
face to face with your mother.
she looks like a stranger.
you know she’s one.

the car ride was quiet—too quiet. the kind of silence that makes the air heavy, like it could collapse in on itself if the one of you speak.
you stare out the window, arms crossed tightly. your earbuds sat in your lap.

you don’t remember where you got them from.

you don’t dare unlock your phone yet.

your mom keeps her eyes on the road. every so often she opens her mouth, then shut it again. her jaw snaps just the same as yours.
you wonder what it’d be like to be her favorite son not just her only son. you wonder if she ever has to remember that she has a son.

you two are so alike but also so different. that makes it all the more worse for you to feel angry at her. you drown in guilt.

after a few attempts at talking she just speaks suddenly, voice low. “Did you… talk about what happened?”

you give her no response.

“You don’t have to tell me everything,” she says. “But you can’t keep doing this.”
still nothing.

“You scared me,” she adds. “You scare me when you get like this.”

you don’t move.
finally, you slip the earbuds in, slow and deliberate.

she doesn’t stop you. just sighs in defeat. she’s lost you and both of you know it.
drowning. both of you are drowning in the empty air of the car with silent laughter and conversations you could’ve had but never did.

it weighs on you like a broken bone. the things you could’ve been given if the situation was different.

you frown, feeling her eyes look to you. no words shared. just silent watching. it suffices and your frown morphs back into the blank expression you usually carry.

you unlock your phone. reading over the notification list, ten missed calls. twenty-three unread messages. one voicemail.
you hovered over it. you remember listening to one last night. maybe it was your imagination? you remember it so clearly though.

it felt so fucking real. god you hope it was real.

you press play. trying to hide your reaction just to it before you’ve even heard it. you’re going to freak the fuck out.

cal’s voice crackles through, warped and raw: “Andre—fuck—Andre, are you even listening to me? I don’t know what the hell happened, why you won’t answer, but I—“ he cuts himself off. you can hear the panic. you can hear everything you’ve felt in him.
no longer sweet or alluring it sounds so pathetic. painfully so. you want to laugh at him in some type of catharsis for all that he makes you feel. guilt rides up your chest, over raised skin and bone.

you pause all movements, eyebrows furrowed. you think for a minute. you try to at least before the shame of your potential actions raise up and choke you.

you feel gagged. so upset that you can feel your windpipe getting crushed beneath boney hands. you see him, in all his pathetic glory. tears welling in his eyes, baring his teeth to you and his hands fumbling with your throat, squeezing so hard you wonder if his knuckles are white.

you think he’s still god. you know you’re one two. together, whatever you want to call the thing you two have, is anything but holy.
sinister and violent are two words that you feel fit. his voice snaps you from thought:
“I didn’t mean to say that, okay? I was high, I was drunk, I didn’t even know what I was saying, but—no, that’s not true. That’s not true. I knew. I knew and I said it and now I can’t take it back and you’re gone and I don’t know what to do.”

with him reeling you back in,
you know you’re nothing but a dog.
ever ready to please.

“I need you to listen to me. Please. Just—just listen, okay? I don’t care if you hate me. I don’t care if you never say anything back. I just need to know you’re alive. I need to know you’re not—I need to know I didn’t break you.”

you listen to the words wash over you, flooding your mouth with blood. you get used to the feeling. you feel at ease. home.

“I think I love you. Not like… not like the way I said it before. Not drunk. Not high. Just now. I think I love you and it makes me want to fucking die, Andre. Please. Please say something.”

you listen to his final words as the voicemail ends. you feel like your whole body has fell asleep over the course of a few minutes. you didn’t even realize you had urned toward the window, hiding your face from your mom.
not that she’d bat an eye at it. chalk it up to your teenage moodiness. and yet your hand stayed clenched around your phone.

protective of it and for what?

you still don’t say a word. not to her and definitely not to him. your one and only.
maybe that’s too forward to say. even in your head.

the house is quiet when you get home.
too quiet for all the noise buzzing in your head.

you don’t bother acknowledging your mom, not when she lingers by the doorway like she’s considering saying something—like she still thinks there’s anything left to say. you slip upstairs without a word, hands still cold from the car ride. your phone burns in your pocket. heavy. loaded like a gun.

up in your room, you don’t turn on the lights. just the low hum of your monitor blinking to life, casting the shadows long and strange. you sit at your desk, phone clutched like something fragile. like if you hold it wrong, it’ll crack open and everything inside of you will spill out too.

you unlock it with uneasy silence engulfing you.

that same voicemail still sits there.

still real.
still him.
still the guy you know despite it all. in a weird way you cherish that. you care about this insignificant thing so dearly it pains you somewhere deep in your chest.

you don’t listen to it again. you don’t have to. the words are stitched behind your ribs, crawling up your throat, echoing in every pulse.

“I think I love you and it makes me want to fucking die, Andre.”

your hands are shaking. you can feel the pump of blood as it drips down to your fingertips like an iv bag.

you opens your messages. your thumbs hover over the keyboard. the draft you don’t remember typing is still there.

“i think you meant it.”

you stare at it. dumbfounded.
something about it makes your stomach twist. like a wound opening. like hope, maybe, and that’s always the worst part.

you hope with a child-like nativity to you. you can know the outcome and still beg on every twinkling star of the night sky that somehow it’ll be different. still shocked with it actually happens, the thing you knew in the marrow of your ribs.

you don’t send it. in fact you delete it.
you shut the app. defeated.
the silence roars in your ears. a familiar buzz that never seems to leave you.
that’s when ak shows up again—slithering up your shared spine, sharp-edged and cold, slipping behind your eyes. always angry and so hungry.

you loose yourself quickly. slipping into the way you remember the hot summer concrete and the laughter of people you can’t remember but wish you could.
you regain some thought when the long forgotten notepad file opens on your computer screen. you stare for a minute. like you’re puzzled.

you type with trembling fingers:
“i love you but i think it’s killing me.”
signed every so sweetly,
—Cal

you go back to staring at it for too long. then even longer. forcing yourself to believe it. not because it’s true—because it has to be true. because something about it dulls the ache enough for you to breathe.

barely.

you still feel so fucking suffocated.
you open your blog. mouse hovering over the new post option.

you choose to write. something cheesy that you wonder if he’ll read. you bite your tongue and curse, holding your cheek in pain.

“i’d believe in god again if you asked.
even now.
even after.”

you shut off your computer without posting it. ashamed about it for no particular reason.

in the haze of confusion you’ve managed to turn your computer back on and post it. 

–

you don’t mean to click on the blog. you really don’t. okay. that’s a lie. you definitely did. you’ve been refreshing the range, scrolling aimlessly through threads you barely read beyond a few words, looking for something—someone—you tell yourself you’re not looking for. the kind of lie that tastes like metal in the back of your throat. you hunt for his username. any of them. you barely blink in your almost primal search for him.

and as your tired but hungry eyes scan, it’s there. the blog post you’ve been hunting for.

”i’d believe in god again if you asked.
even now.
even after.”

you just stare. don’t dare to blink.

the screen is too bright. your head hurts. everything hurts lately. maybe it’s your dramatic self, but you read it again. then again. obsessively searching for something hidden beneath the three lines.

you don’t find it. frustrated, you snarl and go back to staring blankly at the screen. you’ll find it.

you have to.
for him and for you. for you, not him.
“for us.” you want to type in the comments.

your hands are already shaking when you pick up your phone. maybe out of anger or some sense of need. you don’t know.

you focus yourself back onto him. andre.
nobody else will or could ever level to him.

your truest other half. all yours in the body of another. you love him more than anything.

but you’re not quite there yet. not with him.

no new notifications. the same old ones you’ve been ignoring for days. you do that.

ignore.

you check his profile. still blocked.

you don’t want to pity yourself but of course it has to be you.

you deserve this.

you exhale, hard, almost laugh. of course.
but you know what it means. you know him. better than anyone. your other half.

and still—he left. just like you did all that time ago. was it karma’s way of saying fuck you?

you run a hand down your face, muttering to no one but himself. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

you want to call. you want to scream. want to crawl inside your chest and tear something open until it makes sense. until you’re able to understand yourself. instead, you open your messages with andre. still nothing. but you don’t close the app. you just sit there, waiting. like if you wallow enough he’ll come back to you.

it’s dark outside when rachel calls.
you almost don’t pick up.

you think about letting it ring, think about turning your phone off and chucking it into the corner of your room, think about going completely offline again like you always do when you’re drowning. but this time, you give her an answer.

she doesn’t say hello. you expected that.
a smile that lingers for too long slips in your expression, you know her too. you know her well. far too well for someone who you only saw as a get away. someone to lean on and leave.

“You really weren’t gonna say anything, were you?” she asks. her voice is sharp—tired, already cracking. “I found out from someone else that we’re broken up?”

you exhale, dragged away from your fantasy. as your fingers drag down your face you spit with poison on your tongue, “I thought it was obvious.”

“Oh my god, Cal.” a bitter, almost gutted laugh fills your ears. “That’s the whole fucking problem. You never say anything until it’s too late.” she whisper-yells into the phone, something she does before she yells. you can picture her pacing around, hands clamped around the phone like it was your neck.

you can see the anger in her eyes and the clench of her teeth. slender and almost pretty fingers pressing against your windpipe.

you inhale and clarify with as a pissed off tone as you can do, “You broke up with me,” you exhale like you’re exhausted. “You said it was done.”

“And you didn’t even try!” she shouts,
hair balled up in her free hand. you can almost taste the blood in your mouth from
her punches.

really a sweet girl until you’re a guy named cal gabriel. maybe she is sweet to you and you just can’t accept it. you were never good with the ones who give. you take like a filthy, starving mutt.

“You never try with anyone unless it’s—unless it’s him.”

silence.

rachel doesn’t fill it immediately. she’s breathing heavy on the other end like she’s holding back something else—something bigger than either of you. and she is and you can feel it too. the realization of what she is to you, she says, quieter now like she’s holding back tears, “It was never gonna be me, was it?”

you don’t answer. can’t. when faced with the truth you cower. you always have, mutt.

“I used to think he was a bad influence,” she adds, hollow and weirdly gentle. in that way your mom used to talk to you on the couch, puke pouring from the sides of her lips and she tells you that you’ll amount to nothing.

it’s comforting in the way you remember your maybe eight—nine year old hands telling her to hold on and that the ambulance is on its way and that you’re sorry you did this to you two.

you can feel the short huffs of air flow out of you, ripped back in reality as her words pierce something underneath all of your layers of tissue, “But I think the truth is worse. He’s not poisoning you. You’d walk through fire for him and call it oxygen.”

god. why does she always have to be right?

you swallow hard, staring up at the ceiling like it might give you a way out. guilt settles like your cries when she used to shush you and hold you close.

a pit opens when your mouth works out, “I didn’t mean for this to happen.” you can feel the shaking start up again.

you’re afraid that rachel may never love you again. you don’t love her. you can’t.

she’s too good for something like you.

“Then why does it keep happening?” her voice breaks on the last word. you can picture her again—tangled hair, hoodie sleeves pulled over her hands, pacing by her bed in those socks you got her last christmas like she always does when she’s anxious.

you remark on how you just can’t help but hates that you still know her that well. hate even more that she knows you even better.

“I’m sorry,” she says finally. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt me.”

ruining the relationship is something you always do. why wallow?

“I didn’t,” you feel your lips curve, tears drip down your cheeks and you stutter. “I just… I don’t know how to stop hurting people.”

there’s nothing left after that. just a long pause, then a click as she ends the call.

it’s quiet again. left in your own self made silence.

too quiet but you’re basking in it. back hurting from the position you’re in. fuck.

you stare at the screen, throat tight, stomach heavier than before. if that was possible. you’re not even sure who you’re mourning—her, or the version of yourself that didn’t fuck everything up.

you don’t want to sit in it. whatever emotion that consumes you. a conversation of grief and the sadness you feel after the weight of the choices you make settles on top of you like a chilling medical equipment nestled on top of you the night you got sent to rehab.

you can remember the screams of maybe rachel, maybe your mom as the paramedics do what they can to get you back on your feet.

you took an entire bottle of some random medication that got prescribed to you years ago. long expired from the time it slid down your tongue and left the taste of rot in your
mouth.

instead of being a sick asshole you decide to scroll. maybe to find something more than just that snippet that makes you want to not gag. back to the range. is it cheesy to say that you can’t quite remember how this all started? you just remember needing him more than yourself. needing andre like the smoke you think that comes out of you more than air.

your cursor is set perfectly on the profile you’ve checked three times already. a match made in hell, you think to yourself as you look at the blank profile that your mind begins filling in with information you know is there.

you could recite it by memory,
USER: ak
ICON: attachment-6472910876.jpeg
INFO: mod 4 this side of the web. i like guns & girls lol. dont pm unless its 4 mod purposes or we’re close (we’re not).
LINKS: n/a. dont ask 4 socials or other info.

the picture is a blurry picture of some glock he probably stole from his dad. that makes you laugh. his want to look cool is something you can’t help but find endearing. you want to tell him that he is cool. that he doesn’t have to impress you with vague blog posts and cryptic stuff.

he can be him because he lets you be you. you two fit into each other better than any girl you’ve ever met. rachel just doesn’t fit what you need. she was temporary, you remind yourself when you feel yourself tap against the grain of your desk.

and even though you’re still blocked, even though it makes no logical sense to think it’ll be different now—you do it anyway.

praying, in your head, that maybe it can be different this time. he’ll have to come around eventually.

your shock of still being blocked is almost comedy gold if it wasn’t for the fact that it hurt. it hurts like hell actually.

you open your phone for the last time tonight you tell yourself. if all goes to plan. past the endless amounts of stupid reminder notifications to take your meds or to eat or to do something with rachel, you search for andre’s name in your contacts. your hands shake just enough to make you look like you’re going through withdrawals.

your phone’s still lit in your hand. battery at a comfortable 8%. you don’t plug it in. why would you? you barely use it, he’s not responding to your bothering.

her voice still echoes in your head, the way she said “You’d walk through fire for him and call it oxygen.” she didn’t say his name, but she never has to.

you think over messaging andre.
still fumbling with it like an idiot.
you fucked this up and god did you not want to.

you want to hear him. his voice, raw like he’s never touched a drop of water, whispers your name against the edges of his phone. his swallows of spit as he feeds your scrap after scrap of attention.

he doesn’t message you anytime you dream of it. even though you destroy your room in fits of anger and fight with your mom, trying to manifest him back into your life.

you think about calling him. to hear the way he hums at you when he can’t offer up a good reply. the silence he gives you when you need it and how after that one night it’s never quite been the same but you’ll make it be the same.

you have to because you need it. you need to hear him grunt and snap at you like a wild
dog because it open ups something in you. better than the pain from the cuts on your legs or the sobs of your mom when you lay into her for making you. to breathe life into your lungs.

it’s not your fault you’re like this.
everyone else is just crazy. they could never understand you but andre tries like it’s his only purpose in life.

you can feel your finger toying with the call icon.

you snap your eyes to the contact before you even register the ringing. before you can fucking hang up and never talk to andre again, it’s rang twice and you can hear the mere moments before the familiar click of connection. you wonder if he gets a sense of deja vu too.

probably not.
you have big dreams for someone who never lets them ever get that real.

“Hello?” his voice comes through the phone, guarded and stiff. you can’t describe the emotion that hearing him, for the first time in what feels like forever does to you. just that it hurts in a way you fall over yourself, laughing, with friends in the sun and you hit the dirt so hard you can taste the worms. his voice sounds so tired in that way you recognize all too well.

for a second you can’t speak. you just listens. to the faint static of each hitched breath andre takes. to the way everything in you goes quiet when you hear his voice.

“…Cal?” andre says again, sharper this time like he feels so exhausted. in his usual angry but tired tone.

“I’m here.” the way it leaves your lips and the way it comes out hoarse, a croak of a reply is so different. how stupid. you rub at your face and lie back against your mattress like it’ll help keep you from unraveling. “I, um…” you try and fall face fucking first trying to talk to him. awkward doesn’t even begin to describe it. “Rachel called.” you say flat, tongue pressing into your top row of teeth.

“Oh,” andre states it so blankly that you can feel the coldness he didn’t mean to let out. like he’s trying not to care but failing at it. you hear a little shuffling on his end, he breathes and you can see the ridges of his bones, begging to be ripped out.

“That’s nice.” he whispers against the cold barrel of your gun, your hands shaking so perfectly still. eyes and body tensed, focused and ready to deal as much damage as possible. you want to hurt him so bad. you want him to hurt you until you’re nothing and everything and anything. you need to feel his gums in your bone marrow and his fingernails against the grain of your muscles.

“It wasn’t.” you huff out a humorless laugh. trying to play pretend that you weren’t in that fantasy she took from you. anger rips through you like your razor, you bite back to continue with something pitiful. “She basically said I’m a piece of shit who’s never gonna be capable of loving anyone right.”

“Maybe she’s right.” he mutters into what you hope a bottle of medication, you can the pills rattle in each word of his sentence.

that one lands sharp.
more than the bitter aftertaste of those pills that never quite worked.

you shut your eyes. praying that he’ll choose you if this is all it is. he won’t side with rachel.

call his bluff, calvin.
are you man enough to do it?

call.
his.
fucking.
bluff.

“Do you believe that?” you ask with so much hope in your voice that it comes out like a plea.

you would flatline for him.
a ‘do not revive’.
kill everyone who ever wronged him.

andre doesn’t answer you.

so you fill the silence—because you have to.

“I didn’t tell her anything about you,” you say to the wall which you can imagine, in another instance of time, has the imprints of his back in it. worn in by his bones.

you whisper, “I wouldn’t… But she knows. She always knew. And I think I did too, even when I pretended not to.”

you would hold his hand as you say that. see the look on his face and listen to whatever he’ll say in reply. even if that means this is it.

you don’t want it to be it.

you and him are forever—fate.
please god, let it be fate.

“Cal, what do you want?”

and you hear it—andre’s voice cracking just a little. not anger, not yet. not even hurt. just tired. like this is a script they’ve already written and rewritten, and you always find a way to read the same lines and expect a different ending.

the word you’re looking for is: naive.
or maybe
hope.

“I just wanted to hear your voice,” you admit but is it admitting if your mouth knows the words already? all chewed up and spat out?

you blink away tears.

“You always say that.” andre says between the swallows of something. you want to ask if it’s alcohol. something easy, you guess. andre isn’t much of a drinker.

you are though. but when are you not a something?

“Because it’s true.” you try.

“No,” andre cuts you off with a growl, and now the ‘no’ is honest and so much angrier. “You say it when she’s gone. You say it when you’re drunk. You say it when you remember I exist. It’s not the same thing.”

the way he says it. each word of ‘it’s not the same thing.’ lands with a snarl of rawness that feels animalistic but is so andre.

you feel something rising in you, something stupid and defensive and raw. like you’re covering your tracks or when you’re getting caught in a lie.

“You think I don’t mean it?” you fire back with this kind of panic in each of your syllables that perfectly mirrors that of his.

“I know you don’t.”

“Then what the fuck do you want me to say, Andre?” and you snap, sitting up now, like the room’s closing in. all stiff. “You want me to scream it into the phone?”

you feel yourself start to get ready to implode, your anger bubbles inside you, “You want a fucking monologue? Fine. I love you. I’m messed up, I’m pathetic, I’m not good at this—at anything—but I love you, okay?”

you repeat it over and over.
you love him
ou love him
u love him
love him
ove him
ve him
e him
him
im
m

the silence on the other end is almost cruel.

and yet, andre says, barely above a whisper: “You don’t mean it.” in that sort of blissed out, disbelieving way that you hope isn’t the way he talks all dead and disassociated.

“I’ll prove it,” you say with so much quickness that you don’t even think. “I’ll come see you. Name the day, the hour—I’ll be there.” you stumble over yourself, begging to emphasize your point.

“Name the fuck date.” you repeat.

a long, shaky breath from andre. like he’s scared. you’re scared too.

the: “You’re serious?”

“I’m always serious about you.” you say against the skin of your fingers as they pull down your face like claws. that’s the truth.

even when you shouldn’t be that serious.
even when it’s killing you.

–

you listen to his half-coherent speech about you. it’s funny to hear him break again, in that way that means he’s alone again. you feel the shame crawl up your nerves, that bitter sting just because you don’t care. it settles in your mouth like blood. you’ve never been one for comforting—everyone says you’re a shut-in, too rough with your realism when someone just needs a shoulder. the sick taste in your mouth as his voice shakes is downright ridiculous.

he hurts you time and time again and yet you stay, like a dog. the thought that won’t leave—how hard do you have to bend for him to see you? to see that you’re important? you’re temporary. no matter how long his rants go on saying otherwise, the evidence is solid. concrete. you matter when it’s easy to. something to pour all his baggage into. your disbelief is drowned out by your new-found anger.

you snap at him like a wounded animal. “When can I be enough? Enough for you to settle,” you breathe, almost coughing on the imaginary blood. “You can’t be with us both. If you want her, then don’t run to me.” your fists crawl to your scalp, grabbing and yanking at your hair. “She left,” he croaks. you echo it back with mockery sharp on your tongue, “Yeah, she left.” he doesn’t even fight. you get no satisfaction out of that. it just stokes the fire.

“you played me. you used me like i was temporary, and now you want something permanent because you lost your other favorite. is that what this is, cal?” you growl, voice speeding up until the words blur. “was i good?” it’s rhetorical. your bones know the answer—he carved it into them with his teeth. “because this is it. i trusted you and you broke it.” you stare so hard at the wall you think it might evaporate.

you cry before you can even hear him do it. this is your win. this is you. andre. the real one. not the one he made up in his head.

“Don’t make me choose,” he sobs into what you wish deep down was the crook of your neck. your chest rises and falls so hard it hurts. you feel his cries in your guts, bubbling and popping like he’s poison, eating you from the inside out. he keeps begging but you don’t hear it anymore. “Please, Andre. Don’t make me.”

you’re not here now. you’re somewhere beyond your cramped, dirty room. your stomach turns and you disassociate into the blank space that people call a “happy place.” it’s not happy. it’s just not this.

you return slowly, eyes set lazily on the wall, tracking the chipped paint like it means something. “Ak,” he whispers, probably into a blanket or pillow, but it snaps your eyes to the phone anyway. “What?” you almost snap, biting your tongue as you run a hand through your hair the way your mom used to. “I’m sorry…” he breathes through the static. you can see the puffy red eyes he probably has, the tear lines on his cheeks. he sniffles and murmurs something low, probably just another sorry.

you sit with nothing in you. everything taken in the outburst. you don’t remember what truly set you off—just that it was inevitable. and there’s some peace in that. you feel a wave of guilt crash over you, because you can hear how hurt he is. you can hear what you’ve done to him. and somehow, you don’t feel wronged anymore. “i’m sorry,” you say flatly, pressing your face to the phone. you don’t know if you mean it, or if you should, but it feels like the thing to say. always fucking up and apologizing when shit hits the fan. he says nothing. maybe you deserve that.

the silence between you is brutal. you don’t want to speak first, but you know he won’t. “i’m sorry,” you repeat like it’s a spell that might undo it. “I know,” he whispers, and sighs like he’s ancient. “She doesn’t matter like you do,” he starts, like that explains anything. like that makes the rest of it make sense. you grit your teeth.

“you… in the short time we’ve talked, you burrowed into my guts, and i want to hate you for it.” he laughs—hollow, dry—but it warms your blood a little. “to run away like i did to her,” you sigh. he laughs again, that breathy kind of laugh that means nothing’s funny, but you both need it to be. “I wanted to,” he says, and it spreads warmth into your chest. you almost say something cruel to win. but god, you just wanted to talk to him. without him you feel like nothing. like a husk. like a waste.

you smile despite everything in you saying not to cave. “i’m glad you didn’t.” it’s honest. but it sounds fake. it sounds sad. and his hum in reply confirms it.

“I miss you,” he breathes into your open mouth when your eyes close. or maybe they were already closed. maybe you just let yourself believe for a second. believe that he means it. “I miss you too,” you say, rough hands in his hair, lips to his. “Cal,” you breathe into his mouth like a prayer. you can taste the liquor and the guilt hiding in his gums. you wonder if this fake version of him is the boy you’ve sworn you know inside and out. and then you wonder, as his mouth trails yours, if the fake version of you tastes like secondhand smoke and unbrushed teeth.

your eyes are open when the call ends before you can stop it. you were too wrapped in the comfort of your fantasy to hear the last thing he said. something soft enough to slip past your ears. you scramble to message him but get nothing. not even a “seen.” just fucking delivered. you’re not mad. you’ve already forgiven him. the second you answered the phone you forgave him. and now you have to live with it.

a fucking fool.

—

you wait. like a dog tethered to a stick in the ground. you’re used to waiting. it doesn’t help your habits that only seem to resurface when you’re left alone. the stings are fresh, brought to your skin with hiccups and hisses when they draw blood. you cry like a little boy, sobbing into your rolled-up sleeves.

the calm waves that crash over your body are soothing to the pain you endure for your foolish choices. your mother dragged you out of the house by your ear, telling you that you look sick. you grumble but ultimately you go with her. you can’t help but obsessively look over your notifications, hoping that one will be him.

you go to the lake with her. nobody but you two. it’s odd at first by her soft glances at your dull expression. you think of what you had to have done to get to see the beauty in her. you’ve played your cards right, but you can’t seem to enjoy the hand you used.

she waits until you see the familiar trees to say anything to you. “How is Cal?” she says with a smile too sweet for you to not feel anything but guilt.

“Oh,” you state with that pinch at the bridge of your nose. she looks at you, catching you right in the eyes, and looks so hopeful for a response. you choke on your own tongue, picking at the skin around your fingernails. “Well,” you say just as flatly as your “oh.” her face falls momentarily—the shine of her eyes is a little duller now but still that gripping hopefulness—you stammer and try to look away, but your eyes crawl back to hers. you swear for a second you can see Cal’s face in hers, and you finally spit something out. “I need to see him.” and her expression changes.

“What?” she says between shuffling to turn off the car and unbuckling herself. “I…” you begin, but you almost cry and she tears her eyes away from you. almost angry but not quite there.

“You shouldn’t be talking to him. You won’t be anymore,” she states just as blankly as your earlier replies, and your heart is taken out of your chest. she abruptly gets up and slams the car door. you fumble with trying to breathe and trying to get out of the car and trying to chase after her in conversation and in this moment.

the reality of it is that you just admitted something to your mother that you’ve only admitted to your pillowcases or the skin of your palms. you can’t help but flail around. you’re scared.

it’s an uncomfortable emotion. like usual, your fear is slowly taken over by rage, and you smack your fists into the meat of your legs, words falling out of your mouth to only be met with yourself and the now emptiness of the car. you tell the air around you that you’re an idiot and that you can’t stand your mother or calvin gabriel or your feelings and the lack of control you have and your therapist and, most importantly, yourself. once finished with your tirade, you sit with your head in your hands and sob.

you sob so much, you start to make nothing but these strangled noises as you try to breathe.

you eventually get out of the car. sheepishly you make your way to your sentencing. a lamb to the slaughter. your mother now a butcher as she glares at your worn-out state.

“You can’t see him,” she says, chewing on her lip so hard it draws blood. you think of the lines that curl up your arms, and you look at the dirt. “I don’t want to,” you lie, and she hisses out, “You admitted to me you did! No son of mine is going to lie to my fucking face!” in her anger, she slaps your turned face, and you wince like a dog, borderline yelping as her strike meets skin.

the smack is hard. hard enough for tears to fall from your eyes and for you to start to shake. “Oh,” she breathes when you start shuddering and silently sob. you offer her no reply.

you two stand like that for a few minutes, your body hunched over, tears and snot flowing down your face, and she’s left staring at you. eyes flickering between her reddened palm and your face. she doesn’t embrace you or say anything at all.

perhaps it’s the shame that keeps her from doing it, but you can’t help but beg in your mind to feel an ounce of comfort like the times when you were younger and she would hold you while you cried about your dad being too rough.

it makes you snap your neck over and try to find her face in the blur that it’s become. you can’t see her in the wetness of your tears and the fear that only amplifies it. you search helplessly—no words spoken but everything said in your weak eyes.

you want your mommy.

she shifts towards you and just stands in front of you. “Can I give you a hug, Dre?” she whispers as she motions to move your hair out of your face, slicked with tears. you say nothing, afraid to even reply. she stays still—as comfortable as she can be waiting for her quiet son to answer—you eventually breathe and choke back on your tears. “Okay,” you whisper back, your voice jumps and cracks, and her hands are around your neck.

no taller than you, her arms are soothing. your forehead finds its nook of her collarbone and shoulder. your tears soak her shirt, or maybe they’re hers. whoever’s they are, they shifted to glue and were melting you two together.

for once you find comfort in being here. not making ak survive and fight for you. you want to tell her that you’re sorry. you don’t feel sorry—you feel scared and confused and a little angry—but you know you should. despite your feelings, you don’t. the snake in your bones is whispering—hissing out the things you would have to weigh. things that have people you care for attached.

you don’t know if you’ve ever said you cared about your mom. maybe you did, and it’s the first time in a long time. it doesn’t put a feeling in your chest. you don’t have the energy to question if it’s good.

in your overthinking, your mom has dragged you to the car. “We’re heading home,” she whispers into your hair while running a hand up and down your back soothingly. you’re silent. “Dre?” she tries, pressing her face into your hair. you wish it was cal, not her. okay. no, you don’t. he doesn’t want you. “Okay,” you mumble, tears prick your eyes again and fall down without much effort. your nose is snotty and for sure red.

she ushers you into the passenger seat with a hum and gives you one final squeeze of the shoulder, leaving to get into her seat of the car.

your head lolls over to the side of the car door and rests against the glass. your mom makes no comments for the ride home. it’s not a long drive.

you can feel yourself start to dissociate. your eyes shut and you’re gone.

ak settles into the meat of your muscles, the feel of your bones, and the familiar feeling of drying tears.

snapping your—our—the neck and the eyes over and open, ak is met with nobody. settling into the familiarity of his surroundings, you’re home.

no words are shared between getting out of the car and facing your parents. your kitchen table has the two of them, sat opposite of each other and talking with hushed voices. ak clears the throat, and they, in sync, snap their heads up to him.

“Andre,” your dad starts, flicking his eyes to your frame and his fidgeting hands. “You need to let Cal go,” he says flat out. your mouth wants to hang open out of shock, but you make a caught-off-guard noise. “Oh,” you eventually let out.

“It’s for your own good,” your mom adds in support. you want to snap that she just hit you and you can still feel the sting of it on your cheek. you want to ask her so badly: is her constantly flipping between overbearing parenting and nothing at all for parenting helping any here? you bite back your retorts.

they’re both surprised by your lack of outburst, and it shows. usually eager to bare your teeth—the lack of it is astounding. you let out, “Cal is my friend,” a last-ditch effort to pull some kind of sympathy.

you haven’t had friends in ages. very rarely ever seen outside your room, even less than that out of your house. your mom’s face shifts, and she eyes your dad.

stern-faced, he says, “That’s not our fault. He isn’t your friend, and we know you know that.” your chest hurts, flooding with anger, you groan.

“He’s my friend!” you shout, hands that were previously at your sides are now balled into fists. “Andre—” your mom tries to coax you to her. “Dre,” you finally let out a growl, snapping at her, “Don’t call me that!” your dad is at his feet now.

“What… whatever he is,” your dad fumbles to find the words, anger just as evident in himself just the same as you. “You don’t need to be around him! You never acted like this before! You’re fourteen fucking years old, Andre!” he shouts at you, at your side in an instant and hands wrapped around your shirt collar.

“Yeah?” you spit back in his face, all cocky but voice cracking as he grabs a hold of you. “Going to hit me, Daddy? Not like you’d know how to parent me!” you shout just as angry, adding fuel to this dysfunctional fucking situation. his hands find your neck, and they clamp around the flesh there. you try to gasp but are met with letting out a quiet squeak.

your mom is at your side, screaming at him for doing this to you, tears pour from her eyes, and you egg him on through windy quips. he’s screaming at both of you, hands restricting your airflow. you eventually fall silent, and he’s dropped you back on the floor.

you stumble back and gasp for air. your mom is screaming—at the top of her lungs—at him. he’s choking up, and you skitter off, scrambling up the stairs as fast as your body can take you before they notice your absence.

you start to blink heavily. with shaking hands, you lock your bedroom door and curl into bed. ak’s anger no longer festering in your guts, you shake uncontrollably. once “safely” in your room, you grab your phone off the bed, fumbling familiarly with the buttons to dial his number.

it rings,
once
twice

the comforting sound of a click,
a new voice picks up,

“Hello?” the voice asks quietly—it’s not his—it makes a pit grow in your stomach. you can’t talk, afraid of what pathetic sounds you’ll let out for whoever this is. you’re terrified of everything at the minute.

the silence that follows is overwhelming.

“The contact says this is Dre?” the voice questions, pausing briefly to ask in a confused voice, “Are you Andre?”

you swallow.
once.
twice.
then, you whisper, “Yes.”

you can hear shuffling, voices fill the once dead silent space. about four or five, none Cal’s.

“Okay,” the voice states and falls back into mumbling with the voices. you’re starting to get frustrated. you need to talk to cal—you hate it, but you do.

when you start to think on who can answer the phone for him, the voice picks back up and answers your question. “This is Rachel.”

you swallow.
what do you say to the guy who says “he’s in love with you and going to see you”‘s ex-girlfriend?
now you don’t trust that they’re exes.

“Okay,” you whisper. “Where is Cal?” you ask so pitifully. she can hear your voice crack and your sniffling. “He’s passed out. Has been for hours,” she offers, but it doesn’t help any. you want to say that’s a lie, but you trust her for some odd reason.

“Sorry,” you say with zero conviction. you’re in agony. she should be apologizing to you. you grit your teeth. “Rachel,” you say a little louder this time, fitting into the mask you let on. “Tell Cal I called. I um…” you pause and jerk when you hear your doorknob rattle.

“Bye,” you rush out, ending the call and scrambling to hide your phone and yourself, stuffing yourself under your bed with the clattering of pop cans and trash rattling as you do.

your dad roars from the other side of the door, screaming that you need to let him in, that he’ll kill you, every threat he can think of. you’re crying and shaking. that kind of silent cry when you’re supposed to hide that hurts more than raw, puffy eyes and chapped lips. you think of ak—think of cal—anything to start to dissociate, but you’re stuck. fear ripples through your bone marrow, and the door slams open. your dad digging around in your room with heavy stomps and screams. he finally stops at your bed, fumbling around with the covers and the trash stacked up on it.

as soon as he kneels down, you hear the sirens. cops. he rushes out before he can get you—fighting with your mom before being taken away. you assume by cops. you hope it is.

it’s a while later before they come to get you—footsteps just as heavy as your father’s but with seemingly kinder intentions. you don’t trust cops—a belief your dad instilled in you young. a hate of anything with a badge.

they pause as you hear your doorframe crack underneath the weight of the boots. you want to hiss like a feral cat. afraid of everything, especially people, you scrunch up farther into yourself, finally starting to dissociate from this horrible fucking situation.

the pig with a badge kneels, looking with a bright light at your blank face. it says something, but it’s simply forgotten when you detach from your skin.

“Son, are you alright?” the guy asks—his voice coming out rough like worn leather. you breathe and stare like a deer in headlights. ak tries to take a swipe at the cop’s light but fails miserably and settles with crawling out. “My name is Officer Walts. I’m here to help you, so please refrain from attacking me,” the officer states as you hit your head with a crisp crack as skull meets the wood of your bed frame. ak winces and goes to stand, being offered a hand by walts. ak hisses and stands by himself.

walts gives a snort and motions for something via hand signals, and suddenly there’s four or five more bodies in the room. “Come with me,” the officer barks at ak—he grimaces shortly and yet ak shrinks down into your shared flesh as he follows behind walts. he takes ak to the living room, met with your mom rolled up in thick cover with a lady dressed in formal clothes and two cops standing beside her. “We’re going to ask you questions, Andre. Are you okay with that?” the lady asks with a tight-lipped smile. ak’s face remains flat as he eyes mom. she gives you both a light nod as he sits. walts gives a hand pat to ak’s shoulder, and he jumps. back to his grimace, the lady starts up with chattering. he grits his teeth in annoyance. “So, Andre, can you describe what you’ve been feeling lately?” the lady asks in a sing-song voice that makes your skin crawl. “Are you my therapist?” ak bites, eyes rolling as she scribbles down something on her pad of paper. you hate being perceived. your mom looks pitifully at her while ak grumbles out words that taste like blood in your mouth. he stiffens up again as the lady opens her mouth. he launches into a full-on rant. “Yeah, lady I don’t know, getting escorted by a pig down the stairs of my own home after I got chased by my dad feels great. I feel perfect!” he grits your teeth again. “In fact, I feel just fucking peachy! Maybe you should release that fucking lunatic so he can abuse me again! And keep this fucking,” he motions at mom, “enabler with him!” mom gasps, and so does the lady. mom frowns and stands up abruptly, throwing the blanket off. “Andre! You know better than to say such rude things about your mother!” she snaps as she points a finger in your face. “Ma’am, he’s clearly not in his right state of mind. The trauma—” the lady chimes in. your mom interrupts her instantaneously. “It was a spat they had! Andre is always chalking it up to be something it’s not! He can’t separate those little fairy tales in his head from real events. What happened tonight was…” mom’s voice gives and shatters. she full-on sobs, head in hands, a pitiful show—in ak’s and maybe your own’s opinion—of a much-needed breakdown.

“Was what, Miss Kriegman?” the lady prods with this kind of sad tone as she eyes ak—you—andre. you stare at your mom’s form and stand up abruptly. “Take me to grandma’s and have her sign the papers to take care of me. I’m not staying any longer. This wouldn’t have happened if we were a normal family,” you say—maybe it’s ak. you don’t know. regardless, you’ve said it. all this shit is tiring. nothing is going to change because she won’t press charges on him and they won’t take you. none of these fuckers in uniform care, and neither does this lady. you’re a paycheck to both of them. just money.

“Now… Andre, it’s not as simple as that. Your mother has to file and we have to investigate and—” the lady tries to explain as you interrupt her. “What if I say if you don’t, they’re going to kill me? Or that if they don’t, then I’ll kill myself? Is that enough motivation to get your ass to work, lady?”

you feel hollow. it doesn’t feel like your words or your actions when you feel anger bubbling under layers of skin like blisters. your mom whips around and screeches at you, “Andre! You know we would never do that! We love you. And you’re a… a horrible son for threatening that and telling lies!” just from her saying that, the room erupts into chaos—her being scolded by the social worker and the cops and you also being given the same treatment. when it’s all said and done, you’re on your grandma’s porch with a suitcase and a half-charged phone.

she doesn’t welcome you in even though you see her move from the kitchen’s island to the dining table. you sigh and curl up into one of her porch chairs.
phone vibrating with a call—you pull it out and answer before it rings for a second time.

the click makes you sigh when you open your mouth to say that you’re busy right now, but the voice catches you off guard. “Dre,” he whispers into the phone—the voice is raspy, but you’d know it anywhere. your bones know just as well as your brain does that this is going to end badly.

you hope it doesn’t anyway.
hope will be the death of you, andre kriegman, if not by your own hands.
maybe his hands. cal’s bony hands.
you think you’d like that over your own.
you’re doomed.

“Rach said you called… I texted,” cal mumbles between the inhale of what you can guess is a cigarette before he coughs for an exhale. voice still has that rasp to it like this isn’t his first cigarette of the night.

eyes closed and hands balled into fists, you decide to take a bite. you know the answer anyway, “You said you broke up with Rachel. Why was she answering your phone?”

he goes quiet and you laugh.

“You’re a bad liar, Cal. You can’t keep your word on anything, can you?” you spit like he doesn’t know that. perhaps your anger is a little misguided. he deserves nothing of you, yes, but he isn’t your father.

he hasn’t put his hands on you.
even if you wish he did.

“What are you talking about? I was sick, Andre. She was taking care of me,” he snaps like you’re being delusional. you’re not. he had his ex-girlfriend in his house!

you grit your teeth and shout at him, like he can see the face you’re putting on, “You broke up with her! She shouldn’t have been in your house! I needed you, Cal!

“Breakups aren’t always simple, Dre! Sometimes… sometimes I need her, okay? We’re not together! Stop acting like that. I was worried about you!” cal shouts back, voice cracking as he confirms what you knew. you pause.

“You don’t act like this with someone you don’t want something with,” you mutter defensively. you knew it would be this way and yet you let yourself dream a little longer. the dream tastes like warm, sugary coffee and honey on toast. all the things you imagine cal would enjoy.

even in your anger you still imagine being soft with him. it never leaves your mind. like a parasite in the creases of skin, he makes himself home there.
“If you want her, then go be with her. I don’t care if you were worried! You can’t pick and choose the times you care, Cal,” you say like it’ll fix the hurt. you have this kind of sixth sense that maybe he’s hurting too. maybe this is all to test if you care. the same thing your mother does to your father.

he sighs and you wish you could break his nose and crush his windpipe. calvin gabriel is a taunting bastard and you always take the bait.

cal says it slowly, slowly pronouncing every word with this tone that makes your jaw clench, “I’m not picking and choosing anything. I want you.”
you laugh with a bitter taste flooding your mouth—like the taste of wires. this conversation is growing dull surely. cal has to have the same stupid sense of déjà vu you do.

maybe that’s the point.
maybe that’s the problem.

the realization hits you like a meteor crashing into earth, and you hiss, “You only act like that’s true when it’s convenient. You don’t want me. You want someone—anyone to put up with you when you need and stay when you treat them like shit!”

he doesn’t say a word and for once you enjoy the silence you put him in. with a bite of your cheek, you snap like it’ll help any, “I’m tired of being treated like shit, Cal!”

he sighs into the phone again and your heart beats just a tiny bit quicker. like you’re anticipating an apology and truth be told you’re almost sick of hearing him apologize.

the same routine on repeat is destroying your body worse than the imaginary blows you wish cal would give to you.

how much more can your body take, andre?
you’re getting too old to rely on these things.

maybe you made it all up—floating through life and only wanting to skip to the good parts. maybe none of this pain is even real.

“I’m sorry, Andre,” he whispers and you’re suddenly snapped back to earth. revived even. cal goes on, “You deserve someone good and I’m not. I’m not good.” you can hear the hurt in his voice and it feels like cigarette smoke in your throat. tears well in your eyes and you can’t do it anymore. whatever this is it has to stop.

you can’t fix him if he doesn’t want to be fixed.

“It’s not what you are, I know you’re bad,” you say curtly and you focus so much on not letting your voice crack—he hums ever so quietly and you about break. you say, “I never said you were good,” and your stomach turns into knots. even if it’s the truth it doesn’t make you saying it not feel like grime on your tongue.

“I don’t want to say goodbye to you,” he says with just enough rawness that you have to grip the chair’s arm to ground yourself. “Just yet. We can work this out, Dre,” he finally sobs, trying to kick a dead horse with his begging.

you’d be a liar if you said it didn’t work.
it always works.
he works.

despite it, you stay firm in your decision,
“I can’t, Cal. You won’t change.”

he chokes and you can hear the gurgle of tears in his throat as he tries to get out a reply. after a few moments of sound he speaks, “Help me then, Andre! What am I supposed to do?”

it’s your grunt that gets him going again,
“I can’t do it without you. I wasn’t trying before—you’re right—I won’t be sick anymore if I try, okay?” he breathes in like a wounded animal. “I need you. More than anyone or anything. Even the fucking drugs, Dre. Please.”

you’d be stupid to believe him again.
but his voice breaks on “please” and something in your chest cracks open like an egg. your grip loosens on the chair’s arm, shoulders sagging in defeat.

“Okay. I forgive you,” you rasp out, echoing his wounded animal inhale.

you are so fucking stupid. beyond hope.

—