The Liverly

X

It's our routine now. We started in the kitchen but have migrated to the couch in my bedroom's sitting room. Caleb stays up half the night, reading or typing furiously away on his laptop doing who knows what, while I draw or sleep. I rarely sleep in my bed anymore. I've found that if Caleb's in the room with me I don't have the nightmares. It's nice to actually have a full night's rest and not have to stay up for days.

I don't know if Tyrell and Ms. Husby know anything about Caleb coming into my room at night. If they do, they don't ask questions (though I'm more inclined to think they seriously don't know since Tyrell is always busy and Ms. Husby is asleep by eight).

Another night of the two of us sitting here in silence as he reads more comics, and I draw. That's another thing. We barely speak to one another. We don't need to; it's like being together is enough. It fulfills whatever weird need we have.

I'm drawing Caleb for fun (correction, it's for practicing facial expressions, not because I find him attractive). He keeps fidgeting and tugging at his shirt sleeves with one hand as he holds the comic book with the other. I think this is the first time I've ever seen him wear something with sleeves above his elbows. He's distracting me so much that I finally turn to him and ask, "Do you have fleas?"

He raises an eyebrow. "What?"

"Do you have fleas?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"Then stop scratching yourself. It's weird and makes me think you have the plague."

Caleb huffs and makes a face. I roll my eyes and go back to my picture. Out of the corner of my eye I see him tug at his sleeve and try to cover his arm. I turn to jokingly snap at him and stop when I see the scars on his forearm. I can't help myself for looking at them; it's pretty obvious what they're from. I try to go back to my drawing, but he tugs at his sleeves again, trying to cover the scars.

"Why do you hide them?" I ask, staring at my drawing.

"Because I did them, and people give me weird looks." His hand moves to cover his upper arm again, but he stops and fumbles with the book.

"All people have scars. Some people just have them on their skin where everyone can see," I say with a shrug, my pencil scritching away on the paper. I pause and look up at him, meeting his eyes. "You don't have to hide them from me."

He holds my gaze for a moment before burying his face in the book. I can't stop the small smile that spreads across my face. I think I just embarrassed him. Score for me. Not that we're in a competition with one another or anything.

"I'm serious, Caleb. I don't care that you cut yourself. What I hate is that your life sucked so much to make you feel you had to do something like that. Do you get what I mean?"

"Yeah, sure," he says, his voice muffled from the paper.

I can't resist. "Are you hiding?"

"No."

"That's not what it looks like from here." I can barely keep the grin off my face. He doesn't say anything, so I whisper, "Chicken."

That got him to look at me. "What?"

"Nothing."

"No, what did you just say? I know you said something."

I focus on my drawing, trying to keep my smile hidden. "I didn't say anything."

He grunts and goes back to his comic. Just before he buries his nose in the ink, I see him smile, truly smile, for the first time. It's tiny, barely more than the corner of his lip twitching upward, but it's the first smile I've ever seen him make that's not snide or sarcastic. I like it.