Astronomy (of Us)

xviii

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Take Yourself Home by Troye Sivan
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Sapnap's mom yowled through his phone speaker, "Flames, you are coming back to Rothels this instant!" He stood facing one of the four walls of the bedroom he shared with Karl, the one where he felt more at home and able to love than he ever did in Purlain. He rested his forehead against the textured, slightly stained barrier and ignored a pang in his neck. His skin there was decorated with filthy but sublime hickeys.

"Or what?" Sapnap snapped back, his voice just enough decibels for the woman on the other end to hear. She sputtered audibly, red lips shaping around nothing as he grinned towards the wall with nothing but spite in his bones for her. "I wanna know. Tell me what will happen if I don't."

The boy could hear her seethe, frustration melding furiously with her words. "We're going back to Purlain early, Sapnap."

A threatening chicka-chick of a rattlesnake warned her away in the form of a scoff: "And?"

Fangs glinted in the Texas sun as she kept prodding and ridiculing. "I don't care if you're in the car or not." The low, low voice returned, a dangerous growl that he was too accustomed to for it to reel in a reaction. 

Sapnap pressed his lips together, his blue-ringed eyes squinting with thought as cogs in his mind spun. It was surprising for her to say that, but not drastically so. He thought she would slide her rook and instead she slipped her queen through valleys, thinking she pinned his king on a board of ebon and ivory, proclaiming checkmate as he shook his head. He could get out of this; he was so damn close. He just had to knock his knight between the aim-fire.

Before he could question it, Sapnap buried the last gram of him that wanted her. All her lullabies that were perfectly drawled when he lost his first tooth and couldn't fall asleep, scared of the tooth fairy rather than excited for it; her reciprocation of awe when he came bolting across the house from the backyard to the office, a snail, beetle, or toad cupped in his pudgy hands; her tranquil demeanor when four family members gathered at the dinner table, smile content and on full display didn't matter. She wasn't who she used to be, but neither was Sapnap.

All was fair in war, not love.

"I care," Sapnap snarled back at his mother, tone low as venom dripped from his incisors. "I care that I won't be in that car, Ma."

"I hope you don't mean that," the woman's voice finally sounded wounded, aching for gauze or ministrations, but Sapnap only rolled his eyes. The amount of times he'd fallen for that intonation wasn't going to increase by one, not today. Before he could retort, though, Warren's vocals invaded the air, broadcasted through signals and into one phone from another.

"I heard what you said to her," Warren spat, mouth too close to the mic to be taken seriously. "Take it back."

"Oh, no." Sapnap's voice settled to monotone and mocking like clay on a lakebed: low and gritty. "I'm scared of my 15-year-old brother's might."

"I'm not your brother, fag." Warren replied so swiftly, he almost cut him off.

Sapnap huffed, lifted his skull from the wall, and banged it back with a resounding thump, a gavel in the courtroom. "Never said I wanted you to be, dick."

The call ended— meeting adjourned— before Sapnap could take note of what spilled from his mouth, the beep stabbing through his rage. His forehead throbbed against the wall, and his arm dropped to his side. 

Sapnap let his eyes slither shut, and his phone slipped to the ground. One of his hands shifted to a brutal fist that had his fingernails piercing his palm, the other limp and defeated. Purlain and Rothels were memories, not a future. Sapnap was in Gullston, native to there with no previous connections. Sapnap belonged to Gullston, dropped on the doormat and left for dead. This was it.