Tooth and Nail (Draft In Progress - Book One)

Chapter 18 - Gray Space

I dont know what I was expecting. Old Gatorade that had been baking in the sun, maybe the remnants of someone's Starbucks coffee from the dumpster. Not that. Definitely not that. And now, thinking about it, I dont even know what order things happened in. When did we get there. When did we find it. When did I drink it. I know generally how it must have gone, but in this mind, now, its like I'm an outsider having a conversation with someone else. I'm a prisoner in my own body, stuck in a corner of my own mind.

The park bench was wet from a sprinkler, and I could feel the heat escaping it. Connor and the girls laughed a few feet away, I scratched my nose, not being a part of the joke. I could hear him walking up the sidewalk, I guess. I knew there was someone. In my mind, it was a school admin and they were about to yell at us middle-schoolers for being out past curfew, and undoubtedly at 'Squatch, the night security guard that Connor had been wrapping around his finger with cool jokes and casual conversation since the first night. 'Squatch was our ticket out the door that night. Connor just had to promise to bring him back an ICEE from the 7-Eleven down the hill, and maybe an ice pack for his aching feet. Thats how he got his name, after all. His enormous feet that fully filled out his clown-sized shoes, even though his body had in no way needed that kind of support.

I dont remember going to the bench, or sitting down, or having the scarf ties like a blindfold and my itchy nose. I remember sitting, scratching that nose, and hearing them.

Then, between the images of fog that I know were imagined views from the insides of my eyelids, I remember knocking back that warm glass bottle, pressing the sticky rim to my lips, and tasting my death.

Good Lord, it tasted like expired cough syrup.

I spat it out.

They laughed.

What were they thinking, giving me someone else's special mix of High and Mighty Buzz? Jesus Christ, Connor! It was vile!

And I dont recall the journey back to Bexar, or saying hi to 'Squatch and in fact not having an ICEE for him, or how Connor dodged getting us all in trouble with the Warden, the upstairs guard who would surely hear about it from 'Squatch. He was a bit of a screw-up, after all. That's why he was a nigh guard. A very large but short man with even larger feet whose only job was to sit on a stool by the bottom of the stairs and tell kids they weren't allowed out after eight, and sending them back up to their rooms.

I do recall, however, climbing into my little bed beside Connor's in our room after kissing Marissa's hand like a gentleman when we dropped them off in theirs. I felt so happy that I thought the turning in my stomach was just the excitement of having confessed how much I like her.

Connor started snoring only moments after I flipped the lamp off. He was so peaceful, just lying there in his own dreams. My head was swimming with Marissa. How beautiful she was. How kind she was. How soft she was. How sweet she was. And oh, how perfectly pink her lips were. I thought about her beside me, I dreamt of rolling over and seeing her and wrapping my little skinny nerd arm around her and her not caring that I'm a total Band Geek because she is too. A saxophone and a Clarinet. We could make goose sounds together, or... we could make our own goose sounds...

Marissa, Marissa, Marissa. You fill all of the darkness around me, you make the hazy clouds in my memory go away. You make my every day in the blistering heat of this goddamned campus better.

And she doesn't even mind the spitty smell of my Sax because her clarinet smells worse! I would never have to stop kissing her. I would never want to.

When I did finally fall asleep, my dream was foggy. I just wandering around somewhere veery clean and empty and white, and I could see the porcelain white floor beneath my feet, but the space was filled with fog. I've seen those movies where the person has a dream thats just them standing in a white space. That's when God appears to tell them something important, like that they are actually dead or something like that. But no. I wouldn't be able to find God in here even if He was in here. It was so so foggy, and I was choking on the air I needed to breathe.