The Best of Us

six

SEPTEMBER. 2014.

BRADLEY'S BELIEF THAT this year would be the fastest year of our lives was only half true. Apparently, everyone else's September had flown over. I was dragging my September along behind me like a dead body, heaving it towards the thirtieth.

Thankfully, dad, as he often did, was busying himself with work so I had managed to stay under his radar. He left in the mornings, returned in the evenings, joined us for dinner and then disappeared into his office or bedroom for the rest of the night. It was easy to exist alongside him that way, but the easiest ways of living with my father still made my heart ache.

He hadn't asked me about all the time I was spending in the house. Throughout junior year, I'd had a job as a waiter, but I'd been fired not long before summer because I had too many no-shows, and then I'd dived headfirst into vacation— a time of my life where I was out so often that my bed would remain unslept in for days a time. But summer was almost a month over and I was spending more time in my bedroom than ever.

Bradley, Heaven and Layla all worked and attended clubs after class was over, and then had homework and assignments to catch up on later. I went to the gym and felt good— a lot better, actually— for a while, then I returned to the hollow, surreal cave of my room and rotted until they had time to talk.

There were other people that I could talk to— people who considered me friends— and I did occasionally talk to some of them, but they required more effort and consistency than my relationships with Bradley, Heaven and Layla. I could talk to those three without thinking about it too hard or exhausting myself.

Mostly, I had enjoyable conversations with other friends, but they still tired me out. Every time I had to open my mouth and speak or type a text out, I could feel my bones getting heavier. Sometimes I was just desperately trying to beat the sick child of loneliness born from the union of my boredom and dissatisfaction. Sometimes I saw the hands of loneliness forming in the deepest corner of my room and in an attempt to avoid them I would, in an almost frantic state, respond to all of my messages and call up friends who had asked me to get in touch, and then I would feel the hands tightening around my throat regardless.

Thomas, who had survived his first month back at home without too much trouble, said that watching me was making his bones tired. I wondered aloud if dad was going to get on my ass about getting another job or joining clubs, but he told me not to worry about dad and to savour his stretching silence.

I decided that he was right, that I should just be glad he wasn't paying any attention to where I was spending my time, but the ghost of my concern still haunted me and every time I saw him I was waiting for him to ask me what I was doing to improve my academic performance or increase my chances of getting into a good college. He never did.

Maddeningly, the drudge of the September routine was having terrible consequences on the movement of time. School passed by both exhaustingly slow and in a fast motion flurry of packed hallways and slamming lockers and general teenage din, which I found myself becoming increasingly sensitive to. Certain days, it felt like I could distinguish every individual sound of the racket and it gave me awful headaches (which I, like my dad, was already prone to). Other times, everything sounded like it was happening underwater which wasn't any better; that gave me headaches, too. Then, in class, there was the clock; a tapping foot; rapping knuckles; squeaky textbook pages; keyboard clacking. By the time I escaped each period, I was so wound up and irritated that Layla, Heaven and whoever else we spent lunch with were sometimes too cautious to ask me too many questions. The only person who could prod and laugh at me without fear of getting their head bitten off was Bradley, who prodded and laughed as much as he felt like.