Happy Days and Happy Friends (Welcome Home)

Chapter Four-I'm Back!

Wally is still on my bed, sitting so still someone might think that he's a statue sculpted in this position permanently. 

The next thing I know, there are tears on his face and we're sobbing in a near perfect unison. Without even thinking, I wrap my arms around him, and he goes limp. His head is on my shoulder. I'm rocking the both of us side-to-side. 

The best thing about this, if there's even any, is that neither of us speak. We know what the other feels and we're in an understanding with each other. One of my best friends and I keeping each other company as we cry out the tears that have built up since Monday. All the fear, pain, and sadness come out here. The only thing that kept me sane the last few days was seeing my friends again. Even then I resisted to burst with the emotions that continued to build up no matter how many seconds I counted until I'd see Wally again. 

"I was so scared that something would've happened to you," Wally says. 

"Everything's find now, though," I reply. "Everything is okay. We can both go to sleep, and everything in the last few days will feel like it never really happened. It will all like a bad dream, Wally." 

I try to say those words with the caring voice a mother-my mother at least-would have with her child. I love him and Howdy and Julie and Barnaby with my entire being. I love Sally and Frank and Poppy and Eddie that same amount. I just wish I was talking to the others as well without the possibility of my father spotting me under a drunken haze. It only makes me wonder how Sally has never been caught. 

"Let's go to sleep, Angel," he says. 

"Okay." 

So I turn out the lights and lie down on my bed. I don't change out of my bloodred dress that Dad bought me. I've let Wally out of the embrace. He lies beside me, his head resting on the pillow on his half of the twin-sized bed. There are two pillows, one on top of each other, that Wally and I share half each of. The left is my side, and the right is his. 

I watch as Wally slips slowly out of reality. He does with such ease, and all with his eyes open. It feels like he always has been just a fancy doll my grandmother made. I sometimes go to sleep after him, but usually he's the one watching me go to sleep before he does. 

When we both can't sleep, we tend to spend an hour or two whispering to each other. We'd ask each other questions that pop up in our minds only a second before and try our best to answer them until we're too tired to think, ask, or answer. 

Sometimes I'd pull Wally closer to me in my sleep, almost like I'm hugging him while deep in a dream, and he'd wake up. Still, I know he does not dare move because, as he's explained to me only once, he doesn't really know what to do with the affection he receives. He knows how to give affection through making art and talking, not how children usually do. Still, he does not mind having a hug every once in a while-in fact, he welcomes it unless he says otherwise. 

I rest my mind and close my eyes. I don't try to think even a single thought. And I don't feel anything at all. 

For a few moments, it feels like I'm floating in an endless void. And then the world just appears. I don't know how, but I just open my eyes when I feel like it's ready. 

I'm lying on a bed, but Wally isn't beside me. I get up and wander around the room. I take in every detail. The bedroom is a normal size, although the ceiling is a little higher. The wallpaper is red with pink stripes, and the floor is carpet in the same pattern, like a striped box. 

The furniture in the room-the bed, the desk, the chairs, and the lamp-are an unbearable shade of pink. It's like something threw up digested mucus and pink dye. The pink doesn't scare me, I just don't like how obnoxious it is.