Midnight sun

36 | Noah

I've been on edge since last night. After taking another selfie amongst the crowd of all those people at the party, wearing my designer branded clothes and a well-practised fake smile, sending the picture to my Aunt felt the opposite of what I looked–like a total failure. Lying to them is the most painful thing although deep down I know it is necessary. But it's hard staying sane and doing it night after night. I can't keep up, I just can't. Sleep isn't coming and I desperately need it, if nothing else, just to escape this world of misery. I reach for the small, ugly nightstand situated between the two beds of my lousy bedroom and pull the drawer open, where my stash is not even hidden.

After swallowing a pill, I cut up one line of coke on the notebook that I have on my lap. It seems funny to me how as soon as I cut all my ties with him I got this notebook and continued sketching.

Somehow I end up taking another line, and another despite knowing cocaine is not going to make me sleep, just the opposite. After a while I find myself in the kitchen looking for a bottle of something strong, surprised that the space is empty–this place has people mingling around the clock, some familiar, some not, but I'm so used to voices and bodies everywhere that it catches me off guard. This silence, it's like the one that is deep-seated in the layers of fresh snow between the century-old pines, like the silence of one lonely man who knows how to mend a broken boy's soul. I loved the silence of Alaska even though I hated it at first. I loved Alaska. I loved him... love love love

Hey Dylan, hey, hey, hey. Dyl, baby, listen, the world's gone to shit but you're the only light in this darkness. You're the sun

"Noah?"

Fuck. No, did I call him? I look down and there it is–phone in my hands with his name on it, there is an empty bottle of vodka on my floor, I hear my name on repeat from the device, distant and muffled. No. I fucked up. I shouldn't have called him. I'm not supposed to do that. I'm so fucking tired.

"I'm so fucking tired, Dylan."

I hear myself say into the phone.

"Noah, are you ok? What's going on?"

He sounds like he's been sleeping, it's probably the middle of the night and I don't know the time of day even when I'm sober, the curtains are always closed in this shoe box I've been living in for two months now. Living.

"I miss you, I don't want to hurt you but I miss you. Miss everything."

"Are you drunk?"

"I don't know what I am anymore."

I scratch the surface of my skin with a blunt fingernail, where the blue of my veins is slightly visible in the soft crook of my elbow. I need it right now. He'll give me some more if I ask nicely.

That day returns to my memory, one week after I arrived in Los Angeles. My mom was doing better, than worse. Sometimes we would be able to talk for hours and some days she couldn't do anything but sleep. On good days we mostly talked about my dad which was something I came to appreciate. Dad had been in the ground for years, but I hadn't really said goodbye, grieved the loss properly. These conversations had me feeling wrung out and exhausted, but something deep down inside me felt settled, like the fresh, still air after a rainstorm.

It was late afternoon by the time I arrived back at my hotel after one of those long talks with my mom. The place wasn't anything fancy, but my room was cozy and quiet. I walked out of the elevator and footsteps caused my heart to jump, a chill zipping up my spine. The clack clack clack of dress shoes on a marble floor tightened my stomach all the way up to my chest.

I blinked hard, my gaze sticking to the floor as I darted away, turning the corner without looking back, basically jogging through the long hallway toward my room. I was paranoid–since the first day of my arrival I had a feeling I was being followed.