Here Comes The Sun [wattys 2016]

NOVEMBER 2007

NOVEMBER 2007

"You are the world's biggest piece of shit!" Ruth yells. "This is the third time! Third time!"

Alex knows better than to answer so he says nothing. He shifts the phone from one ear to the other and listens to Ruth ramble without paying attention to her words. His Jedi costume is still hanging on his desk chair. He doesn't have the heart to keep it away from his sight, not when it is so spoiled with memories.

""You're such a four year old," Ruth is saying in a high pitched, irritated voice. "I don't want to share my candy."

"Look, I'm saying I'm sorry." Alex counters, and he really was. To some extent, anyway.

"Sorry doesn't give me candy, you shithead."

"Neither does yelling at me."

Ruth sighs. "Touché." She pauses for a second. "More like douché."

"Wow, great pun. You're so funny."

"Fuck you, I am funny."

*

Alex doesn't see Jem all day until lunch. He partly feels relieved and he partly feels as though someone had taken one of his legs away and he didn't know he long he could go on without it. But when he saw Jem sitting at their usual table, making rude pictographs out of his noodles with Ruth, he felt hollow. Jem was smiling his usual smile and the artificial lights made his skin look like the moon and his lips the colour of a wound. Alex recalls the first day he had seen him and thought, 'He isn't too good looking but he looks like a piece of modern art'. And modern art was ugly but Jem was enchanting to look at every time Alex did. He was like that one song you could listen to on repeat without getting bored of it.

Alex takes a deep breath and slides his tray across from Ruth and Jem and says, "Hey." His voice sounds weird even to his own ears.

"Hey, asshat." Ruth says pleasantly without looking up.

Jem glances at him and averts his eyes quickly as if making eye contact with Alex would kill him. "Hey," he says to his plate of noodles.

Alex catches Omar's eye across the room but looks away before the latter can acknowledge him. He awkwardly twirls his fork in the pile of noodles and tries to decipher what Ruth and Jem are making but it just looks like a deformed foot to him. Jem lets out a snort of laughter and buries his face in his hands. "Oh God..."

Ruth grins. "I'm such a natural at this."

"What is that?" Alex asks stupidly.

Ruth raises her eyebrows at him. "Please don't make me describe it."

Not wanting to embarrass himself further, Alex just says, "Okay." He contemplates whether or not to tell them that he got it when Jem, without a word, turns the tray so that Alex is looking at it from the correct side.

Alex still doesn't understand but he nods like he does. "Oh."

Ruth turns the tray again and rolls her eyes but Alec catches the corners of Jem's lips twitch.

*

Alex hadn't been skateboarding by himself for a really long time but he couldn't make himself call Jem. Not after today, when they barely spoke two sentences to each other. Alex took the route he had taken a hundred times before; his feet guided him almost automatically.

Alex thought he must be in shock. Last night, he'd turned over a million possible outcomes in his head and each left a bitter taste in his mouth.

He passes an old woman trying to force her grandson into a tight purple parka but he kept squirming away. "No! Girls wear purple!"