Wild Hearts

Believing a Lie

"You know you're being a complete nutter right now."

Corin's words are like a bucket of icy water to the face. I'm not one-hundred per cent sure I needed that.

I sit hunched forwards, fingers linked, my eyes straining. I feel like a guy who's run a marathon and then lost the will to live. It's a weird analogy, I know, but I've never been particularly good at them.

A nurse enters, smiling brightly at us both, and we wait in silence as she draws open the curtain, letting harsh sunlight blanket us. I may or may not have come to her first thing in the morning. I couldn't go to school. I'm a right mess—dealing with maths, science, geography and sports would be a nightmare. Most of them require a focused brain—something I have a hard enough time mastering myself. And sports... Well, if the extent of my athletic ability is to run every few metres, stop, lean against the wall, legs like jelly, lose the will to live, push myself and die a little further each time... yeah, you get the picture.

God, my head is a mess. Like mush. I've had time to lose some of the anxiety, as in, enough to not have searing migraines and waves of nausea. Time to breathe. I had to try and grasp to what I knew for a fact was real.

Hell is real. The literal warehouse, not the realm of the devil. But it's still an apt name, if you catch Isaac on a bad day. Which I had.

Connor and Isaac are real. Supposing Ryder is a figment of my imagination, I may have just stumbled onto the place by pure chance. But the ghost theory makes more sense. A spirit of the night knows the offbeat locales and would lead a gullible, naive kid to all of them. The bloody tunnel where we broke up?! What if his intentions were mallicous. What if he snapped my neck in the dark and...

OK, let's take a step back. I don't think he's an evil spirit. Are spirits mischevious? Ryder certainly was, but he never did anything to hurt me. If he wanted me dead in that tunnel, he wouldn't give me that bullcrap about his dad leaving. He'd have done me in there and then. No, so his time with me was at an end, and he needed a valid excuse I'd believe. For whatever reason, he wanted to act like a real teenage boy again. To get to know me like he knew my dad.

Only he kissed me. Did he kiss dad? Did he just manifest to me as gay because deep down he knew my soul? A spirit who knows the very essence of me.

I didn't get much sleep last night. I'm sure you can tell.

Corin is real. Getting back to certainties here...

We haven't spoken about her situation yet, and I know that's selfish, but I'm not in the right frame of mind right now to deal with all that fallout. Some part of me is thankful to know there is another living soul with their own problems and that are separate from mine. I can hold onto that. 

And then I had to open my stupid mouth and just let it all out. Now with that over, she seems kind of relieved actually, a contrast to her eyes staring at me intently, lips quivering when she saw me enter her ward. When it became clear this was gonna be about me, she smiled and listened, like a good friend.

"I know it sounds crazy," I whine. "but nothing else makes sense."

"Really?" Her eyebrows arch, and her lips form a perfect line. "You have one of the most... active imaginations I've ever encountered. No, scratch that. The most active. You seriously think this whole time, all of that... was a lie?"

I nod, but doubt creeps in.

"Alright," she smirks, rolling her tongue along the inside of her cheek. A familiar gesture at this point. "say he's a ghost, right? Doesn't that mean he can't interact with the physical world? You know, like touch things and talk to people."