Maybe the rain washed all the words away, and that's why he hasn't said a single thing this past hour. Luckily, this thunder isn't set to pass until daybreak, so that's more blessed human silence waiting for me in the wings.
The storm had levelled itself around us, sheet after sheet after cement-heavy, blood-spattering sheet of earth-shattering rain stinging my skin. I wonder at Phil's being alive in all this. After all, I at least can't drown again. He's still warm and breathing. I can feel the static of his skin inches away. Maybe being dead tunes you into the living.
Right now, my back is pressed against the soaked earth, and I can feel worms poking up against my skin-stuck t-shirt for a split second before they dive back into the soil. Worms drown, too. I wonder if this is what it would be like if they'd found my body. If I would be awake and conscious as they pushed me into the ground. If I had decomposed under a tree instead of in unforgiving sea salt. I raise my arms up, turning hands this way and that, letting the rain bounce off my knuckles. The clouds look so low to the ground. So close. If I could just reach up, catch one in my hand. If I could just swallow the sky.
I'm startled from my fantasies of growing into a giant, so tall that my head stretches above the clouds and my hair tickles the edge of the atmosphere — when I hear that faint but audible click! I shift around, strain my neck to see where it's from. And it's Phil, eye pressed tight against the viewfinder of his camera, lens aimed at me. Shit.
I feel like I'm 16 again, a dork who's afraid of his own reflection, shying away from my friends and the phone camera because I look bad in pictures! I duck into my stomach and cover my face with my shirt. But I'm not 16, and I haven't seen my friends in years, and my photogenicity is not the reason I'm hiding now. Not that covering my face will help my cause.
What if I don't show up on film? I've been hypothesising about this for an hour, how Phil can see me. No one has ever been able to, not in any of my short-lived outings to the village, so there's no way him seeing me is a trick of the light. It's subjective. It's in his mind.
He isn't taking pictures anymore, and I look up at him, though I keep my elbows wrapped tightly around my knees like a cage to protect myself. His head is tilted to the side, and he's smiling at me. I can tell he's wondering who I am all over again. "Can I take pictures of you? I'm sorry. I should've asked first. My photo teacher always says that we need a subject's consent. But he also says that candids are the most important types of photographs. I don't know how he makes up his mind."
I listen to him, and I shrug, helplessly. Why am I so frozen? Maybe I have regressed to my younger self, afraid of everything, and speechless, always fidgeting with cold fingers, always writing lonely poetry, but never opening my mouth because I've been torn down three times too many. I try shaking my head. "I don't..."
He takes a step closer, but I can barely see him because my eyes are drowning. The rain pours, ever more ferocious. "Why not?" He says. In the five hours I've known him, I've never seen him like this. He's completely still. I'm afraid that if I give ground, he'll pounce. "You look beautiful, you know. Please? A rain study?"
He has this look on his face. I can't remember if I've ever seen it before, so openly displayed. He looks hypnotised. It's like, his heart is unfolding between his eyes, and he wants just this one thing, and if I try to kill him after he gets it, he'll let me. This one thing. One thing, and he'll give me the entire rest of the world for my own dominion. And the way he's looking at me. I don't, or I can't say no.
YOU ARE READING
When September Ends
FanfictionDan thought that when he gave it all up, everything would finally be over. But as it turns out, there's more to life than meets the eye, and Dan is alone in this part. Until he meets Phil, who can somehow see him.
