pencil shavings

twenty-three: sam

"Samantha Hadds! The pleasure is all mine."

Oh yes, it is.

A massive groan bursts from my lips as I charge out of the building into the sweaty sunlight and catch sight of Toby's radiating figure.

This cannot be happening right now.

"Hi Toby."

He flicks his blond mop toward the building, narrowing his eyes into something akin to Zoolander's "Magnum" expression. "You in that camp thing? I heard in it remains a remarkably talented group of budding authors and poets and playwrights, all broadening their horizons of undeniable talent... you know I'm sure Shakespeare himself would have gawked at such a phenomenal enhancement of the literary future of our world, and in-"

"Toby. Not right now."

My very own sesquipedalian stalker folds his arms, offering a look like a kenneled puppy. He nods tightly. "Right."

I nod too, already pulling myself back into the depths of that spiral that had consumed me the moment Peter jumped out that window.

"I'll see you around," I mutter and stomp along the sidewalk with no place to go, but a lot of things to leave behind.

There's yelling when I get to my front door, like a Costco-sized stash of fireworks had erupted inside, and my mom's ranting was the smoldering fuse. I swallow hard, reaching for the handle, and then I hear the voices soften to a dull orange flame. I close my eyes. Smile, smile smile. They're okay, I'm okay, Matt's okay, Peter... I turn on my heel and plunge back onto the sidewalk, breathing in the exhaust-and-jasmine scent from the sides of the road.

I don't know how long I walk. Past white-fenced houses and barred-up windows, through a bench-speckled park, over a graffitied bridge. I can hardly feel my feet, my stomach growling, my hair knotted and sticky with sweat, when I see him,. I'm standing on the side of the road, the sun baking miles of brush, just past the residential district. The road that was almost big enough to be a highway, and almost flat enough to make for nice driving, and almost inside the quaint softness of the town.

"Peter..." the name falls off my lips like a daydream. I was almost there.

He doesn't turn, just keeps walking along the side of the forgotten road, with hazy summer heat blurring the horizon behind him. It would be such a perfect John Hughes moment, if I weren't so sweaty, because every ounce of energy goes into my smile, and I sprint for him. Idiotic boys. Can't let people help, can they.

"Peter! Peter Westin!"

I nearly crash into his side as he turns, those green eyes wide.

"Sam?"

I grin, cocking my head. "Duh."

He holds my stare for a moment, nothing short of incredulous, then shakes his matted hair and gazes toward the wavy summer horizon. "I don't know what happened to him. He could've gone home, I guess." Peter glances back at me, and his lips are pressed together in something too weak and trembling to be Peter. "Could've, but it's Dan."

"Hey," I whisper, lightly touching his wrist. He nods faintly, looking away, and I close my eyes to hold back my own tears. This was about him. "Tell me about him."

Peter nods a little more. "Dan. Well, the oldest brother and the one who - who was amazing at everything. Sports, school, he was your typical driven, all-star kid. I was jealous, honestly, trying to live up to that. But then it all went to crap. We all just, forgot about who he had been, and it became Dan, who went to Juvie, and Dan, had passed out, drunk, too many times for me to count, and Dan, who I've saved with three ER trips. And then it was Dan, who ran away from home for three years when I was in elementary school. I still don't know where he went all that time, but the hospital trips and petty theft and gang fights were worse, they became his whole identity, after... after he came home."

The stillness of the wind and the baking sun are too quiet, the words eclectic in the air, the space between us is vast and empty, the world around us burning.

"I still," Peter swallows hard. "I still remember the look on his face when he came home. I was hiding in the front yard, doing homework, when he walked up to the front door. I didn't recognize him. He had a beard, and sagging jeans, and buff arms, and... an empty expression. He left as a grieving boy, and he came back as a haunted man. And when you grow up that fast and that hard, when you stuff every pain into a hole in your chest, you become a living furnace" - Peter looks me dead in the eyes- "and one day, you have one drink too many, one pain too much, one word too far, and all those years of hiding a bad past in a worse present - it burns you from your soul out."

I pull his hand between mine, and I swear I feel his soul sob between my fingertips. I can't speak, and I don't know what I would say if I could, so I just hold his gaze and fight to keep him from disappearing in fear. It's not like I could tell him that it would be okay. He gives me a watery smile. Almost okay.