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Honestly, though. He was standing there with accelerant drying on his jeans and second-degree burns on his hands. It was a waste of everyone’s time to try lying.
But—like every disaster they’d gotten themselves into through the history of their friendship—it hadn’t started all bad. Things were actually pretty fun until that last bit with all the screaming and the flames and the ambulances.
“Hi, everyone, I’m Rina Medina and I’ll be reading my poem: ‘Random Word Generator Input #17’”1: blusness knocle nextboarted naurnel, scouslaved rassly shagion waille hanling buckspoods seaged violities, stinings arfulbring scratic stael. grapprose lerankers dinessed ressiations visuseelling astelly concticing extrine manonloccut leeses, bravon gistertnes repulatauting mysteerly thumspine Valeen.
August would sometimes break into the toy factory and go exploring alone. Bring back oddities that he would slip surreptitiously onto the ledge of Jack’s bedroom window. Like a gift. Or a tribute.
“No … no. It’s not that. I was just worried about something.” “Worried about … me?” “Well, yeah.” “Oh.” Jack sat there for a while. “I like it,” he admitted. “You can keep doing it if you’d like.” “Doing what? The staring or the worrying?” Jack just smiled and unpaused the game.
“You can’t just die so stupidly,” he’d hissed. “I need you. You’re mine.”
August had wanted to roll over for him. Wanted to bare his neck. Wanted to give himself up, so ferocious was his gratitude.
“It’s getting worse. It was a little bit at first, but now it’s all the time,” Jack admitted. “Are you seeing things now?” “Yes.” “What?” “You.” August closed his eyes.
It was like Jack had seized his heart and squeezed it until it burst; it hurt so much he couldn’t breathe. So he reached back and punched Jack in the face as hard as he could.
He just let him chase invisible butterflies by the light of a second invisible sun.
“I’m just trying to get her home, okay?” August explained as the Hound sat back down, still glowering dangerously. “We have three other kids to pick up, I doubt anyone has gotten properly fed, and it’s getting late.…” “You’re like a weird young dad,” one of the bikers nearby commented, squinting at August curiously.
Honestly, it made a bit of sense. Perception is relative. So is sanity, if you think about it. It’s totally a Minority vs. Majority thing. If you fall on one side of the line, take a ticket and proceed. If you fall on the other, shit gets real.
“You know what? Fine. I’ll just riffle through some cultural encyclopedias or something. It’s not like I’m already having a bad time. Now I’m seeing shit and I have stupid homework about it.” Jack threw his arms up in exasperation and turned away.
All virtues not granted at birth are taught to you by life, one way or another. My mother told me that.”
He’d seen Jack fall and sprinted toward the pit; August had leaped off the edge and dove headlong into the darkness behind him. He would pull them both out of the deep with his bare hands. It was the debt. The river. It was his religion now. And such a thing was worth more than the mountains and the seas.
He didn’t even bother to look at Jack as he snatched the bag petulantly. He knew the son of a bitch was grinning at him fondly or something.
“Cracker Barrel is great. It is a restaurant and a toy store and a souvenir store all in one. We’ve been over this,” August said curtly.
The world was so big and they were very small and there was no one around to stop terrible things from happening.
Jack crawled out of the chair and kneeled on the floor in front of him, but it no longer felt right for them to be on the same level. August felt himself bowing lower and lower until his forehead touched the floor.
“It’s not weak. My mom once told me that being alone makes you feel weaker every day, even if you’re not,” he said quietly. “But it’s not as bad if you’re with other people who are alone, too. We can hold each other up like a card tower.”
It was weird, but it made him want to give her things. It made him want to cover her in diamonds. It made him want to work until he could afford to put her in a palace. It made him want to steal her away like a priceless work of art. It made him want to be selfish.
What is scarier, one large scary thing or many, many small scary things?
“Sometimes … you have to stop trying and just let someone else try their best. In order to survive.”
Jack gazed at him for a moment. “Is anything ‘just’ anything? After all these months? Even dressed in my colors? Even with your favor at my feet? Even as the sky falls and the only thing I can hear besides your voice is the screams of the dying and the thundering of horses? You remembered to keep it when you couldn’t even remember to eat. It’s a lighter, yeah. But it’s also everything…” Jack grinned.
“You burn things all the time these days,” Jack said softly. “Would you burn for me?”
And then, like a living nightmare, his howl roused the other patients to noisemaking. Like a battle cry. It soared above the symphony of their screams of confusion and fear, the banging on the doors and the weeping. Soared above all. A phoenix that burned and fell to ash before it could set alight the room at the very end of the hall where the dreammaker lived, imprisoned by his visions. Unanchored and unnoticed in the dark.
And as the champion stood, boots firm on the ground, howling to the sky, I knew at once that he’d never been mine at all. He was a thing of the earth. He belonged to the streams and the deserts and the darkness. To the sound of thunder and the whispers of the ocean as it clawed the shore. To the rain that fell when the sun was still blazing, to the grime clenched between my fingers.
“I don’t care. You’re the most precious thing in the world to me. They’re trying to make you forget that. Don’t let them make you forget it.” August sighed.
Why can’t any of you get it into your fucking heads: He is my only constant. My fixed point.”
Would Jack look at him from across a table years from now and see the hero of this story? Or would he just see a man? A friend? Nothing so glorious as to be shouted from the rooftops or cemented in legend. Or was “friend” enough of a title to satisfy? After all of this?
In this world and the next. They could take everything away and leave us with nothing, and I would still love you.”
