I S A A C
Someone was shouting at me, but it sounded far away, so I didn't care. My bed was always the best place in the world when I suddenly had to get out of it. Except in the next second, my bed wasn't even a bed anymore, just a mattress and a pillow. Someone had pulled the sheets so far back even my toes felt naked.
"Let me sleep." My own voice sounded far away.
"We're late," Ethan said. I felt him walking in circles somewhere in my bedroom. "We're gonna miss all the good waves!"
I could feel the tickling feeling in his fingertips, the urge for a surfboard underneath him, and then the ocean. Ethan had come from the ocean, I was sure, and so now he had to constantly go back to it. He should have just been a fish.
"Did I hear it right? Are you really going to the beach instead of going to school?" My mom's voice was an alarm clock begging to be smashed against a wall.
"Why is everyone in my room?"
"That's a really good question, baby." Mom insisted on calling me baby even though I was one only mentally. "What is Ethan doing in your room, screaming, at five in the morning?"
I opened my eyes. This was too good to be missed. My mom was standing by the door, arms crossed over her pajamas, eyes still puffy with sleep but burning through Ethan, who was struggling to show her his best smile.
"How did you even get in?" she asked him. It was a very relevant question.
"Your window was open..." he said.
"My window? You were in my room while I was sleeping!?" mom asked, surprised, confused, irritated, probably scared too.
"That's really creepy," I said, rubbing sleep off my eyes.
"It's not like I stood there looking at your parents sleeping," he told me, facing my mom afterward, "Your bedroom was the only one with the window open. I didn't mean to scare you. I'm really sorry."
My mom shook her head, but she was already over it. Ethan wasn't exactly a flavor she was still getting used to. She'd had years to do it, and she had. I was surprised he didn't have a copy of our house keys yet.
"Just ring the bell next time," mom said, rubbing her forehead. Were we the reason behind her wrinkles? It was very much possible, yes.
"Well, it's five in the morning. I didn't wanna wake up the whole house."
My mom's eyes grew big in disbelief, "Oh, really? I couldn't tell with all the screaming."
"Yeah, sorry about that," Ethan said, shooting me a look.
I shook my head, pushing myself off the bed to get up. The sun wasn't even out yet. I wanted to strangle Ethan. I could have. He was distracted with the collection of comic books and video games I had stacked on the shelves next to my bed. I could have strangled him right then and there.
I walked over to my bathroom instead, splashing cold water on my face, and then bracing for whatever shit face was about to look back at me in the mirror. Being dragged out of bed at 5 a.m didn't usually look good on me.
"Oh!" I said when I saw myself. "Fuck, I look really good. Ethan, come see!"
I felt him roll his eyes in my bedroom, "I've seen you already."
"And did I not look good?" I reached for my toothbrush. Ethan had one for himself too. "Why didn't you tell me?"
I felt him roll his eyes again. "That you're pretty? Must have slipped my mind."
"You just hate to see a boy toy winning." He didn't answer.
When I came back out, my mom had gone back to bed, and Ethan was going copying the homework for today at my desk. I shoved what I needed into a backpack and put on the shoes I had caught my mom trying to throw in the trash half a dozen times just this past month. Apparently, she didn't care for the emotional value of things.
An apple flew at me in the next second. I caught it before it could hit me.
"What was that for?" I could have gone blind. Ethan was already opening my bedroom window so he could climb on the windowsill.
"No time for breakfast. We have waves to catch," he said. Then he jumped outside.
I held the apple in my mouth, threw the backpack on my shoulders, and did the same. My mom hated us for it. Said it was too high. We could break a leg. We would. She said it was a matter of time. Said we would learn then. Ethan had sprained his ankle doing it once and it had taught him nothing.
He also got the flu every other month and it didn't stop him from going into an ocean that killed Jacks for a living. It certainly didn't stop him from dragging me with him. We didn't exactly have a Rose waiting for us at home, but my parents loved me very much. They would probably be sad if I died. Not enough to throw a diamond worth thousands of millions into the bottom of the ocean, but sad enough.
Still, I always let Ethan drag me. I would want to cry going in and then do it going out. School would become a distant reality I would kill not to go back to and my bed something not a good enough thing to leave the ocean for. The waves would come to life under our boards, and we would come alive with it. The sun would rise and set the sky on fire over our heads, and we would burn happy in the saltwater.
That morning, we skated our way to school, our hair still wet under the gusts of wind, our skin covered in sand.
"That was awesome!" Ethan sighed, a world-sized grin on his lips, his blonde curls sticky with salt. "Admit it! Waking up at 5 a.m was worth it, and I, Ethan Jones, am the best person to ever exist. Good morning to me and only me."
"Fine, but my name's Isaac. I, Etha â"
"You know what I me â" He stopped too, all of his book falling off his locker as soon as he opened it. "Fuck."
"You need to clean that up," I said, looking over at the black hole it was. Ethan left all of his textbooks at school because he didn't trust his mom not to sell them if she got her hands on them at home. The market for schoolbooks was a gold mine, apparently. He also kept his gym shoes there, hence the smell of death.
"I think it looks perfectly fine," Ethan said, shoving all the books back inside.
"You think breaking into my house through my parents' bedroom window is perfectly fine," I noted, "You shouldn't be allowed thoughts."
"I agree," someone said from across the hallway, slamming their locker shut.
I saw Ethan's face before I saw the person. He was smiling, the same smile he would give the perfect wave on a Saturday morning. Caitlyn Murphy. I didn't need to look to know. Ethan didn't give many people that smile. He was stupid like that. Caitlyn wasn't a person you smiled at. She wasn't even a person you looked at. It felt like stepping in front of a car.
She wore all black every other day as if she had a funeral to go to right after school. She would probably be voted most likely to die of lung cancer too. I wouldn't be surprised if she woke up in the middle of the night to smoke, or if she brushed her teeth with vodka.
At the age of eighteen, Caitlyn's dark skin already looked like the inside of an art school's toilet stall. I could see it peeking through the sleeves of her rock band t-shirt, large enough to fit another one of her in it, but not enough to hide the very real possibility of no bra underneath.
There was the elephant in the snake's belly from The Little Prince, the word mom in all caps, a sad face, bees, a small knife, the words fuck you, a petition for NASA to catapult her straight into the sun, a toast to poor decisions, a stick figure climbing out of the hollow of a girl's head, a bottle labeled escapism, a doodle of a sad dog, characters from kids shows insulting each other in speech bubbles.
"Good morning," Ethan said, still smiling. She didn't say it back, of course, plugging her earphones in her pierced ears instead, and walking away. He closed his locker, "That went great."
"What's wrong with you? Do you not like being alive?" Well, no. Obviously he didn't.
"No," he started. "I mean yes, I do, but-"
"You also want to be found dead in a ditch," I stopped him. "I see your dilemma."
"Don't be an asshole." He frowned, pushing me so hard when we started walking, I almost crashed against a girl tying her shoes.
"I'm not being an asshole," I said after apologizing, but he was already on his skateboard, which wasn't really a good idea, seeing as we had been forced to mop the whole school last year on account of all the rubber scuff marks we had left behind.
Still, I got on my board. They had installed wheelchair ramps everywhere on the school over the summer. We had to try them out.
We got in trouble. My bottom lip was bleeding into a tissue, and Ethan was pressing a bag of ice against his left shoulder, and somewhere in the science building, a couple of lockers were slightly dented. Of course we got in trouble.
Would we do it again? Probably in a week.
"I don't know what's wrong with you boys. It's the first week back and you're already damaging school property." Mr. Colton said, sitting very straight on his chair, head shaking in disappointment as he looked down at both our files.
"Yeah, but - "
"You obviously have no interest in your personal wellbeing whatsoever, so I can only ask that you respect other people's concern for their own. Someone could have gotten seriously hurt. Are you aware you damaged two school lockers, and possibly the belongings of the students they belonged to?"
I was aware of all of it, but mostly, of the many frames of the school football team over the years covering the wall behind Mr. Colton's office. He had an unsettling obsession.
"We're sorry. It won't happen again," Ethan said. Only the first part was true.
"Oh, come on..." Mr. Colton said, with a deep breath. "I've known the two of you long enough to know you'll probably drive a bike into class tomorrow."
"We don't have a bike," I said.
To which Ethan, for some reason, added, "But we can get one."
"No, you can get some sense into those heads of yours, that's what you can and should do," Mr. Colton said, with another deep breath. "You climbed the science building the other day â"
"We were late for class." I stopped him. "Mrs. Flynn says if we're not inside before she is, she won't let us in. We saw her go up the stairs. We had no other option."
"It's all the same to me." He shrugged, the way college graduates said I don't really give a shit. "You're both grounded. Obviously. Ethan, you'll be helping Miss Johnson at the daycare every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'll email you the timetable as soon as I have it."
He stopped and looked at me, which was new, because usually, Ethan and I got stuck in detention together, and that was the end of that. I swallowed.
"Isaac, you'll be helping Coach Sargent with the football team. Do whatever he asks you to do. I'm sure you'll have the time of your life."
I frowned, "Sounds like child labor."
"I suppose." Mr. Colton shrugged. "Any questions?"
"Is it true that if someone dies during an exam everyone gets an A?" Ethan asked, genuinely interested. He liked to make the most out of situations.
"Get out," Mr. Colton said.
We did. I looked at the blood dripping from my tissue.
"Well." I sighed. "That backfired."