Hatred

Lance walks into my room the same way he walked out of it: sure and troubled. But where before he was worried, now he is relieved, at least, and it shines from him so that he is burning bright, his gaze searing into me.

"Syl," he says, in greeting.

"Lance," I respond, in the same tone of voice, trying not to smile.

He sits on the edge of the bed and crosses his legs, facing me. "I believe I promised you a haircut."

I sigh heavily. "Alas, I am far too weak to go on hair-cutting ventures today."

He frowns, and his eyes scan over me as if he will be able to see what is wrong and come up with some sort of solution. After a moment, his frown falls away. "Alright, then. That can be for another day. What do you want to do?"

I laugh a little, incredulous. "Lance, it's Tuesday. You have school."

He rolls his eyes and turns, lies back on the bed beside me, our bodies parallel.

"School is overrated." I can't think of a reply to that, so I am quiet: I do not believe in the wasting of words. He sighs, and then he speaks again. "I hate to say this, but Marcus is miserable."

The first thing that pops into my head is, How do you know? The second is, Why? The third, Why do you hate to say it?

I examine my options, and decide to only ask the first two, because the third makes me nervous to think about.  He stares up at the ceiling, as I do on most days, and I stare at him, because the change of view is pleasant.

Then he sighs and answers my questions, albeit in an odd way. "You need to talk to him, Syl." I think about this, but I do not answer. He turns his head to the side, cheek pressed against the pillow, and looks at me seriously. "How long have you known him?"

"Since we were born," I say, immediately.

"How long have you not been talking to him?" he asks.

I consider the question. "A while."  I think for a moment more, and then add, "It isn't that I'm not talking to him, it's that he isn't talking to me."

He blinks, slowly, and then leaves his eyes half closed as if his lids are too heavy to hold open, thick lashes shadowing his view. "It must be hard, for him."

I laugh a little. "And this is just the most lovely time for me."

"I mean, imagine this," he continues, ignoring what I've said, his eyes dark and boring into me. "For your whole life, you have this friend: this amazing, beautiful, smart, interesting friend. But she's sick. She's sick and even touching her in the wrong way could hurt her, and hurting her is something you never want to do. Did you know it's almost impossible not to fall in love with someone you know so well? With someone like you? There are so many things to fall in love with you for, Syl. So many." I catch my breath, and my heart does a strange jump inside of me, and it hurts but I don't care.

"But your friend, you can't love her like that, because she wouldn't feel the same," he continues. "You tell yourself you can only be friends. You try to move on. And then you meet this girl, and you like her. You think you could love her, maybe. But you hide it from your friend, because you don't want to tell her that you're moving on. Because, somewhere in your head, you think that there might still be a chance. And then, of all people, this random guy who just walked into your life, this guy who's been too scared to cut his hair because he was terrified of people judging him for what was hidden beneath, this guy has the audacity to tell you to tell your friend." He pauses, and I force a breath, because during his speech I was hardly breathing.

"He says that if you don't tell her, he will. So you tell her. There is something about this guy that you don't like; maybe it's the way he looks at her, the way that he acts as if they can be so close after not having known her at all. Whatever it is, you don't like the guy. So you take his advice. And she reacts in the way you knew she would react; rationally, reasonably. And you knew she was waiting for you to call, or to go over, to apologise. But you'd never been as strong as she was. And it was hard to say sorry when the thing you were really apologising for was a chance you'd lost."

It is a lovely, sad picture he has painted; one with Marc loving me as I used to think I loved him. But he doesn't. I know he doesn't. And besides, what I felt for him was a facsimile of the true thing. What I wanted and what I thought I wanted became so twisted up and muddled that I grasped on to the first thing I saw and made it the object of my fascination, and that just happened to be Marc.

Lance rolls onto his back, blinking up at the ceiling. "Talk to him, Syl. Even if it's to tell him that you're not going to say sorry, because you have nothing to apologise for. Tell him what you feel, or don't, it's up to you."

The silence in the room grows heavy. I stare up at the white of the ceiling and wonder how a thing can be so pure and clean when it is covered in the weighty, tired, flapping wings of my dreams that were once frantic and now are simply exhausted.

"What do you think I feel, Lance?" I ask, finally.

He blinks, and then closes his eyes. "You love him, don't you?" he asks.

This question, to me, seems very important. There are an infinite amount of things I could say. I could tell him that, yes, I love Marcus, and how could I not? I've known him for my whole life. But I could also tell him that I am beginning to feel something else, something different, something I don't know much about; whether I should be frightened of it or wary of it, welcoming or unreceptive of the feeling. I could tell him about my parents, and my father falling in love with the little parts of my mother that no one else notices. I could tell him that I have grown to like the sure touch of his hands, and the calm cadence of his words, the control he seems to have over his life and himself. I could tell him that I don't feel completely awake til I see his face; the sharp angles of him or the soft look of a smile in his eyes. That I have fallen in love with the smell of chlorine in his beat up car and the look of his hand on the gear shift, comfortable and familiar. That I might be falling in love with him, but I can't say whether or not for sure, because it is something that happens slowly, and I am so used to things happening slowly that this has crept up on me with the subtlety of an elephant and I never saw it coming and I don't know what to do about it because I am scared.

"Not like that," I say, instead, because if I say all of the things in my mind, crowding to be said, more will clamour for attention, and I cannot set some of my secrets free. Not yet.

"Really?" he asks. He both looks and sounds unconvinced.

I start to shake my head, but I am tired and his eyes are closed, now, so it won't matter anyway. "I used to think I did," I say, my voice soft. "But now I know it's not like that. What I was feeling wasn't what I thought it was."

"And how do you know that, Syl?" he asks. I freeze. Because he wouldn't ask me that. Why on earth would he ask me that?

But then I see the small curve of a smile at the edge of his mouth, the barest flicker, a softening of his expression, and I roll my eyes, regardless of whether he can see it or not. "I just do," I say.

"You just do," he repeats, and there is the barest hint of amusement in his voice. That slight laughter is like his smile: almost imperceptible, but I have adapted to it, and have grown such an expert at spotting it that I could tell he was smiling by the feeling of the air around him; the softest touch of his fingertips against my skin. I know what he means, when he does something, because everything he does has a purpose. He hides nothing, this boy; nothing but the patch of dark skin beneath his eye, given to him by birth but made into a problem by his love of control. And ridicule is not something that anyone can control; it is just like fear, in that way.

"Besides," I say, into the silence, "Marc doesn't feel that way."

"I never said he did. But some part of him had to love you, maybe even a little."

"Not in that way," I tell him. And I remember the full curve of Marc's smile, how whole he is and how broken I am, and it makes me hurt. "No one could love me in that way," I think, only to realise that I have said it aloud. I close my eyes, slightly mortified.

The bed shakes slightly as Lance shifts, and I keep my eyes closed, closed, closed, because I do not want to see his reaction. I want to take back that moment and seal it away and never let it out again. But I cannot. And I hate how it is so easy to ruin something, yet so hard to fix it.

"Do you really believe that?" he asks me, his voice quiet. I do not answer, but my silence is more of a response than anything else would have been.

The bed moves again as he shifts, and I feel the sheets beside my head compress slightly as he moves closer, his shoulder pressing against mine. He is so close that I can feel the heat radiating from his body; the soft push of his breath against my skin as he turns his head to the side.

"Syl," he says, his voice softer than before, and a little rougher. "I really, really want to kiss you right now." He pauses, long enough that I force my eyes open from the sheer curiosity and weight of the moment. And when I do, turning my cheek into the pillow, he is looking at me, and his eyes are so bright and dark at the same time that the sheer contradiction both baffles and enchants me.

"What?" I ask, and my voice comes out as a whisper. I see the shape it forms in the air, the word, and the soft imprint of it, the memory in the air as it disappears, because with Lance there is no danger of my words going unheard.

"I want to kiss you," he repeats. "And I want you to know that, for the first time since I have met you, the sheer stupidity of something you just said has overwhelmed me."

I stutter out a surprised laugh. "Did you just call me stupid?" I ask him, and my heart flutters with the small quirk of a smile in his lips, and the soft, fond shine of it in his eyes.

"Yes," he says. "I believe I did. But don't worry. It was only a momentary lapse."

I force back the smile that so wants to curve my lips. "You know, I've seen people fight over less than that, and never talk to each other again."

"Really?" He raises an eyebrow, sounding interested in the answer; Lance is always interested in everything I have to say, whether it be the smallest word whispered in the darkness, or a meaningless sentence no one else has the time to hear.

"My dad hasn't spoken to his sister in seven years," I tell him. "Though I'm assuming it was over more than that, because I refuse to believe my father is that fickle."

"Are you that fickle?" he asks.

"I might be," I tell him. "This might ruin our relationship. And if it does, you're going to have to find me a very attractive swimming instructor to help with my rehab, because I will be very, very angry, and I'll need a replacement and you had better be trying to redeem yourself."

He laughs, that special type of laugh that contains him, that sounds as if he is frightened of someone hearing him and taking away what has made him happy; it is breathy and soft and his shoulders shake with it, and the sound makes me smile.

"Did you just call me attractive, in a round-about way?"

I push away my smile, though it is hard, and roll my eyes. "So," he asks, realising that I am not answering his question. "Can I?"

"Can you what?" I ask.

"Can I kiss you?" His voice is soft and warm and a little rough, with all the charm of a slightly scratched old record.

I think about it, seriously. Because I am seventeen years old and he is very calmly discussing my first ever kiss, in his deep, lovely voice, lying on my bed beside me. And I am sick; I am dying. And I think I am falling in love with him and I should take all of the chances life will offer me, and live them out gladly because life is suffocating me and I can hardly find time to live amidst all of the happenings. But, I realise, I am sick, and I am dying, and I can hardly move. And no matter how much I want to move my hand to his cheek and push away the hair from his face and trace his birthmark beneath his eye, I cannot do it, because I have used up all of my energy and I have nothing left, nothing at all. And, when he kisses me, I want to be able to kiss him back, and I know that in this moment I will not be able to.

I take a breath. Blink and then leave my eyes closed, because my lids are too heavy to lift. "Not today, Lance," I say softly.

He lets out a breath. "Ok," he says, and I know he is not angry, not mad, but patient. I feel his shoulder move against mine. And I so want to touch him, in this moment, that it hurts, but there is nothing I can do, and I am frustrated with the limitations of my body and the unfairness of the world, and I am sad for him and for me and for the both of us, for whatever this is. And I feel tears gathering in the corners of my eyes, and there is nothing I can do to stop them, and they run down, across my skin, and soak into the pillow.

"What's wrong, Syl?" he asks. He rolls onto his side and his hand cups my cheek, and his thumb sweeps the tears from beneath my eye.

I hate myself and this body I am trapped in and the world that has put me here; all the horrible people who are in healthy bodies who go around killing people and inflicting the misery that is inside them on others while they themselves live on, healthy and strong and not realising the worth of it. And I hate that there are children like Tatiana, so full of life but not strong enough to hold on to it. I hate that God or whoever is in charge of all of this decided to make us this way. I hate suffering and whoever invented it, whoever was cruel enough to say that we have to suffer; whoever was smart enough to realise that we need suffering to survive, anyway, because how else would we know what survival was? And I hate that there must be death in order to live. I hate the cruel circularity of life and the way that everything is connected and the way that there is a reason for everything and I don't understand it but I hate it I hate it I hate all of it so much that I feel like I could explode with the feeling of it.

"I'm tired," I say, because it encompasses all I am and all I will ever be.

His hand leaves my cheek and curves around my ribs, his arm over my stomach, and he presses his forehead against mine, the tips of our noses touching. I can't see him, but I know what he is doing; I can feel his slightest movement to the tips of my toes.

"Me too," he says, simply. And we fall asleep like that, spiralling into the one darkness to which people will go willingly.

This time, I do not dream, or, if I do, I do not remember it.