April 21, 2016

Mitch:

'Mom, please. It's embarrassing.'

'Honey, Marley didn't make half as big of a deal about it as you are. It's just a dress. Look, I even got you a red one.'

'I'm not like Marley. Can't I just wear that?'

'You can't wear jeans and a sweater in the picture. No.'

'Mom...'

My chest feels tight when I wake up, I feel like I can't breathe. I carefully sit up and turn so that my feet are on the floor and I leave the bedroom as quickly and quietly as I can. No one in their right mind wakes up at this time of day and he didn't go to bed until four in the morning. My mind feels a hundred times more awake than my body does, and I catch myself holding my breath when I turn the doorknob to close the door. The house is silent except for the high-pitched, nearly unhearable white noise from the modem down the hall in Jerome's room and the faint wheezing noise coming from my lungs.

I don't want to do this now. Why is this still happening? This isn't going to last forever, is it? It's so stupid, flashing back to something that most people wouldn't even remember in the first place, then dealing with the landslide of baggage that always comes with it. What brought all of this up again? I silently close the door to Jerome's musty-smelling bedroom and sink down on the dusty bed that's become little more than a prop in the background of his videos. The modem screeches on, unaware or uncaring. My heart's still pounding as I fight with my lungs to absorb the faint stench of ancient rotten chicken wafting in from the bathroom. I try to think about the day we pranked Lachlan a lifetime ago, but nothing can compete with the overwhelming wave of emotion flowing out of the nightmare. All I can feel is panic.

'See? You look fine. Now just let me comb out your hair and-'

'Mom, please...'

'It's only for a few hours, then you can take it off.' She turns away for a second and pale, freezing hands are already fumbling to undo the zipper on the back of the suffocatingly tight velvet dress. 'Why are you being so difficult today?'

The memory cuts out.

She is rubbing her temple while she leans against the doorway, frowning at me as she watches me walk out of the bathroom, hair tied back again with the expensive black sweater and last year's too-small jeans on. 'I told you 'no.' Why don't you ever listen to me?'

'Why don't you ever listen to me?'

'Don't talk back to me. I told you-'

'And I told you I can't do it. I feel like crap-'

'Watch your language.' Something inside of me explodes.

'- I'm not a girl! Stop trying to make me be one!' I regret the words as soon as they leave my mouth. No one was ever, ever supposed to know that. I am drowning in my own panic. I can't catch my breath. The air burns. Her eyes are so wide she looks like a wax statue. She is blocking the way to my room so I do the only thing I can do: I turn around and run. Down the hallway, down the stairs, out the back door, into the woods. I come out the other side by the freeway exit and I head for the park benches hidden back behind the trees on the other side.

What am I supposed to do now?

They don't need me, not when they have Marley, the normal one. They can find whatever went wrong and keep it from happening to Ky-Ky. I'm just the odd one out. The family freak. Who would want to have a fucking freakshow as a daughter? My ribs hurt so much from the fear and from holding back the tears. The bottoms of my bare feet are scraped up from running over twigs and rocks and the rough road without shoes on.

How much farther am I going to have to walk from here?

Where am I supposed to go?

My forehead is on my knees and my heartbeat is roaring in my ears. I don't want to ever open my eyes again. I ruined everything, like I always do. Why did I have to make the rest of my family miserable, too? Why did I have to tell her? I hear the grass brushing against feet behind me and I throw myself forward to run. Hands grab my arm and I stumble and fall back on the bench. I don't want to do this.

'It's okay. It's okay. You're okay. We'll figure this out. It's okay.'

All I can do is hide my face in her frilly dress shirt and bawl.

I wait for the worst of it to pass, watching the reflection of the sunrise from the pool creep across the ceiling in reds and golds. I only got a few hours of sleep before something triggered this hologram of regret and misery to start replaying in my head. How long is it going to take for the hormone surge to pass? My stomach feels too heavy to move as the dread and repressed rage come back. I can't escape from my own internal hell.

'How are you feeling, Michelle?'

'Fine.'

'What does that mean, 'fine?' How does 'fine' feel?'

'It feels fine. It always feels like this.'

All I ever do is feel. I'm tired of feeling. I just want to be. I don't want to have to think about how this makes me feel or how it makes him feel or where I went wrong or what the consequences of slipping up and saying the wrong thing would be. I don't want to feel a thousand miles away from him anymore. I don't want to lie awake and wonder if therapy, or drugs, or surgeries can fix this. I don't want to feel like everything is always destined to be broken. I don't want to feel better: I want to be better.

'- your child. Reaching out for help was the best thing you could have done and I can connect you to the resources - suffering from depression - anxious - feels left out. There's nothing wrong - abnormal - different - doesn't understand... feel better again.'

I open my eyes again and give up on trying to get back to sleep. Three hours will have to be enough. I check to make sure that the door is locked and go over to his dresser, tugging at the top drawer to see if I can get it open. If he would stop stealing shit from me, he would have enough room for his clothes. I grab whatever was on top and do the same for the other unfolded, somewhat contained piles of clothes he has amassed. I forgot to grab a towel and I know he stopped restocking the towel closet in this bathroom long ago after the ghost of the chicken set in, so the beach towel hanging on the back of the bedroom door is the only choice left. The closer I get to the closed bathroom, the more rank it smells. I open the door and peer in, preparing to see the midpoint of some horrific prank he's been planning, but nothing looks out of the ordinary. I turn the light on - still nothing. I pull the door closed and turn the shower on, watching suspiciously to see if anything squirts out of the shower head - still nothing. I'll have to hire a plumber to check the pipes here, someday, probably the next time we let Ryan cook something at our house and he clogs another sink with grease and overcooked meat. The smell never dissipates, but I don't have the luxury of leaving the door open in case Alex decides to try to prank us back; no one ever needs to see this.

' ... with the understanding that sh... he will always struggle with body image issues. There are limits to what medicine and plastic surgery can do but it would be a significant improvement over how he feels now. Just something to think about.'

It sounded so great at the time: go to the hospital one day and walk out the next day as a guy. It seemed so simple. I run my fingers across my stomach, rubbing each indented pink scar and rippled pale stretch mark I've accumulated over the last two months. I've put on twenty pounds of fat and water weight since it happened and my hormones are still so unbalanced that all I feel like doing is eating, sleeping, and fucking everything that moves. I look away from one mess and look up at another: my face. I see my nose wrinkle up in disgust when I see how oily my skin is again. It hasn't been like this in years. I could deep fry chicken nuggets on my forehead, then polish them like diamonds along my nose before I served them. Red and pink spots are popping up around my chin and on my neck and the sides of my nose are flaking again, even though I clean this shit off four times a day with overpriced brand name acne cleanser. You would think I haven't showered in a week, my hair is already so greasy from all of the sweat and oil since yesterday morning. I look like I'm falling apart, and nothing I do can keep it from happening. I open the glass shower door and just stand face-up under the scalding hot water. I want to feel clean again.

---

April 23, 2016

Jerome:

I don't wanna fight. He doesn't wanna fight. We're gonna fight. Even Alex feels it 'cause he hasn't been downstairs in days. Mitch was the last one outta bed today, for once, and I make sure I'm sitting at the kitchen bar when he comes downstairs. His hair's still wet and I see he's wearing another shirt I'm pretty sure's mine. I wonder how that got started? He catches me staring at the green and black Monster t-shirt and he smirks as he walks past to stroke the Keurig and try to get it to work for him for once.

"You have almost all of my shirts in your room, dood. You take my shit, I take yours."

"Fair enough. I thought you did it 'cause you liked me, but..." He gets this weird, neutral poker face look and he turns to finish squirting out his coffee.

"I like you, but I like my taste in clothes better. I can't walk around naked all the time, dood." Now wouldn't that be a sight. He'd never do it, though. He can't even walk past a mirror with clothes on without making faces.

"No, but I can. They're all your clothes now. Here," I say as I stand up and start untying the string on a pair of swim shorts that I'm only like fifty-five percent sure are mine. I don't fucking know anymore. Half the time we wake up and walk outta the room with the wrong t-shirts on and Dondo starts crying in his vinegar chips.

"I'm good for now, Jerome." He sits down at the middle chair right next to me and I'm not sure if I like that or not. The thunder rumbles again outside and it reminds me why I'm sittin' here in the first place. He takes out his phone and he doesn't even manage to get it unlocked before I open my big mouth again.

"Hey, Mitch?"

"Yeah?"

"We've gotta talk."

"I know we do. Just let me wake up first."

"But this's really important." He looks suspicious and he braces himself for the bad news. I hate always being the bringer of bad news. Bad news never works out good for me, but this much, at least, he has to know about. "So you know how you said the chicken bathroom smells like funky fuck?"

"Yeah..."

"I found out why." His eyes are narrowed and I can feel him accusing me. Why's everyone always think everything bad's my fault? "And I didn't do it."

"What was it?"

"It'd be better if I showed you. Words can't really do it justice." He sighs and looks longingly at his cup of soon-to-be-cold coffee and he slowly gets up and follows me upstairs. I can hear it from the hallway and I just hope it hasn't spread. I only found out about it like an hour ago, so he can't get too pissed at me. I told him as soon as I could and I didn't do anything to make it worse. I open the bedroom door and it smells like wet street and rainy woods in here, and houses aren't supposed to smell like that. "This's what happens when you have a Flori-duh and move where there's hurricanes and shit. We need a bigger bucket." He puts his head against the doorway and starts gently knocking his forehead on the unevenly painted white wood.

"This isn't happening. Jerome, tell me this isn't really happening." I look in the dark bathroom again and I know what I see. And I sure as fuck know what I smell. I use the flashlight on my phone to check on it again, and that's about as fuckin' real as it gets. Real scary. And suggestive-looking as hell.

"The roof's pissing again, Mitch. Or cumming. I don't know how else to describe it." The steady, smelly stream continues right down through the middle of the gooey, caving ceiling and into a bright yellow bucket that's almost three-quarters full already after just an hour. And I really don't wanna get that water on me. We just stand there in silence, me waiting and him fuming. The shady old bastard who sold him this piece of shit was real skilled with smoke and mirrors. And paint. Fucker's been nothing but a mistake since the day after we moved in and the roaches came out to play. He looks around the bedroom and when he sees it's still dry - for now - he sits on the bed and just puts his face in his hands. I did the same thing and my name's not even on the insurance policy. Or the credit card that's gonna hafta pay for this shit.

"What are we supposed to do about that?"

"Maybe call that contractor guy? Bet he's makin' good money off this storm."

"He's just going to tell us to let it dry out, which is kind of hard to do when it's raining for the next week straight." He pauses and I'm waiting for him to snap. It's scary to see him so resigned and tired. I think I'd actually rather have him ghost-pepper-level pissed. "Hey, dood? Can you go grab the extra trash can out of the garage? The one we bought when Lachlan broke the compactor?"

"Yeah. Sure. One sec." I shut the door behind me so the scent of salty, moldy sorrow can't get out and I'm only gone a minute or so but he's already walking down the hallway and working out some kinda plan. He bows me forward into the chicken bathroom of horror and woe, the one with no electricity or fancy colored tiles left in the shower or on the walls. And there's a big silver plastic storage tub lid in the middle of the floor with the empty bucket of tears on it. "What...?"

"It'll spread the weight over a bigger surface area. That way it won't go crashing through the floor?" I didn't think about that. I just nod and he punches me in the arm on his way over to grab my computer tower. "This room is next, if the roof is even half as gone as it looks like it is. Grab all of the shit you want to see a week from now and throw it in my room. I'm taking your set-up downstairs to the TV room; you can borrow mine to record and we can edit on yours."

"So... you aren't pissed?" He doesn't even look at me until he hits the halfway point on the stairs.

"Of course I'm pissed. I'm extremely pissed. But look how much good it does for me to be pissed off." His laugh is full of scorn and irritation and I can feel the fight brewin' in the air again, just like the spinnin' storm from hell outside. I turn and head over to start disconnecting my monitors so we can speed up the process. We both need to just get it over with and bitch at each other for a while. Why'd it take so fuckin' long? I'm just waiting patiently on the bed after he finishes his last trip and he looks around like he's asking what the hell I've been doing.

"What's really going on? We need to talk about this, Mitch."

"Sounds good, dood. I'll add it to the bottom of my list, right below me drinking a death cup of that fucking scummy water," he laughs as he jerks his thumb towards the creepy ass bathroom of death and disease. He starts pulling the dresser drawers open and throwing shit on the bed. Typical Mitch, always running.

"Look, I know you're still mad about the other day and I get it, but I didn't wanna make you get an infection. I told you that." I keep my voice down so we don't wake up Dondo the Door-Listening Hermit and Mitch seems to take the hint.

"That's why I bought the Saran wrap, Jerome, so there wouldn't be any risk. But as usual, you have to sit there and argue with me then wonder why I'm pissed off. Gee, I wonder why." Here we go. Here comes the first drop on the roller coaster of love.

"I'm not gonna take any more risks. I've fucked things up enough without landing you in the goddamn hospital. Don't you think I feel bad enough causin' all that shit to happen?"

"I told you, it wasn't your fault."

"Of course it was my fault! You didn't do it all by yourself!"

"I told you it couldn't happen! The doctors told me it couldn't happen! It was partially my fault because I should know better than to trust-"

"So now you want me to do it again and start it all over from scratch?"

"It can't happen again, Jerome! It can't physically happen ever again! And that wasn't what I was asking you to do. Why is it okay for me to suck your dick but you suddenly get concerned when I ask you to suck mine?"

"Because I fucked up! Okay? I fucked up and now I'm scared I'm gonna make it worse and you might actually die from it this time and it'll all be my fault. How do you think it feels, just sittin' on the sidelines watchin' you get sick like you're gonna fuckin' die, then see how hard it is for you to deal with it, then watch you hurt and bleed and - and suffer? How do you think that feels, being responsible for all that? And I'm not about to hurt you again. I'm a shitty boyfriend as it is." He's frustrated and he pelts me with pairs of rolled up socks until I stand up and try to escape.

"I don't blame you, dumbass."

"Well, I do."

"Well, I don't. Neither of us knew it could happen, but when it did you weren't an asshole about it. I don't think anyone else would have stuck around to help set the whole thing up and drive me around and babysit me when I was ripping their head off every ten minutes." That hurts, too, and he notices. "You're fucking kidding me, right?"

"I just... I still feel bad. I know it woulda been a mistake to do anything else but I can't help it." He pinches the bridge of his nose in irritation and I'm surprised he's keeping it together so well. I was sure that one'd send him clear up the wall and out the broken ass roof. I thought he'd be outta orbit at this point. "I know you'd never-"

"Not only that, but it isn't the right time to have a kid, Jerome. Adam is good at pretending he has his shit together when he doesn't. We aren't. I mean, look at this fucking mess. We can't even handle a house, an inanimate object, let alone a kid. We'd be in jail within a year for fucking something up. Maybe when we're fifty and we've retired, but not right now, dood."

"I mean, we hired Dondo..." He turns all the way around and looks at me and even though we both know I'm not being serious, I can still feel my bones melting from his laser eyes. "Okay, bad joke."

"Just being real for a second, I don't think I ever want kids. I sure as hell don't want them anywhere near my body. I'm not a fucking Pokemon you can breed until you get a shiny."

"I know that. You know I never thought of you that way."

"My point being: for now, I'm saying 'no' way, way into the foreseeable future. I hate kids and I thought you did, too."

"I don't hate kids. I'd just prefer to eat 'em." He gives a snort of laughter and it's his turn to perch on the edge of the bed while I start digging shit outta the closet. At least we're being productive. "This whole thing's kinda changed how I see it, though. I wouldn't mind it... but I wouldn't plan on having kids anytime soon. It just really got to me how we were... we were gonna have a baby. Ya know? That's a big thing and I didn't think I'd ever want it to happen but I guess maybe I kinda do? I don't know, man. It feels like we lost something after all this." I'm not paying attention and I jump outta my skin when he comes up behind me and puts his arms around my stomach. This doesn't happen too often. What the hell? "Mitch?"

"Nothing changed. We just have a choice now. The only difference is that we need a freezer, a petri dish, and a living host for the parasite instead of just booze, bad luck, and Pepto Bismol." I feel warm breath on the back of my neck and I instantly hate him for doing this to me. He knows what he's doing, and now so do I. I grab the shoe of dreams and tuck it under my arm before I start grabbing like twenty pounds of dressy clothes I should just burn 'cause I never use 'em. He doesn't let go and I feel bad askin', but we're never gonna get anywhere like this.

"If you would hurry the fuck up... Maybe we'd finish before the roof caves in." Two minutes later, he's finishing up throwin' all my crap on the roachy floor in the corner by the TV in his room and I'm diggin' in my magic shoe for the good stuff. We both need something after the shitty morning this's turned out to be. I grab a Posh Life inventory invoice off the stack of papers we brought over from my desk and rip it in half before I pack it up and roll it right 'round, baby, right 'round. I light the nasty ass, extra-strong cinnamon cake candle he got specifically to cover our fumes, and I use the same match to light up our new pet roach. The good kind. I smell dirty rainwater and I jerk my head around, looking to see if the whole goddamn roof came off this time. He just opened a window. "Prob'ly not a bad idea."

"I didn't want to set the fire alarms off and awaken the creeps and crawlies."

"You think we should wake him up and tell him? In case it starts in there next?"

"He'll be fine. Not counting the bathroom downstairs, his room is the only room left in the house without water damage. That we know of."

"You aren't countin' Lachlan, Mitch. What he did was a helluva lot worse than water damage." The glowing orange line hits the edge of the ball of goodness and it roars quietly as it explodes and starts eating away at the dry leaves. A middle finger of smoke starts drifting out and I hand it to him to take the first smoke. We need some of his profound ideas about now.

"There you go, dood. We finally found a way to get the guacamole stains out of the carpet: drown it in rancid water and runny bird shit."

"Just rip the whole fuckin' room outta this space-time continuum and pretend it never happened. I know what I heard that night. And his voice'll never let me forget it." He snickers and little puffs of white smoke spurt out of his nose, and he hands the bundle of joy back to me before he goes and stands by the open window to blow it out. He just stands there for a while, looking out at the gigantic drops of semi-purified sewer water pelting down in the pool and making everything just that much dirtier. What's he worried about now?

"What isn't there to worry about, dood? We're underwater in this fucking house in more ways than one. I just charged eighty thousand dollars on my business credit card. I don't know what we're going to do if they audit it when they finish processing the paperwork and find out it wasn't a business expense, or if they audit it when I do taxes this year and I get fined for misusing business credit. I have no way to pay it back. YouTube is dying. The house is dying. Everything in the house is dying. You need to pay your guys for the next six months. Nooch is drowning in his own artistic fucking sorrow. And I would sell the rest of my soul to the forces of evil to have an actual, working dick right now so I could marathon your ass hard enough to make it echo in the past." I take another good slurp and pass the joint joint back to him.

"So that's what that was in middle school. Ma thought I got a nervous twitch 'cause I didn't like people. Who knew?"

"Who would've known?" He takes a long drag and puts his head down on his crossed arms on the windowsill. "Who would've known what a huge mistake this whole thing was? We both could have gone to college - Nooch could've finished college the first time - you'd be a fucking doctor, I'd be running my own business -"

"You never said what kinda business. Always made me wonder."

"Depends on how things worked out with you. Either game production or something with you online, if you didn't go to med school. We would've be the richest motherfuckers in Nowhere Land after five or ten years. We could be retiring next year, for good." Back to me and we're about halfway through it now. I feel a lifetime's calmer than I did just a few minutes ago. This was the right way to handle all this shit. "Yeah, feels good."

"True dat. Got rich doing what, though? This," I give the ashes at the tip a good tap, "or workin' for The Gnome?"

"Either dealing or data mining, whichever you could make work. Anyone who helps The Gnome gets what's coming to them, if not from him then from someone else. I thought you said someone got him."

"Title's still up for grabs. Zeus knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who saw the photos they got. Big bid war, all against all for the files."

"Photos of what?"

"His niece. She's six." All the anger and hurt and disgust is killin' the chill. Sick motherfucker ruins everything. I hand him the nubby little smoky paper back. "Someone won. Don't know who. Can't imagine the BitCoin gettin' laundered that day. The Gnome dug himself a hole to hide in but they never turned his ass in. Hate to say it, but it mighta been for the best. Gives him something new to do for a while. He was snoopin' around our shit for a long, long time. His cronies kept tryin' to put bots on us and tried to hack your phone once. Imagine if he found out? What'd we do then?"

"This." The world's nothing but smoke and warmth and need. He breathes a lungful of tingly smoke into my lungs and his hands are running up and down my lower back. Oh, fuck... I missed this. "Me, too. Come on." He crushes the end of the blunt into the glowing candle and he bluntly leads me over to his bed. Or, I guess it's our bed now 'cause I don't have a room anymore. "You haven't slept in there since Christmas, dood. Don't pretend you're shocked." I guess we're officially moved in together now.

He crawls up on the bed gingerly and I don't wanna feel guilty anymore. But how could he not be pissed at me for what happened? I'm afraid to even touch him. I don't wanna hurt him anymore. He pulls me closer anyways and now we're layin' next to each other on our sides and I don't ever wanna let go. I fucked up so bad. I'm so sorry...

"What do I have to do to make you understand it wasn't your fault? You have to let it go, Jerome." His shirt smells like Dad soap and fabric softener and weed and the two drops of coffee he got to drink before I dragged him back upstairs. I can't cry anymore - there're no tears left - but I feel like I'm suffocating in my own goddamn guilt and it hurts so fuckin' much.

"Dammit, Mitch. That candle's nasty."