Chapter 25: Mind Or Heart?

            Marshall smelled like strawberries. Mixed with a touch of marshmallows. And pink bubble-gum. It smelled so sweet, so childish, and so innocent. Maybe that was why I felt such a calming tranquility within me despite what had just happened, as if his innocence had a way of purifying the darkest parts inside of me. It was like my brain felt nothing. There was no logic and I wasn’t caught in the usual labyrinth woven by my strict reasoning and rationality.

Instead I felt free, and I was so unaccustomed to the feeling that I wasn’t sure what to do with it. It was like I had just been given wings without instructions on how to fly and Marshall was, in that weird way of his, teaching me how to use them by having me on his back. I imagined him saying, “now flap your wings Camila, keep flapping, keep flapping” and when the time was right, like teaching a kid how to ride a bicycle, he’d let go and disappear from below me and I’d somehow be able to keep afloat in the air.

            It was so hard to grasp reality right then, but in actuality, Marshall had taken it upon himself to piggyback me home, which was at least a thirty minute walk, all uphill, and he was heaving and saying to me “don’t worry. You’re not… you’re not heavy at all” even though I’d been silent all along.

            When we got back, he finally let me down and glanced around at the house before giving me a meek smile. “Tell me… you have the keys Cam-Cam.”

            I couldn’t even look Marshall in the eyes and could only raise my gaze up to his nose after several hard attempts. I wasn’t exactly sure what my problem was though it was likely that clinging onto him and crying into his chest for almost an hour in the middle of the school parking lot had finally done my pride in somehow. Nevertheless, I pointed at the garden gnomes by the little flowerbed to the right side of the house and Marshall ventured over and eventually found the key underneath the third one in the middle. 

            After we made our way inside, the first thing Marshall did was make a bath for me upstairs. I felt like my soul had just been transferred into someone else’s body and that my mind was slowly coming off a heavy dosage of hospital morphine, but I wasn’t so clueless not to realize my body was a dirty mess, and flaccidly followed him when he led me into the bathroom. There I let myself sit down on the edge of the bathtub before dipping a finger inside the soapy water to test the temperature. It was only slightly above lukewarm and enjoying the new warmth to my hands, I traced the alphabet on the water as Marshall kneeled down in front of me.

            Truthfully, I wasn’t quite sure why he was still there. If it was the other way around and it was Marshall who was acting spoiled and unresponsive, I might have already dragged him up by his collar and slapped him a hundred times across the face. However, he was as different from me as an elephant was to a rock, and instead of being impatient, continued to smile at me as if I wasn’t being unreasonable towards his thoughtfulness at all.

            “I need you to wash up a little okay?” He said to me. “And then we’ll take care of your wounds after that. Are you okay? Can you do that?”

            I kind of just… shrugged, but Marshall took that as progress and reached for my cardigan. “Here, let’s take this off first.” Gently, he managed to slip it out of my arms and throw it over his shoulders like this was all déjà vu to him and he had gone through this at least a million times. “Now then,” he said, and by now my eyes can finally meet his for at least a few seconds at a time, and they shone mischievously as his lips lifted into a smirk. “How about the rest of your clothes? Want me to help you take those off too?”

            He didn’t give me any time to respond, not that I would have given him one even if he waited for the next ten years, and then quickly told me he was joking before giving my head a soft pat of encouragement. After he closed the door behind him, I slowly slipped out of my clothes and noticed some bruises starting on my arms and legs, some smaller, some bigger, some fainter, some darker, as well as a yellow-ish one growing near my hip bone. There were also some cuts and scratches though I wasn’t sure where they came from, and it was likely that I caused some of them myself when I dropped to my knees in the parking lot.

            It was also a good thing Marshall made the bath lukewarm. Although the water felt good on certain parts of my body, it stung other parts and made me cringe in pain when I stepped in.

            Marshall also came to check up on me every five minutes or so, knocking on the door and asking if I was okay, and I would respond by smacking my shampoo bottle against the edge of the bathtub twice so he would know that I was alive and breathing inside and hadn’t drowned myself out of despair. Once I was finished and had clothed myself in the pyjamas he left outside the bathroom door, he bandaged me up with the first-aid kit he must have ransacked my house for, and then tucked me to bed.

            “You want me to blow-dry your hair before you sleep Camila? It’s not good to sleep with wet hair you know.” I shook my head and he released a sigh in response. “Well alright. I guess once or twice can’t hurt.”

            When he turned to leave, it surprised me and made my heart flinch when I reached out and grabbed onto the back of his shirt. I didn’t know how to explain how I felt, but I just didn’t want to see him go. I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted him to stay with me, and although my hand was shaking as it gripped onto his shirt, those fingers of mine refused to let him go and held onto him with all the strength they can muster. It embarrassed me horribly to reveal this side of myself to him, and even more so when his eyes would only look at me with an infinite amount of gentleness and tell me that he understood what I needed without me having to say the words.

            “I’m not leaving yet,” he said softly, smiling. “I was just gonna grab your clothes from the bathroom is all. Maybe clean up a little.” I tightened my hand on his shirt. “Or… I could do it later,” he decided staring down at my hand. “Do you want me to stay?”

            And in that one moment when I met his eyes, I knew that my efforts had been useless all along. There was actually never any need to hide this side of myself from him. Somewhere along the path, Marshall had taken one look into my eyes and known this side of me existed, and that it was as much a part of me as the overbearing stronghold Camila was. And when I realized he had always understood on some level, there was something so weak, and yet so liberating knowing he had known, and accepted, and stayed, that made me smile up at him through clouded eyes.

            “Stay,” I whispered.

            “Alright,” he said, and took up a seat on the side of my bed. “I’ll stay. I won’t move an inch from here so just relax and sleep it off. I’ll guard you today. I swear on it.”

            And guarded me he did because even though I should have dreamt of blood, and blood, and blood, I was swept away into a world where the wind that brushed through my hair smelled like pink bubble-gum, and the clouds floating through the sky were strawberries, and the meadow of cornstalks I ran through bore fruit to marshmallows instead of corn. 

            When I woke up, a thick orange glow casted itself into my room through the window leaving the center of the room dimly lit but the corners lurking with shadows. Marshall laid peacefully beside me, asleep, hugging the teddy bear he had gotten me over the weekend, his head hogging a corner of my pillow. “So much for not moving an inch,” I muttered, feeling much, much better after sleeping the memories of the afternoon off.

            My voice must have startled him because he promptly stirred and opened his foggy eyes to look at me. “Ah,” he chuckled. “I fell asleep on the job, didn’t I?”

            “No kidding,” I said and even though I meant for it to sound angry, it came off as anything but that. I tried glaring at him, but Marshall returned my look by crossing his eyes and the stupid expression he gave me was enough to make my lips curl into a smile. “Ahh… this feels good for some reasons,” I said stretching my arms after pushing his face away from me. “I feel a lot better after taking a nap.”

            “But are you okay?” He asked. “You got hurt pretty badly earlier. Are you in pain anywhere? Should I have taken you to a doctor instead?”

            His eyebrows furrowed in concern and I decided not to bother him with the small aches and pains I had. “Nah, I’m fine,” I said. “Luckily, I’m built like a tank.”

            “Ah, that makes me jealous,” he laughed and then softened his voice. “Thank you.”

            I raised an eyebrow. “For?”

            “For being okay. For eveything. For nothing. Just cause.”

            I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. The window was opened and the smell of night descending seemed to bring my tired limbs back to life. If I spread my arms it was as if I might really fly away, blown by the soft breeze through the window like a helium balloon might. “Hey Marshall?”

            “Hm?”

            “Just for the rest of today, can I be some other Camila? As if none of it ever happened, today, my past, my scars, acting, singing, Broadway, as if none of it ever existed… can I?”

            When I turned to look at him, the infinite sweetness and softness still filled his eyes and I hopelessly smiled back when he smiled at me. “You don’t need anyone’s permission for that, you know right?”

            I nodded.

            “By the way, I think your dad was trying to call you earlier. I heard the answering machine downstairs I think.”

            Knowing that my dad should have been home by now if it was a regular workday, I hurried to call him back after I listened to his message. Apparently he had gone out of town for work earlier, which wasn’t a big deal since it was less than a two hour drive, but the problem was he had parked his car at a bad spot and now it was towed, and he wouldn’t be able to get it and be back until the next morning.

            How absolutely cliché. Now Marshall and I would be alone for the next few hours. On the other hand, if my dad had come home normally today, he would have probably thought I had gotten beaten up by Marshall, and murdered him before I had the proper chance to explain. In the end, this was a blessing in disguise: Marshall got to keep his life and I didn’t have to make up an excuse for every bruise on my body just yet.

            “So when’s he coming home?” Marshall asked, coming down the stairs.

            “Don’t worry. I’ll send you home before he gets back.” I watched him breathe in relief and stifled a laugh myself before noticing his clothes. “Shouldn’t you take a shower too?” I asked. “Since you carried me back and I was dirty. I can’t believe I let you sleep on my bed earlier.”

            Marshall pulled on his shirt and sniffed it. “I don’t smell anything,” he murmured.

            “My dad says that also,” I told him, “after he comes in from mowing the lawn and pulling the weeds in the sun for several hours.”

My remark made Marshall crack a smile, but he was resilient in his belief. “Even if I do take a shower, it’s not like I have anything to change into.”

            “You can just wear my dad’s clothes.” Without another word, I ushered him up to my dad’s bedroom which had a private bathroom attached. While he showered, I spent my time lying on my dad’s bed. There were times my head felt a bit dizzy, and then throbbed uncontrollably at others, but closing my eyes for a while seemed to be the right fix for the impairment and each time I was thankful when the annoyance passed.

            When Marshall came out, he was dressed in these dreadful blue Hawaiian shorts with big orange flowers decorating them, and a large white tee with the words “#1 DAD” and a big red heart right underneath it. As soon as I saw him, I stood up on the bed and laughed.

            “Shut up,” he flustered. “Did you really have to pick these clothes?”

            “They suit you,” I laughed. “Dad.”

            “Are you kidding me?” Laughing, he ran and took one leap before jumping on top of the bed. I lost my balance when he intruded into my territory, but he caught my hand and somehow we ended up laughing and jumping on my dad’s bed after. Both my hands were in his.

            “Hey. You remember the first time we met?” He asked. “I was naked and you burst into the guys’ shower room? Remember?”

            Marshall let go of one of my hands, and as he twirled me with the other, I bounced around in a small circle before our hands met again. “Mhmm,” I murmured, snickering at the memory. “And I pretended to be pregnant.”

            “Yeah,” he said, gloomy faced and all. “You pretended to be pregnant.” Groaning, he made a mad tug at his shirt. “So do you realize how scary it is to wear this shirt right now?!”

            “No problem. No problem.” I laughed.

            “It is a problem,” he shouted. “It’s totally a problem!”

            I continued teasing him and somewhere in between, we changed our jumping pattern. This time every time he jumped up, I was down, and every time I was up, he was down, as if we were playing on some imaginary teeter-totter on the bed.

            “But do you know what is a problem?” I babbled. “This is a bed Marshall not a trampoline. Are you sure you should be jumping like– ” And just as I said it, Marshall smashed his head into the ceiling and came tumbling down holding his head.

            “This is why I tried to tell you,” I shouted, kneeling down to check on him. “Did you really think you were five again?”

            “No,” he groaned. “I just forgot to keep my head and back bent because you got me all worked up.”

            “Excuses,” I muttered, and it was right after I said that when the light above our heads flickered – just quickly, barely half a second. Marshall and I both looked up, and then, flash, just like that, the entire room went black.

            It was way past sunset now and although the sky probably wasn’t completely masked outside, the light coming through the closed window blinds were virtually non-existent. “You can’t be joking!” I scoffed.

            “Is it a power outage? That’s weird. I didn’t think there was a storm outside or nothing.”

            “Somebody probably knocked down the power lines.” Sighing, I felt Marshall trying to crawl his way over me off the bed and I got tangled up in him trying to fight my way out of bed first. “Stop it. Hey that’s mine. Watch where you’re touching.”

            “What are you talking about? That’s my leg.”

            “No that’s… oh maybe that is your leg.”

            “Loser,” he laughed.

            “You want me to bite you?” I snapped.

            “Yeah okay. I’m kind of into that.”

            We couldn’t help but break into small giggles, and between fighting and playing Twister in the dark, we managed to make our way out and downstairs. I tried on a few light switches just to make sure it wasn’t the breaker for the lights upstairs, and sure enough, it was a real power drought. With Marshall’s phone as a light source – since I had left mine inside my school locker – I fumbled through some drawers and managed to find a flashlight, some matches and a bunch of candles.

            After placing the candles strategically throughout the kitchen and the living room, I took the flashlight to search the cabinets for food. If I wanted to keep Marshall around for company, I had to feed him right? But there wasn’t a whole lot that was edible under the current condition besides a stash of my dad’s favourite instant cup ramen. At least there was a hot water warmer in the kitchen and the water should still be steeping inside even if the power had already gone out.

            “What are you gonna eat then?”

            “My dad always packages food for me inside the fridge,” I replied.

            “Oh, your boxes of lettuce,” he groaned. “Rabbit food. C’mon Camila, you said you wanted to be different today ya? Forget about dancing, singing, ya? You can forget about your diet too. Eat ramen with me.”

            “Fine,” I muttered, after a moment of thought. I leaned against the kitchen counter and curiously watched Marshall as he peeled back the opening and poured water and soup mix into the Styrofoam cup. “But does cup ramen even taste good?” I asked. “I don’t really remember what it tastes like. It looks kind of weird.”

            “You’re like an alien,” he said, and when he saw me make a threatening face at him, he laughed and quickly added, “A cute one. A cute one!”

            After we settled down in front of the dining table, Marshall quickly dug into his meal while I continued to study him. “Aren’t you supposed to wait three minutes?” I asked.

            “Yeah, but I like to eat mine undercooked.”

            “Who's an alien now?” I scoffed, and watched him chow down as I waited three minutes for mine like the countless times I had seen my dad eat his. When the noodles were ready, I peeled back the cover and stirred around it before swallowing hard.

            Marshall watched me intently before nodding his chin at it. “Well? Go on, eat it.”

            “I am!” I threw a glare at him, and ignoring the nervous bubbles inside my stomach, I lifted the fork, blew on the noodles twice before biting into it. I think my eyes widened a bit too much when the taste hit my tongue. It was like volcanoes were erupting inside my mouth and the flavour flowed to every corner of my taste-buds like red hot lava. “Oh my God,” I shouted. “This taste!!!”

            “Right?! Right?! It’s good ya?”

            “It’s amazing!”  

            After eating, Marshall pulled a Monopoly game out of nowhere and begged me to play. I didn’t even know where he found it, or realized I had something like that inside my house all this time. The last time I played it was forever ago – so long I can’t even put a rough time period to it. Of course we got sick of it eventually, or at least I did since Marshall was a gigantic cheat. Or I thought he was since it can’t be possible for a guy to win every single round, right? Worse, Marshall had that cracked up way of counting his money and laughing like a mad man every time he earned some more fake paper cash.

            “Why are you so obsessed with money?” I asked him later, when we had ventured into the backyard out of boredom to lie on the grass and stargaze lazily. We were both horribly misplaced on the lawn, Marshall lying in one direction with his arms spread-out and me in another, with my head resting on his lap. “Are you going into business after graduation or something?”

            “Nah,” he laughed. “I can’t run a business.”

            “What do you plan to do then? Do you have something you want to be?”

            “Mhmm.”

            “And that is?”

            “I can’t tell you yet,” he laughed. “You’ll find out when I succeed.”

            I smiled and closed my eyes, letting whatever thought that came into my head be spoken without filter. “Speaking of which, shouldn’t you call your parents to let them know that you’re here?”

            “It’s okay. I texted my brother awhile ago.”

            That was news to me. “You have a brother?” I asked, opening my eyes. I really didn’t know a single thing about him at all, though that fact shouldn’t surprise me anymore. “I didn’t know that,” I muttered. “How many siblings do you have?”

            “A couple.”

            “Really? Younger or older? You guys close?”

            There was a pause and I wasn’t sure if I was just imagining it or it was real, but there was something like awkwardness in his voice when I heard him speak. “Younger,” he said, “and you?” He asked, quickly changing the topic. “You’re going to become an older sister soon aren’t you? Excited?”

            I swore. A loud capital F. And he knew enough from just that how excited I was that Diana was pregnant.

            We spoke for hours after, about just anything, from random did-you-knows to school to the people and the things we hate. By the time I had to get up to go to the toilet, my bones ached from having stayed almost perfectly still for the past little while. My head had a quick dizzy rush, but I closed my eyes for a moment and was able to wander inside with the flashlight soon after.

            It was after my bathroom break that I decided to go into my room to check the time. It was one of those clocks that ran on both battery and electricity so it came handy during these situations. The first moment I found out that such clocks existed, I had to go out and get one right away. There was no way I was going to miss something important in the morning just because of some small power outage that happened over night that I had no idea about; I ran on a tight schedule after all.

            As soon as I opened the bedroom door however, the lights flickered again and suddenly everything went running back up. I could even hear the noisy hum of the fridge all the way from the kitchen downstairs like it was some giant bear that had been starving itself for the entire season and now had food right in front of its face. In a way, I too worked like that. It was as if there was some switch inside of me, and when the power came back, my switch also flicked back on.

            I took one glance at the clock: 12:05am, and then began to pull open my drawers in my room. I found a couple here, and a couple there, and some that I hid under my mattress, but it wasn’t enough so I briskly moved to my dad’s room knowing he’d have the rest that I didn’t. He always kept it in one place and since he puts it there with the air that I can take it when it’s an emergency, I didn’t think twice about taking it. Once I had enough, I clutched the stack in my hand and walked downstairs, nonchalantly, robotically. The only abnormal fact was the unsteady heartbeats thumping out of me as if my heart had gone insane and was wrecking havoc inside my chest.

            When I got downstairs, Marshall must have just come in from the backdoor and shivered in the kitchen as his body adjusted to the warmth inside. “The power is back!” He said, opening the fridge to check the light before closing it. “Nice!”

            “Here,” I said, and after walking up to him I pushed the handful of money I had prepared towards him. “From the time you found me until now. Ten hours. So ten hours multiplied by twenty dollars an hour. It’s two hundred bucks. It’s also past midnight so you should take it and leave. You can probably make it for the last bus if you hurry.”

            Confusion swam in Marshall’s eyes as he looked into mine – the blue and the green in his iris swirling and chasing and chasing each other in an eternal loop. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to read out of me, but my head was empty like an infinite abyss. It was just as simple as the light switch; the time was up, and I no longer needed Marshall’s company, or wanted to get to know him, and the time spent with him today was time that I could have spent doing something else more productive, but due to an unintended weakness, failed to accomplish.

It was simple. It was natural.

            But then, if that was the case, why did I feel so uneasy? Why did my stomach swirl and make me feel like vomiting? Why was my chest throbbing?

            Slowly, I watched Marshall taking in the situation. He stared at the money emotionlessly before he looked away, shaking his hair in front of his eyes to hide his gaze. When his hand lifted toward mine, I felt my throat dry up. Was he… was he really going to take it?

            Don’t take it.

            No. What was I thinking? Stop it.

            Don’t take it. Please! Just do what you always do Marshall. Hit me with some stupid line. Anything right now. You can say anything you want right now. I’ll believe it. I’ll believe you!

            No! Stop it! That wasn’t what I wanted!

            Please don’t tell me the last ten hours only meant this much to you!

            I felt Marshall’s fingertips lightly touch my hand as he took a hold of the money and awkwardly smiled at him.

            I let the money go. I let my hand fall back to my side. This was what I wanted. This was exactly what I wanted.

            He couldn’t seem to look at me. “Thanks,” he whispered.

            “Mm.” I said.

            We stood across from each other silently. For the longest time, that was all we did.

            When he finally spoke, he said, “I should go.”

            “Mm.”

            “Goodnight.”

            “Mm.”

            “Take care.”

            “Mm.”

            And when he left, I sat down on the floor where he left me and placed a hand on top of my heart. “And that’s why,” I said. “You shouldn’t have interrupted.”