Henry 

It has stopped raining.

Thunder rolls across the sky, but distantly. A cool breeze flows and the clouds have started to part. It seems like the worst of the storm is over. Both inside me, and outside here as well.

The damp grass beneath my feet and the cold wind on my skin testify to the dark clouds lifting inside my head.

"Henry."

I turn my head to look behind me and find Irisa standing on the porch of my home. It's a strangely comforting sight. Colourful ink covers the skin on her arms and hands, in which she holds a glass. When she smiles at me, my clouds lift off some more.

She walks over to where I'm standing. "Here," she says, holding out the glass of water to me. "Don't worry, this one won't break." She looks at me and shakes the glass in her hand. "It's plastic, see."

I chuckle lightly and rub a tired hand down my face. "Thanks," I say. As I accept the glass from her hand, our fingers brush. Our eyes meet.

For a moment in time, standing atop the damp grass and under a partly grey sky, we freeze. We're transported back to the kitchen, to when I'd felt as if I were breaking, heart tearing out of my soul, my chest. And Irisa had held me together when even I was rendered incapable of doing so.

Swallowing heavily, I take a step back. I feel lightheaded. Confused. Lost.

But these are feelings that I've come to associate with Irisa. I often find myself lost and confused and overwhelmed when I'm with her, around her. Her presence in my mind consumes my senses, because there is nothing that I can do but try to figure her out.

Now, however, there is another emotion bubbling in my chest. I glance at her from the corners of my eyes, at the fading yet sharp figure that she cuts. At the drawings on her skin that are, somehow, the brightest as well as the saddest thing about her. I see her tugging down the sleeves of her shirt to cover her arms before she folds them around herself, as if she's cold. She might actually be cold. It is a little chilly out here. But her endlessly blue eyes make me think that she's cold because she has been swimming for too long in the ocean inside her head that never ends.

And I have just dumped my pool into her waters as well.

How can I make her smile, help her fight and live and steal moments from life for herself? How, I wonder, when I've become one of the people who add buckets into the ocean in which she's already drowning.

But shame is a useless emotion, my mother had once taught me. It is a pitiful ember in a fire that has burn out. Unless that ember is used to light the torch to the path of atonement.

I spin on my feet, the wet grass providing the momentum I need to start. I hold out the glass toward her. "It's called an IED," I say.

Irisa blinks at me, stumped. I don't say anything else until she takes the plastic, allowing me to go and sit down on the porch steps, wrapping my hands into my lap, hidden from her eyes and mine. Because I don't want her to see them shaking when I start to talk.

"It's called an IED," I say again, slower this time, pacing my words even though it already feels like my heart is catching fire. "Intermittent Explosive Disorder."

The words hang in the air for what feels like an eternity. An eternity where my life, my childhood, flashes in front of my eyes like a perversely comic home movie. The kind that's morbidly funny to watch, but only when it isn't yours.

The cold air around me shifts before Irisa replaces it with her warm smile, sending a slew of goose bumps up my arm. She sits beside me, cross-legged, and mirrors my posture. But her knee touches mine, and when I drag in a deep breath, my shoulder brushes past hers. So even though we're both hiding our hands, we're so close that it feels like an embrace.

And when I look at her, the blue of her eyes reminds me of the endless ocean she holds inside her, but her smile tells me that she's also a damned good swimmer.

"What happened?" she asks, quietly, softly. It seems like a day made for quiet words.

So I tell her, in a voice that's barely above a whisper, in words that are carefully wrapped in something akin to indifference because I'm afraid that the emotions they hold might cut something, break something, or worse, break me.

I tell her that IED is a disorder which makes a person lose control over their anger, makes them explode. I tell her that my dad had IED. Of course, at the time we didn't know that. We just knew that when Nico was one and I was six, dad started to smile less and scowl more. We knew of his sharp words and his foul moods, which would shift so suddenly that we'd jump in surprise. And then in fear. We knew that one day he came back home smelling of alcohol, and then he always smelled like that whenever he'd come home, and that eventually he started drinking around the house.

I tell her of the time he broke a plate, and when Nico ran out of my arms because he was scared and he wanted mum, and he cut his foot on the broken ceramic, dad yelled so loudly that four year old Nico did not talk for a whole day after that.

I tell her how the plates, glasses and other things that he'd throw started to become more aimed and less arbitrary in their direction. Until one day he threw my toy car at mum and cut her arm. And then we'd hide our toys as well as ourselves.

When I have to stop talking to catch my breath, my layer of indifference slipping off like cheap wine, Irisa scoots closer so that the side of her arm is pressed firmly against mine. I close my eyes and hang my head, trying to fill my lungs with enough air. When I open my eyes again, I notice the sky has started to turn shades. The clouds, once grey, are burnished orange and pink now.

The storm really has passed, I realise. And this thought, accompanied with the press of Irisa's arm against mine, serves as a gentle reminder that I'm not alone here. It gives me strength to continue.

"I was thirteen when shit hit the fan. It had been bad before as well. I mean, it had been bad for a long time..." A coarse laugh comes out of me. "It had started with something so small. I think I'd had a bad grade? No," I shake my head, "No, it was the teacher's letter. I'd done poorly on some test and I'd been sleeping in classes because I couldn't at night, you know. And so, she'd had this letter to mum and dad, asking them to come see her. And he thought that I'd said something to her, the teacher."

I wet my lips and fix my gaze at darkening sky. "So yeah. He started screaming his head off. He tore the letter and shoved me toward my room. Told me I couldn't have dinner because of what I'd done. And mum, well. Mum said there was no way she was letting me sleep without eating."

A few moments pass in silence. I've thought about that night before, I've turned it all over in my head countless times. But just now, I realise that I've never actually recounted that night to anyone, out loud.

Irisa shifts beside me, unfolding her legs to stretch them straight out. As I'm about to ask whether she's tired and would like to go inside, I feel her lay her head down on my shoulder. She rubs her nose and tucks strands of blonde hair behind her ear. "What happened next?" she asks me.

Exhaling loudly through my nose, I stare at my hands for a few long beats. Then I rest my head against Irisa's.

"He hit her," I say. My voice is even quieter now, but inside the little bubble that we're in right now, I find that I don't need to be loud to be heard. "He'd never hit her before, not directly. He'd always just... throw things. Or raise his hand and then slam it on something else. But that night, he hit her. Slapped her so hard that for a second I remember thinking if she might've broken her neck." I try and fail to block the image from rising to the front of my mind. "When he raised his hand again, I didn't think, I just ran straight into him and shoved him as hard as I could."

I hear Irisa breathe in sharply, and for a moment I have the urge to laugh. Then it passes and all is quiet again. Except for inside my head, and in my chest.

"I was thirteen. I was skinny and not very tall. But, I'd just seen my dad hit my mum," I say, pronouncing each word slowly. "I didn't think. I just reacted. We both ended up on the floor, and then that was that for me. Dad started to hit me." Now it's my turn to take in a deep breath. "He would've beat the shit out of me, and then out of mum because she was trying to get him to stop. He would have, but..."

Raising her head a little bit, Irisa looks at me. Our eyes meet.

"Nico called the police."

She closes her eyes shut and drops her head back down to my shoulder with a heavy thump. It's as if we both deflate. We don't need to say it out loud because the message is there, in the way we sit in silence for the next few minutes. Mournful. Not of what happened, because it had to, but of how it happened. Mournful for the loss of little Nico's innocence, starting from when he was still an infant, and ending that night.

"He must have been around seven," Irisa whispers. I remember that she, too, has a little sister. So, I know that her horror is coming partly from imagining her sister in a similar situation. But then I think of how Irisa talks about her parents in the past tense, how she always gets so quiet whenever her family is mentioned, and I wonder if she's horrified not because she is imagining the loss of her sister's childhood innocence, but because she might have experienced it happening first hand and is recalling her hurt.

"He'd just turned eight," I say. "The court trials lasted for a few months. It was then when he admitted to being sick, that-that bastard," I spit out, sudden anger coursing through my veins. Irisa touches my hands with cold fingers and gently pries them apart before wrapping her hand around mine.

I close my eyes and let the anger diffuse out of me in a long exhale. "His case worker pleaded psychological disturbance and he got out of a stricter sentence because of that. Instead of locking him up, they sent him to jail for a year, and then to some criminal rehabilitation centre after that."

Sitting up straight, I stretch my neck and look up at the sky. It's almost fully dark now, the sun has already disappeared behind the tall buildings in the distance.

"It's been five years since then. Five years that he's been out of our lives. But," I gaze down at my hands, at Irisa's pale fingers wrapped around mine. She squeezes my hand. I sigh and look at her face, into her eyes, and in the failing light, admit to her what I've been afraid of admitting to even myself.

"I'm afraid of turning into him, into someone like him."

Irisa smiles at me, her eyes crinkling at the corners as her lips spread over flushed cheeks. "Do you know what fear stands for?" she asks me. I shake my head. She leans in closer, and whispers to me, like a secret, told in utter confidence. "Fake. Evidence. Appearing. Real."

I stare at her and blink. Once. Twice. Three times. Then in an equally quiet and serious voice, I say, "Did you just quote the Nightcrawler to me?"

"Yes," she says solemnly.

"Right after I told you about the single most traumatic experience of my life?"

"Yes."

For a moment longer we stare at each other in absolute silence, then we burst out laughing. We laugh until tears flow from my eyes and my stomach hurts. Until Irisa has fallen behind on her back, curling toward me while clutching her stomach and shaking with silent laughter, her head pressing into my lower back.

Suddenly the front door opens behind us and Nico steps out, making Irisa and I sober up really fast, our laughter dying in the blink of an eye.

He's changed into an old tracking suit that used to be mine. He folds his arms across his chest and eyes us. The frown on his face reminds me so much of what I see when I look in the mirror. But it's the hurt in his sad green eyes that breaks my heart.

"I'm sorry," I say. "I'm really, incredibly sorry."

Nico's lower lip wobbles for a second before he clenched his jaw.

"I'm sorry," I say again, because I don't know what else to do.

Irisa scoots to the left, away from me, and pats her hand on the newly made space on the floor. "Please," she says to Nico. "You said I was awesome. Shouldn't that mean that you at least hear me out once?"

Nico shakes his head at her, but then walks over and sit down between us. Even though there isn't much space, he still puts as much distance between me and him as possible, even if it's just a centimetre or so.

"So, I take it that you've had a fight with some kid at school?" Irisa says. She waits for Nico to reluctantly nod at her. "And it wasn't your fault?"

Nico stays quiet for a few moments, and I almost want to tell Irisa to give up, but then he turns his face toward her and starts talking. "There's this guy, Richard, who bullies us. He bullies my friend, Adam, actually. Because Adam hasn't gotten tall yet and he has long hair, like down to his shoulders. But it suits him! But Richard is a sod so he doesn't let up."

I'm hearing all this detail for the first time, and it makes me wonder just how faulty my approach to dealing with his problem had been.

"And I've been trying to be civil, I swear I have been."

Irisa nods at him in encouragement. "I know you must've been. But what happened today?" she gestures toward his knuckles.

Nico rubs the back of his neck. "We were having lunch when Richard walked over and snatched away Adam's sandwich. He'd brought it from home, you know. His mum had made it for him, special. She isn't around much because of her job so sometimes she packs him special lunches," he explains. "But Richard didn't care for any of that. I mean, he stood there, right in front of us, and scarfed down the entire sandwich."

"And then?" Irisa says.

"Then Adam pushed him," Nico says, quietly. "Then Richard's friends jumped Adam. And I—" he hangs his head. "I couldn't let them beat up my friend."

Irisa gazes down at Nico, and so do I. But then she looks up and over his head we lock eyes. And I can tell that we're both thinking the same thing.

I place my hand on Nico's shoulder and turn him around so that he's facing me. His frown now looks more sad than angry, so, without saying anything, I wrap my arms around him.

"You did the right thing," I say to him, hugging him right, holding the back of his head with one hand. "You were protecting your friend. You were fighting for the right cause, though the manner could have been better, but still." I let go and pull him back a little so that I can look into his green eyes, so much like my own, filled with will and vigour that mirrors mine. "You did the right thing," I say, "And I'm sorry for yelling at you. Please forgive me."

This time around it's Nico who hugs me, with so much force that I'm knocked back and have to plant one hand on the wooden floor to support my weight and stop myself from toppling over.

"I'm sorry, too," he says into my chest, and I hold him more fiercely.

Over his head, I catch Irisa's eyes. She smiles, open and wide, and I can tell that she really is a brilliant swimmer, because her eyes are a blue ocean, ever so deep and large, but so is her heart.

Nico let's go of me and turns to Irisa. "You're the best! Like John always plays football with me and Aiza gives me the best food." He holds out his hands to her, as if she's a marvel and he an art critic, "But you're the nicest of them all!"

Irisa laughs. "Thank you, Nicholas. That means a lot."

"His name's Nico," I say, voice filled with mirth.

Nico spins around and scoffs at me in indignation. "No, it is Nicholas, thank you very much." He looks at Irisa again, his face crestfallen and pleading, "Please call me Nicholas. You're the only one who does."

Irisa laughs again, and I think that it's a sound I would really like to hear more often.

When mum comes about half an hour later, she finds the three of us sitting on the porch, huddled together against the cold, listening to Nico animatedly re-enactment stories of all the times I'd tried to play football with him and John, only to then fail miserably.

"Good God," she says, holding Irisa's hands. "You're freezing!"

Mum stuffs Irisa's hands inside the pockets of her coat while shooting me a seething glare over her shoulder, then leads her inside the house with the promise of hot tea that she needs to drink right this instant.

Nico turns to me and nods his head in the direction of the hallway from where we can hear mum and Irisa talking. He whistles, then winks at me.

When I lunge at him, he shoves his bony elbow in my ribs, causing me to gasp. And then the little punk runs inside the house, laughing.

_____

I reach into the bucket of popcorns in my hand. My fingers scrape the bottom of the cardboard container before I grab the last two bits of the remaining kernel. I toss the empty bag into the bin, saying a quite, yass, when I hit the bullseye. I turn to see if anyone else has noticed my achievement, only to find Aiza and John arguing about which film to watch. Just like they have been for the last half an hour, ever since we entered this damned cinema.

Scoffing, I look at Irisa. She's leaning against the wall, eyes reflecting the light of her phone's screen. When she looks up at me, I frown and show her my empty hands.

"You finished the second one as well?"

"Those two gits," I point toward John and Aiza, "Have been arguing for over half an hour. It's enough that I haven't driven back home yet."

Irisa shakes her head at me, rolling her eyes, but a small smile plays at her lips. She pushes off the wall and taps Aiza on the shoulder. It takes an insistent bout of tapping before Lawaiza decides to pause her fight, lips pursed and nostrils flaring.

"What?" she asks. "I'm trying to talk some sense into this fool here."

"Who the fuck are you calling a fool, eh?" John says.

Before they can start fighting anew, Irisa step in between the pair and holds up her phone. "Look," she says, voice hopeful. "I found a movie we can watch. Love, Simon. It's a re-screening, and the show starts in twenty minutes."

Her announcement is followed by a long silence.

Finally, Lawaiza shrugs. "Yeah, I guess. We can watch that." A smile slowly replaces the frown on her face. "I've actually read the book and I remember it being quite good."

I nod my approval, as well, mostly because I just want to sit down and get started with something, anything.

Then we all turn to look at John who hasn't said anything so far. He's looking at the ground, eyes unfocused, lips slightly pursed.

I lightly punch his shoulder. "Hey man. You with us?"

"What?" His head snaps up and he looks at us, eyes glazed for a hot second. Then he shakes his head, as if shaking off a bad thought, his face melting into its usual grin. "Yeah. Yes, let's watch that."

The film actually turns out to be brilliant. It's funny and thoughtful. And sad. Irisa cries. Lawaiza sobs. And even I can't stop my tears from flowing when Simon is talking to his mum and he says, "It's still me."

I also find myself relating to so many of the friends scenes. When Leah has a sleepover at Simon's, and they're both getting ready to sleep, heads facing each other, I instantly look over at John, sitting to my right.

"Hey man, remember that time when—" I say, turning my head toward his, only to find him completely lost. He has that look on his face where his eyes are focused on the screen with great attention, but his gaze seems lost. As if he's looking at what's happening in front of him, but he's thinking about something else entirely.

Throughout the film's running time, my eyes stray toward John time and time again. And for most of those times, I find him looking just as lost. His shoulders hunched, his jaw clenched, as if it's a grey morning and we've just picked him up from the end of the lane down the road from his house.

An hour later, when I roll to a stop in front of the beige-coloured brick house that Irisa points out as her place, I'm still thinking about John. I glance down at my hands resting on the steering wheel and find the watch's short hand tick its way to 9.

"Thank you," Irisa says. "For the ride."

I look at her and shake my head with a little smile. "No problem."

When she leans over to the backseat to grab her bag, her shirt's sleeve rides up and my eyes fall to the colourful ink decorating her pale skin. As she turns back to the front again, I avert my gaze, but the vibrant drawings, sharp and fading, distinct but still bleeding into each other, is an image that I find to be engraved into my mind.

The front door of the house opens, casting a rectangle of golden light on the cemented pavement. A young girl of Nico's age, around twelve or thirteen, comes jumping out. She swiftly walks to the side of my car, closing the door Irisa has started to open. She then leans in through the open window, bright, young face resting on folded arms.

"Hi," she says. It takes me a moment to realise that her words are aimed at me.

"Hey."

"So are you Henry?" she asks, "Because Risa has mentioned you. To gran and me."

Irisa's eyes go wide, a flush rising up the pale skin of her face. "Asteria!" she hisses at the girl whom I'm assuming is her little sister.

Irisa shoves open the door with force, causing Asteria to stumble back, laughing, then quickly closes it behind her. She has a quick word with her sister that's too quiet for me to hear, but when she raises her arm, fingers firmly pointed toward the house, I guess that she's telling her to go back inside.

Alone again, she turns to the car, eyes closed, and heave out a sigh. I can't help but smile, my eyes dragging themselves across her face, her short blonde hair, her arms, her fading bright ink.

When she opens her eyes again and leans in through the window with an apologetic smile, all I can do is stare at the deep blueness of her eyes. "Sorry about that," she says. "Asteria is completely mad."

I tell her that it is okay, mostly younger siblings are quite mad, and she laughs. The ocean in her eyes seems to ripple.

"Hey, Irisa," I call out to her when she has turned to leave. Opening the opening door, I step outside into the cold air and walk over to her.

"Hmm?" she asks.

I stare at her for a beat. My eyes drop to her hands and I can tell by the way her smile falls from her lips that she has seen me staring. But I'm not staring. I'm thinking. And either way, I find that after today, I don't care about these boundaries. Not anymore.

I'm ready to fall with her in her ocean.

After all, shame is only useful when it leads to atonement. Atonement, and then maybe something more.

"Thank you for today," I say, finally. "For, you know. Back at home. Everything with Nico and all that bullshit about my dad. All of it. Thank you for being there, for listening to me."

Irisa folds her arms around herself, nodding. "That's okay. You don't need to thank me."

"And," I say, then stop. When she raises her eyes to look at me again, I take in a deep breath. "You can talk to me, too." I look at her folded arms for a moment before bringing my gaze back to her eyes. "Whenever you want. Wherever. I'm mostly awake late at night, you know."

Silence builds between us. I take a step forward, putting myself close to her, in the space where there was just cold air before. "Talk to me, Irisa. You can talk to me."

For a few impossibly long moments, Irisa stares at me. Her eyes go through an array of emotions that I can't even begin to comprehend. But I'm ready to try.

Finally, she sniffles, rubs her nose once. Then nods. "Okay."

Then she turns around and walks off, straight up to her house and then inside, stopping just once to wave at me before closing the front door.

I stand out here in the cold air for a few minutes. Then I put my hands into the pockets of my jacket and start walking to my car. I smile a small smile. Soft and quiet, but firm and sure.

It's not much, I know. But it's a start.

And for now, this start is all I need. 

_____

Hey guys. Hope you're all well and amazing, because you are.

So I just wanted to let you all know a little something:

We're approaching the half-way mark here, ladies and gentlemen. Halfway through my first full length novel.

Thank you to all my friends who have been here on this journey with me so far. I treasure you.

And for all the people that might read this story in the future, I say, thank you for being here. I hope you find some hope in this story. 

Love, 

-Zee