#leviathanjames

Riley places the cup of water next to her watercolor pad on the cluttered desk, eyebrows shooting upwards when her phone buzzes and the screen lights up to notify a text.  She tilts her head to the side; no one texts her.  EVER.

She picks up the phone, fingers barely touching the device due to uncertainty, as if she’s sure it would EXPLODE in her hands as soon as she unlocks it.  She takes a deep breath, then with a reluctant slide, she opens the message.  Eyes run over the thread.  And it does again.  And again.  Then again.  She blinks.  Again.  And again.  And again.

“W-what…??”

A minute passes, and another, and another, before it dawns upon her that Levi actually texted her.  Which probably meant that he thought of her.  And he cared enough to text.  Her, of all people!  Did he say he missed her??  He did.  HE DID!!  Oh my gosh.  Oh my gosh.  Oh my gosh.

She dances around the room, singing to herself an impromptu victory song of some sort.  She’s so PREOCCUPIED with feeling her heart well up in her chest that she almost forgot to reply.  She’s in the middle of an amateur pirouette when she realizes this, so she falls in a painful heap on the floor.  She regains composure as if a lovesick girl from a campy coming-of-age movie (which she practically is, especially around Levi), quickly sweeping hair from her face.  She takes another breath, and types in a reply.

Heyyy.

Aw, I’m glad!  The school trip was fun too, got a little bit of time in the sun.  How was your trip?

How thoughtful of you!  You didn’t have to get me anything, so thank you!

MOTHS TO FLAMES

You were the sun, and I was crashing into you. I'd wake up every morning and think, 'This will end in flames.’ -Carry On, Rainbow Rowell

Dear @leviathanjames​,

How are you feeling?  I hope you’re doing better now.

Anyway, you’re probably wondering what this is.  If you can’t tell, this is a drawing of you.  I’m giving this to you because I want to thank you for just... everything.  You’ve been very kind to me ever since we first met and I highly appreciate how you’ve been patient with me.  I really do.

There’s just so much that I want to tell you, but I’ve never been good with words.  You know how they say that “a picture is worth a thousand words”?  I might be understanding that idiom wrong, but I’d like to believe that I speak better through drawings.  I hope that... whatever I lack in conversation is made up for through this.

So... yeah.  Again, thanks for everything.  Have a better week ahead. x

                                     He knew what happened when he pushed.

     But he had found out where Levi was and he went over to him. Cypress needed to know he was okay, and he knew that Levi wasn’t actually okay, but he was still... Alive. Levi was alive. No one else close to Cypress had died and he was praying it’d stay that way. Once he arrived in Levi’s room, he sat down next to the boys bed and took his hand in both of his, pressing soft kisses to his knuckles. “Hey, babe,” he whispered, feeling relieved just to see him. He wasn’t going to admit to Jonah that during the storm he had been freaking out about Levi as well. The poor guy had enough to worry about after all. 

     “Hi, Peaches... I’m really happy to see you... You don’t have to talk about what happened by the way, like... Whatever you want to talk about, I’m just happy to see you.” 

First thing’s first: I won’t call him The Creeper. Victor Salva already patented that. And it’s too easy. He’s given us enough to come up with something better. It’s a man– ssscis-gendered…? We don’t have any suspects who aren’t… traditionally… mainstream gendered… people. And the lack of subtlety screams BOY. He knows enough about plants to handpick specific flowers for every girl in the school. He’s a twisted romantic, a little witty. He has access to a penis. I think he’s repressed. Definitely a virgin. Timid for lack of tact, not lack of interest in talking to people. But he’s observant. He has to spend a lot of time around the campus, so I’m ruling out all employees, including the young ones. This is someone who watches the way his peers interact and keeps an eye on the unnatural mannerisms when certain topics come up in conversation. This is someone without much social life to distract him, or someone with shallow acquaintanceships but no friends to notice when he’s spending all of his time on a project like this. This is an outsider on the inside. So you can call him The Botanist, The Florist, The Casanova, The Anthropologist.

I’m calling him The Wallflower.

I’ll mention the three crossed off my list first:

ANDI MICHAELS. Reasonable suspect. He has the classic profile of a common serial killer: middle-aged man, agreeable personality, eerily mundane, a little awkward. But I don’t buy it. He doesn’t fit my profile. He’s not at the school often enough to study everyone. I don’t think he’s The Wallflower. But I don’t think he’s innocent outside of this specific context. He’s worth keeping an eye on.

CHARLIE KING. Investigated. Thoroughly. Don’t want to talk about it. Too old, anyway. And too genuine. You can’t fake the patience and kindness he had that night. He’s not frustrated enough to be The Wallflower. I don’t think he’s… without secrets, but I know this isn’t his.

TERENCE LICHT. Undeniably suspicious. And I think suspecting him is what helped me build the profile. But he’s a RED HERRING. He’s not on campus enough to pay as much attention as The Wallflower has to. When he’s around, he’s always busy, and he’s kind of a big deal. With girls especially. And he’s not stupid enough to incriminate himself by making flowers an M.O. It’s too obvious.

I really think it’s a student. Specifically…

SIMON REIGN. Sure has been lonely and quiet since all of his friends left last semester. Everyone’s always talking about how he never gets close to anyone or sticks around one place for long. Kinda troubling, when you think about it. And his roommate’s never around much to keep an eye on anything weird he’s doing. He has the perfect opportunity and the loneliness to boot. And the perfect alibi, of course, is how he conveniently came out as gay just a few weeks before our ladykiller hit the scene.

DARBY CHAPMAN. Do I want to suspect my friend? No. Is my friend awkward, standoffish in social situations, foreign, reportedly anxious as a result of childhood trauma, heterosexual, and not getting any? I mean, sorry, DC, but it’s kind of hard to rule out. 

GREY CAVERLY. He has the wit and the mystery. He’s a good liar– or he is when nobody’s onto him. He’s more romantic than he lets on. He’s friendly at face value, aloof enough that he doesn’t have any close friends, and I always find him on the sidelines of campus. I don’t want to think it’s Grey. I have plenty of reasons not to think it’s Grey, but I’m worried that being breathtakingly charming isn’t exactly a valid alibi. In fact, it’s a little more worrying.

ZACH COLTRANE. The problem with Zach is I don’t know much about him, but that’s a little incriminating in itself, isn’t it? But I don’t really think he has the capacity. He’s dealing with enough of his own weird baggage, from what people say about him. I doubt he knows enough about human etiquette to leave the kind of notes The Wallflower leaves, but I can say that about a lot of people on this list. Here’s the thing: when an offbeat classmate asks me to plant-sit for him, he gets a one-way ticket onto this list.

LEVIATHAN JAMES. I guess I can thank Jonah for being the jumping-off point, but Levi’s the perfect suspect. He’s got the outcast cred down pat. People don’t understand him. They get frustrated with him. They yell at him. They whack him around. And he doesn’t understand them, either. A stranger in a strange land and a quiet watcher who’s so DESPERATE to fit in. I don’t…. I just don’t trust him.

     Cypress wasn’t really the kind of guy to text someone and be like ‘hey I want to hang out, come over’ but Levi honestly made that different. It almost felt like how it was with Adam again. Except Levi was as pure as snow. His voice was like honey and his eyes were like unseen ponds. And Cypress never thought like that too. Everything about being around him made him feel a little bit more bitter about his place in the world, because comparing the two of them... There wasn’t anything good of it. Cypress was gritty, and not even in the way that made Max someone who was desirable. He was just gritty and bitter and cynical. And then Levi was just... If magical realism could be put into a person, that person would be Levi.

     He still texted him though. Because Cypress did want to see Levi. He loved seeing Levi and sitting with the boy and just talking about things. Levi was his peach, his babe, and that was how it was going to be. Even if Levi had a husband or had another romantic entanglement, that wasn’t going to change that he was Cypress’ peach. And so when he heard the knock on the door, he grinned and got up to open it. He leaned in and kissed the boys cheek softly, “hey, Peaches. You havin’ a good day so far?”