#wipweek2017

Henrietta's early morning scenery is a stunning mixture of lush green grasses glinting with a kaleidoscope of dewdrops, sun slanting off the reddish rooftops, and trees waving lazily in the breeze. Too bad this natural beauty is overshadowed by your mood going to school. You can think of a dozen activities you'd rather be doing – dishes and laundry among them – than entering the tedium that is Aglionby.

Yet you promised Gansey, and some moronic honorable code dictates you be true to your word. Sometimes being unable to lie is a huge pain in the ass, but it's still a point of pride for you.

You pull into the parking lot. At the edge of the campus you spot a lone figure hunching in the shade behind the buildings. As you park, someone slinks around the corner, hunched and nervous. You imagine greetings and other things to be exchanged: there's a quick sweep of the area, a clasping of hands, a friendly cuff on the shoulder, then the newcomer hurries away.

You haven't seen Kavinsky on school grounds for weeks, but then again, your own attendance record is not a stellar example of punctuality and sticktoitiveness. He may well have been here when you weren't, and there's no way to tell unless you asked around, which you damn well are not going to do. It doesn't interest you. Nor does it matter.

Still, his presence draws you in like a current, despite your resentment and your insistence on avoiding him during daylight hours. He's a different creature then, at once too strange and too familiar, a grown-up version of the boy you used to chase over the green meadows stretching out beyond the Barns.

He looks all wrong now.

You prefer to encounter him at night, when the darkness obscures the angles of his face and the alcohol makes it light up from within. It's easier then to ignore the loss of innocence – not that he ever had much to begin with, but there used to be a boyish side to him that got excited about more than just self-destruction.

As ridiculous as it sounds, you still miss the old him, the one you flew kites with, built mud castles with, ditched homework with in favor of playing in the fields till evening yawned into night, this scarecrow of a boy, all stick-limbs and sinew, yet with a softness about him you're beginning to think must have been imaginary. There's no way this sharp-boned skeleton you're approaching is the same boy you used to tussle with, tip cows over with, lie in the grass and dream together with.

You'd rather avoid him after your fight this weekend. But you promised Gansey.

His mouth splits into a sickle grin when he sees you, the neutral one he flashes everybody, regardless of what business they have with him. You're not special anymore.

"Dickhead," he greets you, and it's the friendliest he's been in a while.

"Shit-for-brains," you shoot back.

"What brings you here?" It's almost lewd, the way he sucks on his cigarette, and your eye tics because of how much you want to punch him for making your eyes wander to his lips. "Need some love potion for your girlfriend? Think that get him to finally let you screw him?"

By way of reply, you slam his back against the wall. It doesn't faze him. He just laughs in your face.

"My bad. Of course you'd let him screw you." He tips his head in defiance and the glint of his sunglasses blind you.

"I'm not here to talk about Gansey." This close, you catch more than a whiff of his knife-like aftershave under the cloud of weed and cigarette smoke. It, too, is less repulsive at night, when it had hours to disperse or mix with exhaust fumes. Sometimes you wonder if he's trying to mask the rot that has infested him, if he even notices how far it has spread.

"But you would let him screw you," he laughs at you again and it is grating. "There's no shame in this, you know. If either of you have performance issues, you can tell me, I'll help you sort it out."

"I said, that's not what I'm here to talk about. Are you deaf as well as stupid?"

"Okay, okay, I'll bite," he says and snaps his teeth. "What are you here to talk about?"

Your fingers tighten around the lapels of his school uniform. "Cabeswater," you say, because that's a conversation you still need to have, one he's been refusing to have, and you're running out of time.

He rolls his eyes ostentatiously and lets his head thud against the brick behind him. "Don't you ever quit? I already told you no."

"No is not an option."

"It's gotta be, because that's the one I'm going with."

"Don't be that way, asshole. I'm not telling you to quit, I'm asking you to help me figure out how to make it safe. It used to be, man, and I'm sure it can be again."

He's staring at you for a while, eyebrows scrunched together behind his sunglasses and lips slightly pursed. He sucks in his bottom lip and chews on it.

"Want to stock up for tonight?" he asks finally, but you barely catch the sounds coming out of his mouth.

"What?"

That's not the answer you've been expecting. Or the question.

It's been a while since he invited you in person. Most of the time you just went, like everyone else, but unlike everyone else, you don't cluster around him like a swarm of flies. You don't need his attention. You have it anyway, in a sort of negative, I know you're there but I'm waiting to see what you'll do sort of way, unless he decides to give you the time of day – or night.

You hate how sometimes being at his parties feels like begging.

He was yours before he decided for whatever shit reason that you weren't good enough anymore and started hanging out with other people. You're still sore about that. You fucking used to dream together, build things together, an entire world of dreams, but now he seems to be content with providing his cronies with all the pills and weed and booze they can ever need or want? Fucking waste, if there ever was one.

"You're coming, right?"

"I've got better things to do," you sneer and immediately regret it. If he's offering you a chance to talk to him, you ought to take it.

"Such as Gansey, I know, I know." He slaps his palm on your head and rubs his thumb over your buzz cut. It makes you dangerously aware of how close you are and how deliberately he has been derailing the conversation. "I'm sure if you ask nicely enough, he'll take you himself. Making sure to keep a tight leash on you. How do you put up with the chafing, anyway?"

"None of your concern."

"C'mon, just ask him to take you for a walk. I'm sure no one would be surprised to find you on all fours beside dear old Dick."

"Fuck off." Your fuse is dangerously close to blowing. You jam his shoulders harder into the wall behind him.

"That's cute, coming from the asshole accosting me when I was minding my own business."

Before you remember to pull his hand away, his fingers smooth down your head to clamp around the back of your neck. And just like that you're transfixed, unable to move when he pulls you in, crushes your nose against his shoulder and his cheek against yours where his stupid sunglasses dig into your flesh, and all you feel is skin and heat and an elevated pulse that's rushing him to an early grave. Your own pulse is not far behind.

"Be there tonight," he murmurs so his breath plays about your earlobe and you shiver. "And bring me something fun."

With his other hand, he presses something small and rounded into your palm. You don't need to look to know it's one of his dream pills. You have an assortment of them hidden away in a drawer; you prefer to go about dreaming your tried and true way.

"On the house." He folds your fingers over it and leans close as if kissing the air above your scabbed knuckles.

Something turns over like an engine in your chest, or maybe your head, because not a single thought sparks and all you can focus on are his goddamn pretty lips – which he must have noticed too, because he's raising his shades from his nose and he's grinning in a way that would signal danger if you had your wits about you, but you don't, and the bruise around his eye has faded since the weekend, and before you know it you're touching it, your palm against his cheek, your thumb brushing over his discolored skin, his fingers curling over your wrist, dipping into the cuff of your uniform, tickling the sensitive skin there, and you're certain that if you don't stop this right now, he'll twist the moment like a knife in your gut, unthinking and inevitable, just as that last time, when he ruined what friendship was left between you and gave you no choice but to push him away completely.

Maybe you thought you could salvage something that way, or maybe you were just trying to save your skin.

"Still a chickenshit?" he asks, nose brushing yours, mouth a hair's breadth from your own. You don't appreciate the reminder, but what the hell, you've been living with the consequences of it every day.

Is this your chance at a do-over?

Off to your side, someone coughs politely.

"Am I interrupting something?"

Your first instinct is to shove Kavinsky away, as if that would undo the past minute and a half; your second is to freeze where you stand because fuck, this is Declan. Your own brother saw you nearly make out with your childhood friend. God Jesus Mary fucking shit, he's going to think you're jealous or something.

Kavinsky just settles back against the wall as if nothing at all had been happening, as if his fingers weren't still burning on your wrist, as if Declan were just another desperate fuck willing to sell his soul for whatever services Kavinsky provides.

"Not if you plan on joining in," he says, bold as brass.

Declan smiles thinly, but his eyes are on you. You're aware of the fire in your cheeks, how your brother can't miss it. "That's not exactly how I planned on spending my free period."

"Let me guess," Kavinsky surmises with a dirty grin. "You need another batch of blue pills to please your latest lady friend, am I right?"

Your lips compress. The jab at Declan's promiscuity ticks you off. There's something those two can talk about. They were fucking made for each other.

You rip your hand free and turn around; whatever their body language is about to betray, you don't want to find out. "I was leaving anyway."

Before you can, however, Declan pulls you aside. His voice is perfectly fucking neutral when he says, "Stay away from him. He's not your friend anymore."

Anger flashes hot inside you, blood pounding in your ears. Your face grows hotter still. It pisses you off how effortlessly Declan can pretend to be unaffected by what he'd just witnessed. It pisses you off how he doesn't care that you might have been encroaching on his territory. It pisses you off how he's so goddamn casual about his sex life, like none of his partners matter to him.

It pisses you off that you have these thoughts at all. This wasn't what you bargained for at all.

Fuck Declan and fuck Kavinsky, too.

"Don't worry. He's all yours."

With that, you stalk off, heart in a snarl of anger, ache and annoyance. When you piss off your brother, you want it to be on your terms, not a crazy happenstance that brought you all together in one place.

Kavinsky must have been trying to stop you, because Declan tells him to leave you alone. You're not sure how you feel about Kavinsky listening to him.

"Don't forget tonight," Kavinsky calls after you.

You flip them both off over your shoulder.

But with you out of the picture, they've already moved on to other topics. You've been in their way the entire time.

"So, you do want me all to yourself," you hear Kavinsky say. "I get it. Okay, shoot. What can I do for you, handsome?"

"Don't," Declan hisses. "Not on campus."

The rest of their conversation is lost in the rustling of the leaves overhead. You keep your gaze resolutely in front of you. You don't want to turn around and see your brother finishing what you started.

Your insides are boiling. You don't know what you're most furious about: the fact that Kavinsky still hasn't agreed to stay away from Cabeswater, that you nearly fell prey to him, or the fact that your brother interrupted your nearly falling prey to Kavinsky.

That you wanted to fall prey to him.

School is out of the question now. Sorry, Gansey. You can't show your face near him anymore, not before you haven't wrung a promise from Kavinsky and certainly not in this state. You need an outlet for your growling anger, preferably one that includes smashing things to pieces.

You tell yourself you haven't always been this pathetic.

You've spent many hours in grand stupors, passed out on bathroom floors, hallways, stairs even, waking to a pain in your head, your joints, your heart that would only grow worse over time unless you get another fix -- to alleviate the emotional impact if not the physical one -- and sometimes you don't because you're unable to move, unable to do anything but sink deeper into the pit of despair that lurks so far below the surface mere cutting tools don't reach it.

Yeah, you've been there and you've grown used to it, used to starting awake in strangers' cars, in stranger's beds, on strange piles of shards and other things with jagged, rending edges, like yesterday's trash, broken and forgotten.

You've grown used to starting awake to strangers in your house, on your floor, your bed, (you -- like your body's a blow-up doll and no longer yours when your consciousness vacates it for a while,) used to loud music, fast cars, and neon strobe lights, used to having crowds around you, fawning over you, spewing the same sycophantic bullshit as anyone else, while their drinks slosh dangerously in their cups and their fingers find their way into your hair, your mouth, your pockets, turned inside out in search for what only you can give them: the ride of their lives.

Disorientation became your game and you played it till you won.

It was a way of life and you were living it, disregarding that you were already dead inside.

You've been in a string of pathetic situations before you learned to ride the buzz and not let it ride you, before you learned that staying high and staying in control were not mutually exclusive even if it was fun for a time to give up one for the other. Keeps you on your toes.

Going up, you never worried about coming down. You never worried about anything.

So, you've been fucked up a lot, but you've never felt as fucked up as you do now, empty and shaking and so alone. There are texts on your phone, but your thumbs too numb to open them, the screen is screeching at your eyes, and the messages are garbled as if the words had been thrown into a blender. They don't go through to you.

Inside your chest, a nauseating merry-go-round made of razor wire is slicing at you, whittling you away, carving you hollow.

You like to think you haven't always been this way. That there's a progression to these things.

Yours seems inevitable enough.

You still remember the days before now, before this, before everything, although you try your best to erase them, line by fucking line. It's easier to forget than to go running around with all that baggage. Who needs that shit anyway?

You were a sweet-faced boy, the aunts told you, by which they meant you look like a girl. You hated that.

They weren't your aunts, but wives of the men who worked for your father, and they came by to keep your mother company when he was away. Or busy. Or both. Which was all the time. You thought of them as a flock of birds for their matching outfits, their gleaming jewelry, their impeccable hair, the way they tittered and they cooed, and how you've never seen one arrive without the others.

So they perched on the sofa and the armchairs, coffee cups daintily placed on their saucers, and they sang their merry tune of how lucky your mother was for having such a sweet boy, such an angel, he does so take after you, dear. They simpered, pinched your cheeks, ruffled your hair, and you hated it at the time, hated that you had to be still and smile and endure it, because if you did, they'd stop fussing sooner instead of later, growing bored with you as if you sort of faded in the background.

But you liked the attention all the same. At least somebody noticed you for a while.

*

The aunts brought their sons, if they had them, and brought toys if they didn't. Action figures, toy cars, dinosaurs, whatever they'd been told young boys your age were crazy about. Or they brought stories about how they would also like a son, a healthy, strong son, because their husbands wanted one, so that is what they should want, too. Maybe they did, but you couldn't tell, you could only overhear bits and pieces when you sneaked into the kitchen to get away from the other boys.

You were supposed to be playing with them, be nice to them, but they weren't nice to you, so why should you care? You were small, you were fine-boned and you were pretty, and nobody liked you.

But it was okay, you didn't like them either.

Except that you did, in ways you didn't understand at the time, because nobody told you about these things and you never had the chance to figure them out for yourself.

Maybe they didn't like the implications of you, maybe you made them feel something they weren't supposed to feel, maybe there's always been something despicable about you. Maybe that was it. All you know is that they teased you, that they made you cry because of it, and that your father didn't want a cry-baby for a son. He never called you his son, he called you other things that took you years to understand, things that the boys in your backyard echoed before they wrestled you to the ground and stuffed sticks and soil and sand into your mouth and made you swallow.

You still remember their names or what names they called you, what they looked like,

what they made you feel.

Your father never said anything to the boys or their fathers. Why would he? It would draw attention to what a pathetic weakling you were and he was probably too ashamed of you already. His preferred method of making sure you wouldn't get beat up again was taking the matter out of their hands. You earned yourself a clout whenever he caught you sniveling, sometimes even if it was from a cold, and sometimes he wouldn't stop until you stopped.

Sometimes you wondered if he wanted you to stop completely.

You were supposed to stand up for yourself, that was the understanding.

Your mother didn't like how he ruined your face, you were her handsome boy after all, but she also did nothing to stop him. That was fine with you. If he used his fists on you, maybe he wouldn't have to use them on her. (That was before she took to hitting you as well, you devil child, you cursed evil thing, when you still had some loyalty in you, some sense of solidarity.) He never hit <em>her </em>face, but a shiner or two on yours were okay because it detracts from your looks and adds character. Simple as that.

It's a lesson you took to heart and made use of at school. Your father liked to see you get into fights, liked it when you came home with scarred knuckles and split skin, when you proved to him you were a man after all and worthy of being called his son.

You stare into the mirror. Nothing stares back. You're seeing through yourself, at the wall in the back, or maybe the back of your head. It's dark in there, it must be, you cannot see the light.

You're covered in gasoline and someone struck a match. Your skin is burning.

This is what his touch must feel like. Around your throat, squeezing the life out of you. Whatever life there is left of you.

You splash some water on your face and it reappears in the mirror.

Pretty thing, they used to call you. They used to beat you up for it, as if your looks were somehow offensive to them.

No one would call you pretty now, with your sunken cheeks, broken nose and bloodshot eyes, and you prefer it that way.

You conceal the damage of last night and the many nights before with white sunglasses and a grin that's as changeable as your mood while it remains one thing at its core. An impenetrable fortress.

Your parents may have taught you something useful, after all.

There must have been a time when you thought your parents loved you, that they just couldn't show it in words or gestures, so they showered you with gifts to distract you from their emptiness that was becoming your emptiness.

"You need to stop spoiling him," they told each other when they thought you couldn't hear, but they never did.

When you woke up to yet another gift on your pillow, one you've been wishing for very hard but never had the chance to tell them about, you thought it was their way of saying sorry for being so distant. You thought it was their way of soothing you after your nightmares.

You were delighted by it when you were very small, and put off by it as you grew older, because you saw it as a cheap ploy to buy your loyalty. Fuck that.

Until you noticed they didn't get you anything.

"You're spoiling him too much. He's soft enough."

"I thought you got him this toy."

The answer to this riddle, however, was a much better gift than anything they could have given you.

You know now that every gift comes with strings attached. And sometimes, those strings are darkness itself.

Come to think of it, your mother never hit you before your very existence started to threaten her sanity. Not that she'd had much of it to begin with, but your dreaming didn't exactly help. It only exacerbated it. And then, when you killed your father and he still continued living after that, well, that was the end of it. She never let you live that one down.

Or she wouldn't, if you kept her sedated any less. She prefers the brain fog to the knowledge of what you are, too. Otherwise she could have left a long time ago. Tried to, in fact, but even with her means, she was unable to find anything that killed her brain that what you provided for free.

Family discount.

You've had enough to drink for a lifetime, but there's a restlessness eating you up from inside that you need to douse and you know just the thing to do it with.

It comes in a plain vodka bottle, looks and tastes like lighter fuel, and the fumes alone are enough to intoxicate you three ways from Sunday.

The best part about it, however, is how much it burns. Every swig of that hellish concoction is another splash of kerosene onto that ever-raging fire that is consuming the very fiber of your being.

You know who you have to thank for stoking it, for making it so unbearable to take another goddamn fucking breath.

Family, you think. It's more of a curse than a thought, really. But it rams itself into your head with the force of a sledgehammer.