@Oakie Dokie
this was one of my hardest chapters to write so
here goes
~~
Flashback to one week earlier
Samuel slept all morning and woke up around teatime, dizzy and feverish. He found he could not sit up, so he instead rolled out of bed and landed on the soft carpet laid on the floor, where he soon fell back asleep. He woke up almost an hour later to his grandmother shaking him and yelling his name. “Sammy, wake up!! It’s almost 4 o’clock!!”
Samuel’s face clouded with unrecognition for a second before he moaned softly. “Father, grab me my bag. Mum’s in the hall.” His words were slurred and his face seemed to be frozen on one side. This scared Samuel’s grandmother, who called in his mother.
She took one look at her son and called the emergency room.
The two women picked Samuel up by the armpits, walked him down the stairwell, and secured him in the backseat of his mum’s Chrysler. By now he was beginning to regain awareness of what was going on, and he asked them if they were going out for lunch. His words were still slurred, though, and within a few minutes of this he fell asleep once more.
When he woke up he was in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV drip. His head pounded, his eyelids drooped, his stomach churned, and his senses of touch, smell, vision, and hearing seemed to have stopped working altogether. A tall middle-aged man of seemingly hispanic origin stood with his back turned away from him, typing something on a Thinkpad before turning back to him and giving a fake why-should-I-care kind of smile that all doctors had seemed to master, including his mother. What had she said earlier, something about it being past noon, or was that his grandmum? He couldn’t remember. All he knew was that he was starving, tired, and achy.
“I see you’re awake, Mr. Bell. That’s good. Do you understand what I’m saying?” Samuel nodded slowly, confused. Why would he not understand what the dude was saying? Why was he here in the first place? Apart from the flu-like symptoms he experienced, he felt perfectly fine.
“Good, good. Are you thirsty?” It wasn’t until the doctor mentioned it that Samuel began to realize he was thirsty; his mouth felt dryer than his grandmum’s scones. He hastily took a paper cup filled with Gatorade and gulped it down quicker than he had taken the cup from the doctor’s outstretched hand. He next devoured a tray of hospital food provided by a shaking Emilia. Now he remembered: his grandmum had come to wake him up and… and… he ended up here? The middle part was still foggy.
The next morning, he was released to go back home. He felt perfectly fine now, save the recurrent drowsiness and occasional blurred vision. He was told he’d had a… a seizure? Stroke? No. Neither of those. He was still struggling to remember what it was when they got in the van and took off back home.
The next day…
Samuel woke up in the movie theater, a Dear Evan Hansen song titled “Only Us” playing on his Spotify account. Joel was sprawled out asleep in a recliner in the corner, and Alexis had rolled off a couch and into the floor, snoring fit to scare off a mountain lion. He smiled softly at her lithe form before retreating down the stairwell and walking into his bathroom, where he pulled out his prescription box and taking the pills in the “tuesday” section: an antidepressant, a blood pressure pill, and a- “Sam…? You good?” Alexis stood silently in the doorway, watching him gulp down several multicoloured capsules. “That’s a lot of medicine.” “Yeah, it’s just antidepressants and different hypertension meds.” He swallowed before their bitter tang could touch his tongue, then walked slowly to his room to get dressed for school. “Is Joel up yet, or is he the kind of guy I need to take an air horn to?” He turned to face her, and, pulling his Night in the Woods shirt over his head, opened a dresser drawer and pulled out a new v-neck t-shirt, which he slipped on after applying deodorant. He then slid on the school-issued buttoned shirt and navy tie. He hadn’t even been to school for more than a day and he already hated the getup. “Erm… I didn’t see him get up, but I’ll go check.” Finally, Samuel was alone again. He changed into a pair of khaki shorts and laid down on his bed, pulling out his phone and staring at the picture of Charlotte that he’d set as his wallpaper. He’d prayed about the feelings he had for both her and Alexis countless times since he’d begun to realize he’d had them for the both of them, but that same persistent nagging at his heart continued. He used to be perfectly content being with Charlotte, but now something was… different. He just couldn’t bring back the feelings he had for her. His heart had found someone else.
The three of them took Alexis’s Volvo to school, jamming out to Panic! At The Disco and scrambling to get homework done. Not for the first time, Samuel began to feel more adapted to this new environment to his old one. He actually had more than one friend now, and he was, against all odds, getting somewhat of a tan.
But Alexis was a terrible driver, so he couldn’t drool over his body now. As the inhabitant of the passenger seat, it was his job to take the wheel if Alexis spazzed out again reaching for her Nalgene bottle. Plus, there was already another body next to him waiting to be drooled over.
He sent a quick prayer to the Holy Mother and continued watching the road. Best not to get distracted by her.
The rest of the drive went surprisingly well (for Alexis’s driving, that is), and Samuel only had to yank the steering wheel to the side to avoid collision twice. He stumbled out of the car and dashed to a nearby bush, which he threw up in. Next time he was driving. They walked into school afterwards, Samuel wiping his mouth on his hand, and began class.
Charlotte sat with Darren on the riverbank, absently picking at the petals of a white flower that grew in small clusters dotting the field around her, stretching out to the distant snow-capped mountains on the horizon. Those distant peaks only painfully reminded her of how far away her Samuel was, and how close she had grown to the one she once thought she hated. Who knew he was so cute!! And funny, too. The exact opposite of how she felt about him a month or so ago.
But she knew this was wrong. Regardless of her newfound feelings for Darren, she couldn’t just leave Samuel. That’d be cruel. She edged away from him ever so slightly and kept on at her task of robbing the wildflower of its silky, snowy petals. No, it wasn’t right to leave Samuel.
But at least Darren lived in Scotland still!! She hadn’t seen her love in over two weeks, and every text he sent seemed to be full of artificial meaning, every call sounding like droning small talk. He hadn’t even texted since around tea-time yesterday, so as she was climbing into bed last night. They had facetimed each other every morning; now he didn’t even bother to text.
Maybe he’d found someone as well.
Maybe he was going to leave her.
Well, she’d find out.
She was visiting next month, and she intended to make the most of her stay.
Solomon bustled about the trailer home getting ready, careful not to wake up any of his siblings. He was the youngest of 5 and the only one who hadn’t yet dropped out of school; on top of that he was the only one of them not born to his mother’s first husband. Being half hispanic and half black was embarrassing according to them, and he preferred to just stay as far away from his siblings as possible. Best not to remember how his mother’s ex-boyfriend had tainted his ethnicity. For all he cared, he was a proud Malone child, not some crummy washed-up Lopez.
He opened the screen door softly and dashed out into the small driveway, climbing into a Chrysler PT Cruiser and backing out into the main road cutting through the middle of the trailer park. He drove slowly to the backlot, a cluster of falling-apart RV trailers, and picked up Naomi, who sat on the broken front steps of the second one. Together they rode silently to school, both staring forlornly out the cracked windshield at the road unfolding before them. They both knew they didn’t have much hope for the future, being broke-trailer-park-couch-potato kids. Most teachers seemed surprised that they still attempted to show up to school anymore, and it would take a miracle for them to even make it to a community college. That’s just how the world worked.
Solomon backed his mother’s most expensive item in next to Alexis’s station wagon and walked quickly with Naomi to class. Would Samuel be there? He’d probably already stolen Alexis from him. Early bird gets the worm.
Sure enough, Alexis sat right next to Samuel, twirling her dirty blonde hair in her fingers and laughing at everything he said.
It made him sick.
She may not be his anymore, but he still felt as if he was hers.
He would always be hers.
He shook his head angrily to clear away the tears that had begun to spring up in the corners of his eyes, then trudged over to his assigned seat and plopped down. Today was going to be terrible.
Samuel listened absently to The Score as he studied for the SAT, but honestly he was more interested in dwelling back to this morning.
Had Alexis been able to see exactly what pills he was really taking?
He didn’t want pity, he wanted to be treated normally. It was bad enough that he was getting the new-kid-in-town treatment; he didn’t need anymore attention brought upon him. He preferred to stay invisible as much as possible. This newfound… complication wasn’t going to allow him to remain that way unless he kept it a secret.
This morning had been a close one. That couldn’t happen anymore.
He thought back to the night before, when he looked out into the storm-tossed ocean and thought about his life so far. He’d sworn the day his father left his mother that he’d never do the same to anyone, and talking about their split only brought that vow up in a painful reminder. He loved his father to death, but he’d never forgive him for leaving the life he had behind to pursue another woman. His father had adored the ocean, and said that one day he would retire and become a true sailor. Look where that plan ended up. Thrown away, just like Samuel and his mum.
Never would he throw someone away that carelessly.
Not even if that person had been replaced.
But wasn’t that what his father had done as well? He completely disregarded who he originally had, refusing to be satisfied, and replaced them with someone new, not even considering how his choices would affect the people he left behind. Wasn’t he doing the same to Charlotte? Wasn’t he throwing her away for Alexis?
He needed to remember that she had feelings too. Regardless of how he felt at the moment, he refused to hurt her.
Even if she hurt him.
Not saying she had, but… you know.
It’s one of those things.
Then again, his life was like that stormy ocean as well, along his feelings. He just moved to a new country, his father was nowhere to be found, his mother had finally gotten a job and wouldn’t be around as much, he’d gotten overloaded with so many new things that he had no idea what to do with, he’d made two new friends, he liked one of them, he suddenly didn’t like Charlotte, and last week the doctors determined he had a-
“Samuel? Sam. Sam!!” Alexis ripped his earbud out of his ear and slammed the lid of his laptop shut. “Dude, did you zone out or something? It’s time to head to history.”
“It is?” Samuel replied, launching out of his chair and shoving everything into his Swiss Gear backpack. “Christ, where the heck did I wander off to?”
“Don’t ask me,” she laughed, walking to the door. “I’m just here to anchor you down.”
Anchor me down?
That whole ocean metaphor just kept getting deeper and deeper.