Acquired Tastes

Chapter Seven

Something about that Sunday left Neil feeling even heavier than usual; perhaps it was the dismissal ceremony that week, where the devastation from the students let go felt more palpable. Perhaps it was worsened by the dreary gray weather outside for the eighth day straight, or by the most recent headlines talking about a water-borne illness that was beginning to spread around many of the lowest-income communities in the country, without regular access to safe water. With everything combined, Neil's mind felt extra shadowy, like there was something inside him chewing on his ribs, weighing him down.

In a desperate attempt to distract himself, he filled his backpack with the least rotten pieces of food he found at Dining, then set off, following one of the little trails down to the river. He turned his music up as loud as his anxiety would allow, leaving one ear empty, too nervous to let himself lose his sense of hearing entirely.

He made his way down to the creek, then tied his shoes together, slinging them across his shoulder, and began to make his way slowly upstream. The water felt freezing at first, but his legs acclimated, and by the time he met the part of the river intersected by the tall, barbed wire fence, he'd warmed back up. He sat down on the riverbank with his back against the fence, eyes drifting with the water as it made its way through the fence and out the other side, more free than he was.

After a few songs, the music began to fade into hollow noise in his head, the way it sometimes did when he most needed it not to. Even his favorite songs had a tendency of growing flavorless on the days that the world felt the darkest to him. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore, so he turned the music off. It was beginning to drizzle, but he didn't have the energy to try to outrun the rain, so he stayed at the base of a nearby tree as the skies emptied into the already-angry river. Watching it rush past his feet was oddly comforting, in a way not unlike staring up into a sky full of stars, where he was reminded how small he was, that even his death wouldn't bring an end to the world around him.

In the way that it so often did, his brain took the bad feelings and made them worse; he knew that isolating himself, in that moment, was not the healthiest choice. On the other hand, he felt entirely helpless to change that. Who was he supposed to call? Alexis, the guy he'd worked out with a handful of times and eaten a few meals with, seemed like the person he knew best right then, and the thought of sharing these heavy emotions with him felt almost laughable. There was no one from his school that he felt like he could call, either. Sure, he'd gotten along well enough with his various sports teammates, ever since he'd stopped being so thin and had proven himself as a valuable asset, but none of them had felt like people he could talk to about something like this.

When he couldn't stand the loneliness of the woods anymore, he made his way back up the river and climbed the trail toward the main part of campus. He meant to head straight for the showers, but after stopping in his room for a towel, he found himself sitting in a soggy little heap, his limbs feeling too heavy to lift, a puddle growing around him on the cold floor. Unable to think of anyone else to call, he tried his home phone number, desperate for any chance to speak to someone who knew who he was beyond number twelve.

He barely had time to worry it would be his dad before his next-older-brother, Jesse, answered.

"Hey," Neil said, voice coming out smaller than he'd intended. "It's Neil."

There was a long silence. Finally, Jesse spoke again. "Did something happen?"

"No," Neil replied, still trying to get his voice back to normal. He cleared his throat. "Can I say hi to Ash?"

Another short pause. "You know dad doesn't really want you to talk to any of the younger siblings."

Neil knew pleading wouldn't work, not with his twenty-one-year-old rival brother who'd taken over his good, low-maintenance middle child role ever since the incident in ninth grade that had gotten Neil written off as a heathen with his family. Still, he didn't have any other ideas.