The Goldfinch

Chapter 6 | Part 13

"I GAVE you a fat lip that time," said Boris, who clearly felt guilty about the Kotku business since he'd brought it up out of nowhere in our companionable morning silence on the school bus.
"Yeah, and I knocked your head against the fucking wall." "I didn't mean to!"
"Didn't mean what?"
"To hit you in the mouth!"
"You meant it with her?"
"In a way, yeah," he said evasively.
"In a way."
Boris made an exasperated sound. "I told her I was sorry! Everything
is fine with us now, no problem! And besides, what business is it of yours?" "You brought it up, not me."

He looked at me for an odd, off-centered moment, then laughed. "Can I tell you something?"
"What?"
He put his head close to mine. "Kotku and me tripped last night," he said quietly. "Dropped acid together. It was great."
"Really? Where did you get it?" E was easy enough to find at our school—Boris and I had taken it at least a dozen times, magical speechless nights where we had walked into the desert half-delirious at the stars—but nobody ever had acid.
Boris rubbed his nose. "Ah. Well. Her mom knows this scary old guy named Jimmy that works at a gun shop. He hooked us up with five hits—I don't know why I bought five, I wish I'd bought six. Anyway I still have some. God it was fantastic."
"Oh, yeah?" Now that I looked at him more closely, I realized that his pupils were dilated and strange. "Are you still on it?"
"Maybe a little. I only slept like two hours. Anyway we totally made up. It was like—even the flowers on her mom's bedspread were friendly. And we were made out of the same stuff as the flowers, and we realized how much we loved each other, and needed each other no matter what, and how everything hateful that had happened between us was only out of love."
"Wow," I said, in a voice that I guess must have sounded sadder than I'd intended, from the way that Boris brought his eyebrows together and looked at me.
"Well?" I said, when he kept on staring at me. "What is it?"
He blinked and shook his head. "No, I can just see it. This mist of sadness, sort of, around your head. It's like you're a soldier or something, a person from history, walking on a battlefield maybe with all these deep feelings..."
"Boris, you're still completely fried."
"Not really," he said dreamily. "I sort of snap in and out of it. But I still see colored sparks coming off things if I look from the corner of my eye just right."