Shadow You Drew

30 | Wayne

Within the first couple weeks of summer, I can tell it's going to be different than all the other summers I've experienced. For one thing, I've never had a kid sleeping on a mattress on my bedroom floor five or six nights a week. For another, I've certainly never had to go back to school every week for college prep. And we're not talking SAT tutoring.

Music bootcamp is actually really fun. Platz drums until his fingers bleed and Ben and I race to play scales faster. Dan floats around, letting Platz perfect his drumming and Mr. Cyr drilling him with the piano. Or sometimes he just writes or sings.

He's doing better. Honestly. He needed a couple days after school got out to heal from a week straight of panic, but things are improving. He's starting to eat on his own, without me pushing him to. He gave me his pills to hide from him and he hasn't even asked for them. And I think he's starting to understand that there are alternatives to cutting himself. He plays guitar or writes or lets me try and talk him through it. It's still difficult when he has to go home for a night, since he's trying not to aggrevate his parents by still coming home occasionally. I mean, if my parents beat the shit out of me, more or less at the doorway, whenever I came home, I would probably have some coping mechanisms too. Maybe bad ones.

One day in the music room we're taking a little break and I see Dan scribbling something in his notebook with a pencil. He looks kind of freaked out, I don't know if he's panicking or something.

"Whatcha doing?" I ask him.

"Doodling."

Platz walks behind Dan's chair and glances over his shoulder. "Hey, you didn't tell us you could draw."

"Huh?"

"That's really good."

"Oh." Ben and I come over to join them. He drew the piano, and Ben leaning against it drinking water, and me standing next to him laughing. It's a quick, messy sketch but surprisingly accurate.

"That's awesome, Dan," Ben says. I nod in agreement.

So that next day, Platz gets him a sketchpad and some pencils and he starts to draw. Us, mainly. He sits down and has the sketchpad in his lap while we hang out, and slowly he'll draw the three of us talking or laughing. Or he'll draw me playing guitar. It's good for him, I think. It lets him make marks and lines without touching his skin.

I keep the drawings and hang them up and then realize we've never been much for taking pictures. So we start taking some. Just random pictures on our phones, or one time Platz brings a camera to Red Rocks and tells us all to ignore him while he tries to "capture our happiness".

Cheesiest thing in the world, right? Oh well. We've been good.

///

"Wayne?"

It's a little whisper from beside my bed. I've been reading on my phone and the clock says 2am. I sit up, shutting off my phone.

"Yeah?"

"Were you awake?"

"Mmhm. You okay?"

I hear movement and then see him sit on the bed next to me. "Yeah. Just can't sleep."

"Me neither." I lie back down and turn on my side so I'm facing him. "How are you?"

He laughs a bit. "I've been practically living with you and you ask me 'how are you?'"

"Well, yeah," I say as Dan lies down next to me. "It's a much different question at 2am than it is in the middle of the school day, isn't it?"

"That's why I like you. You think," he says. "And I'm...not bad."

I tap his arm lightly. "How long has it been?"

"Twelve days." He sighs. "I told myself I wasn't gonna count anymore. Way too disappointing when I screw up. But I can't help it."

"Well, it's natural. We're human, we wanna see progress." I pause and then whisper, "Twelve days is a lot."

"There's 365 days in a year. Almost sixteen years in my life. Twelve days is like...nothing at all."

"Well if you believe that it will, then twelve days can turn into fifteen and then twenty and then a month and a season and six months and a year and on and on."

He's silent for a while, then turns on his back and looks up at the ceiling. "Or I could...take a razor blade tomorrow and mess it all up."

Before I have a chance to respond to that, he turns back to me. "I'm sorry. I get all sad and lonely at night and then I think dumb things." He yawns. "Let's go back to sleep, I think I'm tired enough."

But he doesn't move.

After a minute he notices I'm still looking at him. "Oh! I'll go back to my bed. Ha. Are you looking at me weird? I really can't see in the dark. Like, at all."

I chuckle. "Just stay here. Life gets so much better when you stop worrying about looking gay."

"I-is that okay?"

"Yes. Come on, girls share beds all the time, I shouldn't have to make you sleep on the floor when my bed has room."

He smiles a bit and pulls the sheet over himself, curling into a little ball. "If you say so."

"'Kay. Night. Love you."

"I love you too."

He presses his foot against mine and leaves it there the whole night, barely moving his body an inch. I didn't mean to tell him I loved him, just then. But I see no reason to make it into some dramatic declaration of friendship when he returned it so easily.

I mean, what else could I say?

Best friends are supposed to love each other.