Counterfeit

-twentythree--

--twentythree-

WE WERE QUIET for a few minutes, but for the first time, I didn't feel the urge to break it. 

Charleston removed the needle from my skin, the machine slowly drawing it out from my vein. I watched him carefully as he focused on precision, doing his best to make sure that it wasn't uncomfortable. In that moment, I think MiKinley was wrong about him.

He looked over at me. Brown eyes.

All wrong.

"Something tells me you haven't asked me all your questions yet."

"You're right." I told him, now up from my seat. We were both standing. "When did you learn to read minds?"

He shrugged his shoulders a little, grinning. "My father taught it to me when I was a kid. That, along with tying my laces."

I nodded, stifling back a laugh. We were different, like this. Real, almost. Nothing ever felt real in the Dormir.

"But, I'm not too convinced it's working right now." He told me. I shot him a confused look, urging him to continue. "What is it, Pip?" He wondered. "What is it that you want to know?"

It was now or never, I told myself. I was finally going to get my answers. No matter the cost, I was ready to dive right in. And I did, head first.

"Did you know what you were doing?"

"When?" He asked back, but I knew that he knew what I was talking about.

"That day." The day something began. "That day when you tried to touch me, Charleston." 

 His head dropped, but his eyes peaked upwards to look at me. I could see he was a little nervous to answer, as I was to hear what he had to say, but he also seemed hopeful that maybe I knew what was coming. 

"Did I know the consequence of the rule, or did I know what it would mean to touch you?" 

This boy, this stranger who had made me doubt everything I once knew, felt more familiar than the dreams in my head. "Both." 

"Yes. I knew." 

There was a shift in the universe after his answer; I felt it. I felt all the planets and the stars dance in the void abyss of time, taking my mind with the music. When it returned back to me, it felt like beginning of the world. Like the galaxy had began between us. 

It didn't terrify me as much as I had prepared myself for it to. 

I felt a little dizzy, perhaps from trying to piece everything together in my head; there was a storm raging up there. But I also felt alive, and that was so much greater than any fears or any declarations could ever take away. 

"I knew, Pip. That's why I did it." 

I shook my head slightly, disbelief taking over me. But I smiled and I couldn't work out why I was smiling until I looked at the sincerity on his face. On him. How honest he was. 

"Why did you do it?" I spoke sooner than I was expecting. I wasn't certain that I wanted his answer just yet, at least not until he gave it to me. "I'm not angry. Well I don't think I am. I only want to know why." 

Charleston took a step closer to me, our bodies now only a few feet apart from each other. I could feel the warmth radiating off of him. He made me feel so alive, and the feeling kept coming back to me in waves: retreating and collapsing, retreating and collapsing, retreating and collapsing together. 

He placed his hand on the metal of the table - both our eyes followed, watching with uncertainty as if we had no control over our bodies, waiting to see what would happen. 

If he was the darkness that Kinley had thought, then he stretched on for light-years, existing in spite of the sun and stars. If he really was the void, he could swallow the universe in seconds. 

Here's the terrifying notion: I think I would let him. 

But here's the truth: he was not the darkness. 

-twentythree--

Space themes?

My mind is a universe, I suppose.