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WILLIAM'S CLASSMATES THOUGHT HE WAS WEIRD. Well, in William's exact words, "some sort of alien", "freak", "antisocial wreck". That was what he told Naomi the night they finally shared the demons they had been battling all this time. He started slow, telling Naomi about the little instances that bothered him at his summer school. The names he was being called, the eyes people sometimes gave him at lunch, but soon, as one word was uttered there were ten more pouring out behind it. The words, or more-so the meanings they held, edged William Morgan toward something unavoidably tragic. He probably didn't realize it, even as he tripped over his words and his fists opened and closed unsteadily, but Naomi was forced to bear witness; deja vu shuddering her bones.
William Morgan was sat atop his bed that night, rambling himself to the brink of a steep and rocky cliff. Each painful incident he thought out loud and each fight he described, ushered himself that much closer to the fringe, a place where his throat seemed to shut by itself and a relentless pain battered at his eyes. His body began to tremble as he looked over the precipice.
Then, he fell. He did it in such a quiet way that his sister almost never recognized. There were no screams or fits of struggle, his face only contorted and his eyes snapped shut. Then, he was free-falling. Naomi caught his body and rested his undoing into her lap. His remains splattered against her, tiny pieces of youth and happiness lost in the shattering.
As the blood of William Morgan soaked through his sister's clothes, she struggled to find the right words. For all the times that she had cried, she never once had an audience to console her. This was new territory. She found herself mumbling expected 'it's okay's and 'it's alright's' and other nonsense she was sure he couldn't even hear over the sound of his own destruction in his ear. After a while, she decided to simply say nothing.
Time stretched, and as it did the siblings sat there against one another, the walls of the Morgan home pushing outwards as if it would expand and cover all of Riverside. Naomi Morgan consoled her brother with a circling palm on his forehead, calling his name lightly until she realized that his mumbled exasperations and shaking shoulders withered into nothingness. It all stopped, and she realized he was asleep.
Naomi Morgan sat there in the silence for a few moments and immediately knew two things. The first being that she never wanted to unload her problems onto anyone ever and the second being she would always want her brother to unload his problems onto her. She faintly stroked his hair at the resolution, only a few minutes before her own eyes grew heavy and she drifted off into sleep.
Then, they never spoke of it again.
*
The next episode automatically began playing, Naomi an attentive audience. This one was another series that Naomi tended to binge during the day— a time killer until her brother came home from summer school and they could spend the night talking about nothing and enjoying each other's misery. She was a little invested in the over-the-top drama— a bit more than she'd ever care to admit— but she had to be. She couldn't afford her thoughts to drift ashore to a place she'd long since left behind. Not now.
