Slate | ✓

SEVENTEEN | ATHENA

Resting my back against the base of John's bed, I stretch out the aching muscles of my shoulders and neck. A dull pain radiates throughout my body. The sun only now spills in through the window, yet the house already feels deafeningly quiet without the usual body count of morning activity. The door does not slam behind Victor as he leaves for work, Henry remains fast asleep, John isn't here to start making coffee, and Will is not by the window with a cigarette in hand.

The two alternates in the roster, Charlie and Lizzie, have yet to stir from behind the closed door of my room.

I try to get comfortable. I spent last night tossing and turning in John's bed while painfully aware of the absences all around me. Like an itch that couldn't be scratched, my mind kept circling back to the picture Charlie gave me. The same photo now lays at my crossed feet. The sun casts a glare over my mother's face and washes it in white light. To both sides of the picture is Will.

On the right is the shot I took of him in the school parking lot two days ago. His blurred hand arches upwards to bring a cigarette to his lips. Will's green eyes, dampened with exhaustion, meet the camera without any defence or ceremony. It's a good fucking picture. One that feels more... coherent than anything else I've produced this summer. It's subtle. Quiet, even. 

On the left is the picture of a younger, lankier Will that was hanging in the hallway. 

It could have been his face...

A shiver goes down my spine and I wrap John's blanket closer around me. The three pictures assembled on the carpet feel like pieces to a puzzle that doesn't quite form a whole image but connects nonetheless. They tell an unspoken story, but only if you're paying attention. It's been a long time since I payed close attention to much of anything.

Despite that I took the photo of Will, I feel like I'm invading his privacy by even looking at it. Since Charlie showed up, I've realized more and more how everything in this house is shaped by what could have been seven years ago— perhaps even more than what is. Maybe that's how Victor has always seen things. Maybe that's the real reason Charlie is home: Victor's just trying to salvage some of that lost possibility. He's trying to change the present by rewriting the past.

There's a odd destructiveness to it all. The emptiness of the room around me feels increasingly like a consequence of the narratives Victor wants to believe in. He's desperate for some sort of absolution to what happened, and he thinks we all need the same thing. Yet, he couldn't even look at Mom's picture. She's a loose end that can't be tied off so easily— just like Will. 

The lies that Victor wants to tell himself are hurting everyone else.

I jump when there's a gentle knock on the already ajar bedroom door. It pulls my attention away from the pictures. Charlie gingerly pushes the door open further, and planks of sunlight from the window line the lower half of his body as he steps in. He wears sweatpants and a ratty band t-shirt. He's less rigid than yesterday. For the first time, Charlie seems like he's at home. "Can I come in?" He looks around the room with wonder in his eyes. 

"This is your old room?" I struggle to mentally reorient Charlie, both past and present, within the context of this house. 

As Charlie steps inside his hands glide over the walls and furniture. He looks like he's stepped into an alternate reality. "This used to be my bed, and John would sleep over there." He points to Will's bed. "Mom made him and Will share because she said that you would need your own room. Do you remember? She wanted Dad to make a bunk bed for the two of them."

"No." I watch him closely. "I don't remember."

Charlie says nothing. His attention turns to the walls, to the clothing that litters the floor, to the John's construction boots in the closet. I see how his gaze hitches on the mirror, or rather the glossy business card that's lodged in the top corner. "Where'd they go?" His voice still carries a hint of sleep.