WAKE (Wattpad edition)

37. Scars.

{Jon}

Jon woke up itchy, his neck aching and his mouth sticky and bitter. He unfolded with a groan and staggered out of the car. He stretched his back and breathed in the dry, prairie air, squinting at the light pouring over the horizon from every direction. They appeared to be in the literal middle of nowhere.

Cary's legs were sticking out of the open car door in the back seat. Jon walked a little ways away to relieve himself, then returned. He was surprisingly hungry. He rummaged in the front seat for his water bottle and poppy seeds. The seeds were making a mess of the front seat, but they took a little of the edge off his opioid craving.

Cary's dishevelled head appeared above the seat backs. His face was flushed and marked with creases from pressing into the car upholstery. He blinked blearily at Jon and the interior of the car, then staggered out to do the same thing Jon had done. He stiffly crammed himself back into the driver's seat beside Jon without speaking, as if he were still half asleep.

"I'm starved," Jon said. "What's the next stop?"

Cary started the car. "Forty minutes." His voice sounded like gravel and he cleared his throat. "Need to gas up."

"I'll check for breakfast places." Jon held out Cary's phone for him to unlock, enjoying having the ability to use one again after days without his phone at Hope House. The map showed a pin not far from the next town. "This your aunt's place? It's not far. We'll be there an hour after breakfast. I think I want real food—like waffles and eggs. There's a place in town that looks good. I hope they're open." The sight of the time startled a laugh out of him. "Geez it's early. I haven't been up this time of day since, like, Christmas when I was ten."

Cary gave him a sideways glance, his eyebrows relaxing upwards.

Jon felt fidgety with energy and more cheerful than he had in weeks, driving away from the city and all his problems. Having Cary next to him was part of it, he realized. Jon and Cary weren't complicated. "I missed having you as a friend," he said as soon as the thought occurred to him. "This is really fun. Your car is awesome—we could live in here for weeks."

Cary made a dry noise. "Beds," he said shortly.

He shifted his stiff back. "Well, yeah. But it would be fun for a bit."

Jon couldn't eat as much of his breakfast as he thought. There was a payphone at the table and he thought again of calling Kurtis. He didn't have a credit card to use it—he didn't have anything. The restaurant was quiet—nearly empty, and there was nothing to distract him from recalling the sound of Kurt's voice saying White, or the way his lips curled when he smiled. He flicked his finger hard against the soft skin inside his arm to snap out of it, but it didn't hurt enough to distract him. Jon and Kurtis were so fucking complicated. He wished he could take a big scouring pad and scrub the oldest Klassen brother right out of his brain: thinking about him hurt and thinking about not thinking about him hurt, and he didn't have any pain meds left to numb it all out.

Cary didn't eat much either. When their half-finished plates were cleared away, Cary said, "Time to clean you up."

In the parking lot, he popped the trunk of the car and dug out clean clothes and a shopping bag that held deodorant, soap and a toothbrush.

Jon made a face. "I'm not using your toothbrush."

"I'm using my toothbrush," Cary said.

Jon followed him across the parking lot into the restroom, noticing the tension in Cary's shoulders. For the first time it occurred to him that their situation was more serious for Cary than it was for him. If he could get his shit together, he had a home to go back to. Cary didn't have anyone if this didn't work out.

Cary stripped his shirt off at the sink and splashed water on himself to wash, then tried to comb down his mop of hair with damp fingers. He gave up with a disgusted noise and Jon glanced at him from where he'd been gingerly trying to step into a pair of Cary's clean pants without letting his bare feet touch too much of the floor. Cary had his face ducked away from the mirror, unwrapping the gauze from the top of his arm with quick, practiced movements. The cuts were jagged and sloppy, uglier than the knife cuts on Jon's arm. Cary's face was creased with worry and he hissed a little to himself as he dabbed them dry with a paper towel. He smeared ointment on them—the same kind his mom used, Jon noted distantly—and after a moment's thought, bound them up again.

"Your turn," Cary said, flicking Jon a glance.

Jon froze. He hadn't planned to take his shirt off. He didn't want Cary seeing his cuts, let alone touching them.

"You cleaned those yet?" Cary asked. "You keep opening them they'll get infected. They won't heal."

Jon turned his face away, crossing his arms tightly over himself.

Cary sighed. "Look, I'm gonna worry about them until I know they're okay, so just...let me take care of you, all right? You already know I'm the last person who's going to judge you for those."

Jon shuffled to the sink without looking at him, his face hot as an oven. He shoved his sleeve up his arm and set his eyes on the paper towel dispenser beside the sink. He heard the water turn on, then felt Cary's fingers gently touching his arm. The water was warm and the sting felt good. The sting deepened when Cary soaped the cuts with soft, quick strokes, and then rinsed the pink-black residue away. He was silent, but when Jon looked down at the ridges, he could tell they weren't good, weeping and inflamed. Cary smeared the ointment on generously, and peeled open a new roll of gauze with little movements of his fingers.

When the cuts were covered and secured with tape, Cary turned Jon's hands one after another to check the cuts on the inside of his arms—ones he'd made when the bugs were on him. The hospital had treated them and Jon had left them alone. They were nicely scabbed and healing.

Cary took a deep breath and wrapped his hand over the bandages on the top of Jon's arm. "So...we're doing this every day till these heal. If you break them open a hundred times—if you make new ones—I'm not going to comment, okay? I just want to clean them and wrap them at the end of the day. That's all I'm asking for you to come with me." He found Jon's eyes, worry lines tightening in the corners of his mouth. Jon's hands closed and he tucked in his chin, holding his look with difficulty. It was a lot to ask: bare his arms to Cary every day? He couldn't help calculating where else he could cut if he needed and Cary wouldn't find them. He nodded once and looked away, watching Cary in the mirror as he tidied away the first aid kit.

Under the fluorescent lights, the map of Cary's scars was plain against his skin—thick strike marks hash-tagging his back, fine lines traced on his arms and front. "Do you think your scars will ever go away?" Jon asked.

Cary touched his fingers to the "x" on his chest without looking. "No. Just a part of me now." He pulled a clean T-shirt over his head, then started buttoning a dress shirt over that.

Jon turned his hands over, imagining the cuts there smooth and white like the ones on Cary's arms. "When did you stop?" he asked. It must have been a while ago—everything was healed on Cary, except the cuts he'd given himself yesterday. Jon's cuts.

Cary touched his eyes in the mirror for a second then looked away. "I don't remember."

Jon remembered. "The ones on your chest were fresh—when I just broke my ribs." That night came back to him abruptly: the pounding pain in his body, Cary's white, broken face above the scabbed "x" on his chest and horribly, his own words, crystal clear: Get your shit together before anyone else gets hurt. And I'll leave you alone, like you wanted.

His voice came out a little squeezed. "Did you cut after that?"

Cary shook his head once, his eyes hidden behind his wave of hair.

"Truth—Cary?" Jon's voice broke.

Cary fumbled with the last button. "Your mom hid all the sharps," he said in a low voice. "I wanted to. But I couldn't find them." He bundled his old clothes into the shopping bag without looking at Jon. "We should go."