Beyond The Ideal (Chapter 4)

I woke up with a painful throbbing in my head, but thankfully I didn't feel sick like the night before. I managed to remember that I was in Alex's bed before I got too confused, but certain things about the night were like a blur. Try as hard as I wanted, I couldn't get a clear image of everything. I remembered it more like a blur, as if everything had moved in fast motion. I hadn't really forgotten anything, just felt funny because I usually had a pretty photographic memory.

I noticed that I was alone in the bed, but the side where Alex had been was warm still, so he couldn't have been gone for long. I looked at his walls and noticed that they were covered with drawings and photographs, with barely any plain spaces left. That explained the confusion of last night. I hadn't been able to really pinpoint details, so the wall was pretty much gibberish at the time. Some of the pictures were of friends I'd seen Alex hang out with before, and I saw a few of Eric too, including a few of him asleep, one of which captured him drooling. I made a mental note to ask for a copy of that one; it had blackmail potential. There were a lot of pictures of people who were obviously strangers, like one of a little girl on a swing, which he'd taken in black and white. All in all, they added a really artistic touch to his room.

The drawings were just as interesting, seeing as they were well done, but in a weird way. It seemed he exaggerated certain things, like he'd draw people with so much expression they looked like they could leap off of the wall, but at the same time the ones I recognized, they didn't look exactly like the people he was drawing. He also seemed to like making the backgrounds with shocking colors, smudging and sometimes very random details, like an umbrella on the ground, or a fire hydrant in the middle of a field, stuff like that. I was pretty absorbed, so I didn't hear him walk quietly into the room.

"Like what you see?" he asked, closing the door behind him. His hair was wet and he was wearing a different shirt from the one he'd slept in, so I figured out, with amazing logic, that he'd just taken a shower. For a few seconds I thought he was talking about himself, before I realized that he meant the stuff on his walls. I probably blushed a little.

"Y-yeah, I love the pictures and drawings everywhere, it never really occurred to me that I've never seen your room before now," I told him, feeling a bit awkward but being totally earnest at the same time.

"Well you're always welcome to come back in sometime.. But for now I think we need to talk about the stuff you told me last night," he said, his expression more thoughtful than before. I felt my stomach clench at that, and I had the most ridiculous urge to just run out of the house and hide.

"What about it?" I asked carefully, looking down into my lap as I sat back onto his bed. I felt the bed depress as he sat next to me.

"Am I the only person you've told?" he asked me.

"Um, yeah, you and Anthony are the only ones who know all that stuff about me," I said, feeling worried again about what Anthony would tell people about me.

"Why haven't you told Eric any of this? Since when do you have secrets from him?" he asked, and I hesitated a bit, thinking of the right way to answer that.

"I... I didn't tell him because.. It’s hard to bring up, and.. After the whole thing with Anthony started, I felt too ashamed of myself.. I don't want him thinking of me as some wimp who let some guy order me around," I answered slowly, feeling defeated again just from saying those words. I felt Alex put his arm around my shoulder and pull me closer to him.

"Eric wouldn't think anything bad about you, you're his best friend… And you're not a wimp, the guy's been blackmailing you, you're a victim and he's a fucking pig, don't forget that.. Look, I think that when you're ready you should tell Eric, you could probably use more support than just me, and you'll feel better for not hiding anything from him," he said in a more heated tone, as if he was arguing with me. I thought about what he said, and he was right, as much as I didn't want to admit it.

I nodded wordlessly at him, and neither of us talked for about a minute, leading to an awkward silence. I was surprised 'cause we'd hung out a lot and it'd never seemed awkward, even if we didn't talk at all, but I realized it was because of how much he knew about me. He'd just crossed some kind of line, and there was some intimacy that wasn't there before, probably because our interactions were never really serious before.

Suddenly it dawned on me that it was a Monday morning, meaning I was missing school. Maybe he saw me looking at the clock, or just decided to tell me, but he spoke up right then.

"Don't worry about class, I called your brother earlier and told him you weren't going in today," he said, making me draw in a breath of relief.

"What did you say was the reason?" I asked, trying to think of what I could say to explain when I got home.

"I just told him you had a bit too much to drink and you didn't feel so great.." he replied, and then, as I felt myself panicking again,
"Don't worry about it, he'll understand that no problem.. But do you think maybe you should think about telling him what his friend's been doing to you?"

I was already worried enough about how to explain missing school, and what Anthony could be telling my brother that very moment to think about that. I sat, thinking, for a few minutes, and I could feel the silence growing awkward. I was trying to imagine telling someone like Eric about the whole situation with Anthony, or my brother, and it felt more unlikely with every passing second. I wanted to tell him that I would tell Eric and my brother right away, to feel brave enough to just do something like that, but I knew if I told him that and then didn’t follow through that Alex would be disappointed in me, or at least that’s how I felt.

I got to my feet a little shakily, feeling the room spin a little bit but not as badly as the night before. Alex was still looking at me for a response, and I couldn’t think of anything really appropriate to say.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it… I’m already ashamed of myself, and I don’t want the only other people that think anything good of me to be ashamed of me too,” I finally said, maybe sounding more desperate than I wanted to. I was looking down because I felt like, if I looked up after saying that, Alex would see me tearing up, and I’d look even more like a pansy than I’d made myself out to be so far. I didn’t see him move, but I saw his shadow cover mine, and then he’d pulled me in close and hugged me tightly. This didn’t make me have a melodramatic breakdown and start crying or anything like that. It comforted me, and he felt like something steady in all the chaos, both mentally and physically.

“I’m not ashamed of you, and you shouldn’t be ashamed of you either. The only thing that will ever set you free is the truth, but when you’re feeling down you can always come here and talk to me if you don’t want to talk to anyone else,” He told me softly, holding me by the shoulders firmly so that I was looking into his face while he talked. I hugged him again tightly, whispered ‘thank you!’ in his ear, and walked out of his room.

I considered going towards Eric’s room, but decided I’d go home first to deal with my brother. Now I knew without a doubt that Alex would be my friend even if Eric wasn’t anymore, and this helped me see things from a fresh perspective. I felt like I’d been looking at everything as hopeless for a long time, and now I was seeing the good along with the bad. Looking ahead, I could see that I couldn’t let Anthony have any more control over me, because it wouldn’t stop until one of us moved away or something worse happened. I realized a little more too, a hunch I was having that made me feel a little more confident in the face of what I was about to do. Anthony didn’t want people knowing about us any more than I did! I was willing to bet now that a lot of his threats were empty gambles, because telling anyone could easily backfire on him. Either way though, whether I was believed or not, I was going to find out who I could depend on during the rough times.

I’ll admit I was still scared shitless of just telling my brother everything that happened with Anthony. When it came to the home front, he was really the only one I could count on to be on my side. If what I told him made him think badly of me, the only thing keeping me attached to my home would be gone. After my talk with Alex though, I really needed to see if my brother could support me as easily and as unconditionally as my best friend’s brother had. It seemed like one night had changed my entire state of mind; before I’d been afraid to risk losing everything I had, but now I needed to see what I actually had.

My house looked big and empty as I walked in, and I found myself wondering why my house always felt so lonely, when Eric’s house always seemed warm and welcoming. I saw Dave’s shoes near the door, so I knew he’d be home, and I was relieved to see that Anthony’s shoes were nowhere to be seen. When I reached the kitchen, I could faintly hear some rock music coming from Dave’s room upstairs, so I started up the stairs. My heart was pounding like hell, but it was from excitement too, not just fear.

I was about to just walk in, but I remembered a couple of times walking in on him and some girlfriend, so I knocked loud enough so he could hear over the music. The music went off a few seconds later, and Dave opened the door in a pair of those huge basketball shorts that everyone has a pair of, squinting furiously at me because his room was pitch black and his eyes weren’t used to the light. He looked at me a second and said, “What’s up?”

I looked at him a second and said, “I need to talk to you.”