I could hear the peacock girl in the doorway, pleading for the other two to stop. At least, that’s what I’ve chosen to believe she was saying. I really don’t know. Maybe she was goading them on. But I have decided that she stopped them and maybe even saved my life. They quit kicking and ran off. Left me in the mud and ick.
But not before grabbing my backpack (the one with all my freshly laundered clothes). My jeans (with my wallet and phone in the pockets).
And your oxblood Doc Martens (the only thing of yours I’d brought on this trip). I can still see them dangling from Frankie’s fingertips as she ran. That’s what hurt more than anything. More than a brick to the head or a kick in the balls.
One more piece of you slipping away.
Miles Away to Vivian Girl
June 8, 3:16 PM
Battle wounds are as follows: one black eye, two stomped testicles, several bruised ribs, and one gnarly-looking gash on my temple that probably needs stitches and will probably leave a scar. Do you think I will look sexy with a scar? I can pull that shit off, right?
I wonder. Did they attack me because I didn’t save you from trying to commit suicide? Or is it because I dropped out of the court case? Don’t get me wrong. I deserve it either way. I failed you. Twice. Someone shoulda kicked my ass a long time ago. Hell, I’m not even mad. I get it. I just need to know if more bad karma is coming my way.
Though, now that I think about it, I did have a little bit of luck. Help came in the form of a robot. No, make that TWO robots. Óskar is as much a clever little machine as the artificial intelligence in my cell phone AND twice as useful.
Anyway, I’d say I probably lay on that disgusting floor for at least half an hour. I threw up, ’cause that’s what you do when someone smacks you with a brick, then kicks you in the balls. I’m not going to go on too much about that, though. I’m not trying to make you feel sorry for me. It was bad, but I never lost consciousness. At least, I don’t think I did. And I got up eventually. I got up.
I went outside, and of course it was still fucking daylight. Or maybe the sun had set and risen again. Who the hell knows around here? I wandered for a little bit, unsure of what to do next. I found my Tourist T-shirt still next to the pool—they hadn’t grabbed that when they stole my pants. I was so dirty that I didn’t want to put it on, though. So, I got back in the pool and washed all the mud and goo off myself and my underwear. Carefully washed my head wound. Hopefully the water was clean enough. The blood had clotted, but when I rinsed, it started bleeding again. So, I ended up applying my warm, dry shirt to the gash on my head. Bloodied up my T-shirt. Fitting, really. You ARE a tourist, Miles. Bewildered and gullible.
The French girls had left their cooler (too heavy for them to lug in their grand escape, I suppose). I drank the last beer. Are you supposed to drink when you have a head wound? Eh, probably not. There were also two containers of skyr inside, which I gobbled up without a spoon. Just tilted my head back and chugged them down. Then I immediately went into survival mode, thinking, Wait! Shouldn’t I have rationed that food? Because I was a pretty long way away from civilization. I remembered seeing a few houses scattered along the countryside, but the nearest one . . . How far of a walk is a twenty-minute drive? Fuck.
I knew my best bet was to get to a road. Start walking, or hope a kind stranger was willing to pick up a wet, bloody, half-naked hitchhiker who stank of muck and Viking booze. So I headed uphill, away from the pool. And probably three hundred feet out, I found my cell phone. It must have fallen out of my pants pocket when one of the French girls ran away. Great news, right? Except that the screen was cracked and blank. And I’d left it on airplane mode. Great. Fucking. News.
I tried everything I knew about resetting cell phones, but the display was toast. The phone still worked—I could feel that “haptic feedback” vibration whenever I touched the screen. I could even get it unlocked, because I knew where the keys would be. But I couldn’t really call anywhere. Who would I even call? I guess I could have called Mamochka, but then she’d have cried and panicked, and I’d have cried and panicked, and where would that have gotten us? Plus, like I said, my phone was on airplane mode. Emergencies only—to keep me from accruing ridiculous international roaming charges.
And there I was. An actual goddamn emergency. *Cue “No Phone” by Cake.* But then I thought, Siri! Siri doesn’t need buttons. Siri will save me! Puuuush. Dingding! Then . . . nothing. No computer voice asking me what the hell I wanted. Yep. Siri needs internet to work, too.
So, I sat there and figured out how to turn off airplane mode without looking at the screen. I know that doesn’t sound like a grand ordeal, but it was, trust me. Like, maybe . . . a forty-five-minute ordeal? Lots of complicated steps, but eventually I heard that dingding and said, “Call Hotel Skógur in Reykjavik, Iceland,” and Siri said, “Calling Hotel Skógur.” And I nearly wept with joy.
A guy picked up, and I immediately thought he was Óskar, but he told me Óskar was off for the weekend. Then I just sort of launched into “Look, I’m fucking lost and I really don’t care how much this is going to cost me I just need someone to come pick me up, oh and can you please bring some pants?” He asked where I was, and I was like, “Uh . . . Iceland’s oldest swimming pool?” He goes, “Selojakjmodnonajondkull” or whatever, and I was like, “. . . Yeah, that’s probably it.” He said he’d send someone, and I said I’d be waiting by the road.
So, I finished the rest of the walk up the hill. It took me, like, thirty minutes because, well, my balls hurt, okay? I figured whoever was coming to pick me up was coming from Reykjavik and so they’d be at least another hour, so I wasn’t paying much attention when an enormous white Jeep with huge tires pulled up alongside me.
“Hello, handsome. How much for a blowjob?” The driver smirked at me, and I saw my own pitiful reflection in his mirrored aviators. Shivering and bruised. Pathetic. No wonder some strange asshole wanted to mess with me. Any other day I would have cursed this dude’s mother and started listing off a few inanimate objects with which he could fornicate, but I was beat. Physically and mentally. So, when he slid out of the Jeep and walked toward me, I actually flinched.
Then I realized how little he was. And how blond. Óskar. Minus the man-bun. His hair was down, loose around his shoulders, and he was dressed sort of . . . I don’t know, grungy? T-shirt and jeans, baggy cardigan. Very Kurt Cobain. My mushy brain couldn’t make sense of him out of uniform and out of context. Plus, did he just make a joke?
“How did you get here so fast?”
“I was nearby,” he said, looking me all over. I don’t think he’d noticed how beat up I was until then. I felt very small and very naked. “Do you need to see a doctor?”
I shook my head and drew my arms up around my shoulders. Óskar was kind of the last person I wanted to see because I still thought he might be a smug little shit that my mommy had elected to babysit for me. And I was still a little mad that he’d mocked me in front of Shannon for rarely leaving the hotel.
But at the same time, he was looking very much like my knight in shining sport utility vehicle.
“I don’t want to talk about it. Can you please take me back to Rey—to the hotel?” I got a little flustered, thinking he might laugh and leave me on the side of the road if I managed to pronounce his precious capital city incorrectly.
He turned and motioned for me to follow him back to his giant monster truck. We got in, and he reached into the back seat and handed me a neatly folded square of fabric. It was a pair of black and white plaid pajama pants. I pulled them on without a word, and he smirked at me some more while he started up the engine.
“The hotel called me to pick you up because I was nearby, but this is a little inconvenient. I will see to it that you have a bed tonight, but I cannot take you back to Reykjavik until tomorrow afternoon. I have some business to attend to. I promise not to ask you any questions if you will do the same for me.” Big, blue-eyed-cat blink.
And thus began my very weird
night with Óskar. Which I will tell you about. Later.
For now, we sleep.
Chapter Nine
Miles Away to Vivian Girl
June 8 6:02 PM
I did an impossible thing. You’d tease me so much—I just lied to Mamochka! I told her I fell while hiking. It was easier to lie via Skype, but still not entirely guilt-free. I think she believed me. I really just want to go home, but I don’t want to worry them. Or waste money. So, I’ll suck it up. I’m barricading myself in this hotel room again. More wound licking. At least the injuries are mostly external this time. God, I’m a wreck.
Miles Away to Vivian Girl
June 8 6:35 PM
Nothing’s working. Nothing’s changing. I feel like I’m being buried alive.
I hate labels, you know? I’ve been a lot of things, like the Son of Those Two Lesbians and the Only Queer Kid in School. How about That Guy Dating That Chick Who Used to Be a Dude?
The thing is, I’m fine with all of them (except for someone calling you a dude). For the most part, I’ve never been ashamed of my parents or my sexuality or you. Sure, there were times I wished things were simpler, that my life didn’t leave me with so much explaining to do. It is what it is, and I can’t really change any of that.
So it really sucks now to be stuck with this label because of a conscious choice that I made. I am now the Guy Who Threw Our Beloved Vivian to the Wolves. I don’t know what to do or where to go from here. It feels like I need to apologize to the entire world.
And sometimes it feels like the entire world ought to apologize to me.
That’s selfish. I know. But every once in a while, I get caught up in this fantasy where your parents show up at my door and tell me how wrong they were. I wonder, too, about all the trolls who filled your Haters inbox—do they know what happened to you? Would they take it back if they could?
I think about what I’d say if my mom apologized for not seeing the warning signs in you. Before I left, we kept having this same conversation. It’s not even a conversation, really. She’d show up at the cabin or my bedroom or wherever I was trying to sleep and just talk at my face. Say things about how a lot of shit factors into a person’s decision to commit suicide. That just because I yelled at you the night before doesn’t mean it’s all my fault. When she does that, it makes things worse somehow. It’s almost like she thinks she has the power to absolve me. I wish she’d just be real. Say out loud that I screwed up. Admit that she did, too. Maybe then we’d be getting somewhere.
Miles Away to Vivian Girl
June 8 7:49 PM
Okay, I promised to tell you about Óskar. Two things first, so I can kind of set the scene. For starters, Óskar looks like a supermodel. That’s not to say he’s hot. You know how you sometimes see those angular, androgynous people in magazines and think, How on earth did that awkward creature land a modeling contract? That, in essence, is Óskar. He’s perfectly symmetrical, physically flawless, and blond as all get-out, but sort of . . . alien? Then the light hits him just right and you go, Oh shit, those are some gorgeous baby blues. Or maybe I’m just really, really horny and everyone is starting to look damn sexy to me?
Anyway, the other thing is that his phone rang all night. Like, every ten or twenty minutes—and I’m not exaggerating. It kept vibrating in the cup holder between us—this old-ass flip phone, btw—and he’d snatch it up, look at the display, then set it back down unanswered. This happened from when he picked me up around one or two a.m. until we crashed. Not literally crashed. I mean, when we went to sleep.
So, back to where we were. Óskar had just picked me up from—and here is its actual name—Seljavallalaug, and I was . . . honestly, I was trying my damnedest not to cry. Not just because I was in pain, but just the idea of it. I’m still really upset, V. I’ve always been a part of the queer community, but turning my back on you meant turning my back on the rest of them, I guess. It’s just really scary to know I won’t be welcome anymore. The kids at Camp must be really mad at me too. Maybe not all of them, but enough for my parents to send me to the friggin’ Arctic Circle.
Maybe that’s why they didn’t want me around. Maybe it wasn’t for me to heal but to protect me from them.
I really regret letting everyone down, and for such selfish reasons.
Óskar turned the Jeep east, away from Reykjavik. I leaned on the window and watched the scenery, because the south coast is super pretty. There are really, really tall cliffs all along the road (none of those tiny baby mountains I’d seen leaving the airport). Green fields. Lots of sheep. And waterfalls pouring out of everywhere, like, every ten feet.
I decided the only way I was going keep my shit together was to not think about you, so I started getting really fixated on Óskar and his stupid phone. Since I was wounded and a little out of it, my mind wandered to some pretty weird places, and I ended up convincing myself that he was up to something illegal. I mean, he was driving to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. His phone going buzz buzz all urgent like he was late for an execution.
“So, are you, like, a drug dealer or something?” It was the first thing that came to mind.
“I can get you some weed when we get back to Reykjavik.”
“No, man, that’s not what I’m asking—”
“I said for you not to ask me anything.”
“You are just acting all kinds of shady right now with your phone and your confidentiality clause, or whatever. If you’re about to make me an accessory, I just wanna know, okay?”
He glared at me for an uncomfortably long time, then didn’t say anything for the rest of the trip. He turned in to a long driveway with a squarish house at the end, maneuvering the Jeep behind a stone wall so that it was mostly out of view of the house. Weird house, black with white trim. It looked so ominous, even in the relentless Icelandic sunlight.
“You are in no danger,” he said, turning to me.
“Uh, okay.”
“But we cannot speak for the rest of the night.” Bliiiiink.
“We can’t?”
“No.” He waved his hand dismissively. “We are going in that house—do you snorrh?”
“What? What does that mean?”
“When you sleep? Do you snorrh?”
“Snore? No, I don’t snore.”
He nodded. “Good. Then you can sleep. But no talking. Because I am not there. And you are definitely not there.”
“No, I don’t think either of us is all there right now.”
“In the house.”
“Yeah. Uh, we’re in the driveway.” Between my head wound and his weird accent, it was starting to seem like a game of Who’s on First.
He blinked at me again and pointed a finger. “Quit fucking around. I know you understand me.”
“Not really, man.”
He paused for a second and scrunched up his face. “Did you ever sneak into a girl’s room?”
“Ha. Oh, okay. Gotcha. Why didn’t you say so?”
One more scowl, then he hopped out of the Jeep. He shut his car door very slowly and quietly, so I did the same. We took a roundabout way to the house, circumventing a huge red barn on our way to the back door. Óskar let us in with a key. We crept through a laundry room and up a flight of stairs. The house was old and sort of Victorian-looking on the inside. Floral wallpaper and scuffed wooden steps. In the middle of the upstairs hallway was a door with a word, a name I (correctly) assumed, painted on it. Bryndis. Óskar opened this door with yet another key, and we went inside. There must’ve been blackout curtains or something, because it took my eyes a second to adjust. I heard the lock click behind us and sensed Óskar moving about the room. He handed me this super soft knitted blanket and pointed to a chaise longue in the corner. I shuffled over to it and curled up, making sure to turn my head so that I didn’t stain anything with my blood.
Even though I was in a strange house, uninvited, my entire body relaxed when I lay down. I felt comfortable. And safe. At least I wasn’t on the flo
or of some filthy changing room, getting an unsolicited spinal column adjustment.
Óskar pulled off his shoes and cardigan and crawled into the bed. There was a girl beside him, but I couldn’t tell much about her other than that she was small, blond, and probably asleep. Óskar stretched out on his belly, facing away from her. I thought that was weird at the time. Why go to all the trouble to sneak into your girlfriend’s house, then not even, like, cuddle with her? He just fell asleep. Pretty quickly, too.
His phone kept buzzing, and you know how light a sleeper I am. Plus, I was dealing with some PTSD shit, or whatever, and every time it went off, I’d twitch. Finally, I got up and grabbed it off the nightstand. The background on his phone was a photo of him and a blond girl. She was cute, grinning this big, sparkling grin. Óskar had on his usual serious face. The notification display said “27 missed calls from Jack.” Well, it was in Icelandic, so it didn’t exactly SAY that, but I could tell that’s what it meant, because the name and the number were legible to me. There were text messages, too. I was so tempted to look at them, but I powered the phone down and put it back.
After that, I kept myself up worrying that I had a concussion and if I fell asleep, I might not wake up. I wasn’t sure if that was a real concern or just something they put in movies. And then I was suddenly so exhausted that I didn’t care. I wonder if that’s what happened to you. Maybe you were just tired. Tired of being alive anymore. That’s how I felt that night, so defeated that I didn’t even care whether I’d wake up in the morning, or if I’d expire in a strange Icelandic girl’s bedroom.
Miles Away from You Page 8