Falter Kingdom

by Michael J Seidlinger

“Who’s what?” It’s a gut reaction, but she gets it before I say anything. Too late though.

  I tell her, “H.”

  Nervous laughter and then: “Hunter, you have to stay strong. Please, stay strong!”

  She reaches for my hands. I pull them away.

  Now’s the time to ask: “Where’s my invitation?”

  Becca stutters, “W-what invitation?”

  “My invitation,” I say, “where is it?”

  “Why would you need—”

  I interrupt, stepping closer and closer, until we’re inches apart. “It’s my exorcism. Where’s my invitation?”

  “Yeah, yeah, but see...” Oh, look at Becca’s eye twitching.

  And let’s just get right down to it. I’ll save her the trouble.

  “You figured since I’m going to be the ‘star’ of it, I didn’t need one.”

  Becca agrees. “Because you don’t get invitations to your own, like, thing, whatever it is. You’re part of it, you are it, babe...” And then she tries to grab my hands again. “Are you okay? I’m so worried about you, Hunter.”

  I push away from her, acting all moody. Really playing up the whole thing to be more dramatic and emo than it really is.

  I wander off because doing that would be the funniest.

  Becca’s all like the concerned girlfriend that, because of the situation, seems to look like she isn’t actually the problem. Funny, so damn funny, how the situation changes things. Like Becca isn’t obsessive. Just know that she counted every single damn invitation. She not only got them made up, but she also created raffles and other things to get more people to show up to the exorcism.

  It’s Becca. She does stuff like this.

  I can’t stand it. It really does make me angry.

  Walking to last period, I see Blaire and Blaire sees me. She stops, looks right at me, and then leaves—just turns the other way, the way she came. I want to call out to her. Be like, Blaire, it’s me...

  But that doesn’t happen and instead, the day keeps going. It ends exactly the same way every other school day ends.

  I drive home.

  I find it all so funny, seeing everyone exposed like this.

  I mean, I’m not doing this to hurt them. I’m just doing this because I think it’s more than a little due. They owe me. But maybe they don’t.

  But I got a laugh out of it.

  That’s all that matters, right?

  On the drive home, I get to thinking about those invitations. I start fixating on those invitations. Like always, if I think about something long enough, it clicks. It becomes something real.

  Turn one corner and I’m laughing about what happened today. How I really messed with people.

  Turn another corner and I’m grinding my teeth, trying to tear the steering wheel off just thinking about what those invitations mean.

  Left at the light—I think about Brad and feel a little sorry for him. Maybe I really was a little mean.

  Left at the next light—I think about Becca and how she sees me as property, sees me as something expected, like I’m really not a person to her, just the part of her life that reads “boyfriend.”

  At the red light, I’m fuming, thinking about Becca.

  It’s my fault for staying with her, yeah.

  It’s my fault for a lot of things. But then there’s this idea of change. People change over time. What makes me the most mad...

  I really can’t figure out what it is that does it, just sends me over the edge. I speed down the neighboring streets, screeching tires as I make a sharp turn up the driveway and put the car in park.

  I storm up the stairs.

  I think Mom or Dad is home. Someone stirs from the kitchen.

  No, it isn’t H. He’s already upstairs in my room.

  I go right up to my room.

  A voice from downstairs: “What’s going on?”

  Dad.

  This means I’ll have to lock the door. What he usually does is what he ends up doing today. He follows me up the stairs, stops at the door, talks to me with his face pressed against it. “How’s it going?”

  Don’t say anything. I don’t have to say anything.

  “Everything okay, Hunter?”

  Everyone is asking me that like it’s supposed to help. It’s not helping. It’s making me lose my mind. So annoying.

  “Hunter.”

  Man, I wish he’d go. I have nothing to say to him.

  Get the hell away.

  I hear a crash from downstairs. Broken plates.

  I hear my dad mutter, “The hell was that?”

  I’m like, “Thanks, H.”

  Damn, I didn’t realize that I was clenching my phone so tight. I broke the case. The plastic is cracked all the way down one side. I throw the case away and toss the phone on the pillow. I lie down next to it.

  A video plays on the laptop.

  “Yeah, that one’s pretty awesome.”

  But it’s not enough to get me off the topic of Becca. Nothing helps. I scroll through news stories on my phone. I delete text messages, most of them old ones from Becca, waiting for what it is I was trying to think of to arrive. I wait and I wait, thinking about how we have nothing in common.

  Forget the phone. I close my eyes.

  No idea what time it is. Don’t really care.

  The reason she makes me so angry is that while everyone changes, talks about change, and is going on and on about themselves, Becca remains exactly the same. Comfortable. Predictable. She is there to hold me back. She is there to make me feel like I’m small. She’s become everything that bores me.

  So everyone’s talking in the past tense? Well, then it’s starting to really feel like I can’t see her. I look everywhere but the only way I spot her is if I’m looking back.

  The laptop shuts off.

  “Thanks.”

  Before I finally slip away into sleep, it registers as true.

  What I must do.

  For me, there’s more to this than looking back at things in doubt and confusion, like they’ll just go away with time. I’m not seeing how time really changes anything if you’re not willing to change with it. You know what I mean? Sometimes, you just have to trust the one that gets you. And I mean really gets you. Sometimes you just have to trust your own instincts.

  I mean, right?

  The dream opens a lot like the end of most movies—darkness and a sound track. The sound track is mostly my thoughts. I hear breathing in the background. Yeah, that’s me. I’m fast asleep but still not running through this fast enough. I want to go back to the good parts but I can’t find it. So it’s the end of the movie and I’ve forgotten what it is I’m watching.

  What am I watching?

  I guess I’m watching you.

  I’m watching you standing there, a group forming around you. Wait, if that’s you, then where am I?

  It takes a second for it all to kind of click.

  It clicks when I see her standing next to you.

  It sounds like I’m talking but those aren’t the right words. It’s really not what I’m supposed to say. I’m getting it all wrong. What’s going on?

  People are watching like they belong in the scene. They are extras, faces forming a crowd. They are talking in whispers, and Becca and you are chanting the same short sentences. They’re angry, what I’m saying.

  What she’s saying, it’s a mixture of “I’m sorrys.” But she isn’t really sorry. She’s just saying that. And you aren’t falling for it, are you? No, you’re not.

  You tell her that it’s been a long time coming, this moment, this day.

  Becca’s saying, “This is, like, so unlike you.”

  And that’s kind of the point.

  It’s what gets me excited.

  That isn’t me. But it could be. It really could be, if I wanted it to be me. And she’s trying to tell you what you’re supposed to say. She’s talking to you in that way that she always talks to me. It’s annoying, right?

  She’
s saying that it’s your fault that I’m acting this way. “It’s the demon, Hunter.” Becca’s in tears.

  We’re making a scene, and everyone’s watching. Normally I’d care about what they’re thinking, but something about the dream seems rehearsed, like you’re showing me how it’ll fall into place.

  I’m standing where you’d be standing. And no one seems to notice that I’m standing right here—you’re standing right here—the entire time.

  Even when there’s no activity, you’re standing near and within reach of other people’s breaths. You can breathe for them, I know you can. You can breathe just like me. In this case, you are, and I’m sensing that there really isn’t a whole lot of difference between the two of us.

  Like, you’ve got to trust your instincts, you know? You need to say what comes to mind.

  This is the scene that this entire thing has been leading up to. I know that, and even so, it’s like I can’t actually say the words.

  We’re finished.

  I can’t say them.

  I can’t say them to her, and definitely not to her face.

  But here, in this dream... that person standing there is supposed to be me. He’s talking like he’s sure about the future. He’s talking like he’s never been more confident of a decision before. He’s talking to Becca like she’s the reason he’s never changed. He’s talking like I should have been talking.

  It starts long before the words “We’re finished.”

  It starts when Becca walks up and says that everything’s planned. My reaction, our reaction, it’s basically like, “What’s planned?”

  And then we find out that Becca’s planned the entire day: she’s spoken with Halverson and gotten permission to leave school early so that I can go get some fresh air, maybe get checked again by a second source. Becca has planned it all out like I’m a kid. She does this. She always does this and it drives me crazy.

  Then when it’s time to finally say no, Becca acts like I’ve gone and done it. She acts like I really have gone crazy.

  I’m not crazy. I’m not, right? Right.

  It seems more like she’s the one who’s out of her fucking mind, saying all these things, doing stuff for me when I’m my own person. Whatever that means.

  Then it’s like—I don’t let my mom pamper me, why do I let Becca do this stuff? It’s true. You’re starting to make more sense than anyone else. Everyone else is saying impossible things, like they aren’t saying anything at all. But you’re saying every single thing for me.

  It’s a real big help, thanks.

  You’re really coming out of your shell. People say that, right—“coming out of your shell”? You look just like me and you do a mean impersonation. Becca doesn’t realize that it’s you that’s telling her to go get a life. Do something else for once. How it’s insane that she can think that it’s okay to do this to a person. How it’s what’s really insane—the fact that this has lasted more than a few years.

  She’s repeating herself now. Apologies and then it’s “How can I make it up to you?” and “Sorry about the invitation thing,” and also “We don’t have to go.”

  Of course we don’t have to go. I don’t have to go anywhere I don’t want to. I don’t have to ask you to prom, and I don’t have to do what you say.

  This is all toxic.

  If people hold you back, keeping you from being, well, you, shouldn’t you fix the problem? Shouldn’t you, I don’t know, maybe find people who make you a better person? Find people who you can actually relate to?

  I don’t know, it seems kind of stupid to think that you can just be friends with anyone. Not everyone’s the same. Not everyone gets along with each other.

  Just like these dreams, no two are the same. They’re all different, and yeah, I’m different too.

  So then another thing to be said is that we have nothing in common. You tell her that, for me, and it’s what breaks her down. It’s the one that gets her crying. But I know it’s an act. You know that too, I’m sure. It’s all an act. She does that to get other people’s attention. Becca does it to hopefully make it look like I’m the bad person here.

  I’m the one who’s “breaking her heart.”

  But she’s really crying because she knows that it’s ending now and there goes her investment. There goes three and a half years of keeping this guy on a short leash. Three and a half years down the drain.

  It’s a short scene, telling me what I need to do.

  It really does seem easy. But I don’t know if I can do it alone. I need someone at my side. Someone I can trust. I need to know that I’ll be doing the right thing.

  This has gone on for too long, I know.

  She’s going to be broken up about it because it means she’ll have to start from scratch. She’ll try to fix things, but I can’t just get lazy and let it go, just stop halfway, you know? I can’t do that. I’m in the situation I am because I never tried to meet people. I just kept whoever was there around. I let other people keep the friendship afloat. I let that all happen on its own.

  It’s why I’m this way.

  And I have to know that it’ll change.

  It’s getting so damn old. Everything’s bogus. Everything’s a bust.

  We’re finished.

  I can say it.

  We’re finished.

  You’re saying it the way I need to say it.

  We’re finished.

  I guess I just need a little support. Friends on my side, but Brad and Blaire and Jon-Jon and everyone else, they’re there to watch, not to help. We’ve never had anything in common except that we needed someone to hang around. It’s all kind of a lie, if you really think about it. But this dream, it’s the truth. It’s telling me what I need to do. It’s telling me what I need to hear. It’s showing me what I need to see.

  And don’t think I don’t realize that it’s you.

  You’re the one that’s making everything change. You’re helping me out, and that’s awesome. But I need help now more than ever.

  I can hear myself saying it in my sleep, “Will you help me?”

  Will you help?

  Of course you will.

  And then the next moment I’m calm and smiling. A smile on my face while I dream up that moment when I tell Becca to her face, “We’re finished.” I dream it over and over again, a dozen times, until I wake up.

  It’s because you’re helping me that any of this is happening.

  I probably didn’t even need to ask.

  But I know you were waiting.

  It’s the offer you’ve been waiting for.

  Once I say it, it’s like everything clicks into place. There’s no more doubt, and I’m really sure that I’m going to be a different person someday. We all change over time. I’m confident that this is necessary.

  I can’t fill my life with fair-weather friends.

  I need to know that I’m doing the right thing.

  You make sure that I never lose confidence. You say all the things I’m supposed to say.

  And that’s when I know that you and I really get along.

  It’s like you’re thinking what I’m thinking, and I’m thinking what you’re thinking. It kind of goes in a circle, and now I sense that when I’m not sure, you’ll be there to pick up the slack.

  Like a true friend, you know?

  No, I don’t think I’m crazy.

  I think we’re getting along just fine.

  10

  WHAT HAPPENS IN A DREAM HAPPENS IN REAL LIFE. IT makes sense now. I woke up this morning with marks on my arms, just to make sure that I’d remember. Yeah, it’s a dream, so what? Yeah, I didn’t go through with it, so what happens now? That’s a good question.

  I look at the marks like they’re tattoos. But yeah, they’re more to help me remember that it’ll happen today. They help me remember to be confident. They help remind me that I’ve got your help.

  “Thanks,” I say on the drive to school.

  This happens and that happens, but
it’s just another day at school until we get to that part of the day. It’s actually not that weird, what’s been happening to me. Not anymore.

  It’s kind of magical, like I’m just watching it again for the second time. The second time, it’s very different. This time I see it with my own eyes. I have a horrible headache but it’s like I’m using the pain as motivation. It’s like you’re the one moving the body while I keep busy with the conversation.

  Sure enough she walks up to me around fourth period, just before lunch, and she tells me, “I got us the day off!”

  Say it like this: “What?” Almost like I’m stuttering, in shock, but really I’m already aware of what’s happening.

  I’m holding on to a deadly secret.

  We’re holding on to the secret. She won’t know what hit her.

  “Wow, you’re looking better today,” Becca says.

  I’m grinning wide for obvious reasons.

  I nod and say, “It’s a beautiful day.”

  Becca agrees. “Like, you have no idea. I actually got Halverson to let us out early, on the fact that you’re not feeling well. I’ve planned our entire day. Food, some sun, fun, and all that.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yup!” Becca being Becca.

  You have no idea what I’m about to say.

  “Oh, and I want you to see another priest too. You’re not looking good, Hunter. Better today, true, but I’m worrying about you constantly and I just can’t let that happen.”

  Of course you can’t let that happen.

  People are starting to form a crowd. It’s because of what H is doing. H is making it so that they can’t help but stop and watch. Becca notices this and gives this one person a really mean look.

  Then I realize this is it. This is the moment. Do it now or never do it at all. But the latter isn’t even a choice. It’s like you’re telling me that it’ll be okay.

  First line is “Listen...”

  But of course Becca isn’t listening. She’s looking around at the people circling us, all confused.

  Now you know how I’ve felt most times. I used to be confused but that’s changed. I know now what I need to do to get things going on the right track.

  Next line is “We have to talk.”

  That’ll get her attention.

  Yeah, it does. Now it’s a real scene.