Wake

by Abria Mattina

I march around the side of the house to tell Jem off, but I can’t hold onto my resolve once I get a look at him. At first the only thing I see is the top of his hat above the steering wheel, on which he rests his forehead. I step slowly around the side of the car and see him clutching his arms around his middle like he’s in pain. My first thought is that something is physically wrong with him—that he’s sick and needs medical attention. Then I pause to take a closer look at him through the window. I didn’t see it at first with his head bent like that, but his face is twisted up in pain and he’s crying.

  The cold, calculating part of my brain wonders whether I should call the hospital or his parents first. I reach for my cell phone and open the car door to get a better look at him.

  Jem startles and flinches away from the door. I hold a hand up for calm. “It’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry.” Jem turns away and wipes his cuff over his eyes with embarrassment.

  “Do you want me to call someone?”

  Jem shakes his head. I reach out to touch his shoulder and he grabs my hand so hard it hurts. I guess I have a spare, but damn…

  “Please.” His free hand fists around my shirt and his head tips to rest against my front. I put an arm around his shoulders—he’s trembling with tears that he’s shamefully trying to quiet.

  “Don’t cut me out,” he says shakily. I wish he wouldn’t beg. “I’ve been a really shitty, fucking awful friend, but please…” A little sob escapes and fuck if that doesn’t make my traitor heart melt.

  I dislodge my hand from his grip and he backs up. He’s got that wounded look of rejection again.

  “Calm down.” I wrap both arms around his shoulders. Jem practically falls into the hug with a grateful little whimper, holding onto my middle so hard I can barely breathe.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you like this,” I say as he hiccups and gasps. I had banked on him feeling anger and resentment, not falling to pieces in my driveway.

  “I didn’t mean to m-make you mad,” he answers with a thin voice. “You just…I reacted badly, and I couldn’t make it right…” His face twists in pain again and I tug on his shoulders before the water works can gear up again.

  “Come inside.”

  *

  I give Jem a cup of cool water that he’s shaking too badly to drink, and sit him down in the kitchen with his head between his knees and a cool cloth across his neck. He’s shaking and breathing like he just ran a marathon in cold weather.

  “You’re all right,” I encourage him, rubbing circles on his back.

  “You must think I’m such a pussy,” he says lowly, sniffing back snot.

  “You have no idea what I think.” Neither do I. My indecision bothers me.

  Jem sits up slowly and takes the towel off his neck. His thinly lashed eyes are swollen and his cheeks are stained. “Why wouldn’t you let me apologize?”

  “Because I didn’t want to fix it.”

  That was precisely the wrong thing to say. He presses his lips together and stops breathing. At first I think he’s angry, and watch as he lowers his head again and replaces the cold towel. He doesn’t make a sound, but little drops begin to strike the tiles. It’s not the towel that’s dripping.

  “Jem.”

  “You’re my only friend,” he says quietly. “We can’t—? I won’t hang around if you don’t want me to.” He tries to stand up but I grab him by the shoulders and sit him right back down.

  “You have no idea what I want.” And coincidentally, neither do I, apparently.

  “You don’t want me around.”

  “Let’s talk about this when you’ve calmed down a little.” I take the towel off his neck and brush it across his cheeks. “Lay down on the couch for a bit, ok?”

  Jem lies down on his side, still breathing shakily, and tucks one of the throw pillows under his head. There are spots of color on his cheeks, whether from exertion or embarrassment, I can’t tell. Maybe it’s a little of both.

  Jem grimaces and points at my front. I look down and see a big, smeared string of snot on my shirtfront from when I hugged him in the car.

  “I’m sorry.” He reaches for the Kleenex box but I hold out a hand to stop him.

  “That’ll just smear it around.” I turn to go change out of this shirt and Jem sits up as I leave. I point a finger at him and say, “Lay down.” He wisely obeys, but there’s a distrustful look in his eye, like he doesn’t want to let me out of his sight.

  So I don’t go upstairs. I go across the hall to the laundry room and take a clean t-shirt off the top of the basket. I bring it back to the living room—because I know if I was gone for more than fifteen seconds he would get up to follow me like a puppy. Jem looks up when I come back in, plainly trying to read my face.

  I toss the t-shirt on the recliner and take a seat. I have to unbutton the plaid shirt carefully to avoid touching the snot, but I get it off without smearing. My bra today is a tired, well-loved one: old white cotton, as modest coverage as they make, with sweat stains under the arms that even bleach won’t take care of. I pull my t-shirt over my head and straighten it around my shoulders.

  Jem is glaring at me.

  “What?”

  “You don’t think of me as a real guy, do you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You wouldn’t have just taken your shirt off in front of Chris Elwood.” His tone is accusatory, which sets me on edge.

  “A gentleman would have looked away.”

  “A lady wouldn’t have taken her shirt off in the first place.”

  I grab the snotted-up plaid and stand up with a huff. “There’s always something up your ass,” I complain, and march off to the laundry room to wash the plaid. I throw it in the washer with a load of dirty dishtowels, still ruminating on what an oversensitive prick Jem can be. He’s right, I probably wouldn’t take my shirt off in front of Elwood, but that’s because Chris would read it as an invitation. Under any other circumstances, I wouldn’t mind being shirtless at all. This bra covers way more than the average bathing suit, so it’s hardly pushing the bounds of modesty to show it off, not to mention it’s probably the least sexy thing I own. It’s not like I flashed him.

  When I return to the living room Jem is sitting sideways on the couch with his knees bent, arms resting over them, looking contrite. “I’m sorry,” he says. I know it’s emotional blackmail, but it’s sort of nice how politely he speaks to me now. He’s terrified of doing anything that might dissolve our friendship even further.

  I stand over him and bury my hands in my pockets. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you before I cold-shouldered you.”

  Jem looks down at his lap and smiles sadly. “Why’d you do it?”

  “I told you from the start I’d be a bad friend. I intend to kill you, remember?”

  He looks up at me with squinty eyes, like he’s irritated but trying to hide it. Eventually Jem looks away and shrugs dismissively. I watch him flex his hands around his knees. His knuckles dig into the denim, tightening and releasing, before he knits his hands together and looks up at me. If his hands are an obvious indicator of his thoughts, his eyes are even more so.

  “Are we still friends?”

  “Can you handle me?”

  “Can you handle me?” he returns quietly but earnestly.

  “Maybe. Do you have it in you to stop being so pessimistic all the time, and to be a little less possessive?”

  “I shouldn’t have snapped on you,” he murmurs.

  “Yeah,” I agree with a nod. “I get it that you were mad, but there’s shit you just don’t do. I don’t call you Uncle Fester, you don’t steal my phone and mess with it, or get pissed off that I have a life outside of this.” I gesture between us. Whatever ‘this’ is.

  “You don’t cut me out like that again,” he adds.

  “I won’t. And will you please quit calling all the time and asking Frank where I am? He thinks I have a stalker.”

  Jem smirks. “I’ll cut back. A little. Y
ou could just, y’know, answer your phone.”

  “I’ll work on it.”

  “So…friends?”

  The word sounds wrong; frightening, strangely pleasant, and somehow not enough. I feel like I know him better than that. I’ve shared my memories of my happiest and hardest days with this guy. I’m not ‘friends’ with Jem the same way I am with Paige or Hannah. Or Luke.

  “I’m not a good person.”

  “I’m not either.”

  “Okay then.”

  “Okay, friends?”

  “Okay, we’ll call it even. I guess that’s as good a foundation for friendship as any other.” That gets a smirk out of him. Hail the return of the smartass.

  Jem excuses himself to use the washroom and I go upstairs. There’s something I want to show him. I brought very few books with me to Frank’s house, but the one I couldn’t do without was Darrell Epp’s Imaginary Maps. I thumb through the worn pages for the poem I have in mind. By the time I find it I can hear Jem calling for me nervously on the ground floor, like I would take off and ditch him in my own house.

  “Coming.”

  He meets me halfway up the stairs. He’s got that frightened puppy look again.

  “For you.” I hand him the book with the cover folded back and he takes it like it’s a death warrant. Hardly. Jem reads “For A Sick Friend” through a few times, standing below me on the stair. I’ve never seen him from this angle before. Standing on the upper stair, we’re almost equal height.

  The poem is one about the helplessness of watching a loved one deal with sickness, and the contradiction of both needing and failing to express what that means. It was always good at making me feel a little less alone.

  “Is that how you see me?” he asks, looking up at me from under red lids.

  “I figured you’d get it.”

  He turns back to the page. “So…” He struggles for a few seconds, blowing sighs out through his nose and fiddling with his hat and rubbing the back of his neck.

  “Is that why you…y’know, ditched me? It was too much to handle…with your sister. And…stuff. I mean, I know what everyone thinks—were you tired of being stared at?”

  “If I had a problem with you having cancer I wouldn’t have been decent to you in the first place. It’s not like it’s something you have to disclose.” I gesture up and down to his tall, thin frame. He looks absolutely sallow in the late afternoon light.

  Jem looks down and nods uncomfortably. He knows how he looks.

  “This,” I flick the poem, “is my side of things. Can you appreciate that maybe you remind me of some very painful shit that happened in my life? I mean in addition to being a jerk.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to leave you alone?”

  “I want you to admit that your feelings aren’t the only ones that matter.”

  “I’m sorry. You do matter. You matter a lot.”

  He reaches out to grab the railing suddenly and sways a little.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Just got lightheaded there for a minute.” He turns and sits down on the stair before he can fall down.

  “Do you need food? Juice?”

  “No.”

  I take a seat beside him and he snorts self-deprecatingly. “You know, I was so nervous to come over here and talk to you that I made myself sick.”

  “Jeez, Harper.” I rub slow circles on his back. Jem carefully closes the cover on Imaginary Maps.

  “Is it okay with you if I lay on the couch awhile longer?”

  “Do you want my bed? That couch sags like ninety-year-old tits and the bed closer to the bathroom if you feel sick.” Jem quietly accepts the offer and we head upstairs. On second thought, I go back downstairs to grab the mop bucket out of the laundry room. If he’s dizzy as well as nauseated it’d be better if he didn’t have to try to run to the bathroom.

  I sit on the desk chair, facing Jem where he’s curled up on his side. He barely fits length-wise in my twin bed.

  “Why weren’t you at Elise’s party last night?” I don’t think he came downstairs the whole night.

  “I was. I drifted in and out. Eric and I were supposed to be supervising, but it seemed like he had a handle on it.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I called some friends. Caught up with them and stuff.” That explains the cell phone on his floor.

  “Sounds like fun.”

  Jem snorts. “More like an exercise in jealousy.”

  “How’s that?”

  “They have lives. Places to go, people to see. I live in Smiths Falls and have no social life.”

  “I take it you didn’t always scare people away?”

  Jem scowls at me. “You know why people avoid me.”

  “I know why you think they do.” Jem gives me a dry look, which I ignore. “You think you look creepy and that it puts people off. And yeah, you’re right, maybe it does freak a few people out, but that’s not enough to make you a complete pariah. People avoid you because you push them away with moodiness and jackassery.”

  Jem stares at me for a few seconds like I haven’t got to the point yet, and then closes his eyes and sighs through his nose. “I wish I could have known you before I got sick.”

  I have never felt more compelled to smack this boy. I tell him that’s a stupid thing to wish.

  “I know. Can’t turn back time.” He can be so dense it’s unbelievable.

  “Everything I know about you from before points to the fact that I wouldn’t have liked you had I known you then, and you probably wouldn’t have liked me either.”

  “You like me now?” Always with the difficult questions.

  “You’re not unlikeable.”

  “But do you?” he pushes quietly.

  “Yes.”

  The corner of his mouth lifts in a small smile. “I like you too.” There’s an awkward silence where I don’t know if I’m supposed to say something back. We both get a little shifty-eyed; studying benign objects around the room in between the searching glances we throw at each other.

  He breaks the silence first. “Can you…?”

  “What?”

  “Can you come sit over here? I mean…your hand on my back felt really nice.” He seems so embarrassed just to ask. I can’t think of a reason why not, so I leave the chair and sit behind him on the bed, between his back and the wall. He relaxes just a little as I make circles on his back. The arms he has wrapped around his middle shift slightly, so he’s holding them up around his chest.

  “Thanks.” He smiles sadly and snorts like something is funny in a pathetic sort of way.

  “What was that for?”

  “Yesterday you weren’t even willing to look at me, and today you’re being nice and touching me.”

  “You’re being nice too.”

  Jem reaches out and picks up my iPod off the nightstand. He holds it out to me questioningly, and I take it. We each take an earphone and I scroll through my playlists for an appropriate song. I choose “One Week” by the Barenaked Ladies. It’s apt. Jem picks the next one, “Iris” by The Goo Goo Dolls, and he drifts off to my second pick: “In the Sun” by Joseph Arthur. Jem’s sleep is swift and sound. He’s exhausted in so many ways. I take the earphone out gently when he begins to snore and sit back with my music, watching him sleep. When he begins to shiver slightly I get up and fold the blanket over him like a human burrito. That settles him for a little while, but then he begins to shake again and makes mewling sounds under his breath.

  “Shh,” I whisper, like he’s a restless child. I put an arm over him and adjust the edge of the blanket to keep the cooler air away from him. Jem curls further into himself, pressing his back against my front. Some part of his unconscious mind realizes I’m warm, and he turns his head toward me in sleep. His neck is going to cramp like that.

  “Lift your head,” I encourage him, even as I do it for him. I slip the pillow under his head and bundle the blanket a little tighter. Jem’s eyelids flutter.

&nbs
p; He groans and I sit up on my elbow. “Go back to sleep. I’ve got you.”

  Jem licks his lips and forces his eyes open. He has a hell of a time of it, blinking tiredly as he tries to focus.

  “I forgot my meds.”

  It feels like all the air has gone out of the room at once. I haven’t felt that in awhile. It’s a sensation whose absence I never lament.

  “Fuck.”

  I fling back the edge of the blanket and pat down his pockets, looking for the little pill sorter I know he keeps. I find it in his front left pocket. There’s still a familiar pill in the ‘afternoon’ slot.

  “I’ll get you some water.”

  I take the stairs two at a time. I am such a screw up—to upset him so badly is one thing, but to upset him to the point where he forgets important medication is quite another. He wasn’t shivering in his sleep; he wasn’t cold—he was in pain and starting to withdraw a little bit. It’s a nasty business to miss a dose of opiates after prolonged use.

  I take the cup of water upstairs and help Jem sit up. His hands are shaking, so I slip the pill past his lips and help him steady the cup at his mouth.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry? I don’t care if you’re sorry—are you okay?”

  “You look worried.” He tilts his head to the side curiously, like I’m the one being the idiot here.

  “I look worried…” I shake my head. “I ought to bubble-wrap you, Harper.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Lay down.” He obeys like he’s scared of what I’ll do if he doesn’t. “Are you hurting?”

  “Kirk,” he scolds me softly. I must be over-reacting. I do that when people mess with my head. I have serious issues with watching people endure pain.

  “Sorry.” I set the pill sorter down on the nightstand and set myself down on my desk chair. “I’m sorry I messed you up so bad.”

  “I’ve lived through worse.” I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from yelling at him: Stop saying shit like that! Your entire life isn’t a fucking disease! But I’ve frightened him enough for one day, so I let it be.

  “Okay then,” I say. “But I still intend to kill you.”

  *