by Ali Merci
His father shot him a deadpan look while his ma just burst into laughter, joining them at the table once she’d set the baseball bat aside.
“You know,” Asa said after swallowing a mouthful of food, “you never told me why you came in with that thing in your hand.”
“No reason.” She brushed it off.
“She thought it was a burglar when she heard sounds coming up from the kitchen,” his father answered, earning a glare from his ma. “I told her there was also the smell of food being cooked so it was only you, because burglars don’t normally break in to cook themselves breakfast. But when does your mother ever listen to me?”
“Is it that hard to believe I’d do this?” Asa asked, frowning. Maybe he needed to do these simple gestures of affection more often.
“Of course not, cariño.” His mother smiled softly, blinking once in assurance. “We’re just pulling your leg, your papá and I.”
Asa only grunted in response, before he suddenly remembered why it was that he’d been in a good enough mood to wake up without his mother needing to yell at the top of her lungs.
“Oh, by the way, Ma,” he paused to take a quick gulp of water before swallowing and setting his glass back down, “just a heads up. I’ll be running late today too.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She sighed dramatically, shooting him a sideways glance. “You’ve got other priorities now.”
“Oh my God,” Asa muttered under his breath. “She’s a friend. I told you that already.”
“That’s what they all say in the beginning,” his father said in a serious tone.
The beginning.
Goddamn, the beginning. When had that been, again? Asa felt that it was a lifetime ago, as if everything else before Carmen West simply ceased to exist.
Did the existence of a beginning foreshadow the existence of an ending? Because he didn’t think he’d bear to live through it. There could be no end to the phenomenon that was Carmen—there just couldn’t.
“There he goes.” His mother’s voice reached his ears. “Zoning out again.”
“I’m here, I’m here,” Asa said hastily, ignoring the warming up of his cheeks and neck. “Anyway, it won’t be like the other days. I’ll be even later than usual.”
His mother stopped lifting the spoon to her mouth, and set it down as she frowned at him. “And why’s that?”
“Umm.” He rubbed the back of his neck uneasily. “We’re kind of hanging around the place.”
“Hanging around?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “There’s this girl who joined our school a few weeks back. I’m just gonna show her around.”
“The same girl you’ve been giving a ride?” His father furrowed his brows.
“No, that’s someone else.”
“So, there are two of them?” His mother looked at him with a bewildered expression.
Asa choked on his water, sputtering and coughing, as he tried to speak amidst it all. “No, Ma!” He looked at her with incredulity all over his face. “Of course not!”
“Okay, calm down,” she said, struggling to contain her laughter. “I was just kidding.”
“Willa’s the one who just joined recently, and she’s only a friend. Nothing else.”
“So, your mum was right then,” his father piped up. “Willa’s only a friend but the other one who you’ve been driving home is more?”
Asa let out a gigantic sigh, all his energy and positive aura from when he’d woken up slowly dissipating now. “You know what, I need to get going.” He stood up, pushing his chair back and grabbing his plate and glass from the table.
“Mijo, you know we’re just joking right?” His mother spoke while he washed his hands. A few seconds later, he felt her familiar warm hands wrap around his torso from behind and her head rest against his left shoulder. “There aren’t many mothers out there who can proudly say they have a son who actually spends most of his time indoors, enjoying the company of his parents.” Asa heard her sigh softly and step away from him, dropping her hands to her sides. “I’m just cherishing it.”
“I’m not mad, Ma.” He sighed, placing one hand on her shoulder as he leaned in and kissed the top of her head. “Maybe the slightest bit annoyed, though.” He grinned, and his mum rolled her eyes and knocked his hand off.
“Go on,” she said, giving him a slight nudge. “I don’t want you getting late for school.”
Asa grabbed his bag from the floor, where he’d set it down beside one of the tables’ legs, and swung it over his shoulders. “Adios, Papá,” he said, patting his father’s arm. “Bye, Ma.”
“Te quiero,” both his parents called out in unison, the words falling on his ears just as he stepped out into the chilly autumn air and proceeded to shut the door behind him.
A strong gust of wind blew past, rustling the leaves of a tree by the sidewalk on the edges of their front lawn. One of its branches stretched far enough that it hung low over their house, and he watched as a leaf struggled and eventually broke away from the branch, fluttering around in the air before landing a few feet away on the ground.
A smile graced his lips without him even being fully conscious of it. He walked forward, remembering what Carmen had said once about the wind whispering something intimate to the leaves that turned them into different shades of red and orange.
He picked it up, the fragile stem held gingerly between his thumb and forefinger as he twirled it around and around, staring at it as if it was going to sprout wings and fly itself back up.
Carmen, he sighed mentally. He just couldn’t look at the world the same way anymore—and maybe, just maybe, he didn’t even want to.
The world through Carmen’s eyes seemed like a more beautiful perspective.
•••
“Ace?”
Asa’s hand froze, his fingers tightening around the copy of Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince that he was stuffing inside his locker. All that giddiness he’d felt ever since he’d woken up this morning vaporised into thin air, leaving a trail of coldness and misery in its wake.
“Asa,” he corrected, finding his voice after a few minutes of internal struggle.
“Potato, potato.” Isla grinned. Asa wasn’t looking at her, still keeping his eyes fixed on the interior of his locker, but he recognised the grin in her tone. He would always know without needing to look. Just like how he knew that it was false bravado keeping her chin up and shoulders ramrod straight right now. Just like how he knew it was uncertainty and worry that made her curl her palms into clenched fists that she tried to conceal by folding her hands across her chest.
Asa didn’t have to look at Isla to know. They were best friends. At least, they had been.
“Wow,” she said, and he heard her chuckle. “Harry Potter again? You’ve read the series, what, eight times already now?”
He knew that keeping his face turned away would come off as immature, but for the love of God, he couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eyes. All her words came crashing down in torrential waves over him, dragging him under a little more as each second ticked by. His breathing quickened and then faltered as he felt his chest constrict, the knife she’d stuck in him twisting further into his flesh as a brutal reminder that it was still planted in him and would probably never come out.
She thought he was pathetic. His best friend—his best, best friend in the entire goddamn world believed that about him. Was that how she’d always seen him?
Had she stood by him out of pity’s sake, then? Had it always been a one-sided friendship with her?
Asa felt sick. His lungs shrank and the walls closed in on him as he found it increasingly harder to turn towards her. God, he felt pathetic.
“So, there’s this party…”
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. He wanted to scream at her, but his ears won’t take in her words anymore. His throat was dry, and words weren’t coming to him. It was a different kind of speechlessness, though. Not the kind that Carmen cast over him—
Ca
rmen.
Her name slammed into his head, ricocheting off the walls in his mind and resonating throughout his entire being. It played on his heartstrings like it was a long-forgotten tune that his soul had missed so, so much. And just like that, his chest stopped constricting. His lungs expanded, and he could breathe again.
Asa could breathe again.
Carmen reminded him to breathe and, in that moment, Asa wondered if it was people like her that you held close and never let go of. The ones that reminded you to breathe rather than those who took your breath away.
Carmen was like the moon, he then realised (though he felt sort of idiotic for even coming up with that analogy). She wasn’t anywhere near him but she still found a way to be a beacon of light for him in the dark.
And all those seeds her smiles had planted in the spaces of his ribcage, all those seeds that her laughter had bloomed into flowers, was now wrapping around him like a shield. Carmen’s words were paintings on his skin, and he felt them burn into his bones as if they were coating his entire being with a layer of protection that no poison could infiltrate ever again. No knife could pierce through it ever again, even if there was one already buried deep inside his chest.
And it was with this newfound strength that Asa found it in himself to face Isla, to look her right in the eye without flinching or letting his mask slip.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I lost track there. You mentioned something regarding a party?”
“Yeah, it’s tonight.” Isla grinned, her whole set of perfect, shiny white teeth on display.
But Asa found himself picturing Carmen’s slightly crooked ones instead.
“It’s down by the beach actually,” Isla continued and Asa just stared at her, wondering how she could just stand there and speak to him like she hadn’t just ripped his heart out and tossed it over her shoulder like it was just another thing on her to-do list. “There’d be quite a crowd. And I know it’s pretty chilly these days, but there’ll be a bonfire and all that, so you should come.”
“Can’t,” he said, his tone blunt. “Hanging out with Carmen and Willa.”
At the mention of Willa’s name, he saw Isla’s eyes narrow into slits and her mouth form a thin line. He braced himself, waiting for her next verbal attack.
He made this world a better place—Carmen had told him that—and it was slowly getting easier to accept it, easier to even consider believing it. Carmen believed he made this world a better place, and that meant that whatever Isla had to spit at him wouldn’t be true in the least bit. And in that moment, Asa felt ten-feet-tall.
“You can’t be serious,” she said through gritted teeth, the calm façade slipping off. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“No, Isla,” he said, squaring his shoulders and drilling his eyes into hers. “I’m not.” He slammed his locker shut and tightened his hold on his bag. “Must have something to do with the fact that I’m—what were your words, again? Ah, yes, a pathetic lap dog who goes looking for affection and approval in places where I’m never going to find it.”
Isla’s face was set in a stony expression, but her eyes betrayed her. Asa read the regret in them like an open book.
“I mean, those were your words, right?” he asked, his tone calm and guarded, not giving anything away. He couldn’t see himself opening up to her in the way he used to. Not anymore.
Silence dragged on, placing another brick on the wall that had begun building itself in the space between them. Adding more distance between the minds that had once ran along parallel lines. Severing yet another of the few remaining threads that connected two hearts that had once felt one another’s joys and grievances.
“Just let Carmen know I’ll give her the photographs once school is over,” Isla muttered, before turning around and walking away.
Asa watched her go as she took with her a piece of his heart that he was never going to get back. Perhaps that was his biggest flaw: he placed all the best parts of himself in all the wrong hands. Perhaps that was another step in the road to self-love. Maybe it was acknowledging the fact that it was okay to keep your heart under wraps like it was made of ceramic instead of iron and only letting those with cautious hands to handle it.
As he walked down the hallway, wanting to use the pool in his spare period, Asa found himself thinking of when Carmen had held his face with her hands and how he’d wanted to lean into her palms because they’d sort of felt like home.
Carmen’s hands were cautious. Carmen’s hands were a safe place to put his heart in.
And if he wasn’t careful, Asa could fall in love with her for it.
34.
Take My Hand
Waking up was an accomplishment rather than just an ordinary task for Carmen that morning. Each shift of her muscles was the movement of a mountain, and swinging her feet off the bed and placing it on the floor of her room was stepping on a bed of needles. Her bones weighed as heavy as her heart did that morning, and she didn’t know how she could walk without her feet buckling underneath her, but she did. She managed to walk towards her bathroom, get herself ready even though every inch of her body and mind screamed at her to go back to bed. Back to sleep. Back to that place where everything was just blank and nothing could touch her.
She didn’t want to die, but she also wouldn’t mind if she never woke up from her sleep one of these days. And that was supposed to terrify her, but it didn’t. In all honesty, the idea of an endless, undisturbed sleep seemed welcoming to her.
Too welcoming.
Minutes later, she found herself seated on one of the stools at the counter, her father right across her.
She had observed him, saw the bags coating the skin underneath his eyes as if they were bruises his tears had left behind. She saw the dishevelled state of his hair, as if the demons from this house had sat up all night with him running their claws through it.
She wondered if she was a demon too, in her father’s eyes. A demon in flesh and blood. The one that he’d never be able to escape when he’d somehow managed to drive away the ones in his head. The thought made her sick to the stomach, and suddenly, she couldn’t eat anymore.
“Dad?” she called out after some time, her voice sounding scratchy even to her own ears.
He looked up, meeting her eyes, and Carmen knew it wasn’t her mind playing tricks on her when she saw the warmth flood in them. She knew she wasn’t imagining the soft turn of his mouth into the smallest of smiles.
“Yeah?” he asked softly, not touching his food either.
“I think I’d like a ride to school today,” she told him, feeling no shame in admitting to herself that today was just one of those days. One of those days when she needed a little help. One of those days where she simply couldn’t find the energy to even enjoy the walk to school because every nerve, bone and muscle in her body just ached too much.
“Sure, love.” He smiled, nodding once before pushing his chair back while he stood. “Seeing that we’re both not hungry, we might as well get going now.”
Love. He called her love. Carmen wondered if he truly meant it.
Many times, she didn’t see how he could. She couldn’t understand how he found it in himself to look at her with warmth in his eyes, and a smile on his face, and love in his voice. She couldn’t because how could he possibly love her when she wasn’t even his own? How could anyone, really? Her own mother had forsaken her before she’d even learnt to walk.
So, Carmen would love. And love. And love. She’d love with all her heart, handing it out like it was extra change that sat in the back pockets of her jeans. She’d love because she knew what it was like to be unloved, and she’d do so without asking for even a fraction of it in return.
•••
It was after second period that Carmen found herself walking down the corridor and into the main hallway where the lockers were located. She had a spare now, and like always, she was planning to spend away the minutes in the art room that Miss Cassidy had said was always o
pen for her at any time of the day.
Just as she was getting out her art supplies though, her eyes landed on Asa a few feet away, standing at the other end of the hallway where another row of lockers were located.
She was about to approach him—she had no idea what she was even going to say to him except for a greeting of some sort—but there was that sudden rush of emotion in her, bringing her back a little more to life from the listless state she’d been in ever since last night. It made her abandon any sense of pre-planning for a conversation and turn around to walk towards him, only to stop dead in her tracks when she saw Isla herself approach him.
Carmen felt something tighten her bones, making her fingers throb with the need to hold his hand and remind him that she was there. That she’d always be there. It wasn’t something as petty as jealousy, or something uncalled for like annoyance. It was more.
It was always more, like that surge of protection she felt the other day in the parking lot when he looked so crestfallen about what had gone down between him and Isla. That need to shield him from all the curveballs this world threw at him. That unexplainable want to dig her fingers into the very depths of him and flush out all the pain.
Pain that she knew Isla had caused him, even if Carmen didn’t exactly know how. She liked Isla, she did. But it was hard not to be weary of her presence when every bone in Carmen’s body seemed to shout out battle cries in Asa’s defence.
She watched his shoulders stiffen and square up as he turned to face Isla, saw his body plant itself right there as if he was begging the ground to be his anchor and not split into half underneath his feet.
Goodness, how bad had Isla hurt him? she thought. Carmen didn’t know. She didn’t.
She wanted to, though. She wanted to know exactly how much hurt was coursing through his veins so that she could shower him with everything that was good in this world worth tenfold of all that pain.