Winter Wakes

Deep, dark brown walls gave the room before me more flavor than every other one I had come through to get here. The white Roman style columns and large faded dark green door that served as an entrance to the main office were more than a bit intimidating, scarily formal to a point it made me uncomfortable to enter in jeans, boots, and my knee length black coat. The white interior, with the oak desk and bitter-looking receptionist hadn’t lessened that feeling; nor had the sneer I had received upon informing the horn-rimmed glasses hag I needed a word with the dean. After being informed I was required to schedule an appointment I had blushed momentarily, before politely requesting she page the dean and ask her if she had time to have a small discussion with the heir of Walton’s Funeral Home. The difference in the woman’s behavior was noticeable after that; it left me wondering if she had witnessed the confrontation between Caroline Dreyton and Simon, while he was in control of my body. Two minutes later the same woman kindly gave me directions to the dean’s office.

I glanced around, slightly awed as I sat my bags on a beige couch just in the door. Heavy oak bookshelves, packed to the brim, lined the back wall next to the couch and on the other side of the door. Opposite them was a floor-to-ceiling window that stood in place of an outer wall, in front of it was a desk made of the same deep oak as the bookshelves, two burgundy chairs sat on my side of it, while a large dark-brown leather one was situated in the center behind it. The room itself was handsomely decorated; heavy burgundy drapes to match the chairs hung on each end of the window-wall; an antique globe sat in the right corner of the desk while a desktop occupied the other.

What was most breathtaking though, wasn’t anything in the room. I stepped forward, nearly floored by the view the open wall provided. A stunning, picturesque outlook of the campus lay before me. Snow from the weekend’s storm (small compared to the one that had kept me in my house for an entire school week) blanketed the scenery; it clung to the trees without mercy, giving the campus a winter wonderland look. I watched a few students shuffle precariously across shaded patches of the sidewalk that were laden with a thin layer of ice. I looked for one particular head among the throngs of students though; luckily his white blonde curls were nowhere in sight. If my thoughts were correct he had set his sights on the hospital a short distance from the school, the same one I had spent far too much time in lately, the same one his brother lay in.

“Oh, Maggie!”

I jumped slightly at the sound of Caroline Dreyton’s voice, whipping around to find her standing in the doorway of her office with a thick folder of papers under one arm and two steaming cups clutched in her hands.

She chuckled at my startled reaction, stepping further into the room, “I’m sorry dear, I didn’t mean to startle you. I just didn’t expect you to be up here so soon, here, I ran to get us some coffee.”

“Thanks,” I smiled awkwardly, taking the steaming cup from her hand as she passed. She sat down the folder under her arm down before placing her own coffee on the table beside it.

“Bank work.” She rolled her eyes, referencing the folder before her. “Even though father gave the position of CEO of Keystone to James I still get saddled doing a lot of paperwork.”

I stared aghast at the thick folder, “Wait, Keystone belonged to your father?”

“And before that, his father. Of course my father’s always been a little sexist, so he didn’t feel quite comfortable passing the position of CEO onto his daughter and only child; he set me up with a few suitors he picked out that he wouldn’t mind letting take the reigns of the bank, and I got to pick from there.” She smiled almost bitterly, one of her blonde eyebrows quirked up at the look of shock on my face. There was no denying the blood shared between her and Simon. “What? It’s not that big of a deal, Maggie.”

“You couldn’t marry whoever you wanted?”

She gave me a motherly look, motioning to the deep red chair I stood beside. “Sit, sweetheart. No, it wasn’t like that, really. I could have married whoever I wanted, believe me there. But I felt a slight obligation to my father, to keep the bank in family hands, so I married James. He’s a good man, honest, smart; he takes care of his family. And if my father trusted him, I had no reason not to. And now here we are, over twenty years later. Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t really want the position of CEO, I’m much more content here, watching over Brown University.”

Over twenty years later; I examined the prim blonde woman who stood on the opposite side of the desk then, eyeing me with the same concentrated look. There was barely a hint of wrinkles pulling at the corners of her eyes; small laugh lines creased the corners around her mouth. Her hair looked painstakingly taken care of, shining beautifully even in the room’s florescent lights. Twenty years of dealing with the stress of children, a bank, and a school and she didn’t have more signs of age than this? It was honestly impressive.

“I’ve only been over Brown as the dean for five years, so I’m still fairly fresh at this, to be honest.” She sat down finally, taking a small sip of her steaming coffee. “Mmm, still hot. Give it a few minutes before you drink it.”

“So, were you happy when you married Mr. Dreyton or what?” I was having a hard time fathoming marrying someone preset for you, raising children with them, staying with them for over twenty years. Did Simon know all this?

She sighed heavily, “No, honestly I wasn’t. James and I were friends in college, he was a few years older than I, and it was actually through me he received a job at Keystone after he graduated and proceeded to get on my father’s good side. We were just friends, never really anything more. Well, until the marriage. Now don’t get me wrong, Maggie, I love my husband. It just took some time to settle in.”

“Did Simon and Oliver know about…?” My voice trailed off. She set her elbows on her desk, fingers intertwined as her chin rested atop them before giving me a half-smile.

“Well, no. But I’m sure Simon does now, though.” She looked slightly crestfallen, a bit of self-loathing taking up residence in her green eyes.

I shook my head, “It’s just me today.”

“He’s not with you?” She glanced up, a bit shocked and relieved at the same time.

“I think he went to see Oliver.”

That was when all traces of the confident, content woman vanished, and Caroline Dreyton wilted into a copy of herself I recalled upon first meeting her at the funeral home. Her green eyes became glassy, corners reddening by the second. Her hands uncrossed themselves as she cupped one over her nose and mouth, eyes squeezing shut. A slight surge of panic hit me; what had I done?

“Oliver…” She whispered.

My throat tightened as I watched Caroline try to compose herself unsuccessfully. If Simon was there I’m sure I would have been in an intense amount of pain for upsetting his mother like that.

“He’s still alive, Mrs. Dreyton,” I offered weakly. “He’ll wake up sometime, I’m sure of it.”

“He didn’t deserve that, Maggie. He didn’t deserve that.”

My hands were folded in my lap, clinched tightly together as I bit my lip, not daring to look up at her. Waves of pain and frustration seemed to roll off of her, each one hitting me harder than the last; each one tearing at me a little more.

“H-he was the one who w-wanted to go here, Maggie,” She sobbed. “He wanted to go to Brown, Simon never d-did. Simon… Simon wanted to—to g-go to Syracuse… H-he only came here for Oliver…”

I listened silently as Simon’s mother spoke, not knowing what to say, not knowing just how to comfort for once. The bullshit routine I was so familiar with from the funeral home seemed ridiculous, stupid in fact. So I did the only thing I could; I let her cry.

Her constant tears didn’t hinder my mind from wandering elsewhere, though. What she had just said popped to the forefront of my thoughts. Simon hadn’t wanted Brown; he had only been here for his brother. Somewhere underneath that hard exterior, there was a heart within him. The gentle, vulnerable side of him had only revealed itself to me a few minute times, scampering back behind it’s stone cold mask more quickly than one could fathom once things seemed to have settled down. But he had gone so far as to sacrifice his collegiate desires to remain by the side of his brother. I could feel the cracks forming in my own resolve not to cry then, my heart felt heavy with an indescribable sadness.

I looked up at the clearing of her throat; eyes still red, she had wiped most of the tears away with a tissue from the box on her desk. “I apologize for that display. I—I guess I’m still not dealing too well with all of this.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Mrs. Dreyton.” I tried to muster a weak smile. “You’re still in pain from… everything. Really, it’s nothing to apologize for at all.”

“You’re such a sweet girl, Maggie. And please, just call me Caroline. Now, what brought you all the way up here to see me sans Simon?”

I tried not to fidget in my seat; if I had been nervous about this before, after her little breakdown I wasn’t at all positive it was the right time or place to have this discussion; but then again, when was I going to have another chance to talk with her minus the constant presence of Simon? I picked up my cup from her table with a shaking hand before attempting to take a sip out of it; the scalding coffee burnt the tip of my tongue. I resorted to swishing the steaming liquid around.

“Simon didn’t kill himself, you know that, right? That’s why you got me into this school, to find out just what happened to him and Oliver, and why, isn’t it?” I finally managed to find my voice; it didn’t shake or waver like I had expected it to. When she didn’t respond for a few seconds, I finally looked up to find her eyeing me with an expectant, if not curious look. I took that as my cue to continue. “There was an incident Friday night that has led me to believe that Oliver’s ‘accident’ may some how be tied in to Simon’s death. It may have seemed to everyone that Simon drank himself to death after the incident that put Oliver in a coma, but if you know your son, Mrs. Dreyton—Caroline, you know he wouldn’t do that. Even I know he wouldn’t do that, and I’ve had a lot less contact with him than you ever did.”

I paused, more than a little hesitant as to how to breach the next part of why I was there. I sighed, “And someone admitted Simon’s death was no accident, and made it a bit more than apparent it was true by drugging me.”

A screaming silence washed over the room as I finished, my heart fluttered and pattered rapidly in my chest. Caroline’s expression was a startling, wide-eyed blank mask as we sat in a locked stare. She didn’t move; neither did I. I was paralyzed with the fear of potential repercussions of what I had spilled.

“Maggie, I don’t think I misheard you, but just to make sure; did you say someone drugged you?”

This wasn’t something I wanted to linger on; it had been the one thing I hadn’t wanted to bring into the conversation, but I needed her to know that it was more than apparent Simon hadn’t killed himself. For his sake, I felt she had to understand that; I knew his response to my believing he had taken his own life was one of pure pain and misery. I couldn’t imagine how he would feel if his mother held fast to that belief. He suffered enough, more than I could possibly fathom. Somewhere in him, the knowledge that those he cared about had faith in him would ease his tortured soul, even just a little.

“Um… yeah. I did. But it doesn’t matter. I’m fine now. I don’t know who did it, anyways,” I lied. “Don’t you think it’s a bit odd though, that someone tried to kill Oliver, and a few days later, Simon’s…gone?”

“I…” Caroline sat opposite me, mouth agape, looking more than a little shocked. I tried to take another sip of my coffee, only to receive the same scalding feeling again. I set the cup down then. My bangs slipped into my line of sight, habitually I shook them out.

“Did they have any enemies here?”

Creases appeared in her forehead, centered between her eyes, “Enemies?”

She said the word as though it was foreign, an alien concept to her, perhaps something spoken in another language. The one little word hadn’t been simply laced with confusion, it had been infected, overrunning with it.

I inhaled heavily through my nostrils, the strong scent of the coffee infiltrating my system with ease.

“Did they ever talk to you about having trouble with classmates… With anyone?” My voice stopped momentarily; a pair of pale blue eyes filled my mind.

“I was the dean’s son, Maggie. Everyone hated me.”

“Because of anything, like your position?”

Her blonde head shook back and forth, the silence in the room nearly stifling. I felt my body deflate a little, my hope of getting some kind of information, any kind of lead from a conversation with Caroline Dreyton fading as quickly as it had sparked. I knew I had to get more out of George Max, although I wanted anything but to find myself in contact with him after Simon informing me of what he had done to me at the party. I had prayed Simon’s mother would have possibly been able to give me any trace of information that may have allowed me to explore another route.

“They never discussed any problems they were having with James, or me,” She spoke softly, coldly. “They always had each other for that. If we wanted to know anything we always had to probe the other twin, and keep at it until they finally snapped and told us what was going on. That was how we found out Oliver was gay. It took a while, but we knew something was up. Only after a month and a half did Simon finally crack, and we think that was only because Oliver told him it was okay to tell us, and he was scared to tell us himself. We still loved him though, it didn’t matter. But it was always that way with the two of them. It was like they were in their own little world, neither James nor I could ever get as close to them as they were to each other.”

Beyond the large window that served as a barrier between the dean’s office and the outside, a strong wind shook the trees. I watched as the snow that had settled comfortably onto their branches was dismantled, thrown into the air only to be tossed around carelessly before landing on the sidewalks and then trampled on by the shoes of passing students.

There had been a level of closeness in Simon’s life to his brother I could never experience, with him or anyone else. And it had been ripped away, not once, but twice. The first time had been with less finality than the second; a coma was just a time constraint. Death was an undeniable, irreversible end. There was no way he could ever gain back that relationship, or any relationship for that matter. It had all been taken from him in the blink of an eye; his current form was a curse much worse than an eternity of vapid blankness.

“I need to go, Caroline. I’ve got class soon,” I stood slowly, pushing the chair back closer to her desk, the way it had been before I sat in it. “Thank you for the coffee, and I’m sorry for barging in here like that.”

Her face melted into a warm smile, “I don’t mind, Maggie. You’re welcome here any time.”

I headed towards the door, grabbing my bags off the couch.

“Oh, Maggie?”

My body turned back towards her.

“I’m going to launch a little investigation of my own, into this incident involving you being drugged,” She looked scarily stern as she sat behind her desk, hands folded before her. “As the dean that is a matter I cannot over look.”

I swallowed the small lump in my throat. Of course, in her position she had more to worry about than just the death of her son. She had to uphold the integrity of the school, resolve conflicts and issues that may arise. It wasn’t my place to stop her; honestly I doubted if I would have been able to. I merely nodded before retreating from her office and the building.

Outside my breath could be seen as a white puff of air before me. I stepped carefully along the ice-covered sidewalks, making my way across the campus with a much slower pace than usual. Even considering the situation, my mind felt more bogged down than it had any other time since Simon’s arrival into my life. Every one of Caroline’s words carried its own immeasurable weight. I could feel the heaviness of the pressure everywhere.

“Took you long enough.”

I looked up from my zombie-like fixation on the sidewalk. Standing beside the snow-covered tree that hung above the entrance of my next class’s building, a lone blonde boy had his arms crossed over his chest was eyeing me in a lazy, almost irritated manner.

“I was beginning to wonder if George had attacked you or something,” He stated without much interest.

“I haven’t seen him, actually,” I offered with a shrug. A girl walked past, giving me a funny look before entering the building. I forgot about talking to Simon in public, and the girl’s you’re-off-your-rocker look served as a quick reminder. Glancing at Simon his face had taken on a sour look, he’d apparently just gotten the same memo.

He shoved off the wall, not making eye contact as he strode past me, “Come on, we’re getting out of here.”

I turned quickly to watch him, more than a little startled. I threw my just-reminded caution of not speaking to the dead boy out the window. “Wait. ‘Come on?’ I’ve got class. What do you mean, ‘come on?’”

Simon turned back around to face me a few yards a head. The right corner of his lips was turned downwards as he settled me with a stoic look. “Not today you don’t. Its Women’s Studies, Maggie. You’re not going to miss anything. Now come on, let’s go.”

After a few seconds of disbelief, and a slight hint of confusion, I followed him across the campus and back towards my car. I watched the back of his head fixedly as we walked; no matter what I couldn’t seem to get in his mind. It was things like this that made me feel as though I would never understand him. Every time I felt I broke though, or understood him a little better, there was always some new trick up his sleeve, something that left me baffled and unsure of just how well I really knew the elusive Simon Dreyton.

I climbed into my car after tossing my bags in the back; Simon had taken up residence in the passenger’s seat, eyes fixed blankly before him. My fingers turned the key, the car’s engine jumping to life. Then the two of us sat; neither said a thing, neither moved. After a few minutes I could feel the heat slowly warming my chilled limbs.

“So, what are we doing?”

His blonde curls shift as his head turned in my direction, each perfect angle of his face remained set in place as a blank mask; even his icy eyes managed to mute any emotions or clues as to what was swimming through his head.

“You’re driving us somewhere to talk,” He replied.

“My house?” I asked, slightly confused.

Simon shook his head. “I’m bored. We need to go somewhere different. And I think I know the perfect place. It should be pretty much deserted, so I don’t think you’ll have to worry about getting odd looks for talking to me.”

I waited, he said nothing.

“O…kay,” I mumbled. “Would you mind telling me where?”

“Reverse it and take a right out of campus.”

We watched each other intently; his eyes bore into my own, cracks forming in their blank look. I kicked my car into reverse, doing as he said.

“Wow,” He muttered, bemused. “I didn’t even have to threaten you this time.”

I had mentally noted that as well, a little surprised at myself, and him as well.

“It’s called trust, Simon, on my part anyways.” I shook my bangs out of my eyes before giving him a sideways glance as I pulled off of the campus. “And you? I think you’re just going soft.”

I did my best to put my meeting with his mother to the back of my mind; I had a feeling if he knew this somewhat awkward calm between us would vanish like a mirage in the desert. It hadn’t yielded any information about his death, but a good bit about him. None of it I could ask him about though, no matter how badly I desired. For once, it was my turn to keep secrets from him. Although, there was a slight trace of bitter jealousy gnawing at the back of my mind then; jealousy towards Oliver. I wanted what he had so easily had with Simon; I wanted the ghost boy to open up to me, not just when the situation called for it, any time. Now, even though I was the only person he could talk to and receive a response from, I still felt we weren’t anywhere near that level.

From beside me I could feel his eyes burning holes in my skull after my slight jab. “Going soft, huh? Yeah, I’ll certainly be going soft when I push your ass into the lion’s cage.”

His threat felt empty, and I found myself snickering in amusement. I wondered if he had inadvertently revealed the location of our little trip, or if he had done it on purpose.

“So, we’re going to the zoo to have our little chat?”

Simon sighed. “It’s dead this time of year, anyways. And I just need a change of scenery. Besides, you’ve got class with George tomorrow, right? We need to figure out just how we’re going to get the bastard alone and get information out of him.”

“Oooh, so we’re plotting then,” I nodded in approval.

“Yes, we are,” He mumbled quietly beside me. “Keep driving, I need to think.”

The rest of the ride was silent, both of us set in our own worlds of thought. Everything Caroline Dreyton had revealed to me about Simon hung at the forefront of my thoughts, mixed with flashes of anger and frustration directed at George Max. I had to find my own way to break through Simon’s barriers without having them go back up again. I don’t think he understood just how badly it was hurting me to be unable to help him, or just to get close.

My fingers clinched the wheel tightly; one way or another, I was going to help him stop hurting. One way or another by doing so, I was going to end my own pain.