I Can't Hang

“We’re in this as two,” Brady had told me.

I never forgot those words.

I don’t think Brady did, either. But what happened after that night was just a complete turnaround to me. I didn’t understand it, and I don’t think I ever will. I still don’t, ‘cause to me, it’s just so weird.

A couple more days passed. He didn’t really speak that much. Pretty much all he did was scour the hotel for more paper and use one of the pre-supplied plastic knives to whittle away the crappy pencil he found in the drawer. There was a Bible in there, too, which could’ve been used as paper instead of the toilet paper he insisted upon using, but he flatly resisted.

And there he sat on that bed, day after day, running his hands through his greasy hair over and over again like it’d just magically sprout a good idea. His eyes were always glossed over a lot. He didn’t change his clothes at all, even when I offered to wash his crap along with mine in the bathtub. He took showers, thank God, but they were short and he always came out of the bathroom with wet hair and boxers on, dashing over to the toilet paper-notebook he’d fashioned.

He’d just kept planning crap. Even though I’d told him that you don’t force those kinds of ideas out; you wait for ‘em. And it was pretty obvious he hadn’t figured nothing out yet. He didn’t come up with anything worth a crap, since if he did, he would’ve said so.

And he hardly said nothing at all. Before he’d always been that kind of annoying chatterbox, you know? The kind that won’t shut up. Especially when he was nervous and all. And then after…that, he just shut up. Shut up like the only way he ever talked was inside his head.

Looked like he was always thinking about something, too. Of course, he was. He was always glaring down at the stuff he was writing on, scribbling more notes. He never showed me anything. Even if I asked, he shook his head and just barely mumbled, “No.”

I didn’t like it that much. From the way he spoke to me that night, I thought we were gonna work together. Like, literally together. Like, having him actually talk to me. But he was off in his own little world for the time being, and I kinda had to live with that.

It got unsettling after about a week, though. I mean, I’d already been forced out of my comfort zone and all – very few things could have seemed weird to me at that point – but this was just flat-out bizarre, you know?

He’d been writing one night on the bed (not on the bed literally, but you know), all hunched over like some kind of madman, and it was after dinner and everything, so I’d taken a shower recently. With a stomach full of ramen, I stood in front of him with my hands on my hips, hoping to tell him subtly that he should have really looked up from whatever the heck he was doing.

I stood there for about thirty seconds and he didn’t seem to notice me.

“Brady,” I snapped, breaking the silence since the TV was off and couldn’t do it.

He jerked up from what he was writing and snapped his head up to meet my eyes. Hair fell in his face. The guy looked like a mess. “Yeah?”

I smiled to myself, quietly amused. “All you been doing the past few days is writing stuff down. You haven’t come up with anything yet?”

“Nothing good,” he groaned. “And at least I’m doin’ stuff.”

Déjà vu.

“I’m thinkin’ real hard and stuff, but I can’t come up with nothing. My head hurts all the time.” He twiddled the pencil around his fingers in thought, biting his lip and clenching his jaw. Something flickered across his face – a look of doubt. I’d seen it in him more times lately than I ever had.

“Maybe we should wait.” I sure didn’t want to spark another argument-turned-sap-fest, but I had to say something. I didn’t want to see him all tied up in his words like this; he wasn’t acting like himself. “You should take a break, you know? Get away from it for a day or somethin’.”

Instead of flaring up like I thought he would, therefore repeating the events I didn’t want to relive, he just opened his mouth a little bit and sighed, hesitating from saying anything. Resting his head in his hand gently, Brady stared real hard at the bed.

“That might work,” he said softly.

“I mean, it’s pretty obvious already that whatever we’re gonna do has to be completely mind-blowing and awesome. That’s clear already, so we already got a start, right? And so if we just kinda chill out for a while, maybe something else’ll come to us instead of us chasing it around. ‘Cause if we chase it, then it’ll run away and stuff.” It was probably the most I’d spoken to him in a week.

He pursed his lips. Bags hung under his eyes and dragged them to haggard insanity. I hated looking at him like this. I mean, he looked pissed off when I first met him, but that was ‘cause of me. He was all worn out now ‘cause of his own self. I hate people who pity themselves. They look for people to feel sorry for ‘em and then get all mad when nobody does.

Then he rubbed his eyes and nose and forehead, groaning something awful and mumbling a string of swears under his breath. Unfolding his legs from the criss-cross position he’d twisted them into, he fell back onto the bed, onto his back. I never saw him so exhausted, either.

“Just sleep, dude. You need it. Can’t be angels without no sleep, you hear me?” I kinda grinned, realizing the irony in that statement.

“I know.” He slung his arm over his eyes. A heavy breath was forced out of his chest and for once I actually got the vibe that he was trying to relax instead of getting all bent outta shape.

And I had to smile at that. Things weren’t perfect. They weren’t nowhere near perfect. But as things were, they weren’t so bad anymore. This was gonna take time and I knew that already. Heaven could wait, though. We had to get our heads on straight for something like this to work out so we could avenge ourselves.