Keating

“Ghost, hold my hand.”
“What? Why?”
“Because. I’m scared and I asked you to. Is that not good enough?”
“Scared of what?” He shifted slightly behind me, presumably to reach for her hand.
“Scared of what?”
“Hmm, dunno. Just scared. Just very scared. I forgot to take my meds this morning, and at lunch. I think it was in 5th period, but everything did that thing it does when I don’t take my meds. It was all bad, all bad. I’ve decided things, Ghost. About Hadyn. And obviously he can’t know them, but I guess some day I’ll tell him so he can write it all down.”
“Okay. Is Hadyn writing things down about us?”
“Hmm…no. Not yet, but he’s going to. He doesn’t want to forget us because we’re the most interesting people he’s ever met and he’s an observer and that’s what he does, so that he can remember the things he observes. He was writing when we met him, remember? You talked to him all flirtatious-like and he was like ‘OMGWTFHOMO’ and I looked up and it was funny and then Brock killed my Pikachu and now life is crap because we’re still in the Pokécenter getting healed.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath and glared at me in the rearview mirror. She was, if possible, paler than I’d ever seen her, paler even than Mordecai, and a faint sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead. For a minute, maybe two, she did not speak, just glowered into the mirror. The purple shadows beneath her eyes looked more pronounced, and even at a distance I could see the whites of her eyes, all the way around her iris. She was terrified.
“Do you have all the details, Hadyn? Do you? They tried to lock me up, put me on anti-psychotics for a while, but I wouldn’t take them ‘cause they make you fat so they tried me on a bunch of different medication that would actually deal with the symptoms of my actual disorder before realizing that I never take them when I’m supposed to and then giving up. I’m not supposed to have caffeine or I feel all bad and I had soda and they’re telling me to drive us into the guardrail.”
She closed her eyes, probably exhausted. I didn’t know what to say. Ghost held her hand and brushed her damp bangs off of her forehead. Mordecai steered straight, away from the guardrail.
Ghost looked at her, unobtrusively, curiously. He turned around and lay down with his feet next to the pillows, and I could only see his throat and flashes of his chin as he asked, “what are you listening to?”
“Ziggy Stardust.” She did not look at him. She, too, turned on the mattress and lay beside him, though I could still see most of her face. “I hate Hadyn. I hate Hadyn because he acts so self-pitying just because mommy and daddy don’t even give a fuck that he’s a little girl who wants to be a man.” She sighed as she braided her bangs over her right eye, dishwater blonde over dishwater blonde over dishwater blonde. Left, right, left, right. Annoyed, scared, and probably a little disturbed.
“We are approaching Lover’s Hill, colloquially known as Steam-it-up Boulevard. There are trees for those inclined to converse, and stars for your viewing pleasure. And rolly grass. Just be careful you don’t hit the trees.” Mordecai had not spoken for several minutes.
Clutch nodded. Mordecai parked and I “exited the vehicle.” Ghost followed, and Mordecai helped Clutch out of the back. She removed her coat and chucked it on the mattress before trotting down the hill. She stared at the tree, shivering. I followed, stopping behind her.
“I will not talk to it!”
“Talk to what, are you calling me an it?”
“No, but I might call you an idiot. You’re a boy with girl parts. You’re a boy! I was talking about the tree!”
“You talk to trees?”
She shrugged, an unconcerned, elegant gesture. “When they talk to me first.”
“Do trees often speak to you?”
She appeared to consider this thoughtfully for several seconds before replying “nah, just in certain circumstances.”
“O-oh. I’m sorry, you’re shivering. Are you cold? I mean, of course you’re cold, do you want my coat?”
“Your coat? And nah, if I wanted to wear a coat I would’ve kept mine on. Thank you, though, that’s very sweet of you.”
I nodded jerkily, the words stuck in my throat. My face was burning. Breath fogging in the indigo air, pale hand trembling, tapping a thin thigh aimlessly, rhythmlessly. And then, suddenly, she turned away fro, the tree and past me, walking back to Mordecai, saying something, smiling. Holding him quietly in the dark, barely visible. I turned back to the tree and screamed. High, like a girl. Standing beside the tree, smiling slightly, was Ghost.
“They’re an odd pair, aren’t they?” He leaned back against the tree, hands in his pockets.
“I- yeah, I suppose. She’s more normal with him…” My shoulders tensed, but he just nodded, still smiling.
“Sure. I think what most people don’t realize is that she is normal. She had an incredibly traumatic childhood that damaged her, true, but everyone treats her like she has a major psychiatric disorder, and she really doesn’t. What she really is, ultimately, is scared. That’s her main symptom, fear. Anxiety. She gets scared when she drinks caffeine, because she associates an accelerated heart rate with fear. She gets scared if there’s a test, or if she doesn’t take her medication. She doesn’t even take that much, as far as people go, by the way. She takes 2 milligrams of Ativan thrice daily. It’s when she doesn’t take it, like today, that she has problems.”
“She threatened to brain me with a hammer.”
He sighed, quite heavily. “Yeah, she does that. She’s very worried about you, but not in a kind way. She doesn’t quite know what to expect. She likes you, though, she trusts you.”
“When you say she’s normal, what do you mean?”
He rolled his eyes at me, and I was caught in how elegant and similar he and his sister were. “She’s normal. She forgets to do her homework, she gets crushes on boys, she watches TV, she listens to music, she writes, she reads, she hangs out with her friends, she goes shopping or to the mall or to the movies. She makes jokes, and laughs and sings and dances and asks me if I can buy her more rainbow products because ‘rainbows are cool, but they’re also kinda gay now. It is your responsibility, therefore, to keep the house stocked with rainbows.’”
I nodded. “She likes rainbows, really? She doesn’t seem the type at all.”
He shot me an uncharacteristically dark look. “How would you know? You don’t see a person when you look at her, you see a disease. You see a problem. She’s not crazy, either, not the way you think of it. Mentally ill, yes. Disturbed, yes, but not crazy. She’s not a psychopath, she does not devolve into psychotic fits. She feels what you feel, the same way you do. Someone insults her and it hurts her feelings.” He sighed, rolled his eyes back and forth, quickly, while thinking. “She’s traumatized, not inhuman. She may not act on her emotions the way you do, but she still has them. She still very much feels.”
“GHOST,” she screamed at the top of her lungs from above us on the hill, “Mordecai says we have to go home now, let’s go!”
“I’m comin’ goddammit!! Get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich!”
I glanced at the time on my mobile: 8:57 PM. It was really, really cold and I kind of had to pee, but I also kind of didn’t. Like, you know when you have to go, but not so badly that you want to get up and go to the effort of walking to the bathroom? It was like that. I looked up at the stars, feeling slightly dizzy. Diamonds dancing on black velvet. A giant, celestial tapestry composed of silver, shivering dreams sewn into velvet. Or maybe it wasn’t velvet, maybe that was a lie. I became aware, quite suddenly, that everyone else was watching me from the inside of the car. Well, I say everyone, but Clutch just looked so tired. She swayed gently where she sat as I hopped into passenger seat and closed the door.
I wanted to say something. I don’t know why I wanted to say something, but I felt as though I had done something wrong. Her brother, her twin brother had told me the single most valuable piece of information I would ever learn over the course of our friendship: her main symptom is fear. “C-C-Clutch, you look tired.”
Her eyes turned back from the ceiling to look at me, “and you look like a kid with a stutter.” She turned back to the ceiling, unconcerned. “I am tired, Hadyn, and that’s why we’re going home now. That, and Yugo might be like ‘OMG WHERE’D THEY GO??’ So it would be better to save him from himself, you know, with the worrying and all.” She nodded “wisely,” eyes closed.
“D-does Yugo take good care of you guys?”
“Again with the stutter. Of course he does, otherwise we wouldn’t live with him. Well, I wouldn’t, and Ghost and I come as a set. So yes, he takes good care of us, because if he did not take good care of us we would leave.” She threw herself melodramatically onto the mattress, reaching over to braid Ghost’s hair.
We drove quietly for a long while, back to the house on the hill. We pulled into the garage, as most people in cars are wont to do, and I noticed a white Jetta in their massive (MASSIVE!) driveway.
“Hey, Mordecai, whose car is that?”
“Gabriel’s. Yugo drives it to work because Gabriel gets picked up by Rina in the panda.”
“The what?”
“He means the cop car. Because they’re cops. I’m pretty sure our obnoxious neighbors over yonder,” she waved vaguely behind us to the house there, “think we’re the sketchest kids ever because I’m on meds, Mordecai appears super sketch, and there’s very frequently uniformed cops driving up and entering our house. Which is pretty valid, all things considered. But our neighbors are still total dicks. Don’t talk to them.” She all but threw herself from the car towards the door leading into the house.
“Hmm, I think she’s bored. Which is good, that means she’s feeling better.” Ghost slipped past me into the house and behind me, Mordecai sighed.
“What?”
“THEY’RE SO SELF-INVOLVED!! I had such high hopes when they were like ‘hey, Mordecai, we’re gonna make a friend at school. His name is Hadyn, he’s cool.’ But no, they end up being as self-absorbed and narcissistic as ever. Maybe you can fix them.”
I started to say something as we wandered down the hall, but I didn’t get a chance because Clutch dashed back and grabbed me by the front of my coat– sorry, her coat– and dragged me down the hall howling “HadynHadynHadyn come meet my parents!! They’re coolbeans, dude!” She stopped just short of two men, standing in the doorway of their bedroom. One, introduced as “my super-duper amazingly awesome cousin Yugo who works at a clinic for the appallingly impoverished which is why he can wear his hair that way” stood about average height, with chocolate brown hair cut short in front and spiked up, with the rest of it cascading past his shoulders. His nose was slightly crooked, and he had Ghost’s green-grey eyes. My overall impression could be summed up in a series of numbers: 1983. The man besides him was “his amazing copper-boyfriend Gabriel. He can be a bit of a scrub, but I love him anyway” was a pretty imposing guy, standing at 6'4", and though he wasn’t what you'd call muscular, he certainly had more to him than the rest of us, probably combined. His bleach-blonde hair was spiked up, and inch or two of red roots showing, with one lock falling into his warm brown eyes.

Clutch paused to catch her breath, and Yugo cut in, “you must be Hadyn Connelly. I would say ‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ but I haven’t. How’d y’all meet?”
“We, uhh, we have study hall together. And Gender Studies. I’m a senior.”
“I don’t mean to be appallingly rude, but are you trans?”
“Y-yes…” I really had to pee, and this is my least-favorite part of meeting anyway. It’s not that I look much like a girl anymore, see, I’m on the androgynous side of male, it’s just that
“you’ve got a really high voice for a dude your age. Or maybe not high, maybe your inflections are feminine or something. I dunno. Anyway, welcome to the Keating household, you’re welcome to stay as long as you like.” And with that, he grabbed Gabriel (tall, silent Gabriel) by the front of his shirt and dragged him inside, slamming the door.
“Dude, gross. They’re totally gonna have sex now. Gross…Do you think they’ll let us watch?” Mildly curious beside me, blue-grey eyes wide.
“Aren’t they related to you?”
She nodded once. “True. That’d be a little gross. Should go find some porn…” looking over her shoulder, towards her bedroom, the room she shared with Ghost.
“No, you should come take your goddamn pills.” Ghost is a very quiet person at home. Very quiet, and very watchful.
“Don’t wanna.” She reached past me this time, to Mordecai, clinging to his shirt. Where had his jacket gone? “I don’t wanna, Mordecai. I don’t need them, do I, Mordecai? I don’t need drugs to function.” Clutch rubbed the bridge of her nose, looking anxious.
Mordecai bent himself, just a little, to her level yet again. “To function, no, you don’t need them to function, you were just fine driving Hadyn and you behaved yourself in the car. Except for being mouthy. But they make you feel better, don’t they?”
“Notheydonot.”
He chuckled, a breath of laughter and no more. “I don’t care, go take your pills.”
Clutch slunk down the hall to the kitchen, muttering darkly. She stopped to remove her coat, sweater, and scarf, hanging them haphazardly in the closet before turning and walking into the kitchen. I stared at Mordecai, Mordecai stared at me.
“Wh-, uhh, where’s the bathroom?”
“They didn’t tell you?” Perfectly shaped eyebrow arched, almost disappearing under messy black hair. He points to my right, to the bend in the hall. “First door on your left, room with the toilet, I think you can find it.”
“Yeah, thanks.” Plodding clumsily down the hall to the white door with the brushed-nickel handle.

Inside, a counter with a sink, a mirror, and yet another white door with a brushed-nickel handle. On the counter was an astonishing array of jars and bottles, pencils, brushes, and little lidded pots: hair mousse, hair spray, wet look hair gel, styling gel, extreme-hold gel, pomade, hair gloss serum, cheap black hair dye, pricier hair bleach, eyeliner pencils, eyebrow pencils, lipliner in every color of the rainbow, and some that weren’t, liquid liner in little tubes, mascara in at least five colors (black, blue, brown, deep indigo, charcoal grey), eyeshadow in about a thousand colors whether they were pressed powders or creams, tubes upon tubes of lipstick, makeup remover, spirit gum, spirit gum remover.
Stepping past it, I opened the second door and unzipped my fly. My heart ached, and I felt a faint prickle behind my eyes. Slowly, miserably, I dropped trou and sat, relieving myself. People, they don’t realize how terrible it is to be a boy in a girl’s body. They mostly assume I’m a butch dyke and move on. I wanted to pee standing up, and I couldn’t. But I promised myself I would buy myself a lovely little device that could do everything a penis could do. Except fuck, but that was completely irrelevant at that stage in my life. As I washed my hands, I looked again at the counter by the sink, and I noticed the only things missing were foundation and blush. Clearly, all three of them used this bathroom, and Mordecai wore foundation, so where was it? I shook myself. Who cared? Who cared about makeup? More important were the people who wore it; where were they?
I checked in the kitchen, the family room, the dining room, the unnamed room with the haphazard desk, and the room in which I first found them, though I did not check their bedroom; the twins had asked me not to enter, and I have always respected their wishes. I listened very, very hard. I could just barely hear their voices, coming muffled from below. Being the curious and lonely person that I was, I followed them.
I walked again down the stairs with their perfect cream carpeting down into the maze of more perfect cream carpeting and white walls. Looking to my left, I saw the drawings along the walls, and I decided not to examine them. It still reminded me of a mental hospital, but it was okay, I could hear their voices clearly now. Mordecai laughing, Ghost trying and failing to say something through his laughter as well– trying to finish a story?– and Clutch’s voice interrupting, higher than the other two, stating something, not asking. I stood outside the door with my hand on the doorknob and listened, not wanting to interrupt.
“So then he– he said– Oh for God’s sake, Ghost, quit giggling so one of us can at least tell the story!– he bent over the kid’s desk, and we’re y’know, taking notes, but he just stops talking comes up in the middle of his lecture and bends over the kid, and he goes ‘Izzy, Izzy! Wake up, Izzy…’ and he definitely paused there, for just a second, and then he goes ‘it’s Christmas!’ And of course, it was so random that the entire class just busts up laughing our heads off. Hmm, yeah…it was funnier in person, not gonna lie. But the point is, he’s a cool dude. He’s enjoyable.”
Mordecai chuckled again. “Well, I’m glad you like him. How’re you feeling?”
“Very calm. I mean, I’m happy, this is one of those rare moments of complete contentment, but I’m all relaxed and shit. I feel much better.”
And Ghost started to say something, and I never caught what it was, because at that moment I lost my balance and my grip on the knob, throwing the door open and literally falling into the room.
They stared at me. I stared at them. I looked around the room, in something like shock. It was very blank. More cream-colored carpet with white walls, a dresser, and a bed. A watercolor of some kind of flower my mother liked to put on the table when guests came over hung on the wall. A guest bedroom, then. Finally, picking myself up, I looked at the bed: Metal frame, queen-sized. Grey sheets, grey duvet cover with circular white pattern.
I looked, then, at the people on the bed, sprawled on it. The two boys with the girl between them, on them, over them, tangled up in them. Ghost still in grey jeans, olive tee, white shirt with the collar tucked under on one side, shark’s tooth necklace, white socks. Clutch had changed her jeans and put on a black collared shirt, far too big, probably Mordecai’s. She still wore a loose black tee and white socks with grey at the toes. She still wore the dog collar, leather cuff buckled around one wrist. fishnet gloves and the safety pin through her right earlobe. Her legs, this time, were wrapped in black corduroy, without holes. It was probably warmer. And then I looked, really looked, at Mordecai for the first time. Metal jangled in his ears and dripped from his throat, and his wrists. His sleeves were a mess of torn nylon and fishnet, and his jeans descended darkly from slender hips to shred messily around his blue and black argyle socks. I looked at Mordecai, with his beautiful androgynous makeup, and all three of them stared at me in silence. After a moment, Clutch reached down towards the foot of the bed, by her feet tangled up with her brother’s. She lifted a box and held it out to me, and I noticed crumbs of chocolate around her mouth, between her teeth. “Wanna cupcake?”