Keating

We meandered into the hall and up the stairs, where Clutch leaned against the wall, pressing her palms to it.
“Worst. Plan. Ever.”
“Whyso?”
“We should sleep in our room and shove Hadyn and Mordecai into the guest room, because that makes the most sense. At the same time, they’re even strangers-er with each other than Hadyn is with us, so, like, maybe he should bunk with us but then either Mordecai would be alone or we’d have to split up, and fuck that.”
“So...Mordecai and Hadyn will be awkwardly shoved in the guest room, because you’re too selfish to sleep away from me in your own home?”
Clutch paused, thinking, eyes roving over us. “Yes, yes that would be correct.” Walking by, completely apathetic. Ghost merely shook his head and chuckled ruefully.
“Damn that child and her obsessive love of routine. Sorry Hadyn, your evening will be kind of awkward, but there’s apparently nothing I can do about it.” So he followed her down the hall, disappearing around the corner.
Mordecai stared at me, and I stared at Mordecai.
He grinned suddenly, wickedly, and slung his arm through mine. “Come along, then, roomie, we still need to make s’mores and play ‘Truth or Dare!” He crowed, before dragging me down the hall after the other two.
We stopped outside their bedroom door, it almost matched the door across the hall, with the bootprints on the door in the myriad of colors and caution tape adhered to the door, but it was augmented with words, scribbled and scrawled on the door in ink and paint and some that even looked burned. The most obvious words were scrawled in blue, reading “WE DO NOT WANT YOU,” with “why do you want us?” neatly printed underneath, in pink. Mordecai knocked.
“Hello Mordecai, Hadyn.” Clutch didn’t open the door.
“I dunno yet. Ghost, can I open the door?”
“Can I get some fuckin’ pants on first?”
“You’re wearing pants to bed? That’s gross, Ghost...”
“I’m changing my boxers. Let that happen, and don’t look.”
“I don’t ever look, you make me sound like some crazy pervert. ‘s’rude. Hurry up. Are you still nekky? Hurry up.”
“Okay, okay, Jesus. I’m ready.”
“Nah, now I’m gonna change.” There was a scuffling on the other side of the door, and Mordecai glanced at me, before leaning against the wall.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! You’re not going to shower first?”
“You didn’t. I’munna change and then relax and then shower and then sleep. And then and then and then and so on.” Her voice moved away from the door, and I heard cloth rumpling.
Ghost laughed over something I couldn’t see. “You’re such a mess! A mess!”
“I’m not a mess, my bed is a mess. I’M STILL NAKED WHY ARE YOU MOVING TOWARD THE DOOR GET AWAY GET AWAY!!”
“I was looking for my robe. In the closet. Next to the door. Relax, I am not going to expose you.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
“Are you ready now?”
“Mhm. Yeah. I’m not naked anymore.” The door swung open.
Ghost watched us, quietly, wrapped in striped navy silk. After a moment, he took a step back. “Come in, then.”
Mordecai slipped past me and into the room before I’d even moved, but I figured it was more indicative of the pecking order than anything else. I followed him in and took a look around. The walls were an unpainted and barren white marred by brightly colored and vibrant drawings and paintings and scribblings and posters. It was a rather ordinary bedroom with a desk (with two laptops, I noticed,) a dresser, and a closet. There was, however, only one bed. It was a queen, made up in black sheets with the zebra-striped pillowcases. Clutch knelt on the bed, dressed in a striped blue pajamas that had obviously been cut for a boy’s body. Amidst all the black, she looked very small and very pale. She was drawing or writing something on the wall, ignoring me. Mordecai and Ghost stood together, so close, behind me, their backs to the closet. They watched me and I looked at her, alone on the bed.
“You both sleep in the same bed.” I pointed out after an eternity, a little unnecessarily.
“Yes.” She didn’t stop writing.
“Isn’t that a little– well, a little suggestive?”
“Suggestive of incest, you mean? I suppose.”
“Well, why do you do it?”
“Really, of all the things you’ve learned in the past 10 hours you’re most bothered by where we sleep? What a pathetic little creature you turned out to be, Hadyn Connelly.”
“It’s indicative of an incestuous relationship!”
She threw the pen down onto the bed and turned to face me. “Oh, what does it matter? If we slept in the back of the van or in the guest room or on the floor or on a couch, it wouldn’t make any difference. So we sleep in the same bed, you’ve never shared a bed with someone? Maybe you’re just sex-obsessed or desperate or whatever, but not everyone has such a hard time keeping it in their pants that they shag the first person who gets within 5 feet of them.”
I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but her eyes flashed.
“No, shut up, I’m not finished. You’re a real asshole, you know that? Looking at me like I’m some kind of– some kind of Psych Ward Barbie for you to ogle and then you turn around and treat me like a child. Which is really, really sick. I do not exist for your satisfaction, nor am I some kind of shattered shell of a person for you to coddle. Am I damaged? Of course. So if sharing a bed is how I deal with it– and how he deals with it, too, he’s not perfect, either– then isn’t it fine, so long as we’re coping?”
Mordecai spoke behind me, “It’s wrong of you to assume that just because they seem to function so well that they are, in fact, more or less undamaged and they’re not still trying to find ways to deal with the trauma. Ghost, if you could take off your shirt.” He gestured with one hand to the blonde boy, who inclined his head and dropped his robe to the floor. He yanked his shirt roughly over his head and I was surprised to notice that Clutch looked decidedly away, jaw clenched as she stared at the ceiling. Under his clothes, where makeup and sunlight didn’t touch him, his skin was almost as pale as his sister’s. Looking at the sadistic web of scars along he buttermilk back and torso, I miraculously avoided many clichés; I didn’t gasp, scream, or stumble over painful questions about where they came from. I simply stared in abject horror at the cruelty that had been etched into his skin for years. I choked, however, when he turned to glare at me defiantly and asked me who and where I though they came from. I could not, perhaps understandably, bring myself to offer a coherent or, indeed, even audible or intelligible answer.
The boy I knew only as Ghost Keating positively sneered at me. “Lemme see, how do I explain this?” He turned briefly back to his sister, who still stared ahead, at the window. “Do you mind if I tell him?” And she shook her head, so he continued, running a hand absentmindedly over a scar on his chest as he did so. “Belts are very passé, I think. It’s much more fashionable to beat your children with dog whips these days. Or I dunno, could be out of fashion again, but that’s how it was when we were kids. The dog whip was presented to me three hours after our seventh birthday party. It was introduced to me as ‘what happens when you try to tell the nice rent-a-cop why your sister can’t stand to be around jolly-looking men with scrubby brown beards for more than a few minutes at a time.’
“It was introduced to me in other ways over the course of my childhood as ‘what happens when you try to keep your sister with you instead of letting her have one of her special talks with Uncle Jim,’ ‘what happens when you try to tell the neighbors why you’re sitting funny,’ and, my personal favorite, ‘that one’s going to show over your shirt, you’ll have to tell them it was a skiing accident.’ I have never skied in my life. That’s this one, by the way,” and he reached up behind his shoulders to rub at a long, angry scar between his scapulas. “But as far as fictional cover-up vacations go, we got to go to the mountains and see a sky that was even bluer than a bottle of Rit dye. So thinking about that was nice, I guess. And these,” he gestured to smaller, darker scars on his torso, “are from cigars. They are ‘what happens when you throw tantrums at family gatherings to try to showcase the fact that your sister and Uncle Jim have been talking for well over an hour,’ and ‘what happens when you try to physically interrupt one of those talks with your presence.’ And this, most important one,” he stroked a single, angry line running from his wrist to his elbow on his right arm, “was my response when I realized that I spent my entire childhood trying to save her, and I failed.”
And Clutch behind him pressed herself to the wall and whispered, “you have never once failed me.”
Ghost cleared his throat and continued his atrocious narrative, still fixed on me. “In the end, it was not my actions that saved her, but a blunder on the part of her attacker. He forgot to lock the door, and this was later, we were probably, ooh, fourteen? She was very, very good about being quiet at that point. And he forgot to lock the door to the master bedroom and Yugo walked in to tell them the dessert was ready, and he was twenty and his mother, our Aunt Renée, finally realized why we were so fucking twitchy and she whisked us away. Well, she stepped in and let Yugo whisk us away. And then there was a court battle where they raped my sister again by asking her to tell them, in graphic detail, what her childhood was like. No, of all the things I spent my childhood doing, only one was successful. I saved her by refusing to stop sharing my room. If I was there, if there was an actual witness, she was safe. So that’s why sleeping in the same bed is okay. Someone to hold us when we cry and a witness to watch us if the world ever decides to touch us again.”
I tried again to speak, to say anything. “That’s– that’s really–”
“You bet your ass it is.” Mordecai muttered behind me. “And it’s something we’ll never, ever understand or be able to empathize with. Nothing we say will ever mean anything more than pity in a situation like this, so just shut up.” He stalked out the door, leaving me gaping after him.
“I think I’ll just, ehh, go and shower now.” And I slunk out, creeping into the bathroom like a dog with it’s tail tucked between it’s legs. I looked at myself in the mirror, pale and shaking and looking a little sick, my fake red dye-job falling over my forehead. There was a knock on the door a moment later. “I’m decent.” I stated.
Clutch opened the door and passed me a t-shirt and a pair of boxers, still in the package. “To keep you decent while you sleep,” she said, her smile never getting within a mile of her eyes.” I nodded and set them on the counter beside me, beginning the laborious task of bathing like a normal person.
I turned on the tap and let the water run hot before starting to get undress. I pulled my shirt over my head, trying not to look at myself in the mirror. I did anyway. I tried not to throw up. I wasn’t a terribly pretty woman, or a terribly curvy woman, but I was undeniably female when I had lived that way. Beneath the binder on my chest was the unmistakable swelling of the breast tissue I tried so hard to flatten. Below that was the curve of my waist and, as I dropped my jeans, the hourglass curve of my hips beneath my boxers.
Now, I’m not necessarily one of those super-dysphoric guys who can’t bear to be reminded of my femininity, it’s more that I simply don’t find my body attractive because the image in my head doesn’t match the outside. It was made a thousand times worse on that night by the image of Ghost, bared to the waist and scarred though he was, with his V-shaped torso, perfect flat chest and his six-pack abs, the defined and wiry biceps wrapping his arms in strength and masculinity. I didn’t begrudge him his masculinity, his maleness, of course I didn’t, that would be stupid. But it still depressed me to realize that I could remove my breasts, inject testosterone enanthate into my butt and paper myself with Androderm patches every day until I died and I’d still never be as perfect as he was, scarred or not.
So I looked to my legs. My beautiful, hairy legs. I was lucky to end up with slim thighs and a flat butt, because women generally get a lot of fat in those areas. It’s a hormone thing. So I looked at my legs while I washed and conditioned my hair. There were, for the record, two sets of shampoo and conditioner, so I used the more masculine one I assumed was Ghost’s but ended up being Clutch’s, though they both used the same shaving cream, some overpriced can designed for men with sensitive skin. This was, I learned eventually, because Clutch had a tendency to react badly to women’s products. On both an emotional and dermatological level. I got out of the shower as quickly as I could and dried my hair with a towel in quick, sharp bursts, tousling it. It stood out in all directions, and I combed it down with a fine-toothed comb I found in a drawer. Along with lipstick in shades of blue, pink, purple, black, red, and several tubes of greasepaint. I ended up looking like Ghost and Don Draper had a tranny-baby. I was, however, momentarily annoyed with Ghost for being so trim; his t-shirt made my chest more visible, though I forgave him moments later.
I knocked on the door to the guest room. “Mordecai, are you decent?”
“I am indeed, Hadyn Connelly.” He was sprawled on yet another double bed, his face hidden behind a book. He wore a Bauhaus t-shirt and a pair of striated satin-cotton pomegranate-blood pajama pants. His toenails, I noted, were painted a deep purple.
“Nice pants.”
“Oh, thank you, they were a gift from the twins. Christmas, I believe. Would you be terribly offended if we were to share a bed? I assure you I’m mostly straight.”
“That’s fine, you strike me as a clean, fastidious person.”
“Very excellent.” He never looked up from the book, some novel called Bones of the Moon.
I stepped out of the room, not wanting to intrude, in time to see Clutch disappearing out the door to the garage, barefoot. I watched from a short distance as she turned left in the garage and climbed a set of stairs. After a moment, I followed, surprised when I could see the sky.
I watched Clutch standing on the edge of the roof, bare pale toes curling over the edge, resting quietly. It smelled like rain, and the sky roiled above us in the dark angry thundercloud purple-grey against the indigo. She stood quietly in the dark, arms wrapped around her torso, shivering as she watched the sky. "There is nothing left. There. Is. Nothing. Left," she called.
"You're wrong," said a voice to my left. I jumped. A man's voice. Who? Tall, dark hair falling over his eyes, wicked grin like a knife revealing manic Heath Ledger teeth. No makeup, no jewelry, but definitely Mordecai. He was different, now. Older, more masculine. "It's not that there is nothing left, it's that you won't see it. You’re surrounded by all kinds of fascinating things. Besides, you’re not ‘cured,’ not ‘fixed,’ but you’re not twelve anymore.” He walked to her and pulled her away from the edge of the roof almost roughly before wrapping her in his coat. “Just stop being a whiny little jackass.” He didn’t even look at her, and she just leaned back against him, gnashing her teeth.
“You don’t get it. You don’t understand.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t put it in words,” she turned to him, looking up at him and clutching his lapels. “I can’t put it in words and I don’t even know what it is but it’s a bad feeling. I’ve got a very bad feeling.”
“Can I help you?”
She shook her head sharply, both sadly and agitatedly. “No, no. You probably cannot help me. But I appreciate the offer, it means a lot to me that you want to help me, Mordecai. You’re a good boy.”
He laughed softly in the dark, and she pressed her ear to his chest and smiled at the vibrations, or maybe his heartbeat.
“Do you need a hug?”
“You’re hugging me now,” she pointed out.
“That’s true, this does count as a hug. Do you want your brother?”
“I always want my brother, but half the problem is that he’s all messiah-complex-y, and he can’t save me and that makes him so, so sad and I just wish we could both be fixed and we can’t. I should go snuggle him and tell him how terribly fond I am of him, perhaps it will make him happy.”
“I’m sure it would.” He brushed her hair away from her eyes and kissed her forehead softly. “Go build a castle and save him.”
“You’re not coming in?”
“I’m going to bring Hadyn back in with me, and we’re going to bed.”
“You didn’t shower. You’re gonna get hair product all over the pillowcases.”
“I took a shower this morning. Most of the product is out now anyway, I just need to de-tease it.”
Clutch nodded and turned, flicking me on the nose as she slipped past me down the stairs and into the house. I stared at Mordecai for a moment before he pointed and ordered me unequivocally to follow her.
Nestled in bed minutes later, I noticed a light on and voices coming from the twins’ room across the hall. I’m sorry, I know it was nosy of me, but I made sure Mordecai was sound asleep (he either was, or did a superb job pretending) and crept across the hall and peered through the crack in the door. The twins lay in bed together, wrapped in a black duvet. Ghost lay on his back reading a book with a dark, dramatic cover and Clutch entwined herself around him, laying with her head on his chest as she ran her fingers over his bare chest, looking at his scars. She leaned down to kiss one beneath his clavicle softly, so softly she almost didn’t seem to touch him.
“Hadyn thinks we’re fucking.”
“I heard him.”
“I think it would be bad if we fucked.”
“So it would.”
“But this is okay. This feels safe.”
He put the book down immediately. “Do you feel unsafe? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, silly boy.” She brushed her lips against his. “At least nothing is wrong that hasn’t been wrong for years. Do you think we’ll ever be fixed?”
“Do you want to be fixed?” He pressed her shaking fingers to his lips.
“I kind of like us the way we are. Tired of being scared, though. I’d like to go somewhere beautiful where we could just live off our savings and do nothing forever. We would frolic in a field or some shit.”
He laughed softly into her hair. “That would be nice.”
“Hadyn,” she called, “Close the door and go away.”
And, concerned I’d been caught, I did.