The Illusion of Separation

"Oh my god. Ohhhhhhh my god."

I couldn't help it. I walked around the car in a circle with my hands behind my head, trying to fathom what was happening. Of course it would be Carter's idea to bring us here. He was always the risk-taker, not quite like Christofer but more along the lines of practicality, like he took risks that would maybe get him in trouble or in danger but they were risks that normal people would take, whereas Christofer took risks like talking about dropping out of school occasionally and living in his car, stuff that normal people would know to stay the hell away from because it would fuck up the rest of their life. Not like Christofer had a life to fuck up anymore, though.

Chris was leaning against the car, a huge smile on his face. Of course he would. Sadistic bastard. Although I couldn't really blame him. I knew Carter had brought the both of us here for Christofer because this was pretty much Chris's paradise. I was Christofer's girlfriend, so by extension I had to put up with the things he liked and he would do the same to me...if Chris was a normal person, anyway. But it turned out that I spent most of my life pretending to like things that Christofer liked in hopes that he would pretend to like things I liked, and it turned out that he didn't even do that - he wouldn't eat foods I ate, he wouldn't go places I wanted to go, and he wouldn't hang out with friends I wanted to hang out with. He was kind of a child in that way. I could picture Christofer sitting on his bed in his room, playing ukulele as I went out with my friends to some restaurant or club or something. It had happened before, and they'd asked me where Chris was and I had to create some lame excuse about how he was visitng relatives and couldn't be there, or he had a lot of stuff going on the day after and had to get his rest, or he was deep in a music session and couldn't be pulled away from his songwriting notebook to save his life. My friends had been getting pretty tired of it, though, and it was difficult to go out and have fun when I knew he wasn't anywhere near writing a new song or working on some old ones, he was just sitting on his bed playing the alphabet song over and over.

He'd already thanked Carter a million billion times, starting with when we pulled up to the hotel and Chris yanked open the door, ran over to Carter's side, yanked open that door, pulled out his best friend, and proceeded to jump all over him and freak out like boys do. I was still sitting in the back, eyes wide, having been in shock from the time that I saw the green sign on the side of the highway that said Welcome to Los Angeles.

Chris got me out of the car, too. Opened the door on my side and managed to get his arms under my back and my knees and lift me out like we were gettin' married and goin' right off to our honeymoon. I was still unable to speak, and as Chris jumped around with me in his arms, I couldn't find the words to express what I was feeling.

I knew we were going west, but this was kind of a stretch.

I was a small-town girl. Always had been. I'd caught those little glimpses of city life with my mother, had always been curious about how city folk lived, but never enough to actually pack my bags and move up past the Mason-Dixon with my mom. Yet here I was on the other side of the country from my humble little home of Joplin. Surrounded by bright city lights and noise everywhere I turned. The roads weren't dirt and old beat-up pickup trucks anymore; they were a sea of yellow taxicabs and shiny new cars that probably belonged to celebrities. Once in a while I'd see a limo and my heart would nearly stop. I never saw limos in Joplin except for the one time that Dierdre had her sweet sixteen and invited a few friends to ride to the club in a limo, which ended up being kind of beat up anyway and a shade darker than off-white even though it had probably been white originally.

"I figured you needed to get somethin' done with your music," Carter explained. "You've been fillin' our heads with it for our entire lives and I'd rather the general public be the victims of that instead of us."

He was half-joking, of course. Christofer came up with lyrics that we could only dream of inventing. I couldn't write songs to save my life, and although Carter was a musician as well, he often ran into songwriters' block. Didn't help bein' friends with me, seein' as, like I said, I had absolutely no talent for writing lyrics. The only thing he could do with me was sit me at a piano when he had composers' block and let me plink around for a little while. I didn't know what I was doing most of the time, but Carter would stand there and nod like I was some famous Mozart sort of person or something. Eventually he would straighten up like he'd just been shot and run off to his room to work it out on the guitar. Kinda eerie when he would play the finished song back to me. Most of the song would be his own creation, but I'd hear little bits of my piano-plinking in there, changed around a little, but still mostly the same, and I'd wonder how he could make an entire song just from the few notes I played.

"So," Carter continued, "I sent off some of your demos to the record companies around here and let 'em listen. I got a few calls back. Figure today will be our resting day and then tomorrow we'll go around and see if we can get a record deal set up."

I couldn't believe it.

Neither could Chris, apparently, because he whooped and hollered and jumped all over Carter for the second time today.

"Hate to break up the gayfest, but we have one problem," I interjected.

Chris and Carter looked at me expectantly.

"How on God's green earth are you plannin' to get a record deal for a dead person?"

Carter looked Chris over thoughtfully. "Didn't get that far," he muttered, more to himself than to me. I groaned. Naturally, I'd be friends with people who didn't think about the fact that dead people can't really make music...or be seen in public...or release demos. Suddenly, Carter smiled and I had a pretty bad feelin' about it. "It's okay...all we have to do is take him to get his hair cut...and maybe dyed while we're at it..." He looked mischeviously at Chris's shoulder-length golden hair.

I would have expected Christofer to throw a fit like he usually did when someone tried to change somethin' about him, especially his hair. His parents had mentioned multiple times that he needed to think about cutting his hair since it was so long now he was often mistaken for a girl 'til people saw his face. But he was compliant. He nodded in agreement and said, "I always told myself brown would be the next color. Miss my old hair."

"Then why'd you die it blond?" I snapped.

"Ooh, dang. Miz Foster is a spittin' viper today." He jumped away from me like I really was a snake and grinned at me. That was it. He was in a good mood. Nothing was gonna ruin it.

"Can we just get in the hotel," I pleaded Carter.

He obliged. Chris walked beside me the whole time, through the lobby, where the receptionist gave us our card keys after Carter paid, not acting weird about Chris because, let's face it, he was some kid who got run over in Joplin, Missouri. Wasn't on any news but the local channel, and kids got hit by cars all the time. No one outside of our hometown and the surrounding areas would know who he was. He held my hand down the hallway and into the elevator, and he tried to nuzzle my neck as we rode up. I stayed standing there, indignant. Not like I didn't enjoy it, because I did, but he was not getting off that easily. All I wanted to do was get into the hotel room, pull the covers over my head, and sleep for the next week or so. I'd had way too much go on the past few days and I wanted to shut out the world for a while.

Shoulda known that wasn't happening.

Soon as we got in, Chris was exploring everything. He wouldn't shut up. He never did. He was way too talkative by nature. Kept commenting on how soft the beds were, how nice the flat-screen TV was, how cool it was that they had coffeemakers in the room, how sophisticated-looking the bathroom was. "I don't even wanna take a shit in there. I feel like I'll ruin it for the next twenty years. Don't even wanna piss. Or wash my hands. Jesus."

"Chris," I groaned. Like I've said before, I loved everything about Chris but that didn't mean that I was excited about his hygiene habits. Yeah, he wouldn't be Chris without them, but I still didn't enjoy them. He didn't have a censor on his mouth either which was extremely frustrating.

"What's wrong, sugar?" he asked, and jumped onto the bed where I was lying face-down, my head buried in the pillow. I sighed as I felt the bed bounce up and down slightly from him abusing it.

"Just wanna go to sleep." I was aware I was whining. I didn't particularly care at that moment. "Shut the fuck up with your disgusting commentary."

"Awh, someone's grumpy. You know what I think will make you feel better?"

"If it's pot I swear to god I am throwing you out of the fucking window."

He laughed softly, the kind of laugh that had always made my thoughts go fuzzy with pure infatuation. It did the same now. I was happy we were in love. Arguments like this didn't make me fall out of love with him. They made me like him a little less, but I was sure I would always love him. Or at least for a long time, anyway. "Always" was a pretty big word when you were a teenager.

I coulod feel him slide into the covers next to me. He started stroking my hair, and eventually I turned around so that we were facing each other. Him with his blond hair falling into his eyes and a lazy smile on his face. Me probably looking like shit from being stuck in a car for two days and not being able to shower or put makeup on correctly. He didn't mind, though. He never did. He was always one for the natural beauty, although he tended to go for girls that wore makeup without him knowing they were. "What? I thought your eyes were darker. Wait, that was eyeliner?" I'd heard it at least once before. He did it with me once but it was just a side comment about my lips, since I usually wore at least a little gloss on them.

"It's gonna be okay," he told me. "Just relax."

Which was probably the most useless advice he could ever have given me.