This War Paint

Jane


I didn’t know what was more shocking about the situation I was in.

It could have been the fact that I was just standing on the sidewalk, having a bizarre conversation with a guy I barely knew.

Or it could have been that I had just watched the guy jump off a roof, land badly in some bushes and emerge with small scrapes eliciting blood onto his tank top.

Possibly it was that this guy was higher than a kite, bloodshot eyes and easy grin giving him away.

Or maybe it was that this guy remembered me and our just-as-strange conversation days earlier in the middle of our school’s hallway.

So, it was safe to say that I was more than a little bit uncomfortable meeting his glazed eyes as he stood in front of me. A car passed lazily by and I prayed nobody recognised either of us. And especially how obviously on drugs Fraser was. I could almost see the rumour mill chewing up that one. Jane Hathaway and Butch brought in on suspicion of having done drugs!

I was sick enough of rumours as it was, it took every bit of will power I had not to scream at the town about how wrong their belief in David was, how stupid they were to follow him so unconditionally. I wondered if what they held for me was so steadfast or if he’d already undone their angel. I saw Fraser and what people said about him and questioned how far I would have to stray to take such a route. Probably not far at all. Especially if the flower tattoo on my hip was any indication.

I stood frozen on the side-walk and calculated in my head how long it would take for me to disappear around the corner. My home was only a few streets over, less than five minutes away, two if I ran. Surely Fraser wouldn’t notice if I left. In fact, he’d probably not even realise until I was long gone, until I was sitting in my lounge with a glass of lemonade.

It wasn’t in my nature to run away, though. And I owed this boy something – my attention at least – for the other day, as strange and unusual as it was. I couldn’t look at him and honestly tell myself that he was what the town told me he was, even though he was high and covered in tattoos and much too muscular to not be intimidating. I wouldn’t believe the people who thought David Armstrong was saintly, they were wrong about him and me so surely they were wrong about Fraser too.

“You look sad,” the boy blurted out, bloodshot eyes fighting to stay locked with mine.

I faked a small smile and shrugged. That’s all I ever did. Shrug. No answers, just passing off questions and queries with a roll of my shoulders.

“You look ill,” I countered quietly.

And he did. He looked about ready to collapse onto the warm pavement beneath our feet, one big heap of drugged-up mess. A shot of pity ran its course through me. I felt sorry for him, knowing what I knew about his jaded past and the fact that he didn’t have a proper home.

It was common knowledge that his Dad had kicked him out six months ago although it wasn’t common knowledge as to why. Most assumed it was because he was ‘Butch’ – any sane parent would have thrown him out years before and the man was a saint for not drowning him at birth. My mouth curled up in disgust at the thought. I couldn’t imagine Fraser as a baby but undoubtedly he would have been innocent.

“I… I… I don’t feel so good,” Fraser swayed and, before my very eyes, turned to vomit onto someone’s lawn. I watched, stunned, unable to compute exactly what had happened. But then he turned back to me and his breath hit me square in the face. I almost doubled over myself.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” he burbled “this wasn’t how I was supposed to act.”

He reached up to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand and took a large step away from the vomit. It may have just been the glare of the sunlight in his eyes, but Fraser looked close to tears. He stood, half on the side-walk and half in the road, dried blood dotted around his flannel shirt, subtly shaking from the strain of being sick. And I almost couldn’t hold myself back from moving towards him and hugging him.

It was funny really. This large boy-almost-a-man so defeated looking and upset. You could assume by his tattoos that he was tough and by his size that he was fearless but he was vulnerable before me. Charcoal eyes bright, tanned cheeks a deep scarlet. I wanted to move towards him and turn away all at the same time. I wanted to comfort him and spare him the shame of seeing him so out-of-character.

Instead I smiled sympathetically and held out an arm “here,” I offered “let me help you.”

He was clearly stunned and I wondered whether he thought I was just going to leave him. Surely my reputation, although skewed, must have showed something. Jane Hathaway helped everyone, always, even the town’s bad-boy after he’d just thrown up on someone’s lawn.

Fraser reached out a bronzed arm of his own and looped it around mine, fingers brushing my forearm. His breath washed over me again, forcing me to wrinkle my nose, but I tried to keep a straight face. Just because he was high didn’t mean he was blind and his vulnerability alone had me conscious. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. And that was a strange concept.

I tugged him along after a few seconds of just staring at each other, wanting to get out of that strange in-between place we both seemed to be stuck in. He was still shocked that I was with him and I was still fretting about being with him. Rationally, I should have just gone home, after all he had gotten himself in this state. But, irrationally, I didn’t want to leave him like that.

“Why did you do this to yourself Fraser?” I asked tentatively, not knowing how he’d take the question.

He beamed at me, a crooked thing that highlighted a single dimple in his cheek.

“What?” I hated the scrutiny and how close he was to me “have I got something on my face?”

“You called me Fraser.”

I shot him a peculiar look “well… yeah. That is your name.”

“You could have called me Butch.”

I shrugged “that’s not your real name.”

“It is to most people.”

“Well not to me.”

He stayed silent after that as we walked side-by-side under the early summer sun. I felt the slow sting from my shoulder telling me it was burning under its rays but instead of moving the fabric to cover it, I relished the tingle. I burnt too easily what with my red hair and pale complexion. Beside the boy to my left I must have resembled a ghost, translucent where he was so bold.

I wasn’t really taking any weight from him, just leading him along without much direction. I was about to muster up some depleting nerve to ask him where he needed to go when he spoke first.

“I do it because I’m an idiot. I do it because that’s what everyone expects of me – I’m just that Butch who shoots up drugs and gets high on joints. One day you just stop fighting it and say ‘why the hell not? That’s what they think, might as well make it a reality.’”

He didn’t falter once in his movements forward, confident in what he said. Fraser must have left the vulnerable boy back on the side-walk. Or he was just doing a good job of disguising him under someone else.

I couldn’t imagine what it was like for him. We were such polar opposites. I was expected to succeed and shine and thrive. I fed off of that as much as others fed off of me, using their dependence as if it were some kind of motivation. Fraser wasn’t expected to do anything but waste his life away in a dank underworld. He must have fed off of that too. He couldn’t not have.

“You don’t have to live up to what they think, they’re wrong you know.”

“About what?” he turned his head to take me in, stopping our flow.

“David,” I watched him tense at the name, “and me.” My arm still connected with his suddenly felt impossibly heavy “and you.”

I broke the intense stare to peer around us. We had stopped in front of a row of expensive looking houses, houses much too big to be anything like mine, and for one wild moment I thought Fraser must live here. Or had lived here before he was thrown out. His eyes, focused on me, gave nothing away.

“Thanks for walking me home,” Fraser’s voice was stiff as if trying to contain something else. Something strong. “I think we did this the wrong way round, normally the boy walks the girl home.”

“And normally the boy doesn’t fall into a clump of bushes and then throw up because he was high,” I couldn’t repress a smile. “Today’s not been the most conventional of days.”

I assumed he was crashing with a friend in one of these big houses. Even if he was an outcast he still had friends, normally the type who aimed to be outcasts but never quite made it.

“Well…” I shifted again under those charcoal eyes “I’ll see you at school I guess.”

“Yeah,” he sighed heavily and smiled that already familiar crooked smile of his. “You will see me.”

I almost forgot then that his breath still smelt distantly of sick and his flannel shirt was clinging to his bloody chest in spots. Almost but not quite.

“Get yourself cleaned up and please,” I finally met those eyes again “stay away from drugs.”

His grin widened as he nodded “I will.”

I didn’t believe him but it wasn’t my place to call him out further. We weren’t really friends, merely morphed acquaintances, and so without a backwards glance I set off for my house, away from the grand neighbourhood.

If I had looked back I would have seen him watch me go, a soppy smile irremovable on his lips.

If I had stuck around I would have seen him turn and head further back down the road.

If I had waited still further I would have seen him climb into a parked car I hadn’t noticed, settle himself down and draw a battered blanket around his quivering body.