Shades of Gray

Finals pass, and I do also, but only barely. Second trimester kicks off with me achieving a four-hour rest, between 12:32 AM and 4:55 AM. For Christmas, Jack buys me a dream dictionary, and another on prostate cancer. Both seem like a joke, but he barely even smiles as he watches me unwrap them, so I thank him and give him his gift, a book on psycho-sexuality, which seems to get him more excited than I anticipated. On New Year's Eve, I fall asleep before midnight. When I wake up, Josh is smiling.

***

"Whose fucking idea was it for us to have a three-part system? This is bullshit. Nobody should have this much classwork over break," Josh complains for the sixth time in the hour. He looks up at me and squints.

"Did you take your meds today?"

I roll my eyes in response, rummaging around my desk drawer for a pair of scissors. "I slept, didn't I?"

Josh shuts his textbook, dropping it carelessly on the floor. "Whether or not you'll sleep tonight is the question."

I shrug, climbing back up onto my bed, which might as well be a bunk bed, these things being so damn high up in the air.

"I think I'm better now," I tell him, cutting the plastic wrap off of the small box in my hands. The box is light, and on the top SHINOLA in black lettering. Josh catches sight of it as I remove the lid.

"Honestly, Alex, did you really spend five hundred dollars on a watch? You own nearly thirty already."

I give him the squint, too, and take the watch out, immediately syncing it up. You cannot hear the ticking, not physically, but I hear it in my head. The strap is a strong but soft leather, and the clock itself is a sleek silver. Classic but discreet. I feel safe.

It is 3:14 PM. I have been awake for nine hours, fourteen minutes.

I remind myself that it does not matter how long I have been awake for, since I will be going to sleep again tonight, but I can't help noticing when the number changes to nine hours, fifteen minutes. Sixteen minutes. Twenty two minutes.

I'm better now.

***

"Don't you have a date tonight?" Josh asks me as he steps out of the shower, towel wrapped around his waist, hair still dripping like he never actually left the shower.

It is 6:23 PM.

"We both kind of had more important plans going on tonight," I explain, but get up and slip on a cleaner shirt, anyway.

"More important plans being hanging with Barakat?" Josh raises his eyebrow, slipping on a pair of boxers.

"More important plans being visiting my parents," I correct him, strapping my new watch on my wrist.

Josh looks at me.

"With Barakat," I admit, picking up my phone and keys. "But that's beside the point."

"That kid seems to be the main point of everything," Josh comments. I shoot him a look as I walk out the door.

***

Thirteen hours, four minutes, I think, as Jack gets in the car, right foot first, left arm second.

We sit in silence for a second, the car humming in a warm up. Our breaths fog in the air.

Jack looks at me, breaking out into a grin. "So, I'm meeting your parents, huh? Have you told them about us?"

I reverse out of the Scooter's parking space, switching the gear to 2. "What about us?"

"Alex," Jack enunciates dramatically, "I think your parents should know we're engaged!"

"Quit being a fuckhead," I tell him, hands numb on the steering wheel. Why isn't my heater working? "We're not engaged."

"Sorry," he grins again. "Thought this was your dream."

It begins to snow, although it is early February, and Jack actually opens the window to catch falling snowflakes.

"The tingling of cold is not numbness," he informs me, smearing melted snow across my cheek. "It is actually intense pain. Your nerves hurt."

"Good to know." I close his window from the driver's side button, turning the heat all the way up.

"Are you in love yet?" Jack asks me. My head is jittery. I am filled with new-found adrenaline, a sudden motivation to do something, but what, I don't know. The cars in the road are moving too fast.

Jack repeats his question, slightly louder this time, as if I might not have heard him, but the radio is very low, and the hum of environmental noise is quiet.

"Who would I be in love with?" I counter. I half expect him to say "me," but he doesn't.

"O' Callaghan. Do you love him?"

The question takes me by surprise. I have forgotten John's existence for a second, but I'm not sure it currently matters.

"We've only been dating a month," I reply. "I haven't even kissed him yet."

"Okay," Jack nods, leaning back in his seat. "I was just wondering."

"What about you?" I ask. "How's your quest to fall in love?"

He stares at me for a long time.

"I'm getting there," he says.

***

My mother adores Jack, having met him twice before, and my father thinks he could use a lesson or two in taxes, but is overall a swell guy. He pulls me to the side ten minutes into my visit, asking me if I'm gay. When I say no, he insists that I am, and then tells me it's okay. I tell him that I am, in fact, asexual, but this seems to cause him only more grief, and he mumbles something about grandchildren and preserving the Gaskarth name before handing me back to my mother, who Jack is entertaining by studying her recent gyno's diagnostics paper.

"You're in excellent shape, Isobel. I'd even go as far as to say you're capable of holding another child!"

My mother blushes, actually blushes, and then gets up, ushering me in the seat she'd just been sitting in. "Sit here, the both of you," she orders, taking a pan out of the cabinet. "I'll make you dinner or something."

Jack leans in close to me. "I want to see your room," he tells me.

I blink. "My room?"

He flashes me one of his mischievous smiles. "I'm rather curious as to how teenage Alex was. No better evidence than your main habitat."

I resist the urge to remind him we went to the same high school where I was, in fact, a slightly younger teenager, considering that I am, in fact, nineteen, and still, in fact, "teenage Alex."

I get up, much to my mother's dismay, and lead him to my room. The fifteen year old inside of me jitters at the thought of bringing someone to my room. My inner self is disgusted that someone is invading my ultimate sanctuary.

I'm not sure if I still live here. I'm not nearly too old to live with my parents, but I've always planned on having a place of my own by the time I was done with my undergrad.

Opening my door, the same panic washes over me that I have tried to avoid in the past, and it almost feels like an electric shock- a fast tingling that you're not really sure of.

My room is the same, and I start to match it. Unexpectedly, I am tired, but awake, hyper alert of Jack breathing behind me. He distracts me momentarily, immediately diving for my bed and peeking underneath. He pulls out a box.

I don't recognize it.

"I'm opening it," he announces, pulling the lid off and tossing it aside. He pulls out a black book, SENIOR YEAR scrawled across the cover, and suddenly I am very embarrassed.

Jack flips through the pages for a minute and I hover, sitting carefully on the edge of the bed.

"Oh man," he gives a half laugh, skimming a very long anecdote. "This is golden. This is too good. Who knew you were so angsty? What is this? Some ghost-whisperer shit? What I wouldn't pay to see your brain three years ago."

"Alright," I take the book from him, dropping it back in the box. "Enough."

"Have you been seeing your psychiatrist?" Jack questions abruptly, more somber than seconds ago.

It is 7:14 PM. He still hasn't complimented me on my new watch.

"I didn't think everyone was serious on that. I'm much better now, honestly."

"The longest anyone has gone without sleep is 11 days. His name was Randy Gardner and he was seventeen years old."

I look at him. "I'm not trying to set a new record. I can sleep."

I hear my mother put something into the oven from the kitchen, down the hall.

"Because of your medication, of course."

I sigh, and so does he. I realize that he's leaning against my side, back to my left thigh, head nearly resting in my lap.

"I won't die of some drug overdose," I reassure him.

Jack's eyes meet mine for a second, but his gaze switches over quick.

"No," he says. "You'll be dead long before then."