Prose by Elaine Nichols
Art by Keira Innes
Florian saw the boy, who was supposed to have already left, just as he was about to pass from the suburban area into the main part of town on the way to his cousin’s. He was sitting on the low wall outside the run-down, leaf-covered play park where they had sailed ships and buried treasure as children. The back of Florian’s neck itched as he slowed the car to a crawl and peered out the window at his friend—no, it wasn’t, not him, a little different—leaning back on his hands and swinging his legs like he had done when they were eight. His face lit up at the sight of the car, and he seemed to spring to life, making a winding motion with his left arm.
“Hey,” said Florian, rolling down the window.
The boy—his friend—smiled placidly. “Hiya, Floz.”
The white morning sun shone around his head, not quite blocked by his silhouette, as if a halo had been painted sloppily around him. Florian squinted, blinded by it. “Thought you’d gone.”
“Oh, yeah, well,” said his friend, that same smile spread across his face, “Mira wanted me to stay awhile, so.”
“Right.”
His friend moved a little, blocking the glare of the sun. All Florian could see of his face was dark shadow, the outline illuminated by the light. “Is that better?”
Florian swallowed. “You getting in, or what?”
The drive crawled by in four-count measures that came from the passenger—Florian’s friend—tapping his fingers across the dashboard, humming to himself, there’s got-ta be a way out-ta here. Florian’s head pounded at the sound, continuous and grating. He wished it would sound a little more familiar.
Florian’s cousin lived above the pale yellow thrift bookshop in town, which had belonged to Florian’s grandfather before his uncle, and would have one day been his cousin’s if Mira, something restless and yearning threatening to break the surface, hadn’t said that anyone who thought so might as well be Myshkin for assuming that she wouldn’t leave at the first chance. My dad will run it forever, anyway, she’d added, sitting beneath the wall of bodice rippers that her father had hauled back cheap-as-chips from a jumble sale. Here, in the stacks sandwiched between the cobbler and the produce shop, was half of Florian’s childhood, spent stocking shelves and listening to old Cantopop records whilewhilst the smell of his uncle’s cooking filled the flat.
Pulling over to the side of the road behind the bookshop, Florian paged his cousin twice, then said into the space beside him: “I’m sorry.”
The boy in the passenger seat started. “What? Oh, hey, no, don’t be.”
“Peter,” said Florian forcefully, turning to look him in the eye. “I’m sorry.”
Peter lifted a shoulder to his ear. “Really, you don’t have to be. I mean, you were—” his face flickered. Florian winced, then—“I get that. I would’ve done the same.”
His face flickered again. “I would’ve done—”
The back door opened loudly, causing Peter to squeeze his eyes shut before opening them again, his face stretched with effort. He smiled, a little blankly, at the girl blocking the light filtering in from the doorway. “Mira,” he said happily.
“You’re still here,” she said stiffly. Florian eyed his cousin in the left wing mirror.
“Well,” Peter started, then stopped. “Did you just wake up? You’re looking a bit peaky.”
Mira caught Florian’s eye in the reflection and straightened a little. Her expression, which had been warm and open towards Peter, grew colder.
“Look, Mira, are you getting in or not?” Florian interrupted. “We’re going to be late.”
“Florian’s got an appointment with the career teacher,” Peter said. “Would be bad if he were late.”
Mira huffed, getting into the car. “As if you haven’t before.”
“What?” asked Peter, his smile fading. “I don’t understand. Before?”
A strange look came across Mira’s face. “Peter, Florian is late all the time.”
Peter had known this before, Florian thought; he had rolled his eyes and made jokes, how do you know this better than I do, you never come to any lessons, Mira, tell him it’s not fair.
Florian glanced at Peter under the guise of pulling back into the road. Peter tapped his fingers on the side of the door, all a-long the watch-tow-er . . .
The ice cream in Peter’s bowl, paid for by Florian’s underground calculus cash cow, sat sticky and melting in the afternoon haze. It was untouched, save for the streaks of chocolate on the side of the glass that Peter persisted in dragging his pink plastic spatula through repeatedly. He kept asking questions like how was it with the career teacher, then, Florian, to which Florian lied, and thanks for this ice cream, by the way. Do you have a job?
“I help around at the marina,” Florian told him, just as he had told him last week, just as Peter had known before. He looked at Mira, small and pale in the shadow of the table’s umbrella. She seemed to have shrunken in on herself, as if her entire body were made of lead. She added little to the conversation if it didn’t concern clarifying things for Peter or updating him on details he had already known. Her gaze drifted, fixing on anything that didn’t threaten to look back, eyes filled with tears. He wanted to offer to do her calculus homework for the rest of the year, free of charge.
“That must be fun,” Peter said absently, cocking his head at some noise that Florian couldn’t hear. His right arm snapped out towards Mira’s face. Florian launched himself to his feet, but Peter’s arm was back at his side before Florian could push him away. Mira clenched her jaw as Peter held out something small and black pressed between his thumb and forefinger, like a cat presenting a dead sparrow to their owner.
“House fly,” he said gently, with a glazed, dopey sort of smile. When Mira shook her head, he opened his mouth and placed it on his tongue. His left arm dangled limp by his side, bent at an impossible angle, bone piercing through the skin.
“Peter,” said Mira. “Your arm.”
Florian’s stomach churned as Peter, chewing the house fly vacantly, looked down his side.
“Ow,” he said.
Peter had Florian pull the car to the side of the road on the way home. He clambered out of the backseat towards a rat the size of a small cat, inside out, eyes gouged out and larvae feasting over it. Florian and Mira watched, frozen in the front of the car, as Peter bent down amongst the maggots and peeled a strip of flesh from the skin with his good arm, putting it into his mouth, that same blank smile plastered beneath his eyes.
“We can’t keep him here,” Florian said that night, Peter dozing behind him on the zed-bed they had pulled out of the cupboard under the stairs. Jules, back from medical school, had helped Florian move it up to the bedroom. When his brother had asked why he needed two beds in his room when he had no guests, Florian ignored him. “We have to let him go.”
Mira’s voice was scratchy and soft through the phone. “He’s fine.”
“Mira, his bones are sticking out.” He was unsure whether the absurdity of it made him want to laugh or cry. “We’re hurting him.”
“I can patch him up,” she said desperately. She was terrible at pretending she felt something other than what she really did, Florian thought. He wished that she would talk to him. “He just needs—he just needs a cast, or something. I can make one.”
“He was supposed to have left already. He shouldn’t even be here.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mira said abruptly, the words sharp and unforgiving. She hung up the phone.
A massive weight sat in Florian’s chest, dragging him to the floor, the phone clutched in his hand. There didn’t seem to be enough air in the room, not enough to breathe. Peter’s soft snores grew louder and louder, threatening to chip away at the barrier Florian had built between them in his mind. He pressed his hand into the warm pillow that hung off the zed-bed by Peter’s head, and came away wet, something dark and sticky on his fingers.
Florian’s stomach lurched. He scrambled up from the floor of his bedroom, shoving his hand into his pocket in case anyone might see, although of course they couldn’t. He ran into the bathroom and vomited twice into the toilet before setting about washing the blood off his hands.
That same sick, lurching feeling carried Florian into the next morning, turning him jumpy and paranoid. The feeling of Peter’s blood on his fingers lingered long after he had scrubbed it away, only strengthening at the strange looks he had gotten from his siblings at breakfast. Zed-bed work out all right, Floz? Jules had asked, whilst Roddy, back from an archaeological dig in Egypt, had asked him if he were feeling a bit ill. Kitty had dumped a bottle of paracetamol in his lap and told him she’d cover for him at school if he wanted to skive off, whilst Peter had sat in the chair beside him, empty to the others, his arm twisted and his hair sticky with blood. You’re looking a bit grim there, Floz, he’d said.
He jumped at the first opportunity to take Peter into town and send him into the bookshop in search of Mira, desperate for a moment to relearn the act of breathing in and out. In, out, in, out, and again. And again. And again—
“Oh, hello, Florian.”
Florian wanted to burst into tears. “Mrs. McCarthy.”
“Florian, darling, are you—are you all right?” Peter’s mother frowned, laying a hand on his arm. Florian flinched.
“Yeah. Yeah, thanks, I’m all right. Bit of a nightmare last night.”
Peter’s mother tutted sympathetically. “Oh, I’m sorry, dear.”
“Do you need help with your shopping? After your shop, I mean.” Florian clutched the hem of his coat in his fingers, wondering if the blood, already scrubbed off, would show.
“I’m all right, thank you,” Peter’s mother said, still peering at him with concern. “I’m only picking up a couple of things.”
“I’m going down to the marina,” he blurted, out of a need to say something. “Ask if they need anything done.”
“Oh, right,” Peter’s mother said. “Peter did tell me you liked to help them around there.”
The weight in Florian’s chest cracked open. “He did?”
“Of course.” She smiled. “Always talking about you. You and Mira.”
The marina had become a favourite haunt of Florian’s since the day he had been steered towards the tins of paint outside the dockmaster’s office and told that if he were going to continue to loiter about during the hours that his friends spent in school, as he had for weeks on end, he might as well make himself useful. The physicality of the odd jobs Florian was often put to seemed to temporarily undo the knot of tension that he carried with him, and he was almost embarrassed by the eagerness with which he showed up now, as if to say help me return to myself, make me useful. He was pointed to a pile of old buckets, in need of a scrubbing, and began to fill a large tub with warm water. The smell of the ocean and soft crash of the waves were just settling his stomach when he heard a shout for his attention: hey, Berg, your cousin’s here, with a gesture towards something over Florian’s shoulder. He turned to find Mira making her way onto the dock where he sat, Peter trailing behind her like a lost puppy, his arm clumsily bandaged in what looked to be an old shirt. His face had begun to bruise over in a deep purple on the right side.
“Hey,” said Florian.
Mira smiled tightly.
“Hi,” called Peter from over by the dockmaster’s office. “Hey, is this me?”
Florian followed Mira as she turned and joined Peter. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, that’s you.”
“When was this photo taken?” Peter asked curiously, peering at himself through the glass. The Peter that stared out at them had the awkward, uncomfortable smile and too-neat uniform of someone who anticipated being photographed with dread. The face in the photo and that of the boy beside Florian were identical in the dark eyes and wide mouth, but Florian couldn’t help but feel that there was little in the photograph reflected in the Peter who stood with them. “Oh, look, there’s a little plaque here.”
“Last year. School photos.”
“Peter John McCarthy,” read Peter slowly. “Eight August one nine—one nine eight eight—oh, that’s my birthday.”
“We have to let him go, don’t we?” Florian looked up to find Mira standing over him, pushing her sleeves up. She sat down on an overturned bucket and took up another one, going over it with a sponge. “I asked Peter to wait over there.”
She pointed to the far side of the dock where Peter sat, swinging his legs like a child.
“I don’t think—” Florian sighed. “I don’t think it’s right to keep him here.”
“It’s not,” said Mira, scraping the rough side of the sponge over the bucket, her voice catching. “We’re hurting him.”
Florian wiped off his forehead in exasperation. “Then why did you bring him back?”
Mira was silent. At times, she seemed to live in the future, a degree of removal from Florian that had only grown wider as they had grown older. Florian wished to read her as he had been able to when they were younger, watching her look out past Peter at the ocean as if to tell it that she would be unafraid to fight should it threaten to tip her, too, into its yawning depths before she had done all that she was set on doing.
“He told me you wanted him to stay awhile.”
She glared at the bucket. “He’s my best friend.”
“Mine, too,” he said, wishing that she would look at him.
As if on cue, she turned and looked him in the eye, her expression hard and unyielding. “I got in. Into the university, I mean.”
Florian looked away first, plunging his arm back into the tub of soapy water and squeezing out the sponge. “So, you’ll be leaving, then.”
“Yeah, I’ll be—oh, my god, Florian, I know that you’re failing. I know that’s why you’ve been having all those meetings.”
He set his bucket aside to dry and reached for a new one.
Mira gestured wildly with her sponge in hand. “I don’t understand, you’ll do everyone else’s work, but you won’t do your own. I’ve seen you, you get things in like, five minutes. No one’s as clever as you—”
“Yeah, well, I don’t get paid to do my own, do I?” he spat. “What’s the point if I’m never going to go anywhere? I have to stay here. I can’t leave him behind, all right?”
He felt as if he had reached into his own stomach and labelled his insides. Here’s the intestine, here’s the liver, up here you’ll find the heart.
Mira looked like she was about to cry or perhaps slap him gently. Snap out of it, he imagined her saying as he swatted her hand away. She looked over at Peter, sitting obediently on the other side. Her eyes filled with tears.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said slowly, finally. “There’s so much. I have so much, and I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know where to put it.”
Florian wished he could say something. Everything felt too heavy.
Behind Mira, Peter coughed out a lungful of water into the ocean below him, then sat back on his good hand and tilted his face towards the sun. His chest rose and fell with the sound of the tides.
Sometimes, something about his face would split open, and Florian would catch a glimpse of the putrid corpse, bag-of-bones Peter as he was, awkward and gangly and most of all the best of them, before a cloud of confusion passed over his face and he was once again hidden behind pleasantly vacant eyes. He had been dreamt up as someone real, the Peter of before risen and amongst them once again. Instead, they had found a faint projection, a watermark on the pages of their lives, who would do what they wished and would come back over and over again to lessen their grief. Florian was filled with love for him. He couldn’t bear to see him in pain. Florian hated that he looked at Peter and wished for someone who wasn’t there.
Florian wanted, more than anything, to forever live in the memories of his own mind; to go back and memorise the sound of Peter’s laugh, his voice, the mischief in his eyes as he began to laugh at his own joke before the punchline. Wait, Florian would say, wait, say that again, I need to write it down. I need to keep you with me. I need to keep you alive. Beside the place where he kept his love for Mira, there was a space in his chest carved out for Peter that now sat empty, a dull throbbing pain running through him. I love you, I love you, I love you. Please stay.
“Hey,” said Peter.
Florian looked up to find him standing over them. The bruises on his face had faded almost completely. He stood straighter, his expression clearer than Florian ever remembered it, as if he recognised them, as if he were the Peter they had known before.
“I know you wanted me here,” he said. “But I think I’m going to have to leave.”
Mira wiped the snot running out from her nose on the back of her wrist and held her clean, soapy hand out to him. Peter grasped it, then looked over at Florian. Florian ached. I love you, I love you, I love you.
“I’ll be all right,” he said, smiling, his eyes warm and hair matted with blood. “Promise.”
Releasing his grip on Mira’s hand, he turned and walked out of the marina underneath the yellow sky, towards the cemetery.