Chapter Text
His lemon grass eyelids open to a resenting smell. His temples throbbed with every intake of breath, and he reached under his pillow for his phone. The sun leaked its way through his blinds and lit his room awake. 10:43am, the numbers read, along with a string of messages from “My Love.” He flipped his head down to see the bottom bunk, his nest of dark hair floating below his head. His sister’s blanket was entangled with her sheets, but the girl was noticeably absent.
Plopping his feet down on his carpeted floor, he kicked dirty clothes from his way, tossing them to the piling basket. As he came out of his shared bedroom, he looked across the hall to see the door to his baby sister’s room open. He let out a breath of exhaustion.
He had hoped he had got up before the girls did. What time did he go to bed last night, he thought as he descended the steps. The smell roamed deeper into his nose and became so unbearable, even though plugging his nose. From the final steps, he spotted his mother, wide awake, fiddling with the curtains.
“Morning,” He called. No response. “What are you doing?”
“I’m fixing the curtains.” His mother replied. “I found these at Goodwill last night. I spray painted them and now I’m trying to assemble them- Hey!” She suddenly snapped. “The house was trashed last night! I thought you were supposed to watch the girls.”
“I did!" He defended. Truth be told, he got high with his brother last night and still doesn’t know what happened.
Suddenly, Ira, who was only 2 years old, made a beeline for the kitchen, her diaper sinking into the floor.
“Mom!” He shouted. “Ira’s diaper!”
“Oh, yeah,” His mother replied, looking back with her dilated pupils. “Can you change her?”
He attempted to catch Ira before she had a chance to reach the kitchen. “Yeah…”
Stepping his way into the kitchen, he spotted the red light indicating the stove was on. He approached the stove carrying the squirming child, and spotted a nail, half melted on a stainless steel pan.
“Mom!” He screamed. “Why is there a nail on the stove?!”
“Why are you shouting?!” She screamed back. “I was trying to loosen- You're making the baby cry!”
His mother stomped into the kitchen and took the child from the arms of the 17-year-old boy.
“No, she’s crying because you didn’t change her diaper!” He shouted back. “What the hell? Where is Claire?”
His mother stepped up the stairs, hushing the crying child. “Addie took her to the park.”
He turned off the stove and removed the hot pan. As he ran cold water over the nail, he grabbed a knife and repeatedly jammed it to the dish.
He was sick. Sick of this house. Sick of tripping over unfinished projects. He knew what his mom was using, but every time an intervention was done, she would relapse. It’s how addiction worked. He was sick of this cyclical lifestyle of hoping and dreaming only to get crushed down and neglected and left hoping once more.
Without thinking he took out his phone and texted his girlfriend, “you free today?”
He got home late that night. So late in fact, the sky lightened, and the stars faded away. The sun had yet to creep over the horizon. The only people up at this hour on a Sunday morning were morning runners and churchgoers. The house was quiet and surprisingly clean. He suspected his mom was either out or still awake upstairs.
The kitchen was spotless. He could hear it now: his mother went berserk on his siblings, and them panicking, cleaned the house since it was one less thing for her to worry about. He took a beer from the fridge and cracked it open, stumbling carelessly upstairs.
He peeked into his mother’s room. Her body lay practically lifeless on her sheets, her phone dropping out of her hand. Shelves were clutter, and the bathroom light was still on.
He stepped into his bedroom, which was quiet and clean. Addie was back home and asleep with Claire on her bottom bunk. Upon entering, he maneuvered around a mountain of dirty laundry. Once he stepped over it, a bunkbed to his left, a dresser to the right. Leaning on the wall and on top of the dresser was a great mirror, smudged near the bottom frame with tiny fingerprints. On the bottom bunk beside the smudged mirror were his sister,s Addie and Claire.
The boy kneeled before them and kissed Claire’s soft head. She was barely 5, her soft eyelashes over her rosy cheeks. Sweat beaded her skin and soaked her thin brown hair. He was too tired to cry tonight. He wanted something better for her. Better for all of them. He wrapped his finger around her hand and squeezed, kissing the pale flesh.
Will climbed up into his top bunk and laid his head on top of the sheets that had been abandoned around his skin. He hoped for help. He prayed for sleep. He dreamt he would wake up in a different place. But when he woke up, he was met with the same place, the sun hovering over his blinds.
The same smells, the same soft sheets, the same screaming.
Screaming is what he heard in the morning. His mother rustled all around the house for her wallet. Or perhaps it was her keys this time. Or maybe her glasses. She always lost something.
He comprehended his place in his bed. He knew his sister was not below him. He heard her trying to calm their mother down in the echoing kitchen. She only got like this when she was going through withdrawal.
Should I pretend to sleep? He thought. Maybe sleeping would give the illusion that maybe his mother couldn’t lecture him about him going missing yesterday.
That didn’t stop her.
“And don’t think you are let off the hook from last night’s stunt you pulled!” She screamed.
He pretended to be half asleep. “What?” He drawled
“Where were you?!”
The brunette thought about his answers before he settled on, “Friends.”
“You are grounded!” She shouted. “I can’t believe you! I almost called the police!”
No, you didn’t, he thought. You only pretended to care. Perhaps that wasn’t true. But it sure felt like it.
“If Rob was here, you would never do that!” She said. “You treat him so differently! I should just stay with him to make you listen.”
Her words stung but stayed true, nonetheless. He would listen because he preferred Rob yelling over a fist into his face.
“Yeah, because I’m scared of him.” He let it slip out of his lips before he could catch it.
“Give me your phone!” She demanded. “How could you do that? You made your sisters worried sick.”
“I’m sorry,” He mumbled, watching his mother leave his bedroom open.
“Your siblings stayed and watched the girls while you were out partying!”
“I wasn’t partying,” He said. “I was-”
“Bullshit!” She screamed.
It went on like that for a while until she finally left for work. It seemed endless. The boy wanted to crawl up into a ball and die. Nobody knew what she did for a living. But nothing was endless. Addie stomped upstairs and opened their door.
“I need you to take Ira today.” She demanded.
“Did you change her?” He replied.
“No, Clayton did.”
Later that afternoon, the boy stayed in the kitchen, washing the dishes that piled up over the day. Claire and Ira sat quietly watching their shows in a dimly lit living room. Eventually he drifted off into the patio, music blasting through his ears as he lit a cigarette. He enjoyed these moments when it was quiet. Where it was him.
He hasn’t been answering his girlfriend over the phone, and she has been blowing him up. Sending and deleting messages, petty back-handed comments, and calling him over and over. He couldn’t care less. He left his phone off and took another rip of his cigarette.
When the stick was nothing but ash and filter, he flicked it out onto the concrete corner dedicated to cigarette buts. Wandering back inside, he plucked Ira from the couch and put her in bed with Addie, who slept soundly on the bottom bunk. Then, he carried the other toddler to her bed across the hall.
Stepping soundlessly down the carpeted steps, He spotted Clayton, his older brother, exit his room and cross into the kitchen.
“You know, you scared us,” Clayton said, opening the fridge.
“Didn’t think it was that big of a deal.” The other boy shrugged, following him. “You guys do it all the time. Plus, I was just stressed.”
“You can’t abandon us like that,” Clayton argued, slamming the fridge door shut.
“Why?” He crossed his arms and pivoted to the sink to check if dishes had piled up. “Because you can’t do it without me?”
“Whatever,” Clayton grumbled. “I’m just saying it’s selfish.”
Those words hit and crossed over the burnette's chest like a dagger over his ribcage. He put down the rag and gripped the counter, hearing Clayton stumble back into his bedroom. He took a short and trembling breath until it sank into his closing throat.
“Selfish," He mumbled. “Of course."
He sank his body into his mattress around 2 am. His room was quiet and enveloped with darkness. The moon above him let in dim light through the open blinds. He turned onto his side, his back to the door. He gazed out of the window to watch the car whisk by his neighborhood.
He caught himself hoping again. Hoping for anything. Hoping to die. Hoping to leave. To go somewhere. Anywhere else. The ache in his throat tightened and he felt his eyes swell with tears.
“Are you okay?” Addie asked from the bottom bunk.
He quickly wiped his tears. “Yeah. Go back to bed.”
The brunette woke up without a blanket to cover him. He woke up on a cold and hard mattress. His body throbbed and ached as he attempted to move it. He smelled smoke, and his joints sparked with pain whenever he pulled them up. His first thought was that he was missing something. Opening his blue eyes, he saw he was shirtless, with bruises and scars over his contoured torso.
“Where…?” He crowed out, feeling his throat itch with every word. He coughed out his breath.
“Easy,” A voice came.
He took a slow, deep breath through his mouth, feeling the tightness of his chest. “What the hell?”
“You’re safe,” The voice answered.
“Where am I?” He asked.
The stranger jolted up when another walked into the room through a thick skin curtain. “The boys found him on the beach.” He explained to the boy who walked in. When he opened his eyes to get a good look at the boy, he saw he was around his age, with dark brown eyes and fluffy hair that was combed up. His skin was a deep bronze and his eyes an infinite black. He turned back toward him and kneeled.
“You were hurt badly.” The boy said.
“What?” He crooked again.
“Relax, man, you're going to make your wounds open up again.”
"Wounds? Who the hell are you?” He asked.
The boy took a rag and dunked it into the bucket. “Blake. You?”
He attempted to speak once more, only to cough again. Blake eased him back against the mattress. What was his name? He searched for it in his mind until he was sure of it. Yes, his name.
“Will,” He finally said, never more uncertain about anything in his life. “William.”
“Well, William.” Blake smiled at Will, standing up once again. Will now saw the attire he was in. Animal clothes, a cloak around his neck that drooped down to his leather belt. His pants were short and torn at the mid-calf. He didn’t wear shoes. He smelled of dry dirt and sawed wood. “Welcome to Neverland.”