The Words We Keep

The inside of his house is dark, even though the sun is still sharp. The curtains are drawn and the house is quiet as I follow him down a tiled hallway into his room. His floor looks like a fast-food graveyard, with empty cups and bags scattered across the floor. Yeah, a teenage boy has for sure been holed up in here for a week. He mutters an apology and clears away a small stack of dishes by his bed and a McDonald’s bag on his floor before he takes Bob Ross out of the box. He pushes the audio button, and Bob dispenses a one-liner: “You have to have dark in order to show the light. Just like in life.”

He puts Bob and his bobbling head on his nightstand next to the copy of The Bell Jar I gave him. When I flip it open to our blackout poem, I notice dog-eared pages.

“You’re reading it?” I ask.

“It came highly recommended by this cool girl,” he says. “We were working on this project together, but then she, like, grew horns and started breathing fire, so I’m not sure it’s going to work out.”

He smiles, but it’s still strained. Still unsure.

“Well, I, for one, am a firm believer in second chances,” I say. I’m putting the book back when I notice a bottle of pills—aspirin—sitting on a ripped piece of paper with scrawly handwriting: Do us all a favor.

I pick it up. “Micah—”

“A little love note from Damon,” he says dismissively.

I shake the pill bottle. I knew he was an ass, but this is next-level asshattery.

“We have to tell someone. An admin or something.”

He smirks like I’m a toddler announcing she wants a unicorn for Christmas. “Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”

“Seriously, Micah, this is not okay.”

“And you think Principal Porter is going to believe the transfer kid with a history of violence who just skipped a week of school?” He chucks the pills and the note into a trash can. “Not a chance. Now, if you’ll excuse me a second.”

Micah heads back down the hall, and I can hear an electric toothbrush whir to life, followed by the sound of gargling. While I wait, I pick a sketchbook up off a huge purple beanbag. On the open page, a wispy, black demon squats on top of a man, a natural extension of his shoulders.

“Much better,” Micah says, coming back into the room, his hair somewhat tamed and his breath minty fresh. He plucks the sketchbook from my hands and flops backward onto his mattress, the bedsprings creaking beneath him.

“So shall we keep going with the small talk, or are you ready to say what you came to say?”

He gestures for me to sit in the beanbag, and then waits for me to start. Where do I even begin? How do I articulate what’s going on in my head? How do I explain me?

I sit up straighter, the beanbag shifting loudly beneath me, and I take a deep breath. “Could you maybe—close your eyes?”

He gives me an Are you serious? look but closes his eyes, his elbows propped on his knees, head in his hands.

“I—I—think there’s something wrong with me,” I start. “Maybe like what’s wrong with Alice.”

“You think you’re bipolar?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. All I know is, my brain is…” I search for the right word while picking at a loose string on the seam of the beanbag. If I pull it out, will the bag unravel? Will all the insides gush across the floor? Would we ever be able to stuff them back in? “…off. Like, I have all these thoughts. It feels like…like…like my brain is broken. Like a busted laundry machine that’s stuck, and it keeps going around and around. And then my body goes haywire. I can’t breathe and I think I’m dying and it’s—terrifying.”

I don’t mention the scars on my stomach. Talking about this is one thing, but actually seeing it etched in my flesh is another. Micah’s nodding like he understands.

Could he? Could anyone?

“It’s like there’s this voice,” I continue. “Not like I’m hearing voices—it’s my voice. And it knows all my worst fears and insecurities and it uses them against me. Constantly. And it’s usually the loudest voice in the room, always telling me I’m wrong, and sometimes it makes me think”—I take a deep breath—“I’m crazy.”

As I say it, out loud, part of me, the part behind my rib cage where I keep all the unspoken words, cracks open slightly. I envision my words flying like butterflies, leaving their perch inside me, floating into the air. They travel through the space between us, and land on Micah. His face twists slightly under the added weight of my confession.

He doesn’t say anything. The silence gnaws at me as I wrap the unraveling beanbag thread around my finger. “I shouldn’t have told you. I came over to check on you. I’m supposed to be helping you.”

“I think,” Micah says, opening his eyes, “we’re supposed to be helping each other.”

“But I sound mental.”

“You sound scared. But just so you know, I already knew you were a total weirdo.”

I throw an empty McDonald’s cup at him. He dodges it and laughs. “Joking, joking!”

“Okay, jokester, your turn. Where have you been since last week?”

Micah stares at the ceiling, where he has stars scattered like the ones Alice put in our room years ago. Micah keeps his eyes on the stars as he talks—slowly, quietly—so different from his usual sarcastic bravado.

“I know what they say about me, you know. That I’m a psycho. That I’m dangerous. It’s all very sensational and intriguing, except it’s all shit. This is depression.” He gestures to his room, the discarded food, the rumpled sheets, the funky smell. “This is what it is. It’s like, like I wake up sometimes and—nothing.”

“Nothing?”

Micah springs off the bed and switches off the overhead light.

“So right now, your pupils are dilating, yes?”

I nod. The room comes back into view slowly, illuminated with just enough light from the cracks around the drapes to let me see the shape of Micah in the dark.

“Sometimes it’s like I can’t dilate. I can’t see the light, and I lose hope that I’ll find it again.” Light floods the room when he flicks the switch back up, and my mind shoots back to when the lights came on in the janitor’s closet.

“Was it because of me? Did I…cause it?”

Micah gives a short, small, forced chuckle, like what I’ve said is funny, not in a ha-ha kind of way, more like a life-sucks-doesn’t-it kind of inside joke.

“It as in depression?”

I nod.

“You can say it out loud, Lily. You won’t summon it.” His eyes meet mine. “But no, it wasn’t you. Or maybe it was you. I don’t know. It just is. It’s part of me. People always ask, Why are you depressed? But the boring truth is that nothing is wrong. I feel nothing. I am nothing. When I look into the future, nothing. It’s the nothing that destroys me.”

Is that how Alice felt on her meds? Was the nothing chipping away at her? Micah picks up the demon drawing on his desk again, studying it.

“People always talk about mental illness like it’s a heroic war with a monstrous disease. But the fact is, we’re fighting ourselves. Just a bunch of smaller battles. Getting up, every day, facing down the beasts because I can never beat them. Because they are me. The best I can do is—”

“Make friends with the monsters,” I say, not even aware I’m saying it out loud until Micah nods.

“Exactly.”

Behind him, my eye catches a drawing of all the characters from Winnie-the-Pooh standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean, their arms around each other. I bolt up out of the beanbag.

“Acceptance!”

“Excuse me?” he says.

“The Hundred Acre Wood. It’s about acceptance.”

He’s watching me, and for the first time since I got here, a real smile plays at the corner of his lips.

“I’m listening….”

“Piglet and his anxiety. Rabbit with his OCD rows of carrots.” I point to each character, thinking it through as I talk. “Dyslexic owl and ADHD Tigger. Eeyore and depression. Oh, and don’t forget Christopher Robin, the boy whose stuffed animals talk to him. Hello, schizophrenia!”

Micah’s face is all weird, and I’m not sure if I’ve nailed it or totally offended him, but I keep going. “And they all know Piglet’s gonna freak out about the wind. They expect Eeyore to be a dud at the picnic. But they invite him anyway. They help each other, but nobody tries to fix anyone. You’re just you and they’re just them and that’s okay.”

I flop back into the beanbag. “I’m right, right? I’m totally right.”

Micah looks from me to the drawing and back again. “Sorry, kind of in shock here. You’re the first person to ever figure it out. Or care enough to try.”

“I guess that makes me pretty special, then.”

“Yes, Lily Larkin, I guess it does.” A true Micah smile finally appears, and he motions for me to move over. He squishes next to me in the beanbag.

“For the record,” I say, turning to him, “I do care. A lot.”

I reach out and take his hand, separating his fingers with my own. He doesn’t say he forgives me, exactly, just slides his palm against mine as our eyes meet. I can tell he’s still holding back, though, afraid I’ll pull away again. So I lean in close. Closer. His face—his lips—are a whisper from mine.

His curls tickle my forehead, and a rush of adrenaline shoots through me, white-hot and consuming because all I can see or feel or think is him. I’m not even sure who makes the final move, but the space between us disappears and our lips touch, feather light. I lean into him, and his mouth opens, just slightly, enough for me to feel the wet warmth of him.

His lips move slowly, as gentle as a breeze, but the taste of him makes my whole body hum, my brain float. His hand cradles the back of my head, and our bodies, our lips, melt farther into each other, and all my plans and reasons and worries fade away, and the only question I have is, Why haven’t we been doing this since the first moment he walked into my life?

When we pull apart, he smiles, and even though all I want to do is keep kissing him—maybe forever—he leans back on the beanbag, his cheeks slightly flushed.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he says.

I scrunch next to him as he puts his arm around me, and I cuddle into his chest.

“I have a pretty good idea.”

His weight settles into mine as we fall farther into the beanbag, into each other. It feels good, our bodies, leaning in, supporting each other.

“I could almost fall asleep like this,” he says, his eyes closed. “And that’s coming from someone who never sleeps.”

“Sleep is for the weak.”

“Yeah, who needs it?” Micah says, midyawn.

“Not a couple of weirdos like us.”

His heartbeat is steady against me, his body warm against mine. We fall into silence, but not the kind of heavy nothing filled with unsaid words. Our silence is easy, the kind of quiet that says nothing, and somehow—everything.

“Hey, Lily?” Micah says, his voice slow and slurry.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

The last thing I feel before falling asleep are his fingers sliding deeper between mine.

“For staying.”