home is the thing you run from
I sneak out of my mother’s house every night after she goes to sleep. I call it her house because it is not my home. Home is where I’d feel at peace. Home is where I’d know my own name. No one calls me by the right name in the daylight, and I want my name back. During the day, I tell the boy with curls and buck teeth and eyes like a lightning strike to call me Eddie. He never does. At night, I don’t care what he calls me. At night, I am always me, no matter the name, because the woman who puppets me puts her hands to sleep. I don’t sleep much.
I make it look like my body is still in my bed with pillows under covers in case my mother comes in. I look at it. I wonder if, maybe, it doesn’t matter what’s in my bed as long as something is sleeping: human, ghost, or monster. I wonder if, maybe, I am the ghost haunting my own body. I wonder if, maybe, my mother doesn’t care what’s inside me so long as she can control it. I look at myself in the reflection of the window. I look human, but I could still be a monster, because I know better than anyone that nobody can tell the difference between the two. My puppeteer mother taught me humanity is monstrous, and after this long, I'm starting to believe her. I open the window. I climb out onto the roof and jump off. I stick the landing and look up at my mother’s bedroom window. I look back at my own room; my prison cell. I run.
I take nothing with me but a five dollar bill and my name. Eddie. Eddie. It beats with every crash of my heart against my ribs, begging at my viscera to become unconfined. It breathes with every gasp my lungs take, greedy in the stifling air of this monstrous town. I have seen the face of evil, and I have devoured it, vivisected my own demons, and now they’ve made a home inside me. Evil broke my bones and I just put them back together in the shape of a boy. Evil is the ghost laying in my bed while I run through town, ducking through trees to avoid the streetlamps. I want to be me, but I don’t even know who that is. I want to be me, but I really don’t know if I ever was to begin with.
I am always running, it’s just that sometimes, I’m not allowed to look like it. I am always running, it’s just that sometimes, my lungs can’t take the pressure and they burst open, flowers blooming and choking me stiff. Those flowers are beautiful but the puppeteer rips them out root from root when my inhaler comes out—useless, a placebo, empty of any real power, just like me. I am scared more than I cannot breathe. My head is sick more than my body is. The puppeteer would have my hide if she could lick my brain, if she knew that I know how I am not sick or dirty or broken. I am Eddie. I am Eddie.
My name is alive inside me when I end up in front of the lightning strike boy’s house. I grab a stone and toss it at his window, one for every time I thought of him tonight and was ashamed of it. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. The boy I love comes to his window and opens it, looking exhausted and excited and lovely. He is always himself, unabashedly and unashamedly. I wonder if he knows I love him because I love how he wears freedom like a second skin. I wonder if he knows I love him at all.
He smiles down at me. Eds, he says, and it’s not my name, but it still sounds like home, the one I’m not allowed to live in. I smile back. I always fashioned myself a little like Juliet: just a broken bird, waiting patiently for somebody to save her. But maybe I was never broken at all, and neither was Juliet; we were just waiting for somebody to tell us that we can save ourselves. I remember the lightning strike boy setting my arm in place when it snapped in two, when evil laughed in our faces. Evil came in the shape of a smile. But maybe the true evil has lived inside our homes all along and we never even knew it. My evil has strings and a placebo inhaler in a hand outstretched; my boy’s is a wolf who’s wearing his skin. We all have things that long to control us, but in the end, they never even come close. They don’t know about the things we love when they aren't looking.
He says, I thought I was your Flynn Rider. I don’t have enough hair for you to climb. I say, then come to me. He does, and as he lands at my feet, I ask him if he likes running. He smiles, like he is only ever smiling, and says, I like you. I grab his hand, and together, we run into the night. There, we don’t need names to still be ourselves. He screams, unafraid, not never considering he could hide from the light. Laughing like he is only ever laughing, he says, our friends will never let us live it down if they find out we went running around town all night in our fucking pajamas, you loser! I shrug, say nothing, and keep running. He doesn’t know that all I do is run, even without him, even without our friends, even and especially without my mother.
We stop at the school, and I buy him a coke from the vending machine outside the building while we catch our breath. He leans against the cool brick, glowing red from the light of the Coke machine, and pulls out a cigarette. He is unpredictable and wild and lovely, and my lungs don't mind his smoke. They are not sick. I have to tell myself they are not sick, or else the fear will scream louder than the love.
When he looks up at me through his eyelashes, he doesn’t look evil—he looks beautiful. Lightning strikes. He tosses his cigarette to the ground, only one drag in, and stamps it out with his boot as he reels me in. I kiss him back, because it is dark, and we are young, and there is nobody around to tell us we are sick and dirty and broken for wanting to. I tell myself that two boys can kiss without it being evil. The words are louder than anything else. The kiss tastes sweet, like soda and freedom. There is a lot my mother doesn’t know. There is a lot my mother will never, ever find out about.
We ditch the cans and keep running, and when we laugh, we don’t sound like the evil that tried to feast on us. We don’t sound like our mothers who don’t understand us. We don’t sound like anything but ourselves. I drop him back off at his house, and because I’m wheezing a bit, he asks if I brought my inhaler with me. I shake my head and smile, broad and proud and brave.
I don’t need it, I say. He smiles back. Lightning strikes, and I am home.
dededos
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jbbartram-illu
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