Chapter 13
Lennon
Anna is in head-to-toe gym wear. White leggings, a bright-pink crop top, and trainers. Her hair has been braided into pigtails, and she’s wearing a look of cheerful determination that, frankly, scares the unholy crap out of me.
I’m not sure how it came to this because I distinctly don’t remember asking for her help with the move.
If anything, I did the opposite.
I think my mistake may have been a vague answer when she asked if I owned a bed frame, or if I was planning on sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Her smile froze momentarily, and she tapped my upper arm kindly, but ominously firmly.
“That’s not good enough, Lennon,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to put my foot down.”
Honestly, I’m not sure what kind of dastardly power she wields over me, or what exactly putting her foot down would entail, but I do know I’d rather not find out.
“Let’s take the stairs,” she chirps, hoisting a box into her arms. “It will be quicker.”
I sigh internally.
Connor’s apartment is on the second floor of the building and is serviced by an elevator that’s in perfect working order. There’s no reason on Earth to take the stairs.
She bounds ahead of me, and I follow without comment, the will to live seeping out of me a little more with each step I take.
“Are you sure this is everything you need?” she asks again.
I haven’t been home in a while. I’ve been living out of boxes and bags, crashing in crappy motels or Airbnbs. This is the same. It’s no more permanent than those arrangements, so yes, I’m fucking sure it’s all I’ll need.
She stops walking and looks at me expectantly. It’s clear she thinks her question deserves an answer.
“I bought a bed frame and a headboard, as well as a mattress,” I remind her, a twang of panic slowing my words.
Connor opens the door and welcomes us in with all the aplomb of a man who believes that good things can happen at any moment. He’s wearing tan linen pants, Birkenstocks, and a loose-knit cream tank.
It annoys me almost as much as Anna’s sports gear.
I can’t stand it when people dress differently over the weekend than they do during the week. Just choose one personality and stick with it, for God’s sake.
“Hey, bud,” he says as though we’re old friends who haven’t seen each other for a long time. He pulls me in for one of those shoulder-bump-hug things that only the severely sporty people, or people without any self-awareness, can pull off. I make an absolute hash of it. “Good to see you.”
Anna shifts the box she’s carrying onto one hip and handles her greeting like a pro-athlete.
She and Connor hit it off immediately. Right off the bat, it’s clear they have a ton in common.
For one thing, they’re both super concerned about my possessions, or lack of them.
Connor handles his concern differently though.
He isn’t overt about it. He just shoots Anna concerned looks when he thinks I’m not looking.
My bed was delivered to the apartment earlier in the week.
A queen mattress and frame, and a teal headboard that I hate more than I can recall hating anything in, oh, the last five years at least. It’s high and obnoxiously puffy, covered in cheap velvet that has an unpleasant shine when viewed from an angle.
I caved and bought bedding yesterday, when Anna sent me a third message confirming she’d be helping me with the move this afternoon because I had a distinct feeling that not owning bedding was something else she’d put her foot down about.
I toyed with the idea of getting a jock-approved tartan set as a joke, but couldn’t make the leap.
I got black instead. Black sheets. Black pillowcases. Black bedspread.
“Mm, so nice,” says Anna, with a tiny sigh.
“Black like my soul,” I mutter by way of explanation.
It’s something Havi used to say a lot during his teen emo phase, so I think it’s funny. Naturally, neither of them gets the reference, but they don’t seem to notice. They’re too busy making my bed to waste their time on my bullshit.
I stand to the side to stay out of their way. I watch, removed, as they whip my bed into shape. Now and again, they pass concerned comments back and forth.
“No bedside tables…”
“Think the lamp might be broken…”
They speak out of the corners of their mouths and use hushed voices that I think are meant to set me at ease, but they don’t.
It takes a while, but eventually, I realize that they fully intend to unpack all my belongings, not just make my bed, so I spring into action, quickly dumping my underwear and personal items I don’t want them touching into the drawers in my new dresser.
By the time I’ve done that, Anna has my hoodies and T-shirts laid out on the bed, and she’s showing Connor how to fold them alien-style.
At least, that’s what I think it’s called when you treat a hoodie with such ruthless disdain that it starts looking like an entirely different item of clothing.
Like a pellet or a capsule of fleece rather than something meant for comfort.
“Incredible,” says Connor, and sadly, I can’t tell if he’s being dead serious or if he’s taking the piss.
Once my entire wardrobe has been subjected to Anna and packed away with military precision, the murmurings of dissatisfaction about my bedside table situation grow loud enough that I’m no longer able to ignore them.
To circumvent the problem, I quickly rip the tape off the last of my boxes and pull a stack of books out of it. I dump them in a tall pile next to my bed and place the lamp on it. For good measure, I put a stick of ChapStick next to the lamp and hold my hands out as if to say, “Ta da.”
I hope my little performance is enough to distract them from the fact that I haven’t plugged the lamp in, as it is indeed broken, and the last thing I need is Anna or Connor becoming aware of that.
Anna sets to work collapsing boxes.
“Oh look,” she cries when a collection of photographs falls out of one of them.
They’re photographs Havi took when he was in his photographer era.
Black-and-white polaroids from a different lifetime.
A big part of my life condensed into small, glossy images.
A close-up of my favorite skateboard, the image of a graffiti-style skull stretched out and distorted.
The silhouette of the sycamore tree we used to sit under in his backyard, branches bare and stark.
A Coke can with my teenage fingers curled around it, nails painted black and chipped badly.
“These are amazing,” says Anna. “Can we put them up for you?”
Being numb is a peculiar thing. I don’t remember the exact time or day it started, only that my descent into it was painful. So painful, so agonizing, that by the time the numbness came, I didn’t fight it. I didn’t mind it because it was a respite from despair.
I didn’t realize at the time that numbness comes with its own downside. It’s an impassive virus that spreads silently, infecting all aspects of your life. A virus so virulent and contagious, it robs you of more than your pain. It takes your joy too.
It’s awful.
Right now, I’m grateful for it.
Right now, I stand back and watch, emotionless, as Anna and Connor animatedly discuss the best way to display the photographs. It takes a while, with several options offered up and hotly debated, before they decide on a formal grid pattern that will take up the width of my headboard exactly.
“Should I get my spirit level?” asks Connor.
“Oh,” Anna waves him off. “No need. I have a built-in spirit level.” She places a forefinger and thumb on each temple and turns her head robotically. “I can spot something crooked a mile away.”
I have a lot of questions about that, but Connor takes her at her word, so I let it go.
I stand at the foot of my bed as they scurry around, applying sticky tack to the polaroids and taking pains to get the grid pattern perfect. They jabber enthusiastically and laugh for no apparent reason.
As I watch, I think about something I read somewhere once. It was some kind of religious or spiritual post, so I didn’t pay it a huge amount of attention, but it obviously made an impression because here I am, years later, thinking about it.
I can’t remember the exact words used, but the basic premise was this: what if our stay here on Earth isn’t about being good and doing things to get us into a better place in the afterlife? What if, when we die, angels or whoever, greet us and say, “How was Heaven?”
In other words, what if this is it? What if we’re here, experiencing nirvana, but we’re too preoccupied with the noise, the little things, to notice?
I remember thinking it was an interesting notion at the time.
Now, I wonder if the opposite could be true. Is it possible to be in your own personalized version of hell and not be aware of it?
It certainly seems like it might be.
I look at the neat row of Oxford shirts and the polycotton work pants Anna has hung on coat hangers in my closet and feel an incredible disconnect between the person I was and the person I am now.
“I used to skateboard,” I murmur, more to myself than anyone else.