8. Dorien
CHAPTER EIGHT
DORIEN
The Belrose basement smells like old popcorn and the faint, permanent sweetness of whatever Melia uses to clean the floors.
Nothing in here has been designed, only accumulated.
A sectional sofa dominates the center, its cushions sunken from years of bodies dropping into them.
The fabric is a faded brown. Against the far wall, there’s a bookshelf with DVDs I bet no one has touched in ten years.
And there’s a small TV propped on a stack of textbooks because the actual TV stand broke two years ago and no one bothered replacing it.
There’s a braided rug under the coffee table, and the ceiling is so low it brushes the top of Carter’s head.
Nothing in here matches, but all of it fits.
That’s what I love about the Belrose house. Every room looks like it was put together by someone who cared more about the people inside it than the objects. It’s the opposite of my parents’ place, where every room looks designed for a magazine spread. People were never part of the design.
I’m sitting in the corner of the sectional with my back against the armrest, one leg stretched across the cushion, a joint pinched between my index finger and thumb.
The smoke curls upward toward the ceiling, where a bare bulb hangs from a fixture with a pull-chain switch.
Carter is at the other end of the couch, spread out like a maniac, his legs taking up most of the middle cushion. There’s a beer balanced on his knee.
Aeron is sitting in the recliner a few feet away. He’s sitting stiffly, like the recliner will fling him off if he relaxes.
I take a slow drag from my joint and hold it, letting the smoke seep into my lungs and fill the gaps between my ribs before I exhale.
A slight buzzing starts in my toes and spreads upward.
Soon, there’s the world’s softest blanket over my brain, the noise in there finally dimming.
It never disappears, but it dims. That’s all weed has ever been for me: a volume knob to turn life down when the static gets too loud.
Other people smoke to feel something. I smoke to feel less.
If I could walk around in a bubble of numbness, I’d be happy.
Carter is scrolling through his phone with one thumb. He’s talking about a Hargrove student who fell asleep in a school pool. He didn’t drown, just fell asleep floating on his back.
“Ha, look at this,” Carter says, turning his phone to show me and Aeron, even though neither of us lean forward to look. “He’s completely passed out. The coach walked in and the guy was literally snoring in the deep end.”
“How do you fall asleep in a pool?” Aeron asks from his recliner. His voice is quiet but there’s a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“Exhaustion, man.” Carter takes a sip of his beer, shaking his head. “They do six a.m. sessions where the coach just screams at them for two hours. I’d fall asleep in a pool too.”
“With someone screaming at you?” I ask.
Carter shrugs. “Sure.”
“You’d fall asleep in a pool because you’re incapable of sitting still for longer than four minutes,” I say. “Your body would shut down out of spite.”
He grins. “Four minutes is generous. I give myself two.”
Aeron laughs, but he looks startled, like he didn’t expect it from himself.
I take another hit and lean my head back against the armrest. The ceiling is close enough that I can count the cracks in the plaster. Three long ones radiating from the light fixture, two shorter ones near the corner where the wall meets the ceiling. Old cracks, like a home should have.
My parents’ house doesn’t have cracks. My parents’ house has a maintenance team that comes quarterly to ensure nothing ever shows its age.
Carter continues scrolling, narrating his feed in fragments. I let the words wash over me without really listening. His voice is good background noise, steady and upbeat.
My mind drifts.
It’s been doing that all day: drifting. Snagging on things I don’t want to think about, then releasing, then snagging again, like fabric catching on an exposed nail.
June.
This morning… what were the chances she’d find her way into my class after the semester already started?
She was close enough that I could smell the sandalwood in her hair, close enough that if I moved my arm two inches we’d be touching. And that’s where she’ll be twice a week for the rest of the semester.
Not good.
I wasn’t prepared for her today. Most days I have my invisible armor on before I leave my dorm room. But this morning, I woke up at four a.m. from a dream I couldn’t shake.
The dream was the same one I’ve been having for as long as I can remember.
I was in my parents’ house, but it was bigger, and the hallways stretched longer than they should have.
I was calling for someone. My voice was steady at first, then louder.
My throat hurt. I walked through every room.
The kitchen. The living room. The marble foyer.
I opened doors and found more rooms behind them, each one pristine, each one empty.
I screamed and the house absorbed the sound, like the walls were designed to swallow noise.
Then, finally, at the end of a hallway, I saw a little boy. I recognized him and I sobbed.
He screamed, he called for my help, and I turned my back on him and ran away.
I’d woken up with my hands clenched so tight my palms had half-moon marks from my fingernails and my wrists ached.
My first thought had been to text Carter.
My second thought—the one I actually followed—was to put on my gloves to warm my shaking hands and go to class, acting like I hadn’t just spent fifteen minutes sitting on the edge of my bed waiting for my pulse to stop racing.
So when June slid into the seat beside me in Mixed Media, part of me was already exposed and I didn’t know how to hide it. For a few minutes, in a mostly empty classroom with the afternoon light catching in her hair, I’d let myself forget why I keep my distance.
The flyer actually came at the right time, before I did something we’d both regret, like ask her to hang out, just the two of us, after class.
Was I going to ask her on a date like a damn idiot?
I am an idiot.
I suck harder on the joint, and the smoke fills my chest too fast. I hold it, letting the burn sit there.
June’s face on the flyer. Her photo and those words underneath.
The fury comes back, quieter now than it was this afternoon but no less dense. I feel it in my hands. They want to break something. When I’d read that flyer, the anger had been so immediate I’d lost my usual restraint. And June had noticed.
She saw that I care, and that’s a problem.
I clench my jaw. Stupid asshole spreading rumors about her.
June is a lot of things. She’s stubborn. She’s also genuine in a way that most people at this school aren’t. She earned her place in that exhibition. Anyone who stood in front of her paintings knows it. You can fake technique but you can’t fake the kind of feeling that lives in her work.
Someone is trying to take that from her, and I care. I want to find them. I want to find them and make them regret ever thinking of making that flyer.
I finish my joint quickly because I need it to calm me. I need to be numb and stop caring.
I can’t get involved. Being in the same class is already too much proximity. If I start fighting her battles, if I let myself get pulled into her orbit, bad things will follow. That’s the lesson I learned when I was nine years old.
I exhale and watch the smoke dissolve into the low ceiling.
No more thoughts. I just…
“Dude.” Carter’s voice pulls me back.
I blink at him, my eyes feeling dry. I’m sure they’re bloodshot. Maybe even completely red.
He’s looking at me over the top of his phone, one eyebrow raised. “You’ve been staring at the ceiling for like ten minutes. You okay?”
“I’m um…” I blink a few more times, trying to focus. Suddenly, a laugh works its way up my throat. “Contemplating the plasterwork.”
Carter smirks. “You’re stupid.”
I laugh more because I can’t stop myself now. Contemplating the plasterwork feels like the most insightful thing I’ve ever said. I lift the joint butt. “This is good shit.”
Carter and Aeron are both laughing at me. I don’t care; at least I’m not focusing on June.
Carter shakes his head and turns back to his phone and nudges Aeron’s shoulder. “Look at this. This cat is riding a Roomba.”
Aeron leans over to look. The corner of his mouth lifts.
I watch them from my end of the couch, the two of them angled toward the phone, Carter’s large frame leaning into Aeron’s thinner one. Carter does this naturally: draws people in.
Aeron, by contrast, is rigid, but I don’t think he knows it. His shoulders are pulled up slightly toward his ears. One foot is bouncing against the braided rug. His sleeves are pulled down past his wrists, his hands hidden, his posture folded inward like he’s trying to take up less square footage.
I’ve seen Aeron around the Belrose house for years, and I’ve noticed him the way you register a piece of furniture. Yeah, it’s an ugly thing to admit. But it’s true. I was so focused on keeping my distance from June that Aeron just got… overlooked I guess.
Now I feel like shit about that. It’s not the only reason I’ve been hanging out with him—I think he’s talented and I like his dark humor—but it’s part of it.
I watch his bouncing foot for a few minutes. My head is still floating in the clouds and I’m trying to bring it back down. I pull a fresh joint from my pocket and hold it out.
Aeron looks at it, then at me. His foot taps faster.
“You want a hit?” I ask. “Helps with anxiety.”
He snorts. “Who says I’m anxious?”
I glance down at his foot and he immediately stops. His eyes flick to Carter, who raises both palms in a don’t-look-at-me gesture, then back to the joint. “I’ve never...”
I laugh. “Hey. It’s not a test. You can say no.”
Carter adds, “Yeah, we won’t kick you out of the cool kid’s club for saying no to drugs.”