CHAPTER EIGHTEEN #2
A few minutes later, James spun the contraband vinyl, breaking the silence as he listened to the song Elliott played for him every year on his birthday, since James wouldn’t live to see the next September. “Say, do you remember dancin’ in September?”
Elliott sat beside him, organizing one of the science professors’ conspectus.
Roslyn couldn’t land him the chemistry professor assistant position, but she was able to procure him an astronomy professor assistant position.
It should’ve felt full circle in a cosmic kismet.
The professors paid Elliott very generously to hand-copy star charts, given his artistic skill.
Elliott further had entry into the personal student file system.
Except Elliott could hardly concentrate on neither the planetary movement nor star alignment nor student files at the moment. “Are you frightened?”
James groaned with the weight of his soul. “Damn it, not you with this, Elliott. Anyone but you.”
“James, I’m worried for you–”
“I’d speak to a therapist or a priest, if I was concerned about myself.” James removed his socks from the tomes, but Elliott pressed on.
“I think Lucien wants to kill you–”
James sat forward. “Which song do you want to listen to, since I can’t listen to mine?
” James already knew Elliott’s favorite song, and before Elliott could respond, he alternated the vinyl to Aretha Franklin crooning that was the way she felt about her man.
“Please, please, can you hear my love knocking on your door?”
Elliott shut it off. “James, listen to me–”
James rolled his eyes dispassionately. Wasn’t the winter long enough without Elliott clinging to James? Didn’t Elliott ever grow tired of sticking to him like a burr in his skin, always fretting after him like James would die right in front of him?
“I…” Elliott lowered his voice to barely above a whisper. “I will take care of it. You shouldn’t be worried. That’s all I wanted to say.”
James’s eyebrow piqued with interest, his whisper of raillery tickled the skin of Elliott’s neck, tingling him with sensation when he leaned near him in conspiracy. “You’ll take care of it?”
Elliott nodded. “I will.”
“How brave of you.” James smirked teasingly, and Elliott’s stomach fluttered like a canary. “I took care of it as well, Elliott. I attained a secret gift for the provost.”
James didn’t expand on what he meant by that. Instead, he left to lather his jaw for his evening shave with a steel straight razor in the hazy mirror.
“Forget the provost,” Elliott muttered timidly, which was blasphemous enough for James to set his razor down and look squarely at the younger boy. His hair still damp from the shower. “James, listen to me.”
Elliott peered through the half-wet waves in front of his eyes. Elliott scarcely interrupted James, therefore James was rapt.
“I…I plan to meet with Lucien Montclair.”
James blinked. “Why would you do that?”
Because I don’t wish for you to die; I would sooner slit my own throat than for you or Kitty to die. Elliott kept his thoughts trapped between his ears. If it flew out of his mouth untamed again, it would only bear pain. “There are better options for the honorarium. Someone else.”
“Someone else?” James inquired, perfectly entertained that Elliott had such a darkened mind to send a separate student to death. “Who else?”
“Well, for one…Lucien Montclair.” Tyrannicide. All Elliott had to do was convince his sect to turn against him. They already despised him. It would be like Julius Caesar in the ides of March. Cave Idus Martias. Elliott pressed against the desk chair as James walked over to him.
“You believe his own trust of electors will select him?” James said in response to his naivety, roughening Elliott’s hair in amusement as though Elliott were still the shy boy that would trail after the upperclassman endlessly in trauma from what he’d seen.
For the first summer weeks they met, Elliott rarely spoke, not even when spoken to by James, he was haunted.
Would you follow me into death? James jested once, his mouth as slick as silver.
You’re my friend, yes, Elliott responded.
That summer afternoon, he tested Elliott, leaping into a rapid waterfall, where many boys were mourned after by their mothers.
Finch Hudskin had fractured five of his knuckles there twice.
Elliott didn’t hesitate to vault into the waterfall after him and if that disturbed James, he had a strange way of expressing it by making Elliott his best friend.
Elliott never needed to say it, Yes, I would follow you into death.
Years later, belatedly now, James realized it and he stammered. He removed his hand from Elliott’s hair. He would follow me into death. What have I done? The young man with more words within him than an almanac turned reticent to speak. James forgot to even finish his shave.
“Don’t–Don’t do this, Elliott.” His voice was almost pleading, unknowingly sounding exactly like Professor Winston on the fateful afternoons he drank. “I will be selected, don’t follow me. Don’t even attend.”
He didn’t want Elliott to witness the tragedy. He’d never recover.
James’s voice was struck thin. “I am begging you, Elliott. Don’t follow after me when I am dead. It’s not worth it.”
However, his words detonated Elliott.
“You won’t be dead!” Elliott exclaimed in frustration, leaping out of his seat, his chest churning like a beast. “Will everyone stop fucking saying that?”
Now it was James’s turn to trail after Elliott as he stormed out of his dorm and into the late evening’s brisk air, pounded with pelting hail. Their coats left behind. James caught his arm, but for once, his touch felt like inferno to Elliott.
Elliott removed his arm out of his hold, tightening his own black tie, as though he wanted to suffocate himself, prevent himself from speaking as he charged out of Winterthur Hall.
“Elliott, you don’t understand what the ancient philosophy department has done to me–”
“Do not say my name. Do not speak at all, if you’re fine with being dead.
” Elliott was spiraling already and the worst part of all was that he could not hide it.
Elliott felt like ripping out his own hair, searing apart his clothes.
Anything to stop the tears that barged against his eyelids.
Anything to keep the graphic images of what he’d done to his biology teacher out of his mind.
“You will not be dead. You will never be dead. You will live forever.”
“Elliott, stop, please,” James chased down the college student, but for some reason his heart couldn’t work, his tongue twisted in his mouth, and his legs mangled as Elliott miraculously gained preternatural speed through the snowed campus and out into the immense wilderness.
“Elliott, you need to understand that the ancient philosophy department has damaged me beyond any atonement–I am sick–I am depraved–”
The young men were out of breath within miles of running through hail–sprinting past fields and thickets, prairies and pines, pits and troughs–extensive acreage that lured them near the mountain’s edge.
Elliott collapsed first, and James caught him around his abdomen and brought him close against his heart.
Close enough that Elliott felt the perspiration and rapidity within James’s own heartbeat pounding against his skin.
“You don’t want me in your life. Stay innocent, Elliott,” James’s breath panted on his nose. “I am corrupted. I am an obscenity.”
He said the last part almost like a cry for forgiveness, a rare breath of naked truth, before he bore his soul. “I am enchained to the ancient philosophy department in ways you don’t understand. ‘I am obsessive and possessive in turns of wretched measure. Run from me.’”
The last sentences were part of the hibernal performance. Elliott had heard him practicing the lines for the recitation, but now it was if he spoke through to him.
Elliott wondered what he meant. He was sick from medication he didn’t tell Elliott about?
Tell him, Jamie, you coward. James faltered his words, his mouth moving uselessly a few times, before he stopped himself, drawing in a shallow breath.
Just tell Elliott what you’ve done. Who you’ve become.
However, James knew if he revealed even a fraction of himself–the reprehensible truth of him–Elliott would never look at him the same.
For some foolish damned reason that mattered greatly to him.
Elliott could forgive Kitty of anything, but it wasn’t the same with James.
James wanted to die with Elliott loving him as he always had.
Elliott argued with choked tears, his heart fighting through his chest, forcing out words he’d always kept hidden. “I don’t want to lose you. I see all of myself in you. There is no me that exists without you, James Wilde. What don’t you understand?”
“You need to lose me, Elliott.” Instead of a confession, a warning leaked from James’s throat.
His voice strangled out darker words on top of him.
“Please, Elliott, graduate from the College with a degree in art. Find a nice girl and buy a home far outside of Connecticut, like Knox did. Turn grey and old, grateful your soul was never polluted an inch by inch by the ancient philosophy department. That slaughterhouse.” His teeth clenched. “That butcher’s yard.”