March

[To make up for the short posts earlier.
After some time spent on careful observation, I've concluded that there are some things that go on in a guy's head that I will not, repeat, will not commit to paper (or in this case, paper or .doc file).

I tried.]

On most days Mike liked to pretend that he was normal, just another college kid with jeans worn ragged at the knees and headphones blasting downloaded music into his ears, its tempo a slower, deeper echo of his heart. On most days Mike did what the other kids do, trailing back to his (and his roommate’s) room’s cluttered dimensions to spend hours upon hours in a digital reality, where exit was always an option only one click away. On most days it worked out just fine, allowing the waters of time to stream over his life with hardly a ripple, no deeper and no shallower than any other lives. Then there were the other days when the bubble would shatter, uncalled for and without warning, days when he felt an abyss opening beneath his feet. Those were the days when Mike would sit in the sun and feel no warmth, staring at the silvery lines on the underside of his arms, almost too fine to see. Those were the days of walking on thin ice, when he could not find shelter in indifference, regardless of whim or will. His friends called it “the Mood.” The psychiatrist had a different name for it, right before he walked out—it was slightly longer to say but, in the end, it all amounted up to the same thing: that life sucked.

Oh to be sure there were always more factors than that, each value requiring countless hours and thought to define methodically, to try to contain. There were always more factors, different each time. What mattered this time was that spring break was coming, that another quarter was ending, and that his father had just called, less than twenty-four hours ago, to announce that he was getting married, that the wedding was over spring break, and that one Michael J. Reynolds was expected to show up for it, broking no argument.

Mike seriously considered calling Gary over to meditate on the possibility of a double patricide before he remembered that Gary was just sorting out all the problems with his father, and therefore he should do the nice thing and Let Them Be. Except Mike was thoroughly sick and tired of Letting Things Be. It was always the same choice, he knew—it was just this time it took that much more effort, where things had gone so far passed what was fair that Mike could no longer be bothered with it anymore. All of which went a long way to explain his mood (or rather, Mood,) when Nick and Gary found him, lying prone on the lawn outside of the life science building.

“Mike, you okay?” asked Gary, and Mike, with the sun a dark red haze behind his closed eyes, could tell by the quality of silence that ensued that at least one of his two friends had realized how stupid the question was.

“Wassup?” Gary tried to amend, before realizing that that was not the way to go, either.

Mike looked up wearily. It was a Friday afternoon, and Gary was already wearing his Thank-God-the-Week’s-Over celebratory green contacts. Nick had just moved to thoughtfully place himself so that his shadow feel cross Mike’s head and the sun was no longer shining directly in his eyes. He also looked a little drawn and Mike, lying with blades of grass poking him in the neck and the lumpy comfort (or was that discomfort? He could no longer tell…) of his backpack under his head, tried to get it through his head that he was making his friends worried and that with the finals next week, everyone was worried enough already. He should cheer up, that was what he should do—Suck It Up, whatever—but he could not even muster enough energy to sit up.

To hell with it, he thought, and closed his eyes again.

The Mood was present. Nick could see it in the way Mike was collapsed against the ground, the tension in his shoulders, and the something in his gaze just before his expression changed, locking them out even before he closed his eyes again

Que dire de plus?

Nick wanted to yell in frustration at the locking out, at being locked out when the Mood had struck again. It was the locking out that made the Mood that much worse, because it meant that there was no way to gauge anything until Mike decided to talk, whenever that might be.

Gary shifted next to him, awkward and at a loss.

Yeah, thought Nick, moi aussi. He’d known Mike longer, but he still didn’t know how to react when Mike was like this. He doubted even Zach knew. It was hard—each time, each trial—him always hoping that it would be the last and a tight knot in stomach, a nagging worry in the back of his mind, always informing him that it probably was not. There was a cynic in him, albeit a deeply buried one (in fact, it was so deeply buried that Nick didn’t think it should be counted at all) and Mike would no doubt feel very smug to know this except Nick was planning to take the knowledge to the grave with him.

Il en est de même d'une lampe: si on l'allume, ce n'est pas pour la mettre sous une mesure à grains: au contraire, on la fixe sur un pied de lampe …and it gives light to all who are in the house…

So he did what he usually did when this happened, which was, first, to elicit some form of response from Mike. Even if it was just a punch, a word, it would have broken that particular type of frozen silence and Nick knew at some levels that it was the silence, the dark thoughts that were weaving a wall of tangled webs between Mike and the rest of the world, that was the most dangerous. He nudged Mike’s left arm, the one that had never suffered from a fracture, as gently as possible with his foot. “Hey Mike.”

Mike ignored him. He tried again. “Mike?”

“What?” Mike finally snapped, throwing his left arm over his eyes.

What indeed, thought Nick. Get up. Do something. Fight the Mood. What? “You’re done for the day right? Want to downtown together?”

Silence.

This, Nick thought, is why now I’d actually prefer it when he’s calling me an idiot and laughing at me. Because I know this.

Mike took a deep breath. It came out a shuddering sigh that was not un-tinged with exasperation. He finally looked at Nick. “Don’t s’ppose you’ll go away ‘til I say ‘yes’?” He asked without much hope.

“I’m not going away even if you said ‘yes’,” corrected Nick, hiding a smile. Six months. They’d known each other for six months (though sometimes he swore it felt like forever), and he still remembered that first month…and from Mike’s response, so did he. “Since, you know.” He plopped down beside Mike on the grass, just to make his point.

“We’re not going ‘nywhere,” chimed in Gary, eyeing the ground regretfully, as that his clothes generally cost as much as an entire wardrobe and therefore were not to be ruined on anything that wet, alive, and chlorophyll-ed.

“Auugh,” groaned Mike, and rolled over to his side, away from them, apparently less concerned with the state of his clothes than the proximity of his annoyingly persistent friends. “You guys suck. You guys are the suck.”

“Like a vacuum cleaner?” asked Gary, curiously.

“No,” replied Mike. “I like vacuum cleaners. Don’t have to argue with ‘em, see? We get along great.” He paused.

“Got something you wanna tell us, Mike?” Gary asked into that pause, all mock seriousness. “Like since when did you start a relationship with a vacuum cleaner?”

“Since I realized that girls’re all stalker-ly and creepy, as you have so kindly showed us,” said Mike, not entirely without guile. “At least vacuum cleaners aren’t stalker-ly.”

Gary went red. “Alright. Let’s…not…”

“Did she send you anymore love notes this week?”

“What? No!”

“Candy? Flowers?”

“Hey—You—shuddup!”

Nick laughed and allowed himself to relax a little. It was better now, with Mike distracted and waging a little battle of insults with Gary. A little safer. He inhaled deeply and breathed in the scent of fresh grass, which he liked, and the scent of sunshine, golden and a more subtle fragrance than the grass, dancing somewhere in the air around him, warming his skin. In the sudden silence he turned and found both Gary and Mike staring at him. “What? I like the smell of grass!”

“Uh,” said Gary. “ ’s that normal?” He asked Mike, in a stage whisper.

“Oh, he’s just weird n’ French that way,” explained Mike very logically.

“And charming,” added Nick, grinning hugely. “Weird and French and charming. Don’t forget that, Michel.”

“Riiiiiight.” Mike rolled his eyes, then scowled. “And I told you to stop calling me that. It’s like a girl’s name.”

“Actually it sounds more like Mikhail to me…” interjected Gary. Mike gave him a withering look. “Just sayin.”

“French people and their weird sense of endearment,” snorted Mike. “I mean… mon p’tit chou—what up with that?”

“Hey you American people aren’t much better,” countered Nick. “You call people ‘cookie’ and ‘sugar’ and things.”

“That’s because they’re sweet, you idiot.”

“Well cabbages are--!” Green. Crunchy? Not really sweet. Nick stopped himself. “Er.”

“See!” Mike said, triumphantly. “Ha! I laugh in your face. Ha!”

“They’re…uhm… good to eat,” Nick finished lamely, but knowing that the point was moot when Mike was smirking like that.

He did seem happier now, though, Nick thought, and smiled.

Pourquoi as-tu douté?

“Hey, you guys busy over spring break?” Mike asked suddenly.

Nick contemplated what Mike could have planned over spring break. Movies. Video games. Making fun of Nick for three hours straight because he kept mispronouncing all the actor’s names. Anything, so long that it did not involve airplanes. Nick no longer trusted Mike around airplanes. “No, I don’t think so.”

“I love college,” sighed Gary blissfully, “No homework over break. No homework for an entire goddam’ week.”

Silence.

“Wanna go to Minnesota with me? I’m pretty sure my dad can get us plane tickets.” Mike followed the startling proposition by sitting up and giving them a strained smile—lopsided and tight at the jaws. “Look, I’m even offerin’ a safe way to travel!”

Nick stared at him. Mike was known to be a bit impulsive at times, but this was sudden, even for him. A football whizzed past somewhere overhead. A projectile tracing its unconcerned path of flight against the sky. “Um.”

“You’re going to Minnesota over the break?” A confused frown puckered Gary’s forehead.

“I do, you know, technically live there,” Mike reminded him, sighed again, and admitted reluctantly (and it sounded like, through clenched teeth), “An’ my dad’s gettin’ married.”

Oh, thought Nick. Then, oooooh.

Well, that would explain the Mood.

“That’s—” Nick started, then stopped. That’s wonderful? Probably not. That’s terrible? That would only make Mike more depressed. “That’s, that’s, um.”

“Yeah,” agreed Gary, nervously wounding his hands into his hair as he darted an anxious glance at Nick. “That’s.”

“Well thanks, guys,” Mike said sarcastically, irony causing his mouth to curl up at one corner. “For being, you know, so comfortin’.”

“I’ll have to ask my dad,” Gary tried to appeal. “But I think I can come, over spring break?”

Good job, Nick’s eyes tried to convey. Gary looked relieved. Slightly. Not really.

Mike turned to Nick, one eyebrow raised.

One good thing about living this far away from his parents was the almost unlimited amount of freedom, checked only by prudence and one’s own sensibility. Nick knew that his mother would have much preferred that he stayed with his uncle, but the decision was inevitably left to his own discretions.

Decisions, decisions, thought Nick, freedom and sensibility. He was never much good at being discrete, as Mike often told him with great enthusiasm, and it was, more or less, Zach’s job to be the sensible one in the group while it was his job to keep people’s spirits up so….

“Yeah, I guess so. I’ll just have to let my uncle know ahead of time.”

It was going to be an interesting spring break.

A part of Zach was all schedules and frightening predictability. For instance Mike, knowing Zach’s intolerance for meals in crowded settings, his tendencies to do things early, and his progressive decrease in patience over the course of the week, had only to factor in that Zach dines at six thirty on Monday and that his patience decreased at around six minutes per day to walk in at six in the evening on Friday in the dining hall to find his friend exactly where he was supposed to be.

It made him feel vaguely proud, as he grabbed a tray and hurried after Zach, the latter completely oblivious to his presence. The accuracy of his mathematical model in predicting actual human behavior was possibly one of the few breaks in the now fairly omnipresent cloud of doom and gloom which Nick seemed to think was surrounding him.

“Hey,” he said, just as Zach was about to turn to go find a table. “Havin’ dinner early today?”

To his disappointment, Zach did not jump or make any sort of interesting noises. His eyes had widened slightly, that was true, but being Zach, he merely looked up and said, quite calmly, “Yes, that was the plan, so if you’re planning to burn down anything I’d like to know ahead of time, thanks.”

“Who’s it that’s talking about arson now?” Mike raised an eyebrow. He wondered if Zach realized that he didn’t always think about burning things down or blowing things up or other illegal activities of equal nature. True, occasionally those ideas had their appeals, but he actually never thought about them that much. Planes? Now airplanes were a different story. Especially the shiny supersonic ones.

Airplanes. Spring break. Minnesota. Mike tried to turn his thought away from the track that would inevitably lead him down the road toward the hellhole of Someone, Please Shoot Me and Shoot Me Now, but he was too late.

“I’ve concluded that talking about it is better than doing it.” Zach gave him a sideways look. “Better out than in, right?”

“Hm,” said Mike, dubiously. He sighed and looked around. One of the most amazing sights in college was the groups of people. It was not that people didn’t normally travel in groups, but the sheer amount of group-traveling-ness, the cliques and group-orientation that were present in college, was staggering. At six at night, Pacific Time, on a Friday, the current moment was as close as the dining hall could get to “tranquil” for the rest of the night.

He sighed again, feeling intensely and almost irrationally jealous of the peaceful demeanors of most of the people who were around at this time, who were here to just eat food, chat with friends, worry about tests, and nothing more. Unfair and so unfair because it was entirely too typical of life to be this unfair. “Um, Nick’s told you about my whole spring break thing, right?”

“If by which you meant the wedding,” said Zach, “Then yes. I’m sorry,” he added softly, a moment later.

“Yeah, well, so am I…” It was hard to try not to sigh, the pressure building within himself, mounting, another type of tension to counter the one already in his head that was working on giving him a steady migraine. It was harder to sigh, because of the pain behind each sharp exhalation because of the almost non-sound of frustration and helplessness.

He sighed. And waited. And being patient, he waited all of five seconds, contemplating the choice between coffee or soda before deciding that his current plight deserved the pacification of hot chocolate, before asking, “So you comin’ or what?”

Zach looked up from where he was attempting the tricky business of extracting a fork from the mess of forks in the fork container (a process that Mike could never watch without wincing). “Hmm? Oh. Yeah. Want to sit over there?” He indicated with his chin, tray in one hand, fork in the other.

It took a moment for Mike to realize that Zach wasn’t talking about the same thing he was. “No, not that,” he corrected, wanting to clench his teeth but refraining. “Spring break. Minnesota, you comin?”

Zach hesitated.

Mike hated that hesitation. It always meant that he was about to…to be thwarted, that he wasn’t about to get what he asked for or that some horrible news was about to be conferred on to him. It had happened so many times since when he was a kid that he’d trained himself to recognize it—the momentary awkwardness, the slight note of apology in the person’s eyes. He knew it wasn’t anyone’s fault—certainly not Zach’s as he tried to find the best way to break the bad news but, God, he hated that hesitation.

“I’ll ask my parents,” said Zach, finally. “We’ll see.”

“You do know you don’t have to worry about the plane tickets, right? ‘Cause my dad—”

“We’ll see,” Zach repeated firmly, the resolute line to his mouth and the guarded, cautious look on his face putting an end to the conversation. “I’ll…I can let you know by Monday, definitely.”

“Alright,” agreed Mike, stifling another sigh with only the greatest of efforts. He followed Zach as he carried his tray over to a table.

“But aside from that,” said Zach, sitting down. “How’s your day? Horrible? Horribly boring?” He glanced up at Mike, measuring, a spark of dark amusement in his eyes. “Both?”

“See, you’re doin’ it again,” complained Mike. “You knew I was going to say ‘both’.”

Zach ducked his head, but failed to do it in time to hide the grin that was determined to take over his face.

“I’d like to think,” said Mike, sitting down and addressing the air in front of him, “I’m not that easy to figure out.”

“Trust me, you’re not,” muttered Zach, picking at his food, head still determinedly lowered.

“You’re laughin’ at me,” accused Mike. Zach paused for a moment before looking at him over his tray, eyebrows arched and expression completely blank except for his eyes. Oh god, the eyes. “I can see it in your eyes.”

“I’m sorry,” murmured Zach, and studiously looked back down at his dinner.

“No you’re not.”

Zach coughed into his napkin.

“I’m complicated,” Mike grumbled to himself, half-defiant, half-appalled. “I’m very complicated, like an onion.”

“Yes. You smell,” said Zach, grinning into his glass of whatever healthy thing that he’d decided to drink.

“Hey!” Exclaimed Mike, straightening indignantly in his chair. There was a certain element of wickedness to Zach that not many had ever seen, that Mike felt himself to have the doubtful privilege of being the veteran of. He tried to scowl, but it twisted itself around somehow in the middle and ended up as a sort of aggravated smile instead. “Layers! I mean layers! An’ I do not smell,” he paused. “…do I?”

Zach choked on the juice. “Not like onions, at least,” he managed, when he could speak again.

“Oh thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Zach grinned, then added, with just a touch of irony. “Happy Friday.”

[Oh and I'm also to pass on the message and tell Mike to not "break the vacuum's heart, please. Hoovers are so sensitive." End message.]