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The thing that Alex discovered about Reggie was that he cared. He cared about- for everything way too much.
Sometimes Alex looked at him and felt something akin to mourning because the boy held his heart raw and golden, and hearts like that didn’t tend to last for long. When Alex was 12, he met Reggie for the first time. When he was 12 and a half, he decided he would rather die than let anyone shatter Reggie’s heart.
Luke was a little different: his heart was open and bare, too, but it didn’t need protecting. Sometimes Alex thought that where Reggie’s heart held love, Luke’s held passion. Unweighable, humongous amount of passion. It would be envious if it weren’t so frightening. Alex was afraid that if he were to hold so much passion in his heart, it would probably rip apart at the seams.
Bobby was something else entirely. His heart was a fortress of thorns and half-lidded eyes and bored hums and gentle hands. Where Reggie’s heart was soft and trusting, Bobby’s was cautious. And where Luke’s was open – Bobby’s was guarded behind metal bars. The way Bobby cared wasn’t written on his face but was embedded in his deeds instead.
So, when Alex discovered that his own heart was different from everybody else’s, he became deadly afraid. Because in it was not care, or passion, or tenderness – but endless anxiety and fear instead. And something else, far more hideous, that he pretended not to think about.
He was thirteen, and his friends felt like home.
[…]
They are fifteen, and Bobby has weed. He bought it from a classmate or his cousin – Alex doesn’t remember because he spiralled the second Bobby told him.
It takes all the love from Reggie’s heart and all the reassurance from Luke’s to calm him down, and then Alex is high and spends 15 minutes apologising. It’s not until Bobby places a hand on his shoulder and says, ‘Alex’, in that Bobby tone that sounds like metal and a drumbeat, that Alex breathes out and rests his head on the back of the couch, quietly.
He thinks they’re talking about grapes, and there’s a thought there that Alex really wants to catch, and then he thinks about how he should think now and not later, but Luke is telling a joke, and it’s not funny, but they all laugh. The moment feels flammable.
‘And so the thing with modern art is–’ Reggie starts, and Alex is lost again.
Suddenly they are all laughing, and Bobby is saying,
‘I mean, I think it’s just colour theory.’
‘No, it’s the perception! It’s all about feelings!’
‘Luke, I think they are interconnected.’
‘Oh, screw you and your fancy words’, Luke says as if he’s not the one who’s been writing poems and would-be-lyrics in his black notebook.
Alex laughs, and his eyes feel heavy, so he rests his head on Reggie’s shoulder. Reggie scoots closer, and Alex wants to cry.
They are all laughing again.
‘Anyways, yes, that’s what I’m saying! Green peppers are much kinder than the red ones. We should start a band.’
And Bobby groans, sliding down the chair dramatically, and Luke throws a crisp at him, Reggie sighs with contentment, and at this moment, this exact, sharp moment, Alex realises with sweet grief that he is in love with all of them.
[…]
It’s the worst feeling ever.
[…]
It’s been five days since he’s seen them. A month since the hangout at the garage where Alex had come to terms with something - with it - and five days since the last band rehearsal. Luke wrote a song, something about moonlit paths and interconnectedness, and that was it.
Maybe it was the passion in Luke’s eyes when Alex hit the cymbal or the way Reggie jumped in rhythm with his bass, or even the way Bobby furrowed his brows when he struck the wrong chord, but Alex decided he had had enough.
He went home that day, and when his mother called him for dinner, he pretended to be asleep just so that he could avoid looking her in the eyes.
Now it’s been five days since the rehearsal, and Alex hasn’t shown up to the previous two. For once, he is thankful for his mother’s distaste for his friends because every time one of them stopped by his house, Mrs Mercer turned them around without even asking Alex.
On the fourth day, he hears pebbles thrown at his window in the middle of the night. The cross nailed to his wall looks sharp in the moonlight, and Alex feels just as sharp. He closes his eyes.
[…]
Alex was fourteen when he sneaked out of his house for the first time. He wasn’t planning to, was actually about to fall asleep when he heard something being thrown at the window. His first thought was, ‘What the Hell!’ and the second one was how he probably shouldn’t have thought that, so what he decided on instead was,
‘What the heck? Luke?’
And down on the ground below, like in a very twisted tale of Romeo and Juliet, was Luke Patterson with his awful fringe sticking to his sweaty forehead, ruefully sad stare, and an old bike lying beside him on the grass. Their eyes met, Luke threw a handful of pebbles to the ground, and at that very moment, Alex realised that his good night’s sleep would have to wait. The cross on his wall glared at him as Alex quietly slid through the window.
The night was loud, not in the way of a final chord but in the way of a just-plugged-in amp when there is no music yet, but the air is ready and waiting. Luke led Alex through a seemingly sporadic labyrinth of streets and paths, and Alex followed him. He had a feeling that he would follow Luke anywhere, eyes closed and heart open.
After ten minutes of walking, Alex came to terms with the fact that there was no final destination that night; every dead end was a milestone, and every turn – a passage. They walked in complete silence, Luke tugging Alex along by his hand.
Later, when the streetlamps had just gone out, and Alex and Luke were both sitting on the sidewalk two streets down from the Mercers’ house, Alex quietly panicking about everything, Luke said,
‘I don’t think my mom likes me very much.’
The night fell silent. Luke fell into Alex’s arms.
[…]
Alex was fifteen and just about to leave school when he heard that Bobby was in detention. It was said to him in passing, not even really to him, but instead whispered loudly in the corridors, like most things at school usually were. All Alex made out were the words Shaw, punched, detention, and he was changing the route in seconds.
Bursting through the door felt like an appropriate reaction, but Alex was an anxious person, so he knocked quietly instead.
His thoughts were a hurricane. He saw the shiner on Bobby’s face. The hurricane roared.
Bobby was dismissed for 5 minutes, only because Alex was a good student and because he lied about homework. Lying was wrong, but, as Alex figured, punching someone in the face was probably worse.
This wasn’t Bobby’s first detention, and they both knew it. Nowadays, it seemed like Bobby spent more time in detention than in classes, and almost every time, he outright refused to tell Luke, Alex, or Reggie what that was about. Alex was afraid that his fortress of thorns and half-lidded eyes was deafening the bored hums and gentle hands.
They were sitting opposite each other on the floor in the corridor, Alex fiddling with his cross necklace, Bobby inspecting his bruised knuckles. Two minutes had already passed, and the third one was just about to fade out when Alex decided on saying something, anything,
‘Are you alright?’
Bobby looked at him with quiet terror in his eyes, or maybe it was just the reflection of Alex’s.
Another ten seconds passed by. Ten seconds of complete, utter silence until Bobby finally spoke.
‘I– They were saying– ‘
‘You don’t have to explain.’
‘I do. I really do.’
There was something scary about the way Bobby moved to sit right in front of Alex, gently taking his hand and looking at the floor as if trying to solve the world’s greatest puzzle.
Another five seconds of silence.
‘I’m just… so angry. All the time.’
And Bobby didn’t start crying, but his eyebrows were all scrunched up, and his palm was hot and sweaty, so Alex just tugged on his hand, and Bobby fell right into his arms, his head obscuring the cross necklace.
‘Just tell me. Please, tell me. Tell me where to put the anger.’
Alex didn’t have the answer. He wanted to, desperately, but he didn’t. So, in the crushing, choked tone of Bobby’s words, Alex just put his arms around him and prayed that it was enough.
[…]
It had been two days since Alex’s fifteen birthday when Reggie called his house. The boys tended to avoid calling the Mercers, so when Alex’s mum covered the speaker and said, ‘It’s the Peters boy’, with the same distaste that she would talk about a spoiled carton of milk – a carton she pitied, rather self-righteously – Alex’s mind took a leap.
In the 7 seconds that it took him to get to the phone, everything from arson to brawls had already happened and undergone. In those 7 seconds, the world had ended.
‘–Careful! Oh, hi, ‘Lex. Come by Bobby’s garage. Quick!’
Because, of course, the world hadn’t ended.
But Reggie Peters did have a curious effect on people, so Alex was clambering to get his shoes on without a second thought.
Nobody explained anything to him. All Alex got when he arrived at the garage was ‘Shh! Look!’, and then Luke and Bobby left for the shops, promising to come back with ‘all the necessary stuff’.
There was no arson and no brawls, but there was a cat. A little rugged black ball curled up on Reggie’s lap while two pairs of eyes stared at it, anxiety and pure adoration meeting halfway. Reggie was hovering his hand above the animal cautiously, reverentially as if it was something holy, and he wasn’t sure how to approach it without letting the sanctity flee.
‘Where did you find it?’
‘He just… came in here. He seemed to be lost.”
Alex looked up. The careful serenity in Reggie’s voice, the simplest change from ‘it’ to ‘he’, the gentlest of hands. He was, after all, by design, the most human of them all.
And then Alex saw a tear roll down Reggie’s cheek. It was a slow descent, something caricaturally wrong and treacherous, and then another tear mirrored the first one, and Alex felt his whole world end. The tears landed on the cat gracelessly. It woke up, blinked, and stepped off Reggie’s lap. The tears doubled.
‘Reg…’
‘Why is he alone?’
Alex scooted closer. Reggie was ignoring his tears, letting them fall freely, desperately.
‘He’s just a kitten, and he’s all alone. Where are his parents?’
Oh.
Alex’s world was collapsing on itself. The cat had moved to the couch and was looking at both of them with a mix of curiosity and disappointment, like most cats looked at everything. Alex wanted to know what it was seeing. He felt like there wasn’t much to see.
‘He’s just a kid.’
And Alex couldn’t take it anymore. He took Reggie’s hands in his own, their knees pressed together, the garage burning hot. And on a sunlit afternoon, with a small black cat lounging lazily on the couch and Luke and Bobby on their way back from the shops, Reggie cried his eyes and heart out, and Alex held him and thought: ‘He’s not alone. He has us.’
[…]
Alex is fifteen, and he’s miserable. It’s the seventh night, it’s been six days since he’s seen them. It’s raining, the biggest storm of the summer yet. The lightning illuminates the cross nailed to Alex’s wall each time the light strikes outside the window, and the cross looks evil. The longer Alex stares at it, the more unholy it seems. Thunder feels like atonement.
He doesn’t know for how long he’s been in bed, trying desperately to fall asleep. The bed doesn’t feel like a safe haven anymore. He feels like on this angriest, stormiest night of the summer, he is burning. When Alex was little, he always got excited when the forecast promised a storm. It felt like magic. It doesn’t feel like magic anymore. It’s pure damnation.
Something is knocking on his window, and maybe it’s the lightning, the thunder, or the fire.
It’s not. It’s Luke Patterson. Who is standing on Reggie’s shoulders. Who is standing on Bobby’s. It’s the most absurd thing Alex has ever seen. He opens the window, and it feels like a fever dream, and maybe it is. The only thing he can think of is,
‘What?..’
‘Thank God!’ Alex flinches. ‘Bobbers’ legs are about to give out, and we’re probably gonna be struck by lightning any second.’
Bobby, indeed, looks like he’s about to pass out. Reggie is gripping onto the house cladding so hard that it seems like he’s going to rip the entire wall out. Luke is out of breath and grinning like an absolute muppet. Lightning strikes somewhere far away. Alex is in love with them.
Alex opens his mouth, then closes it, and drums his fingers on the windowsill. The feeling of a rhythm is calming.
‘What do you want?’
Maybe it’s rude. But he feels like his house is getting hotter with each passing second, and all the walls are about to come down, so he doesn’t care. He cares so much.
‘Come on. We’re going, you’re coming with us.’
‘No–‘
‘Yes,’ and it’s Bobby who says it, and it’s metal, and Alex is livid.
‘You can’t just show up at my house and expect me to follow you anywhere!’ he whispers; his words are malice, ‘Go home, it’s storming.’
‘We’re not going anywhere if it’s not with you,’ Reggie says, and it’s really that simple. It’s so, so simple that Alex wants to laugh, or cry, or go with them to the very edge of the world.
Thunder roars, and the three are soaked to their bones, water dripping down their hair, holding on to each other. Alex has never seen anything more beautiful. He sighs and moves away from the window to take his jacket, and Luke starts saying something, but his words are drowned out by another clap of thunder. Alex takes the cross off his wall.
He is back by the window when he understands the absolute stupidity of their situation.
‘Move.’
‘Yeah, alright. Wait, how do we?–‘
[-]
Luke is sporting a big dash on his forehead because he fell while climbing from Alex’s window.
They are in Bobby’s van, and Bobby keeps shooting Alex these glances every chance he gets. He is driving because Luke is ecstatic, and Reggie is holding onto Alex, so there isn’t much of a choice. Bobby hasn’t said a single thing since they got in the van, so the glances are all that Alex gets. To decipher those glances is a task that no simple human can succeed in, and right now, Alex feels like he is very much failing. It’s scary. So he just glances back.
The van smells of old leather, and sweat, and orange soda; a rubbish rock song is playing quietly on the radio – though it’s more static than music because the antenna on the van is crooked. Alex, too, feels like static. The downpour outside obscures everything, and he has no idea where they’re going, but he trusts Luke, Reggie, and Bobby completely, so he’s not asking. The rain drums staccato on the roof, and Alex drums along. He thinks that, maybe, the four of them and the drums are the only constant thing in his life. He would be okay with that.
And then, the van starts slowing down, and Alex looks through the front window. He sees his church. It’s the end of the world.
[-]
Alex won’t get out of the van. He won’t do it for the life of him.
The church is looming; grey and dark and everything death.
There’s a hand on his shoulder, and he immediately recognises it as Bobby’s, even in his shaken still state.
‘’Lex, Alex,’ that’s Reggie. That’s definitely Reggie.
The storm is raging outside, and Alex is raging, too, but, unlike the storm, he doesn’t feel quite as grand.
‘Why?’
This feels like a night of questions. And questions feel like a dangerous thing. Thunder strikes.
‘It was Luke’s idea,’ says Bobby, not in an accusatory way.
Alex looks at Luke. Luke looks at Bobby.
‘Okay, dude, wow,’ Luke does sound accusatory, and it should be funny like it always is with Luke and Bobby, but Alex feels like crying. Luke turns around.
‘Don’t be mad. It was a spontaneous decision. We thought we could maybe… I don’t know. Burn something in there.’
‘We can’t just burn shit in a church!’ and everyone recoils. Reggie removes his hand from Alex’s arm.
‘Okay, maybe not… Burn. But mess it up a bit! Spit on the floor. Move a few candles. Flip off the Mary.’
Alex hates them. He loves them.
‘What did it do to you? Why?’
And Reggie speaks up,
‘Oh! Because every time we drive by it, you look like you’re dying.’
Alex would end and build a world for them.
[-]
The first step feels like blasphemy, even though Alex hasn’t done anything yet.
The church doors are closed, so the four get in through an open window that is just low enough that they can help each other get in. The building is made of redwood and big windows, and the storm outside makes it look and sound like a safe place from Hell. Alex thinks it feels like a trap. The lights are out, rows of wooden benches disappearing into the darkness. The church smells like candles and wood. It’s the worst.
‘Are you sure we can’t burn anything in here?’ Luke asks, and Alex is glad that he is the first one to say something because it’s Luke, and Luke makes everything feel less scary.
‘Yes. Absolutely.’
Luke climbs onto the bench, sitting on the back of it, his feet in the seat. Reggie sits on the floor. Bobby remains standing. Alex carefully lowers himself near Luke’s feet. He feels like this is an intervention.
‘Okay, so this is an intervention,’ Luke is fiddling with a candle – where did he even get it? – and looks at Alex. Alex looks away.
He hopes there’d be silence, for just a few moments, so that he can think of something. But, of course, they are all here, so the words keep flowing. They begin with Reggie:
‘We noticed that you are– That you’ve been–‘
‘Distant,’ Bobby supplies.
‘Yeah, dude, we haven’t seen you in a week! You’ve missed rehearsals!’ Luke and his stupid rehearsals.
‘And we wanted to give you some space but Luke–‘
‘Okay, can we maybe stop throwing me under the bus?’
‘We just want to know if you’re okay,’ says Bobby, and Alex really wishes he didn’t say it because it’s Bobby, so now it’s serious.
‘Is that why you took me to church? To confess and all?’
Alex hopes that if he keeps his tone conversational enough, maybe then his brain will file this whole exchange away as casual banter and not him possibly turning his life upside down. So far, it’s not working.
‘Alex,’ it’s that Bobby tone again, and the jokes are over.
‘Did we do anything wrong?’
And suddenly, everything stops. Because why would Reggie ask that? Why would they think they did anything wrong? Why would any of them even consider it when Alex is the one who is always, always wrong?
‘What?..’
‘I mean,’ and Luke has this awful, defeated tone in his voice that he should never, ever have, ‘You stopped hanging out with us. So, we thought– Yeah.’
‘You didn’t– You’ve never done anything wrong.’
And Alex starts crying. He feels like there isn’t a precise start for it: just, one moment, he is trying to explain something – it, and the next moment he is crying like he’s been crying for ages.
There is no hesitation. He feels Luke’s and Reggie’s arms around him immediately, Bobby’s hand on his knee. Luke is whispering something, but all Alex can hear is the quiet ‘Oh, ‘Lex’ that comes from Reggie, and he just starts crying harder.
They stay like that for centuries.
At some point, they all move to the floor. Alex isn’t sure when – all he knows is that they are holding onto him, and it’s warm, and he can smell the detergent from Reggie’s shirt. Maybe we can stay like that forever, he thinks but then lightning strikes outside, and he is back at the church. Everything around them is dark and empty. He isn’t crying anymore, but he almost wishes he were because now somebody is going to ask for an explanation.
Alex waits, and waits, and waits.
And they don’t. They don’t ask for anything; just sit with him until he wipes away the last tears. Alex thinks they get it – he hopes, he prays, he knows they do. He is going to tell them, just not now and not here. The church doesn’t feel like a place for confessions. Everything is quiet – the storm outside, the hands on his back, the saints on the walls. Alex looks at Luke, and Reggie, and Bobby, and they are looking back. They are always looking back. He would rip the world apart for them.
‘Let’s burn some shit.’
[-]
They put together a small firepit right in the centre of the room. Bobby has a lighter because he thinks it looks cool when someone asks for a lighter, and he happens to have one. At least, that’s what Alex guesses. He and Bobby are standing by the firepit while Luke is searching for more small things to burn, and Reggie is checking the window so they can book it as soon as the fire alarm goes off. Luke brings two more books, some pamphlets and what looks like an old robe. Alex wants to tell him off but then sees a framed picture of the pastor in Luke’s hand – another mindless thing to set aflame – and keeps quiet.
Reggie comes back and loops his arm around Luke’s. They all look at Alex. He reaches into his jacket and pulls out the varnished wooden cross that had been nailed to his bedroom wall for centuries. Alex guesses he took it with him as a mistake, desperate to get out of the house but now he’s glad he did. He throws it into the pile.
Bobby starts the fire.
The flames begin carefully, born from nothing but a simple act of rebellion, but build quickly. Alex can’t help to think that it’s ironic how well something that is supposed to be holy burns. The fire grows, flames devouring the texts and words within them, and with it, Alex’s heart grows, too. He looks around at the content look on Bobby’s face, the proud look on Luke’s, and the sparkle of quiet revolution and fire in Reggie’s eyes. He notices that they all moved to stand beside him. He loves them.
The fire spreads.
Alex feels like throwing his cross necklace in, too, but he doesn’t. He takes it off and puts it in his pocket, to be forgotten – a force defeated.
He watches as the walls drink in his sin, saints looking down at him with their golden haloes and folded wings. Alex looks back with unashamed fire, hooking his finger into the belt loop of Bobby’s jeans with one hand and clutching Luke’s t-shirt from the back with the other. Reggie throws his arm around Alex’s shoulder, and they are one creature. One creature made of sin, rock, and love. He feels like music.
He feels endless.