The Others - 16. Chapter 16: Afraid of death

Shit. Tyde is home. I totally forgot! What now? Tyde was at my dad's house, he went there to fight with him, what if he saw Codey. No, that couldn’t have happened, because then Codey would’ve known his dad has another child, right? If he knew that he would've told me.

But still, Tyde just called me Adam. How can I solve that? I can see Codey's looking confused. I grab his arm and pull him outside. “I’m sorry,” I say as I keep pushing him away from the house.

“Who is Adam?” he asks.

“A friend of mine. He is away for the weekend, so I thought I could maybe take you to his house.”

“Why would you do that?”

Am I wrong or does he seem to be frightened. Why? Does he think I wanted to hurt him? “My house is…” I stop talking. “I didn’t want you to see my real house.”

“Oh!”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. I should’ve been honest with you.” I try my best to look sad.

“I can understand. I normally don’t tell anybody about my dad and my best friend either. I think I feel embarrassed by it.”

“Why?” Oh thank you, Codey. Thank you for changing the subject again.

“I don’t know. I don’t want people to feel pity for me, I guess.” He looks at me. He is a little bit smaller than I am and his blonde hair just covers the top side of his eyes when he looks up at me. It is really cute to see, the pupils of his eyes just beneath his beautiful hair.

I think it's his hair that I find most attractive, his blonde medium length hair. He doesn’t put any wax or gel in it, so it looks very soft. Oh, I forgot about his eyes. Maybe his hair is the most attractive to me, but his eyes surely are the most sexy. They are dark brown, the kind of brown that looks like it’s endless. You know, like you could fall into it and disappear forever. If black holes were brown, that’s the kind of brown they would be.

“I think it’s the same for you, you're afraid people would worry about you if they found out where you live?”

Wait, what? How did we get back to talking about that? My house, of course, my non-existent small and cheap house. I suddenly realise I can never take Codey to my house again, so if I want time with him alone, I have to go to his house. Or I can take him to mine when no one is home, of course. I can tell him Adam is gone for the weekend again.

Why am I even thinking about having time alone with Codey? I'm only talking to him to find out about my dad.

“We can go to my house, if you want?”

“No, Codey. I’m sorry. I’m kind of embarrassed you found out I lied. I hate having to lie.”

“You don’t have to lie to me,” he quickly responds.

“I wish I didn’t have to,” I say and that’s more true than he knows.

“I don’t know why you think that Matt, you should know you can talk to me. I talked to you and you told me letting everything out helps. It's best to be honest and anyway if you lied to me, I’m sure I can forgive you.”

Even if I told you I lied about my whole existence and the reason I started talking to you in the first place? I don’t think so. “Thank you,” I say.

“So, are you sure you don’t want to come to my place?”

No, I'm thinking my dad would probably be there. “I don’t feel like it, I’m sorry. I can come tomorrow after school?”

“I’d love that, Matt,” he smiles. “What time do you get off school?”

“3 o’clock.”

“Me too! We can go to my house together, if you want? Of course I don’t have to tell you were I live, you can find my house on your own.” He giggles and I blush. This is actually the first time I have blushed in someone’s company other than Sam. “My mom would love to see you again Matt. She can’t stop talking about you.”

Okay, apparently I’m not going to stop blushing anytime soon. Why should I even care if Sandra possibly likes me? It’s not like she is my step-mom.

“I like the way you blush,” Codey whispers and immediately blushes himself. I don't think he meant to say that out loud.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say and turn around. I walk past my own house and wait until Codey is gone before going inside.

“What was that?” Tyde asks.

“What was what?”

“You came in and when you heard me, you went out immediately. You are not keeping any secrets from me, are you?”

“What’s wrong with keeping secrets?”

Tyde is in the living room and started talking to me before I had time to take my shoes off. I join him in the living room although I’d much rather go straight up to my room. He’ll follow me then, though, so I decide to get it over with. “Keeping secrets is like lying and you’re not allowed to lie.”

“Tyde, I really don’t feel like having this discussion with you.”

“Who was that? I saw you through the window, you were talking with a blond guy.”

I sigh. “I mind my own business, can you please do the same?”

He gets up and walks towards me. “I don’t like it when you lie to me,” he says with his face very close to mine, probably wants to intimidate me. It doesn’t work though. He won’t scare me.

I decide to ignore him, but I know I’m still not allowed to go to my room. He would follow me for certain and if he gets in my room, I don’t have another place to retreat to if things go wrong. I always wanted to have a lock on my door, but my mother has claustrophobia, so she isn’t fond of locks. A few years ago my mother had someone replace our door handles. Before that, we had handles that weren’t attached to the door. When you pulled them too hard, you’d pull them out of the door. I used that to my advantage, because I pulled out the door handle when I was inside my room. That way Tyde wasn’t able to enter.

It took him several months to find a way to counter that. Eventually he worked it out, he took the door handle out of his door and used it as a key to mine. It’s almost like nature, you change one thing and nature needs a few months or years to adjust, but in the end nature will always beat you. Tyde will always beat me as well, both physically and mentally. I’m smarter than he is, that’s for sure, but I don’t have the energy to keep arguing with him.

“You left your dishes on the counter today. Why don’t you just wash them up straight away?” he asks.

“Oh, sorry. I forgot,” I say.

“Stop forgetting everything! You always think you are so smart, but you can’t even do your own dishes!”

“Did I hurt you by leaving them on the counter?” I ask.

“You are such a pain is the ass!” Tyde screams out.

“I’m going to my room. If you start talking to me again before mom gets home, I’ll call her.” Arguing with Tyde is exhausting. I wish he could just, for once, shut up. Just give me a chance to get in the house and work through everything that's happened to me.

Sometimes I blame him for the mess I'm in. It’s like he forces me to always think about him, so in the end I spend too little time thinking about myself. He doesn’t give me the chance nor the time to really be myself, so I don’t even know who the real me is. Does that even make sense?

I run upstairs and shut the door to my room behind me. I feel like I might start crying any moment. I really hate fights and although you couldn't really call this encounter a fight, it still hurts me. It always hurts me, even when the dispute is between my mother and Tyde. I hate the fact there is so much anger in the world.

All I want is to go. I want to go on my little vacation. Only two weeks more, two weeks of school. Probably two weeks of mostly skipping school, I should say. Oh and of course next weekend, this stupid party of Brian's. I told them I would go, but I’m planning on breaking a bone in my body sometime this week so I can get out of it. God, I hate… everything. Do you know that feeling? When it just feels like everything is going wrong, when you just don’t seem to be able to accept the plan the universe has for you. It just feels… I feel… I feel sad. Sad without a reason. The world is moving too fast and I’m not only moving a lot slower, I’m moving in the wrong direction.

There is only one way to describe what I feel and there is probably only one person who could understand the description – me – but it feels like even my skin doesn’t fit me. It’s too tight and every step I take or every thought I think, stretches it.

That’s why I want to leave. I want to leave everyone and everything behind so the only one around me is me.

Though, that doesn’t sound like a real solution to me, because I am the problem. Being around myself brought me all these problems and painful feelings I experience every day. So I’m the problem, not the people around me. The real solution would be to get rid of myself and only be around others. The others.

I always wished I hated the others. I always wished I could blame them for my life. I can’t, of course. As I said, I’m the problem and I hate myself for it.

I’ve thought about leaving myself behind, saying goodbye to the body I’m in – saying goodbye to the world I’m in. In other words: to step off a roof or jump in front of a train.

But I’m a coward. For as long as I can remember my worst nightmares were those in which I die. Just the thought of being dead, of being engulfed by darkness, it scared the hell out of me. That’s my biggest fear.

So, it’s only because of my fear of death that I haven't embraced it a long time ago. According to many people, committing suicide is a coward's way out. It’s for people who tend to blame the world and other people for all their problems and instead of facing those problems, they flee. And to be honest, I agree with them. I want to take the easy way out, because life is simply too hard for me. Every day of living drains energy out of me. Living is exhausting and society is a place where I won’t ever fit in.

Committing suicide is something I won’t do, because I’m an even bigger coward than I have just described. I fear death while I want it so badly. My alternative is in some way almost akin to saying goodbye to life. I want to say goodbye to everything I know. When I go on my vacation with only my bike and my hammock, there is a chance I won't ever come back. I will just leave everything I know behind, even though it’ll hurt mom. I can’t, I just can’t keep on living here. It’s literally draining the life out of me and I fear if I stay too long, I'll end up committing suicide no matter what. I don’t want to die.

Woah, even when it comes to a really simple principle, either you die or you don’t, there isn’t much more to it, I make it confusing. I’m cursed, everything around me gets complicated.

I stare at my computer screen. Without thinking I open a picture of Yuri again. I thought – I hoped – that after telling Sam almost everything about him, I wouldn’t feel an urge to look at his picture again. I hoped I would be able to leave that part of my life behind. It would make everything so much easier. Sometimes I blame Yuri for every bad thing that happened in my life. He only made me happy to end up making me more miserable than I was before I met him. He left the wreckage behind when he deleted his online existence – his only existence as far as I knew.

I’ve contacted JayJay so many times over the past two years. Every time he has managed to take away a bit of my pain, but it’s never enough. For a couple of days I live in somewhat less pain, but then it starts over again. Of course I text him once more, because I know the effect he has on my pain, but he doesn’t reply. He's started ignoring me again. It’s like this every single time. I am starting to believe he makes everything worse as well. Maybe I should blame him for the pain I feel.

Of course I know that I’m – right now – blaming everyone I’m even remotely allowed to blame. I need to do this, because as long as I can blame others, as long as I can push the origin of my problems on to others, I don’t have to change myself.

I close the picture and stare in front of me, through the computer screen and through the walls of my home, as if I can see the way out of this shit if only I could stare intensely enough.

I decide against making dinner. I go straight (no pun intended) to bed and fall asleep within minutes. Í don't have any dreams, fortunately, because I’m sure any dream I could’ve had, would’ve been a bad one.