Some Place Better Than Here

Chapter 23: Bridge Over Troubled Water

23 

Bridge Over Troubled Water

===========MARY============

The drug companies would make a killing if they sold whatever I was jacked up on, on the streets. Either from a deep sleep, or solid trip, I floated back to consciousness. Seriously though, by the time I fluttered my eyes open, it took me a second after recognizing the Sgt. Pepper's poster that I was in Danny's room. His bare feet stuck out from under the blanket as he slept opposite me, his face ballooning out like a baby's with his breathing. A draft tousled the blinds. I shook Danny's foot, waking him up.

He groggily recapped the entire episode for me. Only when he went through the events, play by play, did I remember. Even the beach was nothing more than a fog. Apparently, I suffered from something that I couldn't dare say, but was written on a treatment guide prescribed by the doctor: enophthalmos.

Danny was pleased with how significantly better he said I looked. When I winced in pain after jerking my head too fast, Danny busted out one of my painkillers. Yay, more drugs.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, popping open the lid of the vial and handing me the capsule clipped in his fingers.

"Well, I'm not seeing double anymore," I said, and downed the pill with a glass of water. Danny smiled and said that was good, and then we didn't say anything for a long time.

Through the half-lowered blinds, the dim overcast light threw strips of shadows across his body and the poster-wall behind him. A narrow column of light crossing over his brow pulled the hidden green coloring out of his brown eyes.

The last time I was in Danny's room, I had assumed he was just a weird guy who still had a thing for Pokémon. But understanding him better, or perhaps harboring an unrealized compassion, or perhaps now feeling I had not the right to judge him because he firsthand experienced the chaos of my life, I viewed his childhood décor from a different perspective. Pinup babes and music equipment and rock posters only stood paces in front of the video game stickers and delicate obscuring of the Toy Story figurines.

Danny's life was captured in collective evidence all around his room. Atop of old posters were plastered new ones. Books and biographies were stacked in rows on his shelves in front of graphic novels, and behind those were picture books with dinosaurs. Nothing discarded, nothing ever let go. Even the closet, which was cracked open (with Raquel's stretch-marked belly hanging out again), held stacks and rows of clothes I had never seen him wear.

The light from the lower half of the window, unconcealed by the blinds, shone earnestly on the marker drawings taped up on the far wall. Taking a closer look this time around, I saw pirate ships, spaceships, and racecars. All of them featuring cartoon characters on some sort of adventure, and realized the gallery of doodles told a story. Every page, the embodiment of a little boy's sense of imagination. The evidential baby steps to the stories that would become the lyrics to the songs he wanted to write.

"Are those marks from your kid drawings?" I asked while looking down at the multi-colored etches on the hardwood floor.

"Uh. Oh yeah," he said, following my gaze to the ground. But then the words he silently formed on his lips fell off, and his eyes took on an inward quality as he stared down at that spot on the floor for a long, long time. "We used to draw in my room all the time."

"We?"

"My brother—and I."

"Is your brother's name Connor?"