"Sunlight" (Chapter 6- Few; NANOWRIMO)

TO BE MAJORLY REVISED AND EDITED POST-NANOWRIMO.

Chapter 6: Few

Less than three years ago

                He had seen her prior to the occasion of Liv’s graduation party. A glance here, a glimpse there, a very average someone two grades below him. They never really crossed paths all that often, but since their “formal” greeting, Damir had begun to assign meaning to those few brief sightings of one another. Neither was very sociable, though Damir’s expression of this non-social tendency was very different from hers, as Dan was extremely sociable.

                The week after their first meeting was punctuated by the thoughts of the young woman with the winter-blue eyes. She invaded therapy sessions of all sorts, grocery shopping, desperate job-hunting, lonely bus-stop waiting, insomniac nights lying idly in bed. Only the presence of his parents caused the thoughts to cease. He was forced to drive, an activity barely possible with the graphic images of the recent past constantly scraping his thoughts, helping them in and out of their single vehicle, from various therapies to home and then back again, day upon day. It was difficult not to fix his thoughts on their circumstances, on the thought that this was likely to be the routine of the rest of their lives. The proverbial bills were beginning to pile up, and at this time, he was the only one recovered enough to begin to provide. Any attempts to obtain a diploma of any sort were now a small pulsation of anxiety among a mind filled with other priorities. The sliver of free time which allotted the graduation party’s time, weeks ago, had all but subsided.

                In spite of all such priorities, there she was, the sun’s illumination poking through the clouds of tasks in his mind. He was grateful for such a distraction in his minimal moments of pause. It seemed impossible that he would have the slightest bit of time to ponder such things, but rather than dwell on the Pax family’s circumstances, he thought of her. It was selfish, escapist. Impractical. Unlikely. But this he did. He wondered, in those brief moments, what book she had been reading in the study. What flower she enjoyed the most, especially being a gardener herself. It was impractical, selfish, escapist, and perhaps more than a little bit odd. He’d really only seen her once, and that once gave him a revealing glimpse into her self, her nature. Her first real impression made him wonder if they had more in common than the desire to avoid socialization with others… but perhaps they were very different. Even so, that once made him wish to know her more than he had ever wanted to know a person before.

                It had been months since he had attempted to get to know someone. No, perhaps, longer than months…  Dan was his only true friend. It had been years since he’d attempted to make any new connection with somebody else. And now he hadn’t the time to do so.

                In about the middle of June, he received an unexpectedly untimely phone call. He had just stumbled inside from another unwanted transportation nightmare, struggling to clear his head before putting in a load of laundry he had recently neglected, when the phone began to vibrate, the simple blue screen clearly stating "Dan".  Sighing, he flipped it open.

"Hello?" he said, using all his effort to sound unafraid.

"Hey, Damir. How's it going?"

"...Fine, um... did you really call for small talk, or what? I... kind of have some stuff to do..."

"Oh, that's okay. I was just wondering if you weren't too busy on Saturday. James is having his grad party, and the guys from the team were thinking about going out somewhere afterward..."

Saturday. What did he have to do on Saturday? Damir thought of his every move as he made his way to the kitchen, and glanced very consciously at the calendar. He wished to keep his mind on all things of this very moment, grounding him in place, in the present, to keep from wandering into the depths of the past.

"...Uh... sure, yeah, I... I... what time?"

"Between six and eight."

"Sure. I think I can do that."

"And after...?"

He glanced at the kitchen window, and there was another window, longer and wider with straight white blinds, in a white walled room, with the nurse, alarm in her eyes, in scarlet-splattered scrubs at the end of the bed...

"I have to go," he said, quickly, hanging up before staggering into the bathroom, and slamming the door shut. He always saw the room. The room and her expression, their concern, and all the words he couldn’t yet say. And there were the images themselves, the road twisting, winding, in and out of focus, blurred among flashes of iridescent blue and stiff brown green grass… tumbling, twisting, winding, shattering, into the ground, only to be met with the sudden agony of a swiftly blighted body, and the sight of the triad’s life force draining thick and dangerously fast, coating once-sturdy grey seats and dashboards and smashed windows…

                He sank to the icy tiled floor, his reflection obscured by the memories. Some vague part of him acknowledged that he needed to regain control soon, as the hour would end quicker than he could ever expect. He took shallow, ragged breaths. There was little he could do to stop it from coming. If he slept, the scenes came more vivid in nightmares, sometimes enhanced horrifically by his brain during sleep. And if he laid awake, the scenes still came. They had been put off for a while now; he’d seen them less and less by keeping busy, and using his will to see and think of Amira. But they remained, if not at the forefront of his thoughts, always somewhere, spiderlike, laying eggs that grew into more dark and poisonous pests.

***

                The week went on in a feverish blur. His family did not assist in making the scenes less vivid; rather, they did the opposite. But Damir had little choice in the matter of seeing them, holding them, assisting with many things that once necessitated only themselves to accomplish. Their frustration became his. Saturday seemed like an entire impossibility. It simply ceased to exist, until the day itself arrived. He had been sending down a cardboard box, down stairs he did not yet attempt to descend, when yet another call punctuated a seemingly meaningless moment of his life. He scrambled away from the stairs, straining to keep his balance as he searched for the source of the phone’s loud vibration.

                “Hello?” he answered, out of breath and clearly startled.

                “Hey, you need a ride tonight?” Dan replied.

                Damir found that his gaze was already fixed on the clock, something he’d relied on very much in recent times. Saturday had somehow managed to arrive, the abrupt arrival of the last frazzled marathon runner, outlying from the rest. The stern numbered face stated that it was forty minutes from six o’clock, the alleged time that one could begin arriving at James’s graduation party. His parents were tended to, and it would be another couple of hours before he would need to retrieve them.

                “Sure, but… I… I should get back by 7. If that’s okay.”

                “That’s fine. I’ll see you then.”

                It was unlikely that Damir could settle the slight sense of nervous panic brought on by the recognition of this coming event, nor the constant ache which accompanied his steps, nor his relief at Dan’s offer of transportation, even if he frequently used his cell phone while doing so.

                Nor did the sudden return of the sunflower on the tree, in the park, down the street from Liv’s house. The return of the presence of the girl who had accompanied him, next to him on that bench. Enigmatic, yet clear as an unwritten page, a wide, open sky. Her return to his thoughts kept him from his acknowledgement of the light, chalky tablets in his palm, brought to his tongue and swallowed without water. Only the necessary dosage. He allowed the girl to occupy his mind for now, while the medication took its course. Time would soon enough bring Dan to the door once again.

                Damir attempted to keep his gaze from the daunting mirror before him. His reflection had been something he had grown accustomed to avoiding. Though the worst he could cover with his clothes, they hung upon a once-strong, now wiry frame, his sleeplessness revealed in the darkness beneath his eyes, nine month old injuries in his every unforgiving step, the cane giving him no way to hide. There was no way to forget. It could be worse, he knew. Much worse. These memories, the hospital, his parents, those enduring their own challenges among them… they had also begun to take residence in his mind, settling in on the dusty furniture. Each on their own difficult journey from personal catastrophe to something resembling normalcy.

                So he let Amira enter his thoughts once more, as he left from this house to James’s. Any conversation which Dan attempted to have with Damir was futile, his thoughts beginning to fill with a heart-racing sense of anticipation, tinged with irrationality.

                “Seven, right?” he heard, suddenly realizing the lack of motion in the vehicle. All throughout this week, until this very last 15 minutes, he had noticed every minute detail of the automobile travels he had made. 

                “Yes, seven,” he replied, as the locks popped up, and the two stepped out.

                Damir knew James significantly more than Liv; he had been his last soccer team’s keeper, and quite a good one at that. James had also occasionally lived the wild life with Dan and his friends, leading to at least a handful of surface conversations. A slight pang of guilt arrived with the realization that he had prepared nothing to give this almost-friend. As discreetly as possible, he retrieved his wallet from his pocket and skimmed for something potentially worth giving… there was a very low amount of cash within, a couple of cards. He withdrew a neglected Starbucks gift card, from what seemed like eons ago, with a high potential of being expired. Regardless, the card was untouched. It would have to suffice. As he scanned the room for something with which to designate James’s gift, he found his gaze drawn to the very essence of his thoughts.

                She stood beside the kitchen counter, among a cheery James himself, a ghost of a smile coming to her lips. The now-celebrated high school graduate warmly embraced Amira, and her smile grew more genuine. As pleasant as her joy was displayed, there was an uncalled for dismay at the sight of the togetherness between the two…

                He began to turn away, when James crossed the room to meet him.

                “Damir! Glad you could make it, man!” James said, the grin plastered to his face.

                “Yeah… me… too. Um… Congratulations. I’m really sorry, I couldn’t get you_”

                “Oh, no, it’s fine, that’s cool_”

                “Uh… here.”

                Damir handed him the unsigned card.

                “Sorry…”

                “Starbucks. That’s totally alright, Damir. Good place. Hey, have you met my cousin?”

                Private embarrassment rose up in Damir’s face, as he noted James’s gesture to Amira.

                “Damir, this is Amira. Amira, this is Damir.”

                Amira’s sun ray smile remained.

                “Hi, Damir. It’s nice to meet you,” she said, extending her hand, meeting his eyes with their secret, second greeting.

                “Nice to meet you too, Amira,” he replied, accepting the offer of her slender hand as a sudden, pleasant tightness entered his chest. Her cousin was swiftly swept away by new others to welcome. Damir was surprised to find that such an expression as a smile was still possible on a face so accustomed to grimaces, frowns, and masks of apathy.     

                                “So… how have you been?” Damir began. Had it really been nearly three weeks since he’d seen her?

                “I’ve been… good… I think,” she replied.

                “That’s great.”

                The conversation was a jacket covering a bare chest. There they stood, his eyes on hers, hers in the corner of the room, both sets of lips and vocal chords muffled by rushing thoughts.

                “Amira, who’s your friend?” an unfamiliar voice chimed unexpectedly beside them.

                A woman and a man, nowhere beyond their mid to late forties stood near the young woman before Damir. Though he’d never met the couple before, his recognition was immediate. The faint azure of Amira’s eyes belonged to the man, the tawny hair, the woman. Her stature differed mildly from theirs, but if Amira’s reddening face, and shifted gaze did not create an even clearer perception of the couple’s identity, he was not sure what would.

                “This is… Damir,” she said, her voice returning to its prior quiet tone.

                Her mother and father each took a turn to firmly shake his hand, the latter clearly testing something, as if Damir’s grip would give some sort of insightful indication of self.

                “It’s very nice to meet you, Damir. We are so glad that Amira’s made a friend here,” her father said. Their demeanor betrayed something further than simple politeness, which he did not comprehend. He glanced at Amira, who had fixed an empty stare at the corner of the room again, now populated by a woman and two nagging children. The concern which had suddenly flashed in her parents’ eyes further perplexed Damir.

                “I think we’re going to go speak with your aunt now, Amira. We’ll catch up with you later,” the woman stated, with peculiar urgency, as she and her husband took off toward another.

                                Amira and Damir’s silence was nearly noticeable among the dozens gathered in the crowded living room of the young man’s home. Damir decided to say all that he knew to say; retreat appeared to be their only option once more.

                “Do you… want to go somewhere else?” he inquired, his voice barely above a meager whisper. Somehow, the girl received the words and nodded, purposeful in her leading steps through and around the crowd, until they reached a strangely placed door adjacent to an ascending staircase. The girl flipped a switch to the door’s left, faint autumn gold slipping through the tear between door and carpet. Amira turned the knob, revealing yet another set of stairs, fortunately shallow, of neat, dark texture. The girl remained a few steps ahead as the two descended the stairs, yet she moved as slowly as he. At the bottom of the stairs, the contents of the lower room were revealed.

                Chests of stuffed animals, tiny race cars and elaborate plastic tracks, at least one visible and fully furnished dollhouse, populated with miniature families, among abandoned dump trucks, and other various articles of archetypical boyhood and girlhood, a scene captured from a fanciful children’s film. Yet within the room, was an undeniable and ominous weight, as though dust had piled itself into stone and crammed itself into children’s toys. He had been fascinated by the room, yet Amira herself became his focus once again as she took a seat on a closed chest. He cautiously maneuvered himself to the floor.

                The moments passed as if they were infinite, as if he could shrink and sleep for ages more in one of the beneath the small cloth sheets of the dollhouse’s miniature wooden beds.

                “We used to come here all the time,” Amira murmured, her voice piercing clouds of dust, her blue eyes piercing the blue tub filled with the deconstructed car ramps and trucks, action figures, multi-colored blocks and Lincoln logs. Her gaze was fixed there as it had been in the corner when they had been upstairs.

                “It was just so nice for my parents… just for us to have our Aunt and Uncle, and James right here, here in town…”

                He could not help but note the way she scanned the toys, in such a strange way. Watching them in the way that he watched her.

                “Us?” he spoke, immediately regretting the word.

                “I… I mean… me. My parents took… me… here. When we were little… I,” she stammered.

                Her gaze moved to the floor. Then to the blue plastic tub once more. The small mauve one beside it. Then back to the blue…

                “Are you alright?”

                A moment.

                “Hm…? Oh… um. I… I’m fine,” came her nearly inaudible reply.

                “Are you sure?” Damir treaded on, a heterogeneous mixture of concern and dubiousness coloring his speech. “You look like you’re seeing a ghost…”

                His last word made the girl freeze, changing her pallor into something like the word and all it implied. She stumbled over her own words once more, before scrambling to her feet and sprinting up the stairs. The weight of the room seemed to collapse upon the young man now. If he stayed her for too much longer, he would indeed shrink into an abandoned child’s toy, destined to remain in a haunted blue plastic tub. Slowly, he arrived at his feet as well, and began the treacherous trek up the stairs once more.              

                Guilt for whatever he’d made Amira feel consumed him. The crowd upstairs seemed as subdued as the level below them; there was a silent, haunted weight upon them that he hadn’t recognized earlier. The worlds of the celebration and apparition had seemed to blend into one. Amira was nowhere to be found. Instead, he fixed his gaze on the door to the outside, his destination, the single way out, though he had not wished to leave after seeing her again. But he knew now that he’d done something terribly wrong, that he’d seen something that perhaps he was never intended to see. And though her wandering eyes gave way to even more curiosity and wonder and worry than he had ever had for a single being, he knew it was not for him to understand, unless she were to elect to explain. He hadn’t the right to ask, to be in any of her family’s homes, or in their children’s old wonderlands. His exit was imperative.

                “Damir, are you leaving?” he heard Dan’s voice break through the dozens as he arrived at the door. The brighter and younger young man came quickly beside him.

                “Y-Yeah. Um… Yeah, I’m going home,” he replied.

                “It’s six-thirty… I can take you though, if you want.”

                The summer sun remained, though a swarm of gray just beyond it loomed eerily above them. His home was several miles away; his vehicle in the driveway, awaiting his keys and demanding his Senela-touched hands on the wheel, shoes controlling speed and stops. He did not wish to conclude this reprieve, no matter how much dusty weight it carried. But the inevitable would arise without regard for his wishes.

                “Sure.”

                He watched as Dan discarded a half-empty can of soda into a recycling receptacle by the door, and breathing the outside air before Damir. The relief and the wonder, the fear and the guilt, and the longing within him in leaving this house, were more than he’d truly felt in weeks.

                “You ready?” Dan asked, as they each took their respective seats in the vehicle. Damir was tempted to close his eyes on this ride, a futile attempt to drown out the inevitable scenes of his memory, but he knew it would not make a difference. He gave Dan a dishonest nod, and his friend started the car.  As soon as they began to move, Dan began his comradely inquisition.

                “So where were you this whole time? I’ve hardly seen you since we got there.”

                It had been but a half an hour. Damir was strangely reminded of Amira’s parents at the tone of Dan’s voice. His friend had never been reminiscent of a parent, at least until now.

                “I… I was talking to someone.”

                Dan drove on without speaking, as though expecting elaboration. Damir suppressed a sigh as he continued.

                “Amira Senela… James’s cousin. Do you know her?”

                Odd, yet consistent with what he’d seen in James’s home, Dan’s eyebrow rising, his lip turning downward. He took a moment to take in what was just said.  His response of clear disbelief appeared as though Damir had described something incredibly absurd rather than told him the honest truth about spending a half an hour engaged in conversation. Or perhaps his surprise was in whom he was conversing with…

                “Amira? You’re serious? You talked to her? She talked to you?”

                “Yes… why is that so surprising…?”

                “Well, Amira hardly ever talks to anyone. Actually, she barely speaks at all, unless it’s for class or something, but even then…”

                They both remained silent for a moment now, as the young man in the passenger seat began to ponder on what this may imply. He could only hope that…

“I think something happened when she was younger. Her brother died when um… James was 12. He would’ve been our age,” Dan continued.

Though their vehicle moved at 65 miles per hour, the peripheral glimpse of a flower-and-ribbon-strewn cross on the side of the road, had stained itself into his mind.

Damir closed his eyes.