"They don’t actually do shit," he answers, looking aside.
What is he not telling me? He is downplaying it for sure.
For a moment, I hesitate whether I should tell him about the strange black afterimages I sometimes see before something bad happens, but after a moment, I let it go. I do not feel like Snow is the person I should share that with, there is resistance in him too.
On some level, there is the ever-present rivalry between me and him, not only in music, it is something broader. As if we were polar opposites in our energies. But I do not want to show him all my cards. I have noticed for a while that Snow’s intuition works on other people… except me. Beyond this one situation surrounding my birth, when he predicted that my parents would have an accident, he has never had another vision about me, never warned me about anything. For the most part, we ignore each other as if we do not exist, as if we are not living in thesame house and are barely brothers, even though a single glance at our faces would leave no doubt. We look a lot alike, the only difference is our hair, mine is dark red and his is platinum blond.
"Sooo…" I drag out the word. "You are saying nothing changed for you after the tattoos appeared?"
Snow’s eyes lock with mine, unreadable.
"Nothing at all," he says in a flat voice. "Just decoration."
Fucking liar.
I loudly hit the C key, then stand up.
"Thanks for the great nothing, brother, as helpful as a fart in your pants."
Idiot. I head for the exit. So pointless. Well, I was alone before, and I am still alone with my problems.
There is no one in this world I could share everything with. I know Alex would listen, but I simply cannot burden him with my dirt. He is untainted, and I will do everything I can to keep him that way.
But suddenly, just as I step into the doorway, I hear behind me,
"Are you training something? You look kind of… cut."
He waves vaguely toward my stomach. "You have some decent abs. And your biceps got bigger too."
"No. Nothing. They’re just decoration."
I answer with a stupid face. One big nothing, meeting another big nothing. Gosh, my brothers are useless.
???
In the second semester of my freshman year of high school I keep up with my training and I also keep spending time with Alex… of course I do.
Everyone in our grade already sees us as a couple, even though we have never actually confirmed anything out loud, andsometimes I wonder what Alex would say if I asked him to define us, but he never brings it up himself. I am simply with him as if we were incredibly close friends and, to be honest, that works for me, even though I have secret thoughts about how maybe we could be something more, although that is still a long road for me.
He comes to my house every weekend, we study, we spend hours on my bed editing and cutting my videos on my laptop, or Alex helps me record whenever I sing and play.
Sometimes we sit next to each other looking at the screen, our shoulders barely touching, and those are the moments I draw a lot of secret joy from. Alex’s energy always makes the world brighter, it feels as if he carries a field around him that stretches several feet out, a space where everything is lighter. And when he walks away the room falls back into half-darkness, which is why I am hungry for his presence, need it like air.
And not only me, because Alex’s positive attitude draws in my brothers too. Skye and Rain like to drop in to see us, sometimes they come to play a round of chess with him or, more accurately, get completely humiliated when he beats them in a few moves. Even Storm thinks Alex is cool, and they sometimes ask me if I am his boyfriend, but I always answer no, we are just very good friends. Period.
During the second semester Alex becomes even more a part of our family, spending an incredible amount of time here. He's fun to be around, has thousands of ideas for how to fill the hours not only for me but also for my brothers. He even helps Storm with math and Storm is finally bringing home A’s, and he helps Rain study for the national round of the math olympiad.
And his help in growing my career is priceless, because I admit that I would never have found in myself the kind of determination and stubborn focus and, most importantly, the consistency needed to upload new videos and record morecovers. My channel, after only seven or eight months since Alex started managing it, has grown enough that my videos already get forty thousand views, and the money in my account is becoming more and more noticeable.
In the meantime, Alex also pulls me up in math to the point where, in the second semester, I am able to switch into Algebra 2, and the teachers are impressed with the progress I have made, although it is of course entirely thanks to my tiny, perfect Alex, because on my own I would never have bothered.
Oh, if he knew the contrast between the way I act alone versus around him, friendly but always keeping physical distance and avoiding exposing my emotions. And the things I write about him in my pink notebook dedicated only to him…? Cringey!
There is a dried flower he gave me glued inside.
There is a tiny speck of lint he brushed off my shoulder, kept in a mini plastic bag.
There is his bent earring that once fell out and he stepped on it. He wanted to throw it away, but I secretly took it out of the trash and kept it.
