When Romeo was seven years old, a pair of magpies lived in an oak tree in his garden.They made their nest together and Romeo had climbed up the tree intent on destroying the home for reasons he didn’t know but instead squeezed the life from every egg the pair had made.
He didn’t know why he did it, but he knew it felt good.
The magpies watched him do it from the roof.
They saw what a monstrous boy he was, and yet the next year, they rebuilt their nest in the exact same spot.
And the year after that.
And the one after that.
For seven years, the same thing happened until Romeo found the magpie in the garden, injured, and weak, its mate nowhere in sight.He kept it in a box in the shed, and it cawed, and screeched, but its mate never came back.
It was alone, and after a few days it accepted its fate.
Romeo had never given much thought to the other magpie, he was too invested in the injured one, but he stood at the kitchen sink, frowning at his empty mug, wondering about the other magpie.
It could’ve been killed, but there had been no dead magpie outside or scatter of feathers like something had attacked it.No, it was far more likely that magpie upon seeing his injured mate had abandoned it and flown somewhere new.
Birds were like that—they left behind the sick or injured.
All Romeo knew was there was one magpie in his garden when there had once been two, and it had the bad fortune to have been found by him.
Romeo’s gaze was drawn to a drawer in the kitchen.
He tilted his head, staring at it before he gave in and opened it.
The drawer had all sorts of random bits, pens, screws, wires.It was the same drawer Chad had hidden the leaflet about Mercutio.
Romeo picked out the box of temazepam.
He pulled out the pack, and pushed his forefinger into the empty blisters, one after the other.
Chad had taken four.
Just four.
Why four?
Romeo frowned at the empty spaces.
Did he take them the last four days they were away, or did he take them at the beginning and not like the side effects?
He’d been ill.
Confused, dizzy, unsteady on his feet.
Not a cold like Chad had led him to believe, but symptoms of the medication.
Romeo dropped the box on the side and tugged his phone free of his jeans.
He typed in side effects for the medication but with an extra word.
Rareside effects.
The one in a hundred thousand side effects.
The side effects people ignored because they never thought they’d fall victim to them.
