“What were you two talking about?”
“Nothing. Just shooting the breeze.” I brushed it off, standing up.
James didn’t look up, but he kept crushing weed in the palm of his hand. Should I tell Will? Not tell him? Why was I getting into a situation where I had secrets with the best friend of the guy I liked?
I looked at James and his fidgety fingers that slid expertly across the rolling paper when William spoke.
“I’ve known you for almost a month, June. There’s no point in beating around the bush when you’ll find out anyway. James is right.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“What do you mean?”
“Come on.”
I glanced at James one more time, who stuck his tongue out theatrically at the bottom of his stairs and made a gagging motion with two fingers.
I shook my head and followed William to his bedroom. His room, right—how could I forget such an unsettling place.
We both sat at the edge of the bed, and he pointed first at the right wall then the left.
“See these two walls?” One white and one black.
“Yeah.”
“Imagine this is my life, June.”
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
“The times I’m like this, how you see me now, are rare.”
I watched him fiddle with the ends of his hair.
“How?”
Will tried to moisten his dry lips.
“How I feel now. Balanced.”
I inadvertently furrowed my brows.
“But I feel like I’m about to go in another direction.” He pointed at the black wall to our left.
“Please, explain, Will.”
“The good times are always followed by the bad.”
Those seemingly innocuous words conveyed a deep anguish. I instinctively took his hand, stopping his nervous gestures.
I started feeling afraid, maybe because I was starting to notice his fear. I pressed his back with my palm and Will finally started talking again.
“I have a love-hate relationship with drugs. Sometimes I try to go off them because they don’t help me.”
“Drugs?”
He was driving me mad with curiosity. I wanted Will to open up freely, on his terms, without pressure. And he took all the time in the world between sighs and moments of silence. “Sometimes I feel bad. Like awful. I don’t want to see anyone or even get out of bed to go to school. My dad has to organize his business trips around my mood swings,” Will said remorsefully, as if he was riddled with guilt. I couldn’t stop looking at him. His eyes, which always looked calm and gray like a gloomy day, were now stormy skies.
I couldn’t decipher him. Maybe I never would. Just as I thought I knew what kind of guy he was, when he became nice and understanding, he’d throw me a curveball the next minute. Was that what he was talking about?
