This card game is no longer fun.
I chuck the deck of cards onto the floor. They scatter over the living space, one nicking Conin on the cheek as he elicits a slew of stern protests. He has this endearing habit of scrunching his face every time he’s captivated by whatever’s caught his interest. Conin always had a competitive spirit. It’s hilariously cute.
Atlas ruptures into another onslaught of laughter when he captures Conin’s scrutiny. I’m the next to break. He and I are bunched up on the floor while we howl with laughter.
That wall, that protection, has a chasm in it now—an Atlas-shaped chasm. I’m not certain when it happened, whether it has anything to do with this link, this tether that intertwines our existence. But this chasm is being chipped open more and more each day, flooding over with Atlas, Atlas, and nothing but Atlas.
Our society and the people in it are loathsome (Conin and his mother have always been the exception), but I like Atlas, and the notion fucking terrifies me. The bubbling mirth welling inside me fades. I’m left rocking with a developing headache.
When Atlas’s laughter dims, he moves to the couch and shuffles into a comfortable position. A familiar ease. Conin discards his pile, then sits back.
“So,” Atlas says, an icebreaker, “tell me about a mutual embarrassing moment from your childhood.”
You never know where our conversation will lead with Atlas.
Conin gives me his full, undivided attention with a wry grin. He’s about to embarrass the ever-loving fuck out of me. When Atlas discovers Conin’s dead cadaver tonight, it wasn’t me.
“I have this distinct memory from when Ezra and I were kids. God, we were probably like twelve or thirteen,” Conin starts the tale, and I already know where this is going.
“Shut up!” I swat at him, and he swats back with a giggle.
Atlas sits up in earnest.
“I dragged Ezra along for all my little daring expeditions back then, so one night we decided to go skinny dipping and—”
“Shut up!” I yell.
I lunge for his mouth and press a firm palm against it so he won’t speak. My body pins him to the floor, but it doesn’t feel right. Larger legs fasten kneecaps, meaty hands snare wrists. The frame of someone more imposing, large, and threatening to look at: the husk from the motel. We’re suspended while time involuntarily slows. I hover over Conin’s figure with a faux strength in these muscles that carry none of their own. Panting breaths escape my mouth.
Conin looks taken aback. The glimmer in his azure eyes is a dead giveaway. They swim in an unspoken guilt. He crossed the line and it’s evident in his eyes he realizes this—I don’t want Atlas, a stranger, to know my most embarrassing moments. No matter the ties that bind us or that chasm, this is my and Conin’s secret—ours alone, witnesses aside.
Not only had my underwear been snatched by some feral dog, but I had emerged from the water with an erection I couldn’t placate. The mere closeness of our naked bodies had been scintillating with the boy that I loved. Conin played it off as a normal teenage occurrence, so I was never suspected. Still, I doubt Conin would share that more intimate aspect, but he’d surely tell the tale of our arduous journey home. How humorous he finds it.
“I’m sorry,” Conin whispers.
The broad stature of this projected facade fades into a slim body, scarred and imperfect. It feels like the moments in my childhood when I’d slip and shift—a mistake that would have been a detriment to my entire life if I had been caught. The impression is degrading.I hate it.I recoil from Conin and sitagainst the couch, a hot flare reddening my cheeks when I remember Atlas is in the room with us.
“Sorry,” says Atlas. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have brought it up,” Conin says.
He takes the rocking chair. The piece of furniture has unquestionably become his in our short time here. His foot kicks the chair into motion, followed by smooth, repetitious movements, vacillating to and fro.
“I remember this day when abu was alive, my first time meeting the Angelics,” Atlas tells us, maybe to break the sudden awkward tension that permeates the air. “I was so determined to make a good, lasting impression. Something they would remember me by and be like, Oh! That’s Augurys’s grandson! He’s going to amount to something great one day. Remember him—’” Atlas trails off, his expression grim, but then he smiles as if the memory is bittersweet.
“I wanted so badly to show them what I could do, that I wasn’t just this nerdy, useless kid—a kid who was picked on, bullied for who he was,” he says.
He notices the shock on my face, the curved O of my mouth. Did they—
“They didn’t know about my powers, no. But I was determined to show the Angelics and prove I had prowess. So, I did. I teleported. But I was thinking about those kids at school and materialized in one of the hallways.”
“Shit,” Conin mutters under his breath.
“I just realized how not funny this story is,” Atlas guffaws.
His display of emotions is difficult to face when all I do is hide, but if I can challenge myself for Conin, I can trudge through this too.
“Go ahead,” I say.
