Besides, what possible good reason could she have for ditching us anyway? What did Nolan do to her, aside from freakher out? They’re both as bad as each other, as far as I can tell, with the small exception of murder, possibly.
It still seems surreal, trying to rationalize it in my mind. Fit Nolan into the serial killer profile Lincoln has no doubt built for him. Good thing I’m not planning to go into forensic psychology, I guess. Clearly, my judgment is clouded, and I’d need to be impartial in that field. Then again, I suppose most forensic psychologists don’t need to profile their own brothers.
I let my shoulders drop, my mouth still dry from sleep, only deep red cotton shorts and an oversized black shirt on underneath my blanket coat.
The need for sleep pulls at me at the same time that my stomach growls, but I’m not getting up to eat. My body might need the nutrients but my mind is reeling too fast for food.
Blackness overtakes me, and in my dream, I’m sleeping between Faust and Sylvan in silk ink sheets, all three of us satisfied, content,safe.
But someone is knocking at the door.
It’s quiet. Not urgent. A tapping more than a pounding.
Neither of us want to get up, though.
We’re too comfortable here.
Too happy, even in sleep.
The tapping continues, like Dracula’s nails against a windowpane.Tap, tap, tap, tap.
The image won’t leave my mind, but I stubbornly keep my eyes closed.
Vampires aren’t real, after all.
Even if Sylvan’s teeth on my throat and the dot of blood on his lips from mine was the hottest thing I’d ever seen in my life.
Thinking of it, I shift on the bed, pressing closer to him.
But he feels stiff, and not in a good way.
Too hard.
I burrow in further, then reach out my fingers to find Faust’s broad, firm back.
There’s nothing there.
Just cold air.
Tap tap tap tap tap.
I frown in the darkness, but my eyelids are too heavy. There’s been too much. The murders and working around hockey and exams and studying and the feeling of losing my brother so close to the holidays, the person I thought I knew most when really, I understood him the least.
Ace’s death hurt deeper than the rest, yet even that didn’t bring me to tears.
Something is wrong with me. Maybe the same thing that’s wrong with Nolan.
The idea startles me. Like being caught in a hurricane, drenched in realizations and whipped by the icy wind of memories.
Maybe I never cried as much as my friends because I’m incapable. Maybe I could starve myself so well because my perfectionism overrode any humane aspect of my psyche. Perhaps I fell headfirst into psychology because studying what made people tick was really a guise for discovering why Ididn’ttick the way I should.
Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.
It gets more frantic as my thoughts tunnel.
Maybe I’m with both boys because I’m never satisfied. I can never be normal. I will never want calm or peace or quiet or?—
Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.
