Wanted

It was the weekend before the semester started and the blue house that was 54 Island Avenue thrummed with a bassline heartbeat.

Inside the house was a boy who’d drank too much.

He hadn’t wanted to come here tonight. He hadn’t meant to drink. The plan was to drop off his two friends who needed a ride and he would come back later. But then they encouraged him inside. And still he planned on leaving—just ten more minutes, then I’ll go—and he would have, but then it happened.

It. The same thing that happened the night of the Christmas tree lighting, with Professor Faye. Hearing words that weren’t spoken.

Someone had screamed. And he was the only one who’d noticed.

At which point he said fuck it and decided to drink, too.

And it was fun. He felt happy. Blissful and giggly and open.

Sabriel knocked back the last of his drinks. Professor Faye had asked him not to drink anything more, but he couldn’t resist the fruity allure of whatever-this-was that someone had mixed together for him. He couldn’t taste the alcohol, but he could feel it. It was wonderful.

Even more wonderful: Professor Faye wanted to see him. Would be there soon. Any minute now he’d pull his car up the street, which also pounded with the echo of music, and he’d call or text—Sabriel clutched his phone hard in his hand, waiting to feel the vibration of a notification against his palm. Maybe Professor Faye would come up to the door and ask for him.

Sabriel wanted to be seen like this. Laughing. Leaving a house full of people. He wanted there to be proof, sober proof, that he’d been around all these people and hadn’t hurt a single one of them.

@Kyros

“Sabriel?” The party-goer wrinkled her eyebrows. “I don’t know—”

“That quiet goth kid,” said one of her nearby friends. “Hang on, I just saw him.” She held up a finger as she stamped out a cigarette. Stepping away from the door, she weaved her way through the crowd until it swallowed her completely, her body blending in with all the other bodies.

Sabriel didn’t know why he’d picked January. He didn’t know why when he went into his phone to find someone to talk to, he picked his professor. Maybe it was because this whole hearing-weird-things-when-people-touched-him thing started with January. Maybe it was because Professor Faye had always been nice to him. Maybe it was because he wanted someone with a little authority to see that he could be a normal person at a normal party.

When the girl found him, Sabriel had just finished his last drink. And when she said some tall blonde guy was looking for him, Sabriel’s golden eyes widened with excitement and a sloppy, sideways smile came to his face.

He made his way to the door. And he could see him. When he got close enough, Sabriel thrust his arm up into the air and waved.

“You came!” he said. His breath smelled like liquor. “You really—” He laughed. He was beaming. “Hi!”

Professor Faye touched his shoulder.

It didn’t happen.

Sabriel stared at Professor Faye dumbly for a moment, expecting that sentence he’d agonized over countless sleepless nights, but no words penetrated the murk of alcohol. The lopsided smile gave way to a satisfied laugh, puffs of his breath coming together in white clouds in the chilly air outside.

“I’m fuckin,” said Sabriel, who laughed again, in relief and joy and disbelief, “man, I’m fuckin-in great—“ And then, with earnest interest: “How are you?”

It was cold out here. He was keenly aware of that. It was everywhere: very close to his face, especially, and then in his head when he breathed. His fingers were cold.

But January’s hand on his shoulder was warm.

“You’re warm,” said Sabriel. He turned his head to look up at Professor Faye’s face. “My shoulder is all warm, from you, it’s nice.”

“A lot of fun,” he said. “People actually like me when I’m drunk.” He laughed harder at this than he should have, eyes crinkling shut as the sound, sincere and pure as the ringing of a bell, peeled into the air.

“I wasn’t even going to stay,” he said once the giggles faded, “I was supposed to drop friends off, but hah—started hearing shit and whaddaya know, a Jameson And Ginger fixes that.”

He sounded bitter. And relieved. And astounded. In a few short sentences he was all over the place, words slurring, new pieces of himself revealed that he hadn’t ever meant to tell.

He pushed his shoulder into Professor Faye’s hand. He had the most intense urge to snuggle. Mostly he wanted to be warm, all over his body. The wind rustled through his black hair. The gray-purple hollows under his eyes, a permanent fixture of sleeplessness, seemed more pronounced in the glow of the yellow light pouring through the front windows.

Sabriel dragged a hand over his face. Then, jolting with realization, he grabbed Professor Faye’s arm.

“You have the same name as this month. That is so cool. I love that.”

January took his hand away.

Sabriel’s shoulder stayed warm, for a moment, from the captured heat of his palm, but it wasn’t the same. He could feel the absence of his touch. He felt—empty? As if by taking his hand away, January had created something hollow inside him.

“Wait, how do you know about that—?” Sabriel’s brows came together, and then, realizing, he groaned, “Oh, God, I just told you. I just told you.”

The only other person who knew was Lochlann, and that was because Sabriel had seen an opportunity to get to the bottom of whatever-this-was. He had ideas, now, for what those words meant. But he didn’t like his options.

“It started actually—the tree lighting, when we…?” Sabriel trailed off, gesturing vaguely between their bodies. Turning his head away, he looked back toward the house, to the silhouettes milling about inside. The bass thrummed through the ground beneath his feet, through his ears. His stomach twisted. His mind felt numb and electric at once.

“I don’t want to talk about it here,” he said. “Could we like—could we go, and I’ll like, I’ll tell you later?”

“Yeah,” said Sabriel, stepping down off the porch with a wobble in his knees, “yeah, that uh, that’s a good idea.”

---

Sabriel tried to take off his shoes toe-to-heel, but tripped over himself, and only by barely guiding himself into the nearest wall did he avoid falling flat on his face. Shoulder colliding with a soft, painless bump, he waited a moment before he stood straight, walked to the kitchen counter, held on with one hand, then leaned down and wrestled his shoes off, one at a time, and left them overturned in front of the refrigerator.

Coat next. One button at a time. He fumbled with them, listening while Professor Faye spoke. Because he was drunk, the explanation was enough. Sweet, even. The sort of explanation wayward, half-monster boys needed from older men who mattered a lot.

“Doesn’t bother me at all,” he said. “It’s really nice. You’re really, really nice. I like that you’re nice.” He twisted in a circle, trying to free his arms of the coat’s sleeves, before he finally shed the garment completely. He pushed it over the kitchen counter. Next came his sweater, which got stuck around his head until he yanked it off and tossed it away to land inside-out in some pile, mussing his black hair further and leaving him standing there in a T-shirt and jeans and socks.

“It’s just, I don’t think…” Sabriel paused. “I don’t think you’re gonna—gonna like anything you learn,” he said. “About, the uh, the person behind the lens.”

He left the small entry-and-kitchen-area to turn on more lights, including every lamp, but the apartment was so small that he never once left January’s sight. The party was over. The people were gone. He wasn’t feeling happy-drunk anymore. He was feeling lonely-drunk. Sad-drunk. Wanting-desperately-to-be-liked-by-someone-with-authority-drunk.

“What do you want to learn about me?” he asked. “You can ask whatever.”

Voices.

That was what Professor Faye wanted to know about.

Sabriel groaned. He finished with the last of the lamps, bringing the apartment into a brightness not suited for the late hour. “You coulda picked anything,” mumbled Sabriel dejectedly, “coulda asked if I was a virgin and I’da said…” He dug into his pockets, pulling out his wallet and his phone and setting them down on the coffee table. As soon as he set down his phone it buzzed, and he picked it up, swiped open the screen without a thumb print or number code, then set it back down.

He pushed aside some books from the couch to the floor and collapsed into the corner, pulled his knees up to his chest, and nestled in against the arm.

“S’just when I touch people,” he said, “and not all the time, it just… happens…” He waved his hands vaguely. “It’s a power, but it’s new, you know, so I haven’t told anyone yet.” He scratched the back of his neck. “There were so many people, I was sort of, like, it was like, I was touching so many people, and just kept hearing them—they just kept saying things they weren’t saying, right into my head, and I couldn’t…”

Wide-eyed, Sabriel shook his head and tried to laugh, but he couldn’t. He pushed his hands over his face, then hugged his shins.

“I don’t wanna be psychic. The rest of what I am is bad enough without this.”

“Sometimes they scream,” said Sabriel. His voice sounded uncertain, afraid—he couldn’t look at Professor Faye, and didn’t acknowledge him as he sat down on the couch or inched closer.

“And sometimes they’re begging. Or apologizing.”

He thought of Lochlann. I’m sorry, Addy. How quick and sharp those words had been in his head. How he’d needed a drink from Lochlann’s flask afterwards. He felt like he needed a drink right now. But his stomach twisted. His throat felt hot. The dark place behind his eyes felt like cotton.

“Sometimes it’s—nice stuff.”

He turned his head to look at Professor Faye and thought of the night of the tree lighting. How those unsaid words rang in his ears, his whole head. How cold it had been. How Professor Faye’s touch put his whole body on fire, burned him down and made him into something new, something that could be punished.

“But that’s rare. The nice stuff, that’s rare. It’s usually... bad. Awful.”

His voice broke. He thought he might cry. His eyes burned. But he couldn’t cry.

This was, Sabriel thought, a punishment. For what he was. For the way he needed to eat. For hurting people, for forcing his way into their heads, for ruining them if only for a night.

His breathing had grown heavy while he explained. In his head everything he’d ever heard was playing in repeat, from Professor Faye to Lochlann to stranger after stranger after stranger, all of their words, and Sabriel sat there unable to speak of it lest he have to share the horror of his suspicion, and his stomach lurched and his heart pounded and a cold sweat broke over his neck—

“I think I’m gonna throw up.”

Sabriel heaved.

Hunched over the bowl, his fingers bent like claws into the porcelain. The cold sweat on his neck spread up along his hairline and down to his underarms, down the knobbed trail of his spine. His skin was wet and cold and hot and his throat burned as he emptied the alcohol and the guilt and the fear into the bowl.

The bowl Professor Faye had retrieved for him.

Somewhere in the back of his head he kept asking himself why. Why it was Professor Faye he texted.

When Professor Faye touched him, the answer emerged and Sabriel threw up a second time.

A shudder ran down his body. He coughed and gasped and wiped spittle from his mouth with the back of his wrist. He’d heard it again—or was he just remembering, with utmost clarity, what he’d heard the night of the tree lighting?

“I thought it was done,” said Sabriel, and his voice cracked, “I thought I wouldn’t hear yours again, fuck, fuck, fuck, it isn’t you, your fault, it’s not, when people touch me, I’m—” A lump in his throat stifled his words and he shook his head, groaned with exhausted frustration, clenched his eyes shut, and tried not to fall apart. The tears stung as he held them back and he felt weak and tired and afraid.

The hand rubbing gently should have been a comfort. And it was. But it was also a reminder that something unknown was happening to him at unpredictable intervals.

Very carefully, he inched closer to Professor Faye. Just a little. He didn’t want him to pull his hand away.

He didn’t want to be left in the void alone.