Unquiet (3 page)

And he deserved it after all the awkwardness and angst of middle school. Zits and pudge had given way to a lean, chiseled jaw he liked to leave just the slightest bit stubbly. His body had grown tall, the football team and the stringent exercise and diet regimen it entailed packing on the muscle. As junior varsity, Loren had proven himself a standout in the game. For the first time in his life, he found himself popular and accepted. He excelled in academics too, and his teachers loved him. Standing here now—varsity football, a senior, a true Big Man on Campus—this was going to be his shining year, the year it would
all
come together in one social and academic triumph.

As the starting lineup took the field for stretches and warmup, Loren caught a glimpse of blond hair streaked with blue bobbing through the stands above. Eliot. His friend had changed too, in completely different ways than he himself had. Where Loren found his niche as a jock, Eliot was the quintessential stoner. He’d grown his hair long and then had it cut in some ridiculous asymmetrical style, short in back, with long, floppy bangs he’d dyed bright blue hanging in his face. A gold hoop in his right ear, ripped jeans, tight band T-shirts, and some Doc Martens completed the look, along with the badass attitude.

Eliot was still weird as fuck, but because he made weirdness look so good, everyone pretty much gave him a pass, if not a wide berth. He was wild, and half the time you didn’t know what might come out of his mouth. He talked, he shouted, he made people laugh, sometimes in discomfort.

Loren didn’t spend as much time with him as he used to due to their active schedules and social lives, but they found time to connect in some way every day: a text, a phone call, a brief conversation between classes. Loren couldn’t go to sleep until he talked to Eliot first, and every now and then he’d wake in the night to find Eliot perched on the side of his bed, looking at him anxiously. Loren would open his arms and draw him in close, both of them grounding themselves once again on just being together.

Loren watched now as Eliot went to the top of the bleachers and jumped up on a small ledge, balancing, his arms out. He cringed. Eliot didn’t seem to care sometimes if he lived or died, and the chances he took were awful. Loren wondered if he was on speed because he was always up, always hyper.

Then there were those weird random times when Eliot seemed to deflate like a balloon, would burst into tears at lunch, or sometimes just sit with his head on his desk like the weight of the world had gotten to be too much.

He still never seemed to sleep. If the teacher asked for a five-page essay, Eliot would turn up with thirty pages the next day. Every now and then Loren would feel a real sense of unease because sometimes the dude seemed truly crazy, and not in a good way.

“Loren!” one of the cheerleaders shouted flirtatiously, startling Loren out of his reverie. He waved at her before searching for Eliot one more time, still seeing the blue-streaked hair high up in the stands with some of his stoner friends, and he turned back to his game warm up stretches, bending down and touching his toes several times, running in place while he windmilled his arms, loosening up his shoulders.

The cheerleader walked over, flipping her hair and batting her heavily mascaraed eyelashes at him.

He grinned. “Hey, Mandy.” He blew her a kiss, watching as she ran back to her teammates and giggled, turning around and twitching her hips to make her little cheerleader skirt flip up, ensuring that Loren got a good view from the rear. And it was a very nice view, he had to admit. Too bad he was starting to realize more and more he’d much rather see Tate Miller, the starting quarterback, bend over in his jockstrap in the locker room than a pretty girl shake her cute little ass.

Fuck my life.

“DAMN, DUDE,
you fuckin’ reek!” Loren exclaimed to the lump under the covers. “Get your ass up and take a fuckin’ shower. And where have you been for the past three days?”

The days of looking around with furtive glee for adult ears before letting loose with a curse had long since passed. Mrs. Garcia wasn’t there anymore to police their language, and both sets of their parents couldn’t care less. They were always busy anyway, and Eliot and Loren were true latchkey kids, pretty much doing whatever they pleased.

There was no answer from the quilt-covered lump, and Loren ripped the covers off him and flung them to the floor. No response. No indignant scream, no flail, just—nothing.

“Eliot?” Loren said, his voice tentative, sitting on the edge of the bed. Eliot didn’t move when Loren placed his hand on his bare back. “What’s wrong?”

Eliot didn’t say anything, and Loren finally got up and went to open the blinds, thinking the blast of sunlight into the dark room would have to elicit
some
kind of reaction. The light flooded in, illuminating the dust motes that danced in the air, and it fell right across Eliot’s face. He didn’t even twitch.

“You’re scaring me, El,” Loren whispered, sitting back down on the bed. “Did something happen? Talk to me.”

Eliot dragged his lids open like they weighed several thousand tons, the effort of blinking against the bright light even seeming to be too much for him. His green eyes were dull, lifeless, with none of the feverish, frenetic light in them Loren was used to seeing of late.

Eliot’s lips moved, but Loren couldn’t hear. He leaned in closer, trying to ignore the smell of sour sweat, of greasy hair.

“Hopeless. Die,” Eliot breathed, and Loren put his hand on his back again.

“What’s hopeless?” Eliot didn’t respond, so Loren continued, “And who died?” He stroked once up and down Eliot’s back, feeling the stickiness of sweat.

“Did someone die, El?” he repeated, and his insides froze when Eliot rasped painfully, “Want to die. Me.”

“Jesus,” Loren exclaimed, scared shitless. “No, you’re not gonna die! Get up!” He pushed to his feet and gesticulated with angry motions. “Get your ass up, take a shower. That’s crazy talk, even for you!”

Eliot didn’t move, so Loren grabbed him and hauled him up out of the bed, making him stand.

“Snap out of this, Eliot Devlin,” Loren said fiercely. “Just snap out of it, goddammit.”

Eliot’s eyes didn’t change in any way. They just slid closed and he sagged back down to the bed. Loren pulled him up again and bullied him into the shower, having to go in there and drag him back out again when Eliot just leaned against the tiled wall without moving. Loren had changed the stinking, sweaty bed linens in the meantime, and he helped Eliot into a clean pair of pajama pants and a T-shirt, dressing his seventeen-year-old friend like he was three.

Loren fixed him a bowl of soup and ended up feeding it to him when Eliot refused to pick up the spoon, and he tried his best to mask his horror at Eliot’s condition. In all the years he’d known Eliot, while Loren had seen many, many facets of his epic weirdness, he’d never seen anything close to this. It was like Eliot was in a hole he couldn’t climb out of, and Loren just didn’t understand.

After his soup, Eliot fell back to sleep as though the little bit of activity had utterly exhausted him, and maybe it had. Loren pulled out his homework and sat at Eliot’s desk, working, until he heard the garage door open. Thank God at least one of the Devlins was home.

He packed up his shit and got ready to leave, noticing with a jolt three hours had passed since Eliot fell back to sleep, and he hadn’t moved a muscle. Loren checked to be sure he was still breathing and then quietly left the room, although he could have set off fireworks on Eliot’s bed and it wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference.

He made his way to the kitchen, where Eliot’s mom, Dr. Rebecca Devlin, was standing in her scrubs, weariness in every line of her body, peering into the fridge. She turned and looked at Loren, surprised pleasure on her face.

“Well, hello, stranger,” she said. “Haven’t seen you around in a long time.”

Loren didn’t feel like wasting time on pleasantries. “Something’s wrong with Eliot.”

Dr. Devlin blinked at the abruptness, but she replied, her tone even, “He’s just been a little under the weather.”

“He’s not sick,” Loren insisted. “He’s—I don’t even know what he is. Depressed or something? He said everything’s hopeless and he wants to die.”

“He’s recently been diagnosed with a mild depression, Loren,” she said, a professional soothing tone running through her voice. “He’s getting very good treatment from a well-respected child psychiatrist. And he’s been prescribed some medication.”

Loren was astounded. Eliot had never mentioned that.

“I don’t think it’s working,” he said fretfully, “whatever medication he’s on. He—he’s scaring me.”

Dr. Devlin stopped rooting in the fridge and turned to face him.

“I’ll talk to him,” she promised. “Sometimes it can take a little while for these types of medications to take effect, so don’t get too upset too soon. We’ll keep an eye on him.”

Loren just stood there, and at last she said, “Look, I’m tired, Loren. I had a full day, and I have another equally full day tomorrow. I’m sure Eliot will be fine in a few days. I promise I’ll check on him when I go upstairs in a little while, okay? We’ll see you later, honey.”

Loren felt like arguing against this clear dismissal because he had no fucking doubt he knew Eliot Devlin better than his own parents did, and something was
wrong
.

“I think I’ll go back upstairs and stay with him a while longer, if that’s okay.”

Eliot’s mom nodded, and then turned away to pull some sandwich fixings out of the fridge. “Suit yourself, Loren. But I promise you, he’s going to be fine.”

Loren murmured a good-bye, and before he left the room, he glanced back over his shoulder just in time to see Dr. Devlin slump against the counter, a sort of defeat written in every line of her body. Loren opened his mouth to say something and then snapped it shut, turning and walking away.

When he got back up to Eliot’s room, nothing had changed. Loren had intended to do some more homework, but what he did was end up sitting at the desk and watching Eliot sleep. At one point Loren drifted off himself, his chin falling toward his chest, and he jerked awake. When he did, he noticed that Eliot’s eyes were open, slitted, watching him.

Memories of those long-ago nights sitting up with him after a nightmare came rushing back to him. Loren stood and opened the blinds, letting the moonlight flood into the room, remembering how that used to bring Eliot some strange sort of comfort. Would it still work?

He watched as Eliot’s eyes tracked toward the window and held there. Loren kicked off his shoes and climbed into bed next to him, easing him into his arms. Eliot didn’t resist, just lay there like a deadweight against Loren’s chest.

“See the moon, El?” Loren whispered into Eliot’s hair, wanting so desperately to take some of his pain away. “Because I see it.” He kissed the top of Eliot’s head, and while Eliot didn’t move a muscle or react in any way, Loren felt the hot wetness of tears against his neck.

As he sat there holding him, Loren’s worry kept him awake all through the long night. He slipped into a light doze a little before dawn, waking when the morning sun fell across his face. Loren groped for the phone on the nightstand, asking his own dad if he’d call Loren in absent for school, explaining Eliot was sick and Loren wanted to stay with him. His dad didn’t question it, just did it, so Loren spent the day watching Eliot sleep, at one point waking him and almost force-feeding him some more soup.

Another morning brought no real change, and Loren reluctantly left Eliot so he could go home to shower before school. As soon as the final bell rang, though, he headed straight back to Eliot’s house. The first thing he did when he arrived was open the blinds again, letting sunlight flood the dark room. Eliot blinked, then turned over in bed, away from the light. Loren gasped. Progress.

He sat down next to Eliot and stroked his hair. “You’re going to be okay, El.”

Eliot’s lips moved but no sound came out, and all Loren could think to do was climb into the bed and hold him close.

School the next day was long and excruciating, and when Loren got back to Eliot’s room at last, he was elated to see Eliot up and about, paler and quieter than usual, but at least not as scary out of it as he’d been those days before.

Loren sat down on the end of Eliot’s bed and asked flatly, “Dude, what the fuck was that?”

Eliot didn’t even pretend not to know what Loren meant, and he shrugged, his movements still a little slow and listless as he pawed through the backpack full of makeup homework Loren brought him.

“I don’t even know if I can explain it to you, man,” he mumbled.

“Try,” Loren ordered, a thread of steel in his voice. “You scared the shit out of me, saying that you wanted to die. What the fuck, El?”

“I
did
want to die,” Eliot said simply. “More than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. It’s always like that.”

Loren gasped. “This has happened to you
before
?”

“A few times.”

All Loren could do was sit and gape in horror and disbelief. “How come I’ve never seen it?”

Eliot stopped making neat stacks of his textbooks, turned and sat down next to him on the edge of the bed.

“It’s never been quite that bad before,” he admitted. “Most times when I get like that I can still go to school. I just feel sad, like there’s not a whole lot to look forward to or live for. But I can usually deal until it passes.”

“Jesus, El,” Loren whispered.

“But this time I couldn’t even roll over in bed, much less get out of it and get ready for school. My whole body was lead, like the weight of the world was crushing me down, no happiness or hope ever. When my mom checked on me I just told her I was sick, and she didn’t question it. She never does.” Eliot’s voice wasn’t bitter, just matter-of-fact. Loren couldn’t argue; his parents were the same. As long as they didn’t hear anything bad about him and his grades stayed decent, they let him go on doing whatever it was he’d been doing.

“But you need help!” Loren tried not to let his anguish show. This was his best friend, the person he cared about most in the world, and he never had any clue that he was fucking
suicidal
?