Jake: Try to Fix It. By: orphan_account You are sitting alone on the curb, poking at a… something. You’re not sure what it is. Some kind of insect, it seems, but you don’t really care. You’re bored. Your friends Roxy and Dirk are making something for you, for your birthday or something. It was obviously Roxy’s idea, probably getting the date all jumbled up again, because your birthday is next month, not this one. She’s never been very good with the date. The day of the week, maybe, but she’ll get the 4 and the 24 mixed up in a heartbeat. ‘Course, you could go see Jane, chat with her a bit, but since you and Dirk got together she’s seemed a bit more closed up to you. You’re not sure what you’ve done, but trying to talk to her is a surefire way to ruin a good mood. That look on her face when you bring up Dirk at all, even if you’re just telling a story that involves him at all, is actually very upsetting. And no matter how much you want to talk to her, you don’t, because it’s quite apparent that she doesn’t want to see you. She’s just not ready yet, you suppose, to accept that two of her best friends have started dating. You glance up from the insect and over in the direction of Jane’s building. It’s Roxy’s, too, while your apartment is in Dirk’s building. They’re just over two blocks away from each other, which makes visiting extremely easy. You live with your grandmother—or, you would, though she spends weeks at a time on safaris photographing rare frogs or something, so you never really see her at all. Like how Dirk would live with his super-rich bro, but the guy’s really elusive and only really stops by to give him a pat on the head, check to make sure he hasn’t starved, and grab some comic he’d left under the bed. Dirk didn’t really grow up with his bro, he just kind of lived in his shadow. Then there’s Jane and Roxy, who live with their father and famous author of a mother, respectively. You guess that they’ve got much more normal lives than that of your boyfriend and you. Sometimes, you admit, it does bother you, and you wish you knew where the hell your grandmother went or at least that she’d send a postcard and a picture of a frog she’d drawn glasses and scrawled reminds me of you! on. That’d be better than going day by day by day wondering if a tiger had mauled her yet. Groaning, you shove yourself to your feet. Dirk and Roxy must be finished by now, you decide, and you shove your hands into the pockets of your shorts and make your way back to the building. It’s fairly warm for an October day (almost 80) and it makes the walk easy and just warm enough that the goosebumps you’d had earlier had settled back down. You kick a stray pebble and wonder what your friends had actually been doing. Maybe they’d just wanted you out for a while. Yeah, you know you could’ve just gone to your own apartment, but it was a nice day, the haze a bit thinner than usual because of the wind (which ruffled your hair and dashed along your skin, threatening those damn goosebumps again) you thought a little while outside wouldn’t be too bad. The lobby of the building is lined with dusty maroon carpet that looks tanner than it does redder, and the beige wallpaper is faded and fraying at the corners. There’s a mirror behind the desk, which is clustered with papers and pens and checkbooks, and behind it sits a dark-skinned woman with hair that corkscrews six inches out on all sides of her head. She has her face in her hands and her elbows on the table, and her laptop in front of her blares harsh white light. In the mirror, you see only rows and columns of tiny numbers. There are two elevators and a door that leads to the stairs, propped open with a chair. You greet the woman—Shelby, you think her name is—and take the stairs. It takes you a good five minutes to get to your floor and Dirk’s, but you don’t mind. The stairs are healthier than an elevator, anyway. You pass his room on the way to your own. You want to change your shirt, seeing as you probably smell like car exhaust, but you pause outside his door. It’s silent. No beats—of his own, or from the stereo. That’s very, very strange. His music is kind of a given. It’s always playing. Maybe Roxy turned it off because it hurt her head? Unnerved now, you knock on his door. You’ve got a spare key, but you almost never use it, usually opting to knock and wait for him to open the door. The last time you just knocked once to make your arrival known and walked in, he’d been in the bathroom, and at the sound of your entry he’d called that he’d be out in a moment in a bit of a panic. You never asked about it. It made him uncomfortable, you knew, but you’ve got your suspicions now. You still don’t want to see it. Seeing it makes it real. And you want to help him but you can’t. There isn’t an answer. Dread floods through you and you rush to shove the key into the door but you keep fumbling with it, keep missing the lock. When you manage to get it in you push the door open and kick it closed behind you as you run in, hearing the slam, not caring. “Dirk!” you shout, breath coming out in quick pants. “Dirk! Where are you?” Not in the bedroom. Not in the main room. Not in the kitchen. The bathroom door is locked. You run at it, shoulder first. Pain blossoms under your skin. You remember reading somewhere you should brace yourself on one heel and kick it with the other. You do so, twice before it crashes open and hits the wall, hard. You’ve found Dirk. He’s on the floor, white tiles stained red. His head rests against the side of the tub; he is shirtless, holding his left forearm gingerly. It’s covered, elbow to wrist, in blood. You can’t even see the wounds. There’s an open razor on the floor on his right. He doesn’t seem to have heard you enter, or at least, taken the effort to notice. You dart forward and fall to your knees at his side. No. It can’t be as bad as it looks. You’ve never seen this much blood. No. No, this can’t be happening, no, God, please, no. You vaguely hear yourself calling his name, over and over and over and over until he tilts his head, eyes fluttering open a fraction of an inch. “Jake?” he breathes. You grasp his shoulders, certain it’ll hurt him but you don’t care, you pull him into your lap. He winces, releasing his breath in a hiss, and you wipe his hair from his face, muttering lies about how it’ll be okay and how you’ll make it better and how it isn’t even that bad. He raises his other hand to your face and runs his thumb over your bottom lip. You let out a sob. A tear falls onto the skin of his throat. “Jake,” he whispers. “’S not your fault.” You want to close your eyes but you can’t. A sob racks your body again. “But it is, Dirk, it is. I knew,” you admit. “I knew that you—long sleeves in the summer in Houston. Hobby blades in the bathroom drawer. How could I not? But I… I didn’t do anything!” His eyes have widened slightly; he didn’t know you knew. But he shakes his head. “No. Couldn’t’ve… nothing would’ve helped.” You clutch him, desperate, despairing. “I’m a coward!” you cry. “If I had spoken up I could have helped you… I could have fixed it! Let me fix this, Dirk, please, let me fix it, I can fix it, I promise, just let me—!” You’re crying now, you’re reaching out, grabbing the tissue from its roll and tugging and pressing it to his arm. Your movements are clumsy and uncoordinated. Dirk’s hand moves, weakly grips your wrist, stills it. You turn it, take his hand, squeeze it. Chest shaking, you kiss his fingertips, tasting blood on your lips. The corner of his lip tilts up in a blissful smile, and he leans his head against your upper arm. “I love you,” he mutters, eyes closed. Then he opens them again, topaz meets emerald, he says it again. “I love you, Jake English.” “I know,” you murmur, bowing your head and pushing his face to your neck. “I know, I know, I love you too, so much, Dirk, so much.” But it wasn’t enough. He keeps repeating something that sounds like ‘I’m cold, it’s dark, I’m afraid’ but his speech is all slurred, just a few drops of syllables all pooled together. You hear I love you sighed into your ear once more, and then the body in your arms goes limp and heavy and now you’re weeping, you’re bawling and it’s pathetic, you’re pathetic. You weren’t enough to save him. You’re rocking back and forth and back and forth and crying out his name. You weren’t enough to make him better. You feel blood soaking your knees, staining skin red. You weren’t enough to fix him. His razor is still on the floor, bloody and silver. Your eyes linger on it. Dirk is dead and it’s your fault. And suddenly it’s in your hand.
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 22:38:06 +0000