Parker. He is morbidity, cemeteries and post mortem photographs. He is camp and theater and melodrama. He is tragedy personified with Kleenex in his pockets, dead Disney moms and Dickensian poverty. He is long fingers and limp wrists and haunted button eyes; babies and girls' dresses. He is germs and grief, runny noses and The NeverEnding Story. Parker is my Parker, and no one else in the world will ever be like him...
Tate Langdon lay in the memory of his teenage bed, watching the storm outside periodically illuminate the ceiling. He didn't know how long it had been raining or how long he'd been lying there or how long mama and Addie and all their things had been gone. In death, he'd found, time moved differently. Forever had no meaning anymore. His entire existence was one long, cold, boring day.
His hand teased the waistband of his jeans as he considered jerking off. He wasn't horny or even particularly bored. But the scent of his best friend, the vividness of his memory was still so potent in Tate. He remembered the way that Parker's breath sounded, the horse intermittent snuffle when he slept; the slightly ill heat of his chest and the salt taste of his face. Tate thought that maybe if he touched himself, if he associated the memories with an intense spasm of feeling, they'd stay longer. He wouldn't forget the boy's voice or his face.
Before he could unzip, thunder clapped and the house shook, the room illuminating and its phantom contents chattering like cold teeth. Tate's dark eyes widened, filling. He was a little boy again, stuck in the memoriam body of a teenage mass murderer. "Mama..." he called hoarsely, a desperate whisper.
Nora came to his bedside, bringing with her the scent of deadstock perfume and notes of old phonograph music, her cold hands tender on his face.
-Three weeks earlier-
When Parker Morgan slept, he dreamt of mothers. The fevered subconscious trips filled the boy-so charismatic in life-with a vulnerable longing that felt like hot chicken broth in his chest and his eyes. In them, he could remember crying: the feeling like his nose was full of chlorine, like he'd stayed underwater too long in a swimming pool. The Dumbo montage haunted him. Mothers rocked babies in long arms and elephant trunks. They smelled like gardenias and violets. A mother kangaroo slept in the corner with her baby. She sounded like a rocking chair.
I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always.
It was always the same. Just at the moment where everything was safe and lovely and the hurting stopped, when everything was black and white and illustrated like a sentimental kids' book, suddenly they all went stiff and cold. They smelled like hospitals, formaldehyde, and the cardboard-crunch of their bones was all wrong. They shouldn't be stiff like that.
As long as I'm living. AS LONG AS I'M LIVING.
Parker's green eyes popped open abruptly, his body jolting awake as "Sliver" blared through the speakers of his alarm clock radio. "Fuck," he muttered, breathing hard. His heart felt like a freight train.
Grandma take me home, grandma take me home, grandma take me home, I wanna be alone...
The dark-haired boy grinned wanly at the hoarse comfort of Kurt Cobain's voice. It was the only Nirvana song he liked. In general Parker liked his bands a little quirkier, less hard: Beat Happening, They Might Be Giants. Indie-pop was clever. Grunge was more Tate's thing.
Parker groaned, peeling himself off of the cot he slept on in lieu of a bed. It wasn't comfortable at the best of times, but today he was hungover, and furthermore, sick. Living in a home that wasn't heated half the time, where nutrition was Top Ramen and booze, would have given any seventeen-year-old a permanent sniffle. His eyes felt crusty from sleep still and his head ached dully with fever. He coughed, his slight shoulders shaking with the force. He couldn't remember anymore whether he was thin through genetics or illness.
Parker stood, rubbing his eyes and pushing his overgrown bangs out of them. He felt shitty enough to avoid changing his clothes, but vanity prevailed. Barely looking, he grabbed black jeans and a striped cardigan from his closet and stripped quickly, putting them on. The only thing he didn't change was the faded, shrunken NeverEnding Story tee-shirt he wore under the sweater.
The hungover boy swayed, struggling to steady himself as he sat back down to shove his feet into his ancient, dirty white Keds. Noticing that he'd left his scrapbook out, he stashed it quickly back under his cot. Parker's heart skipped a beat.
He looked around the small bedroom. Like all of the trailer, it was in disarray, stark and undecorated. The floor was a fortress of clothes and videocassettes. The teenager's disaffected face softened when he caught sight, yet again, of the little framed photo on the bedside table. The woman in it was in her late twenties, with Parker's pale skin and off-black hair. Even her elfin facial features and upturned nose mirrored his own almost exactly, right down to the faded spray of freckles.
Parker's face felt like it could crack. "I'll be good today, mom," he said quietly. "I promise." He kissed the little frame gently before stashing it too under the cot. He wondered if he'd be able to catch Tate before the first period bell rang.