It was Wammy's House. It was full dark, a quarter until twelve. Everyone was celebrating the new year, taking down sparkling apple cider bottle by bottle (and no one was stopping any of them for once, in the spirit of the thing), and Mello was hiding out in his corner of the room.
It really was his corner; he'd already punched out two kids who'd tried to make it otherwise, and since they were only non-letters, and nine to his fourteen, they'd backed down without a fuss. No one had been there to supervise it, and Mello was lounging with a secret little sample bottle of grey goose vodka up the sleeve of his black sweatshirt. The vodka was by the graces of Matt, who was uncommonly good at lock-picking and shop-lifting, though he didn't seem to glory enough in either and usually stuck with internet hacking. Whatever. The corner was by the graces of no one but Mello, who wanted nothing more than to be alone tonight.
He didn't understand it. No one else seemed to even have noticed it, the way that Mello spoke now with a darker tone to his words, how when he turned his head it was with a wariness that was unwarranted by the safety and warmth of the well-guarded institution. How he was changing. They probably only saw the over-eager, hyperactive child who'd come through the doors only by the graces of L. The playful, thrusting bully. They wouldn't know otherwise because from that day forward, as far as Mello was concerned, they never looked.
None of them, not really, not even Matt who was up in the room they shared playing his latest acquisition in the realm of video games. "I've almost beat the last level, in a minute, Mells!"—that had been a half hour, and still no sign of him. Mello hadn't protested so much for once as he closed the door, half-hoping that his silence would rouse Matt from the depths of his gamer's daze. But it hadn't, and here he was, alone on the cusp of the new year. It was exactly how he wanted it. Every other year, he and Matt had curled up on the window seat in the back of the room, well out of Roger's view, splitting their own bottle of cider between the two of them and mocking the performances on the television.
A noise-maker blared obnoxiously from the corner of the room. Mello fidgeted with the vodka in his sleeve but didn't drink. He would wait—tradition, and all that. Several of the older kids who fancied themselves in pairs were cuddling up to one another. Mello wanted to punch them in the face, but he kept his steady, dead expression on the flickering screen. Control—how many times had he been told, Mello, control yourself—yet he'd kept a better cap on it than they would ever know. Control: it was one of his specialties.
And then it was time. The countdown had begun and Mello's mouth watered for some chocolate, for the drink up his sleeve, for everything to just be over and done—
"29! 28! 26!" Some of the kids, young and older alike, began to shout out the numbers with the people gathered in Times Square. Stupid mule-face Linda was edging up to stand at the shoulder of the boy she'd been eyeing the whole night. Mello could have told her she didn't have a snowball's chance in hell, not with that face.
"15! 14! 13!" Roger poked his head in briefly, then retreated for once, giving them the last few seconds to do whatever they pleased before the next round of exams in the coming weeks. One of the littlest boys, Johnny-wet-the-bed, belched loudly. Someone blew a noise-maker from inside the room this time. Matt was not going to come down from his game.
"10! 9! 8!" Mello tried to feel angry but he didn't feel anything at all. He was becoming hot, he needed to leave the room, sleep it off. He thought that every night, well, maybe this time it would work. He would wake up, and he would be normal again. Normal again. What a joke, he thought as his eyes scanned the room. Not a one of us normal in the whole bunch.
"6! 5! 4!" His eyes skimmed past a row of three couples, leaning in in preparation for their stupid little chaste pecks, to the one other person alone in the room.
Near was sitting, as always, a good couple of yards away, fidgeting with the tiny pieces of a large, blank puzzle. Same as every year, Mello thought caustically, and, as though his thought had somehow travelled the distance between them, Near turned. He did not, in a motion that Mello would call scathingly, "classic Near", stare off at some point behind Mello's head, vaguely twisting his hair. He looked directly at Mello with eyes that were large and dark and hideously empty. Mello was suddenly overly conscious of Matt's absence by his side, of anything indeed, that could get between himself and those eyes.
Near smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. It was to Mello a dark smile, a smile that said I know.
And Mello believed it, because for all Near was a freak, he was good for seeing. Remembering.
Noticing.
"3! 2! 1!"
The contact between their eyes burned dark and hollow and deep, and it seemed to Mello that with the dropping of the ball came a dropping of something much larger in the depths of him. The space it left was gaping.
"HAPPY NEW YEAR!"
The sound of several noise-makers went off, everyone leaned out of their kisses—Mello had missed the actual action, thank god—and Near turned back to his puzzle. As Mello watched, he reached up and twined a strand of hair around one long fine finger. He did not turn around at Mello's persistent glare.
"Mells!"
Matt pushed through the crowd, past Linda and the boy she'd been ogling (they were now standing arm in arm. Mello couldn't bring himself to even laugh).
"Geez, I kept calling for you. I thought you'd be at the window seat. What the hell..."
Matt trailed off as Mello brushed past him, weaving through sleeping children and laughing teenagers, taking the stairs one at a time. He didn't bother to run. On the landing he stopped to take the little bottle of vodka from his sleeve, twisting off the cap and tipping it back. He took nearly the whole thing in one swallow and felt it burn clear and awesome down the back of his throat, felt the blooming of warmth in his stomach. Behind him he could hear Matt coming. Maybe he was sorry he had missed the festivities. Why, it was a shit-fest, Mello thought of saying, and felt a crooked grin split his face.
The new year had come, but Mello had begun to feel very old.
"Who says that doesn't have its own kind of promise?" he mused bitterly as he took the rest of the stairs to his room, leaving the door open for Matt. He was feeling magnanimous tonight.
After all, he had a stash of chocolate in the drawer of the shared nightstand between the two beds. It was high time to make use of it.
