Author's Note: Takes place at Jake's cabin a month or so after "Nowhere to Run".
A ton of thanks to necklace890 for helping me with this fic. She was a great brainstorming partner and helped me work with Jake's character and voice (or at least, my interpretation of Jake based off of what very little we have seen of him) and also helped me narrow down a very messy outline.
Just a reminder that I'm on Twitter: AlbatrossTam14 (protected tweets)
I don't own Degrassi.
I.
"I want you to know something," she whispered. "Something important."
She was lying on his chest, her chin digging into his shoulder blade, twirling one of her stray curls around her pointer finger. Jake loved that look on her. That flushed innocence. Always wanted to kiss her when she looked like that.
But she was giving him a look that meant she wanted to be unkissable at the moment.
"I want you to know," she murmured, "that it's okay if you want to open up to me."
"Okay," he whispered, bending in for another kiss. He looped one arm around her shoulder, resting one hand across the back of her head. Which fit perfectly in his palm. He loved that.
Clare obliged, but after a few seconds arched her head away and looked him in the eyes.
"I mean it," she said.
Jake sighed. "I know. I heard you."
She looked hurt by the flippancy, so he backtracked and bent their foreheads together.
"I understand," he murmured. "Okay, Clare?"
He closed his eyes, focusing on Clare's chin digging into his shoulder blade, and counted to ten. Let it go.
When he opened his eyes, she was peering up at him through the frazzled loops of her curls.
"Then why don't you?" she whispered.
He sighed, unfurling his arms from around her.
"I'm serious!" she said when he pulled away. "We never talk about you!"
He peered at her from his awkward angle. "Why do you want to know?" he asked wearily.
"Because!" Clare said petulantly.
She sat up, staring down at him, braced on one arm.
"It's just…" she said, trailing off as she toyed with the collar of his shirt, "sometimes, it's like I have no idea who you are." She tilted her eyes up to him. "And I should, you know? I mean, you're my boyfriend…and my stepbrother," she said hurriedly. "And we even live together. And I still feel like there are some times when I just don't know you." She bit her lip. "I don't want you to be a stranger to me."
Jake chuckled drily. Instead of responding, he shifted on the mattress, stretching his arms upward.
"Clare," he said, "look, everything's fine, all right? I don't know why you're so wound up about this."
"I'm not 'wound up'!" Clare argued.
"Then why are you getting upset?"
"You can't be with someone and be secretive with them!" Clare cried. She bit her lip, and Jake thought he could see tears, but she blinked before he could see any fall. "How can we be together if you don't talk to me?"
Jake sat up, shaking his head. "Look, just because I don't tell you everything – "
"You don't tell me anything!" Clare shrieked. She jumped off the bed and stood directly in front of him. "You just keep all these things hidden from me!"
"Hidden from you?" he repeated. "Like what? What, you think I'm some serial killer or something?"
"Can you at least TRY and take this seriously?" she snapped. "I'm trying to tell you that you're a stranger to me, and you act like you just could not care less."
"I do care!" he said. "I just have no idea why you think I'm keeping secrets from you!"
"Then why don't you talk to me about anything?" Clare demanded. "Jake, I just want you to know that you can come to me if you ever need me. For anything."
She reached a hand out, cupping his chin, and pulled him closer. He thought she was going to kiss him, but she stopped their faces just inches away from it.
"Because I'm here," she murmured. "I'm your girlfriend. And you should feel like you can talk to me about anything if you need to."
Jake smiled. "I do know that, okay? I've just got nothing to say."
He leaned in for the kiss, but she pulled back before it could land.
"Nothing?" she asked. Her face fell.
Jake sighed. He reached one hand up and scratched behind his head absently, trying to figure out what wouldn't set off another landmine.
The house was empty and silent. Clare stood before him, arms crossed over her chest, regarding him with a mixture of wariness and hopelessness. It was as if the entire world had hushed, waiting for him to say unsayable things.
He could have filled in the blanks by himself, but waited for her to finish them.
"See, THIS is what I mean," she said. "It's like you don't trust me enough…"
"Of course I trust you…" he began.
"And the more I feel this way," she cut across his voice, "the less I trust you."
Her voice went low and took on a hard edge that she only used when she was planning on striking a low blow meant to go in for the kill. It was usually used on her mother, but apparently Jake wasn't immune.
"I already dated Mr. Mysterious once," Clare continued. She narrowed her eyes. "And look how that turned out."
That hurt. Being compared to Eli. Not that Jake still had a grudge against the guy or anything – he and Eli had made peace with one another, and he had to admit, he liked the guy, under the eyeliner and black nail polish – just the way Eli had treated Clare. Jake knew he'd hurt her bad. He knew he would never do the same. And he meant it.
"I trust you," he repeated. "Okay? I do trust you." He sighed. "I have no idea why you think I don't."
"Because," Clare said. She stared at the ground. "You haven't told me anything that makes me believe you."
"What do you want to hear?" he snapped, exasperated. This conversation was going in circles. An exercise in slow-burning frustration and futility.
"I don't WANT to hear anything!" she cried. "I want the truth, Jake, that's all I've been saying!"
Clare sniffed back tears he could see were falling, and he mentally kicked himself, wishing he could rewind.
"You said you loved me" Clare said. Her voice was a low, cracked whisper. "And that you wouldn't leave."
Her head drooped, tears running to the floor. "And I can't just believe that!"
He heard her sobbing from the hall. Even after the obligatory door slam in his face; the hot, dry pine walls were bloated with her weeping.
II.
All along this unnamed stretch of rock-strewn Muskoka back road, the sky was low and heavy, thick with smoky storm clouds. The metal-bottomed truck absorbed the fractured sunlight and warmed the bottoms of his bare, calloused feet. It wasn't exactly hot out, but humid enough for his skin to tingle with the electricity in the air, the sizzle and current of rain. Jake was covered in a light, grainy sweat that slicked down the curve of his spine, smelling like mold and lake water. The humidity of the afternoon settled in his throat and coated every breath he took with a grimy haze.
The sky was eight different shades of blue. He counted. He could tell it was already raining on the other side of the lake, where the cobalt sky eased its way up to the Clare-eyed blue that drifted above the wet, hot clouds. Around him, the trees were in the process of doing their annual striptease, shedding their layers down to the discolored nakedness of their bones and limbs. The dangling tree branches scratch-scritch-scritched against the trunks like a whisper, like a noise trying to be quiet. Their falling leaves casted shadows in the corners of his eyes, as if someone were darting in and out of his vision. It was almost as if the lakeshore wanted Jake to know he was being watched.
Stop, he scolded himself. Paranoid much, dude.
He'd driven far out enough to find a clearing by the water that gave him an uninterrupted look at the clouds. He'd escaped the green treetop sky that blocked out the sun around the cabin with its tangle of snarled, leafy heads. Way out here, there was nothing that blocked his view. Just a broad, flat stretch of land where he could lay back and try to take it all in, impossible as it was.
Everything was flat here in Muskoka. Maybe that's what made the sky look so much bigger out here. There were no high-rise condos or skyscrapers for the clouds to compete with, like there were in the city.
Jake closed his eyes and took another hit from the joint dangling between his fingers. He didn't want to think about the city. He wanted to enjoy the last day of the holiday weekend here, not think about having to go back to Toronto and Degrassi and colorless, concrete cold.
He hadn't realized, until he moved back to the city, how many shades of color there really were. Not only was the sky currently shifting every type of blue in the wheel as the storm crept across the water, but Muskoka had more greens than he remembered existing. The deepest green lake water that looked black from a distance; the grey-green of the marshwater grass down by the water's edge that was nearly up to his waist; the neon of the little tufts that sprouted through the rocky soil; the rain-smelling green of the tangle of trees around their cabin, heavy with cold humidity, tall enough to block out the sun.
The stereo from inside the truck was playing one of his mixes, something he'd made years ago and now that he shared carpool with Clare usually had to keep in the console because Clare hated most of his music. For now, though, she wasn't here, and he could listen to whatever he damn well pleased, like the Old Crow Medicine show's banjos and the drunken twang of their harmonies rustling the jays from their lakeshore occupations.
He took another hit from the joint, inhaling deeply and letting it out as slowly as possible. Everything was smudged in the corner of his eyes. He couldn't tell if it was from the buzz he had going or from staring too long into the burning sky.
Clare hated that he smoked. He thought about keeping it a secret from her, but after the whole "Marisol-Smoked-The-Couch-Weed" segment of their failed camping expedition, he couldn't exactly hide it. Besides, he didn't want to be all secretive and sneaky about it. He didn't want to be that guy who lied to his girlfriend.
He almost let out a bitter laugh at that, but it came out a dry, aching cough instead. Kinda ironic, given the argument that just sprung out of nowhere.
Once, not long after the cabin fiasco, Clare had asked him if he had ever been stoned when they were together.
"No," he'd said, and he was being completely honest. She'd told him when they first got together that she had never done anything – any drugs, any drinking, not much in the way of physical stuff despite being in a serious relationship for three months – and that she wasn't really comfortable with smoking weed.
Which was okay with him. He wasn't planning on turning her into a stoner or anything. If she ever wanted to smoke with him, that was fine. Let her make her own choices about what she wanted.
Clare, though, had looked less than convinced by his answer.
"We were having fun," he assured her. "I wanted it to be real." He gave her a kiss and a smile. "And it was. No drugs needed. Ever."
She smiled a little at the kiss, but didn't return it or keep smiling for long.
"What's a matter?" he asked. "Do you trust me?"
"Yes," she said, and he knew right away she was telling the truth. "Just don't make me lose that."
The tone of her voice made him laugh, but not like something was funny. "Is that a threat?"
Clare's face didn't change.
"No," she said softly. "It's a promise."
They talked about it, and he promised he wouldn't do it in front of her, but that didn't mean she was any less pissy when he had the smell on him or if she suspected he was the slightest bit high.
He closed his eyes, turning his face straight into the sunlight. He didn't want to think about Clare. He could still feel that little room shaking with the rattle of her hysteria, her sudden fury. It dug under his skin and made him feel anxious and itchy in a place he could never satisfy.
He dangled the joint lazily in his fingers, bringing it closer to his lips. When he pulled away, he stared up at his hands, held above his head. He'd started to notice lately that his hands were starting to look just like his father's – rough and cracked, blistered and calloused, scarred in the same places. There was a scrape along the palm from where he'd cut himself on the tip of an old nail fixing window panes, one that had bled like hell and left him in a hand cast and a whole round of tetanus shots. That had been Grade 9. The year before that, he'd been hit in the head by a piece of crumbling roof trying to do a patch job with his dad at the cabin. A concussion and his first trip to the hospital in years. And last year, his hand had almost been crushed trying to latch a trailer on the back of his dad's truck in the move.
He had enough scars tattooed on him from working with his dad to be used to it. But that didn't mean Helen didn't freak out every time she saw Jake up a ladder, or on the roof, or underneath the car doing some amateur repair work.
Jake couldn't say he didn't like the attention. His dad didn't like Helen hovering around when he was trying to get some reno done, but Jake only pretended to mind. It made him smile, weird as it was, that she was constantly gasping and trying not to hide her mini heart attacks every time he was twenty feet off the ground.
In a way, it was nice to have her do that. It was kind of like what Jake imagined she should do. The dad and son do their routine of rough-and-tumble, and the mom sits back and tries to tell them to take it easy.
Helen was definitely not used to that "rough-and-tumble" part of her new family. Jake figured it came from only having girls; he didn't really remember Darcy, but Clare wasn't big into outdoorsy stuff, even when they were little. Jake figured Helen was now getting seventeen years' worth of "boys will be boys" stuffed in the few months she'd been married to his dad. A whole new experience of kid-raising.
Jake wasn't sure how well Clare liked his dad. They seemed to get along all right, though Clare avoided talking about their parents whenever they were alone, probably because the situation was so weird. But whatever issues Clare had with her mother – and Jake knew she had a bunch – he liked his stepmom. She hovered a lot, always peppered him with questions whenever he tried to leave the house, lectured him about marks when he'd come home with a D on his progress report for chemistry, insisted the entire family sit down for dinner.
It was a lot to take in a new space in a short amount of time; it wasn't what he was used to, and Helen still minced around him on tiptoe like she was still unsure about how to act. But he liked it. He'd never really had someone take an interest in all those little things before.
Back in September, he'd gotten a cold that had turned out to be full-blown pneumonia. Helen had taken him to the doctor, gotten his meds. Made him tea, and it felt weird but nice. Even tucked him into bed. Smoothed his hair back, whispered goodnight. Kissed his forehead. Like nobody had done to Jake since he was, like, four. It was like something out of a commercial.
It wasn't often anyone took care of him; even less that he let them. But Helen made it feel like that was what was supposed to happen. Like he was supposed to let her give him such attention.
His dad seemed to be trying with Clare. He always made it a point to talk to her at the dinner table; ask her how her day had been, what was going on at school, if she needed anything. That was what he asked the most, Jake noticed. Did Clare need anything. He asked the same question over and over again; different words, but the song remained the same:
"Wanna head to the grocery store with me, Clare?"
"I gotta stop at the pharmacy; you want me to pick up something for you?"
"Jake and I were going to head to the Farmer's Market in town; why don't you come with us?"
"I'm thinking about getting Netflix for the big TV. What do you think, Clare?"
"I was gonna add some garlic to this dish. You like garlic, Clare?"
Clare usually answered in one word – "sorry", "no", "okay", "maybe", "sure" – and his dad would try to make it sound like her opinion was the most important he'd ever heard.
Jake kind of pitied him. He knew his dad was reaching out to Clare in his own way, but he felt just as awkward as Helen must with him. Except more so, because his dad had always just had Jake to deal with – and Jake was easy. He was used to taking care of himself; used to not needing much; used to taking things as they came and letting them pass.
Jake learned that a long time ago. It didn't do any good to get stuck on that. You just…deal. Move on. Put shit behind you. Take whatever's left and do what you can with it.
That's just what you had to do sometimes. You had to make rooms. Rooms in your head. Places to sweep certain things when they couldn't be dealt with anymore, was beyond help or healing. Just push it behind a door and deadbolt it shut. Don't go poking at it.
III.
One room was leather and moving and smelled like wood shavings and sweat. The inside of his dad's pick-up truck, the old blue Silverado with the bench that could fit three people across the front; four if they're small like Jake is and can squeeze.
They're going to Burger King for dinner. It's the second time this week they've gone, something that's never happened to Jake before, but when he asked Dad what was for dinner, he'd just stared at Jake like he didn't understand what he was asking. He disappeared into the bedroom for a long time, and Jake poked through the drawers and the pantry, looking for something he could make by himself.
Jake knows they have a ton of food in the house – the people who kept stopping by the house were always bringing it over in pans and dishes and baskets that Dad always threw in the garbage when he took the food out, along with all the flowers that made Jake's head hurt from the smell – but all of that was food that you needed to cook, use the stove or the oven for, and Jake couldn't use any of those. He thinks about asking his dad for help, but he thinks Dad's sleeping again. He's been doing that a lot lately. Plus, he doesn't think Dad could help much, anyway. If Jake wanted something to eat, he'd have to feed himself.
The pantry doesn't have much. Boxes of spaghetti (he needed the stove) and cereal (who had cereal for dinner?) and some Nilla Wafers (which were good, but not for dinner). The fridge didn't, either. Salads that all those visitors kept bringing them (gross) and all the stuff you put ON food, like ketchup and mustard and pickles. Not even milk, or juice.
Back to the pantry, even though he knows no food would magically appear in the time he'd been fishing through the fridge. He sees a jar of peanut butter on a shelf higher than he could reach, though, and there was some bread. He could make himself a sandwich, though that would mean he'd have to use a knife, which he isn't allowed to touch. But Jake's hungry, and something tells him not to bother his dad right now.
He pulls one of the kitchen table chairs to the pantry door and stands on it, reaching to the shelf for the jar of peanut butter. It's extra crunchy, which he doesn't like, but he's too hungry right now to care. He just realized he can't remember if he ate lunch, or if he even ate today at all. But he's hungry enough right now to eat anything, even the peanut butter that normally only his dad eats.
When he opens the silverware drawer, he realizes that there aren't any clean knives left. All of them, he thinks, must be in the sink, filled with dirty dishes that haven't been washed. Jake thinks about trying to find one, but the dishes stink and are covered in gross food bits.
Sometimes, the people who come over with food and flowers and ask him the same stupid questions over and over again and touch him (He hates all that touching. Too much hugging, too many smells, too many kisses. He hates it that people just touch him all the time now, like they think they're allowed to) will stare at the dirty messes around the house and clean them up without being asked. But nobody's cleaned the dishes, and they're all nasty now.
He knows there are other knives, the ones that are REALLY sharp and kept in a wooden block by the stove. He's been told a million times to NOT touch those knives, EVER, by both his mom and his dad. But he's just so hungry.
And now he's got a dull ache in his stomach that has nothing to do with being hungry, and everything to do with thinking about mom even though he knows he's not supposed to. Just like he's not supposed to talk about her or say her name or try to ask Dad anything about her at all.
None of the visitors that keep showing up say anything about her, either. Like it's a curse word or something.
He's in the middle of spreading the thick, hard peanut butter onto one of the pieces of bread he's laid on the kitchen table when his dad walks in. His hair is messy like he's been sleeping, and his eyes are blinking like the kitchen lights are hurting them.
Jake pauses, knife in hand, and braces himself for trouble. He wasn't supposed to touch the any of the knives, and now he's holding one of the REALLY sharp ones. He thinks his dad will send him to his room, but instead, Dad just stares at the bread on the table and the jar of peanut butter.
"I'm making dinner," Jake announces.
Dad still stares at the half-made sandwich, ignoring Jake and the knife. He's been like this a lot lately. Just kind of goes away. He looks confused to be in his own kitchen.
He suddenly looks at Jake, and the look on his face makes Jake want to squirm. Dad just stares and stares and stares.
"What are you doing?" he says finally.
Jake puts the knife down on the table.
"Making dinner," he says. "I know I'm not supposed to use the knife, but I was really hungry."
His dad blinks. "You're hungry?"
Jake nods slowly. The sense that he's talking to someone even younger than he is – like one of his cousins – comes to him, even though he's talking to his dad who's a grown-up and should know that it's late and Jake hasn't eaten.
His dad suddenly walks out of the room and grabs his keys off the hook by the front door.
"Come on, Bud," his dad calls. "Let's get some dinner."
Jake leaves the half-made sandwich and follows his dad out the door. When he steps outside, he realizes that he didn't put his jacket on and is about to tell his dad that he should go back and grab it from the closet, but his dad is already walking towards the pick-up, and Jake doesn't think his dad would hear him if he tried to tell him about the coat, anyway. His dad isn't wearing a coat either, or snow boots, or a hat. He's just in a button-down t-shirt, but he doesn't seem cold.
Jake climbs into the truck. The cracked leather of the seat is freezing, and he can't help the chattering his teeth make as he sits as still as he can, arms held tightly around his middle, trying to warm himself up.
His dad puts the keys in the ignition, but then he doesn't turn the truck on. He just sits there, staring out the windshield, as if something really interesting is out there that he just can't look away from.
Jake wants to be quiet and knows he should, but his teeth are chattering too much and he's so cold and he's still so hungry.
He hesitates before asking. "Dad?"
His dad still stares out the windshield, keys idle and the car covered with a layer of the snow that's been falling since this afternoon.
"Dad?" he asks again.
His dad finally turns his head, looking at Jake with that same look that's both too hard and too empty at the same time. Dad doesn't say anything, just stares at him like he can't remember who Jake is, sitting beside him in the truck.
"Why don't you have your coat?" Dad asks.
Jake stares back at his dad. "I didn't have time to get it."
Dad's look doesn't change. He stares at Jake a little longer, then the keys, then back out the windshield.
"Are you hungry, Buddy Boy?" he says finally.
Jake has no idea what to do anymore. His stomach feels weird, but he doesn't feel hungry anymore. He feels kind of sick, and dizzy.
His dad sniffs loudly, staring at the air vents, and it slams into Jake real sudden – his dad is CRYING. His eyes are all red and puffy with real TEARS. Sniffing and huffing, trying to hold them back, but he's still got tears in his eyes, and his hands are shaking as they hold the steering wheel. Dad's CRYING.
"Hungry, huh?" Dad says again, making a coughing noise and sniffing again. His eyes are still red and puffy, but he doesn't have any more tears in them. "Let's get some dinner. You want Burger King? Burger King sound good?"
Jake can't do anything but nod. His voice feels stolen away. Even if he had anything to say right now, which he doesn't, he doesn't he could force any sound out of his mouth at all. He sits rigidly in his seat, just nodding his head, even though he's not hungry anymore.
His dad makes that coughing sound again that's not a real cough.
"Okay," he says, more to himself than to Jake. "Okay. Burger King. You and me, Big Guy. Going to Burger King."
He turns to Jake and smiles, but it kind of scares Jake to see it. It's not a real smile, but like the smiles of everyone that's been stopping by the house lately, the people who bring food and whisper the same words to his dad over and over again and say how sorry they are and how the two of them are HOLDING UP. Whatever that means. Holding up what?
His dad never cries with those people, even though they sometimes do. Dad didn't cry at the church, either. He's never cried. Jake hasn't, either.
His dad finally turns on the truck, and a blast of cold air shoots out the vents at Jake and chills him before it warms up to so hot that it feels like it's choking him.
Dad turns the radio and windshield wipers on, the snow flicking off the windshield and guitars that sound like a bad dream pouring through the speakers.
IV.
The sky had shifted again; there were four colors this time.
His head hurt. He took his free hand and pressed it against his temples, trying to ease the ache between his eyes. He blinked and saw fuzzy, exploding neon behind his eyes; he needed to stop staring directly into the sun. He blinked under the intensity of the shifting lights and colors of the still, storm-strewn sky. It was like looking through a dirty window.
Maybe Clare's deal wasn't just with her mom, he wondered, rubbing his palms over his stinging eyes. She wasn't used to life without a dad.
Jake questioned if Clare would have had as hard of a time with it all if her mom had dated more after the divorce. The ink had barely dried on their divorce papers before she started going out with his dad. And they'd married only two months after it had been finalized. Maybe, if Clare had seen her mother going through a more long-term dealing process and not just hopped straight into another marriage, she would have let go of some of the past.
Jake hadn't had a mother since he was eight; well, really since he was four, because that's when his folks had split and he saw her a few times a week. The divorce happened right after she'd basically checked out of being his mom and had become something else; some weird yellow-eyed creature that hid under the covers, surrounded by blankets and gentle, grey swells of delirium, dizzy with dark. Then she'd checked out for good when he was eight.
Either way, no matter how you tallied up the years, it had been a long time since he had a mom.
But for Clare, her dad had just left. One minute he was there, and the next he was up and gone. And she still hadn't processed that.
But still. Hanging on to all of this was hurting her. And definitely not letting her process it. She'd never be able to move it all through herself if she couldn't just shut the door and push the deadbolt.
Jake thought about the revolving door of women his dad had strung through after his mom, before and after she'd died. There had been a lot of those. An invisible, revolving tribe. Teachers and waitresses, nurses and receptionists, bartenders and managers, yoga instructors and dental assistants. Professional women who rotated in and out of the doors to the Martin house and their jobs. Dozens of them between the city and here, scattered across the small lakeside downs like a connect-the-dots picture. They had no special tattoos or identifications. Strangers to everyone, including the man they were sleeping with.
They were transients. Billboards to replace, songs to skip on a CD, bed sheets to be changed frequently. They came in and out of the Martin house like the spare tire in a car – good for what you need it to be, but definitely not a long-term part.
Then again, he thought, maybe not. Maybe Clare couldn't have handled that, the same way Jake had. She was always so afraid of leaving. Of walking out the door.
V.
Some doors were harder to get to than others, because they were hidden inside other doors. Sometimes the door was in the floor; he had to use the first room to find the second, the secret chamber buried inside.
Jake's door in the floor came from one of his dad's old girlfriends he'd had years ago, when Jake was still a kid. Sage. She'd smelled sharp and sweet at the same time, and had very short brown hair and pale blue eyes, and freckles like Jake. She used to trace them with her fingertips. He loved that. He and his dad were never touchy-feely, even when he was young, and Jake wasn't all that comfortable with touch unless he was the one instigating the touching. But every time she ran her fingers across his cheeks, he'd closed his eyes, mesmerized by the warm jump in his stomach and the lazy chill up his spine whenever she raked her nails lightly across his face.
Whenever she did that, he could find that door in the floor.
It wasn't a full room – he couldn't picture where he was, or even when he was, exactly. He couldn't see faces or hear exact words. But he still had the room. It was made of the cool touch of soft, soap-smelling hands cupping his cheek. A woman's voice, clear and sweet, singing a song Jake couldn't remember the words to but could hear the tune as clearly as his own thoughts. It was made up of the soft brush of fingers on his forehead, running over the skin of his closed eyelids, trancing him to sleep. It was the smell of those mother hands and the sound of that mother voice, clear as untouched sky.
He had to think of Sage and her fingers on his freckles before he could find that door. But once he pictured Sage, he could start to hear the hum growing in the back of his mind, the one he shut down 99% of the time (gladly). And then he had to do some quick mental blotting, because he didn't want Sage's face to be on his mind when he opened that door in the floor. Sage didn't belong there. No one did.
It had been Jake's private trap door. That little space, wherever and whenever it was. When he felt and heard her, love in syllables and skin.
VI.
People leave. Jake knew that.
There was distance everywhere. One that existed between people and the path to the nearest door. The breakeven came with how long it took the other person to close the distance and walk out that door.
Really, "forever" really just meant for ever as long as they'd give you.
Which meant a timeline. Which meant it was better for everyone not to plan for no more future than the afternoon.
That was the only reality. You find people who are worth it, and stay with them for as long as they'll stay with you, however long that was, before they left again. Most of the time, it was family.
With Clare, it was both. She was family, and she was worth it.
But she just didn't understand that.
Well, that wasn't true. More like she didn't WANT to know that.
And it probably would have killed her if Jake explained it, so he never did.
VII.
This room smells like damp and powder, like dirty linens and rain when the sun was still out. It's dark even in the middle of the day, with shades drawn over the windows and the bed sheets making waves Jake feels like he could disappear and drown in.
The fan hums and the blinds are slitting in blades of dusty white light into the dungeon. It's suffocating with the smell and dizzy with the shades of exhaustion that make up the waves of stunted frenzy choking the stale bedroom air.
He sees the plastic green plate sitting on the night table that used to have his dad's stuff in the drawers, but now is filled with his mom's medicine. He sees the crackers he'd put on the plate earlier, and the cup of water he'd poured. None of it has been touched since he put it there last night.
Something in the bed, something with grey-tinged skin and yellow eyes and hair like a wet bird's nest, stirs when he tiptoes into the room.
"Mom?"
No answer. Its head still remains buried in the pillows.
"Mom?" A higher, whinier pitch.
The sheets rustle, an ocean wavering under a grey pre-storm sky.
"Mom?"
He hears a sigh. Then one slitted eye crack open just barely. "Yeah, Baby."
Her voice doesn't sound like it usually does. It sounds like the sandpaper his dad worked with, harsh and grating and scraping the soft pad of his hand whenever he touched it. It sounds like all the color had been washed out of her voice. Like she's speaking in black and white, all dryness and harsh lines.
"Can you make me some noodles?"
She rolls over, her back to him. "Daddy can't do it for you?"
Jake stares at her.
"Dad's not here," he says. "He's at his house."
Mom knows that. Is supposed to know that. How did she forget?
"Can you fix them yourself?" she mumbles into the pillow.
"I can't work the stove!" he whines.
It makes her wince, burying her face back into the pillowcase. He thinks she's going to ignore him for good, but instead she pushes up into a wobbly sitting position, running a shaking hand through her wild hair.
"Okay," she murmurs. "Okay. Yeah. Come on. Let's fix you some noodles."
His mom keeps blinking and making these little sounds under her breath, like something's hurting her that he can't see. She stands at the countertop with a peg-legged stance. Jake thinks she looks like a pirate. He wonders, watching her rustle through the fridge and pull out a jar of mayonnaise, if other people's moms sleep all day and act like pirates.
"Shit!"
The crash makes him jump. He takes a step forward to it, the broken mayo jar and the white goop covering the kitchen floor. It smells like sour milk.
"Shit!" she keeps repeating. "Shit, shit, shit!"
He takes another step, and she throws out her hand.
"Stay back, honey," she says. "Broken glass. Not good."
He stays back, but instead of trying to clean up the mess or pick up the chunks of glass on the floor, his mom just stands there, looking like a pirate (or the ghost of a pirate), hands shaking and saying, "shit, shit, shit" over and over again.
Why did she need mayonnaise for noodles, anyway?
She goes back to bed. He cleans up the stinky blobs and finds a box of stale cereal in the mostly-empty pantry. Sits by the door with his Gameboy, volume turned down so he wouldn't bother her, one ear cocked in case she needs him for anything.
VIII.
Somewhere from the west, thunder rolled. The trees chirped in the stiff, wet air. It sounded like a crowd of darting gossips hidden in the dense black woods. The same woods Clare had gotten lost in over the summer; the same woods where drunk and wild teenagers would go to party and every summer one always ended up drowning in the lake while everyone else was fucking against the tree trunks; the same woods that supplied the local stores with Christmas trees every year. His dad had always bought one and brought it home in the bed of his black Tahoe, latched down with bungee cords and baling twine.
This would be his first Christmas not at the cabin since he was little. This was going to be their last trip here probably until summer, when the thaw had come.
Helen was trying to organize something for Christmas Break, a beach vacation in Florida. Her parents had a condo down there. But his dad didn't know whether or not he could take off work.
"Take the kids," he was telling her. "Go on. Enjoy fun in the sun. It's not a big deal to me if you guys leave me behind, you'll have fun."
Jake was kind of hoping Helen would cancel the plans and just spend Christmas at home. Jake wasn't overly fond of the beach. He loved the outdoors, loved sprawling views and open spaces and long stretches of nothing that made his chest feel less tight. But the beach was too much nothing for his liking. Empty and somber-colored, with dark salt meadows at his back blocking off any view beyond the creeping sand dunes. The sand stretched out like eternity carpeting his feet, and the sea crawled outward until it met the sky and swallowed it up as if it never existed. Whenever he was there, he couldn't shake the lonely feeling that he'd reached the end of existence. Not a good idea to have.
Besides, he hated the smell of the ocean. Like sweet, hot decay; like semen and spilled cheap wine. Like the world was rotting away.
IX.
Another room was sticky and damp. It was in a tangle of trees carpeted with moss, heavy with cold humidity and made heavier by the shadows of oak and pine. The door opened up to the shore of a wine-dark lagoon, where the damp overgrowth and treetops blocked out the sun; the damp earth and stones smelling cold and distant and remote, but welcoming. This private darkness was outlined in gold, a barrier of the sun creeping in through the heavy leaves and waterlogged mossy walls.
He has a bucket of ice in his hands, ice cubes they spent all day making from the sink and the single cube tray they kept in the cabin freezer. It had taken a long time, and he'd almost given up hope that they would ever be ready. When you're four years old, an hour can feel like a week. More than an hour's wait might as well be like telling someone to wait until the next blue moon.
But here they are, standing by the edge of the lagoon, with a bucket of new ice and water that looks too still to be anything but black glass.
She takes a handful of ice, giggling at him when she cups it in her palms.
"Cold, huh, buddy?" she says, gasping lightly.
She takes a handful of the cubes and chucks them as far as she can into the glassy surface. They land with a plop, creating black ripples that got bigger and bigger the farther they spread out.
She laughs again, then grabs another handful and hurling them out at the dark water before the cold can start to ache.
Jake digs his own hand in, feeling the sting of the smooth, frozen edges brushing up against his skin. He tries to grab a whole handful like she does, but only manages one or two. He hurls his arm back and tosses them as far as he can, trying to make as big a ripple as she does. He hopes, maybe that they can rouse the fish that must be sleeping underneath that still surface, maybe make them jump out of the water and catch the ice cubes in their mouths. Maybe they can even see an alligator come out of the water. At three, it doesn't occur to him that what they're doing is scaring off the fish instead of drawing them out, and that Canadian lakes are far too cold for alligators to survive this far north.
She grabs another handful of ice and gives it a toss, then grabs his face in her freezing hands. It makes him shiver and try to pull away, but she still holds on. Her long fingers wrap around the curve of his cheekbones, and brush the tip of his nose before brushing back his damp, sweaty hair and kissing him on his sunburnt forehead.
He tries to stay still, but he wants to keep throwing the ice, and besides, her hands are so cold that they're making his face hurt. Its news to him; sometimes, you can be so cold that you actually start to burn.
X.
At this point in his life, Jake was sure that his head was basically a room full of doors; all heavy oak, too thick to hear behind the wood, deadbolted shut and standing somberly like guards along the stretch of wall that circled his head room.
That's what Clare just couldn't get. She seemed so bent on reliving the past over and over again. You couldn't do that and hope to deal. No one could live with that much shit in their head all the time.
He loved her; he honestly did. Never cared about anyone like he cared about her. He wanted to make her happy, wanted her to be able to move on past this shit. But she never could. She never let go of anything.
And what was the point of it all? Why did she always have to carry it around, like a fucking disease?
XI.
There was another door he never opened, and never would. He kept more than one deadbolt on that one.
The door was made of brick. Bright red, it was almost like the door was burning. Like whatever was on the inside was burning too brightly to contain behind the hard, thick walls.
It opened to a place he'd only been once. A red brick house to match the red brick of the door. A house on the end of a cul-da-sac with some name he didn't remember but thought had something to do with a tree – birch, or beech, something like that. It was a street off a street in a state he knew nothing about.
Georgia. His mother's world had been a world of believers, a land of faith and fire. The Deep South; churches everywhere, the breezes rustling through the trees like murmured prayers. A south he knew nothing about; his south was south of downtown, not southern Georgia. Not a southerner's heritage, one that was and wasn't his at the same time.
Her funeral had been in a small, but bright Methodist church. It had had giant stained glass windows lining the walls, a carousel of color that made him dizzy and gave him a headache if he tried to look at them for too long. The cold sunshine made the colors seem to burn more brightly, frozen hot in spite of the winter wind chill.
After they got back to Aunt Liz's house, he went outside and lay down in the middle of the pavement. It was January in Georgia, and still cold, but nowhere near as cold as it was in Toronto. He'd never seen a snowless winter before, and was surprised that he could walk on the cracked pavement in the without slipping on a patch of black ice or needing show boots. He'd gone to the middle of the cul-da-sac and stood in the middle of the teardrop-shaped street and stood under the sun.
Everything here looked so perfect. The grass was still green, the houses still visible, cars were idle in the driveways. There was no snow underneath the heels of his shoes, slush that only looked neat until you were stepping in it and realized how dirty it was.
It was like a cheat. The no snow, the sunshine. Like it could be any other day.
He was surprised to feel the rocky pulse beneath his palms. The blackness absorbed the heat of the unchecked sunshine. He lay down on his back, palms against the concrete, and stared straight up at the burning morning.
"Are you trying to get yourself killed?" Grandpa yelled at him later. Uncle Rory had found him lying in the middle of the street and screamed, really screamed, like Jake had never heard a man scream before. It made him sit up, and Uncle Rory's face was completely white and scared, and it scared Jake, because he'd never seen a grown-up scared before.
That night he'd heard Aunt Liz talking to his dad.
"I'm not just gonna to let you take him back to Canada if you're not going to get him some help."
"What help? He's going to be okay."
"We just buried his mother today! Of course he's not okay."
"God! Would you just fucking leave it, Liz? Jesus Christ."
"Well, at least tell me you're taking a break for a while."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I don't know, Glen. Don't you think it might not be good for Jake to see you parading around after he just lost his mom? Forget that it's not exactly healthy for him to see that anyway."
"Liz…" That was Uncle Rory's voice. "Come on."
"Well, it's the truth!" Aunt Liz argued.
"Oh, fuck you, Liz," his dad said.
"No, fuck you, Glen!" There was a sound of something clattering to the floor. It made Jake jump from his hiding space on the stairs. "You are not just going to take him back to Toronto if you're going to carry on like that. He needs someone to take care of him!"
"And you don't think I can?"
"The way you've been acting lately, no, I don't think you can!"
"The way I've been acting," his dad repeats.
"Okay, Glen, look," Uncle Rory butt in again. "No one's trying to say you're a bad parent. We don't think that. Right, Liz?"
Aunt Liz didn't answer.
"We're just worried about you, man," Uncle Rory finished. "You and Jake."
There was a long silence.
"Well," Jake heard his dad finally say, "I appreciate the concern." He didn't sound like he did, Jake thought. "But I've got things under control."
"I'm sure you do," Aunt Liz mumbled.
There were footsteps, then he saw Aunt Liz at the bottom of the staircase. Jake held his breath and hoped she wouldn't see him, but she walked right by without seeing him and slammed the door to the bedroom behind her.
He could still hear his dad and Uncle Rory talking in the kitchen.
"Sorry about Liz, man. Lydia was her sister, you know? She's always gonna defend her. She knows you love Jake. She's just been a mess since…"
"It's okay, Rory," his dad interrupted. "Really. Just, it's fine."
"I mean," Uncle Rory continued, "I know you two had it rough. You know, Liz likes to pretend like everything was great all the time, but, I mean, we both know that wasn't true. Lydia had her problems."
"Okay, Rory."
"I mean, she always had, even before I married Liz, you know? Like when they were girls. Liz knew it, I knew it. We all did. She just did what she could to keep it under control."
His dad didn't answer.
"But we know," Uncle Rory said, "she loved the hell outta you, and that kid."
Still no answer from his dad.
Jake heard Uncle Rory clear his throat.
"Liz and I, we know that," he said again. "We're just lookin' out for you guys. You know. Family."
XII.
He wondered, randomly, what Clare's room might be like – if she ever built one for herself.
Her actual bedroom smelled like honey and vanilla. Like the feeling you get on Christmas Day – the sweetness that would drug you under the weight of your contentment.
He hoped her room was something like that. Or anything. At this point, he'd settle for her room being an abandoned warehouse. Or a closet. Or a garage. Anything for her, just so long as she was able to start moving her life through her body and finally, finally, FINALLY come to some peace.
XIII.
There was one more door. The deadbolt for this one had been thrown a long time ago. The room was always stuck on replay. It smelled like exhaustion and sounded like being dizzy.
The lights would be off and she'd be under the sheets again. Her hands would be shaking. She'd be replaying "Sweet Baby James" over and over again from the CD player on the corner of the dresser. She'd always change it to "Sweet Baby Jake". It was her own little song. He didn't realize those weren't actually the words until he was twelve.
"Baby boyyyyyyyyyy," she'd say, drawing out that "y" like it went on forever. Her voice would sound like the static of the television or a cloudy sky. No color or lines, just a sound that could have been anything but didn't sound like anything. She'd hold out her hand like a twig about to snap. She'd smile at him like her face was trying hard not to break apart. "Sweet Baby Jake." She'd giggle at putting his name in the song. "Come here."
He'd crawled into her lap. She'd smooth his hair back, scratch his scalp with her bare, untrimmed nails, mesmerizing him.
"You love me, baby?" she'd murmur into his hair.
He'd try not to wrinkle his nose or pull away from her, even though she'd smelled. She'd smelled like the smell he'd smell whenever he walked into someone else's house. They couldn't smell it themselves, but he always did. She'd smelled like her own world. Not like powder, or soap, or rain. Like she wasn't really her. But he'd known this other mom for a while, was used to seeing this thing that slept and breathed and lived in the dark and sometimes looked at his face like she was trying to remember it.
"Yeah," he'd mutter. He'd still be under the spell of her fingers running over his skin. He was a sucker for whenever she did this to him. He'd agree to do anything as long as she'd keep doing it.
"Yeah?" she'd whisper. "You love me? You won't leave?"
Before he could answer, she'd pulled him in tighter, nearly smothering him against her shoulder. Her bones would be sticking out from under the skin, poking his face and hurting him, but she'd slip her hand up his shirt and start scratching his back, and by then he'd be too blissed out to try and move away.
The stereo would keep playing his song about a young cowboy and deep greens and blues; won't you let me go down in my dreams? Rockabye, Sweet Baby Jake.
"It's so beauuutisfhfsul at night, mmmbabyboy?" she'd whisper.
Her voice would be sliding and dropping off with every word. Like a song slowly fading out.
XIX.
The old truck stereo was rattling. Willie's nasal warbles were mingling with the clicking trees and the frantic current in the hot sky as the rain came down, the roar of an Indian summer storm.
Right now, Willie was singing "Blue Eyes Cryin' In The Rain" (and wasn't that the damndest thing?). Jake ran through the track listings in his head. He was on track 4; he had six more songs to go before "Always On My Mind" came through the stereo's fuzzy speakers. And he needed to get out before that happened, before his life felt like a scene from one of those teen shows Clare watched, full of brooding, thoughtful guys who were supposed to be playing regular teenagers, even though were ten years older than Jake.
Maybe that was the type of guy Clare wanted him to be. Straight from her TV shows. The kind with cheesy diary voice-overs and crappy, half-baked breathy pop songs that all sounded alike, like feathers falling slowly to a light-strewn hardwood floor.
Jake sighed. Well, those guys were TV characters. They had scripts written for them and plotlines to enact. People didn't go around just puking their feelings everywhere. If he had shit, he'd deal with it on his own. Sweep it like dirt under a rug that already had a giant pile of dirt swept underneath it that he ignored, because that's how you dealt with shit. Not by dwelling.
Jake wondered, exactly, what Clare thought he needed to talk about. Their parents' marriage? He was happy his dad was happy with Helen. The fact that they were step-siblings? Weird, no doubt about it, but they managed. School? Yeah, right.
He sighed, rubbing one calloused palm over his eyes and tasting grit on his dry lips. Clare never brought up the topic of his mom, even in passing. Every time they stayed into any conversation that might lead to this, she got this weird look on her face like she was afraid of what would happen if she kept talking.
He didn't tell her about James Taylor, about mayonnaise jars and ice buckets. About powder hands and pirate legs and speaking in black and white. He didn't tell her about Sage or Aunt Liz, or about the time he saw his dad cry in the snow. He didn't tell her about his mom's funeral, all the colors too bright and still like they were frozen that way, or the warmth of the asphalt against his back as it absorbed the late January sunshine.
There wasn't any point in talking about them. Those times were over; their doors were shut.
The rain fell on the truck bottom, but Jake couldn't seem to feel the beat of any on his face. He stared up at the darkening sky – now only three shades – and sighed, coughing as he breathed in the stormy smell of rotten wood and mildew. He grabbed the plaid shirt he'd discarded earlier, hanging over the lip of the tailgate. He'd worn it yesterday chopping firewood out back, and it smelled like it – the hot, dry sweetness of pine, of dust and sweat. But it didn't smell like weed, so he put it back on, the fabric sticking to his damp skin, hoping he'd smell like a thunderstorm instead.
He wondered if Clare would be speaking to him when he got back. The last time they'd argued, she retreated to her bedroom for the rest of the day and pretended to be sleeping when her mother had called the two of them down to dinner. Jake didn't see her until dinner the next night, and even then it was more of her retreating backside than anything else, because she'd stormed downstairs and grabbed herself some leftovers before huffing back upstairs without a word to him.
He'd stop at the general store before he went home, he told himself. Get her one of those Arizona teas she loved so much. He couldn't remember if she liked the regular or raspberry-flavored, so he'd get both and hope for the best.
His best was that he wouldn't run away. He said he wouldn't.
He jumped off the tailgate and just stood for a moment, looking out at the lake. The sky was cobalt and gunmetal, the sky filled with clouds that looked like they were trying to be important, but across the lake and far in the distance there was a light orange blossoming in the horizon, a sunset that might eventually roll over here if the storm blew over fast enough. He stretched out and felt the creak of his stiff muscles, his back aching from lying on the hard, ridged floor of the truck bed for so long. The ground was wet underneath his feet, but still warm, even in this late into fall.
He would go to the corner store. Get Clare her drink. Gage what kind of mood she was in when he got home.
Work out the salvage. Try and move on.