I didn't worry about much. Xandra would often leave hoards of leftover foods from the bar she worked at in the fridge, and my father sporadically gave both Boris and me ridiculous amounts of money. It was rare to see either of them unless Boris and I spent the weekend at my house, which occasionally happened, especially when Boris' father was home (which was hardly ever). Anything we couldn't steal was covered by the money my father gave us, which we pooled together and shared. We ate our meals together, drank together, and took whatever drugs Boris could get his hands on together. We spent our school days together when we could as we had most of our classes together. We rode the bus together, walked home together, lazed around the house, sat on the swings in the abandoned park, and sometimes roughhoused in the pool. I had always been wary of doing that ever since one night when we had way too much vodka and decided to dip in the pool under the stars. Boris' face was still covered in blood and I was glad he was willing to swim, as somewhere in the back of my mind the logical side of me muttered something about the chlorine disinfecting his wounds or something like that. It was definitely better than perfume anyways.
"Christ, I'm choking. I've got to get this off me." he'd said while I laughed. We stumbled outside-shredding our clothes, hopping one-legged out of our pants as we went-and jumped into the pool: bad idea, I realized in the too-late, toppling-over moment before I hit the water, blind drunk and too wrecked to walk. The cold water slammed into me and almost knocked my breath out. I clawed to the surface: eyes stinging, chlorine burning my nose. A spray of water hit me in the eyes and I spit it back at him. He was a white blur in the dark, cheeks hollow and black hair plastered on either side of his head. Laughing, we grappled and ducked each other, even though my teeth were chattering and I felt way too drunk and sick to be horsing around in eight feet of water.
Boris dove. A hand clamped my ankle and yanked me under, and I found myself staring into a dark wall of bubbles. I wrenched; I struggled. It was like in the museum again, trapped in the dark space, no way up or out. I thrashed and twisted, as gulps of panicked breath floated before my eyes: underwater belts, darkness. At last- just as I was about to gulp in a lungful of water- I twisted free and broke to the surface. Choling for breath, I clung to the edge of the pool and gasped. When my vision cleared, I saw Boris-coughing, cursing-plunging towards the steps. Breathless with anger, I half-swam, half hopped up behind him and hooked a foot around his ankle so that he fell face-forward with a smack.
"Asshole," I sputtered when he floundered to the surface. He was trying to talk but I struck a sheet of water in his face, and then another, and wound my fingers in his hair and pushed him under. "You miserable shit," I screamed when he surfaced, heaving, water streaming down his face. "Don't ever do that to me again." I had both hands on his shoulders and was about to dive on top of him-push him down, hold him for a good long time-when he reached around and clasped my arm, and I saw that he was white and trembling. "Stop," he said, gasping-and then I realized how unfocused and strange his eyes were.
From that day forward I couldn't get the way his eyes looked out of my head. They haunted me, the strangely unfocused glaze to them was almost identical to the clouded orbs that had startled at my voice the night before; only without the added terror and blood. In the peaceful morning where I drift awake slowly without fear, looking up to find him engrossed in a passage of The Idiot I run the events of that night at the pool in my head over and over again. I was drunk out of my mind and barely able to function, but I wish so badly that I had insisted for an answer, and explanation for why he was shaking and his face was sheet white. I ponder asking him now, but there is an awkwardness to doing so, as though such a question was reserved for that night and that night alone, and I had missed my chance.
Instead, we continue our odd routine as usual. He doesn't offer and explanation and I don't ask. The morning after I find him perched on the windowsill, the same glassy look in his eyes and his features drawn in almost sadness, I don't call him out for his obvious lie to me. I don't find it to be such a big deal. Boris had always been a rather restless person, always coming up with insanely (and very obviously) illegal things to do, lecturing me about the horrors of government, sometimes scaring the shit out of me when he randomly would jump and yell something, often in Russian or Polish but sometimes English too, and often not making much sense. I always fell asleep long before he did, and was an early riser. He would often elect to stay by my side in the mornings, playing with my hair lazily or reading instead of bouncing around and waking me up. I never thought much about it, that was just who Boris was. His under eyes were always rather shaded but it was never much of a concern to me.
Our week passed by in usual. I saw Xandra once thought the entirety of the week and that was just to inform me that she and my father were going to be staying somewhere a few hours away for two weeks on "business" and to drop off a boatload of snacks and money from my father. She'd lectured me about disappearing cigarettes and told me to take my empty beer bottles to the dump instead of leaving them around the house, but she always told me these things. As quickly as she had come, she left and Boris and I were left to our own devices, which wasn't unusual as this was almost always the case even when Xandra and my father weren't out. We went to school, as usual, dragging our feet and popping aspirins for our headaches. Boris took aspirins too, however, he hadn't been drinking as much as he usually did. We smoked weed on Tuesday but that was the only thing he brought all week. Compared to his usual never-ending energy, Boris was quieter. I started noticing the smell of cheap coffee on his breath instead of vodka.
I didn't worry about much. Yeah, sometimes I needed to worry about what I was going to eat or what chemicals to buy to clean the pool, but now the ever-persistent thought in my head was Boris.