Between that incident and the video; it became clear to Elio that there was more to Peter than just being antisocial. He'd heard the rumours before he's seen it; eventually someone sent it to him. He sat one day, watching the grainy cell phone footage of his roommate in a classroom, his body contorting into unnatural poses until he slammed his face into his desk, hard enough to break his nose; the screams that followed peaking the sound on Elio's crappy laptop speakers. He closed the video; shaken.
Not long after the sleep walking started, though Elio only realised that's what it was when he woke one night to find his roommate standing at the end of his bed, gazing down at him.
'What the fuck?' Elio yelled, startled, sitting up.
Peter didn't react, scaring him further. Elio grabbed something from his bedside table - his phone - and threw it into the corner of the room. The noise was enough to startle Peter out of his fugue state.
'What are you doing?' he asked, warily. His roommate looked around, as if only just realising where he was.
'I- I dunno, I was asleep, did I sleepwalk?' he asked.
'Yeah, you were just standing there.'
'Shit, sorry,' he said, then got back into his own bed. Elio didn't sleep for the rest of the night.
'I'm not crazy,' Peter said one evening, apparently he'd been made aware of the video from his school days doing the rounds on campus.
'I didn't think that you were,' Elio replied for reassurance, though even he wasn't fooled by his own declaration.
'Sure,' Peter scoffed, sitting down on his bed, defeated. He stared ahead, that far away look in his eyes that he often wore. Words of comfort were needed of course; but Elio didn't know what they were, or how to channel his father and figure it out.
'Was it a seizure or...?' Elio asked, knowing he shouldn't but unable to stop himself.
'That's what the doctors claim. They also say I sometimes have delusions and PTSD.'
'You think they're wrong?' Elio asked, sitting on his own bed opposite Peter.
Peter said nothing, lost in his own world.
There were crumbs of information Elio had pieced together, and from that he managed to find something he thought had the potential to be helpful.
'I had a friend once, her name was Vimini; she was this really smart kid; used to come to our house all the time. She died over the summer, I know it's not the same as a sister but-'
'Was it your fault?' Peter cut across.
'What? No. She was sick, she'd always been sick.'
'Then I don't think you can relate,' he replied coldly, getting up from his bed and exiting the room.
