Exotic - Chapter 16: Chapter 16

I followed my phone to the floor, fumbling for the call button and raising it to my ear. Blood roared in my ears, making it difficult to hear when Caleb asked after two rings.
"Don't freak out," was the first thing out of his mouth. I dug my fingers into the carpet, rocking back and forth as my lungs contracted further.
"What the fuck do you mean, Lauren knows?" I managed to wheeze out, throat constricted by dense panic.
Caleb hesitated, prompting me to repeat myself in a hoarse scream.
"Jesus, she just knows, alright?" Caleb snapped. His voice was constantly changing volume, like he was on the move. "Second you got out of the car, she said 'I thought he looked familiar'. When I asked for clarification, she told me, 'it made sense you freak out every time you see her' because you're Steph."
I pressed my forehead against the floorboards, revelling in the tiny relief the cool wood afforded me.
"Would you say something?" Caleb demanded. "Please."
I didn't know if I physically could, through the tight confines of my throat and the intense shaking that had possessed my body. I opened and closed my mouth a few times uselessly.
"She doesn't know about us," Caleb began to ramble. "She doesn't know you perform, and she doesn't think I'm... gay."
"Good for fucking you," I choked.
"I mean, I didn't tell her you were gay either," he argued. "Look, I just told her I saw you at the bus stop, recognised you, and gave you a place to get changed. And that the whole Steph thing was a joke, that you were messing with her. Anything she thinks, I didn't prompt it. I didn't tell her anything. And she won't tell anyone, she's not like that... would you just say something?"
I knew the source of his panic wasn't due to any compromising position his little sister might put me in. The only reason he'd picked up the phone was to make sure I knew he hadn't spilled the beans. He wanted to guarantee that I would keep my end of the bargain, despite his being broken.
No one finds out about Sephora.
I wanted to blame Caleb – it would have been easier – but I had chosen to stick around and spend over an hour with her. Lauren had figured me out, and it was entirely subject to my own carelessness. The knowledge that there was no one to fault but my own turned back my needling anxiety back on me.
I sucked in a breath, rocking back on my heels. My head was spinning like a top. "Why would you tell me that?"
I imagined Caleb startling to a stop. "I thought you needed to know."
"She's not going to tell anyone. You said so yourself," I gulped. "Do you get some sick enjoyment out mentally tormenting me?"
"Jesus," Caleb came back immediately, tone irate. "Sorry for thinking it was important to keep you in the loop. Next time, I'll keep it to myself."
"Thanks," I snapped, but it came out almost incoherent. I pulled the phone away from my mouth as a sob reverberated from my chest, loud and congested.
"Miles," Caleb's voice carried from the phone. If I hadn't known better, I might have thought he sounded concerned. "Are you alright?"
I hung up.
My back hit the side of the bed, and I dropped my head back onto the mattress. My lungs felt like they were the size of water balloons, and the ability to breathe out became a distant memory. My hands found my knees and clenched down until my stubby nails left crescents in my knees. The ceiling above me spun, and when I did finally breath out, it came out as a pathetic little wail.
My phone began to buzz by my knee. I rolled to the side, keeping my eyes focused on the light. It seared my retinas, but it distracted me from the intense sensation of not feeling able to breathe.
All I could think was, mum is dead. Mum is dead and nothing else matters.
If Mum had seen my life in the state that it was, she would have been horrified. She would have given me a stern talking to, then slapped on some lipstick and marched down to school, demanding to know how her son had fallen through the cracks. She would have grounded me faster than I could blink, confiscated my phone, and had me doing my homework on the dining room table every night while she cooked dinner.
I'd never told her I was gay. In all the chaos of her last few months, I hadn't had the chance.
The buzz of the phone continued, as persistent as my laboured breathing. My focus shifted from the burning light to the rhythmic ringtone. It was constant enough to calm me significantly; not bring me back to a place of easy breathing, but enough that I became functional enough to answer it, hands shaking terribly.
"Hey? Hey," Caleb's mouth was far too close to the speaker, and I winced back as his voice rattled about in my ears. "Are you there? Miles?"
He was just about the only boy on the soccer team who called me by my first name. I like the way it sounded in his mouth. "I'm dying."
"You're not dying," Caleb said firmly. Did I say that out loud? "You're having a panic attack. Is there anyone there with you?"
I released a whimper of a laugh. My mother's urn was laid out on the sheets in my peripheral vision. "Mum is here."
"Mum?" Caleb's voice softened. "Are you seeing your mum?"
"I'm not crazy," I snapped, and immediately regretted it. My panic immediately spiked again. "I don't want to talk to you right now."
I hung up again and crowed my eyes with my fingers. With nothing to anchor me, I found my anxiety amplifying again, breaking out into a sweat. My hand began to buzz, and my arm along with it. I answered my phone again, fumbling for speakerphone and dropping it on the carpet.
Caleb's voice rang out. "I know I'm the last person you want to speak to, but please just listen to me. Just concentrate on your breathing, alright? In and out. That's all that matters right now. In and out."
It all sounded so easy, when he put it like that. I sucked in a breath and let it tumble out, along with the humiliating whine that came with it.
"Is anyone home?" Caleb asked. "Is Reece there?"
"Don't fucking talk to me about Reece right now," I gasped out. In, out, in, out.
"Alright, I'll talk about something else," Caleb said quickly. "Do you want me to talk? Or do you want me to call Max? Someone who can come over..."
"Jesus, you're terrible at this," I sucked in another breath. "Just talk. Tell me about the fucking soccer game on Saturday."
Caleb wasted no time, "We got completely obliterated. O'Connor Prep is meant to be in AA division, but they lose just enough games a year to stay top of the leader board of A every year. Pretty scummy, right? It was raining. I ate shit about nine times, it was embarrassing. I'm still finding mud in places I didn't know mud could found."
In, out. In out. "Sounds awful."
"It wasn't where I would have spent my Saturday morning if it was up to me," he admitted. "I can go through each one of my failures in detail if that would help."
In. Out. In... Caleb had stopped talking, and I found myself grappling for the phone. "Are you there?"
"Yeah, sorry," I heard a door slam, and his voice got louder. "Just focus on my voice. You're safe, you're in a safe place."
"Reece is downstairs."
"He's not going to hurt you," Caleb assured me. "And Lauren isn't going to tell anyone. And I'm not going to tell anyone. You're going to be okay."
"I'm not okay."
"You're going to be okay," he said, more firmly this time. "You're going to turn eighteen and move out and have an amazing, weird, crazy life. And high school isn't going to matter, and your asshole dad... sorry, Reece, he isn't going to matter. How are you doing?"
I was coming down; I could feel it. My limbs were slowly un-tensing and breathing seemed to be switching very slowly back to an automatic function. "I'm alright."
"You know that photo you sent me?" he continued. "I still have it. I look at it more than I'd admit if I wasn't just saying everything that comes into my head right now. You look... really nice in it. But more than that, you look happy. You're going to be really happy soon. Miles?"
I closed my eyes. My lungs had returned to their normal capacity; my brain was extinguished. I let out a shaky sigh. "I'm okay."
* The silence might have lasted a second or an hour. I could imagine Caleb fidgeting on his bed, on the line out of a sense of responsibility rather than concern and desperate for the first chance to hang up. I could also imagine him pacing his filthy room, anxiously waiting for me to speak first.
I hung up.
Only slightly to my surprise, the phone buzzed after a minute of consideration on Caleb's part. But I'd returned from the weightlessness of the panic attack, and humiliation had folded over me like a fitted sheet. I let it ring out, crawling into my bed. Mum's urn rolled as I slid under my covers, skin flushed red.
The phone remained silent for a blissfully long stretch. Then it hummed once, signifying a text message. That was a lot less daunting.
I slid my hand out from the sheets to grab it, pulling it to my face.
Don't do that.
Another message arrived as I read the first.
You really freaked me out.
My fingers flew across the keypad.
sorry I guess.
His response came in the form of my phone lighting up with a call again. After what felt like an age of deliberation, I answered it.
The line crackled under the weight of Caleb's sigh. "That's not what I meant."
"I know," I admitted.
After a brief pause, he asked. "Are you really okay?"
I nodded dumbly. Realised pretty quickly that he couldn't see me. "I'm nodding."
His laugh was breathy. "Good."
And then, "Have you had a panic attack before?"
I nearly shook my head. I was truly out of it. "I don't think so. Nothing like that before."
"I didn't think..." he paused. "I shouldn't have sent that message with no context. I should have called you in the first place. I'm sorry I didn't prep you properly."
I couldn't help myself. I giggled.
"Oh, Jesus Christ..." but Caleb didn't sound angry, just exasperated. He huffed out a laugh. "Sorry. Didn't mean to set you off."
I dragged a hand down my cheek. "It didn't. It was a last straw kind of thing. I haven't had a great day."
Something creaked, as Caleb dropped back onto his bed. "Is it to do with your mum?"
I swallowed down the last of my restlessness. I felt remarkably at ease, despite the state I'd been in less than five minutes ago. The comedown was surprisingly quick, though the memories lingered. I hoped that I would never feel as helpless as I had five minutes ago ever again in my life, "Yeah. She died."
"I know. I heard at school when it happened."
"She died two years ago," I clarified. "Two years ago today."
There was a pause, before Caleb replied in a hushed voice. "Miles."
"Please don't tell me you're sorry."
"I'm..." Caleb hesitated. "I didn't know."
"Yeah, I didn't exactly wear a t-shirt to announce it," I reached out, gliding my fingertips over the metal shell of the urn. "I'm usually fine. But today was just brutal. Can't... can't stop thinking about her."
Caleb gave me space to elaborate, before speaking again. "Do you want to talk about her?"
I considered it. "Not really. Not to you. No offence."
"None taken," I somehow doubted that by his tone, but he didn't say anything to probe me further. "Do you have anyone to talk to about it?"
"I'm seeing the school councillor tomorrow. She's cool."
"Good," his voice drifted off at the end.
Downstairs, the front door slammed as Reece came in. I curled my legs into my stomach, making myself as small as possible with the phone resting next to my head.
"Did you really keep my photo?" I asked. "Or did you just say that because you thought I was conceited enough that it would bring me back to earth?"
"Well, it worked," he hummed. "Yeah. God knows why. God knows why I told you."
I rolled over onto my stomach, hunched over the speaker. "What did you think?"
Caleb took his time answer, checking the conversation for metaphorical traps. "I'd done well to forget what you looked like in a dress. I said you looked very nice. Very Sixteen Candles," he cut himself off, and then spoke in a rush. "Lauren made me watch it. You can't..."
"Relax. Who am I going to tell?" Just like that, I was smiling again. "That was the vibe I was going for."
"Mission accomplished, then."
My toes curled into the mattress. The part of my digestive tract reserved for butterflies flared up, and I curse my body for reacting in such a way. I had worked very hard to put a stop to the way my body reacted to Caleb.
Jesus, I thought we were done with this.
"You made your Instagram private," the second the words left my mouth, I felt like a petulant child. "And I know we're not friends and your life is your life, but seeing you getting friendly with Aidan after that talk we had after you said you wanted to punch him for what he said... I couldn't believe it."
Caleb's voice slowed down like he was explaining a very complex theorem to a primary schooler. "Aidan's my oldest friend. It's not as simple as ditching him. He'd want to know why."
"And you can't tell him that," I concluded. "Because you know how he would react to finding out his best friend has been checking him out in the showers this whole time."
Caleb made a sound of complete abhorrence. "Fuck all the way off."
"Not your type?"
"Just the opposite," he blew out a long sigh of air. I wondered where I – blonde, skinny, short, excruciatingly non-violent, drag queen – sat on his spectrum on attraction. I sat in complete contrast to Aidan, in personality, appearance, and extracurricular interests. Caleb clearly liked Sephora, but everyone loved Sephora.
I'd never pictured myself as someone's type.
"Caleb!" someone called in the background of his call, followed by a question I didn't hear. Caleb covered his microphone to answer, but I did make out there in a second!
"Places to be?" I asked once he returned.
"Yeah," he sounded somewhat reluctant. "Are you going to be alright?"
I nodded gently, snorting when I realised. "I'm nodding again."
"Lauren doesn't know I've told you," he told me. "But you can text her if you want. She likes you, and she doesn't like many people, so good luck with that."
"Caleb," I said earnestly. "Thank you."
"Don't make a habit of it," he echoed a temperate joke.
"Have you..." I wondered if the question was too personal. Caleb had made a habit out of drawing back when prodded. "Dealt with stuff like that before? You seemed to know what you were doing."
"I didn't. Not really," he confessed. "A couple of years back, there was a kid on the junior team who was pretty sensitive. I talked him off the ledge a few times. Trout was never very sympathetic."
I could imagine. "Damn it."
"What?"
I sighed exaggeratedly. "You're just a good person, aren't you?"
"See you, Miles."
"I'll do my best not to."
Upon hanging up, I found my stomach in age-old knots. I placed a hand to my face and pressed down, eyes rolling back into my head.
Mum would have called me hopeless. Not that her taste in men was anything to applaud – a fact that had only become apparent post-humorously. Those feelings don't last forever, she had assured me when I'd asked her from advice at the freshly-hormonal age of thirteen, carefully masking the pronouns of the paperboy I would spend hours at the window to see ride by, and when you stop thinking they're the hottest thing on earth, you start to see the shit that actually matters.
Like what?
Like their soul.
My mother was pretty hopeless herself.
Tuesday, thankfully, ended not long after that. Despite the light streaming through my thin curtains, I fell dead asleep where I'd curled up during my conversation with Caleb, with Mum's urn tucked between my pillows.