I Fell in Love with Hope(33)

“Baby, don’t start another argument. If I keep winning, you’re just gonna boost my ergo.”

“What are you two fighting about?” C asks, peering over the board game laden with stray pieces.

“It started with monopoly,” Hikari says. “Now they’ve declared war.”

“I’m still right about monopoly,” Sony says, flipping her hair.

“You landed on my property and didn’t pay. That’s the whole point of the game!”

“Okay, but you’re in jail. Was I supposed to give money to a criminal, baby? That’s just not right.”

Neo leans forward, another comeback on the tip of his tongue. It never leaves his mouth. His breath hitches, his teeth grit together, his eyes shut tight, body paralyzed in an instant.

“Neo? You okay?” Hikari touches both his shoulders, steadying him.

His back seizes up, throat laboring as he fists the bedsheets. “I–I need to stand.”

Neo and pain have a far different arrangement. C doesn’t stand still when it takes pleasure in lighting his nerves on fire. He runs his palm across Neo’s back and carefully pivots him out of bed, Sony moving aside to make room.

“Hold on to me,” C says. Neo’s fists curled around the fabric of his shirt, beads of sweat catching on his hairline.

“What happened to your eye?” Neo asks, hissing.

“Hush,” C scolds. “Just breathe.”

He drags his touch down Neo’s arm, confused when he flinches. He pulls back the sleeve, Neo protesting with a hum. C pulls it back anyway. A bruise taints Neo, too, drawn from the crook of his elbow, spiraling up his bicep in the shape of a hand.

C goes taut, staring at the cloud of beady purple and black. Neo’s father visited last night. He puts it together quick enough for a vein to show on his forehead.

“Don’t say anything.” Neo pulls his wrist away. “And don’t be angry.”

“I’m not angry,” he bites, his nails forming crescent shapes in Neo’s sweatshirt.

Neo eases back into comfort as the minutes pass, listening to C’s heart thrum against his ear. “Tell that to the thunder between your ribs.”





Nights till the escape: 5





Eric has a watch. It has a red leather band, old-fashioned like he is. He still has a flip phone and refuses to own anything else digital.

His watch stopped working the night he cried at Sony’s bedside. Eric keeps flicking the glass, but the arrow won’t tick on. He gets a new one, but he keeps the old one too. When I ask him why he says he can’t bear to toss old things away. I ask him if I could steal it. He takes it out of his pocket and considers it for a moment.

When our eyes meet, he doesn’t look for a reason because we’ve known each other long enough for him to know that I don’t lie.

Hikari and I have been exploring. The hospital, the skies, each other. Nurses are so used to us running past that they don’t even yell at us anymore. We’ve become background noise gone unquestioned.

We read Hamlet together, singing and dancing as she likes.

We steal moments by people-watching. She has horrible people-watching skills. Her impatience is dreadful, like a reader who can’t wait to get to the good part. It’s always worth it, though–her little reactions when a couple reunites in an embrace or a parent kisses their child just released.

Today, she draws while I read in the library, but we become restless fast. She hides from me, smirking when I catch glimpses of her between the aisles. She entices me, makes me give in to the chase.

“What’s this?” she whispers once I corner her against an armchair.

“A gift.” Redbanded leather and motionless arrows. I lay the watch in her hand, careful not to let my fingers graze her palm. Hikari blinks at it in the easy light, a wave of silence humming between us. “I would’ve gotten you a fake skull, but I would’ve felt replaced.”

“It’s perfect,” she says, clutching the watch against her heart. A bashful line tints her cheeks, as she stares up at me through her lashes. “You want to know something?”

“Mhm.”

“This is my favorite gift I’ve ever gotten.” She bites her lip, thumb gliding over the crystal. Then, she points at my lips with the watch still in her hand. “Second to that smile.”

Endeared, I point back at the smirk worn on her lips, wondering how I ever thought she could become background noise when she’s so obviously a chorus.

“I stole it from you.”





Nights till the escape: 4





C is a philosopher without a mouth. He thinks. Constantly. But he never shares a single thought.

He and I wend down the halls to his echo appointment. Earlier, he said his chest felt funny, kept on scraping his sternum, gliding his tongue over sore gums.

“It sounds like effects in space movies,” Neo says as he, Sony, Hikari, and I sit along the wall inside an exam room. C lies on his side, arm over his head, skin soaked with ultrasound gel as Eric swipes the transducer over his chest.

“If you’re lucky, some space movie director will buy the tapes,” Sony says, eyes glued to the screen. “You get enough echoes done for all nine Star Wars movies and the stand-alones.”