spectrophobia

"When we were seven, Rex wanted to be a policeman. He would traipse around the classroom with Mr. Sherberg’s old sheriff’s badge pinned to his chest and the Intern's trench coat dragging behind him. He would recite all of Woody’s maxims with dauntless enthusiasm. Becoming a cop was all he would ever want.

He held this adamance towards everything. In the first grade, he had us both laying face-up on the plastic slide, basking in the glaring sun, shirts hitched to our chins. He told me we'd get suntans. Rex didn’t understand that this was a logical leap. My skin was as fair as snow, not to mention the fact that I was a girl, which made 'shirtless' improper attire and was bound to send the recess aides into an uproarious frenzy.

In the fourth grade, Rex told me he was going to marry my ma. He said she was the prettiest woman he'd ever seen. But he could never get the guts to talk to her, so he sent me as his messenger. 'Rex wants to marry you,' I told Ma at dinner time.

She laughed for a long time. 'And who's this romantic Rex character?' she asked afterwards. Ma had a strange way of talking like that; 'this romantic Rex character'. I didn't like thinking of Rex as 'romantic' in any way. My nose scrunched in abhorrence.

'My friend from school,' I told her. She ruffled my hair, pursing her lips.

'Well, you'll have to tell poor Rex that I'm taken.'

I broke the news to him in the cafeteria the next day. His face fell, flushed and upside-down, and I thought he would cry. In lieu of expectation, he nodded solemnly and thanked me for trying. The next day, it was as if he'd forgotten. He was completely undeterred, and resorted back to screaming, 'I'm gonna marry Clove's ma!' in the middle of period four. By day’s end, his arm was pinched raw from my fingernails.

In the sixth grade, Rex started charging twenty-five cents to solve any problem with which someone bequeathed him. He got a shocking spell of business, which was enough to arouse my curiosity. One day, I dropped a quarter in the lap of his jeans and told him that my parents were splitting up. I asked him what I should do. Rex was the one who always knew everything, but for the first time since I'd met him, he fell silent. I started crying and couldn't stop. He gave me a hug, bone-crushing, which I supposed made the twenty-five cents worth it.

In the midst of my blubbering, I told him that he could have my ma, and he said he didn't want her anymore, and I said that, well, I guess nobody wanted her, which made me unbearably sad.

Rex's real name was Achilles. Teachers called him A.J., and his buddies on the swim team called him Chill. I've always called him Rex. I can’t remember why--not for the life of me. He told me that names from Greek mythology were difficult for most people to pronounce. He knew because his friend from Hillbury thought 'Aphrodite' was a socialite with a hair outgrowth problem. 'Get it?' he asked me.

He was good at telling jokes bad enough to make a person laugh.

In high school, Rex started growing. A lot. He shot up like a weed over the summer, and was almost six-foot by eleventh grade. He'd gotten his braces removed, and in place of his skeleton figure grew a layer of thick muscle. He asked me on the first day back whether he’d changed. I told him he was the same Rex I had always known.

I remember the evening after Grant Boux dumped me in the schoolyard. We were in the tenth grade. Rex snuck us into a nightclub using the fake ID his friend from Hillbury had lent him. While I was in the bathroom, he spent ten minutes convincing the DJ to play 'She's Always a Woman'. It was my favorite song.

I came out of the restroom and heard the piano skip. My eyes flew to Rex's. He cocked his head, an almost undetectable hint of limerence in his eye. Neither of us could smile. Instead we stared, my heart enraptured in undying appreciation. He nodded towards the dim of the dance floor. He swung me in his arms, and said that any guy who’d let me go like that had to’ve had something up his ass.

He was always there for me when I needed him most. We were sitting on the couch at his house one afternoon. He was slouched, sweater crimped at his belly button, and he fooled with the remote. 'Nothing's on,' he said.

'That's what you always say when you can't find Brooklyn Nine-Nine or a soccer match,' I deadpanned.

We'd ordered pizza. I shoved the box aside and snatched the remote from his hand, flipping through the channels. I found ManU versus Barcelona. A rushed spiel of commentary erupted from the television.

‘Rooney… plays it to Van Persie, who spreads the ball out wide to Falcao, who trips over it! Holy shnikies! Oh, and there's Rooney, picking it up again on the overlap…he takes the shot--and he scores!'

Rex whooped emphatically, tossing his arm around my shoulders. 'That's how it's done, Clove.' Then, ‘Think I can hit that corner?'

'You can hardly kick a ball.' He flicked pizza sauce onto my nose. I licked it away.

Rex then insisted that we watch 'Paranormal Activity' on the flatscreen. I told him my brother had scared me with that movie when I was a kid. He said that his brother had done the same to him. I told him I was terrified. He spoke through mouthfuls of buffalo chicken and blue cheese.

'It'll be like redemption for all those times we let our brothers win,' he told me. I couldn’t detect a hint of remorse in his voice, even though his brother was dead and mine wasn't. There was never any jealousy. I supposed one person couldn’t really be jealous of another person's healthy brother. Rex never got jealous, anyway. Or maybe he did, and there was just some kind of channeling process he used to ward it away.

There was pizza sauce on his cheek from when I’d given him a bite of my pepperoni. I wiped it away with my forefinger.

'I don't care, I'm terrified,” I told him. I was. I was afraid of ghosts; I knew I wouldn't be able to watch. I didn't want him to think less of me. But he continued on, because wasn't I up for a little scare?

'You can squeeze my hand when you're afraid,' he offered.

So we put the movie in and I clenched his hand tight for the entire time. He let me, fingers loose and comfortable, and every time he squeezed back, my heart raced and I remembered the movie was not real; not like the two of us.

Rex died last Wednesday.

We were riding our bikes along the stream. It's winter now, so the sidewalks were overrun with snow. The grass had frosted tips, but the night was calm. It was dark. We were the only ones out. I was begging for his attention as we pedaled furiously along the trail . We were competing as to who could make the worst joke. 'A cashew walked into a bar,' I sang, but he was laughing about something I'd said before. 'A cashew walked into a bar,' I repeated urgently.

'And everyone called him nuts?' Rex asked, choking on his words. We both skidded around the corner, hoodies billowing from our bodies.

'And he was assaulted, dope,' I told him, wondering if his version was better.

'Clove,' he said. His voice was suddenly serious. The sudden sobriety brought me to silence. 'I have to tell you something,’ he said. I stared at him, and then at the path ahead. And then at him again. I asked him ‘what?’ as in, what did he have to tell me? My fingers were stuck to the handlebars. He was blindly riding on, eyes on me and nothing else. 'I love you,' he told me in the brisk whisper of late night air.

Our breaths puffed from our mouths in a fog. I started to slow down, pressing lightly on the brakes. He tried to follow suit, but his wheels seized suddenly. He let out an unassuming laugh, cursed; he thought he could erect himself. But his wheels slipped. He toppled to the ground, pedals snagging his legs and dragging him into the lake. The lake was frozen over, but the ice didn’t prevent Rex from crashing through. It couldn't stop his blood from freezing, nor the current from washing him down the bank.

He drowned, even despite my screams. I was crawling along the edge, searching for his body with my hands. My eyes were blurred with tears. He drowned despite my sprinting back up the hill and shrieking for help. He drowned, dead like his brother, gone, like nothing we'd went through had ever mattered.

I guess I always imagined us growing up together. I thought maybe he'd end up in the local law enforcement, and me in some quaint coffee shop being his morningly barista when he came to pick up his 8'oclock cup of caramel macchiato with a whip. We'd talk over the counter. I'd ask him about the soccer match last night, not knowing who was playing but knowing he watched the game. He'd ask me how Ma was doing. Then maybe he'd ask me on a date.

Instead, he died. Froze up in the river, just like that."

I took a breath. Shoulders shaking. Ma's eyes were locked on mine, attempting feeble reassurance. I could hardly fight the tears hammering underneath my eyelids. A sob worked its way into my throat. Rows of people lined the pews, clad in black dress.

Rex's mother was watching me from the right pew, pleading silently for me to end on something positive.

Later, I sat on the couch; eyes glazed and locked, glazed and locked, glazed and locked. Seeing nothing. Guests congregated in the parlor. Ma sat down next to me. I could not stop thinking about the things he would never know. About the things he would never hear from me.

Ma leaned towards me. I could see that she’d been crying. She hardly knew Rex, which meant she’d been crying for me. “I know, Clove,” she whispered. “I know. You can squeeze my hand if you’re afraid.”

So I took her hand and held tight until I believed I was real. I held on till I believed that he would never be again.

Then I let go.