Chapter Text
“Huey!”
Initially, his eyes remain shut. A strikingly blue sky seeps behind his emptied vision. It’s humid out. Thick air hangs like fabric over the trees, into his lungs.
“Hi!”
She aligns herself an arm’s length away, plopping unceremoniously into the grass.
“You look sleepy.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Can I join you?”
Just presses his folded arms firmly into the ground behind his head. Her naïve perceptiveness of concepts she couldn’t possibly register intellectually is frustrating. He’s not tired, in a physical sense. He’s simply thinking. Enjoying a thin reprieve of peace on a hill up the pavement road from Grandad’s house. Or silence. Maybe it wasn’t quite peaceful if one’s mind continuously rattled with the tribulations of their lives. Silence it was, then.
“Have you ever had a bad dream?”
He frowns.
“A really bad dream. Scary. Or kind of sad. Mostly scary. Like, where monsters run after you, or you lose something or somebody you love, or you feel like you’re falling through the air. My dad says these are normal, sometimes. But why would any of these be normal?”
In his ten years of living, he had dreamt about everything she had described. Monsters, green and cartoonishly grotesque, had run him through the hallways of his old house. He had lost Riley and his parents and Grandad in a multitude of ways. He had fallen through the air, dark hands dragging at clouds as if they would have steadied his inevitable descent.
“Do you get them?”
He offers her a thoughtful hum. She rustles through flora, soft voice becoming slightly clearer. She’s probably facing him now.
“They’re horrible, aren’t they? I had one last night. My hair and teeth were falling out and I couldn’t do anything! It was so scary, I cried when I woke up. People say these dreams have meanings. But what would this mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Why nothing?”
“Everything is meaningful to some degree. Yet some things mean just that. Nothing. Unless your hair and teeth fall out regularly. Then your dreams are simply a reflection of your reality. Don’t let it happen on a carpet.”
He imagines her gawking, bug-eyed.
“You’re really weird, Huey.”
“Hmm.”
“That doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” he can hear the smile in her voice.
“I know.”
“Of course you do. You know everything. Or at least you think so.”
“Hmm.”
She slides closer, and the sun’s probably beating against her face, painting her biscotti hair as ringlets of orange flame. He knows she would never mind. She enjoys spring, watching the flowers grow with rapt, green awe, watching the perennial drizzle cascade along her too-large window frame.
“You still look like you’re falling asleep.”
“I’m awake.”
She giggles like one would after reaching the apex of a carousel. “Thanks, Huey.”
He offers a nod. She rolls even closer.
“Can I tell you a secret?” She leans in against his cheek, cupping her lips as if she were about to commit murder.
He doesn’t move. Just inhales, exhales, feels a burgeoning breeze against his nose.
“You seemed really mean and scary when you first came here.”
He jerks away, rolling onto his stomach, and she bursts into that same fit of endorphin-drunk laughter.
“No offense! Let me finish!”
He grunts.
“What I meant to say was… you’re not bad. Or mean. Or scary. Or angry. You’re just Huey. And maybe Huey is all of these things sometimes. But you’re just Huey, still.”
“Appreciate it.”
“See?”
“What?”
“You’re just being Huey now.”
“Oh.”
“Never change.”
She’s nestled into his neck now. His eyes open. The sun never hides away. That fresh breeze continued to trickle across the minuscule hairs on his face, ruffling the golden curls grazing his collarbone.
“Never change,” she repeats, gently.
She doesn’t talk much after that. He can’t see the way her face moves or contorts with that same childish naïveté when it’s buried into his own. Her breathing evens out.
“Thank you.” She’s probably asleep. He wonders if those dreams about lost fragments of hair and teeth have returned this afternoon. Minutes have probably become hours.
He sighs. She tugs in a state of subconsciousness. Yet, the world continues to spin, the ground beneath him is impossibly green, the sun seeps bright through branches of redwood, and he never finds it in him to move away again.