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Jack tilted his head back all the way, eyes closed in pure ecstasy and arms outstretched to either side of himself, striking the Christ pose. The sun lit him from behind, casting his face in a gentle glow and illuminating his hair in a halo. He opened his eyes and gaze cast towards the heavens, the milky white of his wet scleras glistening. Rangesh watched, transfixed by the odd spectacle, as Jack bent backwards. His ribcage protruded up through his sweat-slicked skin and his spine curved sharply. Eventually, though, Jack's arms came back down and he stood straight again. His eyes still shone brightly, sparkling against the glare of the setting sun. Rangesh swallowed and leaned back against the headrest of the rented-out luxury car, feeling the low hum of the engine through his fingertips. The show-off. Sometimes Rangesh wondered if Jack could still do backflips like he used to. Neither of them were thirteen anymore, that much was apparent, but Jack sure as hell still acted like they were. Like a puppy that was cute at first, now you wanted nothing to do with it. That was how Jack grew on people.
Because Rangesh didn't truly hate him yet, and because Jack was behaving himself, they ended up in something that crudely resembled the play-fighting that happened between real friends. Rangesh was thin and bony and sweat beaded on his forehead as he struggled against Jack's arm wrapped around his chest. It was tight and compressing, pushing down on the bone to crush his lungs. His foot connected with Jack's stomach harder than he meant it to, but to a point he had began to feel the cool rush of panic sink into his gut. Jack yelped and let go, crossing his arms over his stomach. He was hunched over in pain and panting like a dog, chest heaving dramatically. The thin cotton fabric of his shift blotched with cool spots of sweat. His overgrown bangs fell into his eyes and Rangesh pressed his palms into the uneven earth, hauling his body up from where he had landed. The world was on tilt, everything coming at him from the side. It was dizzying. Rangesh placed the large, flat palm of his hand on Jack's back from where he was still hunched over, patting him encouragingly. He barely managed to make an apology before Jack lurched forehead and headbutted him square in the chest. Rangesh gasped and grabbed Jack's sleeve, sending them both crashing down into the wet grass. Mud splattered all up their backs, caking their bare skin. Jack was warm and alive and squirming wildly in the sludgy soil. Eventually he managed to shove Rangesh off, who rolled pitifully onto his back besides him. They laid side by side in the grass, the balmy afternoon carrying on around them like nothing had happened. It would've nearly felt romantic, if Rangesh didn't have mud in his mouth and if Jack hadn't had a big yellow bruise forming across his stomach in the shape of Rangesh's shoe. Rangesh stared up at the sky, into the flat gray sky with the odd wisps of clouds smeared ugly across the horizon. His glasses were thrown off somewhere a few feet off from where they were laying, and one of the lenses popped out of the frame. He tilted his head to the side and looked over at Jack, and then burst out laughing. He laughed and laughed until his sides hurt. Jack glared at him.
"Ha ha ha," he parroted back in a mocking tone. "Yeah it's just so funny, laugh about it."
Rangesh caught his breath for a moment and looked back over at him.
"What are you talking about bro, I'm the one who got my glasses broken, you broke my glasses!"
"I think one of my ribs is broken," Jack complained, wrapping an arm around to nurse the ache in his side.
Rangesh laughed again, pitched and annoying.
"You think I seriously broke one of your ribs? Deadass bro?"
"No," Jack wailed. "It was already like fractured or something I don't know,"
"From what?"
"I like, fell off my dirt bike yesterday morning but I fell weird 'cause I didn't want to break my collarbone again," he whined. "Michael told me to go to the ER."
"Dude are you literally stupid?" Rangesh asked. "You should've listened to him."
He reached down to help Jack up, pulling him like dead weight.
"Oh my gawdddddd bro," Jack groaned. "Are you going to drive me to the hospital?"
"What? No! I can't drive right now, my glasses are broken!"
Jack sat up and curled into himself, cheeks pink. His inhales and exhales came out as wheezes. Rangesh thought he looked like a little kid. Or at least a baby-faced moody teenager. He tapped Jack on the shoulder.
"Are you really hurt?" he asked him.
"Yes," Jack whined.
His big eyes were watering, glimmering and wet. Rangesh frowned.
Jack liked when Rangesh bleached his hair. It didn’t matter that the dye job was terrible or that Braden still called him chopped, Jack thought it looked nice. They were all drinking that night; Jack was trying to keep his heart from racing after downing all of those pills, Rangesh was content with being Miami’s worst muslim, and Braden wanted a reason to do nothing at all on a Thursday night. So they all drank and drank from the crystal-clear chandelier bottles none of them could really afford until their heads swam. Jack’s eyes got heavy-lidded and glossy, lips wet with drool and glittering chain dangling from around his neck like barbed wire. Rangesh and Braden held their liquor a little better, but not by a long shot, so the walk to the van was full of staggering. Rangest in particular, (who was tasked with partially hauling Jack across the parking lot) found that the ground seemed to be made of some frictionless material that dipped and curved sharply at every turn. Braden wasn’t much help. Rangesh dropped his glasses and nearly toppled over on the incline of a slight pothole, almost sending both Jack and himself face-first into the concrete. His stomach sloshed sickeningly as it happened and he was forced to joke back the bitter taste of rising stomach bile. Braden, who had managed to make it to the van, noticed the tragically comical scene and laughed loudly. Rangesh glared at him and regained his balance with Jack still leaning on his shoulder, a dead weight. By the mercy of God (or Allah), Braden decided to take some initiative instead of letting Rangesh crack his skull open on the pavement. All that bottle-bought physique amounted to little as he strained underneath Jack’s weight, slipping both of his arms beneath Jack’s and around his chest to drag him onto the seat. Jack’s head lulled to the, his eyes half-open and pupils narrowing from the sudden intake of light. His sweaty skin sealed itself to the leather seats and brain felt as though it were swelling and throbbing against his skull. Rangesh stood for a moment more outside of the van, breathing heavily. Braden waited expectantly for him inside, and he could hear the girls complaining from the back. Fighting amongst themselves like cats thrown in a bag.
“He’s getting fat,” he told Braden, nearly missing the seat.
Braden snorted and brushed his curls out of his eyes, leaning back into the headrest.
“I mean, yeah. He’s bloatmaxxing right now.”
“Says the guy who eats fast food every day and never works out,” Rangesh replied.
Braden stiffened, and his eyes widened slightly. Face still completely blank, though.
“Disrespectful coming from a sub five,” he said.
Rangesh rolled his eyes and slumped further down into the carseat.
“Bro shut uppppppp,” he groaned.
Jack was still in the row beside them, chest rising and falling slowly. His eyes were closed and he looked pale and almost doll-like. Probably the most graceful blackout drunk any of them had ever seen. Rangesh realized that this was the most calm he had ever seen Jack. For a moment, just a moment, he thought putting his hand out brush his bangs back. But the moment passed and he was still drunk, so he leaned over the side of the seat and puked.
Jack woke up feeling like Mrs. Pacman, like someone had taken his head to crack open and split down the middle. He was lying in the huge bed that dipped in the middle on his side, pillows packed in around him like he was a toddler. The same thought was there, though, to keep him from choking to death on his own vomit while he spent the night in an alcohol-induced coma. Rangesh was passed out still at the foot of the bed, curled into himself in a fetal position. He hadn’t even taken his glasses off. It was almost like he had collapsed right then and there, and hadn’t bothered to get up again. Sitting up slowly, Jack could see that the bathroom door across the room was slightly ajar. He squinted through his fuzzy vision and made out the shape of Braden lying on the bathroom floor with no apparent regard for how gross that was, his forehead pressed against the cool porcelain of the bowl. His face looked sallow and waxy, and his lips moved without any sound. Jack rolled out of the bed, trying not to kick Rangesh in the face. He managed to pull himself to the window to shut the blinds, blocking out the offensively painful light that seemed to pierce right through his eyes and into his skull. Rangesh looked a little like he was dead. But only a little. He stirred slightly against the comforter, long skinny leg kicking absently at the corner. Jack tried laying back down but couldn’t fall back asleep. The pain behind his eyes rose and his muscles ached and sweat welled into the corners of his eyes, stinging. It was hot, whatever air conditioning was running had not managed to reach the top floor of whoever’s rented out mansion they had been sleeping in. His mouth felt thick and dry. Jack rolled onto his back and considered his options, mind idling between praying to God for a second bout of sleep or calling his brother to come get him. He didn’t even know where his phone was.
Jack’s hands trembled involuntarily, the muscle contracting and shaking beneath the skin. His body felt too much like a body, he was aware of the flesh and the muscle and the bone and the sinew and the tissue. It all hurt badly, like someone was sticking a handful of pins and needles through every never ending he had. He was curled up with his back pressed against the sink stand, shirtless. It had been too hot to wear it before, but now he was cold. Hot on the outside, cold on the inside. He didn’t know whether he was going to shit or puke. The violence of hangovers had yet to go unbeaten. Braden had been complaining loudly about cortisol spikes with a hand over his eyes and Rangesh was hovering over Jack nervously. Through a mouthful of regurgitation, through the watery brown sick that had spattered across the bathroom tile, Jack was doing what he did best: whining.
“Dude, I fucking loved her,” he sobbed, practically hugging the toilet as a thick drop of spit slowly descended down from his mouth.
“Bullshit,” Rangesh laughed. “You didn’t fucking love McKinley.”
“She’s the only girl I ever loved,” Jack was looking up at Rangesh now, eyes wet with tears.
“If you loved her then why’d you hit her? If you loved her you wouldn’t have done all that shit to her.”
“I didn’t hit her!” Jack replied, raising his voice. “I pushed her! I was so drunk and high. What the fuck are you even talking for? Fuck you! You’re just mad, you’re mad that Sam never loved you. At least I had a real relationship!”
“I was drunk and high with Sam all the time! I never fucking hit or pushed her. She actually did shit to me too! Dude it fucked me up, knowing she was fucking around with other dudes but I would’ve let her beat the shit outta me before I ever would hit her.”
Jack made a noise, something that was halfway between a choke and the word “cuck.” Rangesh looked down at him with disgust, and then left the bathroom.
Rangesh thought of Sam, Sam and her soft skin and Sam and her glory to God. Sam with her manicured nails, Sam with her beautiful tanned complexion, Sam with perfect makeup. Rangesh looked to where Jack lay on the bed. Jack had soft skin, and Jack gave glory to God. But there was dirt underneath his stubby nails, he was pale, and bare-faced. Jack’s head ended up in Rangesh’ lap. Sort of. His head was pressed awkwardly into Rangesh’s thigh, the heavy weight pressing down into the skin and the fat and touching the bone. It burned, a slow, distant pain raising up into his nervous system. Jack’s glassy eyes were staring up at Rangesh’s face. Rangesh thought that it looked like there wasn’t much thought behind those eyes, but not in a cute way. Jack looked empty and spent. Like a used up whore. Rangesh swallowed. He ran his hands over Jack’s cheek and over his lip, and Rangesh pretended that he was Sam. He pretended that Jack’s curly light hair was dark and straight, he pretended that Jack’s flat chest had breasts, and that Jack was beautiful. Jack would never kiss him the way Sam had, and Jack would never even consider giving Rangesh any kind of gift. The only thing that Rangesh could truly link between them without fantasy was the name Mikyle. He thought it had sounded cool enough at first, but now that didn’t matter. Rangesh pressed the palm of his hand down onto Jack’s face and fantasized about Sam calling him Rangesh instead of Mikyle. On stream, in public. He just wanted it to happen again.
Braden blinked, looking up at the ceiling like it wasn’t just a flat white texture. Rangesh followed his gaze, but still couldn’t see what he was seeing.
“Y’know,” he said, hands placed neatly and politely in his lap. “I was hanging out with Nick the other night.”
Rangesh watched him run his hand over a healing split in his lip, where the tender flesh had scabbed over in a blackish red.
“We were talking,” Braden continued. “I asked him if he ever felt like nothing good was going to happen to him. And he told me that nothing good ever did happen to him and probably never would.”
Jack tucked his knees into his chest and put his hands over his ears like a child.
Rangesh wanted to hit him. Braden shrugged, still speaking to no one in particular.
“I mean I think he’s got the right idea.”
Rangesh noticed that his glasses were smudged, blurring his vision, so he took them off to wipe on his shirt. While he did, Jack rolled out onto his back. Stretched out flat like a starfish, the center of attention.
“So does that, is that, is this all there is?” He blurted out.
Both Rangesh and Braden stopped when they were doing to look at him.
“After all of the this fucking bullshit,” he sobbed. “All the money and the whining and crying and the fucking bitches, is this all there is? Is there nothing more? Is this it for me?”
“What do you mean?” Rangesh asked.
“When I smash my Porsche into a fucking toll booth because I’m fucking high and my head gets smashed open, that’s gonna be it for me. Ok? And, and then a bunch of people are going to make videos about my ‘downfall’ and that’s it that’s all there is,” Jack replied, wiping fat tears off of his red cheeks.
Braden reached down and took the wrinkled, greasy burger off the foil wrapping and took a bite of it. He gnawed on it like it was something good and nourishing and then swallowed it all down. It lay like a rock in his stomach.
“I mean yeah,” he said, licking his lips. “That’s all there is.”
Jack’s eyes widened, pupils big and dark. His eyes just looked dark, black and glittering. Wide. His bangs looked bad, more greasy than anything. The hair was matted and a bloody cluster of pimples had prickled up along the left side of his his mouth, fusing with the lip. It made him look like he had herpes. Maybe he did.
“Don’t talk like that,” Rangesh groaned, pressing the bottom part of his palm over his own fluttering heart. “I’m serious dude. I makes you sound like you’re gonna, like you’re gonna kill yourself.”
Jack turned his head towards the window, and for a moment, felt the raw warmth of the sun drift in through the glass. The memories of the summers from his childhood, before the scantily clad women in bikinis became more important than anything else in the world, had mostly been regulated to blend down together into one long feeling in the vast ether of his fried mind. Some things were particularly strong, like the burn of chlorine as it exited through his nose with globs of snot or the adrenaline he got from being chased through the yard by a Supersoaker-toting Michael. Skinned knees and hot concrete and mosquito bites and sticky popsicle juice drying on his bare skin, it was all there. Jack could be considered to be sentimental. He’d never forget Joanna covering for him after he skipped school for the first time or when Michael came out to him or how sweet McKinley had tasted the first time they kissed. All of his life passed through digital screens and colored-corrected to be saturated enough, he always had all of it coming back to him at all times. And the public, the great voyeur it was, was always going to watch. Jack closed his eyes and tried to envision the feeling of landing that bottle flip for the first time all over again.
Jack’s brother was a pornstar, and Jack posed nude and fucked onlyfans models, so maybe Rangesh expected something a little more than a lukewarm handjob. He seemed unsure of what he was doing, and honestly Rangesh didn’t know what to do either. Braden had left to go meet Nick Fuentes somewhere, so they were free to be as loud as they wanted, but Rangesh felt like moaning was too vile and profane. The noise came out strangled, like an animal being stabbed through the throat. Jack noticed the awkward look on Rangesh’s face and blushed hard, avoiding eye contact.
“I’m trying,” he complained. “Dude, you’re fucking this up. Can you like…”
Rangesh’s face flushed.
“Bro, what are you talking about? What am I about to do?”
Jack tightened his grip and Rangesh slapped a hand over his mouth, swallowing a pathetic whimper. Jack didn’t notice or didn’t care and kept going until they were done. It was anticlimactic and gross, sticky for the both of them. Deep shame unfurled itself in Rangesh’s chest. He felt hot and disgusting, like he would have to scrub the sin from flesh in order to be clean again. He heard sniffling from the far corner of the bed, and ignored Jack’s self-pitying crying. From what Rangesh had understood before, the deal was that it was to be a handjob for a handjob, but Rangesh was exhausted and Jack didn’t seem up to the act either. They laid side by side in the bed, staring at the ceiling together.
“I tried to kill myself before,” Jack confessed, to no one and nothing in particular.
It was like he was speaking to God (or Allah, whoever was watching over that unholy union).
“Mhm,” Rangesh replied, drifting in and out of sleep.
Jack still gazed up with a wide stare, pupils tracing every nonsensical pattern in the plaster texture. Dried trails of tears had gone sticky on his cheeks and his finger traced his collarbone. Up and down, down and up.
“I wasn’t thinking of Michael or my Mom or my dad or Joanna or Jason or my dogs or anything. I was really drunk and kept swallowing those pills. I just thought that I was going to like, kind of fall asleep or something, and then I was going to go be with my baby.”
“You have a baby?” Rangesh mumbled, trying as hard as he could to keep his eyes open.
Jack sniffled, and Rangesh slumped deeper into the pillows. His body rolled closer to Jack’s, like some sort of otherworldly gravity center was pulling him in.
“Yeah,” Jack replied, voice cracking. “Me and McKinley’s baby. She got an abortion, she aborted it, because she didn’t want to bring another one of us into the world.”
His voice morphed into a brutal, chest-wracking sob on the last word, and Rangesh looked away. The two of them were pressed in together tight, bound by the same sin. Legs tangled and arms bound around waists and a head placed on a chest and listening to the steady throb of an ever-living heartbeat. Rangesh tried to picture that baby, but found that he couldn’t. He fell asleep a few moments later, and didn’t wake back up again until the morning.