“Why did you bring me here?” Honor asks, sinking into the fleshy cushion on my mattress. She sits child-like on the bedspread, her legs tucked beneath her, her gaze devouring the rug on the floor. She refuses to look at me.
“It was pouring outside, and you obviously shouldn’t be home right now, so that only left—”
“I can deal with this on my own.”
She mutters, but her words are vigorously sharp. Acidic even. Her eyes scrounge the walls desperately for something to fix on. A painting, a photograph, a clock. Anything to distract herself from having to be in this moment. She shivers into herself, clutching her soaked clothes to warm the fragile body underneath.
“No, you can’t.” I stop myself in the frantic pacing I was doing, and come to sit next to her on the bed. “You can’t.” I say again in a feverish hush.

She looks luminous, then. Wrapped in her own lanky limbs and sticky dark clothes, her skin soaking up the dim overhead lights. Dazzling, as stray beads of water caress a pale arm, a ruddy cheek. Even though her stare is still fixed to the walls, I can see her eyes wash over with a tearful sheen. Underneath her hardness, Honor always holds emotion. She suddenly stifles a groaning laugh.

“Why not?”
“Because your father kicked you out of your own home. You have nowhere to go!” Words ring in hollow waves. The ferocity in my voice surprises both of us and she turns to look at me for the first time today. She loses her hardness, and suddenly she disolves into a desperate, little-girl crouch. Her eyes are wide and fearful, as if luring me in, inviting me to fix whatever is tainting her gaze.
Green-blue-hazel eyes that make the rest of the room lurch into a dizzying haze. Eyes that bloom a red tint, and then let loose to a steady stream of tears.
She begins to tremble.
“No. No, that’s not really true.” She says, shaking her head, convincing herself denial of an absolute truth that she cannot bear to fit inside of her head. “Is it. Is it?”

She continues to look at me, search my eyes for signs, puzzle pieces, clues. As if I know her mind better than herself. But I just keep my face slack and lifeless, and watch as her tears streak her face in black trails of makeup. Smudges the ghostly canvas of her skin with drips of midnight ink.
All the noise around me swells in a numbing buzz. I suddenly feel breathless. Honor’s face swims in front of me in teasingly glorious vibrancy. Floating. Limitless.

“Avi.” Honor half-wails. And I snap back forcefully into the moment again. She continues to shiver, head bowed, eyes pained.
“What is going on? This isn’t like you.”
“Fine. We’ll drop it then.” She says with a shrug of her shoulders and a breath of letting-go air. Careless. How does she float so willingly?
“You should probably change your clothes,” I realize, and jump up quickly to rumage through my dresser. I pull out a large gray t-shirt and a pair of purple running shorts. “Do these work?” I fumble back over to the bed, dancing around the clutter that lines the floor. Aimlessly strewn books and clothes cover more of the room than not. I could have sworn it was cleaner than this when I last left it. I kick a pair of underwear smoothly under the bed before she notices. Honor takes the clothes.
“I don’t think the shorts are going to fit.” She says defeatedly, her words dragging down through an octave as the sentence ends, as if her voice has just bore a grand effort.
“I can pick out another pair.”
“It’s okay.” She arches her back to sit up straighter and slides her mouth into a flirtatious smirk. “This shirt is long enough to fit like a dress. I’ll wear my underwear.”

There is something both alarming and satisfying about her bluntness. Shock pricks at my skin feverishly. She is back, the old Honor. I recognize her now, the playful banter, the cunning eyes, the alluring half-smiles of her mouth. All the gloom of the past few days has been tirelessly out of character. She is mine again. All pigtails and smudged red lipstick pouts. But in this light, in this room, she is more intensely bright than ever. Not just enticing, but magnetic. She giggles to herself, and is clothed in a swath of brilliant allure.

“I’ll leave...” I say, making my way to the door to let her change.
“No.” She quips. The word lingers in the air in hefty waves. She raises her glitter-gaze to me. “I mean, you don’t have to leave, just turn around, yeah?”

Glitter-gaze. Crimson pout. God.

I do as I’m told and turn around, closing my eyes. Just to make sure, she sits down on the other side of the bed, her back facing me.
“Avi?”
“Hmm.”
“No peeking.”
I feel a bubble of blissful discomfort rise and fall inside me. I squirm a bit to relieve the anxiety, and cut the tension with the question that’s been tearing through me for the past 20 minutes.
“So why were you kicked out?”
“Weren’t we dropping it?”
“ I want to know.” She sighs.
“I stole something of his.” I hear the ruffling of fabric and a muffled sound of clothes falling to the floor. I wonder what it was. A shirt, maybe.
“He kicked you out of the house with nothing because you stole something from him?”
“I mean, they weren’t good things.” She says, almost proudly. Something isn’t adding up. My mind flies through lists of things worth stealing. A watch. Money. A cell phone. Journals. Things of value. Things that could hurt someone if they lost it.
If I could steal, that’s what it would all be for. Value would lie in the expression on their faces when they discovered they no longer knew the world as they thought they did. I could make them suffer through the same mask of baffling, impulsive hate as I have. Take from them what they have stripped from me. Value.
God, if I could steal.

“Please, what was it? I semi-plead. There’s a sound of Honor lightly dragging her backpack towards herself, and a humming jingle as whatever’s inside the bag bumps its way over the floor. I remember that same hollow rattle coming from inside her bag as we ran across the streets together, walking her home not 10 minutes ago. The familiar, chaotic hum of small pieces being flung against a larger container. So familiar. A scheduled noise. Like bits of candy pieces tumbling fiercely from the package. Like when you pop them into your---.
Please, no.
In a haze of fear, I forget my orders to avert my eyes and whip around.
“Honor--!”

Her bare back is draped in butterscotch light.
She sits, erect spine, slender shoulders. Her tender skin peppered with light hairs. Suddenly she’s everywhere, in my eyes and in my ears.
A lovely madness.
Honor-essence greedily leaking into my every nerve. Breathless voices, murmurs, hunger. Hungry. Luscious. She sits there. And I stand. Her figure cascading in downy hills, milky and feather soft. Tapered sides.
I take in a hollow breath and try to stable myself. But no, the greed. And silken curves.
Breathless, sightless. Pulsing. My mind swims.
I am filled senseless with her.

A few seconds pass until my vision clears again, and I remember the prescription pills that are hiding inside her bag. The rattle was thick, there must be at least two or three half-empty bottles inside. I’m both desperate and terrified to know what she was planning on doing with them.
She must sense that I’m looking and quickly wraps her arms around her chest, throwing her head back to look at me. She smiles sloppily, and rests her chin on her shoulder. She stares, dazed, dream-like, her head is somewhere else.
“Please don’t tell me you were trying to hurt yourself.” I say, my voice wavering.
A fleeting laugh moves through her. The prospect of danger is ravenously funny.
“Of course not.” She has become immensely removed. My eyes are locked to her, but she feels miles away. Stardust. Close, yet so vastly infinite. Her mouth quivers into a dark grin. “It was only meant to be an...experiment.” I open my mouth to object, but she swallows my words in her own. “I’m fine, really. Just wanted to frighten the old man.” Her eyes are flecked with lies. She lifts a solitary eyebrow. “Turn back around...”

I do, but my thoughts continue to race. Who is this apparition of a girl before me? She is shiny new, shockingly so. The Honor I know wouldn’t threaten her life so willingly. She would joke about it, yes. Her words are always fantasy. A fabrication of what she thinks others want to hear or whatever will make her seem more magnetic. But there is so much danger in her now, sitting behind me, she reeks of it. So many dark thoughts blooming from her mouth, hiding in the way she holds her body, the crevices around her eyes. For a moment I am fiercely repulsed by her. I shake with the realization that there is suddenly barely any of her based in reality. Do I really know just as little of her as my parents, the therapists, the doctors? The thought suffocates. To scarcely know anything anymore of the girl that used to be all mine, all for me. To lose parts of her to the ignorance of the rest of the world...that is fear. All the fear I think I could ever contain.

She has to leave.
Before I start to hurt too much.

“Are you done?” I ask. I turn again before getting my answer. She is clothed this time, and sweeps her legs up over the side of the bed into a cross-legged cradle. My mind is cluttered and I grimace, avoiding eye contact. She whimpers,
“You’re mad.” I love the way it sounds through her lips. Yes, I’m mad. Mad in frustration, heat. But also crazed. I revel in the nickname I’ve been given by the outside. “Crazy” sounds about right.
“I don’t get it. Why did you have to leave?”
She bows her head, folds into herself and breathes out a misplaced giggle.
“He can’t handle his own pain. When he get scared, I leave, to make sure there’s room for the fear to swallow up the whole house.” There’s something fantastical about the loveliness of her words, but something tells me she’s telling the truth. “Otherwise it consumes both of us.”

A hefty silence fills our ears. I’m out of things to say.
She pries herself off of the bed and walks towards me. The gray shirt falls around her slim hips in messy bunches. The hem barely reaches her mid-thigh. Thighs. Billowy. The angry fear dissipates and I’m left floating again. She stops in front of me, a few inches shorter, eyes looking eagerly upwards. Breathe. Swallow, breathe.
“Hi.” I whisper. She smiles as if to say “Hi” back. Her face is still painted with rain-streaked makeup. I place my hand on her waiting cheek, and slide my thumb delicately across the tender skin, an attempt to wipe the makeup away. I continue to swipe, achingly slow, as if to stretch the moment out longer. The soft flesh and the sharp cheekbone. The swiping only smudges the black across her face even more. Perfect. I clench my teeth, my chest slowly gaining the sensation of being filled and heavy. Filled with what, i’m not sure. Anxiety, fear? Yes, fear. Barrels of it. It’s always there isn’t it? Lurking in the places it has no business being in. Spreading its fingers through me, mechanically, as if it has a plan to do me in. The gray-shirt clad body moves closer against me.

Until a hazy sound buzzes its way through my ears. Static background noise, immeasurably out of place. A sound like soft footsteps on a staircase.
Dread swallows me. I’d forgotten that a world exists outside these walls, these shadowy eyes, this rapturous figure. A world so clever, it knows just what to do to make me suffer. Fuzzy as it is, it’s definitely footsteps. Somebody coming to ruin my fun. Nice touch. Or is it the person in front of me that has organized this wretched end. Making me delve so deep into her that the outside has begun to seem even more hellish in comparison. Honor does tend to do that to me.

I tense up as the faint noise behind the closed door slowly sharpens. Footsteps, barefoot, no click of a shoe heel. The noise presses. I direct my mind towards Honor again. She curls a lone hand around the nape of my neck. Soft. Billowy, heat. Her fingers scorch like flames at my skin. And so much sweet danger. Yes, i’ve never felt so good in it. She reaches up on tip-toe, and her face swarms my vision in kaleidoscope shades. Green-blue-hazel-gray irises. Her lips fondle my ear. Closer, please. Just a little bit, before...
A knock at the door.
Her nails drive into the flesh of my neck. A whisper-wash of vanilla scented breath, and the phantom sigh of her voice. My limbs jerk into motion and I grab at her sides desperately, not quite sure if this moment is real, or if I’m ever going to have it again. My lips press to the sleek skin of her neck, and I moan into her in gravely notes. Her name, tearing through my throat.
“Hono-”
“Avi.” Mom says. She stands in the doorway of my room like a ghost.
And I turn, turn to face the person in my arms, but my eyes fail to find her. Honor is gone.