Dusk Confessional

[The Delaney Twins]

“Well, I wanted to ask how much you like her.”
Arihant froze at that one, and Kennedy wanted to hit himself. So much for empathy and all that jazz. Arihant really would have been better confiding in someone else… Sally, May, Jamie, Michael, Nurse Gornray – hell, even the pigeons in the gardens would probably have been better at this than Kennedy was.
But at least what Kennedy lacked in tact he made up for in persistence. When half a minute had passed without Arihant moving, he decided to prompt him.
“Do you… Are you in love with her?”

[Arihant]

D@mn.
He hadn’t even thought about that yet. He’d considered it bad enough that he “liked” her without thinking of how far the condition had progressed already. Trust Kennedy to bring something like this up and complicate the situation even further.
He tried to think about it, to reason it out like he always did, but somehow he couldn’t. He couldn’t let himself think of it. It brought the strangest feeling to rest just behind his vision – a combination of despair, apprehension, hysteria and… and the tiniest scrap of warmth.
He didn’t know what the warmth meant, but that was the part that was scaring him. That was the part that was keeping him from thinking about it himself.
But he had to work this out.
There had to be some way of doing this without thinking too deeply.
“I…” He swallowed, blinked hard. He sounded as if he had something lodged in his throat. “I don’t know,” he admitted, running his hands agitatedly through his hair.
He was breathing much faster than he had been before.
Well, that was only to be expected. He was probably panicking by now.
“W-What does being in love feel like?” he asked.

[The Delaney Twins]

Kennedy didn’t think that those questions would elicit this kind of reaction, but apparently he had been wrong. Arihant was freaking out and Kennedy didn’t have a bloody clue what to do about it.
It was making him nervous, too, hearing his friend’s quick shallow breathing and being stared at like that as if his next words could break him.
His voice betrayed his uncertainty. “I – I don’t know, it seems to be different for everyone – Arihant, listen, you seriously need to calm down. It can’t be that bad!”
The look on Arihant’s face at those words had him backtracking quickly. “Sorry, no, I mean, it can be that bad, but it won’t help anything if you panic about it. We can sort this out if you keep calm.”
Wow.
Apparently he’d got the words right this time.

[Arihant]

“You’re right,” Arihant said, deliberately slowing his breathing down and relaxing his shoulders. “You’re right, I’m sorry, I just…”
Then he registered what Kennedy had said before asking him to calm down, and he had to battle back another wave of hysterics. “When you say it’s different for everyone, what do you mean exactly?”
His voice was still tense.
No, it’s OK, he thought, still trying to bring some semblance of sanity back. It’s OK. We can sort this out. I can sort this out.

[The Delaney Twins]

Kennedy swallowed. “I don’t think there are any clear-cut signs, people just seem to know.”
He thought of May for a moment. He was probably in love with her, but he doubted that it would help Arihant to know this. In fact, chances were he didn’t even know who May was.
But it wasn’t doubt of the helpfulness of the information that stopped him from telling him. If he told Arihant, chances were it would get to Sally, and then through Sally it would get to her…
And that would just be too much to handle.
“So if you don’t know for sure,” he said slowly, “then maybe you aren’t.”

[Arihant]

Arihant fought back the urge to jump out the window. It was mad, but he honestly felt like it would make him feel better. He could just imagine how it would feel when he smashed through it, the exhilaration that would thrill through him as he plummeted to the ground. Arihant was strange in that, unlike most sane people, he wasn’t scared of falling. And right now, he wasn’t just not scared of it, he felt like it would help him – it would stop him from feeling like this.
Whatever emotion this was – panic, fear, it didn’t really make any difference – it was fluttering inside him like a bird. It felt like something was forcing its way up his throat; he didn’t know whether he wanted to cry or throw up.
“That doesn’t make sense,” he muttered angrily, the raging, conflicting, confusing emotions in direct contrast with his voice, which sounded more terse and sure of itself than it really was. “If I wasn’t… if I didn’t feel like that I would know that for certain too, wouldn’t I? And if you just know when you definitely are and you definitely aren’t” – he couldn’t bring himself to actually say the words – “then what’s in between?”
He looked down at his hands, saw that they were shaking with frustration and clenched them into tight fists in an attempt to stop the shivering motion. Likewise, he calmed his voice for his next words.
“There… there is something in between, Ken, isn’t there? There has to be.”
He didn’t know if he wanted an answer.

[The Delaney Twins]

“Of course there is,” said Kennedy quickly. “I mean, aye, there must be, but… I don’t know…”
He thought for a second, fresh concern gripping him as he realised that he could see Arihant shaking.
“You could…”
He swallowed. Maybe Arihant didn’t want to hear this, but it was all he could think of to say.
“You could be falling in love with her.”

[Arihant]

Eyes wide, Arihant stared at Kennedy for a moment.
Then he buried his head in his hands, his fingers gripping his hair so hard that it hurt. The lump in his throat grew so big that he really felt he was going to be sick, and his body heaved in a silent dry retch.
“Oh, shít.” His voice was a breathless, cracked mess, but the word still sounded loud against the quiet of the summer evening.
This was the worst thing that he could have possibly done here. He’d expected to screw up, of course, he’d known he would do nothing less, but he’d never really thought that he could be just this stupid. Screw jumping out of the window, he could happily have jumped off a cliff now.
But that wouldn’t help anything, would it? What he needed to do to fix this was nothing different from what he had always had to do.
And he would have to do it soon before he managed to convince himself out of it again.
He stayed in the same shuddering position for a few more seconds before slowly coming out of it, sitting up through carefully controlled movements. He needed to control himself physically, even if he apparently couldn’t keep his emotions in safe submission.
And then he got up and walked over to his bed, pulled out his rucksack from underneath and started throwing his scant possessions into it, taking little notice of what he was taking.
“I’m leaving,” he said, and his voice was too loud this time.

[The Delaney Twins]

Kennedy had wanted to bite those words back as soon as they had come out of his mouth, as soon as he saw how Arihant’s face fell. This was not a good time for him to be the only other person in the room with him. Ari needed to be calmed down, and fast.
He watched clothes being flung around for a moment more before his mind fully registered what had just been said.
And then he was standing. “What? Why?” he asked, the words coming out so fast that they were practically incoherent.

[Arihant]

“Gee, Ken, why do you think?” asked Arihant as he moved to empty the chest of drawers beside his bed.
“Actually, no, you’re right,” he said when he received no answer, “it doesn’t make sense at all. Obviously I should just stay here and fall the whole way.” He saw a pair of socks falling towards the ground and managed to catch them before they rolled away. “Obviously I should act as if nothing’s happened and carry on with her completely oblivious to the sick feelings that her so-called friend has. And obviously it won’t be my fault at all when one day I forget what I am – and that happens enough for it to be a very real concern, don’t you worry – I reach out to her and k- kill her.”
He tried to hide his tripping over the word ‘kill’ by doubling his packing speed, pulling his school books out from the next drawer down and tossing a few in the bag before realising that he’d have no need for them wherever he was going.

[The Delaney Twins]

Kennedy walked over and pulled the rucksack out of Arihant’s hands, his temper rising. “For God’s sake, Ari, you won’t lose control!”
This was completely ridiculous. And for Kennedy’s part, he’d never known that his friend could be quite so irrational. He had had no idea that Arihant was capable of this flaming, idiotic absurdity, and to be honest he didn’t like finding out that he was. He had never liked secrets and he liked surprises even less.
So he got angry and became determined to snap him out of it.
“You’re not leaving school just because you’re falling in love with Kira,” he said, all attempts at tact thrown out the window. “You’re not. You’re being stupid.”

[Arihant]

Arihant kept himself very carefully calm. “Kennedy, give me the bag back. Now,” he said, and he could feel his eyebrows draw down into a glare.
This wasn’t what he needed. Not now. He just needed to get the hell out of here.

[The Delaney Twins]

“No,” said Kennedy, his stubbornness increasing. His arms constricted instinctively around the faded grey canvas. “You’re not doing this. You’re completely insane, you know that? You can’t leave just because you’re scared, you coward!”

[Arihant]

“How on earth is it cowardly?” he asked, his voice betraying his frustration. “If I stay here feeling like this, chances are that I’m going to – you know what I’ll do! How is it cowardly to want to stop that?”
He took a step forward. “Please, Ken. Just give me the bag.”

[The Delaney Twins]

“Hasn’t it occurred to you that there’s a reason people trust you?” asked Kennedy, gripping even tighter on the rucksack. “Listen to me, you don’t have to leave. Just because you’re falling in love with her doesn’t mean that you’re automatically going to hurt her!”