Artful Exposition Dump (Ransom Pt. 4.1)

“Okay.” Crossing my legs, I plant my elbows on my knees and lean forward. “So to cut down on any interruptions, I need you to start all the way back at the beginning, before you turned into this...this supernatural shape-shifter teen drama model boy.”

He stares at me, mouth open. “Uh... I what?”

Scraping at a glob of congealed yogurt on the floor, I sigh. “Just start telling me about when it all started.” When he doesn’t say anything, I try again. “Your last day as a human, maybe?”

“Oh.”

“You remember that, right?”

A small smile lifts the corner of his mouth, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. My chest hurts for some unexplainable reason. Maybe the start of a heart attack? I struggle to think of my mother’s answers to those medical history sheets the doctors have you fill out. Heart diseases don’t run in the family, do they?

“Yeah, I remember that.”

I tilt my head. “Okay. Tell me about that.”

Dropping his head onto his knees, his shoulders rise and fall with his uneven breathing. Strands of his white hair tumble over his arms, coarse from too much sun and saltwater and looking like it’d been dyed one too many times. I make a mental note to get him a good restorative shampoo and intensive repair conditioner.

The moments tick by but as promised, I kept my mouth shut. He would talk sooner or later, right?

Almost on cue, his head pops back up, eyes darting around the room. I almost tell him to chill, it's still just me, but I bite the words back.

“I’m not really good with words.”

All that time, just to say this? My silence has limits, you know. There’s a reason my teachers hate me. (Well, there’s more reasons besides not keeping my trap shut, but this isn’t about me.)

“Look, man, we already talked about that,” I groan. “Just tell me the best way you can.”

Ransom shakes his head, grains of sand dropping out of his hair. I add Vaccum the entire house before sand gets in ungodly places to my to-do list.

“No, I can’t.”

Growling in frustration, I slap my hand down on the floor, leaning in until our faces are inches apart. The disgusting odor of all things dead fish punches me in the face, but I refuse to recoil. “What do you mean? What’s so hard about talking? And either you start doing some of it, or you get out before I call the cops.”

Nevermind that my phone lays somewhere downstairs. I’ll find a way.

He doesn’t draw back or flatten himself against the wall like I thought maybe he would, just peers at me through long lashes. Why can’t I have eyelashes like that, instead of having to struggle through applying the proper amount of mascara evenly without blinking too much and messing up my eyeshadow?

“Can I show you?” he asks.

I’m missing something. “Um, show me what?”

Ransom leans back, resting his head against the wall and closing his eyes. When he exhales, his whole body seemed to sigh, curving like a young tree in the wind.

Greys—I would paint it with greys. Long, unblended strokes of marengo for the wood paneling and abalone for his hair with the faintest touch of smoke for the roots... definitely deep charcoal for his shadow.

“Give me your hand.”

Why is he whispering? A frown pulls down the corners of my mouth, my brain twisting and turning but unable to find a connection between my question and his request.

Without waiting for my response, he extends his arm, fingers reaching for mine but stopping just short. I stare at his outstretched hand, gaze rising until I meet his eyes.

Wow, I’m getting really nervous. Sickly green, the color of paisley suits from the 80s and vomit—that’s the color of nervousness. Stop it, Harlow, stop thinking about colors.

I can’t help it. I know it’s weird, the way my brain refuses to think in words or pictures or sound, only color, wandering and circling back on itself. Always coming back to colors.

“Please.”

Words have never meant much to me—tumbling out in jumbled messes I can’t unravel to express myself or used to build walls for motives to hide behind. You can’t trust them and they’re worthless on their own. It’s always been the eyes I judge a person by. You can lie until you go hoarse and can’t say another word, do all the right things with the perfect expression plastered on, and yet your eyes will betray you. Secrets lurk there, telling the truth in shadows and exposing unknown bits of your soul. Sometimes I stare in the mirror, trying to figure out what others see in mine.

So when I take his hand, it's not because of the way his voice wavers with desperation but because his eyes beg me to, oceans of blue flecked with fear the color of gold.

Fire races up my arm, pain ripping through my veins and stabbing at my eyes, my skull shrinking as the pressure builds in my head. This hurts worse than Winter Lee pulling my hair in sixth grade.

You have to be nice to Devin. We’re going to be his home until he finds the perfect family, okay? My mother’s voice makes my stomach roll with nausea and I try to push the memory away, only to have it replaced by another.

I’m not asking you to like what I do, but at least understand why I do it.

Harlow, you can’t run away forever.

Someone is running through my head, plucking memories at random and tossing them back. Almost like browsing a bookstore but never buying.

Suddenly, like a door slamming shut or wall falling into place, it stops. My vision clears though my eyes still burn, the skull-splitting headache reduces to a dull throb.

“Wrong way,” Ransom gasps, chest heaving every bit as much as mine.

I can only stare.

“I’m sorry.”

What is he talking about? What is going on? Why did it hurt so much? Is he trying to kill me? I should be scared. I need to run. Find my phone. Call for help. Risa, where are you?

Clammy fingers tightening around mine, he pulla me closer until our noses, once again, are almost touching. Sweat dampens his hair and slides down his jaw, the vein on the side of his face pulsing with exertion.

Falling, falling, falling...The floor warps, walls spinning around me and the ceiling threatening to crush me. My head is too small, too tight...not enough space for the new presence in my head...

Nausea rips my stomach apart, panic clamping around my lungs and squeezing until I taste blood. But the images.

It's the images—people and places I’ve never seen yet somehow feel so much a part of me it hurts to see them. They twist and contort, blurring together into a fever dream of deja vu.

Sun, warm on my face, so bright I can’t see. The humming sound of sand as the wind carries it into my tracks, erasing any evidence of my existence in this strange place. The taste of salt hangs heavy in the air and on my lips.

The humming grows, morphing into clashing voices and angry shouts. The sun shifts, flitting across the sky as the waves still. A phone rings and a girl screams, the colors permeating my eyelids shifting from gold to blue to green to black.

“Hey, Ransom, you going to answer that?” a boy yells.

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” My shoulder rises in a shrug. “It’s probably just Lydia again.”

“Dude, she needs to get a life.” I don’t like his raspy crow voice.

I fumble for the phone beside me, sitting up and squinting against the glare of sun on waves. The sand and beach blankets and emerald waves blend into a mass of sun-bleached tan, and I shield my eyes.

The phone screen confirms my guess and for a moment, I am tempted to just let it ring like the last two times she called. But I can’t risk her getting mad, because then she might not let me use her car on the weekends.

I sigh and tap answer.

“Hey, Lydia, I’m really sorry—”

“You know what, Ransom? I don’t even want to hear it this time. I don’t care who’s sick or what came up or whatever your stupid excuse is going to be. You promised me that you’d help me today. And where are you?”

“If you’d just let me—”

″I know where you’re not, and that’s where you promised me you’d be.” She falls silent, but I know better than to say anything now. It’s better to let her get it all out. “The other times weren’t such a big deal, you know.”

My legs itch from sandflea bites and my scalp is uncomfortably hot. I squirm as sweat trickles down my back.

“I thought you’d at least come through when it really counted.” She’s never this quiet, even when she’s furious. There’s too many gaps between her sentences. “I guess I was wrong.”

Frowning, I glance at Jason, who’s shaking his head and smirking. I hate his stupid face so much right now.

“I can’t keep doing this, Ransom.”

“What are you talking about, Lydia? I was going to be there, just like I—”

“Well, you’re not here.”

I swallow, but the lump in my throat remains exactly where it is. Jason’s motioning for me to hurry up and get this over with so we can go grab a bite to eat before we catch a movie.

“I’m really sorry.” For once, the words don’t slip easily from my lips, but catch on whatever’s stuck in my throat. This time they hurt, and I wish I could just swallow them back up.

“You’re always saying sorry, like that somehow fixes any of this. I’ve been there for you so many times, Ransom. I tried. I really did.” The way she wavers at the end makes my chest ache. “Why couldn’t you just do the same for me?”

Why is this upsetting her so much? Why do her words make it hard to breathe? Maybe it’s the sun that makes my skin burn and my eyes water.

“Yeah, like you were there for me the one night I needed you most?” I don’t know where the venom that coats my words comes from, but there is plenty more threatening to come out.

I can hear her gasp, and I imagine her recoiling from the phone, face paling and lips trembling. My stomach sinks, and I know there’s no mending this bridge, that we can never pretend to be friends again.

We are parasites, feeding off one another in a delicate balance of give and take.

There is nothing more to take. And I have nothing left to give.

I hang up.