Find You in the Dark

by A. Meredith Walters

  “I'm not sure what's going on with you. But I'm not going anywhere.” I assured him, speaking softly as though to a wild animal that would run at any moment. I reached out and touched his arm again. This time he didn't pull away. I took that as an encouraging sign so I crawled closer to him. “Clayton, look at me please.” I murmured. I gently lifted his face. His eyes were red and blood shot, his cheeks flushed. The cut at his hairline had come open again and a small trickle of blood made its way down his forehead. He seemed to have sobered up a bit; his eyes were less bleary but there was something still there that worried me.

  I hesitantly wiped the blood from his face and then left my fingers on his cheek. Clay closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He seemed so tortured. What could be eating him up so? “What's going on with you?” I asked, not entirely sure he'd give me an answer. Clay shook his head. “You should go. I don't wanna drag you into my shit. You deserve better than that. Than me.” I slid my fingers down until they rested on the side of his neck. We were so close, our breath mingled together, each invading the others' personal space. But for once, Clayton wasn't pulling away. Instead he seemed to be desperate for my touch, for my contact, and I wanted to give it to him.

  “Why don't you let me decide what I deserve. Now, tell me what's going on with you. Obviously you're going through something and I'd like to help if you'd let me.” Clay took a shaky breath. “I just wanted to be normal. For once, I wanted to feel normal. Is that so wrong?” He whispered. I had no idea what he was talking about. I gave him a small smile.

  “Eh. Normal is overrated.” I said lightly. I wanted to see Clay smile back at me. Instead my words seemed to cause him pain. He shuddered slightly and closed his eyes again. “You just don't understand, Maggie. You really should go. Please.” He said tightly, though I could tell he really didn't want me to leave. That he was just saying the words that should be said instead of actually meaning them.

  “Nope, you're stuck with me. Friends don't leave one another when they need them.” Clay looked at me with a stark hopelessness that freaked me out more than anything had so far. What in the world could make him feel like that?

  He slowly laid down on the floor, tucking his chin into his chest and stared at the wall, closing in on himself. It was clear our talking was done. So I did the only thing I could. I grabbed a blanket off of his bed and pulled it over us and I lay on the floor beside him. I carefully put my arm over his waist and snuggled into his back. His clothes were still damp and they made me a little cold, but I held on anyway.

  Clayton was rigid for a moment and then he relaxed into my arms, reaching up and lacing his fingers through mine. We lay like that for what felt like an eternity. Me wrapped around the boy I had grown to love as we drifted off into a fitful sleep.

  Chapter Eight

  The beeping of my phone pulled me out of sleep the next morning. I awoke in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room. I spent a few moments extremely confused. I sat up, the blanket falling away from me. Then it all came flooding back. The party, Clay jumping out of the tree, his massive freak out after I brought him home. And, finally, us falling asleep together on the floor.

  I was alone in Clayton's bedroom. The house was silent and I gave a quick thanks that my parents thought I was spending the night with Rachel. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and saw that I had fifteen new text messages.

  Scrolling through them I saw that most were from Rachel, who demanded to know where I was. There were a few from Daniel as well. The last one was from ten minutes ago. It was Rachel, again, threatening to call my parents if I didn't call her back in fifteen minutes.

  Shit! I hurriedly dialed her number and she picked up on the first ring. “WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?!?” She screeched into the phone. I pulled the receiver away from my ear. “Jeesh, calm down, Rachel.” I said. “Calm down!?! CALM DOWN?!? I have been worried sick! You disappeared from the party! I get a text saying you left with Clay! I tried calling you a bazillion times, and no answer! You never make it to my house! And I'm supposed to CALM DOWN?!?!?!?”

  Wow, she was really angry. “I'm sorry. But Clay was going through some stuff. I ended up staying with him last night.” There was dead silence on the other end. “You stayed with Clay? At his house?” She asked, her tone changing to one that said she wanted the dirt and she wanted it pronto.

  “Not like that. He just needed a friend.” I ran my fingers through my hair and my tongue over my teeth. Gross. Morning breath.

  “So you're telling me that you spent all night with Clayton Reed and NOTHING happened? I call bullshit.” Rachel was like a dog after a bone and she wasn't about to give up. Thank god I was saved by the sudden appearance of Clay in the door way. He was already up and showered and he looked amazing for first thing in the morning. His eyes met mine and my heart thumped painfully.

  “Uh, Rach, I've gotta go. I'll call you a little later.” “Uh uh, you tell me...” I hung up on her. Yeah, I'd get chewed out for that later but at that moment I didn't care. I swung my legs off the bed and stood up. I was suddenly very self-conscious of my less than fresh faced morning appearance. I hoped my mascara hadn't smudged acrossed my face in my sleep.

  “Hey.” I said. Clay just stood there, watching me. “Hey.” He said back softly. Okayyy. I picked up the blanket and folded it, laying it back at the foot of the bed. “How did I end up in the bed?” I asked after smoothing the sheets.

  Clay still hadn't moved from the doorway, his eyes watched me intently. “I put you there not long after you fell asleep.” “And you slept...?” My words trailed off. Did he sleep in the bed with me? Clay gave me a small smile. I was so happy to see it after the drama of last night. “I slept on the couch.” “Oh.” I said, not sure what else to say, kind of bummed that we hadn't been together all night.

  I was disappointed to feel the renewal of the old awkwardness that had disappeared from our relationship over the last month. It was like putting on shoes that you had grown out of; not right. But our friendship had taken a drastic turn last night and I didn't know where we would go from here. Clay had some major demons and I had no idea what they meant for him or us. “Bathroom?” I asked, my voice scratchy from too little sleep.

  Clay continued to stare at me with his unreadable expression. “Down the hall on the right. There's an extra tooth brush in the cabinet and towels on the shelf.” I scampered out of the room, sliding past Clayton, who had yet to move. I locked myself in the cheery bathroom. It was decorated in a bright nautical theme with boats and fish painted on the walls. A little perky for my mood, if you ask me.

  I really needed a shower. So I ran the water, stripped off my clothes, and stood under the hot spray. I stood there for an endless moment, letting the droplets drip down my body. I closed my eyes and replayed my night with Clay over and over in my head. What had happened to him? What was going on with him? Finally I turned off the shower and grabbed a fluffy yellow towel and dried off. I hated to put my dirty clothes back on, but considering my overnight bag was at Rachel's I didn't have choice. I found a comb and the extra toothbrush still in the packaging under the sink. I took my time working through the tangles in my hair and then put it back in the dreaded pony tail. Rachel would kill me if she saw it.

  I brushed my teeth and started to feel semi human again. Looking in the mirror, I barely recognized myself. I looked exhausted with dark circles ringing my eyes and pasty looking skin. I took a deep breath and finally left the bathroom, slowly making my way back down the hall.

  I entered Clay's room quietly and found him sitting on the bed, his hands hanging limply between his knees. He looked up when I moved toward him; his eyes looked as tired as I felt. “I'm sorry.” He said finally. I sat beside him on the bed and said nothing. Clayton's hands trembled and he clasped them together in front of him. “I don't know what to say to you right now. Please tell me how I can make this better.” He pleaded. I sat up straight, needing all of my strength to confront him.

  “How about the tru
th. Enough with the evasive crap. Just tell me what's going on with you.” Clayton took a deep breath. “Yeah. I guess I owe you that.” He said. “You think?” I snarked, feeling bad when I saw the hurt flash crossed his face.

  “Mags. You are the best friend I have ever had. I don't know many people that would have stayed after all of that last night, particularly after the way I treated you at that party. You're way too good for me.” He sounded so sad and I hated it. I took his left hand in mine and held it lightly, not wanting to frighten him off.

  “I don't even know where to begin.” Clay mumbled, turning his hand over until his fingers laced with mine. Just like they had been last night as I held him. “How about the beginning. That's usually a good place to start.” I suggested, urging him on. “Sure. The beginning.” He stood up abruptly and moved to the window, looking outside.

  “Well, I guess I should start by telling you the real reason I'm living here in Virginia and not in Florida with my parents. We had a rough relationship to say the least. They are pretty well off. My dad is the District Attorney for Miami Dade County and my mom's a party coordinating, pearl earring wearing, gin and tonic at nine AM kind-of socialite. They are on the inside of the social scene in Miami. I grew up with politicians and celebrities coming to my house for bar-b-ques. But have never been, what you would call, warm parents. I was raised mostly by hired nannies, who came and went out of my life like a revolving door.”

  I tried to picture a little Clay all alone in a big house with no one who gave a damn about him. What a sad and lonely life. Clay turned around to look at me and I could see tiny pieces of his perfectly erected wall start to crumble.

  “When I was ten years old I started to have...issues. I became wild and angry. I would fly into these rages and destroy my bedroom, break windows, threaten my parents.” His words instantly brought to mind his behavior last night. What he was describing was exactly what I had witnessed right here in his bedroom.

  “I would go through periods where everything was fine. I was the picture perfect son, getting straight A's. I would be on fire playing for the lacrosse team, everything was awesome. Then it would change and I would get angry, depressed.” I shivered, imagining what he described. I had witnessed these erratic mood swings myself. One day Clay would be my best friend, the next he would ignore me completely. Then there was the craziness of last night.

  “I would lock myself in my room for days. And I would...hurt myself.” His words made my stomach clench. “Hurt yourself? Like how?” I waited in dread for his answer, not sure I really wanted to hear it, but I couldn't stop him now that he was actually opening up.

  “When I was thirteen I discovered that when I cut myself, or burn myself with a lighter...I felt, I don't know...better somehow. That it stopped the craziness in my head and helped me focus. It became sort of like an addiction. I needed the pain to feel something close to normal, as weird as that sounds.” Clay slowly peeled his shirt over his head and he stood there, bare chested in front of his window. He took my breath away at the sheer beauty of what was before me. But then, upon closer inspection I could see something else.

  I stood up and walked over to him. I could see white scars crisscrossing his chest and down his arms. How had I not noticed these before? I reached out and lightly touched my finger tip to a particularly large scar that ran from one side of his chest to the other. “How did you do this?” I whispered, touching the raised skin.

  Clay shivered under my touch but didn't move away. He closed his eyes as I continued to explore the map of scars on his body with my eyes and fingers. “That one was made with a piece of glass. I was high on cocaine and needed the pain to feel grounded. The cutting wasn't my only addiction. I already told you about that.”

  I dropped my hand and took a step backwards. Dear God, how could he destroy himself like that? I just couldn't wrap my mind around someone driven to hurt themselves in that way. It was completely outside my realm of experience.

  Clay put his shirt back on and turned away from me again. “By the time I was fourteen I was pretty heavy into drugs and drinking. There wasn't a day that went by that I wasn't loaded...and cutting. I was so deep into my self- destruction that nothing else mattered. My parents were never around. My so- called friends were only there for the drugs I could score with my parents' money. I really didn't have anyone that gave a shit about the fact that I was slowly killing myself. And I hated myself, Maggie. I mean really hated myself. I thought about suicide every day. I wanted to die, but was too much of a pussy to outright do it.”

  The agonizing pain in his voice was unbearable. Without thinking, I wrapped my arms around him and leaned my cheek against his back, feeling the steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. “You weren't a pussy for not killing yourself. I think it's much braver to keep on living, in spite of all that stuff.” I said sincerely.

  Clay covered my hands with his and held on. He stood rigidly against me. “So how did you end up here, with Ruby?” I asked after he paused. Clay leaned his forehead against the glass of the window. “It all came to a head about six months ago. I had been partying pretty heavily. I was hanging out with my group of druggie friends and was so strung out on heroin and liquor that I never knew what the hell I was doing. I knew my parents were having a dinner party with some of my dad's constituents, but I just didn't give a shit. By that point, my parents had kicked me out of the main house. They were sick of seeing me drunk and high all the time, so I was living in the apartment over the garage.”

  “Your parents knew you were having problems? And they never tried to get you help?” I interrupted, aghast at the lack of love he received from the people who were supposed to give it to him unconditionally. Clay laughed, a hurt and humorless sound, almost a snarl. “Oh they cared about the fact that I was strung out...but only when it affected them. You know, like if I was supposed to go to some function with them, but was too wasted to make an appearance. Then they'd get pissed. But, other than that, their solution was to get me out of their hair. I guess in their minds if they weren't seeing it, it wasn't happening.”

  “God Clay, that's horrible.” I couldn't help myself. I thought of my own parents and knew that if I was in a dark place like that, they would do everything in their power to help me. I felt a new appreciation for my mom and dad and all they did for me.

  “Yeah, well they won't be winning parents of the year anytime soon.” He squeezed my hands and pulled my arms away from him, putting space between us once again.

  “Well, I took this girl back to my apartment. Lacey.” Oh no, here came the jealousy again. I tamped it down with effort. “Lacey ran with my group of friends and was as drugged out as I was. We had just done lines of coke at a club in downtown Miami and we wanted to be...well alone.” He looked over at me, as if gauging my reaction. I simply nodded, encouraging him to continue.

  “We had sex, did some more coke and broke open the bottle of gin I had stored in my kitchen. I have no idea what happened, but the next thing I knew I was freaking out.” Clay took another deep breath, running his hands through his dark curls over and over again.

  “I remember smashing the mirror in my bathroom. And Lacey was just sitting there in her underwear, on my couch doing lines as I'm tearing the apartment apart. Then the hurricane in my head just stopped. Next thing I knew I had a piece of glass in my hand from the mirror and I was cutting my arm. Then my chest. Then my wrists.” He turned his hands over and showed me two deep scars, one on each wrist.

  “Lacey must have come into the bathroom and seen all the blood. I heard her start screaming, but I was way past caring. The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital room, my hands strapped to a bed and my parents looking at me with absolute disgust. You see, my little issue ruined their dinner party. Was quite an embarrassment for them.”

  I was shaking by the time he finished. Whatever I thought was going on with Clay, this was the farthest thing from it. This guy had been to hell and back.

 
Clay opened the drawer at his bedside table and pulled out a bottle of pills, tossing them to me. I caught them and read the label. Lithium. I shook the bottle. “You take these?” I asked. Clay nodded. “I was hospitalized in Miami General's psych unit for ninety days. After that, my parents shipped me up here to stay with my mom's sister, Ruby. I hadn't had much to do with her over the years. She's not close with my mom anymore, particularly after she came out and got together with her girlfriend Lisa. But she is the complete opposite of my parents. She actually gave a shit and offered her home to me. She and Lisa are the closest things to parents that I've ever had.”

  I was relieved to hear that at least someone had cared about him.

  “When I was in the hospital, the legion of psychiatrists diagnosed me with bi-polar disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. They prescribed me lithium for the bi-polar. It's supposed to help with the...swings. But therapy is supposed to be the only thing that helps with my other problems.” Clay sneered, obviously unconvinced this is what he needed. I ignored that minefield and opted to focus on the other part of his statement.

  “The swings?” I had no idea what he was talking about. Bi-polar disorder? Borderline Personality Disorder? “Yeah, my manic swings. I go through major extremes in my mood. You know, happy one minute, depressed and suicidal the next. I suffer from rapid cycling. My mood swings are severe and hard to control and come on really close together. But a lot of that also has to do with the Borderline issue. The chemical imbalance in my brain is one thing, but the crazy behavior extremes are something else entirely. Which is why I turned to drugs, according to my shrink. I wanted some sort of control over what I was feeling all the time. That's also why I cut. It's so strange to know the textbook explanation of why I'm doing things while having no control over doing them.”