Gloaming: 4

4.

The woman who answered my pounding on the door was tall and thin, all pale skin and a dark dress, with eyes like a fish and hair done up in a tight bow. The sort of person you’d call striking more than pretty, like trees frozen after an ice storm.
        “Can I help you?” she said, each word cold and clipped.
        “Is Adrian here?” I said, as nicely as I could manage.
        “Ah. His friend, hmm?” she said, saying the world as though it was a kind of unpleasant disease.
        “Yes.”
        “And your name is?”
        “Katie,” I said. I waited, but she didn’t offer hers. “Can I talk to him?” I finally added.
        “Wait.” She closed the door, not quite slamming it, and I waited on their front porch, staring about at the yard. It was large, and almost devoid of lawn. Just about every kind of tree I could recall filled it, with various bushes and flowers and some moss that was apparently grass. I wondered if anyone complained that the Holmes’s didn’t mow their lawn, but somehow doubted it. Adrian’s mom looked like sort who’d chew up and spit out the neigbhourhood beautification committee.
        She opened the door again three minutes later. “Upstairs, first door on your left,” she said curtly.
        “Thank you.” I wasn’t surprised to not get a reply and went inside. The house was all earth tones, brown and green, with actual paving stones of some kind for the stairs. The floors were wooden, and walking down the upstairs hallway felt as if I was in some tunnel under the earth. I reached the door quickly, feeling as if I was walking through some Hobbit home, and knocked.
        Adrian opened it a few moments later, suppressing a yawn. He was wearing pyjamas that looked to be a couple of sizes too small and there were dark circles under his eyes. He stared up at me in puzzlement for a few moments and rubbed some sleep from his eyes. “Hi?” he said, voice soft as ever.
        “Sorry, your mom never aid you were asleep.”
        “Stayed up late,” he said around a yawn, heading back into the room. I followed. It was plain and functional, with a bed, dresser, computer desk and nothing else. No pictures on the walls, posters, or anything at all. Everything was in shades of dull green, almost as impersonal as a hospital.
        “Your mom clears your mom daily?” I said.
        He nodded, pulling out the desk chair and sitting down as he stretched, absently rubbing his right arm where I’d squeezed it yesterday after. “You need something? Sorry, didn’t mean to sound rude --.” He yawned again.
        “Is your mom really your mother?” I asked without thinking.
        “What kind of question is that?”
        “I meant, step mother,” I said quickly.
        He shook his head. “She’s my real mom. Why?”
        “I thought she was a wicked stepmother,” I said defensively.
        “Oh.” He was quiet a few moments. “Why are you here? I mean, it’s neat having someone visit me, but not at seven a.m..”
        “Sorry, I just -- something happened to my mom.”
        “Is she okay?”
        “I don’t know. Look, I -- her hands have eyes on them!”
        “Oh.” It was a very different kind of ‘oh’. He didn’t look surprised as much as resigned and went over to the dresser. “You mind turning around? I should get real clothes on.”
        “I could wait outside,” I said.
        “Better not; Penelope hasn’t had breakfast yet.”
        “And Penelope is --?”
        He said something muffled, then: “Sorry, sister.”
        “You don’t want me to wait outside while you change because your sister hasn’t had breakfast,” I said, studying the dull green walls. “That makes no sense.”
        “Does your mom?” he said, a little sharply.
        I turned angrily at that, then froze and stared.
        Adrian had some sweats on and a t-shirt in one hand and I could see the outline of my hand where I’d squeezed his arm in anger as a deep, purple bruise around a far too thin arm. I looked down at my hand and back up, but he’d already wiggled into the shirt, blushing furiously as he did so.
        “I - I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to --.”
        “I’m fine,” he lied. “I just bruise easy.”
        I turned around again and heard a grunt as a dresser drawer opened. “Adrian?”
        “I’m fine. And I’m sorry for what I said about your mom. I’m just tired and I wasn’t thinking straight.”
        “You ever had coffee?”
        “No.” He sat down on the bed beside me and put socks on. “The world is weird enough; we don’t need stimulants on top of that.”
        I had to grin at that. “Feels weird enough today. I’d rather have you not fall asleep mid-conversation, though. Breakfast, my treat?”
        Adrian was silent a few moments, as if mulling over the intricacies of breakfast, then nodded. “Fair payment.”
        “Pardon?”
        “Nothing’s free,” he said, opening the door. “For one thing, another thing has to be exchanged, yes?”
        “That doesn’t apply to just asking questions!”
        “I think it always does,” he said as I followed him down the stairs. “There’s always a cost. Like when predators attack.”
        “What?”
        He looked back up the stairs at me in surprise. “Prey always jump up. It’s like showing off; slows them down.”
        “It tells the predator they’re healthy,” I said.
        He nodded. “And the cost is a few lost seconds, an exchange.”
        “Listening could be cost enough,” I said dryly as he began putting in a black snowsuit.
        “Most people don’t listen; they just wait their turn to talk.”
        “My mom --.”
        “Breakfast first,” he said. “Please. I’m tired, coffee might be good, and I’m going to have to ask you questions too.”
        I started, but said nothing as his mother watched us, eyes cold and dark, not helping her son, only saying he needed to wear more. Adrian told her he had to be able to walk as well, dryly, and received no reply except a stony silence he didn’t seem to find bothersome at all.
        I would have dragged him out the door if I didn’t think it would hurt. I did up his shoelaces while he got the mittens on, trying not to look as impatient as I felt. Adrian just dressed in silence and shook his head when I went to talk as we went outside.
        I headed down the street towards Pat’s Grill. The food was decent, cheap, and it was only five blocks; Grandpa had taken me there a few times when mom had to go clear up business dealings from back home before mom began insisting he make and eat breakfast like everyone else
        I tried not to wonder what he looked like now. Or what customers would think at his store, if they showed up and saw changes in him, if they could at all.
        Adrian reached out and took my hand in his, squeezing it lightly and saying nothing. I returned it as lightly, not noticing anyone watch us from the bus on its way to school.