Torpid

Oscar Knott stared at his mother unblinkingly, his schoolbag still slung over one shoulder as he watched her wring her hands in a kind of nervous gesture. Then, he coolly slipped it off and let it land with a heavy thump on the hardwood floor before taking deliberately slow steps up the stairs. He was hoping, vainly but passionately, that his mother would stop his steady climb to take back what she had just said. He had no such luck.


When he reached his room, he heard her footsteps recommence below, a bit quicker but just as deft and agitated as they always had been. He settled on the very edge of his bed, letting out an uneven breath as he thought about their exchange, and how much of a shock it had been. His mother – getting married? It was bizarre and unexpected; he hadn't even known she had a boyfriend. He'd never met the guy, nor was he ever mentioned. For the past four years, it had been Oscar and his mother, two similarly distant souls unable to support even each other with any kind of comfort, though that familiarity had been a comfort in itself.


Leaning his back on his quilt, Oscar grimaced, seemingly waiting for David Woods to destroy his life.


///


“Oscar? Oscar, please come downstairs. David's here, and he's so excited to meet you.” Ellen Knott's voice, though it didn't mask her anxiety, alerted Oscar to her impatience. Knowing he was expected to look presentable, he crumpled a hand through his chestnut hair before slamming the door behind him on his way out.


It had been two weeks since he'd heard the news, and two weeks since he'd shown anything akin to understanding toward his mother. Ellen had taken it hard at first, coming up to his room and leaning in the doorway the first couple nights, but eventually, she had grown restless and a kind of chilled civility had formed between them.


“You look wonderful,” she murmured, yet still took her own slender fingers to the short, but thick mess on his head. He craned his neck away, digging his hands into his trouser pockets and waited for her to introduce him to their guest.


Giving up, she continued, while grabbing her purse. David was in the foyer, smiling warmly from the moment he entered. “You must be Oscar,” he sounded too chipper, and Oscar merely nodded, his hands still stuffed in his garments and his button-up shirt crinkled just barely at the collar. His mom swooped over to fix it, and he would have groaned if he wasn't too focused on keeping his fists clenched to simmer down his temper.


Finally, not providing any verbal answer, he slipped on his shoes and turned back to his mother who was wrapping a coat around the pretty evening dress she had on. He hadn't seen his mother dressed up for a long time, and her blue eyes crinkled in some sort of elation softened him a bit.

“Well then,” she said cheerily, though it was stretched thin over the awkwardness between the three of them, “shall we get going?”


I turned to David whose blonde head nodded eagerly. “I've made reservations at your favourite ...”


Oscar didn't care to listen as he grabbed his jacket and headed out the door. He guessed David's car was the black Honda parked in front, and though he strained, Oscar couldn't make anything past the tinted windows.


“Is it locked?” David sounded frustrated as the pair closed in on him, though Oscar couldn't understand why. Not then anyway. “Eli's in there,” he muttered, somewhat unenthusiastic, and before Oscar had a chance to ask who that was, the backseat window slid down a few inches to reveal a pair of unhappy blue eyes.


“Took you long enough,” came a voice from a mouth none of them could see. It sounded irritable, and Oscar frowned, turning away.


“Who's Eli?” He finally asked, his soft voice a bit raspy from being unused for so long.


David's hand automatically clasped Ellen's as though the adults needed support in heavy doses.


“Well, Er—you see, Eli is my son.”


The window slid up again, but not before Oscar felt his stomach sink and caught the gaze quickly disappearing behind the window that looked just as thrilled.


///


Eli, though he was as pasty as David and had the man's eyes, owned a disgruntling difference to the man. While David, though Oscar disliked to admit it, was tender and genuine, Eli was haughty and demanding, his slender fingers tapping urgently against the door of the car. He also had darker hair, a brown so deep it often looked pitch black. Eli had muttered uselessly, to no one a number of times, about how he hated the restaurant they were going to, and how he hated his situation even more.


It was a relief when they pulled up to the somewhat fancy meal place, and Oscar's discomfort was reduced to only being seated across the other boy who narrowed his eyes whenever he stabbed his plate
with his fork.


“So, Eli,” Ellen began, setting her fork down and smiling. Oscar watched interestedly, knowing his mother didn't give off the same, welcoming, air as her fiance. “What grade are you in?”


Eli chewed his rice stone-faced, raising his suddenly intense gaze and locking it with Ellen's. Then, as soon as he swallowed, he looked back down quietly, though not calmly. David groaned somewhat, obviously disapproving.


“He's eleven,” the man said, smiling and Oscar's breath hitched when a pale hand reached over and clasped his mother's. A panic button set off somewhere, and unknowingly, his face flushed red as his eyes glanced around the table, avoiding anything but the small gesture of affection. They somehow found Eli's, and the bright blue eyes narrowed further as they stared at each other. Finally, the eleven-year-old sneered, taking a slender arm and tossing it onto the table, letting his head fall against it and ignoring Oscar all together.


“I have a feeling,” Ellen began, folding her fingers over David's, “that Oscar and Eli are going to be wonderful friends.”


Oscar wondered how, after twelve years together, his mother could be so wrong about him.


///


“I'm not,” Oscar said stubbornly, his cornflakes soggy on the table in front of him. “I'm not, you can't do this!”


Ellen, still wearing a fine blue robe, sighed heavily and leaned over the sink as if to recollect herself. Then, she turned around and faced Oscar gently. “Audrey's grown out of her crib, Oscar. She needs her own room now, and – ”


“Put her bed in your room,” he said unwaveringly, his soft voice raising a little. His agitated eyes, normally a mellow sort of brown, seemed to flare when locked with his mother's.


“It's not baby-safe. Yours isn't, and Eli's isn't, and it's only temporary,” she said, turning on the sink for a minute as she finished a few common kitchen chores, and as if to drown out any further complaints.


Oscar watched her, still feeling a twinge of unfamiliarity as she meandered about the kitchen. Ellen Woods was different from Ellen Knott in small ways. She had quit her job around two years ago to take care of Audrey, Oscar's half-sister as much as he hated the word, and seemed a bit brighter since the baby had been born. She cooked, cleaned, and doted on David – she doted on Oscar and Eli too, though neither wanted to notice.


Though her piercing exterior hadn't changed, and she was still habitually cold and evasive, leaving similar traits onto her son.


Audrey leaving her crib seemed to signify the end of the world for Oscar, and the seventeen year old placed his head in his hands in a forlorn kind of gesture. His mother huffed. “You're being overdramatic.”


At that, Oscar clenched his teeth. He and Eli hadn't gotten along from the very first day they met, and their relationship had grown steadily worse over the five years they'd been forced to live together. He'd given Eli's cruel blue eyes a number of bruises, and Eli had returned the favour by pushing him down the stairs, once managing to break his leg in the process. And there was never remorse on either end.


The one consolation was, if they timed it just right, Eli and Oscar rarely had to see each other. Oscar would come home directly after school, take a shower and eat his dinner early. Then he'd disappear into his room for the rest of the night, unless he was planning on going out. Eli would get home later, after baseball practice, and the routine was similar, though he didn't always eat Ellen's cooking and went out more often during the evening.


But, if they had to share a room for some unknown amount of time, Oscar wasn't sure how long they'd last without killing each other. They'd stopped being physically violent after middle school, especially after Oscar's broken bones, but the cutting remarks, the yelling... Oscar didn't even want to think about it.


“Help is coming today to move Eli into your room,” It was the bigger of the two, “So keep in mind it'll be set up by the time you get home from school,” Ellen said simply. And then, warming her gaze from frosty to distant, she kissed him on the cheek and mussed his already unruly hair.


Oscar didn't reply.


///


“That's really good,” Charlie King smiled at Oscar earnestly, flipping the other boy's notebook to scan what other goodies he could find.


Oscar leaned against his row of lockers, and stretched out his long legs. “Great, so how much did we decide on? Seventy?”

It was nearing five PM, a little longer than after school had ended, though Oscar had prolonged going home by making excuses to Charlie of how he couldn't meet during lunch. The grizzly boy seemed to stroke his chin before grinning. “Yeah, we'll get maybe two hundred from it during gigs, and hey, a hundred in profits sounds good to me.”


Charlie had tried in previous years to get Oscar to join his gruff little band, and the boy had refused thinking it silly to waste his time in high school. He was good on guitar, he'd found his father's when he was eleven and had attached himself to it, but it was a hobby. Plus, he wasn't outgoing or friendly enough to attract a crowd.


Taking the bills from Charlie, he stood up to his full, 5'11 height, and sent a careless wave behind him. Each step felt heavy and he shoved his hands into his jeans pockets as he started on his way home. He'd forgotten until he was already seated in his grungy car, that baseball practice had only just ended, and seeing the athletes pour out of the exit of the gym only made him pull out of the parking lot faster.


Eli caught sight of his car, and they locked surly gazes, before Oscar's tires screeched and he was speeding home.


///


He had been lounging on his bed, on his side of the room, when Eli entered. They had kept up their routine so long, so well, that it took Oscar a minute to remember when the last time they had been in the same room for longer than a minute had been. Just that past weekend, he finally decided, when David had insisted they all eat dinner together.


Eli didn't say a word, but took in the foreign shape of the room, how Oscar's TV was squeezed to one side to make room for a set of drawers and how it was sparsely decorated in comparison to Eli's. Oscar, though he faced the screen, was moving his eyes with Eli's form as the lithe baseball player began to locate all his things.


Their beds were on opposite ends of the room, though that still felt close when Eli finally sat down with a hard expression. They looked away from each other, both bristling, though Eli visibly clenching his jaw, until he finally, surprisingly quietly, picked up a change of clothes and left the room. A minute later, Oscar heard the shower running.


He hadn't noticed he'd had the television on mute, and to drown the sound of the noises around him. Oscar turned the sound back on. It flooded the room, making it feel more stuffed and miserable than it already was.