the futile! the futile!

[star studded]

"You have to stop doing this to yourself, Lincoln."

If Althea had counted how many times she had said this to her brother in her lifetime, she would have run out of fingers and toes to count on long ago. Her role was to scold and advise and his role was to ignore and disregard. This was how it worked, always and forever.

Hunched over his knees, Lincoln was desperately trying to fold himself in half. His arms folded across his chest, sandwiched between before he pried them away to wrap around his legs. No matter what position he twisted himself in, nothing was suiting. Everything felt sickening and uncomfortable. There was a phantom ache in a new place, or his stomach churned too violently for him to stand. Seated beside him was his dumbfounded twin who had only witnessed this once before, but nothing to this volume. Shaking to the core and covered in a clammy, cold sweat, the strong monument she knew her twin to be, crumbled.

"Stand up.. calm down, calm.." Without a direction to point herself in, Althea rolled up her sleeves and plugged up the bathroom sink. Lincoln still rocked on the edge of the tub, gasping in sobs and shivers. The sight and sound of it all was heartwrenching and pathetic, his face contorted into a folded frown. While the sink filled with cold water, Lincoln was being pulled to his feet by his sister. He stumbled, still hugging himself as tightly as possible before he needed to brace himself on the ledge of the sink. With the faucets turned off, Althea's hand at the back of his head guided his face into freezing water. He didn't bother to close his eyes. He didn't really care if he ever resurfaced. It took a tug to draw him from the submerged comfort he was taking place in. Pulled back out of the water, he took a dying man's gasp of new air. Blue eyes watched his reflection in the mirror, red-eyed and flush-faced. A shipwreck of mass proportions. Drawing in another breath, he felt his lungs shake from learning to pace breath without sobbing.

"Relax." Her nervous, commanding voice had gone soft and sweet again. They were transformed back into huddling children, hiding under the blankets during downstairs shouting matches or blinking matching sets of blue eyes out the window at red and blue sirens whizzing past. "What's wrong?"

Memory was interrupted by a present day voice that coerced attention, his head hanging, shoulders hunched, arms taut with the tension of holding himself up.

"I don't know." It came out in a rush of breath, his voice as awkward and transitional as he ever remembered it. Lincoln sounded like he hit a snag in growth and his voice never quite made the leap over it with the rest of him. Blue eyes fell shut and he backed over to the bathtub edge again, slumping into the porcelain rather than sitting on its ledge. Althea took that position over, folding herself on the lip of the tub, hands collected in her lap, her back pressed to the corner of the wall.

"You can't keep doing this. You have to know what's wrong." He knew, and he said nothing. That's what she had assumed all along, though she had always been famous for assuming wrong. The twins sat there, unconventionally perched in Lincoln's stiflingly small bathroom. Rather than respond vocally and have to witness the shock and horror of his own voice, he shook his head no. He had no idea what was wrong. He had no idea what was going on. He left Althea without clue or intuition.

"Lincoln.."

"Just stop fucking interrogating me for two seconds please!" The volume of Lincoln's voice lifted decibels and caused his twin to twitch in surprise. Drawing knees up against his chest, he clunked his forehead onto the ledge provided for him.

"Maybe you need to start seeing Dr. Walsh again."

"Why, why would you say that, what would make you say that, Althea." Lifting his head back up from its lazy loll against his legs, Lincoln moved to twist onto his knees, moving to reach some sort of eye level with his sister. She did her best not to shrink back.

"Just because.. this was how you were before you started seeing Dr. Walsh, before you started.. and then you were just.."

"I'm not taking those fucking pills again, Althea, you take those things, you chow one down every night and tell me how you feel!"

"Stop fucking yelling at me, Lincoln, I'm just trying to help you!" Scrambling to stand, Althea planted feet on tile, watching as her brother rose with her. He stepped out of the tub and she backpedaled towards the bathroom door in choreographed moves.

"You don't want to help me! You never wanted to help me, you just want to shut me up! You just want me to go back to a fucking shrink so they can pump me full of medicine, so I'll stop bothering you!"

"That's not it! I want you to stop doing this, Lincoln, I want you to stop.."

"You're a selfish bitch!"

"Yeah, well at least I'm not a fucking psycho!"

"Get out!"

"My, how the tables have turned!"

"Get out!"

<center> -- </center>

With his sister vanished, and with Glory off running somewhere with whatever or whoever, he found himself alone. The four walls of his apartment did little to keep him with the secure, comforting feeling of being strapped in. Instead, he felt like they were too wide, too far set apart. He wished them to move in and crush him flat, like a fly between two crash cymbals. Careening onto the couch, he drew knees up again, a quivering, nervous ball of skin and bone. Skinny, pale, tear-sticky and abandoned. He was a wretch. An emotionally fucked-up wuss who couldn't suck anything up anymore. He had done too much of it in the past. There was nowhere left to shove all of the new things he found himself drowning in.

He wouldn't take those pills again. He wouldn't live life numb and apathetic, a walking corpse, slave to routine and chemicals. He wouldn't. He couldn't. This was better. Even if he was feeling miserable, he was feeling. Wasn't that better? It had to be.

But loneliness. At least when he felt nothing, he didn't have to feel this overwhelming sense of being the only one swimming in the middle of the sea.

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ October 01, 2004 02:13 AM: Message edited by: everything static ]</font>

[star studded]

With french-braids plaiting blonde hair back, Althea sat on the stoop of her brother's apartment building, her knees jutting upwards. Folded arms rested on them, her neck wrapped in a red scarf and her white sweater keeping her as warm as one could be in New York autumn. She watched curiously as Lincoln sat beside her in long-sleeves, jeans and little else, his fingers bracing a cigarette. Smoke trailed in a ribbon beside him, and occasionally he'd drag it to his mouth for a drag that always ended in a rush of gray, cloudy breath.

Both twins sat hunched and quiet, bony framed and wide-eyed. They were reminiscent of the stick children they once were with gooey-red stained smiles and fair skin. In unison, they drew in breath and sighed together, their bodies slowly lifting and falling. There was silence because there usually had to be before there was conversation.

"How are you?"

"I don't really know .. anymore."

Glancing at each other for a moment, two sets of blue eyes met in a suspended moment before they drifted past the catch of eye contact.

"By all accounts, I really should be happy. And I'm not. So.. I don't really know what to do with that." Althea shifted, holding herself closer with the advent of the wind. It blew breezy around them but Lincoln never seemed to even shrug at it. "What about you?" Tipping her head, she nudged at him with the curve of her elbow, eyes wide.

"Remember Fliers Field?"

His voice spoke the name of a place she swore she'd never hear him mention again, and it managed to drag her attention to a complete peak. "Yeah?"

"Well, remember how there was that.. that huge barn out back with the really tall silo?" Staring off into traffic, Lincoln spoke in a drowsy, tired sound.

"Yeah, I remember."

"One day I was out there. After the plane. I went by myself and I was just sitting there, and there were ducks. These ducks were flying in that.. that V formation they fly in, right? And.. they just.. they just flew into the silo. I don't know how or.. or why, but.. they just.. the first one hit it and they all.. the whole V just.. smashed. And.." His breath started to waver, his bottom lip caving into itself. "..and they all just fell, and.. shook, and.. I couldn't, I.. nature, how.." He paused, lifting a hand to smear over cracking features. "Have you ever seen.. nature make a mistake like that?"

"Lincoln.." Althea's voice dipped low and quiet while she leaned in closer, her hand smoothing down his spine. "It's.. you aren't.."

"I don't mean that, I mean.."

"I know.. I know what you mean."

[star studded]

"This is a bad idea."

Althea plucked boys clothing out of the drawers they were stuffed in, using thumbs to create a folding point, each piece thrown into a compact formation before they were tossed into the opened duffel bags on the mattress. Lincoln did the same, but in much sloppier actions, t-shirts balled up and stuffed where they fit, jeans laid in helter skelter wrinkled heaps, pushed in among mismatched colors, a pair of sandals and boots, ziploc bags of toiletries that his sister made up for him.

"Why is this a bad idea?" Lincoln echoed back, pulling the wad of cash out from beneath his mattress and starting to count out bills. His sister watched amazedly as each green piece of linen was thrown back among its counterparts.

"Where the hell did you get all that?"

"From working. I save. Do I look like I buy lots of shit?"

"No, but.. what about your job, what about the band you were trying to start?"

Lincoln's eyes rolled as he struggled to zip closed an overstuffed bag, the lumpy canvas stretching over it as he pulled the thin strip of metal over teeth to latch them together. With the bag packed, he tossed it beside the door and reached for the one that she finished packing to mimic the same actions.

"The band won't work. And I quit my job. It's time for a change."

"You can change without doing something stupid, Lincoln."

"Fuck that. Just because you don't want to come.."

"Of course I don't want to come, you're going with Glory. You think I can spend an hour in the car with him never mind fucking weeks. Where the fuck did you get money for that clunker of a car anyway?"

"Hocked my drum set."

The shock of those words made Althea's eyes bulge a moment. So that was what was missing. "Are you serious?"

"Yep. Look. I gotta go get Glory and convince him that we're leaving now."

"He doesn't know you two are going on a road trip."

"Nah. But he'll come. What better things does he have to do?"

"I don't.. know, Lincoln, this.. this is all a little weird and drastic, don't you think?"

Wrapping his scarf around his neck, he shrugged shoulders and slid arms into the sleeves of his black coat, swinging two bags over his shoulder with a lazy grunt of effort.

"Of course it is. That's why it'll be fun. You've got my cell phone number, I'll call you, you can call me. Whatever. I have to go get Glory, he's at the Equafax office, I think."

"Right. I'll see you later, Linc."

Leaning in, he used his hand to ruffle her hair and then smooth it back into place, before he shuffled off downstairs and into the rusted car, leaving Althea staring out his apartment window to wave an arm goodbye after him.

<center>--</center>

"Hey asshole! Get your ass down here, we're going somewhere! Hey! Glory!"

Outside of the Equafax poster office, Lincoln stood on the sidewalk, bustled and shuffled around by people that passed by. Craning his neck upwards, he peered at the row of windows and bellowed at the top of his lungs.

[star studded]

The Jersey motel was rather stereotypical, a flickering neon light that advertised 'able TV' rather than cable, an ugly green sign that had its paint chipping. The rusted out truck was parked outside of their room, the door blocking out the frozen snow that started to fall shortly after the two boys agreed that spending the night in something other than the truck would be the best idea.

Sitting on the scratchy blanket, Lincoln glanced over at his sleeping roommate. Glory Corgan slept hunched in a tiny ball, the blankets cocooned around him so tightly that it was impossible to unwrap him. Lincoln leaned over, trying to block out the sound of Glory's heavy, wheezing breath. Hunched over his thighs, he locked hands together, his spine stretched out beneath thick skin. With so much road stretched behind him, and so little ability to explain why, it was now that he felt the need to at least reach back and try to keep some strings in tact.

Diving and pawing through the bag he had packed himself, the small, poorly kept book of tattered phone numbers was retrieved from the mess and flipped through, fingers preening down the list of names until the one he wanted was reached. Leaning over, he lifted the dirty phone to his ear and winced, his thumb pressing against the correct succession of numbers.

"Hello, you've reached the estate of Elliot Parish, if this refers to any of Mr. Parish's upcoming business ventures please call the cellular line."

"Christ, Gio.." He mumbled, waiting for the shrill beep. His throat nervously cleared and he locked his jaw in trepidation. "Hi. This message is actually uh.. for Liv. It's Linc. Look, you probably want my balls in a jar for taking off. I know it's pretty close to recording time and everything but uh.. but.. things are.. I'll explain. And I won't be gone too long. Just.. y'know a week or two. Call my cell phone.. and I'll tell you what's up, the number's 212-495-6763. I'll .. talk to you soon. Call me."

Thumbing the reciever to cut the line short, he drew in a breath and waited, running over his options. He had one more call to make and he knew this, however the courage he lacked was much more imperative at the moment. Sighing and listening to the drone of a dialtone, Lincoln dialed the number he knew from memory, waiting for the answering machine he knew so well.

"Hey, It's Brian. If you're trying to reach one of my nomadic roommates...they're not here. If you're trying to reach me, and you're hot, leave your name and number and when this guy I'm with cums, I'll call ya back."

Even knowing that it was a farce, Lincoln still felt that familiar tick of irritation at the very idea.

The high tone interrupted his thoughts and he froze a moment, letting seconds of silence linger on the line.

"It's Lincoln. I just needed to.. yeah. I uh.. I'll call. You should.. you should call soon. My cell phone. Right. I gotta.. I gotta go. See you later."

Slamming the plastic reciever into the cradle, he glanced over to see Glory stir and then go back to wheezing complacently.

[star studded]

On Friday mornings, Lamden's Grocery is a pretty packed place. We've got regulars, at least regulars to me, and I've only been working here since I moved to New York. A whole ten months or so. The better part of a year. Funny the sorta shit that happens in a year, in a new city. Away from home, things are always bigger and magnified. Life went from lifelike to something campy and showbiz-like. Take this morning for instance. I didn't get home until pretty early, and when I did collapse through the door, I only managed to get two hours of sleep before I was supposed to come here at nine and open up shop. I was, of course, fucking late. Sheila, the white-blonde thirty something acting teacher that buys her Yogi tea here every week, was actually waiting to greet me at the door. I grunted some bullshit apology and let her in, flipped on the lights, turned on the register and bam -- Lamden's Grocery was open for business.

I, of course, have had to master the art of counting out the cash drawer while ringing people up and constantly fucking up my total. I want to shout at them all to get out, but shouting won't get me anywhere. I drank a total of four Jacks on the rocks last night, and had a tequila shot to boot. I have a hangover the size of Rhode Island (a state so useless, it should be pushed into the fucking Atlantic), and my mouth is dried out. My voice is several notches lower than it should be. It makes me sound very rugged.

Butch, maybe.

I spent last night dancing myself into a blackout with Olivia and some guy named Nate/Midwest/Jake. Jake, I've discovered, or remembered, or maybe... I don't know. But Jake is what I think is his real name if my fucked up memory from last night serves me correct. I remember interrupting him while he was dancing with some flighty Greenwich queer, and we danced and drank and he called me Robert Smith. He also called me butch, I think, which Olivia had done before. I'm starting to think it's a trend. I'm starting to think that either way, no matter what the fuck I do, or call myself, or try hard to be, there will always be a part of me that contradicts. It's like human nature, or something ingrained. Once I figure something out, I have to do something to completely cross it out and force myself to start all over again. I'm nothing if not in the process of self-fucking-disovery.

I'm twenty-two. I'm too young for a fucking midlife crisis. Self-discovery my ass. I don't need to know who the hell I am, I just need to know what the fuck I want.

Sheila plops her tea down in front of me. She buys a fucking basketful every time and I wonder how many cups of goddamn tea she drinks a day. "You look like shit, Linc." She says in her classic lesbian-chic voice. Her nose is small and sharp and always turned up like a stereotypical snob.

"Long night." I grumble, punching in the numbers and ringing up her total. It's the same every time. These health food people are nothing if not consistent. If I ever start eating hummus or drinking echinacea, I want to make sure someone is there to throw me down a flight of stairs so I knock some sense back into myself when I land.

"I know." She drawls gleefully. She, for some reason, is loving this. "I saw you at Pulse."

Oh fuck. "Fourteen-eighty." I verbally bowl her over with how fast I'm ready to shout her total out. She hands over her usual twenty, and I make change like I've been doing it since birth.

"I didn't know you were gay."

"I'm not." I quip out of reaction more than meaning. It's just easier to look away and deny.

"You sure were dancing your heart out with that guy."

"Old friend. He's gay, I'm not. Whatever, dancing's dancing. It's not sex. I went with my friend Liv, she's a lesbian. Y'wanna meet her? I should set you two up on a date."

Sheila's mouth curls in that amused look she always gives me when I've told her a funny joke. "Cute."

"I try to be. Five-twenty's your change. Have a nice day, Sheila."

"You always kiss old friends?"

"I got customers. Quit harassing me. Go practice downward facing dog or some shit."

She steps out of line and rolls her eyes. "Bye Linc."

"Yeah. Bye."

Well. This seems to present us with a predicament. Going to gay clubs apparently denies us convenient anonymity that being a hermit and a social recluse provides us with. Yet, being a hermit and a social recluse denies us the human contact and attention that we so desperately fucking need at three in the morning when our bed is empty and our whatever-they-weres have left us stranded and we feel like the fucking walls are closing in on us.

I wonder if I'll see Jake again. I'd like to see Jake again.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

"Next?"

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ April 15, 2005 01:10 PM: Message edited by: pretty things ]</font>

[star studded]

<center>And the record begins with a song of rebellion...




All the words in my mouth
That seemed deemed unworthy of letting out
Banded together to form a makeshift militia
And burrowed bloodily through my tongue and my teeth
And I stood proud in the gallery
With my open socket of a mouth for them to see
They all just laughed and said "That boy, he.."

That boy's got woe
Woe
He lives with woe

And that's all I can get when I'm lonely
And these visions of death seem to own me
In the quiet of the classrooms
All across the stacked united states of woe

Woe
We live with woe
She said:

"I can't get laid in this town without these pointy fucking shoes.
My feet are so black and blue and so are you."

Please take me out of my body up through the palm trees
To smell California in sweet hypocrisy
Floating my senses surround my body
I wake my nose to smell that ocean burn

So now I'm forging ahead
Past all the plutocrats who sold me out
Go sob in your bed if life is twice as pretty
Once you're dead
And send me a card
I'm still the optimist though it is hard
When all you want to be is in a dream

Say Anything - Woe</center>

[star studded]

It's hot out. Cities are worse than anywhere else because there's no fucking breeze. The huge buildings just block anything and you're trapped in a maze of cement and stale air. Inside Elissa Larson's office, everything is fake and air conditioned. Maybe not air conditioned, but cooler than outside. I'm sitting on the stretched out couch, because I refuse to lay down. I'm not fucking crazy. At least not today.

"Are you still living alone, Lincoln?"

"Yep."

"Last we talked, you were seeing someone named Brian. How is that working out for you?" Her voice is so high and mighty. She's always looking over her glasses at me, like looking through them will kill her or something. Whatever. I can't really stand to look at her when we're talking, so I focus on the window over her shoulder. Outside, the sky is a very typical blue and all of the clouds are wispy and white, spotting the sky just barely. It's clear and sunny and stifling. I wonder if Liv is around and will take me out tonight. I wonder if I can get out of my apartment.

"Brian? Oh. I don't know. I think he left town. I went on a road trip with my friend, and I came back and he was gone. And then Glory moved out."

"But weren't you in a relationship with Brian?" Her pen skids across paper and then she folds it all into her lap, her fingers knotting up. It's like every other doctor has looked at me. Attentive. Understanding. Completely and utterly fake.

"No. No, it was just. He was just a friend."

"Like Liv is a friend?"

"Yeah. Just like that." It's easiest to lie when you don't like the person you're lying to. Or maybe it's not that you don't like them. I just don't fucking care about this woman, or what she thinks she's trying to figure out from me. I can't stand people trying to pry me open and figure me out. I'll do that my fucking self, and when I figure it all out, I'll let you know.

"Do you remember what we talked about last time, Lincoln? About your feelings for Brian? The last time we talked about Brian, you told me that you were thinking about him in a different way than you had thought about other people in, isn't that right?"

Struggling to think back to the last time I had talked about Brian, I find that it's pretty difficult. It's really weird to come back one day and a phone number you're used to calling is a disconnected line, and no one's there when you answer the door. I stretch out on the couch a minute, my feet flat on the floor, toes tapping. Fuck this shit. Fuck it.

"I don't know. I don't know how I feel about anything. I mean, you spend like.. you spend like, a month or two fucking this guy when you've never.. really fucked anything, and then you tell me how you feel when he just up and takes off. I know you're going to like... you're going to tell me this is all about my pent up emotion towards him and that I'm really in love with him and making emotional bonds and all that stereotypical therapist bullshit, but it's really just that -- bullshit. I didn't love Brian. I don't love him now. I don't even know what that is, to.. love someone, what the fuck is that? I mean, I love my family, my mom and my sister, but... you don't love someone else that you're sleeping with like that, do you? So how can the same thing, the same word be used for two completely.. completely different feelings? I liked him, sure, whatever, I just want to know why. Why leave like that, y'know? No note, no call, no reason, no... I don't know. It's fucking ridiculous. I just sit at home now. Y'know? I went out with.. Liv, I went out dancing with her the other night and that was fun, but.."

"What did you do?" She cuts in. I fucking hate that. She wants me to talk, but as soon as I do, she cuts me off.

"I told you, we went dancing, we.. we just went out dancing. I had a few drinks. I danced with this guy, this guy.." This is bad. I shouldn't be talking about this, because I want to keep this to myself. Telling people gets me in trouble. Talking gets me in trouble. I'm too far in, though. This is what Elissa does, she lures you in with this sense of comfort and then she brings the blade down on your neck and your head rolls away with all of its thoughts in it, completely separated from the rest of your body. You don't know what you're saying or why you're saying it, but you're just talking, all of this shit coming out of your mouth at high speed and with no filter or indication of ever shutting the fuck up.

"Jake." I continue. "This guy Jake."

"Do you know Jake?"

"I danced with him, does that mean I know him?"

"Have you seen him since then?"

"We had lunch. He came to the place I work, and we went out to lunch."

"Did you talk?"

"Yeah."

"About what?"

"I don't know. I invited him over for dinner, but that's really.. y'know, really stupid of me to do because I'm fucking.. I can't cook. I can't cook for shit. And I'm just.. I'm a mess, I can't. I can't even get through lunch with someone without saying something completely out there and off base and off topic and ... uncomfortable. He doesn't -- he won't get it, y'know? I mean, Brian didn't get it, I don't even get it. I don't know why I do this, I don't know why I constantly insist on this ... this overanalytical bullshit, but there are just so many problems, y'know? There are so many problems with everything, nothing works out and sometimes if you anticipate that, you can almost fix it. You.. you can at least know that there's going to be a problem that you can brace yourself for, so maybe it won't bowl you over as much."

Elissa is looking at me like I've just said everything she was expecting me to say. Of course. Of course I've fed right into her little hands. The perfect, pliable fucking patient.

"Do you think that there will be problems with Jake? When he comes to dinner? After that?"

I want our time to be up right now, at this moment.

"Yes. Of course. There are always problems. Yeah.. yeah.."

"Like?"

"Like me. I'm just.. a problem. A big problem to solve."

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ April 21, 2005 12:54 AM: Message edited by: pretty things ]</font>

[star studded]

I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know, I don't know why I'm here, why he's here, why we're doing this, why we've done this, why I want to do it again. Everything that happens is so confusing. Everything we do has two sides and two options and I'm leaning so hard into one but I keep thinking about the other. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. This isn't right. This is out of control. This is unacceptable. This is so not me, to be letting some guy stay in my bed, to let him stay over in the morning, to not make him leave until he has class, or I have work. I don't know. I don't know what I want.

I want everything to be normal. I want everything to be easy and simple. I want to go out on dates and go dancing, I want to buy him dinner and take him out. I want him to come see Liv's shows so I can hang out with him backstage rather than all the other assholes who are surely going to be out on tour with her. I want to talk at length about stupid shit like sitcom spinoffs and music and things that don't matter. I want normalcy. I want smooth sailing. I want, I want, I want...

I want him to get out of my bed and go away. I know I'd kill him if he tried. I'd tear him to shreds if he ever tried to leave before I woke up, I'd make him wish he had never met me. I'd crush him. Brian used to crush me. I'll do it first this time. I'll finish him.

I don't know. I don't know. I can't talk. He's asleep and my tongue is lead. I try to talk, I gear up to lay everything out on the table, to tell him everything, to say that I'm bad news, destructive, that I hate everything I want and I want everything I hate, that I can never tell up from down when I'm like this. If I'm not screaming, I'm agonizing. I'm a mess. I'm all askew. I hate therapists. I hate talking to people who don't know me. I try to tell Liv, I make weak attempts to talk to my sister and I avoid my mother at any and all costs. But I'm not ashamed. I refuse to be ashamed. I don't want to be ashamed.

I want to bury my head in his neck and not surface. I want to suffocate and be buried. It's the only way to stop thinking.

All I can manage to do is swing my arm across him and hold on. An anchor to stay. I want him to stay.

Small steps. I'm incapable of leaping.

[star studded]

Inside the echoing cubicle that was the Greenwich Village record store, Althea and Lincoln stood cramped between rows of CDs with their stuck on, handwritten price tags. Lincoln flipped through the jewel cases without any success, dismissing title after title while his sister looked on with crookedly crossed arms.

"If you'd tell me what it was you were looking for, maybe I could help you."

"You're company, not assistance," he informed, sighing loudly and turning from the rack. "You don't need to know who I'm buying stuff for, or why."

"Well, it's pretty obvious." She scoffed at him, turning on a flat heel and ticking a few cases away, marched around to the other side. "It's someone you pissed off. You don't buy presents. I don't even get a birthday card. And since you're buying one of your apology presents, it must be someone you give a hoot about."

"A hoot? Did you just say a hoot?"

"Why can't you just tell me? I already know."

"You don't already know." Wheeling around, Lincoln paid intense attention to the rows of faded vinyl records, fingers sifting through and examining each cover.

"I do too," Althea insisted. "It's a boy. A boy you like, and a boy you're maybe going on dates with. You did something classically idiotic, pissed him off, and now, you feel like you have to make amends or he'll go on resenting you forever." Reaching across the rows of CDs, she managed to snag his chin with fingers and pinch at cheeks, a squeaking sound of pleased teasing coming from her throat without her ever opening her mouth. Angrily, Lincoln batted her hand away.

"And how's your love life going?" He sneered. Rather than take the hit, Althea propped hands on hips and tipped her chin high.

"I'm getting married. Patrick Swayze finally popped the question. I've decided I simply can't marry a man who won't consent to learning to the final dance scene from Dirty Dancing with me. Complete with the lift." Pale arms lifted high in the air, a graceful flourish as she batted lashes and sighed. A foot reached out and kicked at his ankle as her arms fell again. "So what's his name?"

"Morton."

"Don't even try that with me, I invented that game, asshole."

"Jake."

"And what does this Jake like? For music, I mean." Like some guru, Althea pushed up invisible glasses and hunched over Lincoln's shoulder. He shrank away, embarassed, it seemed.

"I don't know. Uh. ABBA?"

"ABBA? Like. Dancing Queen? Feel the beat of the tambourine, ABBA? I need to meet this guy."

Lincoln ignored his sisters subtle jabs and continued leafing through the flat pieces of vintage music memorabilia. Happening upon a colorful, but faded cover, he peeled it back and blinked at the title, snatching it from the stack and flipping it over. Judy Garland's face stared up from the front, her hair in two pigtails, and her gingham dress fanning out around her. A watercolor rainbow spanned over her head and behind her rose a green city, sparkling and beautiful.

"Got it." He grumbled, hiding the title from his sister and angling towards the counter.

"The Wizard of--"

"Shut up." A sharp snap of a command, his hand digging in his back pocket for the folds of his wallet. "Just don't say anything."

"I think it's sweet."

"I said shut up."

Helplessly, Althea held up hands and motioned towards the counter. Her brother, the unpredictable, stormed past and shelled out an assortment of bills for an apology he never knew quite how to properly speak, but could do his best to actively demonstrate.

[star studded]

"You said your parents divorced when you were about six or seven, is that right?"

Lincoln sat in the oblong chair, his legs kicked up on it. With his spine pressed between the one arm and the backing, he was in a casually slouched position, fiddling with the drawstrings of his sweatshirt hood as Dr. Larson fired questions at him. Smearing a hand over dark hair, he nodded. "Yeah, about that."

"I'd like to talk about the circumstances surrounding that divorce."

"What, like. How it made me feel, and shit?"

"We can talk about how you felt, if you like. About what happened, where you were, how you found out."

The photographic snap of memory held everything in stop-motion accuracy. It projected itself on a film reel in front of him, flickering and silent. A tiny, green strip of lawn in the south of Boston. A sprawl of toys in front of him, action figures, a cap-gun without any ammunition. The sun in the distance was setting behind the train tracks suspended high above the horizon line. Behind him, in the tiny Adler house, a storm brewed. Althea's tiny voice wailed like wind above the thunderous shouting. Something was thrown and clunked against something else.

"Go ahead, then! Go, go live with your whore of a girlfriend, you bastard!"

"You're blowing this out of proportion, Rosemary.."

"You're the one leaving! You're the one cheating on your wife, abandoning your children! Get out! Get out of my house!"

"It's our house--"

"Not anymore! Get out!"

Jonathan Adler's steps grew louder as he marched from room to room and finally out the front door. At his legs, a tiny Althea clutched and clung, red-faced and screaming, her cheeks covered with typical, common tears. Behind her, Rosemary reached to grab her arm and tug her back. From the lawn, Lincoln watched, aware of everything, understanding it all, processing events as fast as he could. While his sister's blue eyes streamed and bubbled over with tears, Lincoln's merely burned as he stared up as stoic as he could manage. Jonathan hovered over him at a loss, gripping two haphazardly packed bags of his things, one in each hand. His tie was crooked, and he looked frazzled, out of sorts.

"Goodbye, Lincoln."

The stoic facade broke and fell away, his bottom lip trembling and caving in as he dragged in a small, wet gasp of hurt and betrayal. At the sight of it, Jonathan ducked down and pressed his forehead to Lincoln's smaller one, a hand pressed harshly at the back of his neck. The boy expected comforting words, some sort of buck-up reassurance. Another raspy sob choked out as matching twin-tears started to fall.

"Stop that right now. Don't you cry, Lincoln. Don't you dare cry."

The business tinged hiss of words stopped the boy in his tracks and he stared wide-eyed, straight ahead as his father pushed off and marched away again, towards a beaten four-door.

"Lincoln?"

Sill staring down at his fiddling fingers, Lincoln Adler shrugged broad shoulders and stared out at Dr. Larson.

"I was really young. I don't really remember."