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Grantaire’s house has too many doors, like living in a shifting puzzle game. Getting to the kitchen with shopping bags is unlikely if not impossible. The living room is orange for no good reason and full of stolen televisions. His mother sleeps with her head pillowed in her dinner, his father forgets to clean his vomit out of the bath.
“I’m in a position of trust over you,” Enjolras yells and his words crack down the middle like eggshells. Grantaire doesn’t say I don’t trust you but he wonders if it would hurt Enjolras’ feelings.
He watches Enjolras’ skinny fingers sort through his portfolio.
“This is good,” his teacher says, holding up a sketch, a flower or a guitar or some hands Grantaire can’t remember. He nods and watches ragged blue butterflies rise in swarms at the corners of the room.
Life isn’t so difficult when you’re wrapped in cotton wool. More than anything Grantaire fears a receding of the mists embracing him. Sometimes it’s easier to eat a handful of cold medicine and not have to worry.
His father tells him he’s a good boy and only just misses trying to clasp his son’s shoulder.
“Why did you give birth to me,” Grantaire screams at his mother and she says I don’t know, I don’t know, who are you, I didn’t raise you like this, leave me alone, “why don’t you love me? Why don’t you love me?”
“Grantaire.” Enjolras’ voice pulls him back into the classroom when everyone is gone. He turns dully, grey tunnel vision. An angel at the end, a light in the dark. “I haven’t found your-”
Warm hands touch his shoulders, slide down his arms.
“You’re freezing. Are you okay?”
He laughs. And laughs, and finds he can’t stop.
They have ice cream on his birthday, a litre of two-euro strawberry. His mother smiles past his ear and pours herself some wine. His father wonders where sixteen years have gone and later blacks his eye.
It rains on Paris. Grantaire kicks through it in his sneakers with no soles; if he was wearing socks they’d be soaked. Joly, sheltering under the porch in his halls, offers him the butt end of a joint as he approaches. When Bousset comes down they are catching raindrops on their tongues.
If there was any kind of romance in his soul, the paintings under the bed would be bound in red ribbon, possibly with some kind of dried flower pressed between them. He’s not a drop sentimental and they live in a plastic sleeve next to his box of sex toys.
“I haven’t found your application form,” Enjolras informs him. “For college.”
He stares blankly, sees fire in his mind’s eye. Nowadays there’s lots of fire, lots of horses too, and mountains and river deltas. He wonders where he is.
“You need to hand it in to me by Friday next. That’s the deadline for a read-through. Grantaire? You will do this, won’t you? You have such a chance.”
Joly’s makeup runs down his cheeks, half rain half tears. He hacks at his hair – a chopping knife, not even a boning one. Grantaire sits in the bathtub and blows smoke at the ceiling. Joly mutters I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate you I hate you. He smashes the mirror with the knife handle. Grantaire watches the pieces fall like stars and so much glittering dust gets trapped between the tiles for weeks.
“Don’t go, don’t go,” Bousset begs him. Grantaire sits down. Hands, like desperate stone.
“You haven’t been here for days.” Enjolras corners him by the drying rack, can’t keep his eyes from Grantaire’s mouth all swollen. “Are you okay?”
Grantaire sucks his lower lip and licks away the blood.
“I-” Enjolras looks at his shoulder, his feet, the wall. “I wrote your application myself. Don’t tell anyone. I could lose my job.”
Doesn’t he know that Grantaire will do anything to keep him close?
Mama, he cries. Please don’t, please – but the frying pan silences any further ideas.
Alone in the darkness, he dreamed he could swim. The water was warm. In the distance someone called a familiar name. Possibly his. There’s no way of knowing any more.
“-this is ridiculous.” Something cold on his bruised face. Sensation has its own meaning here. Cold is easily hot and hot is really yellow and yellow tastes like meringue. Yesterday Bousset gave him strong painkillers. He has two left. They’re good.
“Please open your eyes.”
He would turn his back on Eden for that voice.
The classroom is a stage floating far away, until he blinks and he’s there, feeling the weight of an audiences’ stare on his back. Warm hands restrain him when he tries to look.
“There’s no one there. Look at me.”
He looks.
“Grantaire, where have you been?”
Hither and yon. Over the hill, under the hill, back again. There and back again. Far away and long ago. Up the airy mountain. Not down the rushy glen though, he has some standards.
“Nowhere.”