CASPER (CONT.)

Confronting Nate would be a problem. The plan had been to take him aside at some point during the funeral, but the jerk hadn't even stuck around until his applause was over. And now that their Sixth Form was up in flames, Casper didn’t know when it'd be that he'd see him next. 

Casper knew more about Nate Fife than he would’ve liked, yet not enough at all to be of any use to him. He had no idea where Nate lived, but he knew that Nate played winger for Richmond’s ice hockey team, that he was an only child to a business man and a nurse, that Luka had a crush on him for two solid years, much to his and Will’s chagrin, and that he had the tendency to get into random brawls outside of school. 

Casper didn't believe that latter rumour at first. Nate was a jock only by athletic default and seemed too quiet to be much of a fighter. But once it’d been pointed out to him, Casper couldn't stop noticing the odd bruise on here and there on Nate's face, the bandages and plasters. 

And then there was that one time during Christmas last year, when Nate showed up to class with a battered face and a limp, injuries that obviously had nothing to do with ice hockey or even a flight of stairs. Venoir was a festering city of gossip, but none of the rumours matched with one another, and no one could wring it out of Nate, so the matter was dropped. Nate's hands were also notorious for their gnarly scars, with long hatches of split skin slicing all the way from the back of his hands to the tip of his fingers.

Though it was Luka with the crush, Casper didn’t fail to notice Will’s intrigue either. More often than not, it wasn’t Luka who brought him up in conversation, but Will. “We had a sub in Chemistry,” he said to them once during lunch one sweltering summer. The three of them were sat in a computer room where they’d discovered the air-con was better than the lunch hall. “The woman asked Nate what happened to his hands and I swear the entire room collectively held their breath. And you know what the guy does? He looks at his hands like he’s checking for the time.” Will did a little re-enactment of cooling checking out his hands, his Nathaniel impression. “And he says, ‘holly bush accident’”

“Holly bush?” Luka said, dubious, but she was smiling nonetheless.

Will laughed too. “Total bullshit, right? He knew it too. My god, we were all in hysterics.”

Casper didn't get the joke. “What’s so funny?” 

“You had to be there mate.” Casper was strangely irritated by this. Like he said, Nate was a jock only by default because of his impressive athleticism and the crowd he associated himself with. But without his rowdier friends to cover for him, he had a cold and unapproachable air about him Casper never liked. Even if he understood the intrigue. There must've been a certain charisma people found in his dull expressions and lacklustre personality. It was difficult to say if Nate was actually any good at sports or if he was just good at everything in general with very little effort.

Considering his violin performance tonight, it was probably the latter.

Now that he thought about it, most of Casper’s distaste for Nate most likely had nothing to do with Nate’s aloofness and everything to do with his own jealously. Casper wasn’t particularly smart, but he’d been in top set for three subjects during High School; Maths, English and Physics—Nate had been in all of them. Possibly more. He seemingly paid no attention during class and didn’t speak unless spoken to, not even to answer a question he knew the answer to. Mr Keene had chided him for it all the time, often picking on his when he didn’t put up his hand. Nate would answer correctly anyway and Mr Keene would raise an eyebrow. “Can you not deign us even the act of lifting a single hand, Nathaniel?” To which Nate would shrug. And that would be that.

Imagine being that powerful with such little effort. God sure liked to play favourites. 

They were given a copy of Nate’s English mock paper on Dracula once and, out of all the things to be impressed by, Casper had been dumbstruck by his handwriting. It'd looked messy at first glance but so pleasing to look at, all slanted cursive letters, rigid yet boyishly Victorian. He’d missed full marks on the paper only by a few points.

To top it all off--the cherry on top--he just had to be irritatingly good-looking. Striking in a way that was curiously off-putting and eerily angelic, all soft sand coloured hair and a pretty nose, a perfect side profile, with the kind of pale ocean blue-debatably-grey eyes that poets and song writers wrote about. Casper once caught Nate sleeping in the computer room one morning, earphones in, head tilted back, sharp adams-apple on show, the sun hitting his head just right to halo his hair. Casper had nudged Luka, disrupting her reading, inclined for her to look in his direction. She'd almost gave herself whiplash at the sight of him.

Some people had it all.

Some had nothing.

Casper checked the time. He had to get going. He squeezed a few eye drops into his eyes for good measure before carefully making his way to his parents’ bedroom. His dad was sound asleep on the bed, mouth agape, snoring quietly. Casper threw a blanket over him, mostly to keep him comfortable, partly just to hide the smell of his clothes.

On his way down, he heard his mother speaking to someone on the phone. He listened absently as she goes on about something that happened at work whilst he slipped his damp shoes back on. He looked at Will’s masks, which he’d hung on the railing along with the other coats and masks, but decided against it. He’s had to prepare himself for that change, and he just wasn’t ready. He tightened his bulky gas mask over his face and walked back to poke his head into the kitchen to tell his mother he’d be off—but found Elijah Adams sitting at the table, a slice of sweet potato pie already half-eaten in front of him, his police funded black mask dangling around his throat. Casper's older brother noticed him and straightened in his seat.

Casper ignored him. “I’m going to work now.” He said to his mother. Eli checked the time.

“Wait, what? At this hour?”

“Casper couldn't take the shift off work so he took the late shift tonight instead,” his mother explained, her smile soft but strained. Casper turned with a little wave and went straight back to the door. He heard the chair scrape back against the tiles.

“Casper, wait—“

Casper doesn’t wait. He was out of charging down the street by the time he heard Eli slam the front door shut. It was pitch black, but Casper could tell the Dust had come down thick in the humidity.

“Casper, hey!” Eli was still tightening the straps when he caught up to Casper. Being the one with the shorter legs really came with disadvantages. “Hey, hey, would you please just talk to me?” Eli stepped in front of him, forcing Casper to skid to a halt. “You can’t ignore me forever.”

“I can bloody well try.” Casper pushed past him and kept walking. Eli, ever persistent, followed.

“Casper—“

“I have nothing to say to an officer.”

“Then talk to me as a brother.”

Casper snorted. “If I remember correctly you made it pretty clear that being a brother was no longer your biggest priority.”

“I said sorry about that last year, Casper.”

“So I’m no longer too much of a child to have an opinion?”

“Pritchard didn’t mean that.”

“You sure seemed to agree with him.”

“Look, okay, you have every right to be upset with me,” Eli said, already sounding defeated. Casper couldn’t even take pleasure in it. He was too busy trying to quell the irritation brimming inside him. “I’m sorry that this shit happens Casper, I’m sorry it had to happen to you, to Will. I know you’re angry and you’re confused.”

Eli had no idea about his anger, about confusion.

“But Casp, please, the case is closed. Would it not be better to let Will rest peacefully?”

All of a sudden, Casper wasn’t tired anymore. He was livid, hot, awake. He rounded on Eli so quickly that Eli had to jolt away from him. “Rest peacefully?” He scoffed. “You think Will would rest peacefully after you half-assed his investigation? You think he’d rest peacefully after the way your fucking co-workers dropped his case after a few days?”

“You know I have no say in that Casper, I’m sorr—“

“Don’t you fucking dare say you’re sorry. You’ve got no right. I might’ve been able to forgive you once, E, but…” Casper felt the lump in his throat, the anger, the frustration choking him. Eli looked pained too, though Casper doubted he could ever understand what pain was--at least not the pain he was going through. 

“Luka.”

Casper gave a wet, humourless laugh. “Yeah. Luka. Remember her? Remember the girl you and your friends were looking for for three days? Wow, such effort, such hard-working people.” It seemed the human body really did have an endless supply of tears. Casper fucking hated God for it, because he knew he was crying again. He wasn’t well accustomed to anger, Casper wasn’t like Will, fierce and passionate Will, who would fight until the end of time until he proved himself right. The best thing Casper could do was cry and wait for the anger to ebb away into something dull and heavy. 

But he thought of Will, thought about Freya falling to her knees at his grave, thought about the long hours at the police station, trying and trying to argue with the officials about proper evidence and investigation procedures, about photographs, blood samples, thought about their irritated glares, about Eli dragging him out of the station, telling him to go home, too embarrassed to even look at him.

“I’ve lost two of my best friends, Eli.” Casper said, his voice raw in his throat. “Both of them. And the best your stupid fucking team can do is sit around on their arses gossiping like a bunch of whiny teenage girls until you get fucking paid.”

“Casp—“ Eli went to hold his brother, but Casper swatted him away. Eli let him. “You can hate the division all you want, hate my job all you want but—“

“What if it’d been me, E?” Casper asked. “What if it’d been me in that casket tonight? What if you found me dead in a bathtub? Would you give my corpse a passing glance, let the officials tell you it was suicide and be done with me?”

Eli said nothing, but Casper could tell he was getting frustration, getting upset. “You wanted me to talk, didn’t you? This is me. Talking. What if a few weeks down the line I end up on a few drugs, start spiralling. All of a sudden you get a call from Dad telling you they found me in the bathroom, blue as a berry. Who supplied me the drugs? How did I get the drugs? Did I have a track record? What are the drugs? You’d want answers, wouldn’t you?”

Eli was silent.

“Or wouldn’t you?”

“Am I that much of a monster to you?”

“Of course not. How could I possibly hate the only reason Mum and Dad and I have a roof over our heads. How could I possible hate someone who makes us the most money, right? How could I hate such a dotting son, such a brave, hard-working, law-abiding brother.”

For a beat of a second, Casper saw Eli and thought how much he looked just like their mother did; haggard, tired, drained, like he could do with a few weeks’ worth of sleep. Casper knew his brother must’ve had a thousand things to say to him. But for once, he’d caught him by the tongue. For once both of them knew--there was no turning back from this. There was no way Eli could understand Casper, and no way for Casper to understand Eli. 

“I don’t know what else I can do,” Eli murmured. 

“You can go fuck yourself.” Casper turned and walked away. This time, Eli was smart enough not to follow. In the sudden quiet, Casper’s anger vanished, leaving behind that mind-numbing lethargy that had him weak all over, but he forced himself to keep walking, walking, walking, don’t think about Eli, don’t think about Will, don’t think about Luka.

But his auto-pilot betrayed him this time. Somewhere along the way to the Petrol Station in the South, Casper had taken the wrong turn. He looked around him and realised he didn’t recognise any of the building, the houses. The unfamiliar neighbourhood was starkly quiet, with a narrow road and even narrower detached houses with tangled wires on utility poles.

Casper was three seconds away from forcing himself to collapse right in the middle of the road when he caught a glimpse of a brightly lit window. He looked up at the house and startled, mistaking the shadow as ghost. But it was just a girl, looking out of her window and up at the sky.

Casper had never seen her before, which shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was. He wanted to step closer to get a better look at her, but the second he moved, the girl saw him, and quicker than he could blink—she closed the blinds on him.

Casper stared at the house, an exact replica of its neighbours, expect for one thing—he couldn't find a house number.

Odd.