32 Lucas Emerges From the Fog

July 28th

I sat on the couch in the living room, staring at the now-clean but also very now-empty fish tank.

I was a killer.

Through no fault of their own, Gaston and LeFou had left me for the great big fish tank in the sky. They had deserved better than me, someone who hadn't even noticed the malfunction in their water filter until it had been too late.

After saying a few words and, as gently as I could, laying them to rest in the toilet before flushing them to oblivion, I ordered a new filter and scrubbed the grimy tank until it was good as new. As if the two fish I'd murdered had never lived there.

At least Armand had been here, which was a thought as guilt-inducing as it was perplexing. Because why had I found out that my fish had shuffled off this mortal coil via a Post-it note with three hand-scribbled emojis: a skull and crossbones, a crying face, and a freezer. The most enigmatic eulogy I've ever come across, but it was unnervingly kind of him to have preserved their little bodies until I could give them a proper send-off.

My phone buzzed. Not now, Mom—but it was Skyler.

"Hey."

"Lucas? Hi, I didn't know if you'd pick up." His voice was hesitant but gentle. "How are you doing? I heard your fish died. I'm so sorry."

I blinked at my phone and then at the empty tank. "How'd you know that?"

"Oh!" Skyler paused. "Right, I've been meaning to tell you. I kind of ... met Armand? Your roommate? Mothman?"

I nearly dropped my phone. "You what?"

"Yeah, I got a part-time gig doing life modeling for the workshop he's running at Norsemen. I guess he found Gaston and LeFou yesterday before class? He sounded super worried about you."

This was far too much information all at once. I stood up from the couch and began pacing the living room. "Okay, okay, okay, back up. So you work with Armand ... What—" There were so many questions I wanted to bombard Skyler with. "What's he like? Give me as much detail as you can because you know what I've been working with here."

Skyler huffed a soft laugh. "Well, I think he's a bit shy talking in front of people, but once you get him talking about something he's comfortable with, like art, he's actually really knowledgeable. Like, I don't understand a lot of the techniques that he's teaching, but that's why I get to just stand there while everyone else does the work."

For a moment I became sixty years old, lamenting that modern technology had left me without a phone cord to twirl as I paced the room. My eyes fell on the stack of comic pages I'd picked up from the floor a few hours ago. "And what are the chances he explained what his comic is about?"

"Oh, none. He doesn't seem to like talking about his own work that much. But he's extremely patient with the class. And he made me feel more comfortable than I ever expected about being naked in front of fifty people."

"That's ... good." Skyler was eighteen and legal and I knew plenty of people in college who'd done life modeling with no issues. But the public nudity made Skyler more vulnerable than usual, and a wave of protectiveness washed over me. "So he's not a creepy old man, then?"

"He's definitely not creepy, unless you consider general awkwardness creepy. But yeah, no, he's like, maybe thirty? If I had to guess?"

I didn't know if I'd made any assumptions about how old my roommate was—his apparent aversion to texting had made me think boomer, but the snacking habits and doodles had felt like those of a floundering undergrad.

Before I could decide what to ask next about the enigma that was Armand Demetrio, Skyler continued, voice going a bit softer. "I also talked to your mom. She said you guys had a fight but she thinks you're okay." A pause. "Are you okay?"

That certainly was the question, wasn't it? In my excitement and burning curiosity to learn about Armand, I'd forgotten about the travesty that was my life currently. I took a break from pacing and flopped down onto the couch, staring up at the atrocious popcorn ceiling. "Let's see, my boyfriend dumped me, I yelled at my mom, and I accidentally murdered two sweet fish, so we could be better."

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that too. Darren seemed, um ..."

"Like an asshole, you can say it. Sorry you were there to see that." I was feeling stupider by the second. Hindsight really was 20/20. "You ever feel like it's so unfair that you weren't good enough for someone even when you did everything you possibly could?"

"Yes."

"Yeah, it sucks." I traced the fabric lines on the couch cushion. Maybe it wasn't appropriate to commiserate with Skyler since he was an employee—though technically Mom was his boss, not me—but there was something comforting in his silence. There wasn't judgment or preconceived biases, there was just ... compassion.

The kind of compassion that involved seeing a wrecked apartment and knowing that the person who had made that mess was broken and sad and unable to be a human. That they might feel better after some homemade muffins. There was something so genuine and open about that kind of compassion, and it made me want to curl up in a ball and hide.

Armand hadn't seen me that night, but he had seen me—raw and unfiltered and ugly.

"Lucas?"

I was still on the phone with Skyler. Thank god it wasn't a video call so he didn't have to watch me silently stare off into the middle distance. "Yeah, hi, sorry."

"Gotta make sure the void didn't eat you." Someone spoke in the background, and Skyler's voice was muffled and distant as he responded, before he returned to the phone. "So my break's over, but could you text me later? And maybe let Armand know you're alive so he doesn't ambush me the second I walk into class again?"

"Is that ... a thing he's done before?"

"Oh, yeah. I think he thought he was being subtle about it, but he really has been asking about you almost every day. A bit dramatically, even. I think he took Gaston and LeFou personally."

My cheeks warmed, and there was a weird pinch in my chest. "I'll text him. Um. Thanks, Skyler. Sorry I haven't been around recently."

"Take care of yourself, okay? And come back to work when you can. The horses miss you. Especially Grandpa Milkshake, he's been neighing about taking you out of his will."

"Oh, he's said that, has he?"

"Of course. I would know. I'm Horse Jesus."

I snorted into the phone and after we ended the call, I stayed on the couch for a time, contemplating what on earth to text Armand after days of ignoring his check-ins. The idea that he'd been asking about me, that he'd seemed genuinely concerned ...

As far as I knew, I was alone in the apartment, but I felt a twinge of nervousness anyway. Like I was swimming out of my depth.

Maybe I could decide what to say while I scrubbed the bathtub. Hadn't done that in a while. I padded down the hall to the bathroom, switched on the light, and froze. There was something on the mirror.

It was a detailed sketch of a horse—an almost perfect, lifelike negative of my horse Dakota, whose photo was framed and hanging on the living room wall. My eyes flickered to the scribble in a word balloon next to the horse's head: Why the long face?

I burst out laughing.

The picture wasn't that funny, and the pun was terrible. But I couldn't stop. I laughed until it turned into a raspy cough.

I rubbed my throat, sore from its sudden workout, and stared in awe at the mirror horse.

It was the first time I'd laughed in days.

Once again, there was that warm tightening in my chest that forced me to swallow hard. Armand's doodles, while often inconvenient and sometimes obnoxious, were always funny, allowing me moments of reluctant amusement even as I proceeded to wipe them from our communal mirror. But this drawing wasn't just funny. It was elegant, and time consuming, and ... sweet.

Going out on a limb, I tiptoed out in front of Armand's room. I leaned my ear against the door, listening for any sign of life. After a moment—

Snores. Loud ones, emanating from the room like a bear's cave.

He was here.

All it would take would be for me to knock on the door ...

I took a deep breath and raised my hand.