“It probably wasn't daytime. She didn't see a blue sky like that,” he says.
“I don't understand.”
“When she died,” he says flatly.
My heart clenches in my chest, and I feel as if I'm gagging on words I was going to say.
“You already know?” I ask. “Did the warden tell you?”
“Nobody told me,” he says. “But I knew. She promised she would call me. No matter what. It didn't matter where she was or what she was doing, she would call me.”
“When?”
“On Andrew's birthday. No one tells me the date around here. Days mix and blend. Skip them and go back and lift them again. I close my eyes, and I'm older when I open them. Sometimes I wish I could be younger. Even if I had to sleep through it. They never tell me. I only know it's morning when the vitamins come.”
“Are you alright taking those?” I ask. “Does it bother you?”
“It doesn't matter. They find a way to make me take it anyway,” he says.
“Take what?” I ask.
“I don't know where the time goes,” he says, his voice getting a little bit louder. “Am I breathing every minute? Have they suspended me, so I'm only there when they want me to be? I didn't know. I didn't know how long it’s been.”
“But there was a message,” I say. “It said not to forget Andrew’s birthday.”
“Have you ever been told not to forget something, days before you needed to do it? How about months? How about years? Has anyone ever told you not to forget them? Do they mean to only remember them when they are standing there, and forget when they walk away? I didn't know. And you would have been a while. But she was out there. She was always out there. She had to be, even if I didn't know.”
“What do you mean?" I ask.
“You aren't real when you walk away. Neither was she. Not to me. You are real when I see you, abstract when I don't. She came and went. Sometimes once, sometimes a dozen times. She was, and then she wasn't. Now she’ll never be again. I knew when I realized his birthday was over.”
"You never get to see a calendar or anything?" I ask. "How do you know when your hearings are?"
"I'm told. It's easier that way. I don't think about it so much. Now, I will. Now I always will. How did it happen? How did she die?"
He's getting agitated, the anxiety rising up inside him again. His chest heaves as he seems to struggle to get each breath in, but his hand stays tightly wrapped around the colored pencil and the continuous series of circles he's making on the paper.
"I don't know," I tell him. "To be honest, we might never know. She wasn't in good condition."
It hurts to say the words to him, but he needs to hear them. He deserves honesty. Too many people treat him like a child because they don't understand him. They don't realize his thoughts are far above theirs in so many ways.
“It wasn't daytime,” he says. “It wouldn't be under the sunlight. Everyone would see her. Everyone looked for her in the daytime. Not at night. Only they look for her at night. She looked for them in between. I found them. They didn't find her. She found them. They took her. So no one would know they exist. Everybody can see them, but no one knows what they're looking at.”
He gets up from the chair and starts to pace. His hands shake at his sides, and his breath gets faster. I'm watching him spiral, and I feel helpless. The guard just stands there, watching. It's not that he doesn't care. He might not, but he's standing there because it's all he's allowed to do. Unless Xavier is hurt or hurts me, he sees no reason to intervene.
What he doesn't see is that Xavier is hurting.
As he continues to ramble, I go to the vending machine and get three bags of peanuts. I put two of them on the table and bring one over to him. Looking at the guard, I reach out for Xavier. The guard tenses but doesn't say anything. He lets me press the bag into Xavier's hand.
The touch does something. Xavier's eyes snap to me and widen. He stops moving. Finally, his fingers wrap around the bag, and he walks over to the table and sits down. I wait while he eats a few handfuls of the peanuts, staring at the paper in front of him as he does it.
"I studied them. I didn't even know it. The words just went by on the page, and I didn't even pay attention to them. My mythology professor drew him. Huge." He spirals his hand over the top of his head. "Bald. A fire in front of him." He gestures with his hands, his fingers pointed up and wiggling like the flames. "He asked the class. Why fire? Why would he create fire? What does it represent? And the people around me said, destruction, pain, disaster. But then other people said, no, it means life. Rebirth, warmth, nurturing. I couldn't answer that question until four years later. Then, I knew. Fire is all of them. Creating it is power. He created fire because then he held everything in his hands. Clay in one, flame in the other.”
He is sliding back down now, calming down from the anxious peak.
“Who are you talking about, Xavier?”
He reaches for another bag of peanuts.
"Mythology class," he repeats. "Lakyn found them, Emma. They're watching. Always watching. Now she's gone. And when you leave, you don't exist until you're back. If I ask for you, I don't know if you'll come."
"I will."
"They always exist. I can never forget. Even for a second."
I draw in a breath, the emotion getting harder to breathe past.
"Was it her turn?" I ask.
He looks up at me from the circles he's continuing to draw.
"Was she hidden?" he asks.
"Yes," I
