Page 34 of Shrapnel

“Did you know that when bananas rot, they secrete an oil that kills off all the fruit around them? Bananas commit murder-suicide, and no one says a thing.”

“Are…you worried about bananas evading the fruit justice system?”

Jamie turned his head, gravel crunching under him as he leveled a look at Owen. He thought that his eyes were disconcerting looking at the sky, but when he was caught in their gaze, they were downrightterrifying.

There was nothing there. Two black circles with no depth. No emotion. Nothing. Barren disks devoid of life and meaning—black holes with a crushing gravitational pull. He couldn’t look away.

Owen shuddered. He had never seen such emptiness. Someone could have carved the eyes from Jamie’s head and the hollowed-out sockets would have been less distressing.

“It’s just funny,” Jamie continued.

No one was laughing.

“Death is the only constant, the only thing we can truly control.” He watched Owen as he spoke, his words slow and even. “But when someone wants to die, to take that control? They’re locked away. Stuffed full of drugs until their brain feels like cotton and told that they don’t know what they’re talking about. That living like this is so much better than dying.”

Owen’s mouth went dry. He crouched beside Jamie and felt the overwhelming urge to touch him. To confirm that Jamie was still there. He was looking at him, hearing him, but he didn’t believe that Jamie was there anymore.

“They don’t want us to die but no one bothered to ask if we wanted to live in the first place,” he said it sardonically like he was pointing out how it never rains the one time you bring an umbrella.

Owen tried to think back to all the times he had spent with Jamie. Had he ever spoken like this? Of course not. He rambled for hours about his ridiculous fanfiction and his guns, he made stupid jokes and never missed an opportunity for a pun. He was the first to smile, first to laugh.

It was like there were two different Jamies.

Which one was real?

Owen reached out and brushed a thicket of hair away from Jamie’s face. His finger just barely touched his cheek, skimming across skin made rosy from drink. A startling contrast from the mortality in his eyes. Life and death, a duality that Jamie seemed to embody with unsettling ease.

Jamie’s eyes widened fractionally at the touch. He seemed surprised like Owen had tackled him to the ground rather than just brushed a wayward strand of hair from his eyes.

“Jamie,” Owen’s voice broke.

He wanted to ask if he was ok. Ask him why he was telling him all this. But he couldn’t. The words wouldn’t form. His brain was demanding he ask but something was keeping him from following through.

“Why did you call me?”

He blinked once, slowly. “Because you’re not in love.” The words were tired. Recited so many times they’d been branded on Jamie’s lips.

“I—” Owen started but he found it was just a reaction. He didn’t actually know what that meant. Or what he was supposed to say.

“They’re all in love. They’re feeling all these things and I can see it. I can see it better than they can. But I don’tget it.” He reached up and touched his chest just above his heart.

“I don’tfeel it,Owen.”

Poignant silence fell between them. Owen got the impression that Jamie just said something. Something he should understand. But all he could focus on was that it was the first time he’d actually said his name.

It was always cutesy nicknames. That’s how it was with Jamie. Even the contacts in his phone were a play on words or some kind of absurd epithet he forced upon Owen. His lips had never genuinely spoken his name. But now that they had, it took on an ethereal quality. Like the very act of saying his name had turned it into some kind of witchcraft.

Owen reached forward and laid his hand over the fist Jamie clenched above his heart. Still warm.

“Are you o—”

“Gotta puke.” Jamie rolled up onto his feet and stumbled against a sedan. Leaning against its trunk, he bent over and vomited. When he finished, he turned back to Owen and cracked a smile.

The look was gone. Emotion returned to his face and there was a spark of life in his eyes. They were no longer twin pools so deep monsters could hide. Now they were shallow kiddy pools, with only rubber duckies spinning in the wake.

Jamie, are you ok?

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