Chapter 4: The Great Escape
I had officially sworn off alcohol (something fairly common between the four of us) once I woke up Saturday morning under the fiery lens of a hangover. After spending the better hours of Friday night throwing up on the stiff, chilly floor of the Hog's head restroom I was certain that I would never drink again.
Saturday's sun was ribbed with nectar while the clouds blew kisses across the east end of the castle. Years later I would remember that day; it was the weathered smiles of my classmates and sunscape licking the walls.
I wasted the afternoon hours reclining in a bed of pillows. The four of us swept in and out of the room. We were everywhere at once; engulfing the kitchen, walking to the library, taking a nap. We were dispersed through the school standing tall next to librarians and house elves. We didn't speak much, mostly floated through the hours in a fog.
Remus, Peter and Sirius converged at the door checking their pockets for cash and rubbers. Sirius yawned as he picked hairs off his coat and grimaced at his nails. Bored by profession.
"We're off." Declared Remus.
"Where to?"
"Pub, time to fill our mugs and drown our worries mate."
"Oh how I've missed my good friend Jack Daniels." It was Peter's favorite saying. He always found a way to worm it into the conversation on the days we went out drinking.
"C'mon Pete, is that the best you can do?"
"Wetting the whistle, loading up, eating some yeast, bending an elbow" His voice blew deep and animated "Getting buzzed on suds".
They left in a jumble with voices trailing like shadows. Sirius joked about his dry spell calling himself "The Randy Man" as Peter griped about a potions assignment gone awry. Their voices dulled with the distance until they were too rutted to distinguish.
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I was nomadic most days; always roaming from place to place sifting in-between walls, traversing fields and spanning hedges. I couldn't stay still even in my dreams. At night I was scaling the edges of raw, frosted mountain ranges or submerged in a marine strata probing for puka shells and oysters. At best I was scatter-brained; at worst I was profoundly lost.
The hallways were slick with silence. I wasn't used to being so alone. Around nine o'clock I wandered down to the common room. A portrait called to me in the hallway her voice layered and sing-song. "All alone on a Saturday night? What a shame! Where are those friends of yours, Luppin and Pettibrew?". It wasn't something I planned or thought about; it wasn't even something I could feel happening. It was something mapped by the fates, their singed laughter burning holes through the sky.
Even from far off I saw her. I recognized the tawny hair, burnished and sloped to the side. My whole body jolted. The surprise clung to my throat, pulling daggers against my tongue. Lily Evans sat no more than a few yards away from me in the common room gazing at the fire place. Her knees were pressed together with her feet curled outward. Her elbows were resting in her lap and her hands were clasped around her chin. She sat like a bored school girl, a pose well-practiced. I was immobile.
She sat on the wide, scorching red sofa that reminded me of Scarlett fever and meadows of bleeding poppies. Slowly, without breathing I made my way to a leather chair. We sat in the stillness watching the fire bubble and shatter and implode. The colors wove together and bled upwards forming a cloth. It felt like so long sitting in her presence with my heart smashing at every beat.
I could see her peer over at me, tilting her head to the side. She rolled her eyes along my shirt and across my mouth, drinking in the color from my cheeks. Suddenly a voice flamed from her lips. It was muted and battered in the night-time air. "I wish I was messed up."
"I, uh, I have some stuff upstairs." With my stomach pandering I spoke those first six words to Lily Evans in the hollow of the Gryffindor common room under the silvery hue of night time.
"Cool." Lily Evans was not like other girls. She didn't ask what stuff I had or who I was. She made no attempt to be coy and insist that she really didn't want to trouble me. She gave me no strange looks or embarrassed apologies. She simply smiled at me and said cool.
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I walked behind her watching her head bob up the steps and climb through the igloo of stone pasted all around us. She walked along the corridors, twisting back to ensure I was still there. I pulled at the hinge of our door letting us into the abandoned room. Things were strewn everywhere, bed sheets still wrinkled and empty bottles tipped along the floor. The stillness felt man-made, held down by glue and pliers. She walked around the room caressing the walls with her fingers and touching the wood of our bed posts, the dilapidated cloth of our textbooks and inkwells. I remember wishing that her fingers bled paint.
I sat on my bed and pulled out a petite, marble square. The edge was sleek with polish, the top sealed with tin. It revealed a clear bag of green foam. The pot curved and decked; patching together like a farm from the sky.
"You're James, right?"
"Yeah." She nodded and my stomach shriveled into knots.
Lily bounced onto the bed next to me, climbing on all fours and then pressing her spine to the wall. She wore a sweatshirt and legs bunched in culottes. I suppose it should have felt more surreal to have Lily Evans sinking into my mattress and smiling absently with those big, pulpy lips. It should have, but it didn't. I had always believed that we would converge somewhere along the line, I was only waiting for her to surface.
I rolled a joint the way Sirius taught me in fourth year. Bent the edge in, dipped the weed into the cavity, pulled towards me rolling tightly. I licked the side and sealed it, winding the edges in. She watched over my shoulder as the paper morphed into a small white stick. "Smells good" She noted. Pot smelled strongly, it always had, but the exact aroma was impossible to pinpoint. Peter would always chuckle and insist that it smelled like heaven and Remus thought that it reeked of Indian Spice. My favorite was still Sirius' response "It smells like dead leaves and cum, that simple man"
Using my metal lighter I lit the edge and took a deep puff tasting the paper and the hot, sweet air. Lily inhaled sharply coughing now and then. The smoke sailed out of our lips in streams. "So, why aren't you out with your friends or something? It's a Saturday night after all"
"I could ask the same of you."
"All my mates are off at the Hog's Head getting trashed and I didn't care to join them."
She pursed her lips and talked directly at me, watching my eyes. "I know what you mean. It gets old after a while. It's the same people and the same thing every day and you just can't get away from it."
"You could. I mean, if you really wanted to." We passed the joint back and forth until everything slipped under a mist. I put on Pink Floyd because I thought it was classic, lit incense to coat the smell.
She turned her whole body towards me "So James," She bit her lip, stifling a laugh. "How would you plan the Great Escape?"
"Hm. I would probably go to the Galapagos or maybe Costa Rica. Somewhere warm. And you?"
"I would find some random guy and run away to an island, just never look back." The way she talked about leaving was so wistful. "I wouldn't say goodbye to anyone."
"Why would you go with a," Cough "A random guy?"
"Because I already know the people here, I've already fallen in and out of love and it's not so great. I wouldn't want any complications"
"Mmmm."
"Hey James, you could be my random guy," She laughed. "My fella." The thought of following Lily through her fictitious journey made me elated. I could picture us walking through green island forest, slipping our arms around the air, living among beaches. "We could just, run away." I knew that she didn't love me, not even close. She was charming, she was flirty and I happened to be the object of her interest at the moment. It was thrilling.
"Seems like you've thought about this."
"Once or twice." Silence. "God, I'm so hungry. I could eat fish or a cow. Whatever that bloody saying is." She laughed. I had forgotten how giggly girls got when they were high. I could feel her laughter piling onto me, sinking onto my chest like hot weight, soft and pliable. She giggled at everything and it wasn't a bad thing because her hair fell out of her bun and her teeth showed when she laughed like that.
"Do you want to go down to the kitchens or something?"
"No need." I knelt in front of Peter's bed.
"James," She called from across the room. "You realize that you are sitting on the floor, right?"
"Yes."
"What, are you looking for his dirty mags or something?"
"Not quite."
"Mmm." Her smile curved floppy.
I slid a large crate veined in black plastic from under the bed. "Peter's sweet supply."
"My goodness, you are so well-equipped."
"I try."
"Evidently." Mounds of laughter pressing against me.
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My bed was flushed with candy-wrappers. Crayon colors swept the sheets; macaroni yellow and summer sky pink. There were fluorescent greens and half-eaten candies like cauliflower weeds. They all sat there tending to our hunger, weighing on our stomachs.
Without warning Lily jumped up "James, let's go outside."
"Why?"
"It's so dark and cool out there, don't you want to feel it? Even for just a minute?" I could tell that her impaired state of mind gave her visions of grandeur. She pulled at my hand, at the door knob, at the railing. I could feel her pulling at my edges from every angle. I was unraveling at her touch.
We crept down the steps. Without the slightest hesitation she ripped the door open into the liquid black air. "Come on!" She spoke in stage-whispers. Despite the fact that it was past the time allowed for leaving the building and the fact that it was as cold as ice outside, I followed her. I would have followed her for light-years if I could.
Her legs pranced among the grass, she was looping and swerving. She was running farther and farther from me. "C'mere!" She waved her hands but all I could think about was their thin, flat shape. How her fingers were extruding from the very soul I wanted to find. I jogged after her in the darkness. As soon as I came near she would start running, begging me to chase her, to catch her. We ran in circles, in diamonds and squares and triangles. We covered every shape forming squiggled lines of footsteps; an abstract doodle that sealed and swished within itself.
She dropped to the ground heaving with a rasp in her breath. The air smelled feverant, the hints of fire and charred ingredients speaking of ill-mastered spells and unwanted urses. I stood a few yards away thinking, really thinking for the first time that whole night. I was here with Lily Evans, the girl that I spent so much of my time trying to deconstruct. Here she was lying on the grass, pulsing with breathe. I was suddenly overcome with the urge to throw up. It was not actual throw up but one of those deep, sinking feelings imbedded in your abdomen; clawing at you. I could not believe that it was happening. I simply could not comprehend how after all these months and years of waiting she was sprawled out in front of me with the bottom of her shirt skidding up to expose the white skin of her stomach.
That night became not only a turning point but a point of reference. Everything was either before or after that night. There was other relationships, events, moments; there were memories and personality changes that all existed in sects relating to the night where I first felt the real Lily Evans. It was the beginning and the end, the midpoint of change that I always swung back to, that I always remembered.
She patted her hand against the plot beside her, beckoning for me to sit down. I did, pressing my whole body to the earth waiting for it to swallow me whole.
"So."
"So."
"If you could," We lay side by side. "Change one thing about the world, any one thing, what would it be?" I learned that in addition to being a reckless flirt Lily Evans had a habit of asking arbitrary questions. I did, and would always, try to answer them.
"I, I guess I couldn't just change one thing. I'd have to change everything."
"How poetic."
"It's true. Things don't just change so quickly, they're all linked."
"Like Jenga."
I nodded, laughing. "Like Jenga."
"So you wouldn't change anything?"
"Nah, it wouldn't be worth it."
"I guess you're right. I mean our world is so fucked up I wouldn't know where to start."
"Fucked up indeed."
"Think about it. Everyday people get murdered and raped and robbed and beaten. Everyday there's some alcoholic husband beating his wife or pervert running amok. Our world is beyond sick. I can't walk down the goddamn street at night without being terrified that something is going to happen."
"What are you scared of?"
She scoffed. "Everything. I'm scared of stereotypes and death; I'm scared of not really living my life, of never falling in love, of missing all my chances. I'm scared of disappointment and being alone. I'm scared of motherhood, of the future. And I mean all of it in that abstract sense. I'm terrified of everything, but only below my skin. Only deep enough so that it doesn't show."
The eloquence with which she spoke surprised me. For such a pretty girl she spoke like a scholar, like some rice-paper deity. I had never known Lily Evans to be someone plagued by fears and I would come to learn that she wasn't. Though all those words detailed her worries, in her real life they were few and far between. It must have been the pot and the celestial black because it turned out to be one of the few nights she ever spoke of those fears, that she let them swallow her.
"You're lucky."
"Oh and how is that?"
"Well, all your fears are reasonable, they're understandable. They're more irrational than anything else."
"I don't think fears can be irrational."
"Maybe not."
"What are you afraid of? It's probably a lot more rational than you think."
"I have those normal fears, being alone and all, but there are others. I'm scared of forgetting my friends, like one day I'm going to pass them on the street and not even recognize their voice. I'm terrified of dieing in my sleep. I'm practically scared of sleep itself. And I guess my biggest fear," I looked her straight in the eye for the first time that night, for the first time in my entire life. "Is that my soul mate will never find me."
She looked feral, blinking and chewing on the skin of her lip. "Those aren't so unfounded, they're just specific. I mean, it's brave to know exactly what you're scared of. Me, I'm just stuck with these wishy-washy fears. You're the lucky one James."
"Must be that old Gryffindor courage, eh?"
"Guess so."
She paused. "Do you know what time it is?"
"Yeah, one sec" I strained to read my watch in the dark. "It's 11:15."
"Well I should probably be going."
"I, alright." Blades tore at my throat. There was no way to stop her. All I could think was `what if this is the last time I find her? What if this is it?'
Her lips, as blushed and candied as grenadine, spoke in a lull. "Thank you James Potter, for being the great escape." She sprinted across the grass, deserting me all over again. Her hair bounced further and further until the red looked black and her limbs looked clipped. I ambled to my room and fell into a gaping, dreamless sleep for the first time in years.
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