He sighs and gets up. He turns away from me, as if afraid to see my face. He is afraid. I can always tell. It comes in the job description of being a best friend.

“It’s not that simple,” he says, facing the wall. He runs his fingers along the rough plasterwork. I ought not to have paid the guys who did it.

“I bet it is simple,” I say venomously. I hate it when he can’t get to the point. He can never say what he means and I, all too often, say everything I mean. We’re supposed to compliment each other. It doesn’t work all too well. In the three years I’ve known him everything that was important could never be said out loud. In the three years I’ve known him I’ve insulted him and hurt his feelings too many times.

He shrugs and begins tracing the Greek alphabet on my wall. He loves languages. He knows at least four. English, Dutch, Greek and…something else: I can’t remember. I don’t have the patience for them. He always tells me that if I want to be a famous physicist I’ll have to be at least bilingual. I always tell him that physics speaks for itself. More usually I tell him to shut the fuck up too.

“Spit. It. Out.” I articulated with exaggerated slowness.

He half turns towards me and looks at me with hurt in the wells of his eyes. His eyes are darker than any I’ve ever seen. My own blue ones are so shallow compared to his. Looking into his makes you think of caves and other dark recesses in the earth. But they can hold a lot of things. I’m jealous of that often enough. He can show you everything he feels without ever voicing a syllable. I don’t want to see that so I look away. I don’t want to know that’s he’s scared and hurt. I want to see him strong and powerful and in-control. Like he is when we go to the park and swing on the swing and we’re little kids again.

“Never mind,” I mutter dully. I get up. If he isn’t going to talk then I’m not going to listen. Listening’s never been one of my strong points. That’s probably one of the reasons I don’t like languages. I just can’t see the magic in words. Numbers, yes, numbers are magic. Perhaps that’s why I’m so free with my words, I can’t see their power to hurt and heal and betray and lie and love and create. Maybe he’s just so afraid of their power that he isn’t willing to unleash them upon the world; for fear they won’t obey his intentions.

He fidgets as I approach the door. He’s told me that past girlfriends’ of his have feigned walking out on him to get him to say what’s on his mind. We laughed about it. I wouldn’t have the guts to do that to him. I can’t stand to see him betrayed. He clears his throat and mutters incoherently when I touch the doorknob.

“What?” I reply, raising my right eyebrow and turning from the awful purple door which I also should never have let my mother buy. She likes to buy me bright colours. I think she’s trying to make me go back to modelling. I also think she’s trying to punish me for moving to the city. She lived her entire life in the fields. I guess she couldn’t consider the city as anything other than a rare shopping opportunity for specialties.

He takes a deep breath and his shoulders and chest visibly expand. My forehead is still creased in the effort of keeping my eyebrow suspended. He often tells me I’ll get wrinkles early if I do it too much. It doesn’t deter me though.

“I used to have a sister.” He spits out the words like acid. They shrivel his tongue which retreats into his mouth. The words appear to be searing the air around him with an invisible heat.

My eyes narrow and my eyebrows switch positions. “…So…?”

He mutters indistinctly again. I growl slightly. I’m really good at it. I used to use it to get other kids to stop annoying me. He opens his mouth again and closes it. Then with much greater volume he says, “I killed her.”

The words hang in the air, like feathers from a pillow fight. It’s almost as if they’re sucking the life and colour out of the world. As if they’re killing me. Removing my sight and making my breathing ragged. There’s a part of my brain that’s bleeding. It’s bleeding memories of him. Of my friend. Of my best friend. My best friend the murderer.

“What the fuck!” I yell at him. He was tracing Russian now. That’s the other language he can speak. I wonder whether he’s writing the word ‘murderer’ over and over again. “What. The. Fuck.” I repeat. He whimpers and his fingers are moving faster now as if in a hurry to write his last will on my walls. “Why the fuck did you tell me something like that?! You fucking bastard!” I can feel the words burning the back of my throat as rage bleeds out of every pore.

He turns around as if he’s run out of writing space. “Sorry,” he mumbles, “I just thought…since we’re friends…starting therapy…was young…guilty…” He trails off. The words settle like hot ash on my skin. Far from assuaging me they only spur me on. I’m disgusted. If he’d told me he liked to fuck with corpses I couldn’t be more disgusted.

“Get the fuck away from me.” I say. He’s fallen to his knees on the carpet which is the only thing about this room that I actually like. It’s a sort of pale blue, close to white. But through my eyes the knees of his jeans are pumping bloodstains into the fabric as if he’s a giant heart, pumping away, standing in the middle of this sparsely furnished room I call my study, for lack of a better term.

He doesn’t move. I’m tempted for a moment to walk over and kick him. He looks small now. Just like when I met him. He was studying for a test in Russian speaking then; crouched down over his notes. I tripped over him then. I had been on the phone to my mother then. I was trying to tell her why I didn’t want to model anymore. He didn’t get mad. I think that’s what’s allowed me to get close to him: one of our opposites that have actually attracted. He’s tried to help me learn to control my temper and I’ve tried to learn. I close my eyes and try to regain control.

Breathe…1…2…3…breathe…5…6…7…breathe…9…10…11…breathe. Now, listen to him.

The room is quiet now. All I can hear is the soft sound of his tears and my slowing breath. He still won’t look at me.

“Where do you want me to go with you?” I ask. That was what started this off. He wanted me to come with him somewhere.

He hiccoughs twice before replying. “Memorial service.”

I pause for a moment to think. He is a murderer. He is my best friend. He is guilty of slaughter. He is scared of me. “I’ll listen if you explain,” I verbalise finally, “But you have to say everything.” He looks up. I can still see the tears being drawn up from the wells of his face. I can still see the hurt from my curses. I can still see the fear that I created. I can still see the guilt from his past. But I can see hope too.