Emotional Ineptitude 101
Feeling guilty had always been an emotion Luke could throw to the wayside, mostly believing the reasons built behind it was the cause of someone else’s inadequacies and insecurities rather than a fault of his own. His mother hadn’t left because of his inability to bend to her will; she left because she was terrified of being caged. His father didn’t drink himself out of consciousness because of Luke being a failure; he did it because reality was too stunting for him to bear, nothing was as vibrant and lively as it appeared. So when Mats had begun a seemingly downward crawl into desolation, each new drug a new rung on her ladder and carelessly tossing aside reason in order to abandon her existence, Luke had chalked it up to her age. She just wanted to experiment. Of course she wasn’t weak like their parents. She never would be. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t fighting against her own demons, facing the possibility of the one thing Haden’s could never seem to acknowledge head on:
Fucking humanity.
She sat against the wall in the space between the kitchen and living room, bare legs outstretched with only a tank top covering her torso. Her fingers tangled themselves in her hair, and then crept their way to the wallpaper above her head with palms sliding up the texture and feet pressing into the carpeting. It didn’t take Luke more than a second to realize she’d already embarked on her drug induced journey for the day. A soft sigh fell from his lips as he dropped his keys on the counter, the clang barely audible over the blare of her music. Coconut Records “West Coast.” Matson’s green eyes narrowed, their focus on the wall in front of her that was covered in a lemon yellow pattern, alternating between a waving line of flowers to thick stripes of the same color that were halved by a white dotted line. She looked disgusted, even though her hands touched it with an explorative tenderness that might have suggested otherwise. “We really should re-do this place. The wallpaper is fucking hideous.” Her tone was even and solid. To those who didn’t know her, that alone could have given someone the impression she was completely sober. She was a talented performer when she wanted to be. Trained with the same emotional battery Luke had been. Congratulations, Doug and Lila. They could write a fucking book. “How to Completely Close Yourself Off in a Matter of Seconds” or “Emotional Ineptitude 101.”
His own gaze honed in on his younger sister, taking a couple steps in her direction to lean against the very wall she was so preoccupied with. “Lila picked it for you, you know. You didn’t stop pointing at the flowers. You, uh… used to really like yellow.” He wasn’t exactly sure why he’d even bothered to bring up those facts of her past. Why he brought up Lila. Maybe to remind her she used to smile more, that some damn wallpaper had been enough to satisfy. That she didn’t need to take pills in order to feel something.
A short, removed laugh burst from her form before she finally looked at Luke, an eyebrow rising in curiosity. “Then obviously, I had horrible taste back then.” While she seemed completely amused at the remembrance of her previously wide-eyed and innocent self, he knew the real state she was in. She wanted to shut something out. Bury it under layers of chemicals, kick it under the bed, and lock the room it was housed in. A slow smile crept onto her lips as the music changed to “The Sound of Silence” the easy strums of the guitar making everything go still. A moment of peace that was soon broken by her low voice, knowledgeable and reticent, like what she would say was spread on the floor in front of her the entire time for everyone to see, but she’d only just chosen to acknowledge it now.
“You know I’m just like her.” Another laugh; a punctuation. The misery in the irony. Fucking Lila. What a disappointment. “It’s fucking toxic.” He knew exactly what she meant. Lila had been wicked, she stalked what she wanted, calculating the situation until she had found her best method of attack. She’d take you down before you even got a glance of the thing that was aiming to destroy you. But her biggest mistake had been letting her fears get the better of her. She didn’t want to get too close because then she could be compromised. That was never allowed to happen. You could see the same predatory tendencies in Matson’s eyes, the stillness, the violence. She examined people around her like they were a puzzle to be solved and it was only a matter of time until she figured it all out. Like she’d slice open your chest and tear out your insides just to see how you worked; whether or not she could put you back together again. She wasn’t scared of being compromised. She wanted to know exactly how someone might be able to do it in the first place.
Luke’s apathy had come more from his father. He put everything on the table and let others work how they would with it. It didn’t matter how it turned out. One way or another, he’d get what he needed. The world was a giant chessboard. All you needed to do was make the right moves — not back down. There was no room for the spineless. But Doug had found a critical weakness in Lila. This had been exactly what terrified the hell out of Luke. It had been what shut him out from the rest of the world, except for the select few he allowed in. Mats was the only person in his life who had been accepted with open arms from the second she took her first breath. He loved her unconditionally. There was never any uncertainty when it came to her. They could give each other a look and explain the world. Lately, she’d gathered herself up and was locking other people out like he used to. She was folding into herself, the outside world becoming a series of experiments and mistakes; an attempt to make things brighter again. There never was a perfect answer. At least he sure as hell hadn’t found it yet.
Instantly he reached for the pack of cigarettes in his jeans, tapping the pack against his wrist and pulling one out with his teeth, his stare fixed on her the entire time. He knew she needed something. He could always tell when someone did. What he failed at was fulfilling whatever need it was. He hadn’t been equipped with the empathy necessary. Whenever someone had ever cried around him, his mind would instantly blank out and he would stare at them like an idiot. Smoke a fucking cigarette. Which was pretty damn similar to what he was doing now. He closed the space between them to crouch by her side, blowing a steady stream of smoke from the corner of his mouth. A hand reached up to take her shoulder as he made eye contact with her, observing her evenly, a hint of concern rippling directly under the surface, “You know you’ve always got me, right? Always.”
Her eyes rose to meet his, a glimmer of adoration flashing across her face as she took his face in her hands, smiling reassuringly at him. “Don’t you know by now? Sometimes life is just unsolvable.” It was stated matter-of-factly, but with a sorrow that suggested he would be doomed if he couldn’t accept it. That she thought in fact, he really couldn’t. She leaned in to kiss his cheek delicately as she slipped the cigarette from his grasp to take a drag of her own. “Thanks anyway.” Her attention drifted away from him, eyes glazed and distant, unable to focus on anything specific for long. He assumed it had been E, with a heavy dosage of pot. Maybe some acid. He honestly had trouble keeping up. Most would probably say he needed to do more. Some control had to be taken. But he was no better at controlling another human being. He’d never bothered with them enough to find out. He’d only say what he could.
“Sure.” It was all he could say before she suddenly stood, offering him a final small smile then padding off to her room leaving the husky, caustic sound of Fiona Apple’s voice singing to what felt like a much emptier room.
