Six

We are still young.

We pack our belongings into bin bags and boxes and suitcases, drive them up to Rosemount Avenue and try to mimic the scent of home. We place spider plants on every surface, and begin our collection of empty spirit bottles. Soon enough, we have a family of trolleys and traffic cones stolen from drunken nights on the town, and a sofa in the back yard we affectionately name Vincent.

There are three of us here to begin with.

We start by trying to go to college. We come crashing into the classroom a week late, trailing greasy hair and an alien life style that the other students are too afraid to mention. Although we have had the same amount of trips around the sun as most of them, we have led very different lives. The teachers (bless them) try to fill our heads with life advice that tastes sour going down, and the questions that we want to ask don't have answers.

Now, there are five of us.

All of the beds in Rosemount have been filled, but that won't stop us.

We get jobs.

We cry in the cafeteria because we don't have the time to do it at home, and our youth begins to feel heavy on our shoulders. We were never any good at school, any of us. Eventually, we drop out.

The leaves are crippling on the trees, and winter whispers down the streets with her frosty breath.

Now, we have the sixth.

He arrives in Tesco bags and trackie bottoms. He delivers his personality through slight of hand; blink and you'll miss him. The lack of beds doesn't bother him, he say's he'll make do with the sofa cushions.

I want to freeze him in time, right here. I want to freeze him as the teenager he is, dark hair and a mind to match. There is a confidence in his movements now, he slices open the air as he moves and watches us through eyes still lit. When he speaks, he knows we'll listen. He bring his world into our living room and we watch with a petrified curiosity, but the water does look warm, and soon we're all swimming in it.

Now, we pass our days at work, showing smiles and the promise that everything is going well Mum we'll talk to you later okay love you bye. We fill our souls with booze and fags and drugs, and our breathless laughter carries us through the night, down streets and into homes we've never been to. There is a certain thrill to a youth well wasted, and we spin until our feet have dug holes where we stand. The world we have chemically created in our minds is a rich jungle, but we begin to gag on the shadows the sun stretches out before us.

We break the surface.

We have had fun, but the jungle continues to grow, and we decide to bid it goodbye for now.

All except six of course.

Six has lived in that jungle as long as we've known him. He is the king of this domain, you are Tarzan swinging from vine to vine, bellowing his call to warn off all others. And we never try to coax him out. We look into his blood shot eyes and know that this is where he will die.

There are seven of us now.

Each night passes and leaves a little piece of itself under Six's eyes. He is no longer a teenager, and not yet a man. His cheeks start to sink, his shoulders are tired from carrying his head around all day.

The jungle is growing, and he marches deeper and deeper in.

Maybe he thinks he can make it out, maybe he knows he can't.

Then, a late night phone call.

We drive to the hospital that watches from the top of the hill, and he sits there in the bleaching light. A cocktail of white powders spins around in his head and made it freeze, and he tries to tell us it's his low blood sugar. Caught somewhere between wanted to hug and rip him apart, we sit in silence. His bag and it's contents sit in between his rusted knees, like a guilty friend without shame.

Silently and stupidly I hope that he found whatever he was looking for in that jungle. I hope whatever he saw scared him enough to come running out, arms up in defeat.

But six doesn't scare easy.

Now, he moves as if his limbs were clumsily stitched together with shaking hands. He veers to the ground like an aeroplane with a broken engine, spluttering black smoke into the air behind him like a ribbon.

And there is nothing we can do.

We have a front row seat to our own friend's self destruction, and I can't help but feel honoured to have been invited to the occasion. He digs himself a grave that just gets deeper and deeper, until he has dug himself into the sky. His arms hold the weight of a universe and it comes dribbling out of his wrists, silent and suffocating.

I see now, the ball of anger you have in your heart. We forget, sometimes, that we are so young, and with youth comes anger.

You have a lot to be angry about, Six, and I can't fault you for that.

Change, for the most part, happens gradually. It works slowly and methodically, you don't even register it's presence until after it's work is done. There are those rare times, however, that change happens fast.

We all changed quickly that night.

That was the night we tried to coax you out of the jungle, by asking why you were there in the first place. What we didn't realize was that the jungle had grown into a cage around you. And you were no longer Tarzan flying free, just another injured animal that cowered in it's prison, exposed and terrified.

My heart breaks when I remember you prowling in your shaky form, foaming at the mouth and desperate for someone or something to hit you to the ground. You spat venom into our eyes, and we pushed onto your truth before we felt it shatter in our arms and you stormed out into the night.

Those were words that still hang in the air. They are scorched onto our skin like a bomb shadow, and the stains will never wash out.

We are still young.

We do not have all the answers, we don't even know all the questions yet. But I love you still, Six. And we are still here, just on the edge of the jungle, if you ever want to find the way out.

We are still young, and we still love you.