***
It was a sensation unlike anything Ryan had ever felt. It wasn’t as simple as waking up, it was as though he was being slowly pulled from the depths of an ocean trench, and it felt as if he would never break the surface.
He felt his mental faculties return to him one at a time in a slow conveyor belt of consciousness. Awareness, reason, sensation, memory. When Ryan was finally able to open his eyes and test his limbs, he felt as though he hadn’t used them in months. They were leaden and awkward and it required great concentration to move them. Still, Ryan could see that it was day, that he was still in Vanessa’s bedroom, and that he was once again, more or less, human.
His t-shirt was strewn about his chest in ragged tatters and his sweatpants looked thin and stretched.
As the feeling returned to his extremities, Ryan realized there was something in his hand. Vanessa was curled into a ball on the floor next to the bed in a nest of couch pillows and mismatched blankets. Her hair flowed over the lumpy pillow and Ryan watched as her petite, upturned nose flared slowly in and out. She was sound asleep, but her arm was still up on the bed, her hand in Ryan’s, where it had been all night. Ryan smiled and stroked it with his thumb for a moment before gently placing it back down beside her.
Ryan wondered, then, what he would ever do without her. They had known each other for so long that Ryan couldn’t remember anything about his life before Vanessa had entered it. Now and again he found himself wondering what his life would have been like if the two had never met, or if they had met later in life. If they had met in tenth grade instead of first grade, would they have become friends? Would Ryan be the person he was today? Would they have dated? Ryan smiled at the absurdity of it. They had known each other for far too long for that to be an issue; it had never crossed his mind to think of her like that. Ryan smiled again. Even if he’d ever had that inkling, he knew she was still way out of his league.
Vanessa didn’t wake until Ryan was just tipping the fourth pancake onto the growing stack next to the stove. The last time she had walked into this room with Ryan already there, he had been trying to kill himself. Ryan knew that pancakes wouldn’t erase a memory like that, especially not his pancakes, but he had to start somewhere. She ruffled her fingers through her hair and yawned.
“You made it.” She said.
“Yeah…thanks.” Ryan tried to busy himself with breakfast, but there was one question burning in his mind. “Did you see me? I mean, when I changed?”
Her eyes darkened. “Yeah.”
“And?”
“And it was…really, really weird. The change itself, I mean it looked terrible. I can’t believe you survived at all, let alone twice.”
“What about after that? What did I look like?”
She scrunched up her nose and squinted into the backyard. “Umm, scary as hell. I mean, I don’t know, it’s what you described. But I guess because I knew it was you, I was okay with it. Of course the whole time I was terrified that you’d wake up suddenly and kill me, but you know.”
“Do you want to talk about something else?” Ryan ventured.
“I would love to.” Vanessa replied quickly. “Give me a couple days to handle it I’ll be cool, just…not right now.”
“Sure. How many pancakes do you want?”
“As many as I can hold.”