Chapter Nineteen
Isaac

Waking up the next morning, I wasn’t too surprised to see that Taylor was gone. Mornings after he had what had come to be labeled “the dream,” he always rose before anyone. Sometimes he liked to go for a walk to clear his mind. Sometimes we would just find him sitting in the kitchen, a bowl of cereal or other type of breakfast food in front of him.

I sighed, not quite sure what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to get up yet, but laying there, squashed between a still sleeping Zac and Parker was pretty uncomfortable.

I pulled myself off the floor and onto my feet, stretching to try and get out the soreness that came with sleeping on the floor. And on the couch besides. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to come back into the room after what I had said to Taylor. It wasn’t that I regretted thinking them, but actually saying them out loud was a whole other matter. His screaming with the all too familiar dream was the only thing that gave me the courage to go back.

I went up to the bathroom, feeling groggy and that bad sensation of having to pee really bad as soon as I woke up. But when I came to the door, I could hear the distinct sounds of someone inside, taking a shower. I silently cursed my father for not making the guestroom into a second bathroom and went downstairs to try and ignore nature’s call.

I expected to find Taylor in the kitchen, but found my mother instead. She herself looked a little bit like she had just woken up and was still sleepy.

“Morning,” I said, walking over to the refrigerator.

“Morning,” she said back. Yup, she was only half awake. “Hey, do you know who’s in the bathroom?” she asked.

“I thought it might be Dad,” I said.

“No,” she said. “Your father is still asleep. It’s not Parker or Zac?”

“Nope. They’re asleep too,” I answered.

“So it must be Taylor,” she said.

“I thought that he would be out on a walk or something like he always does after he has that dream,” I said, taking out the jug of orange juice and a glass.

“Me, too,” she said. “I wonder what that dream he’s been having is about, anyway?”

“Whatever it is, it sounds pretty scary,” I said.

She sighed. “Yeah. But he always says that he forgets what it’s about when he wakes up. I don’t know about you, but I don’t normally forget about dreams that have me waking up screaming.”

“I don’t normally have dreams that make me wake up screaming,” I said. “I know Parker was pretty freaked out about it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, he didn’t say anything, but you could tell,” I said.

“Oh. I wonder how he’s doing anyway? I mean, I know he’s only been here a day, but it has to be a pretty radical change from what he’s used to.”

“I heard him make a comment last night about a lack of elbow room while he was on the phone with Gina, but that’s all I know about it,” I said.

She smiled. “I can imagine. Coming from a house with only two people to a house with nine other ones besides him must be sort of suffocating.”

“Mmm-hmm,” I agreed. “I can’t help but worry about him, though.”

“Why?”

“Well, the whole Annie thing,” I said. “I don’t think it’s right to not say anything about it to him.”

“Neither do I,” she admitted. “But Annie’s gonna do what Annie wants to do. That’s sort of the way she’s always been. Just...don’t go telling him yourself or anything.”

“Not yet anyway,” I said, staring into my glass as if it held all the answers. I had made a silent promise to myself that if enough time went by and no one got up the nerve to tell him, then I was just going to do it myself. I knew my mother would see that in my eyes if I looked up, so I avoided meeting her gaze.

“Hey, who’s in the bathroom?” Zac’s voice asked as he simultaneously entered the room, his hair sticking up in gravity-defying ways.

“I think it’s Taylor,” my mother answered.

“Oh great. We’ll never see the inside of that room again,” he said, plopping down in his usual chair and burying his head in his arms. He closed his eyes and I would’ve thought that he had gone back to sleep had I not known that Zac’s snoring could keep people in China awake even if he was doing it in a soundproof room.

Eventually, everyone in the house besides Taylor had trickled in, wondering who was in the bathroom. After a while, we all began to grumble about how long it was taking him, even making some jokes. But not long after, the jokes silenced as we all noticed that the water was still running, nearly an hour after my mother had gotten up to find him already in there, meaning that he was still in the shower.

“I wonder if the water is even lukewarm anymore?” Zac said, looking up at the ceiling worriedly.

“I doubt it,” my father said.

“Trying to wash it away,” Parker mumbled, turning his eyes toward the ceiling where everyone had them fixed. He tugged a little bit on the rumpled shirt he was wearing, the same one from the day before. He had slept in it. We had all slept in our clothes it seemed.

None of us responded to the comment. It was said as if he hadn’t meant to say it out loud or as if he was too shy to say it in such a way that would invite anyone to respond to it. But the meaning of what he was saying was not lost on us. Taylor had tried walking it off and throwing it up. Now he was trying to wash it away.

But what exactly was he trying to wash away? The frustrated thought crept into my mind not for the first time. What was that dream? Why did he keep claiming to forget it when it was so obvious that he didn’t? Was the trust that took not even there anymore?

I brushed the thought away. No use in wallowing in self pity now. I was pretty sure at this point that when or if he ever decided to tell any of us what the dream was about that I would not be the first person he ran to about it.

Finally and suddenly, the water pump stopped running and everyone let out the collective breath we hadn’t known we were holding. At least he hadn’t drowned himself.

I sighed, knowing that he could still be in there for another hour, knowing Taylor, and decided to change to distract myself from the increasingly demanding urge to relieve myself. In silence, I left the room and climbed the stairs, passing the door to the bathroom on my way to my bedroom. I paused outside the door and cautiously put my ear up against it, hoping that he didn’t choose that moment to walk out of the bathroom. I listened for a minute, but I couldn’t hear anything from inside.

I went into my bedroom and pulled out the clothes for the day, quickly dressing. I was just pulling my shirt over my head when I heard the door to the bathroom open. My relief from before got more intense as I quickly dashed out of the room lest anyone should try and steal the bathroom from me now.

Taylor was just emerging from the bathroom as I was exiting the bedroom. When I saw him, I stopped what I had been planning to be my mad dash. His expression was deeply vacant as he began walking down the hall toward where I was standing, obviously in search of clothes since all he had was a towl wrapped around his waist.

Curiously, I put my hand on his arm.

“Hey, Tay,” I said as if answering a phone with him on the other end. He snapped to attention, suddenly aware that someone else was present other than himself. I hadn’t known I was that hard to miss. “How come you took so long?”

I mentally kicked myself. I could have started out with any number of other tactless remarks, but that of all of them was probably one of the stupidest to use on account of the fact that it sounded vaguely accusing.

“Was I?” he said, his voice sounding nearly as vacant as his expression. “Sorry. I guess I lost track of time.”

He looked at me expectantly. He thought I was going to let that be the end of the conversation. Which I wasn’t.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, blinking as a drop of water went into his eye. He hadn’t even bothered to blow dry his hair.

“I don’t believe you.”

Another accusation. This was going well.

He sighed, becoming frustrated with me.

“Look, Ike,” he said. “I’m kind of wearing nothing but a towel here and I’d like to have more on. Sorry if I took too long in the bathroom, I didn’t mean to.”

He struggled out of my firm grasp and disappeared into the bedroom, slamming the door slightly behind him. I sighed but let the subject go, remembering my thought from earlier. If he was going to tell anyone, it wasn’t going to be me. Instead, I quickly went into the bathroom, nearly slipping on the wet floor. Gasping, I caught myself just in time on the sink. As I did so, something resting there slipped off and clattered to the tiled bathroom floor. I bent down to pick it up, thinking it was probably Taylor’s toothbrush. He had a habit of leaving it on the sink instead of in the toothbrush rack like a normal person.

But I paused as it finally registered what it really was that I was bending down to pick up. Suddenly I was wishing for Taylor’s bad habits when I saw that it wasn’t a toothbrush, but one of the steak knives from the kitchen.

It didn’t take long to dawn on my why Taylor would have brought a steak knife into the bathroom with him.

Is Taylor's behavior realistic at all? Just wondering.
Chapter Eigteen
Chapter Twenty