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I slid open the glass door and slowly made my way onto the small deck, cold night air engulfing my throbbing head. A stuffy, congested Joel waddled out beside me with his hand gripping one of my crutches for support. We were both sick with whatever he had caught from his daycare. Headaches, runny noses, coughs, and congestion. The poor guy didn’t talk all day, just lay in a sick haze in bed with me watching old Blues Clues reruns and The Wizard of Oz recording we saved on tape. Garret had come in from work about an hour earlier and brought some Tylenol for us both. It was now almost 9:30 and Joel decided he wanted a little fresh air. So we had wormed our ways out of either side of the bed, I wearily utilized my crutches to maneuver through the room that had never seemed so much like an obstacle course, and now we were situated on a plastic chair, his little form in my arms, resting his poor little congested head against my chest as I rubbed his back.

All day I had been in inexplicable torture heightened by the fact that my body was both too tired and stuffy to really do anything and my brain so agitated that I felt like a super hyper immobilized… mass of wasted space. So utterly helpless. Smoking was on my mind almost constantly. When it wasn’t, I was thinking about what to do to distract myself from smoking. I was bedridden, couldn’t smoke, and reading didn’t quell the thirst for physical movement and the release of adrenaline.

It’s horrible- even as I sat there holding Joel in my arms and feeling his warmth and his breath and his physical-ness, I was thinking (rather guiltily) about cigarettes. I had found an old pack with three remaining cigs in it, and it was burning a hole in my mind. Its presence was very prominent to me on the dresser, even from outside. I was planning on throwing them away, but it had to be out of the apartment, just in case.

I closed my eyes and rocked him gently back and forth to a tune I whisper-sang, probably something I had listened to earlier that day. He breathed open-mouthed over my shoulder in long, slow hums. We stayed like this for a few minutes. I shielded him from the cold wind with my jacket, until he stirred and I thought it best to go in. I struggled to adjust my crutches properly under my arms without dropping Joel. Somehow I managed to stand up (with much quiet grunting of frustration) and get back into the apartment to lay sick Joel back down in bed. He kept his eyes shut as he wriggled into the warmth of the covers and only opened them when he noticed I wasn’t immediately beside him.

“I’m going for a short walk,” I whispered, wiping a strand of hair from his face. “To stretch my leg out a bit. I’ll be back soon, don’t worry.” I kissed his head and grabbed the near-empty cigarette box on my way out.

The stairs are the worst part. There’s no elevator for my apartment building, only thin metal stairs on the outside of the building. I cautiously stepped down the descent of death, using only my right crutch and leaning against the wall with my left arm. It was alright until the very last case. My crutch gave out against the lack of friction between the rubber and the damp metal, and I slipped down the rest of the ten steps, knocking my cast around quite a bit. It was all I could do not to scream, but I did exhale a quiet cry of pain. It seared up through my leg into my thigh, causing my whole body to tense and shake, and my headache increased by a thousand times at least. I wanted to cry: my lungs ached for smoke, I’m incapacitated, I’m sick and feeling like crap… Today has not been a fun day.

“Hey, are you ok?”

Why is it that the one person who I want to be calm around shows up during my most emotionally maxed-out moments? I slowed my breathing before gathering my crutches and attempting to pull myself up with the stair rail. “I’m fine,” I answered, blinking back tears of frustration as I wrestled with gravity. I felt thin arms link into my free one and hoist me into a standing position, putting a crutch under my arm for me. “Thanks.” I stared at my cast like I was pretending to find a more comfortable leaning point. Thank heavens it’s dark. “Why are you here?” I asked. My nose is running again. Very noticeably, I realized, as I sniffed hard. Of course it isn’t as a result of crying. Just being sick.

It was almost as if I could feel his muscles tense at the question. I finally looked up into the shadow of his face outlined by curly black hair. “…Just walking,” he replied. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here.” I wiped my eyes with the wrist of my jacket, not even bothering to attempt being discreet.

He didn’t answer for a second. It was too dark to read his face. “But why are you outside? Trying to climb down a flight of stairs with a broken leg?”

What great timing. I pulled out the cigarette pack and handed it to him, feeling my heart throb desperately at its dislike of the situation. “I found an old pack and couldn’t risk throwing it away in my apartment. I was going to do it somewhere else. But lucky you’re here so I don’t have to walk forever.” I knew I was rambling a bit because I was nervous about passing up a chance to smoke. About giving up smoking. My lungs were not happy.

He took the pack from me and stuck it in his own pocket. I watched it go for a moment, and then had to turn away from him to wipe my eyes again. This is so pathetic, how low these damned sticks of paper and plant can make me feel. It’s my biggest, most powerful enemy. Give me the seamonsters, give me a Cyclops army, heck, even give me Kronos. They don’t have contracts on my soul like those I sign every time I light a cig.

“…I can walk you back up stairs.”

I shook my head no. “I’m good thanks.” I don’t want him seeing me like this any more than he has to. “I’ll see you later.”

“I’ll come over to check on you sometime,” he said as I made my way to the stairs.

I sighed, a little relieved that I’d have some distraction from this endless torture. “Thanks. I look forward to it.”

He didn’t help me up, but he didn’t leave at least until I had entered my floor. And I didn’t slip once on the way up.

I set down the book- the second I had finished that day. It seemed my fingers couldn’t turn the pages fast enough, my brain couldn’t absorb the information quickly enough for my restless body. It was like smoking had deprived me of some of my physical strength, and I was getting it all back at once but couldn’t use it. Throughout the day I’d feel tears rolling down my face, twice in the morning and a few more times in the afternoon. Sometimes they were a result of the spontaneous emotions because of smoking, and other times I had no idea why I was crying- also because of smoking. I was all alone in the apartment for the majority of the day. Joel had been at daycare, Garret had been at work. Now he’s working in the living room, with the old box-TV spitting out what little reception it could get. Joel slept soundly beside me, all traces of a cold almost completely gone. Jake came by in the morning to give me a stack of library books. He talked about getting his eyes checked finally. Said the headaches have been getting worse. I was so hungry for something to do, someone to just be around, that I made him late for school.

My fingers grabbed my art book of their own accord, it seemed. I pulled a mechanical pencil from the top of the small bookshelf by the bed and gazed studiously at my brother’s relaxed, carefree face. The pencil grazed the paper in long, soft, repeated strokes to form the curve of his head, the tip of his nose, the caves of his eyes. Soon the oversized page resembled very much a small square of my vision, and I reached under the bed for my acrylic paints. My drinking water became the cleaning water for my brushes instead. On a very used pallet, I mixed orange and brown and white and a little bit of water to create a pale skin colour, then the milky yellow for his hair.

A knock against the doorframe made me jump and whip my head around. My leg ached at the sudden seizing of the muscles. Garret leaned halfway into the room, looking inquisitively at me. “There’s a kid at the door asking to see you,” he said softly. The bags under his eyes and the sound of his voice made it evident he was exhausted. “You up for seeing a ‘Nico’?”

I nodded, gripping my brush a little tighter. “Sure,” I answered. I turned back to my painting and filled in the last bit of skin colour, the thumb curled in the hand. I wasn’t actually sure about having Nico in my apartment. Something about it just made me uneasy. But he was here now, and he knew I was home, so there was nothing to do about it.

I didn’t acknowledge when I felt his presence enter the room. “Hey.”

“Hey,” I replied. I was filling in the darker shadows of the face now, edging around the forehead beneath the hair. The bed sank as he sat on the edge behind me. I felt his eyes rake over my painting, and I immediately wanted to throw it away. It wasn’t supposed to be seen.

“OK, one, you don’t look so good. You need to eat,” he whispered. His black hair came into view as he leaned closer for a better look. “And two, I thought you said you couldn’t paint.”

“I can’t.” I chose to ignore his first comment. I was rather surprised at my newfound talent. But I guess that’s what happens when you’re stuck in the same room for a week with nothing but paper and paint to keep you company. “I can draw OK. But the painting bit is new. I guess I learn fast.”

He remained silent. I kept painting. After a few minutes I felt his forehead rest gently against my arm. For a moment my hand froze, brush suspended in the air. Then I continued as though this were the most natural thing in the world: to feel Nico’s coldness through my jacket and the conflicting warmth in my gut. Maybe that was me ignoring it. I don’t know.

“What is this?” he broke the silence. He reached for the book lying on the bed that I had put down minutes before. “’The Awakening’. Kate Chopin. It looks old. I didn’t think anyone read old stuff anymore.”

“You can borrow it, if you want.” I filled in around the eyes with a watered-down purple as I spoke. “It isn’t very long. A little feminist, or at least it was for back then. ‘Way ahead of its time.’” I scoffed slightly at the statement taken from a review given by a feminist website. In the back of my head was the thought that Nico might have my cigarettes on him. I kept it back there with all my might.

“I think I will. What’s it about?”

“You tell me.”

He watched me for a while longer, looking occasionally between my painting and the sleeping model. I wondered what he was thinking about. “Have you painted anything else?” His voice was soft, like he didn’t want to interrupt the conversation silence was having with itself.

“I’ve done about five other real ones.” I reached back down to grab a sketchbook leaning against the bookshelf and handed it to him. “But the drawings are better.”

He flipped through it, taking what seemed like forever to examine each one. Dragons, serpents, nymphs, mountains, oceans, depictions of dreams… Anything and everything I thought about was there. My favourite thing to draw was the Leviathan from the tales in the Bible. The guardian of the sea.

Then there were the darker drawings, mostly of dreams I’d been having lately. Lots of black and shadow was involved. In some there was a face, but it had passed so quickly and was so hidden by darkness that I wasn’t sure what it looked like. I knew at least that it was a woman, whose hair became the shadow that surrounded her completely. But that was all I could make out. And that’s all I could draw. I explained this to Nico when he reached those images. “I thought the dreams had meant something,” I said, “because demigod dreams tend to warn of oncoming doom and whatnot. But it didn’t make much sense, and I’m not seeing any warning in them.”

He flipped to the next page after a few moments to a portrait of Garret I did when he wasn’t looking. His face was stoic, weary, disheartened, tired. Aching. I don’t know why I drew it. I hated to look at it. But Nico stared a long time. I decided I didn’t want to paint anymore and shut my book, setting it back down on the floor. The paints were put back in their original spot. I shifted my leg and watched his unmoving face as he examined the drawing.

He quickly shut the book and looked up at me. “I’ll borrow the book. Why don’t you go to Camp Half-Blood, like every other demigod? Or Camp Jupiter?”

I was a little surprised at how abruptly he changed the subject. “Because I have Joel to take care of,” I murmured, looking over at the sleeping boy. “Garret doesn’t make a lot of money. Not enough to support both of them. And I can’t take him with me because I can’t separate them.”

“How did you find out about them? About being a demigod and gods and stuff?”

“I had a protector.” A tall, middle-aged man with short brown hair and a well-trimmed beard came to mind. “A satyr who pretended to be a homeless guy that hung around my apartment for a while. He told me about the camps. But my mother told me very early on who my father was. She liked to tell me, and then point out all the ways I looked like him. And then she would cry a lot.” Most of my memories of my mother were of her unhappy. Often she would wake me up in the middle of the night, tears staining her cheeks, and ask me to sleep with her in her large bed. And she would hold me and cry there in the dark and tell me how sorry she was and she wanted me to be happier than she had been. After the first few months of this, I rarely ever slept. I’d just sit on my bed and read, waiting for her. “But…” I lost my roll. I glanced up at Nico and shrugged. “I guess… That’s it, you know?”

His fingers picked at his jacket thoughtfully. “Does your stepfather know?”

I nodded, looking through the dingy lights of the other room to locate him. He sat hunched over the desk, head in his hands. “I told him. He was a little hard to convince at first, but he got it after I introduced him to my protector.” I chuckled when I remembered his shocked face as he stared at the satyr hooves. He had to touch them before he believed it was all real. “We don’t talk about it much.”

“It seems that a lot fewer monsters attack you than would be expected,” he said finally. “How does that work?”

I pointed across the room to the bow and arrows in the corner, leaning by the window. “The arrows are all tipped with celestial bronze,” I explained, “and the bow has some at each end, for close range fights. They act like knives. The quiver is ‘magically enhanced’, so that it never runs out of arrows. A little gift from my dad I found one morning.” I didn’t mention Quintenn at all. I don’t know what the son of Hades would say about me employing an undead Strigoi as a protector.

Maybe he sensed I was hiding something. He stared at me a long time, searching through my eyes for something. What? I thought I’d hidden it pretty well. But he didn’t question me. Instead he slid off the bed, Chopin in hand, and made slowly for the living room. “I’m gonna get going,” he said, looking at me again with hard, dark eyes that sent now well-expected heat to my stomach. “You should come to hang out at the camp this weekend. Or when your leg heals. Just to see what it’s like. They have a path for running, through the forest and by a river. You’d like it.”

I nodded in reply. “I’ll take you up on that offer when my leg heals.”

He sent me the most genuine smile I’ve ever seen, and the biggest I’ve seen on his face. Then he exited the room quietly, and I was left alone to feel stupid wondering why I had talked so much.