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Knox winced as his dorm room window let out a loud squeak. Luckily, his roommate was out of town for the weekend, and wasn’t there to report him for climbing out the window past curfew. Although at the rate he was going, someone from the other side of the campus would hear him. Welton’s buildings sounded every minute of its hundred year life, which was especially inconvenient at times like this. Times when Charlie was missing from his dorm. Times when Charlie was a few demerits from being kicked out of school.
Knox finally got the window open wide enough that he could slide out, pulling himself up onto the roof. The wind was chilly and smelled like snow, making him glad that he had thrown a jacket on over his pajamas. Knox made his way carefully across the roof, spotting Charlie easily. Thank goodness, because this was the last of his best friend’s hideouts, at least the ones he was aware of.
He sat down next to Charlie, unsure of what to say. So he said nothing, and neither did Charlie. The roof had the best view of Welton’s campus, which was beautiful in late fall like this. The leaves were dark oranges and browns now, just barely clinging to frost-bitten branches. The cold had already set in over Vermont, and you could feel in the crispness of the air that snow was on its way.
“You didn’t get kicked out, did you?” Knox asked finally, when he could no longer bear the silence.
“Nah,” Charlie answered, taking a drag from his cigarette and then offering it to Knox, who took it. He hadn’t even noticed Charlie had been smoking until then, but suddenly the smell was so obvious he didn’t know how he’d missed it. “Not this time. Nolan said that would be too easy, or some shit.”
“How long have you been out here for?” Knox handed him back the smoke, a little hesitantly. “Have you been chain smoking this whole time?”
Charlie snorted. “What is this, twenty questions?”
Knox was quiet. The lack of answer had given him his answer. “Are you high enough to tell the truth, then?”
Charlie didn’t answer, just took another drag.
“Charlie,” Knox pleaded.
“It’s gonna take a lot more than some pot for that, Knoxious.” It was the start of a truth. When he offered Knox the cigarette again, he took it and then stumped it out on the roof next to him. He half expected Charlie to just pull another one out of his pocket, but he didn’t. Just huffed through his nose and stared out across the green.
Knox, once again, broke the silence. “Why do you do this, Charlie?”
“What?”
“Try to get kicked out. Do you really want to leave that bad?”
“Oh, C’mon, Knox, I’m not the first one to want out of Hellton. Don’t tell me you aren’t counting down the days ‘till you graduate,” Charlie replied.
“Well, sure, but I’m waiting to graduate , not be thrown out in the middle of my Junior year,” Knox argued. “It’s not like you’d even be free of school; you know your parents would just send you off to some other fancy prep school.”
Charlie leaned back on his elbows. “Maybe it’ll be an easier one. If this really is ‘the best preparatory school in America’-” he did a very good impression of Mr. Nolan, “-Then I’ll at least be down one or two then, won’t I?”
“But… you’d be alone,” Knox pointed out. “Neil, and Meeks, and all the rest of the guys will still be here. The Dead Poets Society will still be here. Do you really want to leave all that too?” Do you really want to leave me? He knew he sounded like he was pleading now, but he couldn’t help it. The thought of losing Charlie to some other posh gateway-to-Harvard-Law school was almost unbearable.
That made Charlie go quiet for a minute. Knox looked over at him, and saw his expression illuminated in the moonlight. He looked sad, plain and simple. It was the sort of pained, tired look that Knox had seen before only in quick glimpses. This was Charlie with his mask off. Of course, it was then that he turned his head, and suddenly the flippancy was back.
“You’d all be fine without me,” he said with a plastic smile. “Neil is basically your mother anyway.”
“Would you be fine without us?” Knox countered. “And would you really not miss the meetings? Mr. Keating? The poetry? Really?”
Charlie laughed, and it was scary how real it sounded. “I’m sure Cameron won’t miss my saxophone poetry.”
“I would,” Knox said before he could stop himself. Charlie rolled his head to look at him sideways, eyebrows raised. “Really! You’re a good writer, Charlie. You like to pretend you aren’t, but we’ve all heard what to recite for the club. I’ve read your notebooks, it’s all great, like, almost Todd-level great.”
Charlie sat up so fast he almost lost his balance on the roof. “You read my notebooks? When?”
Knox winced. He hadn’t entirely meant to let that part slip. “You left one open when we were studying one night. I didn’t mean to look, really, I didn’t, but once I read the first one, I wanted to read the rest… Look, I’m sorry, Charlie, I shouldn't have done it.”
“Like Hell, you shouldn’t’ve.” Charlie’s face was screwed up in anger, and he had moved back from Knox a bit.
“I know, I know,” Knox agreed. “But my point still stands. Just… Please don’t get kicked out Charlie. We’ll miss you.” I’ll miss you. “And it won’t help you anyway.”
The anger melted from Charlie’s face as quickly as it had come, and he leaned back on the heels of his hands again. His eyes fell closed for a minute, and Knox watched him carefully. Charlie had always been difficult to read. In many senses, he was easy. He didn’t care what people thought enough to hide his reactions and opinions, and he liked to live fast and full. But at the same time, he was a good actor. He could hide things behind humor and flippancy like no one else Knox had ever met. Even after years of knowing him, it was sometimes hard to tell what he was really thinking or feeling.
When Charlie opened his eyes again, he said with uncharacteristic softness, “Okay. Okay, I’ll try not to get kicked out.”
“Good,” Knox answered. It didn’t seem like an adequate answer, but it was all he had. Neither of them moved for a while, watching the moon shadows dance over the empty campus. It was oddly peaceful.
Knox felt Charlie shiver next to him. “Cold?” he asked.
Charlie shook his head, but was obviously a liar, because he was still shivering. Knox took off his coat and pushed it towards Charlie, who shook his head again.
“I said I wasn’t cold.”
“I’m fine, I run warm,” Knox insisted. “Just take it. We have a Latin quiz tomorrow. If you catch a cold you’ll miss it.”
“And what a tragedy that would be,” Charlie nodded solemnly.
Knox elbowed him in the ribs. “Shut up, I’m being serious. Just take the jacket.”
“Such a romantic,” Charlie teased, finally putting the jacket over his shoulders. “Very demanding though. You should work on that.”
“Yeah, that’s the general feedback, it seems,” Knox sighed. He looked up at the clock tower, which was nearing 1:00 am. “We should probably go in soon anyway.”
“Sure, sure,” Charlie agreed, but didn’t move. Instead, he reached into his pocket for his lighter. “One more smoke first, though?”
Knox sighed. “Yeah, alright.”
***
When Knox climbed out his window for the second time that year, it was once again in search of Charlie Dalton. This time, the roof was slippery and brittle with snow, making it more treacherous than before.
Charlie was right where Knox knew he would be, because that’s where he always was. He must have heard Knox messing with the window, because he was already watching steadily. Knox made an attempt at a smile, and Charlie offered a weak one in return around his cigarette.
“Smoke?” he asked when Knox sat down next to him, grimacing at the cold of the snow.
Knox shook his head. Charlie turned back to the campus. The moon reflected off the snow, providing enough light that Knox could examine his face. He had clearly been crying; Charlie had barely stopped crying since Neil died. But more than that, he looked… wrong. Too still. Charlie was the type of person to always be moving, and even when he wasn’t, you could almost see his mind buzzing, the energy radiating off him. Right now, his eyes were dull and he looked defeated. Like he’d finally been beaten down. It made Knox want to cry too.
After a while of silence, Knox managed to ask the question that had been caught in his throat since he sat down. “Did they kick you out?” It came out too quiet, but so was everything else, so it didn’t matter.
Charlie blew smoke out slowly, watching it disappear from view. “Yeah. I’m supposed to be gone first thing tomorrow. They didn’t want me to get the chance to talk to anyone first. I think they’re worried I’m gonna start some kind of revolution.” He smiled a little at that, but it was the dark sort of amusement.
“Are you glad you’re going?” Knox wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer. Either way it would hurt.
“You know what’s funny about that?” Charlie said, in possibly the least funny tone Knox had ever heard. “No. Don’t get me wrong, I want out of here just as much as ever, but it almost feels like… like if I leave now, if I never come back, that he’ll really be–be–”He cut himself off abruptly, turning away to take a shaky breath. “There’s things I’d miss, you know?”
Knox nodded. “We’ll miss you.” I’ll miss you. “I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll write,” Charlie answered. Knox was pretty sure he wouldn’t. Something about this conversation felt like an ending.
Charlie shivered harshly, and it was then that Knox realized he was dressed in nothing but flannel night clothes against the New England cold. Knox didn’t have a jacket to offer him this time, but he knew Charlie wouldn’t have taken it anyway. The reasonable thing to do at this point would be to go inside. After all, Knox did get the information he came for: Charlie was leaving. But that was just it, Charlie was leaving . How could he just get up and crawl back into his warm bed in his warm room knowing that his best friend would be gone when he woke up? How could he just give in to the winter wind and leave when this is the last time he would hear Charlie’s voice, as eerily devoid of life as it was at the moment? No, he wouldn’t leave. Not yet.
After a while, Charlie spoke again. “When you read my notebooks, do you remember what the poems were about?”
Knox tilted his head up to the moon, like she would help him remember. “You wrote a lot about hating school, hating your parents, smoking, some about love I think, but I’m not sure which girl they were about. There’ve been a lot.”
“You’ve been counting?” Charlie snorted. “Because I sure haven’t.”
“Do you really not remember any of them? You really didn’t like any of them?”
“Well, sure,” Charlie shrugged. “Some of them were real sweet, and pretty too.”
“But you didn’t love them,” Knox pressed. He thought it was kind of sad really. Charlie could have pretty much any girl he wanted, and yet he never seemed to stick with any of them. Knox hoped someday he would stop going through pairs of lips like fast fashion and fall in love properly.
Charlie sighed, finally looking right at him, gaze even and steady. “No.”
Knox swallowed, looking away. He wasn’t sure why, but something about the way Charlie was watching him was just too much. It was burning into him, and yet he wasn’t sure he wanted him to stop.
Charlie’s eyes fell to the roof once more, stubbing out his smoke on the shingles. “I should go back inside. I’ll have to be up early tomorrow. Leaving and all.”
“Right, sure,” Know nodded, throat tight. It wasn’t that he was lying exactly, it was just that Charlie Dalton was the last person to be worried about getting to bed on time, especially right now. He was making excuses. He was making excuses to get away from Knox . That hurt somewhere deep in Knox’s chest.
Still Charlie hadn’t moved yet, and neither had Knox. There was so much he wanted to say. To say because he would probably never get the chance to again. To say even just to fill the silence, to make the world unfreeze so they could laugh again. But if the world unfroze, even for the second, reality would come crashing back in and break this delicate balance. Charlie would get up and climb back through his window, loudly, because Cameron could report him all he wanted and it wouldn’t matter. Knox would climb back in his own window, and try not to fall apart from the grief of losing Neil to death, and losing Charlie to something else. Not death, but something they wouldn’t come back from.
Selfishly, he hoped maybe Charlie would leave him a notebook. Just one. Just one hundred pages of sewn together words, of purposely messy calligraphy, of ripped out pieces of newspapers that sound vaguely sexual out of context. Just one documented piece of whatever it was that went on inside Charlie’s head, just so he would remember. Maybe if there were words to go with it, his voice wouldn’t fade so quickly. Knox didn’t want to forget. He was already forgetting Neil, the memories fading around the edges. He didn’t want to lose Charlie too.
It was then that Charlie shifted, and then began to get up, before stopping and shifting closer to Knox instead. “Knoxious,” Charlie said, smiling sadly, “don’t hate me for this, alright?”
Before Knox could answer, Charlie’s mouth was on his. And, oh. Oh . Charlie was a damn good kisser, and more than that too. His hands were cupped gently around Knox’s face, holding him there. It was more than just a kiss too; Charlie was pouring everything into it, so much passion and longing, so much pain and love. Knox hadn’t known all that could exist within one person without bursting into flames and burning him up from the inside. And it was burning, it was every bit of that feeling Charlie's gaze had given him just minutes before times a thousand. Knox was burning right along with him, and to his surprise, he found he didn’t want it to stop.
When Charlie pulled away, the cold rushed back in all at once, along with the horribleness of the past few days. It rested heavy on Knox’s shoulder’s, heavier now that for a few moments it had been lifted. Charlie’s hands dropped away, and he offered a small quirk of his lips, the lips that only moments before had been against Knox’s own. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was real, and it seemed to be the best Charlie could give.
“Goodbye, Knox,” he said softly. “Make sure you get Chris the nice sort of flowers. Don’t make her settle for the cheap ones.”
And then he was gone. Back through the window, leaving Knox alone on the roof with the taste of Charlie’s favorite cigarettes on his tongue and feeling colder than ever.