It's All So Incredibly Loud

[Maraoone]

Heading out had been a horrible idea anyways. The alarm was set for 5:00 AM, yet here he was, just stepping into a party a few minutes past midnight. The night was still young anyways. Morning, whatever. Point was he had a double shift at the Cantina register tomorrow. Who was it again that had told him he'd never be able to work a 9 to 5 job? Mrs. Walker, homeroom, 10th grade, right? Well ha ha ha, he was doing one better tomorrow, 6 to 5, so she and her smoker's lung raspy coarse fucked rasp she called her voice could fuck off.

Anyways, heading out would be a bad idea, he'd feel all this in the morning, bla bla bla. But, he could sleepwalk his way through tomorrow since it was a Saturday, slow work day, and it's not like there were any exams to worry about, and even if there were, he'd fail anyways, so there was nothing to worry about. If he went out, there'd at least be a chance of a fun night, a chance of something happening, whereas if he stayed home, he'd have to deal with Mama and Papa talking at him about his grades and fuck that. No-brainer, right?

He hadn't really been paying much attention as he and his friends hitched a ride to the place where it'd all happen. The night air was cool and light for once in this fucking swamp of a city. The night lights had been beautiful, the guy driving them there, cousin of a friend, had a fucking killer jaw, nice earring, he'd have to have a word or two with him alone later tonight if the opportunity presented itself. It'd felt good. He'd felt good. And these moments were rare, you had to savor them, so that was what he did.

So, he walked his way into the living room, the square living room, the square living room with a slanted ceiling and a nice, pretty glass sliding door to the backyard with the swimming pool, and it looked familiar. Really familiar. Strong deja vu kind of vibes. And, well, he thought to himself, maybe he'd been to this house before. There'd been a few nights where the memories were more in physical form: hickies, bruises, regrettable photos of him cross-eyed lying upside-down on this couch because it'd just felt right at the moment, no, he wasn't referring to any specific examples, stop thinking about it, posted on Instagram, rather than actual memories. Yeah, maybe this was just one of those houses he'd failed to remember, one of those parties, sure.

He couldn't quite. Shake the thought though. And, usually, what he did when he was feeling down was down a bottle or two of beer, liquid bread, that usually made things feel a bit better, that usually helped him get over himself. So, that's what he did, he got a bottle, he sipped at it, sat by himself, he wasn't really in the mood for talking with his friends, they could do their own thing, he could do his. The thought was the kind of thought that kinda got stuck in your mind like peanut butter on the roof of your tongue, and he tried to lick at it and nit at it and generally dislodge the thought, swallow it, but it just wouldn't fucking let go. And there was this stickiness deep in his throat rising and churning and

The feeling fucked off after a minute or so of emptying himself out over the bathroom sink.

He looked up, bleary-eyed. Sound of people lazing around, talking shit in the background thrummed along, mixing with the throbbing bass thumps of whatever new EDM song was being overplayed on the radio, basically like someone was beating his head like a fucking drum.

He rubbed the light-pink indent that stretched across his nose. Absent habit. Years-old scar, bad memory that was no memory at all, really, a memory beaten out of him. He wondered sometimes if, whenever he got a headache, it was cause of this fucking eyesore right here.

Didn't really matter, anyways. Headache was a headache, a god-awful playlist was a god-awful playlist. All the same to him.

He closed his eyes, rubbed his temples for a few moments, and then looked around.

The general color palette this room had going on was pastel green, either like something pulled out of a 70s catalog if you were feeling generous, or like an alien threw up all over if you were feeling less generous, and he had never had much generosity in his reserves if he was being honest with himself.

It looked familiar though.

God, he couldn't shake the thought, and it didn't really look familiar, actually, he was just being a dumbass. He didn't recall being in a bathroom so nauseating to look at, a bathroom with such an ugly color choice, but he'd been here before. The setup of things looked familiar. The size of the room. But this was a normal-sized bathroom with a normal bathtub and a normal toilet and a normal sink littered with normal toothbrushes and normal bottles of shampoo and body soap and hand soap, all of it just colored weirdly. He'd probably been in a million bathrooms like this before. It was nothing. It was nothing.

He stumbled out the bathroom, back into the real world.

It was that point of the night where all the lights were dimmed, all the colored spotlights turned on like they were supposed to play Twister on the walls or some shit like that. The air was hot and heavy, smelled of alcohol. People neared one another, danced on the floor and got closer and closer together until things got dangerous. His kind of night, usually.

The room shouldn't look like this. That was the main thought echoing and bouncing off the walls of his skull. It shouldn't look like this. He was no interior designer or shit like that, his piece of shit laptop couldn't even run the Sims, much less try his hand at making rooms there, but it looked wrong. It was wrong. Whatever this room was, it hadn't been built for a few dozen teenagers and 20-somethings shuffling and moving and grinding and making attempts at dancing in this quarter-lit, shadow-consumed excuse of a living room.

He stepped back. It was too much for him, just, fucking everyone fucking moving as if nothing was wrong. His head hurt. It throbbed. He just needed some space. That was it.

He stepped back. More of the room came into view. The deja vu feeling intensified. He knew this place. He knew this room. The feeling weighed on him, he wanted to be rid of it.

He stepped back. His foot landed past the threshold of the house. It looked familiar. It looked familiar. It looked like

2012. December. Before Christmas.

The boxes had all been loaded into the U-Haul truck. The welcome mat with the kittens, the one that used to be at the entrance of the house, it had been sold off at the same yard sale with the PS2 and the DS, they'd needed the money. The beige sofa, the warm, soft, comfy sofa he'd slept many nights on had also been sold off, it wouldn't fit in the apartment. It was too small, Mama had said. The TV would come with them, at least. The TV, the computer, his soccer things, his action figures, his siblings' toys, they'd keep that at least.

The boxes had been loaded, the house had been scoured clean. The living room was empty.

The cloud-filtered, dull, white light flooded into the house now, without any curtains to block the windows. They too had been sold off. All that was left was a rectangular sort of room, nothing to obstruct the view of the backyard, the tarped-off swimming pool. He tapped the floor just because, the sound reverberated. He hadn't realized how big his living room was until now.

It had always felt so crowded. So cozy.

Papa tugged at his hand.

"Matias, time to go."

He wanted to jump in the pool one last time, even if there was nothing but air beneath the tarp.

"Wait, Papa. Please."

He wanted to sleep in the bedroom one last time, even if the Tony Hawk blanket was in the SUV already, even if the bed frame had also been sold off, even if that room had also been scoured clean.

"Matias, the truck driver's waiting for us. Dale."

He wanted to play chase with his siblings around the pool one last time. He wanted Mama and Papa to tell him to stop running because he could fall into the pool and get his clothes wet. He wanted the pool to be filled with water so he could get wet in it.

"Matias."

He wanted to sit and watch TV in the living room one more time he wanted to sleep in his own room one last time he wanted to still have his own room because Mama told him he'd have to share a room with his siblings he wanted to run around in the backyard because he still wanted a backyard—

"Dale."

He wanted to stay.

But the house was empty.

He wanted so much, but there was nothing left for him.

Without a word, he stepped back out of the house.

He stepped back, and,

"Bro, what the fuck?"

He blinked. Something bumped against his shoulder. He turned around, faced the front yard.

A blonde girl glared at him.

"Huh?"

"You've been blocking the door for the past couple of minutes. You the bouncer or something?"

He stared back at her.

"What I thought. Get the fuck down."

"Where are we again?"

"Huh?"

"I mean, where the fuck are we? City, neighborhood, that kinda shit."

She stared at him like he was growing horns through his head. Not his fucking fault he didn't know where he was. He'd been distracted. She could just stop judging him. He didn't like the way he looked at her. Like he didn't belong.

After a few seconds silence, she sighed, spoke.

"Coral Gables. Why?"

Ah.

"Just south of US-1, yeah?" he clarified.

"Yeah, spot-on."

Ah.

He nodded. Stared into the distance for a few seconds.

"You alright, bro?"

He blinked, the girl was still in front of him.

"Yeah. I'm fine. I'm fine. Thank you."

He turned around. Bumped into someone, mumbled sorry. Didn't hear a reply.

He needed to find someone. He needed to talk to someone.

So, he continued bumping his way through the crowd, looking for a familiar face. Any face. They were all blurry silhouettes, figures that resembled faces more than were faces. Couldn't find anyone, couldn't remember anyone. The people he'd rode in with were all gone, the cute guy who'd been driving the car was gone. It was fine. He could party enough all by himself, usually. They left him behind, fucking fine, he could be the party all by himself.

Usually.

Searching the crowd was useless, just a bunch of randos he didn't even know and wouldn't remember after tonight. He needed someone, but they didn't need him, so he didn't need them, it was that simple. Golden rule, or some shit like that. Treat others as they treat you, that was how it went, right?

He didn't need someone. He didn't need anyone. He just needed to be somewhere else.

There were many houses like this in Coral Gables, the entire goddamn neighborhood had been like this, he remembered that much at least. Some of the houses probably had the same fucking layout and stuff, not like these suburban real estate developers were the most creative bunch or whatever. Yeah, yeah, that was why the bathroom looked so fucking weird, no way Mama would have allowed the bathroom to be that color, she had working eyes after all.

He pitched his way through the hallway out the living room, heading somewhere else, the floor continuing to tilt around him. God, why'd it keep doing that? Pretty fucking annoying. Kept on almost bumping into the walls, he was looking like a whole entire dumbass out here.

He pitched his way forward, and he was heading somewhere, anywhere, and, and, then he saw it. On the walls. Horizontal notches, spaced apart vertically a few inches, marked with pencil, from his knees up to his chest. They were faded, almost invisible, light ashy gray against yellowed white, but they were there, he swore, he saw it, he saw it. And, he remembered them being on this exact corner, within view of the living room. For a second, he was five, the third or second-lowest notch on the corner had just been made, he ran back to the room to watch TV, some childrens' show or another. Mom was cooking. It had smelled like plátanos.

Acrid alcohol-tainted air wafted into his nose. The memory ended. His face twisted into a grimace.

They hadn't even bothered to fucking erase the height markings off the corner of the wall. What a bunch of fucking slobs.

His fist clenched, his teeth ground against each other.

He rushed off to the door, the furthest door in the hallway, past the discolored bathroom, to the right. His room. His room. Didn't matter if he didn't have a reason, a good reason for being there. Didn't matter if he didn't live here anymore, didn't matter. He felt like it. It had been his room. It was his right, right? Right.

He flung the door open, the door to his childhood bedroom, his room, and-

a girl and guy shouted curses at him in unisons. He stopped for a few seconds, said sorry three times, slammed the door shut again, looked away red-faced.

Of course. Of fucking course. He shouldn't have expected anything else, how fucking dumb was he? That scar caving in on his skull again, dumbing him down again bit by bit. But, but no, that had been his room, that had been his room,

that was his fucking room.

He strode back towards the living room, feet pounding against the carpet, walked up to the first person his eyes landed on, any person would do. He tapped the guy's shoulder, took all he had in him not to push the guy over.

"Yeah?"

"Wh- who owns this house? Whose house is this?" he asked through gritted teeth.

He wanted to throw up.

"What?"

"Who's throwing this party?"

The guy pointed at some buzzcut fuck in the corner, smiling to himself, shit-eating grin, fiddling with his phone, probably Spotify, looking pretty damn pleased with his electronic EDM post-ironic Autotuned auto-pitched automatic crap. Him. That was the guy.

Without a word of thanks, he left, went over to the buzzcut dude. Walked right up behind him.

"Yo."

The guy turned around, startled, took a step back, wide-ass eyes glaring at him. Looked him up and down.

"Yeah? What's your problem?"

"What the fuck did you do to my house?"

The guy's eyebrows scrunched.

"Your house? The fuck you talking about-"

"Yes, my home, the place I grew up in, my dwe- my dwelling, my house."

A look of amusement crept into his features. Matias wanted to wipe it all off.

"My guy, my dude, I've lived here five years, I genuinely don't know what you're talking about."

He raised his hands, looked around to signal that he got this, as if he was the leader of anything, as if he was the fucking king of this place.

"Maybe just lay off the drinks-"

"Don't fucking tell me to lay off anything."

It felt like the music stopped, had grown quieter. All eyes were on him, they all looked at him with varying states of confusion, bewilderment, because none of them understood, none of them got that he'd been here first, this was his place, this house mattered to him more than it did this ugly egg-looking fuck, he'd never trashed, disrespected this place like this, none of them got it.

"I was here first," Matias said. "I was here first. This is my house."

He stepped right up, looked him in his smug fucking face.

"This is MY FUCKING HOUSE."

He slammed his fist into the guy's cheek.

Immediately, he felt what felt like a flurry of punches against his face from all directions, ribs, hands grabbing him, pulling him away. The entire house turned against him, WHAT THE FUCK'S YOUR PROBLEM, some shrill banshee shouted in the distance, other voices called him dipshit, dumbfuck, drunkard, he'd heard it all, he didn't give a fuck about their opinion. They hated him, he hated them.

They dumped him out on the front lawn after a few seconds. The door slammed shut.

Whatever. What-fucking-ever. He felt blood trickling out of his nose, what felt like the beginning of a bruise on his cheek, side, but whatever, he'd just tell Mama he fell and hit his face on the curb or something. He'd deal with it. Whatever. Nothing mattered. None of it mattered. It never did.

He pushed himself off the ground, and hunched forward, letting out a long, wordless scream at the house. It stood silent for a moment or two, and then the music turned back on, the lights started pulsing again. Fine. Fine. They didn't give a fuck about him, he didn't give a fuck about them. Fine.

This had been a mistake anyways. The party had been a wash, no one there had been any fun. They weren't worth anything. They didn't mean anything to him.

He wanted out of here.

He turned around, stumbled off to the middle of the streetlight-illuminated lanes and roads. His momentum brought him further than his feet, they struggled to catch up to him. He half-walked, half-ran across the streets, the Autotuned vocals and throbbing EDM basslines receding further and further behind him, until all that was left was just various pulsations of noise coming from some random distance in the horizon.

And yet he ran still, pitching left and right, wherever the world tilted, felt like bringing him. He ran, and ran, and ran, until even the noise was gone, until all that was left was a boy standing in the middle of these cookie-cutter houses in this cookie-cutter neighborhood. He spun around, and they were all the same one or two-story bungalows he'd grown up in.

There was one single window lit up. He caught a glimpse of a face, an eye peeking out at him. They were scared of him, this guy in a hoodie walking in the middle of their perfect little neighborhood because he didn't belong here, they thought. Well fuck them.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LOOKING AT?"

The light promptly switched itself off.

"That's what I fucking thought," he muttered to himself.

And now none of the lights were on. And now there was no noise. Nothing. Just Matias and the neighborhood he'd grown up in. Just Matias and his home.

And so he kept walking.

He kept walking along the roads he'd skated and played with neighbors in, the roads he'd played tag in, the roads he'd drive through going to and from school, but they were just roads at the end of it all. They were quiet roads, silent roads, dead roads. The neighbors he'd left behind weren't kids, they'd all grown up and were all doing their own thing and he was long forgotten to all of them, to this entire neighborhood. The road he was walking along was just a road now.

Nothing left here.

He picked up his phone. Hadn't shattered or gotten scratched after they threw him out, thank God.

He wiped his nose, looked at the smear of blood on the back of his hand.

Pressed quick dial.

...

"Papa?

"Papa-

"Yeah, I know-

"I know, I know, I messed up, I'm sorry.

"I'm fine, yeah, I'm fine.

"I'm fine.

"Look, I, uh, I'm in Coral Gables. South of US-1.

...

"I'll explain. I'll explain later, Papa, can you just-

"Pa. Can you just bring me home, please? I just wanna go ho-"

He swallowed a lump.

"Just get me out of here."

((Matias Juarez continued elsewhere))