in the nettles with jeff magnum

neutral milk hotel #2. can't remember if i posted 'a love song for jeremy barnes' on here...
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jeff and i were hiding underneath the tumbledown shadow of the wall where the nettles grow. at first, i couldn’t figure out why we were there, but after a while i guessed that it was that jeff didn’t want max and ellis to find us. (a more confusing reason than i needed- why should jeff care whether we were found together or not?) i shifted a little in the nettles, so i could see his face. he was watching intently through a crack in the wall, but I could tell he knew i was watching him. his eyes ticked left and right like a clock.

last night had been one of the most straightforward in my life. jeff was not given to many words, but we had stood together for a long time, and so he spoke a little, and in between words he looked so bitter and disgusted that i had to mention it.
“jeff, you've got something on your mind?"
"something, yeah." his face read like 'my dream girl don't exist'. he looked at me straight in the half-dark and i knew what he meant.
"something in your eyes, certainly," i said. "am I supposed to take that as the sum of your feelings?"
"feelings,” said jeff in the voice of a dark brown poison, “you mean for you?”
i was very curious and very hurt, because i had always thought jeff’s feelings for me covered more than a residual woundedness.
“i guess i mean for me. i just wondered what made you so… i don’t know. whatever it is that’s in your eyes. it’s not happy but not really very sad. nor angry. maybe all.”
“yeah,” said jeff. “maybe all. maybe i’m savage. i used to know you, but whoever you are now i don’t like to be with.”
i couldn’t really be taken aback; i had expected something like that. jeff was savage, but looked something damp and dark as well. it wasn’t quite the same. i was supposed to be angry at jeff, not he with me. i tried to muster anger but there was nothing there. it was getting dusky; i climbed up steps towards the house and jeff stood there in the gold-syrup of the outdoor light and burned black. the wind riffled through the cedar shrubs.

today, though, i didn’t quite dare to say anything. max and ellis walked past so close we could hear them talking, and it turned out to be us they were talking about.
“she never said she loved him,” said ellis, telling my secrets like shedding careless skins. “she never said anything, but the way she looked when his name came up…”
“he loved her,” said max. “he said so sometimes, and when he didn’t, i could tell because he watched her so hard.”
they paused, and jeff’s eyes made a blank track up to mine and back to his crack again.
“they’re both so stupid…” said max, just hesitant enough to keep us both from hating him. “they won’t be together and they won’t be apart.”
“they don’t know anything,” said jeff fiercely, but there we were, lying in the shadow of the stone wall among the nettles, hiding from max and ellis. the world just slid by. i looked away from jeff and admitted the truth to myself: everything max and ellis said was true. everything was true.

jeff’s elbows were pressing into the wet dirt and the nettles wrote angry red sonnets on his forearms. my hip was pressed into the dirt and the nettles brushed dancing red welts on my neck. my submission to his concealment hurt.