Old Friends

I saw him again in the most unlikely of circumstances. I mean, sure he was moving in my general direction, but there was a lot of space in which to move. It was very general. Everyone was migrating south, myself included. I kind of already lived in the south, but it was north-south, on the border, and the winter was still unkind there. People had been moving south since September, but now, in early November, the Changers had started a mandatory evacuation. We were supposed to go deep into the continent, close to the equator, although no one knew specifically where. We just had to follow everyone else, they said. Soon children would only dream of sledding down cotton ball hillsides; snow would only fall in old tall tales spun by older generations.

While many people were heartbroken about leaving their homes, possessions, and memories of this border place behind, I was more than ready, or at least I had been. Even before the Change, I was chomping at the bit to leave, standing as far to the edge of cliff as I could, waiting to jump. I’m seventeen years old. What seventeen year-old doesn’t want to try their hand at the world? The Change, as they call it, never changed my desire to leave. It gave me a reason to leave.

I’d be lying if I said being forced to leave was exactly the same as choosing to leave though. Before, I was eager to leave my parents and their protection behind. Now…I would give anything to be wrapped in my mom’s arms or to become victim to one my dad’s bristly kisses. Because you don’t exactly realize how much you will miss those things until they are gone.

I don’t know where my parents are. I haven’t seen them for nearly two weeks. They both work for the EPA, my dad is a research scientist developing better water treatment technology and my mother is a corporate lawyer. Last Monday morning they both went to work and last Monday evening neither came home.  I didn’t really know what to do with myself. Of course, there was no way to communicate with them. Cell towers had been down for months and private internet via cable modem or other devices was shoddy at best. Even the mail had gone under. I couldn’t think of a rational reason why they would be missing, why they would not come home—no business trips, no visits to the hospital a couple hours away to see my grandparents—these are things they wouldn’t do spontaneously or without telling me. I tried email, even calling—it was all pointless. I curled up in my parent’s bed, wearing my dad’s favorite scratchy sweater, and didn’t move for three days.

People came to the house—neighbors, mostly, knocking and yelling for me. They all left after about ten minutes. Ignoring them became easy, but it was annoying to put up with the knocking, so eventually I filled out the evacuation form and put it on my door, making it look like I had left. I had to wait for my parents. I couldn’t evacuate without them. I couldn’t leave by myself—I was only seventeen for godsakes!

At three weeks, I was beginning to think the worst. Kidnapped by some Changers? Not a stretch—they had information. Simply killed like so many people have been? Possible. It stopped mattering at week four. Whether they were coming home or not, I was staying home.  The radio had stopped at three and a half weeks. The streets were silent now. I was rationing the food—my parents had stocked enough for a few months. Ramen never got old, right? It seemed like some kind of sick joke. Here I was, living on my own, parent free, weeks at a time, eating Ramen noodles like a starving college student.  I couldn’t go outside—Changers patrolled every few hours or so, driving down every street, looking for looters or rebels. As long as I stayed inside, I felt somewhat safe. Somewhere in week four, I found a semi-automatic that my dad had hidden in the back of his closet. I didn’t know how it worked or what I would do if I ever had a reason to use it, but I had this feeling that a gun was better than no gun.

I tried to keep busy. I read, I read a lot. There were tons of books stacked in every open space in the house, it was a hobby of my dad’s. He bought books constantly, convinced that someday he would read all of them. After five weeks, I was closer than ever to achieving this goal. I finished Tender is the Night around the time the electricity went out. Halfway through Leaves of Grass I took my last hot shower.

I had just started 1984 when someone broke through a window. It was downstairs, in the kitchen. At least that is what it sounded like. For a second, I didn’t do anything except finish the sentence I was reading. It had not sunk in, not really. My life had been silent for a month now. December ninth and 30 days had passed without talking to anyone. The idea of people interacting with me or having to interact with anyone else was foreign and strange.

But that was beside the point. The window had shattered, and now I heard someone walking around. I stood up from my perch in the corner of my parent’s bedroom. Lately I had been curled up in the chair in the corner, with blankets cocooned around me like a nest. My situation was not great. Being upstairs, I was sort of cornered—whoever was in the house could very well come up and where would I go? I had to beat them, get downstairs. I reached for the gun I always kept few feet away. I was wearing leggings and another sweater of my father’s.  I wasn’t quick, or very quiet, and hardly knew my way around a gun. But I had to try—I had waited for so long—what if my parents were trying to break into the house I had locked up? This may be good—this may mean I don’t have to fend for myself anymore.

The rational part of my brain knew this was unlikely.

I heard the person downstairs walking around loudly—it sounded like they were wearing heavy shoes or boots and obviously thought they were alone for the noise. I crept towards the bedroom door, terrified to open it, half convinced the intruder would be on the other side. Slowly I turned the knob, the gun held limply in my right hand.

Nothing. I paused, waiting to hear if the person had noticed. They didn’t seem to, but it sounded as if they were in the living room. If it was a looter, they would be heading for the tv. For some reason, you could still make money off of that stuff or at least that’s what the radio broadcasts were saying three weeks ago, even though it had very little purpose anymore. I don’t think the value would last much longer.  

My heart seemed to catch in my throat as I made my way down the hall and towards the stairs. I had to make a decision—when to announce myself. Should I do it now in case it’s my parents? Should I wait if it is a looter? If it is a looter should I shoot them? I was hesitant to use the gun—I don’t think I could kill another person. Besides that, someone may hear, and I may be found. That would be terrible. And what would I do with the body? I would have to use it to threaten only.

I took the first step down the stairs. I was bare foot, which at least made me quiet.

Second step, and the person hadn’t stopped moving. They were shuffling around the television.

Three four five six seven…eight was a creaky step. This would give me away. I stood, perched on the seventh step, halfway down, waiting for the intruder to make a noise loud enough to make the way down without them noticing.

Ten twenty thirty forty fifty sixty seconds GO! Something was dropped, apparently on their feet, and in the shower of expletives I ran down the stairs and turned into the living room, raising my gun and waiting for him—it was a him, not my dad or mom but just some guy—to look up.  He looked up at me after about five seconds, and then we both froze.

“Peter?”

The Perfect Wall PT 2

Dominic Rowen inspired the piece. It took all of ten minutes to write and I think its a bit too melo(n)dramatic. Okay.

“Once upon a time there was a perfect wall.”

She would hide behind it.

The wall would tuck her away from her fears and insecurities and all the times she thought about the word no.  Every time she felt the word no she would hide behind the perfect wall. It was comfortable there, it was just large enough to cover her; she could snuggle up to it like a blanket and no one would guess she was hiding at all. It was dependable, too. She could make the bad things go away whenever she needed them to.

As she grew older, though, the wall didn’t always fit quite right. She had to adjust. Sometimes she had to bend down to hide the top of her head, and other times she had stand sideways instead of facing the front. It was disconcerting. The wall existed for her because other things had let her down. What was she supposed to do when the wall disappointed her, too?

The worst day was when the wall went away. She searched and searched for her hiding place. It was missing. She wailed and wailed and cried out. Her insides were raw and her outsides didn’t matter anymore. Now she could see the no. She could feel the pain. She was terrified.

It was hard to say goodbye to the wall. A couple of times, she thought she felt its phantom arms close around her, but she knew she was just imagining things. A few years later, she felt for sure like the wall had returned, but instead of embracing her it felt more like she was being strangled. Without the wall, she felt more vulnerable, but then she thought, I am I supposed to be? Maybe it was better this way.

Maybe.

Diversity Means...

This is a piece I wrote for school. We had to write about the topic "Diversity means..."

Everything except the ice cold drizzle had been planned. It was unusually chilly for a September morning, and the rain was not pleasant.

That’s okay though, it’s motivation for me to finish so I can get inside like a normal person, Lissie thought to herself. She had lost count of how many races she had ran in by this point. This particular 5K was just another one in a long line of meaningless gift bags and stale catered post-race breakfasts. She did not even enjoy running that much; she was not on her school’s cross country team or even track and field. She didn’t make great time, she got sore and hated the feeling of sweat pouring down her back when she ran in the summer. Sometimes she thought about stopping altogether. What’s the point? She didn’t run with anyone. Her parents supported her but could not understand the attraction. Racing was expensive, too, because she had to pay for shoes, races, and the hundreds of hair bands she went through in a six month period. (She had no idea where they all went, it was as if they hated being constricted to her hair, and escaped from her frizzy brunette prison, one at a time.)

The obvious upside was exercise. Lissie considered this as she stretched to warm up for the race, which started in ten minutes. The muscles in her calves strained against her skin as she spread her legs a part and touched the ground. Exercise was essential, and she valued the endorphin release that came from it most of all. She could be angry, depressed, or just anxious, and after running a couple of miles she would be distressed. Just like that. She started running as a release. When she was fourteen, her parents sat her down to tell her they were going to split up—something Lissie had never expected. She did not want to deal with the pain, with the reality, she just wanted to run away. That’s exactly what she did. Lissie had made it through the divorce and a ton of other little hardships, and her Nikes had absorbed the shock of every consequential release of stress.

It was dumb, having to volunteer at these races. My mom told me it would benefit me somehow, but I couldn’t see the value. It was mostly painful for me to watch. I mean, I used to win these things. And now I’m the stooge that hands out the dinky Dixie cups of Gatorade, only to have them thrown right back at me. In this gross rain. Embarassing.

I don’t mean to go off on some tirade where I just feel sorry for myself. I really don’t. I just miss running—so much that sometimes I think about going outside late at night, like three am (so my mom will not find out) and feeling the concrete beneath my feet, the swish of my ponytail, like a pendulum, the thumping of some crazy loud band in my headphones. I fantasize about this like people fantasize about winning the lottery. People don’t get it. When I tore my ACL, my track friends were jealous. “You get to miss practice! I wish I could just veg out at home like you,” said one of my less sensitive friends. Unlike most of them, I loved it. Running was my passion, and this ACL injury was really getting in the way.

Don’t get me wrong, I know I will run again. I literally can’t wait. I just hate that I have to start from scratch. I’ve been working on this since I was thirteen, and five years later I have to start all over again. My mom said volunteering at these races would make me feel better, but seeing all of the seasoned runners pass me by is depressing. It’s as if every muscle in my body is aching to join them, every fiber in my being is yelling let me run let me run let me run.

He had never expected to finish his first race, much less his second. Sure he was starting small, with a few 5Ks here and there, but each mile was huge to him. A mile was a milestone, and landmark, an achievement worthy of a memorial. Eli conquered them all and then some, running past 5Ks to 10Ks and half marathons and then a marathon. What had started as a personal test of endurance and perseverance had grown uncontrollably into what can only be described as an addiction. Each mile represented something different to Eli.

His first complete miles represented hope—a reason to continue running. If he could run three miles without walking, he was sure he could do anything. That’s why he started running in the first place. Eli wanted to prove something to himself. He wanted to try something new, something no one in his family did and something his friends didn’t really understand. He wanted to try it and he wanted not to fail. It was an experiment in his will, in his strength and in his dedication. If he had given up, he had no idea what his life would be like now.

When Eli crossed the finish line that morning, he had a smile on his face. His shirt was plastered to his back, a mixture of sweat and cold rain. He hadn’t won, but then, that hadn’t been his goal. He had worked for this. He had not given up. He had finished.

The 5K had been a complete success, despite the rain. Runners are a different class of people. They wouldn’t skip a race for something so trifling as drizzle.

A Love Letter;

She was in love with the skyline. Every tower and point and crevice was committed to her brain. She breathed the air in, her steps pumped in time with the heart beat of the sidewalk. The breeze fell over her, she fell into the breeze. Every skyscraper and park and tree and person created her. She loved that city because it had raised her and it knew her so well.

It was her cushion, it was her backbone. It supported her, it would never change. She would memorize the cracks in the sidewalk before her city would disappoint her. She was enamored with the traditions the city observed every year—it was a comfort to live a life full of history and memory and happiness. She had not missed a single tree lighting since she was four, she always went window shopping at Christmas time and loved doing random things like watching the toy boat races in the park. She had many traditions of her own, like the walk she took from her apartment to the little Strand kiosk at the edge of the park. She remembered her dad spreading out a blanket in the Great Lawn and reading her picture books. There were so many trips with her mom to meet her dad for lunch. Great long subway rides, exaggerated in her memory, when often times on the way back her eyes would flutter shut with the intonations of “Stand Clear of the Closing Doors.”

As she grew older, the city seemed less of a magical mystery guided by her parents and more like an unexplored land. It belonged to her now, not only to her mom and dad, and she depended on it. She was the one sailing the streets in search of life. She was scouring the city for treasures unknown. She dug up books and music and food. She discovered people that hurt her and people she never wanted to be a part from. She was the queen of this city, she learned more than anyone or anything had ever taught her. She fell in love that year; not with a man but with a place. Her tie, her connection to the invisible forces of the city was mighty and impenetrable. Perhaps people and interests would come and go, but this would never change.

She loved the city because it was always there when she woke up in the morning. She loved the city because she could walk down the street alongside a Hindu man and exchange smiles as he walked his daughter to school. She loved the city because she could eat the same breakfast at the same café every day and the waiters would know her, or she could eat a hundred different breakfasts at a hundred different little cafes if she really wanted. It was a city with a pulse. There was always something happening—every window she walked by represented a different story. This family is breaking up, this woman is feeding yet another cat, this woman is going to try to talk to her brother for the first time in years. She could never know them all, but she imagined all of their secrets and whispered them as she passed them in the street.

In a city of eight million strangers, she never felt alone. In a city of thousands of buildings, she felt like each was her home. In a city of untold stories, her story was her own.

More...

I added this to the entry called "Total" so my English piece would make the word requirement of 1,300. Nothing special. I feel kind of silly posting this, actually.

“Young lady, do you have a watch I could borrow?” The man speaking to me from the other side of the counter is probably in his late eighties. He is at that stage of old when all the mottled skin on your face just seems to fold over another pallet of skin. His eyes seem to barely be able to make out anything from behind the drooping skin that has become his eyelids. His glasses are comically huge for eyes so small, big aviators that were popular thirty years ago, if that. Working here has shown me age in every possible respect—from people who age only on the outside, to those whose personalities sour as much as their skin. This man, at least, is nice. He is one of the many old men who seem to make it their duty in age to tell jokes to all the girls who work behind store counters.

“I don’t have a watch actually, sorry,” I reply not unkindly to this obvious joke opener. I hate these jokes because they are never funny and almost always very sad.

The man’s eyes widen a little behind his skin flaps and he says, “Well that’s a shame, because I sure am running out of time!” His stomach shakes with his laughter and he smiles and I fake my “ha, ha, ha” because I want him to feel good after telling his joke. I can’t make much difference in this man’s life, but I can at least laugh instead of leaving an awkward silence for this man to mull over as he walks out the door.  So I laugh and he laughs and then I grab his usual pack of cigarettes (Misty Ultralight Menthol 120’s, $4.25) and he pays (like he always does) with $20.25. He walks out the door and I don’t spend too much time thinking about the experience. The whole thing lasted less than three minutes and would probably happen again very soon.

TOTAL

     I bit my lip and chanced another glance in the woman's direction. She was no doubt in her mid-to-late forties, and was wearing brown loafers, black slacks, and a lime green sweater set. She had short, brown "mom" hair, and a teenage boy (her son, I assumed) was standing behind her. The reason I kept looking at her was because she had spent five whole minutes in the register lane, looking the impulse buys up and down, giving them far more attention than they merited. I hate it when customers do this, it makes it impossible to accomplish anything except for standing at the counter and waiting for the loiterer to choose which kind of M&Ms (on sale for $0.49) she wanted to tear a part like a wolverine as soon as she was away from the prying eyes of other humans. I knew that as soon as I tore a carton of Marlboro Reds open and began to stock, all of her prospective purchases would be placed on the counter and she would be giving me a look that said "Well, I don't have all day!" I sighed, knowing that any attempt to do anything useful in this awkward time would be fruitless. Better to just wait this one out.

     Bum bum bum bum. Bum bum bum bum. Bum bum bum bum.

     I was drumming my fingers and staring idly at a new tooth brush display on the end of aisle three when she slammed her Tide detergent (waaaay overpriced at $6.99) onto the counter, and gave me this look that said "I caught you."I blinked rapidly as she tossed her other items on the counter, from candy to Olay cosmetics to Folgers Coffee ($16.99).

     Then one of those inexplicably awkward moments occurred when two people say something at the same time and only one statement is heard. "Hi there, how are you? Did you find everything all right?" and "Oh my God Jean you look so tan!" fought  each other for attention from the same party. The vibrations from my voice box  and the vocal chords of the redheaded forty something standing behind (apparently) Geena reverberated against oxygen and nitrogen molecules in the air. I could have sworn I felt my feeble salutations bounce back against my cheek, as if accepting defeat. Geena swung around in time to squeal with delight at the appearance of her friend, and once more ignored the front counter, and me. It doesn't really matter, I guess, I just don't know whether she wants to wait for me to scan or whether she cares--

     "She's fine, or at least it seems that way. Maybe a little overexcited. I guess I'll do the talking since she is busy." Her son smiled as he stepped ahead of her to get the whole process started, and with a twinge of embarrassment I realized that he had witnessed my being completely ignored by his mom; my face felt a little hot at the idea that he had seen me looking so foolish. He was wearing khaki cargo shorts with a tan tee shirt, which seemed like some extreme matching. His eyes, which were also brown, might have been a little far a part, but the whole effect was not altogether unpleasant; my overworking mind immediately pegged him as one of those guys who is modest enough that he values his intelligence and humor much more than his appearance.

     "Oh no worries, it happens all the time, I practically talk to myself my entire shift anyway," I laughed, sliding the detergent in front of the scanner with a BLIP!

    He grinned. "I doubt you're missing much," he said as he lifted a twenty four pack of Ice Mountain water bottles (on sale for $3.99) into my scanning range.

     "Probably right," I replied and with another BLIP! I scanned the UPC. "Oh and, before I forget, would you like to try any Reese's candy tonight, three for $2.00?" I posed this in a falsely bright, very sarcastic tone of voice, and he answered in the same way.

     "You know I would love to, but I really shouldn't tempt myself!" He patted his stomach as if he was watching his weight. I can't help but laugh at this image, it reminds me of another customer, from the day before. She answered the same way to this question and literally grabbed her stomach and proceeded to clutch it for over a minute, losing herself in it. It was one of those moments when keeping the laughter inside is next to impossible. As I slide several more items past the scanner, (BLIP! BLIP! BLIP!) I glance at his mom, who is still blathering away to the redheaded woman, completely unaware of this conversation. This doesn't bother me.

    "Everyone says that! And I swear every time they laugh at their little joke like they are so original, but--"

     "All people are pretty much the same."

     He looks at me, and I look at him. I've finished scanning and bagging, now all that is left is to hit TOTAL and this pleasant respite will be over. I don't really want to say goodbye.

    "Well, most of them," I say with a small smile, and his mother turns around to look at us. TOTAL.