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The ticking clock dragged on. The day was long. My teachers having spent hours upon hours lecturing on information that was sure to leave my brain the second the bell rang. The bell. My savior. Life drags on. Every day I walked home, and every day, just before I opened the door, my heart soared with the hope that maybe when I walked in Mom will be there sitting on the couch, waiting with open arms to wrap me in a hug-- the mystical kind with the ability to assuage the world into something more bearable.
Every day I was disappointed.
I used to have more time for things I enjoyed. Drawing, going to the movies, shooting the breeze with Johnny, getting my ass handed to me at poker with Curly. Now, though, whenever I picked up a pencil the only images wanting to flow from the graphite were my parents smiling faces. As I’d lay in the grass beside Johnny I found myself averse to encumbering him with my thoughts; I didn’t want his words to lie heavy on our conversations. So I stayed quiet. I didn’t go with Curly when he asked to play poker. I didn’t go to the movies with anyone else. I wanted to be alone.
I loved the library, it’d been a safe haven for a long time. My parents never could afford to buy books at the pace I was reading them so the library became my second home. It wasn’t uncommon for me to be there every day, picking out a new book and finishing it before I left four hours later. I spent most of my days looking forward to when I would be able to curl up in the back corner of the library on the little, beaten, red couches that sat hidden from the large windows in the front of the building.
When they died, I stopped going so often. I felt like I needed to be home-- like if I was home all the time then they’d walk back through the door, Dad complaining about traffic and Mom shepherding us to bed as she scolded Darry for letting us stay up so late.
The bell. Finally. The chorus of squeaking sneakers against cheap linoleum was an assault on my ears. I’d fiddled with the frayed thread hanging from the strap of my backpack as I wound my way through the crowd. Shoulders thumped together as students bustled out the doors, pouring into the parking lot as they found their ways to buses or cars. They were ready to go home. I couldn’t imagine a place I’d like less to be.
Home was loud. It had always been loud but without my mother’s chirping song or my father’s robust laughter filling the halls, mixing with Darry’s ribbing and Soda’s easy teasing tone, it just feels hollow.
Steve would drive me if I showed up to his car, so it’s not that I didn’t have a ride home. All I had to do was get in and Steve would take me straight home. Except that’s not what I wanted to do at all. When I spotted Steve leaning against his car waiting for me, I stopped. My mind went blank and suddenly my feet started moving against the pavement. The beating soles of my shoes became a marching cry which pushed me forward. It pushed me past the parking lot, past the middle school, past the new record store, and past the pet store.
It was a familiar sight, the worn pavement out front, and the musty brick sides. The big window in the front with a precariously stacked display of books, the small crack in the corner of the glass barely caught my eye as I looked past the books to the occupants inside. I could see Mrs. Wilson sitting at her desk. As it wasn’t the biggest building you could see right through to the book-filled shelves lining the walls.
I could feel Mrs. Wilson’s eyes on me the second I stepped in. The bell above the door rang as I entered. Her shoulders were hunched, her glasses sat low on her nose as she squinted at me across the room. I shot her a shy smile and watched as her wrinkled cheeks curled upward and I beelined to the fiction shelves.
I’d taken solace in fiction. It gave me a place to hide. When I was 13, I read for fun. When I turned 14, reading was the only thing keeping me sane. When I felt the urge to sleep forever, to take a nap and make sure I never woke again, I’d grab the nearest books and turn its story to my latest mantra. Focus on the words. Words become bricks, stories turn to mortar and suddenly I’d be building myself a shelter. No longer just The Count of Monte Cristo, their pages became a wall that every second, every day, every chapter, every book, helped me expand until I had a structure around my mind to rival China.
I’d been doing a lot of that. Hiding. I felt like a coward, hiding, a spluttering mess in the bathroom as the world waited outside the stall, relaxed with fists at the ready to pound my nose in. I felt safe there, in these paper walls I ran to every second I could; they helped me envision a future where I would be free to run. Free to spend days in the sun as golden rays beat down on the red clay in time with my cleats. I yearned for the days when I could spend hours sitting on the oval of red, staring at newly painted white lines, upset that they’d be mussed up the next day when we ran, and ran, and ran.
I searched the shelves, let my eyes dance from title to title. My finger dragged across their spines as I searched. The crackles of the plastic covers rang faintly across my ears. My feet were slow as I roved through the layers of books. When I’d finally found one that caught my eye, To Kill A Mockingbird , I gripped it tightly in my hand as I wound my way to the back of the library.
In the very back corner of the room, there were two small and worn, red couches. They were old as all hell and slightly musty but still, it was better to sit there than on the floor or one of the wooden chairs sitting up front. I slipped my backpack off my shoulder, let it fall to the floor, and flopped down, sank into the familiar red fabric. Sighing slightly, I opened to page one, letting myself get lost in the words of Harper Lee.
I sometimes wondered if blood would be visible on the couches, or would it just look like water-- a wet drop. Spending so much time in your head gives way for some morbid thoughts. If I ever needed to get rid of a body or run away to Mexico, never to be seen or heard from again, then I knew exactly what he was going to do. I’d never quite gotten into cars or girls or fights but one thing I could appreciate was a nice blade. There was a sort of craftsmanship in a good blade, a human touch that’s missing from a motor.
I was thinking about asking Darry for a blade for Christmas but I don’t know how well that’d go over. I think in the end he’d do it, he knows just as well as anybody how important it is to be protected in this city, but I don’t know that he’d have been too hot on the idea. He’d probably have used it as a time to throw my words back in my face, telling me that if I was old enough to carry a blade then I should be old enough to remember to take out the trash.
He did that a lot. Shoved stuff back in my face. I sometimes think that he needs to fight more like he did in high school. He needs to go out and sock someone real hard, break a nose or femur, I don’t really care about the details, so long as he gets to blow off some steam. I remember how he used to come home in his senior year after a fight, painted black and blue with a shit-eating grin on his face. I hardly see that side of him anymore. The side that would ruffle my hair as mom swiped an alcohol-drenched cotton pad across his split lip with a smile as he regaled me with the highlights of his latest fight. He’d swing his fists in the air, punching an imaginary opponent, as he showed me how to dodge a right hook without letting your guard down.
The library was quiet. Thrilling observation, I know, but it was the type of breathing quiet that let you feel alone in the safest way. In and out. That’s how I liked it. I liked being able to hear the soft shuffle of shoes against the carpet. It reminded me of when I used to read in the living room with Mom while Darry and Soda went to play football with Dad. She’d sit on the couch next to me with her latest sewing project as I flipped through my copy of Mr. Popper’s Penguins .
Usually, I liked reading alone. Having someone sitting there when you were in the midst of a story felt awkward, in a way. I wondered if I was the only person who felt that way. Reading could be such an intimate thing, a time when there’s nothing but you and the pages. I didn’t need to be alone to read, mind you, I could read just as fine in a classroom and at home in the silence of my room. I just preferred it if I could be alone.
The library had been pretty empty, I think I’d seen someone looking at some historical fiction novels before but that was it. I let the hours slip away, let the clock go round and round and round and by the time I looked up to check on the real world again I felt tranquility I hadn’t felt in a long time.
I heard her before I saw her. The rustling of the plastic book cover in her hands pierced the silence of the room. My biology teacher had told us that all our senses are connected, so when we hear something our eyes go there too but most of the time we hardly register what we see until we go back for a second look. My eyes flickered up to the girl then right back to my book. I flicked my eyes up again.
She was pretty. I think. Ok, so, I have eyes, I could tell she was pretty, the type of gal you’d look up and down. You’d make some crude jokes with your buddies and play your hand at getting her number. It’s just that I never quite understood that. The guys had tried explaining it to me, a pooling tug real low in your belly as your hands itch to wrap themselves around her waist, but I’d never quite got that. I let my eyes follow the slight swish of the girl's hips as she lowered herself into the other couch. She let her fingers flit across the cover.
Our eyes met. Her’s were a gray-toned blue, the type that you’d see in the sky when a storm was just starting to brew. I didn’t let my gaze linger. I buried myself in my book and tried not to let the new presence feel like an imposition. It was a public place, she had just the same right to be there as he did. It wasn’t his own private library, as great as that would be. That’s what I wanted when I was older.
I never let himself wish for more money because wishing for what I didn’t have would only make me bitter but under the cover of night, when the only light came from the moon streaking through the holes in the poorly patched curtains above the bed I shared with my brother, I hoped for a place to call my own. I wished to the gods above for a house, a space, that was solely mine, one with a library two stories high with walls filled to the brim with deep wooden shelves filled two rows deep with every book I could ever imagine. That was the height of luxury, not a pool or a tennis court or a big fancy door, but a space with windows bigger than me and one of those rolling ladders that I’d use to get to the very top shelf.
Sometimes I felt guilty that I prayed for the material. My mother had always taught me to pray for health and happiness. She’d made sure I was paying attention on Sundays when the priest would tell us that those who prayed for the monetary would receive silence from the Lord for He only answers the good of heart and those who held envy in their soul were truly wicked and deserving of His wrath. I hoped I wasn’t going to hell, but then again I hoped for a lot of things I didn’t get.
I glanced at the clock. I needed to leave. Holy shit. I hadn’t told anyone where I was going or when I’d be home. Darry would skin me. I scrambled to my feet, snapped my book closed, and snatched my backpack from where it had rested at my feet. I felt the girls eyes on me as I scurried to the counter to have Mrs. Wilson check out my book before I flew out the door, the light ringing of the bell above the door swallowed by the wind.
I felt the slight sheen of sweat accumulating on my brow as I turned onto my street. Even then, from five houses down, I could see the light pouring out of our front windows and the laughter billowing out the chimney.
I made my way further down the street, let my eyes linger on the weeds that had sprouted between the cracks. I wondered why they kept growing. Don’t they see the way they get crushed beneath the feet of those above them? What’s the point of persevering, pushing through the cracks only to be squished-- pressed up, having the life squeezed out of you, as you lay helpless against the restraints you’d fought so hard to shed.
Maybe they didn’t care. Maybe they thought that if they could just grow faster than those before them then they could beat the system, that they could escape a destiny bestowed upon them. Or maybe they were just plants and I was a hopeless dreamer who felt the need to romanticize dandelions dying on the sidewalk.
Hopping up the stairs and into my house was the same as usual, the same as every day. I let my hand linger on the handle of the screen door as I pulled it open. You had to really yank it, the hinges were starting to rust and stick. I remember when Dad put the screen up. We didn’t use to have one, just a door, but Mom loved a breeze coming through the house in the summer and didn’t want mosquitos coming into the house. She’d sit on the floor with me as I stumbled my way through a game of checkers. I miss that.
I miss the way she’d make the most obvious move to make sure that I’d win. I miss the way the air smelled when the scent of fresh-cut grass wafted through the doorway, Dad smiling and waving whenever he found the time to peak his head inside. I miss the way she’d smile when I won, jumping up and doing a dance, pumping my hands in the air. I still think about the look of surprise on her face when I’d just turned 7 and had actually beat her for real. I think about the glint in her eyes as she saw me advance, the way she ruffled my hair when I pulled out the checker table on my 9th birthday. I remember the way her hands felt over mine as she gently pushed the game back onto its shelf before she disappeared into her room, returning with an old chess table telling me she had a new game for me to learn.
The orange glow of the corner lamp lit up my face as I went inside. Johnny was there, sitting back on the couch as he watched the poker game my brother had going. He watched the with his head real low, eyes peeking out from underneath his lashes and the curtain of hair that fell from his forehead. He must have felt my eyes on him. He looked over, his eyes wide, defensive, the way they always were when he didn’t know who was there. I smiled, as small and reassuring as I could manage. He smiled back.
“Where were you?” My head snapped up to where Darry was leaning against the archway to the kitchen, his thumb hooked loosely on a belt loop in his jeans.
“The library.” I met his gaze, hard and unwavering, and tried not to let my voice crack.
“Why didn’t you tell nobody where you’d be?” His voice had a heaviness to it, something weighing him down that didn’t used to be there.
“I forgot.” I turned away from him, ready to go hide in my room until dinner.
“You forgot,” he scoffed, dragging his hand down his face, shaking his head at me, “that’s all you do lately, forget, forget the garbage, forget your homework, forget to make dinner, forget to set your alarm clock, forget-”
I didn’t even bother looking behind me as I loped to my room. The reverberating slam of the door piercing the silence that fell over the house. I fell onto my bed, still fully clothed, and closed my eyes. I ran my fingers over the delicate stitches of the patchwork quilt I slept with every night. The one Mom had made for me when I was no bigger than the palm of her hand, still growing inside her.
My eyelashes fell heavy against my cheek as my breathing evened out. I could feel myself slipping, slipping into the safety of the endless abyss of sleep. Sometimes, I’d wish that I didn’t have to wake up, that I could just slip farther and farther from reality and never come back. I could never tell Soda that.
Usually, I tell him everything, especially lately, when life had just seemed too much to bottle up inside. There had been no way for me to tell him that I wish I never had to do anything ever again without him freaking out. I could see the lines forming on Darry’s forehead when he sat hunched over at the table, a stack of bills laid out before him as he tried, day in and day out, to keep the lights on and food on the table. They had enough to worry about. I could do this. Move on. Shake this heavy feeling which had made its home in my chest. Get rid of it when it threatened to suffocate me as I tried to sleep.
It felt almost primitive. Day after day, all I had to do was get to sleep. Make it to bed at night and I’d be fine. I was fine. I could run or read or listen to music-- anything to get rid of the thoughts in my head. Anything. I felt myself drifting off as I listened to the chorus of voices seeping through the crack under the door. I surrendered myself to an uneasy rest and the world went black.