Short Story

Who is he?

He glances at himself in the window --- long enough so that he can evaluate himself but short enough so that any bystanders or residents on the other side of the window cannot tell that he is starring at himself. He sees all the fast cars across the road, and equally feels as if he is moving just as fast.
“Who would have thought I would end up here…like this…after all these years?” he asks his friend.
His friend responds “everyone.”

Middle school was odd. But oddly felt as if it was a shelter being the small private school it was. Church was even smaller. The cliques formed in them the smallest. Yet, that was where he was --- sheltered: the perfect school, perfect church, perfect friends. Yet, something violent raged in his heart and demanded to be unleashed.

Maybe he unleashed whatever was stirring in his heart the day he broke Jacob Roding’s nose. His eyes were filled with fire but his face seemed so pure. People looked at him differently that day. He was no longer the short boy with perfectly cut hair and pressed khaki pants. He was the boy who punched Jared in the face. But it is hard to tell if he was feared that day. All that was recalled that afternoon was how he never unclenched his fists, even to raise his hand in class, and that his eyes never unlocked from the window that viewed that busiest highway in town.

He loosened his grip the day he realized he was in love with Chrissy Weaver. He grew his hair out because he knew she liked shaggy hair. He hung out with the same group of friends from church as she did, even though when he did he found himself clenching his fist again.

He loved playing with her hair; his fingers tingled when each strand ran through his fingers. And on the day where he said the right words to her, and her hair was exceptionally smooth, Chrissy and him decided that they should be together and all was perfect.

He had on that polo that had a spot of Jacob’s blood on the sleeve from the day he could only find words from his fist rather than his mouth. Jared’s face came to his mind when that fire came to his eyes again because Chrissy told him to stop being so “fucking rude.” He hit her so hard in the face that day that it got across every hurtful word he wanted to say to her. Well, at least that is what he wanted to do. He barely brought his hand out of the pocket of his wrinkled jeans that he was holding on so hard to. And he tried to convince himself he did not love her anymore, as she stood there looking deep into his eyes with so much pain. If you looked hard enough into his eyes, past all the fiery anger, the same pain could be found.

No one ever found that pain. Honestly, no one took the time to search for it. Which made him feel that he wished Chrissy would have just drove that car a little faster the day they got into that car accident together. She was dead. At least to him she was dead the day they both walked away from that accident. And to everyone else, his friends, Chrissy, Jacob, he was dead to them. His hands were too numb to clench that day. But his eyes still had enough strength to focus on the cars that flew beside him.

People did not hear much from him after that day. Except when Chrissy heard about how red his eyes had become. Chrissy just wanted to share her concern with a friend but somehow down the grapevine the red eyes turned into the supposed white powder seen on his nose. Before long his parents were digging though his unkempt room that, despite it appearance, always smelt like a fresh shower. They dug through his car, and the fire that was always in his eyes was identical to the fire raging in his father’s eyes that night his father tried to hit him. He pulled that knife so fast at his father that there was not room for him to have possibly processed what impulse he just made. Tears filled his mother’s eyes as he proudly walked out that front door into his broken into car. Secretly, tears were buried inside his too as he drove away from his home that night. He drove too fast that it did not provide an opportunity for those tears to find a way around that prideful fire.

The room he slept in now no longer smelt like that fresh shower scent it once was. The scent never lingered on him strongly, however, because he shaved all that shaggy hair off that his face revealed all his distinctive features. Often, when I imagine the seriousness of his face, it brings goose bumps up and down my arms.

Chrissy’s face often came to mind whenever he slept with his new girlfriends. He never referred to them as girlfriends. Something I never quite understood. So tonight I asked him why he does not tell me about his girlfriends, and why he did not talk about the night he pulled the knife on his own father, and what he was thinking the day he almost died in that car accident with the girl he claimed he loved, and why he never told me what exactly Jared Roding said that triggered that instinct to punch him straight in the face. And it was then, the time no one was searching for it, that the prideful walls fell and the pain found a way to escape. I did not want to see those tears but he let them fall. “I never wanted to be a disappointment. I’m stuck. I can’t escape” he proclaimed. And before one word could come out of my mouth, he was gone: inebriated, running down to one of the busiest highways in town, with the only comfort of the pills the rattled in the bottle in his pocket and the flesh of his skin. And I know I can not follow. So I wait.

He glances at himself in the window --- long enough so that he can evaluate himself but short enough so that any bystanders or residents on the other side of the window cannot tell that he is starring at himself. He sees all the fast cars across the road, and equally feels as if he is moving just as fast.
He collapses on the sidewalk before he could even cross that busy highway. He then finds himself laying in a hospital bed with only enough strength to clench his fist and stare directly out the window. His face looks so pure like it once did in his middle school days.
“Who would have thought I would end up here…like this…after all these years?” he asks his friend.
His friend responds “everyone.”
And he lies there, asking himself “who am I.” A question that neither his friend nor I know that we can not answer. I no longer can attempt to save him if I do not know him.