BLEAK FUTURE - Remembrance
Part 3a (Paul)
Waiting
I try not to remember a lot about the first few weeks of high school, not because it's so painful, but because I hate to hang on to the past. I hate being the last one to be over things. I'm usually one of the first to try things then the first to let go. It's who I am. I don't dwell, but there's this one thing that I've been dwelling on for three years, something that my heart or mind or soul, or whatever it is, is afraid to let go of. Don't ask me why. All I know is that I'm afraid to forget this. But I'm also afraid that when I finally open the doors to this memory, it will in turn open doors that have been closed for a very long time.
There are things that happened ten years ago that I might start remembering, things that I've been locking away, not for storage, but for disposal. I don't want them, but this, I want. And I guess that as long as I keep and open this one recollection, I'll have to keep and open the others too.
It's not something I tell people, but I've kept it with me for as long as I could. I remember being fourteen, riding my bike around town. I remember not wanting any of my friends to come along. (Sometimes I need a break from them, but this was the first time that they actually let me get away with it.) I remember going far away from "my side" of the town, whatever the fuck that meant. It was a term my parents never stopped using. I remember stopping at a building for absolutely no reason but to look at it's ugliness - it was brown with red splotches. For no reason at all, I stopped racing with the wind to look at this random three-story building. I circled it twice to see if there was something special there that I couldn't readily see because I couldn't make myself leave. I sat on the front steps for a while and thought about how if my parents saw me here, they'd have a temper tantrum. It was hot, being the middle of July, so I took my shirt off and sat for a while, thinking. This place seemed deserted. I would've never thought that people lived here if there weren't cars in the parking lot. I waited half an hour - for what, I couldn't tell you if you asked - and would have fallen asleep if I hadn't heard a car approaching.
"Tristan! Tristan! It's just temporary, hon. It's only a temporary arrangement!" The woman driving the car sounded older than she looked because she looked about twenty-seven and sounded as though she was twice that age. She looked beautiful but tired. The boy she was speaking to, on the other hand, looked about twelve, maybe thirteen. They weren't even out of the car when I first heard him speak.
"Mom, why do we have to be here? Why couldn't I just stay in New York with Dad? This place is in the middle of nowhere..." he trailed off.
I took a quick peak at him and saw that he had a painful look on his face. I wanted to tell him that this town wasn't that bad. I'd lived here all my life after all. But, I couldn't bring myself to move. He was... I don't want to say beautiful because it's so overused that I think people forget what it means. He looked like one of those nymphs in the fairytale books my mom used to try to read to me when I was younger. You know, the little angels or fairies with these faces that God would only give those that he worked with everyday. His hair was long (to his shoulders) and so black that I wondered if in the dark, with the contrast of his white skin, did he get mistaken for a bald kid. He seemed to be hiding his face behind it, as if it was a shield. When he got out of the car, he sat on the hood while his mother got something out of the trunk and his hair moved from his face. When I saw the brightness of his blue eyes and the whiteness of his skin, I thought I had to be dreaming. I don't want to say beautiful because it was deeper, it wasn't just the beauty of it all. It was how everything was happening. It was how this couldn't have been a coincidence. First, I go for a ride without my friends which is almost always impossible to do, then I stop at this strange building that I'd never seen before (I doubted that I'd be able to find my way back home), and then after that, I stumble upon this kid that might have as well fallen from a fairytale book, or even heaven because for a minute, I thought his face was glowing. His angular face reminded me of the antique dolls my grandmother kept in her house in California. His beauty seemed artificial and natural at the same time. His small nose, lips, and ears - or ear I should say since his hair hid the rest of his face - made him look so much like a baby that for a moment he seemed younger.
I can't really say what I was feeling in those first few minutes. I've never been really sure, but I couldn't close my mouth for the life of me, even though I knew that if I didn't, my chin would soon be covered with drool. It wasn't infatuation that I was feeling... yet. It was definitely not love. It might have been wonder. It might have been awe because my eyes would NOT move. So I stared. I watched him sit on the car with what looked like tears in his eyes, but I think they were sparkles. I had to laugh. His eyes had sparkles in them. His clothes, I think, were irrelevant because I didn't acknowledge them. Not that I imagined him naked, it's just that they weren't much of a factor. I didn't care what he was wearing.
When his mother got what she wanted from the trunk, he leapt off the hood to help her. They were shopping bags. They walked towards where I was sitting (because it was the front steps of the building) and I got nervous. I scrambled to put my shirt back on and searched for words that weren't there because by now, speaking seemed so far away, I could live on just staring at him. The closer they got, the more nervous I got.
"Um... uh... do you need some... like, help or something?" I asked, holding on to the tail end of my shirt while they stopped in front of me, waiting for me to get up.
"No thanks, we got it," Tristan answered, exasperated. "You could move out of the way though."
"Tristan," his mother said. She didn't sound disappointed. She sounded worried, tired.
"I could open the door if you want," I said. If my parents knew that I was acting like a bellhop, they'd kill me. No, actually, they were too good for that. They'd ask their assistant to hire someone to hire a hit man to kill me. They'd want no connection to the murder.
I raced up the few steps to the front door and opened it. After they'd gone through, I realized that there was one more door to open before they could go up the stairs to their apartment, so I ran to that door and pulled. It wouldn't open, so I pulled again, but it wouldn't budge. "Uh... I think this door's stuck," I said, worried that they'd think that I was weak or stupid or something.
"Nah, it's just locked. Usually, the front door is open so that you can get inside to use the intercom to someone's apartment and the second is locked because you have to be buzzed in. I have keys though," Tristan's mother explained.
Tristan wasn't talking. He wasn't even looking at me. What bothered me the most was that he looked so sad. I think it added to his beauty though.
"Oh," I sighed. "Well, I guess it was nice meeting you. I'm Paul."
"Well, it was nice meeting you too, Paul. Wasn't it, Tristan?"
"Yes, m'am. It was nice meeting you, Paul," Tristan answered in this monotonous drawl. He wasn't looking at his mother or me. He was just staring at the glass door, like he couldn't wait to be inside.
"Well, I guess I'll see you later." I had to leave sometime. I was afraid that my mom would have a fit if I wasn't home for dinner.
"Unless, you'd like to come in. You seem like nice boy."
"Okay. I mean, I guess. Sure."
Their apartment was small, but it seemed efficient enough. It was strange because my kitchen was three times as big as theirs, maybe four times even. And their living room was as big as my mom's closet. That's an exaggeration, but you get the point.
"So, do you live around here?" Tristan's mom asked.
"Nope. I live pretty far from here. On the other side, I guess."
"Oh, that's right. The other side," she said, kind of sarcastically. She was making fun of it.
I laughed, "Yeah."
"Make yourself at home on the couch. I'm going to put the groceries away."
A half wall separated the kitchen and the living room. It was so weird. If it wasn't for the slight difference of the tile in the kitchen and the carpet in the living room, they could've been mistake for one room.
After fixing things in the kitchen, Tristan's mom brought me a drink. I think it was Cool-Aid.
"I'm Judith, by the way," she said, handing me a glass. She looked around, then called out Tristan's name. "Tris! Tris, come out this minute and clean up your mess!" She sat on the loveseat next to the couch, and when Tristan came out, she ordered him to pick up a few Playstation and Tips & Tricks magazines. When he was through, he looked to his mother and immediately sat down on the couch near me "We just moved here about a week ago. How old are you Paul?"
"Fourteen," I said, sucking on my lower-lip to savor the taste of the Cool-Aid. She did something to it to make it taste really good.
"Tristan's thirteen. You guys should be friends, right Tris?"
"Whatever you say, mom." He was sitting on the opposite end of the couch looking out the window. He didn't seem interested in anything his mom or I had to say.
"What grade are you going to in the fall?" Judith asked. She seemed to be taking more interest in me than Tristan did, which unnerved me. For a minute, I didn't feel as cool as I thought I was.
"I'm starting high school in September."
"Wow, so's Tristan. That must be exciting."
"Uh, yeah. I guess it sort of is." After a moment of uncomfortable silence, I looked at Tristan one last time to see if he was going to turn around anytime soon and look at me, but he looked engrossed in whatever the hell he was staring at out the window. So I decided to get out before I missed dinner at home. "I should go though," I said standing up. "My mom wants me back home in time for dinner. Maybe I'll see you guys around."
"I'm sure you will. You could show Tristan around town sometime."
"Nice meeting you Judith. You too, Tristan." I started towards the door, disappointed with the whole ordeal. Tristan seemed so bored with me. When I got to the door of the living room, I turned around to wave one last time and saw that Tristan was standing right in front of me.
"It was nice meeting you," he said with his hands in his pockets. His long hair was behind his ears, and for the first time, I saw his whole face. My heart sank because I don't think that I'd ever seen anything like it in all of my fourteen years alive. It was surreal, and for quite a while I couldn't move.
"Uh, yeah... Right," was all I could get out before I left the apartment.
Now that I think about it, maybe it wasn't Tristan's beauty that mesmerized me. It might have been the fact that he was the first boy that I was ever attracted to. It might have been the fact that he reminded me of myself when I looked in the mirror, or maybe the fact that he did look somewhat like a nymph.
For weeks after that, I rode my bike around his block without my friends (I can't remember how I got away with it), but never got another glimpse of him. I saw his mother sometimes, outside, sitting on the steps. She always waved, and I always waved back. She seemed nice. I didn't see Tristan again until a week before school started. He sat on his bike in front of the dam near my house. His hair was much shorter. He now had a crew cut. He stared at the water, deep in thought. I approached slowly, nervously on my bike, but didn't want to scare him off, so I called out to him.
When he turned around, he said, "Hey." With shorter hair, I could see his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his cheeks more clearly, without the shielding or framing of his long hair in the background. His face reminded me of a porcelain doll.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, a little out of breath, but not from riding my bike.
"Waiting," he said and turned back to staring at the water.
"O...kay. For what?" I asked, curious, looking at the water to see if there was something special there that I couldn't see.
"Nothing. I'm just waiting."
"Oh. I can wait with you if you want."
"Nah. You don't have to. I like to wait alone," he said, his eyes never moving from the water to me while we are speaking.
"Oh. Okay then. I guess I'll see you in school."
"Don't remind me," he breathed, then frowned. "I almost forgot about it."
"Sorry. I don't see how though. I mean, it starts in just a couple of days."
"I know. I just..." He turned around and looked directly at me with the most severe frown I'd ever seen on anyone's face to date. His face was devoid of sadness, devoid of anger, devoid of disappointment. All I saw was annoyance, exasperation. "Look, do you mind if I wait alone?" His beauty didn't fade, it just... changed, I guess. He no longer looked like a nymph.
"Um... Sure," I said, a bit scared. "Sorry. I'll see you in school."
For hours after that I rode my bike, thinking that I could have been friendlier, nicer, more polite. There had to be something I could to make him like me. I wanted him to like me, like everyone else did, but not quite like that. I suppose that's when my infatuation began.
Copyright (c) 2001 Castor
Please do not reproduce any of this without my permission. Just email if you want to use it. I just want to know where it's going is all.
(7/10/01)
NOTE: My AOL screen name is TediousTelling in case you want to comment but don't want to email.