Disclaimer: Chess belongs to Tim Rice and the ABBA boys. I'm just writing this for fun. No profit is being made. Please don't sue me.
I sit at the big wooden table in the library where I have to reach up to put my arms on the table and if I rest my head on them the hard edge digs into my armpits. Sometimes I do it, anyway, and I lean forward. It hurts every time, and I'm not sure why I do it, but I can't seem to stop. I sort of like it. It's sort of a habit.
Today I sit with my arms on the table and explain to nobody, in my head:
My name is Freddie Trumper and yes, that's short for Frederick and no, it's Freddie, not Frederick, I said my name is Freddie because Freddie is my name. On the door to my bedroom there is a green F. It's been there since I was a baby, and even then it was F for Freddie. Even as a baby, I somehow knew. Freddie. No one says Frederick. They try—for some reason they all have to try. But it's always Freh'drick, and my name isn't Freh'drick. I've read enough to know that the mid-name apostrophe placement indicates Asian or African descent. I'm white mixed with white, Fre-der-ick, not Freh'drick, but people pronounce it properly Fre-der-ick and emphasize the der like the noise the retarded kids make to jumpstart their brains.
At least that's what it was, when I was younger. Little, I was adorable. White kids in winter make plaster angels, and I was all curls and grins and puppy fat. I loved sitting for pictures. Sometimes I would just pretend, sit there real still and pretend someone was taking my picture, pretend I was someone's picture. I would see the room around me: me, up on the mantel, smiling down, a rug to make the floor soft and trap the warmth, a comfy couch supporting a loving family.
I don't want to go home. My name is Freddie Trumper, don't call me Freh'drick, don't call me FreDERick, and I'm nine and I'm not a photo and I get hurt.
The photos we save, snapshot or posed, we save because maybe, just maybe, we can preserve that happiness. All day in class I thought about it, about the pictures my mother placed carefully behind clinging thin plastic veils, or captured safely in metal frames, covered with glass, the happiness of those moments in jailed safe preservation. Their happiness was never coming back.
I get that far talking to my nobody, who doesn't interrupt or do other things, just listens. Then the librarian tells me to leave.
I walk home slowly. It is cold and windy, and I'm small. Helpless. Pummeled. I take slow steps. The books in my backpack weigh me down, and the buildings try to protect me by roughly snapping at my skin. Red marks are left, traces, like the photos.
I'm cold.
I turn the corner and smash into a businessman. "Watch where you're going," he snaps. My chest hurts from colliding with his briefcase.
Oh, I'm sorry. Did I get in the way of your enormous head? I'm sorry! I completely forgot to look out and cede to overgrown goddamn bullies!
(I am nine years old and I can't swear worse than goddamn. That's what Mommy says. Dad tells her, "You've gotta teach that kid not to swear, Jane," to which she replies that, "It's nothing to worry about; he can't swear worse than goddamn.")
So I stop. I freeze. I stand on the corner and decide I am an angel. Wings sprout from my back. My threadbare clothes fade away in favor of loose angelic clothes, maybe a toga. The color drains away, leaving me a calm porcelain grey-white. My skin grows cold and roughly smooth. I am an angel, a full still angel who doesn't react to cars and business people going by. I stand still. I have to. I'm a statue. I can't feel my legs because there is nothing carved under my angel dress-gown-garb item.
I'm an angel standing in a lush garden so green you can feel the water in the plants that makes them look so healthy. It tastes like rain. It tastes so like rain I feel it raining on my skin, but the rain can't move my stones, not for years and years and more. I'm for ever.
It's fun to be a stone. It hurts sometimes, but mostly people let you alone. No one mispronounces your name. No one gives you that disappointed look. No one makes fun of you. And you don't have to think about last night, because you're a stone in a garden. Maybe you can see the garden, maybe you can hear the wind in the leaves, but that's it.
Stones don't have parents.
Stones never crept out of bed for a glass of water, never knew they should have stayed, heard the screaming but had to move, never saw him throw the glass.
He didn't hit her, but I know he meant to. He threw it right at her like he didn't even care. And he cares! He knew he shouldn't've thrown it. But it flew past her and shattered against the wall, glittering to the ground just like rain.
Then he said, "For God's sake, Jane," and the door slammed.
I headed out, tip tapping gently in my feetie pajamas. She was on hands and knees, gathering shards of glass in her hands. I knelt beside her.
"I can help, Mommy."
Because I'm a good boy.
She looked up at me with dark rings around her eyes, and she was not my mother. "Oh, Frederick," she said, skipping over the "er", Fredrick, "go back to bed." Not like she cared that I was scared and confused, just because she couldn't deal with me then. And I didn't know why I felt like the room was twenty-seven degrees colder.
But that didn't happen to the stone.
When I open my eyes and become Freddie again, I begin to tremble. It takes years and years and years to wear away the stone.
I'm small.
I'm wet.
I'm cold.
I shiver and run home. It's dark, and every so often I run through the yellow warmth of a streetlight. Splashes leap up from my feet and my canvas sneakers are soaked.
Eventually I'm numb and eventually I'm crying, the former so I don't feel the latter, but I don't go inside. What if she still hates me? What if he's still angry? I'm so scared I run around the block again and again, getting wetter and colder and number, my feet getting heavier.
I'm scared to go home. Last night all I did was walk into the room and I froze inside because it was my fault. Right? I did it, didn't I, caused it? Because I bring notes home from school sometimes, sometimes the teachers call, and sometimes I'm so deep reading and daydreaming I can't pull out for dinner. I made things bad and when I get home I know I'll be in big trouble.
Next door there are rose bushes. You can't pick roses. You can pick daisies, dandelions, other things, but not roses. If you want a rose, you have to snap the stem like you're breaking someone's neck.
I drop a petal every ten steps. The petals are pink in the daylight. In the darkness they are grey-black. I run out of petals and carry the stem. I clench my fist and want to make it bleed, but it hurts too much.
The straps of my backpack are canvas and dig into my shoulders. My clothes chafe against my skin. Everything is cold and hurts.
After a while I can't stay out anymore. I'm crying and shaking and cold and crying. The brass knob is slippery under my fingers, but finally the door opens and I step into a house as cold as outside, if not colder.
They're sitting at the table, speaking so quickly their words blur. I stand in the doorway just watching them. Neither finishes a sentence before the other interrupts.
"Mommy," I whisper.
They continue arguing.
"Mommy."
She raises her voice and he raises his.
"Mommy? Daddy? Mommy."
Finally they look up. The notice me. As one they take in my soaked clothing, my violent shivers, the snot streaming from my nose. I'm glad I look so pathetic. I want to look pathetic. I want them to make a fuss, hug me, and tuck me into bed tonight.
She opens her mouth. I warm from the inside, anticipating love. What emerges is, "Oh, Fredrick." Fredrick. Again. "Why would you go playing in the rain?! This is the last thing I need today."
I sneeze.
By the following morning my temperature is 102 and I can't swallow solids. I lay in bed wondering when I'm dreaming and when I'm awake, don't know if I ate or slept or got a spare blanket, and for a week the only constant is the green F from the days when F was a symbol, not a threat, until I've spent long enough alone to purify it. A week of looking at that F and it's just another letter, just an extra-special letter for being mine, my only constant in a week of dreaming of waking.
For a week the only constant is Freddie.
the end!
...review? Pretty please?