The temperature was starting to drop signaling the yearly change from summer into fall and the start of a new school year. School. It wasn't anything I dreaded more at that time than school. It was full of a bunch of kids who suddenly went from being your friend in elementary to punching you in the face for your milk money. Or you do one fucking musical of Peter Pan and they have license to mock you until you graduate. That's how I became the weird singer kid and then in middle-school I became the depressed artist kid. Back then if there was one single thing that set you apart from the in crowd it defined you; became who you were. I wish I could say I didn't buy into that way of thinking but I was young and already so jaded by life that I thought I had to play the part they chose for me. Another year of being humiliated and tortured was just nothing something I was looking forward too. So I went to my favorite place to sketch and forget about the world.
The Belleville Memorial Park was my escape from the real world. It's morbid to think that there was a time when I was better equipped to socialize with the dead then the living but it was the only place I didn't feel awkward here. There was a funeral going on near my favorite fountain that day so I respectfully stuck to the north part of the cemetery. From the hill I could see out over most the of park and all the tombstones and paths made it look like a labyrinth in the vast sea of gray. I could just see the tent in the distance were the service was being held. I imagined that one of the Saints was there waiting to lead the poor lost soul on to the other side. The roar of a motorcycle interrupted my immortalize of that saint into my sketch pad. The driver stop right in front of me. I suddenly be came embarrassed. What are they doing? Do they think I'm some sick bastard that gets off sitting in graveyards? should I leave? Wait! Haven't I seen that bike before?
"Hiya," said the driver as he pulled his helmet off reviling a familiar face. "Could you tell me how to get over there?" He was pointing off into the distance towards the tent.
I was speechless part from embarrassment and I was too busy praying he would not recognize me. The last thing I need was for it to go around school that I spend my free time lording around a cemetery. The glaze from his deep brown eyes brought me around.
"Um..yeah..sure." I muttered out as I flipped my sketch book over and started to draw a map for him. There were too many rights and lefts for me to explain to him verbally plus I was so shy I would probably have given him the wrong direction and he would have gotten lost. I sketched away as he spoke politely about being lucky someone was around to ask for fear of getting lost out here.
"Hey don't I know you?" He asked looking at me in such away that I could tell he was trying to get me to make eye contact.
I tore the page out of my sketch book and handed it to him without a word. He turned off towards the distance to make sense of the map and I high tailed it out of there. I could hear him call to me as I disappeared down the hill on the other side but I didn't stop moving and he didn't come looking for me. I felt so relieved to hear his bike start-up and then fade in the distance. I leaned against a mausoleum to catch my breath. I knew he was one of the in-crowd guys but I didn't know his name. Our paths never really crossed before but with all in crowds their status levels seemed to always be known to outcasts like me. He rode is bike to school and all the girls thought he was the shit. He skipped class to smoke cigarettes in the old library reading rooms and was known for being a lady's man. He was everything that I wasn't. I cursed out loud. For all the people to have seen me out here why oh why did it have to be a in-crowder like him? I don't know why I hated him. I was dedicated to playing the role of the outcast and that meant I hating him for being an in-Crowd hero.
Looking back now I can't help but be thankful because if it had been anyone else I don't think they would have SEEN me.