2

Aaah! The Great Big World is Scary! But That's Alright

Twelve should be the unlucky number, not thirteen. Alfred thought this, over and over, sitting at a bus station as rain wailed down at him. As if the sky, too, needed someone to attack. His boots were caked with mud that couldn't dry, his hair was taped to his face and becoming steadily ubiquitous with the tears stubbornly forming in his eyes.

Everything had gone wrong the year he had to endure being an almost-teenager. His grades were dropping needlessly, as he couldn't see the board and incessantly thought 2s were Ss, or Zs were Ts, because he wouldn't wear glasses. Glasses were not cool. He wouldn't be caught dead with the blocky, but classy, pair that he and Francis had picked out.

Putting them on, it felt like he had stepped out of a hazy fog and into a clear field. The world brightened. Colours were vivid, sharp. He smiled brightly at Francis, the best he could, and he felt that some of his emotional baggage had departed.

Then he thought about school. He thought about how many times people had said he had nice, pretty blue eyes. Eyes cut from crystal, aquamarine or a clear one held up to the sky. He wouldn't get that if they were caged behind a thick window pane.

Francis noticed that he would pocket his glasses the second he walked out of his car and into the school.

The next bad thing was when his visited the orthodontist. Alfred lay back in the chair, looking up at the man who asked him senseless questions he couldn't answer, due to the various items lodged down his throat.

"How's school, son?" The doctor asked, peering around Alfred's small mouth.

"Ok eh grf."

"Excellent!" A laugh. Alfred squinted at the light beaming down on to his face. He should have worn his glasses. "Have you been brushing? Flossing?"

"Yeah shr."

"Hmmmm?" He hummed for an eternity, his blond eyebrows climbing up his forehead.

He was that sort of man. One who regularly rock climbed, whose blond hair wouldn't grey for a suspiciously long time, one who laughed to often and not naturally enough. Alfred thought all of this with rising bitterness, bitterness like a squished, rotten apple lodged in his throat.

Alfred smiled sheepishly.

After several more minutes of exploring and mumbling numbers to his assistant, the doctor sat back. He patted Alfred's shoulder as his seat came back up. Alfred ran his tongue across his teeth, feeling overexposed from constant probing. Like his mouth was some strange alien creature and the doctor had never seen anything like it. The doctor smiled his million dollar smile, painfully white and unnaturally straight.

Alfred really didn't like straight teeth. They lacked personality.

"How old are you?"

It's on the papers you looked through, Alfred thought, but sprung a grin instead. "Twelve. I'll be thirteen in a couple months."

"When's your birthday, son?"

"July fourth."

"Oh! Just like our great country."

"Those fireworks are just for me." Alfred managed his best, I'm a good lil kid aren't I? facial expression.

The doctor laughed. "I bet!"

Alfred nodded. So, what was the bad news?

The doctor paused. Alfred didn't say anything.

"Well, it's time you got your shiny teeth straightened up."

"Oh." Alfred managed.

He knew what that meant. He had seen Laura, a girl who had braces so thick it was like the barb wire soldiers go through during training. She spat when she talked. Alfred did not want to be another Laura.

He had seen Miles wear clear braces with dainty white squares on each tooth. They looked fine, but for some reason were labelled as "gay". Alfred wasn't sure why, exactly. Maybe he could get one of those.

Another thought hit him, all of them going light-speed, like colliding comets across the nebula of his mind. His father didn't have that sort of money lying around. Half of their insurance went with his Dad, back to England. The thought poked him like an icepick in the heart.

He didn't care, suddenly, if he spat when he talked or if his cheeks would be scratched raw from the wires.

"Braces?" Alfred asked after what felt like a year, but really was only a couple of thoughtful seconds.

"I'm afraid so…" Then he went into the details that Alfred had just ruminated over.

Francis was called in. They discussed.

The next week Alfred would get them put in.

Alfred remembered all of this, still at the bus stop, still feeling the chunky metal in his mouth. His glasses had become as cloudy as a foggy mirror. He pulled them off and miserably smudged them further with his jacket sleeve.

Of course, if he had known at the time that getting braces was only the appetiser to the troubles this thick-bodied, still short for the meantime twelve year old, he wouldn't have even considered a drop of sadness to drag across his mind.

The worst came when the fall rolled by, bringing along rain like fists pounding into the dirt. A week and three days before Alfred would be sobbing at a bus stop, wondering what he had done to deserve this. Thinking of that vase. That stupid vase.

He began to revise the reason he was even there, like a kicked and dumped puppy. Then he realised he was only twelve years old. He was like a pebble trying to argue against the mountain that rests upon its back. Everything was too vast, too big, and too scary to even consider. To even look up. To even feel the pressure of without snapping into a billion little pieces. Another vase in its infinite parabola to the floor.

The first rain had began to tap on the windows, like hungry strangers. Miss Dew looked out the window, watching it begin to fall. She stood at the front of their health class - mandatory for all middle schoolers - and sighed. Her hair was dark and collected into a curly bun on the top of her head. A group of girls sat in front of the class, giggling about something. Miss Dew had a habit of going silent for a stretch of moments at a time.

Alfred liked it. She was his favourite teacher. If and only if she had reached out to him and talked to him when she noticed the ebbing sunlight in his eyes. He liked when she spaced out, staring out into the rainy world.

"Looks like we're in for another endless downpour." Miss Dew said.

The class looked up at her, nodding mutely. She seemed to space out even more often than lately, usually with a happy smile on her face. Now, that smile grew bigger.

"I have news." She said. "As you know, my dream has been to help. To help underprivileged youth, to be exact."

No

Alfred bit his lip. He felt another thing was going wrong. He couldn't. It couldn't - no, it really wouldn't. All the nots, all the No's. They surmounted to nothing. They gathered into a vapid pile of unending sadness. Sadness that seemed, to him, finite and inevitable. And, more than anything, his fault.

. . .

The rain stopped. Alfred dug his face further between his knees.

"Alfred."

He didn't look up. His fingernails chewed his palms, threatening to draw blood had they had enough commitment.

"Alfred." Francis said sharply.

Alfred raised his head slowly. looking up into the underside of an umbrella. The plunk-plunk-plunk of captured rain filled the silence Francis made. Alfred rubbed his reddish eyes.

"Come on, time to go home."

Alfred stood up.

Francis held out his hand.

"Come on."

Alfred didn't take it, but followed behind him. His hair fell into his eyes and stayed there. He dug his hands into his pockets, following with his head down as if he had been forced to go home. Francis paused every few steps to check that Alfred hadn't been soaked through with rain.

"We need to talk." Francis said simply.

Alfred didn't argue.

. . . . . .

After a long, steamy shower in which Alfred sat on the bath tub floor and let the water wash out the mud and dirty rainwater, he went to the kitchen. Francis had set up a small meal of fruits and cheeses. Things Alfred liked but wasn't in the mood for. He sat down across from Francis, in a white t-shirt and striped shorts. Francis took a sip of hot tea. The steam curled up over his face and through his tawny beard.

Alfred picked at a grape, rolling it between his fingers. He stared outside, wondering how long he would have needed to stay outside in order to freeze to death.

"Alfred?"

"Yeah?"

Francis watched him earnestly.

"Miss Dew was your favourite teacher."

Alfred shrugged. "I guess."

"And she has moved on to better things."

Alfred propped up his elbow on the table and rested his chin on his palm. He stared outwards, towards nothing. The thoughts that once congested his head moved around sluggishly, as if they were tired of going in circles. He was too. Another thought to his misery and he felt like he would puke. And here was his father, ready to prod those tired ideas yet again.

"I don't…" want to talk about it. Alfred didn't say the last part.

"You don't?" Francis looked at him.

Alfred said nothing.

"It happens. People come and go. That's the nature of living things. They're here, then the aren't. The only constant in your life is you, Alfred."

Alfred picked at the side of his thumb. A shard of skin poked up like peeling paint.

"Although, that's happened a lot for you in too short of a time." Francis continued. "So much has happened. I understand you want to get this all out some way, somehow. But you shouldn't go missing and wait for a bus that you know isn't going to show up."

"Yeah."

"Do you want to see a therapist?"

"I'm not insane, dad." Alfred said.

"I never said you were."

"Then why should I go there? That's where you send people when you don't want to deal with them yourself."

Francis sighed.

"I'm asking you, not forcing you. What do you want?"

Alfred scrunched up his face. He didn't want to cry again. He would not cry. No tears, not right now.

"I keep thinking that… That they'll be back next week or something. That they went on a trip and in a few days they'll show up, laughing, and giving us souvenirs or something. And I keep thinking that Miss Dew will come back and say it was all a joke, or that she missed us too much to leave. Or that her plane there will crash and she'll be forced to come back. I want everything back to the way it was. I can't stand this change."

"I keep thinking that, too."

Francis turned away from him. Alfred watched a couple hairs slide out from behind his ear and towards his cheek. His long fingers remained clamped around his cup of tea.

. . . . .

A list to keep in mind:

"Does the music bother you?"

"No, ma'am."

Everything is temporary.

"My name is Mrs. Yeats. Like the poet."

"The poet…?"

"Well, you'll read him eventually. Unless you want to hear my favourite line from him?"

"Sure."

B) Everything can be good and bad. Like the sides of a coin.

Mrs. Yeats picked up a book from her desk and turned to Alfred, flipping to a dog-eared page. She cleared her throat, as if preparing for a glorious speech. Alfred was slightly taken aback when it was only one line.

C) You will be sad, you will cry.

"Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams."

Mrs. Yeats smiled.

D) And that is OK.

"Oh." Alfred said. He felt the climax was not proportional with the pay off.

Mrs. Yeats laughed. "I know, pretty anticlimactic, isn't it? Well, maybe one day you'll realise that it means quite a lot. Or maybe you won't. That's fine, too. All our minds operate so differently. It's fascinating. Isn't it?"

"I guess."

She put the book back and faced him. She was an older woman, with hair dyed burgundy and piled on to her head with a hefty dose of hairspray. She had a square face and dry, red lips. The music behind her was some ode to someone or other, a half-hearted love ballad. Alfred decided it would go under the file of Stupid Pop Music that I will Never Ever EVER Like.

Alfred pressed his palms to his seat, tucked under his thighs. He swung his legs, looking down at them. His shoes were scuffed. He thought that made him look real tough. His hair, too, was parted to the side for the cool kid look. He hoped it distracted from his braces and his obnoxious glasses that Francis asked him, firmly yet softly, to just wear them.

"How was your day?" She asked.

"Fine."

"You know, you can tell me honestly here. I, unlike most of people who pose that question, would actually like to know how you're feeling."

"I'm fine." Alfred repeated. "I had a breakfast and then dad and I went to the store to get some food, and then I came here."

"I see. And your week?"

"Just school and stuff."

"Friends?"

"Yes."

"No, honey, how are they?"

"Fine, I guess. Jordan got a new leather jacket he wears around everywhere, just to make us jealous. Well, I think it makes him look like he's in one of those bags old women have. It doesn't look tough - you know?"

Mrs. Yeats smiled. She had an uncanny, airy smile. Alfred wondered whether or not he could trust it.

"Your father?"

"He's ok."

She had posters along her walls, of varying colours and themes. One was called "Aaah! The Great Big World is Scary! But That's Alright." And it had a list, A-D that Alfred committed to memory.

"I hear your parents are divorced."

"Yeah."

"How's your mother?" Mrs. Yeats asked gently.

"I don't have one."

"Dear, you can't deny her existence just because she isn't there."

Alfred felt insult. That sting, that burn he felt everywhere he went. That same prickling of anger when anyone called him a fag-child, or a homo-kid, or a gayby. Whatever dumb insult middle school could come up with.

"I do not have a mother, Mrs Yeats." He repeated.

She frowned.

"Did you even read that paper my dad gave you?" Alfred said bitterly.

"Yes all it said was — oh." She stopped. "I'm sorry. We all make mistakes, now, don't we?"

"I guess so."

. . .

On the drive home, Alfred picked at his thumb again.

"I like the posters she has."

"Good." Francis said.

"I don't like her."

"Do you never want to go back?"

"Please."

"We can find a better one?"

Alfred gave his father a look of sadness that encased everything he felt.

Francis reached over and tussled his hair. "That's ok. We won't."

"Thanks."

. . .

"Everything will be OK." Alfred said to himself, staring up at his ceiling. "OK for someone, at least."