Act III - Gratitude
This is how I realized that you're irreplaceable to me.
I often wonder why you do things for me. Not just normal favors, like walking back to school with me to get the textbook I forgot, or helping me clean up my room on a Saturday morning: those are ordinary tasks. That's what friends do, right? They help each other out.
Then why do you often go out of your own way, putting yourself on the line? Is it because you want to make others happy that you're willing to risk yourself? Sometimes, I realize you can be so oblivious. And it's not just to things that could hurt you.
Albert, I don't want to lose you.
You can do some rash things when you're fired up about something. What pains me the most is that once you've made your decision, there's no changing it. You insist on getting things done on your own. Why won't you accept the help of others?
Why can't you see that by putting yourself in danger, you're only hurting me more?
It was a quiet April afternoon, gray and stagnant. The sky overhead was crowded with colorless clouds. Damp leaves covered our path; limp and unmoving, save for the occasional cold breeze that would blow by.
"So this used to be your father's?" Albert asked, running along beside me as he observed the refined gold wristwatch in his hands. "Man, it must have cost a fortune."
Albert and I were running towards the secret hideout that day. School had ended an hour early, so were going to finish up our homework there – by researching on the computer that we set up last summer – before spending the rest of our time doing as we pleased.
Well, so I was the one who insisted on finishing our homework first. Albert kept complaining, telling me that we could just slack off, since our project wasn't due until next week, anyway. Sometimes he could be so carefree.
But maybe that's one of the qualities that I like about him.
"Franz?" Albert waved a hand in front of my face. "Why'd you stop running?"
I blinked, shaking my head. "It's nothing," I assured him. "'Was just thinking."
"Hmm?" Albert gave me a strange look, cocking an eyebrow at me. I had a dreadful feeling that he was going to ask me just what I was thinking about, but my worries didn't last for long.
"So how long have you had this thing?" he asked, referring to the gold watch that was now clasped onto his wrist. Well, more like his arm. It was too big for him. "It's all right if I wear it, right?"
"Yeah." I walked along, kicking the moist earth under my feet. "Six years. My father gave it to me the night before my birthday… you know, the night before he…"
"Oh." Albert was apprehensive as he looked away. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have made you mention that. I didn't think..."
"It's fine," I replied flatly. It actually didn't bother me that much anymore. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to take out the watch to show it to him.
The atmosphere became strange between us. What was there to say?
"But… since it's from your father, it must be really special to you." Albert smiled, tracing the grooves of its polished face with his finger. He looked up at me. "Right?"
I snorted in an amused laugh.
"What?" Albert protested, frowning. "What's so funny?"
"I don't know, it's just your expression… smiling at a watch like that…" I explained. However, I could tell I wasn't getting anywhere, because he still seemed annoyed. I smiled. "You're such a simple person."
"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?" Albert insisted. I chuckled under my breath.
"Nothing, nothing!" I told him, giving him a wave as I began to run. "Now come on, we better get there before it starts raining."
"Hey! Franz!" Albert complained. "Don't try to change the subject!"
He dashed after me, shaking his fist in the air as he yelled. I only laughed teasingly, running away to provoke Albert's already irritated mood.
"Franz!" he called. "Get back here!"
I felt comfortable like this. Outside of the window, clouds loomed above us, threatening to burst at any given time. But enclosed in the safe shelter of our hideout, it felt warm and safe. The power had gone out shortly after we arrived, so research on the computer was out of the question. I had lit up an oil lamp for us to work next to.
"Hey, Franz, look at this!" Albert laughed. "Your face looks so funny!"
I was sitting at my desk, writing our rough draft, while Albert… well, Albert said he would read and take down some more notes, but I found it hard to see how our photo album had much to do with ancient Greece.
"What is it this time?" I groaned, pushing myself away from the desk. "It better not be one of those pictures where you drew over me with permanent marker."
"Come on Franz, why are you always like that?" Albert whined. He was lying on his stomach, leaning on his elbows with the photo album left open on the floor in front of him. "That was only one time. And I apologized for it, too! You're too serious."
"I'm too serious?" I blinked, getting down on my knees to look at the photos with him. "I don't think I'm too serious. You just need to focus more, Albert." I poked him in the side.
"Ow!" he winced, shooting me a deathly glare. I laughed at his squinty eyes. Then, rather spontaneously, he stuck out his tongue. "But you have to admit that it was pretty funny."
"Funny? You made me look like a cow!" I exclaimed. "What was with the spots and huge nose you gave me?"
Albert only giggled. After I calmed down, he lifted the sticky transparent film off a page in the album and peeled off a photograph.
"This is the picture I wanted to show you," he told me, lifting it up for me to see. "See? No permanent marker. It was taken last September, on our first day in secondary school."
I took the picture from his hands. In the photograph, I was standing between Eugénie and Albert, squeezing my cheeks in with my palms and glaring into the camera with my tongue sticking out. An irritated Albert was trying to pull my hands off my face, while Eugénie stood with her hand behind her head, looking embarrassed.
"What was I doing?" I laughed, throwing the picture back at Albert. "I must have gone crazy or something."
"I think you were mad about the fact that we were put in different classes," he told me. "Remember how you got your mother to talk to the superintendent so that all three of us would be in the same class?"
"Yeah…" my voice trailed off. I couldn't help noticing the way Albert's eyes seemed to shimmer in the dim light of our hideout.
"Oh, I like this one." Albert pointed to another photo still stuck the album. "We took a lot of pictures that day."
In the photo, I had my arms around my two best friends, a wide smile on my face. Albert was glancing at me hesitantly while Eugénie had an uncomfortable, shy smile.
"Heh." Albert picked up the other picture, the one with me and my hideous expression, once more. He laughed. "You were a little goofy that morning."
"But you know…" he began quietly, "I think I like you like that."
Thunder started to groan outside, resounding in the small room that surrounded us. It was rumbling ominously, causing the window pane to shiver.
"W-What?" The thumping in my chest suddenly became more apparent.
"When you're not so serious, I mean." Albert turned towards me, smiling genuinely. "I like you… when you're like that."
Lightning tore across the clouds, igniting a shower of violent rain. It pounded on the glass of the window, drumming out the silence that was suspended on the tip of my tongue.
"Uh... yeah." I coughed, clearing my throat. I couldn't look directly into Albert's eyes for a while.
Albert must have sensed the difference in my behavior then, because he opted to change the subject.
"Hey, Franz, what time is it?" he asked, closing the album and wiggling over on his elbows to tuck it away on the bookshelf.
"I don't know," I replied, staring awkwardly out the window. The rain was getting pretty heavy now. It was like someone was pouring buckets of water down from the sky. "Don't you have my watch?"
The room was momentarily flooded in a flash of ghastly light.
"Franz…" Albert looked mortified. "Franz, I think I lost it."
"What?" I blinked at him. "Didn't you have it when we got here?"
"I… I don't know," he seemed anxious now. "I'm so sorry, Franz."
"Don't be stupid!" I got off my feet to search the room. "It probably just fell off. It's got to be here somewhere."
After searching for fifteen minutes, Albert got up. He went over to the chair and took his raincoat. I heard the sound of his rapid footsteps stomping down the wooden staircase.
"Albert! Where are you going?" I called after him, running to the stairs. He couldn't possibly be thinking of going out in this weather, could he?
"Out," he replied. "You stay here, Franz."
He pushed open the front door, letting in a chilling wind. The rain cried heavily beyond him. Without turning back, he added, "I'm going to go look for it."
"Albert! Albert, wait!"
But he paid no heed. The door shut tightly behind him, leaving only a puddle of rainwater left where he had been standing.
"Albert…" I hung my head, clenching the stair railing.
What was that idiot thinking?
Apparently, "that idiot" had also thought to take my bike.
I'd left it there the day before after biking home from school. Unfortunately for me, Albert had walked that day, so I had no efficient way of chasing after him.
It's times like these when I realize I should bring a lock next time.
The wind felt overpowering and unmerciful against my face. It howled as it sent raindrops flying into my eyes. With all that water, the only thing I could see was the continuous splashing of the rain against pavement.
How can Albert get anywhere in weather like this?
I forced myself through the endless screens of falling water, cursing Albert under my breath. For sure he was going to have a cold when he'd come back. Though the thought of taking care of him until he was well again didn't actually seem that bad, I was concerned about what other potential dangers might befall him.
A bolt of lightning shot from the sky, branching out towards the earth for a split second. It felt like the ground was echoing.
Beyond the tattered path by our hideout, which was now flooded in shallow pools of rain, I could barely make out a faint outline of a bike heading towards the shortcut we'd often take from school.
Namely, my bike. With Albert on it.
I pursued his faint silhouette, nearly slipping on the mud-caked path. I was almost choking on my own breathing and acid rain when he was finally only a few feet away from me.
"Albert!" I called, reaching out my arm to grab the back of his shirt. But he was too fast. "Albert, wait!"
I couldn't tell if he hadn't heard me – maybe my exhausted yells had been drowned out by the pounding rain. Or maybe Albert simply chose not to hear them.
Before I could get the chance to stop him, make him turn around – anything, really – Albert had been consumed by the bleak grayness that lay before me.
I clenched my fists, mad now. Did he want to get killed?
"Albert!" I yelled after him. "If you want to search for it, at least give me my bike back! You're just asking to get in an accident with rain like this!"
No reply.
Of course. Was it really reasonable to expect one from someone as stubborn as him? I let out a breath of frustration. Regardless of how ticked off I was at him, Albert was still my best friend. I had to go after him.
I splashed my way through puddles, pushing back the odd branch that was in my way as I trudged into the darkness of the surrounding trees. The raindrops that bored into my skull were beginning to feel a bit irritating now.
As I ducked under a leafy branch, I heard a squish of wet leaves somewhere not too far from myself. A soaked Albert was crouching to the ground, struggling with something.
I hadn't noticed what lay before me, because my leg was suddenly caught with a strike against my shin. I toppled over on the ground, hitting my forehead on a tire. As if stealing it to go biking in the rain wasn't enough, that idiot had left my bike lying on the ground, too.
"Albert!" I ran up to my friend's side. He was still on the ground, pulling at something I couldn't quite see through all the rain. "Come on, let's go back."
He didn't reply. He didn't even turn around. Maybe he hadn't heard me.
"Albert?" I called, a little louder this time.
"I told you to stay there!" he yelled immediately, infuriated.
His hunched figure was illuminated with a crash in the sky. For a short moment, I saw his eyes: enraged with blue flames. I took a step back, shocked by his tone. It was the first time I'd ever seen him so angry.
"Albert, I couldn't let you go outside like this." I explained. I was surprised at how meek my voice sounded. "Let's go back, okay?" I held out a hand to him.
"Why don't you go back?" he shouted, yanking at whatever was stuck in the ground. It was more of an order than an idea. "I can handle this myself!"
"Albert… what's wrong with you?" My extended hand had started to tremble.
"No, Franz," he told me sternly, "What's wrong with you?"
He whipped around to stare at me then, his face streaked with dirt. His mouth shook fiercely in anger.
"Why are you always following me, always trying to save me?" he yelled, his voice echoed by the resounding thunder.
"What…?"
"Just cut it out already, damn it!" he exclaimed. "I don't need you following me around all the time!"
"What?" My feelings of shock and fear soon turned to anger. I had already been a little irritated with him, but this was my breaking point. "How the hell is that a bad thing? I've only ever tried to help you!"
"Help?" Albert laughed spitefully. "Yeah, right! Stop treating me like a child!"
"I don't need another mother!" Lightning flashed in his eyes, soon followed by the growls of thunder. I could feel the earth become limp beneath my feet.
"I'm not!" I shot back, shivering in fury. "You're the one who's always so ungrateful!"
"That's because I don't need you to help me in the first place!" Albert was standing now, screaming in my face. "Let me do something on my own for once! Stop trying to protect me all the time!"
"Fine!" I yelled, throwing my arms up in the air. "I won't help you! You're such a dense idiot anyway."
"What? So I'm an idiot now? Real mature, Franz!" Albert clenched his fists in rage. He took a step towards me, yelling even louder. "And what do you mean, 'I'm dense'?"
"Nothing!" I turned away from his blazing eyes. "Just shut up, Albert! Go ahead and get yourself killed, for all I care!"
Crash.
It happened too fast for me to be aware of what was going on. It was a simultaneous thing: One moment I had been yelling my lungs out at Albert, and the next, with a blinding explosion of light, we were down on the ground.
A large, fallen tree lay just a few feet away from us. It sizzled and steamed slightly, still fuming from the lightning that had hit it.
The two of us said nothing, our breaths uneven and trembling.
We could have died.
Inhaling desperately, I blinked at the space below the fallen tree. If I hadn't come here in time… if Albert was still hunched above the ground over there… if I had been standing there with him…
We could have died.
I swallowed hard. My eyes felt like they were stinging. Streaks of water were running down my face now. I couldn't tell if it was from the rain, or if I was crying.
After a few moments of utter shock, I cautiously turned to Albert. His own once scorching blue eyes had been reduced to quavering pools of fear. He turned toward me, and as he did so, a tear slid down his cheek.
"Franz…" he whimpered. He pulled himself over to my side and buried his face in my damp shirt. "Franz, I thought I lost you."
Hesitantly, I placed my arms around him, steadying his back. I myself was trembling. I found it hard to find my voice again.
"Albert… I'm sorry." I rested my head on his trembling shoulder. "I'm so sorry."
Into my shirt, Albert mumbled something unintelligible. When he said it again, strangely, I could hear it clearly over the pounding rain.
"I'm sorry too."
I had a sort of nervous half-smile then. Albert wasn't one to apologize. I put a hand over the back of his head, slowly stroking his wet hair.
"Let's… let's go back, okay?"
It felt cozy inside the warmth of our hideout, dimly lit by the oil lamp that was now placed on the floor. We were sheltered from the cold rain outside. The violent drumming of droplets had slowed to a steady, light patter by now, but we had no intentions to head back home at the time. It was comfortable inside there.
Albert and I lay on one of the futons together, wrapped in a warm blanket. I held him gently in my arms, wiping away the water on his face with a free hand. He looked so peaceful.
Albert slowly opened his eyes, looking up at me sleepily.
"I'm sorry…" he told me.
"You already apologized, Albert." I pushed a strand of damp hair out of his eyes. "It's fine now."
"No…" he looked troubled. "I'm sorry I couldn't get the watch back for you. It was stuck in the ground."
"Oh…" So that's what he had been doing.
"And then it got crushed by the tree…" Albert's face crumpled in dismay. "I'm so sorry; it was important to you."
"It's okay, Albert…" I smiled at him softly. Then, quietly, I added, "I was going to give it to you anyway."
Closing my eyes, I recalled the conversation I had had with Eugénie the week before.
Eugénie ended her piece with a resonant chord, heartfelt and delicate. Her eyes opened slowly as she lifted her hands from the keys, gazing at me with patiently, a slight smile on her face.
"So?" she asked reluctantly. "What do you think?"
I could only gape at her in amazement. The stanzas of her composition rang clear in my mind, replaying themselves over again in her sweeping, flowing style.
"It's beautiful," I told her. And I meant it. "More than that, actually. It's a masterpiece. I'm sure your mother will love it."
Eugénie laughed, getting up from the piano to take a seat next to me. She swiped a milk biscuit off the tray that was centered on the table before me.
"You don't have to suck up to me that much, Franz." She gave me a friendly wink, breaking off the biscuit in her mouth. "If it's that bad, just tell me."
"No, I was serious." I nodded along with my words, though now that I look back at it, it probably just made me seem like I was being sarcastic. "Honestly. It's amazing. You're going to be famous one day, I know it."
"Yeah, right." Eugénie sighed, seeming discouraged. "Like that would ever happen."
I turned to the large balcony windows before us, watching the fresh, sunlit sky.
"Hey, Eugénie…"
"What is it?" She leaned her head to the side, studying my blank expression.
"Say there's this person that I want to get something for…" I began. "Wait, let me reword that."
"Okay." Eugénie seemed patient, but a little confused. "Go on."
"Say there's this person that I care about, and I want to get something for them. You know, to tell them I appreciate them…" my awkward voice faded off. "Or something like that."
"What about it, Franz?"
"Well, what should I get them?" I asked her. She blinked in response.
"Why are you asking me this, though?" She stuck another biscuit in her mouth. Absent-mindedly, she added: "Want one?"
"No, I'm all right." I replied, waving it away before I turned back the window. "Well, you came up with that really good idea to write a song for your mother, so…"
"Oh! So you want to get a gift for your mother!" Eugénie smiled. "Franz, why didn't you just say so?"
"Uh… yeah." I couldn't exactly deny her, but I also couldn't bring myself to fully agree with it, either. "Sure."
"Well, why don't you give her something that's really precious?" she suggested. "Like, something that's really important to you."
"Oh, okay."
"Oh! And also –" Eugénie was excited now. She was always one to help out friends, giving them advice when in need. "Get her something shiny. Or expensive-looking. Like jewelry or whatever. Mothers like that."
I took note of her suggestions in my mind. They were all good points, but I wasn't sure if they applied to my situation.
"Do best friends like shiny things too?" I asked her.
"Huh?"
"Nevermind."
"Franz?" Albert looked up at my eyes. "Did you say something just now?"
"Don't worry about it," I assured him. I pulled the blanket over his shoulder. "Just rest for now, Albert."
"We're going to stay here tonight, right?" he settled himself deeper in his pillow. "Because I don't really feel like going anywhere."
"Yeah." I wrapped my arms around him then. Albert shivered, but I couldn't tell if it was because he was cold, or because I had touched him.
Either way, he pulled me closer to him, close enough for me to feel his breath on my neck. I carefully rested my head on his pillow, inhaling the familiar scent of his damp hair. Closing my eyes, I whispered:
"Me neither."