It's midnight, and I'm sick, so I'm not gonna apologize for taking so long, because you all know that I am.
Disclaimer: I do not own Degrassi
"So, do you mind telling me why you freaked out so much the other day?"
I pluck a leaf off a random bush next to the gravel path Eli and I are walking on.
"I don't know," I mumble, the lies becoming more raggedy and forced than they used to, a fact that is leveled between infinity amounts of pros and cons, "I guess I was just stressed out from school. I'm a fanatic about my grades and having a permanent record wouldn't really look good on a college application."
"Clare," I glance up, noticing the serious expression engaged along his features. "Is that really it?"
I swallow. Trees line up beside each other, a family of wilderness with lost relatives destroyed by needs for public satisfaction. I run the tips of my fingers over the branches, the texture rough and uneven, bruises on every square inch that remind me of all the storms and rain and wind they've gone through
"Yeah, it is."
He shakes his head, sticking his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. The park grew more crowded throughout the little amount of time I've been here, now populated with mothers grasping baby strollers, huddled up in circles of gossip about the latest scandals. Teenagers stroll on by, boys with their arms around peppy looking girls and twirling car keys in their hand, oh-so-casually pointing out the fact that they have a ride and the douche bag next to them doesn't.
It makes me think of Alli. All those times she's twirled her hair to get attention, batted her eyes and bit her lip. All so palpable, all so shallow. But there must be something else to her, and deep down I do know that there is. But I can't find a word for it- a missing piece of understanding that's left me looking down a cliff in pure darkness.
Everyone's heart is the same size. Underneath what may come off as superficial ness and phony cries for awareness, there has to be more, something that's hidden behind the only things we allow our eyes to see. And I can't help but feel the need to knock on and Alli's door and find out what that something may be.
Like it matters. The final look in her eyes told me a story sealed shut. It's over. I could cry and apologize a thousand times, and yes, she may accept it and let me be her friend again, but that gap of unknown she is so sure exists will forever and always be pulling us apart.
"Why are you at the park anyway?" I ask eventually, almost getting knocked down by two guys chasing at each other, screaming.
Eli shrugs, "No reason, really," he answers, "I'm gonna go hang out with Adam later and I had nothing better to do, so I just thought I'd come here. Plus it's also a good way to unwind. Sidestep to looking up the words."
"How did you even find out that looking up words in the dictionary was therapeutic?" I try to imagine Eli sitting on his bed, distraught and overwhelmed with the waves of misfortunes life thrashed at him, scrolling through an imaginary list of relaxation techniques until finding the perfect one.
He shrugs again, as though this question has been asked a million times. "During a time when you're feeling really crappy, a lot of things can happen. I was reading this book and there was this one word that caught my eye. I was always good with vocabulary, but this caught me off guard and I had absolutely no idea what it meant. I tried to look past it and keep reading, but it was like my mind was somewhere else. There's just this nagging annoyance of not knowing something, especially when the knowledge is right there at your fingertips. Eventually I looked it up, and I don't know, it's hard to explain, it was just… contenting." He stops, running his fingers along the bridge of his nose, "God, it sounds to stupid-"
"It doesn't."
"Yeah, it does. But they're so many things in the world that we will never be able to figure out, and I just want to learn what I can. At least then I'm not walking around totally clueless like everyone else. Looking up words, learning what they mean, fills the emptiness of everything else I fail to comprehend."
"That's really incredible," is all I can say, because it's the only words that will come out sounding like the pure truth. Who would have ever guessed that one simple task most people find annoying could play such an important role for sanity?
"I'm no artist," he adds, laughing slightly, "When artists are stressed, they let everything out through their art. Painters paint, writers write, sculptures sculpt, it all fits together. But, I'm just not any of those. So what am I supposed to do?"
"Find something that fills the emptiness," I say, repeating his words to match my own meaning.
A buzzing sounds from Eli's pocket, followed by the hard drumming of instruments that reminds me of the music that day in his hearse.
"Sorry," he mumbles, quickly flipping his phone open to press it against his ear, "Hey Adam."
A mumbling on the other line is all I can hear. Awkwardly, I look down at my feet, not wanting to make it seem like I'm eavesdropping.
"Um, yeah, okay. Well, I'm actually talking with Clare right now…" He breaks off mid-sentence, and I picture Adam sitting in his room, putting the pieces together until he realizes what Eli's trying to tell him. She knows.
Eli glances over at me discreetly, as though something he heard just reminded him that I'm still here. I watch as he listens to the anonymous words coming in through the speaker, nodding occasionally and every so often, glancing back over, each time with the same expression.
"Adam-"
He gets cut off, rolling his eyes and letting out an exasperated breath. I continue to stare at him, not quite able to fight the urge enough not to. After a moment of replaying the previous actions- nodding, muttering unattainable words, eye rolls- he finally sucks in some air and speaks.
"Okay, yeah, yeah, fine. I'll ask her."
My head snaps up. On a small note I was aware that I played a part in their conversation, but even still, the fact that Eli talked about me directly like that is enough to send my blood racing.
When he shuts his phone and looks down at me, I feel my face flush red, and immediately shift my gaze to a woman bouncing a crying baby up and down on the other side of the park.
"Clare," he says, chuckling, "I know you were listening. Cut the act."
I blush even harder at the same time the baby's cries turned into deafening wails. Hectically, the mother begins awkwardly searching through her bag as if to find a magical wand that will answer her one and only prayer. Shut this damn kid up. She hands him a bottle with a sense of pleading and the toddler slaps it away, the small jug sailing down onto the ground, white liquid gushing along the gravel.
"Clare."
I throw my head around so fast it sends an ache trailing down my neck, and meet his eyes.
"You know how I said I was gonna hang out with Adam?"
I nod.
"Well do you want to come to his house with me? I mean, all we're probably gonna do is play video games, but I promise we won't totally ostracize you." He smiles at the last statement, a lightening of the mood, and I can't help but return the gesture.
When Eli said, "going to Adam's house," I thought he meant a fifteen-minute drive. But what he really meant was a fifty-minute drive.
"Hey," I say when the trees and cornfields beside the road suddenly become unfamiliar to me. "If Adam's house is this far away, why does he go to Degrassi?"
Eli lowers the music-which thankfully is angry rock and not ear-piercing screamo- and takes one hand off the wheel. "Well, you know about his situation, right?"
I think back to Adam's fury that day in study hall, the confession he fed me that most people would swallow bitterly, if they digested it at all.
"Yeah."
"Well word got out at his old school," Eli pulls on the gearshift, "And a bunch of bastards just didn't know how to mind their own business, if you know what I mean."
I do know what he means, but even so, I don't want to imagine it. So I just mumble a quiet oh and lean back against the headrest, watching yet another cornfield that seems to be chasing in the opposite direction as us.
"Why do people have to be such idiots?"
"I don't know," I say, trying to imagine slipping all the horrible things I hear people exchange in the hallways from my lips, watching a person's expression die within a matter of seconds, and walk away with a sense of pride. I can't. It doesn't seem possible. Like a foreign language I can't grasp the concept of.
"Like putting someone else in pain stops you from hurting any less. Why do people think that?"
"I don't know," I repeat, just wanting the course of this conversation to take a sudden twist. The lump in my throat is threatening to reappear, and I know Eli wouldn't let it go like he had before.
"Why does misery love company?" He continues on, "Why the hell do people want someone else to be going through the hardships, too?"
"I don't know."
"No one does." He shakes his head. "Sorry about my rambling. It's just, it gets me so freakin pissed off that people actually have the guts to do that to a person, you know?"
"I do know," I answer honestly, although somewhere deep inside, a lie is verging on along the corners.
After another few minutes, Eli pulls over. It's a small neighborhood, with maybe twenty houses or so, and each one is distinguished with a unique color and shape. But still, they all feel equal to one another, more equal than my street, even with its obvious aim towards being congruent. The house in front of us, which I'm assuming is Adam's, is a soft blue with black shutters. The grass is brown and the driveway is cracked, flaws that can be pointed out in an instant and forgotten the next. There's a small table on the porch surrounded with three chairs, two identically brown and one white, plastic and added on only when necessary. Flowers bloom vigorously along the stairs leading up to the porch.
"Are you coming?"
Eli's door is open, and he's leaning down to face me.
"Yeah," I run a hand through my hair and step out of the car. Wind whips my hair in front of my face and I pull a strand away from my mouth. Eli's still by the driver's side, fiddling with his phone before walking to the driveway. I follow him, suddenly overwhelmed with how random and uncomfortable my pretense may be.
There are no cars in the driveway, and all the lights in the house are off. As I get closer, I notice how the patches of paint on the sidings are peeled off, white specks standing out from the blue. The flowers, that first appeared full and lively, are descending dead, grazing down towards their pots, exhausted and tired from all they haven't gotten yet may have deserved.
Adam opens the front door before we even ring the bell. He's in a Giants jersey with a ketchup stain on the collar and faded sweatpants. His eyes are squinted, like he'd just been awoken from a deep sleep.
"Hey," Eli says as Adam slowly rubs his hands down his face, trying to wake up.
"Hey man," he peers behind Eli and over at me, "And Clare.
"Hi," I mumble.
"Come in," he waves a hand, motioning for us to enter.
The inside of Adam's house gives off the same feel as the outside. From a great distance seeming like the peek of perfection, everything in order, set out just the way it was meant to be. But then when I really look close, focus on each and every aspect on their own, mistakes, flaws, shoot through the perfection and form bullet holes too grave to patch up. All the doors are the same color, but a few of them aren't closed all the way, barely open, but enough that I can make out the color of the flooring on the other side.
Maybe these things wouldn't bother anyone else. Maybe I'm just so used to looking for every single bruise, picking out what doesn't fit in and pushing it aside. It's just my nature, and your nature doesn't just live where it began, but rather expands until your whole world depends on it.
We walk up the stairs, which have lines of pictures running up and down the wall. Many of them are Adam and Drew, an arm draped around the other's shoulder, a new background exploding behind them. The beach, a rocky cliff, an old looking townhouse, each a different story. Each bringing the same expressions.
When we finally reach the top of the stairs we walk down a narrow hallway, an identical door waiting for us at the very end. Adam opens it, Eli and I following him in. His room is your typical teenage boy bedroom. Band posters hung upon the wall, dirty shirts scattered on the floor and the bed is unmade. What caught my eye, though, was the flat screen TV, with at least a hundred video games underneath.
I know boys like video games. I'm not an idiot. But I didn't even know that that many existed, much less owned by one human being.
"Okay," Adam says, clapping his hands together and directing his attention towards Eli, "Which game do you want to play today?"
Eli pauses to think for a moment, "Heavy Rain."
Adam fumbles through a few of the games, throwing a couple on the ground until he finally reaches the one he wants. "Who were we playing as again?"
"I think it was Ethan."
"Oh yeah it was!" Adam looks at me, and I quickly shift my gaze over towards his window, where through it, I can see a quiet rain shower coming down. "Clare, you can sit down on the bed"
I robotically do what he asks, the sudden sensation of the past events leading up to this one moment. It was a dream state before, floating on thin air, and now I'm awake, alert, and solid on the ground again.
Adam and Eli lean against the bed with remotes in their hands. The black screen transforms into a terrifyingly realistic image of real people, looking more like a movie than a game. Their features are perfectly laid out, creases in foreheads, blinking of eyes, and I wonder how hard all those people who made this game worked towards perfection.
Adam groans, "God, I hate how they walk. It's so freaky."
Eli laughs and nods in agreement, "I know. They can get everything right but the most simplest thing. It's pathetic." He turns to give me a smile I don't know the reasoning for, but I guess it's just so he knows that I know he won't forget about me. And it feels nice, knowing that there's someone there to look back and make sure I haven't disappeared.
For the next fifteen minutes they keep playing, exchanging game talk I don't understand and occasionally cursing at the TV. I haven't been spoken to, not once, but every so often Eli will turn his head to look at me, giving me a smile, raise of his eyebrows, a smirk, or even nothing at all.
During this moment I surface with a lingering question that I've been unconsciously ignoring this whole time. What exactly are Eli and I? Friends? But friends don't kiss. Boyfriend and girlfriend?
I scrunch up my face in disgust. The word "boyfriend" tastes like metal in between my teeth. Something about the picture I form in my mind when I think of it, it's just so single layered, so showy, as though I'm holding Eli on a pedestal for the whole world to see just what he is. A boyfriend. One boyfriend. There are so many words you can put in front of it. So many options. I want something set in stone, something that won't shake.
"Okay, Clare," I jump at the sound of my name, "Should I shoot him or let him live?"
I glance at the TV, hoping that it will give me some idea of what Adam's talking about, but unfortunately the pause screen is in my way.
"What are you talking about?
"Don't ask," Eli shakes his head while putting his hand on my knee. My breath gets caught in my throat at his touch, the dreadful question in full contact. That is not something you do to a friend. But after a moment he slides his hand off, casually, and I start thinking about it all over again.
"Just answer the question," Adam says. He's holding the remote aggressively, as though any minute he might combust from anticipation.
"Save?" It came out as more of a question, but that didn't seem to faze Adam. He un-paused the game and started clicking buttons like a madman.
Eli grunts, putting his hands on the bed and pulling himself up to sit next to me. "Honestly, I would have said kill."
I roll my eyes. "Sorry I didn't reach up to your expectations."
He shrugs. "It's alright," then he nudges my shoulder, which causes me to flinch, "Are you okay?"
I nod, afraid to use words. Adam turns around, studying me, as well as Eli. It all becomes too much for me. I stand up and say I have to go to the bathroom, and when Adam's about to tell me where it is, I tell him I'll figure it out.
In the hallway I gently push each door slightly open. After three tries I finally reach the bathroom, which is small and cramped. I close the door and lean against it, breathing heavily at the small things I turn into such big problems. That's what I do, I realize. Making more out of the bad things, less of the good. I just can't digest that something or someone may actually be on my side. Self-pity. That's what it is. God, I hate people who drown in self-pity.
I'm not going to hate myself.
I wash my hands, suddenly feeling dirty for no reason, and step back into Adam's room, trying to ignore the perplexed stares they're both giving me.
I sit back down next to Eli. Adam shrugs after a moment and continues to play the game. Eli doesn't keep his eyes off me, and I think back to the day in Mrs. Dawe's classroom, the day a few quotes sent me spiraling out of control.
Eli always looks back at me. And whether or not it be to make sure I'm still behind him or just okay, he always does.
Always.
So tell me your opinions. Be brutal. And hopefully I'll wake up not wanting to cry from a headache.
Okay, so I got a kindle, and right now I'm reading "By The Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead" Absolutely amazing. Makes me want to cry