Learn to Fly

by LQ Aredhel

It’s a Sunday, around eight-thirty, and the sun is just about gone. Richard is with us, black hair almost to his shoulders (he’s too lazy to get it cut). Toby’s sipping a can of Sierra Mist, and we’re all leaning against the side of some apartment building on 33rd. We don’t know anyone who lived there or anything, but it’s about halfway between the school and my place and the place Rich likes to paint and Toby and Laura live a few blocks down. So we all meet by this building and try to decide what to do with our time.

Richard’s frustrated because he can’t get his sketch right. He’s been working on it since school Friday, which is kind of unusual because he normally would have thrown it away by now.

“Something’s missing,” Richard says, breaking the group’s silence. And that was unusual too, because Richard’s not big on talking and he sure isn’t big on talking about his work.

Richard spends all his time drawing. He’s sketching non-stop in class, and after school, he always manages to find a bare wall or an abandoned boxcar to make his work come to life. He is great at pissing off all the gangs in our area of town and sometimes ones across town too. They all think he’s part of some secret gang because his artwork is everywhere. So, in an example of his ridiculous luck, they leave him alone.

Deciding to chance it, I lean over his shoulder (which involves more standing on my toes than leaning, the guy is like 6’2”) to take a peak at his picture. Like magic, the sketchbook is closed, and Rich is eyeing me like I’m crazy. I just roll my eyes.

Some days, Richard’s sketches in school aren’t good enough to him. If he doesn’t draw something satisfying by the end of the day, he just gives up and hangs out with me and Laura and Toby.

“So where are we going tonight, Calvin?” Toby asks me like I’m keeping an agenda. Richard’s back to biting his thumbnail and staring at the sketch. His pictures are usually of faces and block letters and dragons – nothing I’d want to see anyway.

So I shrug at Toby. “We could go to the bridge,” I suggest. “Or maybe the arcade?”

“I could go for a Big Mac,” Laura says. She’s the only one I can see in the streetlight; she’s always had a glow coming off her. I told her about the glow once but she just laughed and said it was Jesus.

“Fuck it.” Richard rips the page out of his notebook, crumples it into a ball and drops it on the ground. The sketch he’s been working on for three days. Longer than I’ve ever concentrated on anything in my life.

“There’s an art show tonight at the college,” he says, and walks off down the sidewalk.

“Are you serious?” Toby groans. “You’re going to drag us to an art show?” I was thinking along the same lines. “I vote McDonald’s.”

“So don’t come.” And Rich just keeps walking. Toby flips him off.

Toby is an asshole, and not even the good kind. He told me once that he had a photographic memory, but I think he was just being sarcastic; the guy could tell you that you were an alien and give you a whole speech about why, all with a straight face. Unfortunately, Toby is mad smart, and he knows it. The guy will use every opportunity to piss people off.

Laura and Toby head the opposite way as Richard, and I’m going to follow, but I watch Richard as he turns the corner, and then stuff his crumpled piece of art into my pocket.

-------

The picture is rough, to say the least. I carefully un-crumple it later in my bedroom. No one’s home – my mom and her boyfriend both work Sunday nights – but I lock my door anyway. Peeking at Richard’s work before it’s smeared over a building feels like a sort of betrayal, but I’m too curious to think much into it. The guy just left it in the street, right?

It’s a face – sort of. There are facial features: small, light eyes, thin nose, slightly parted lips. No hair, just billows of clouds surrounding the face. It seems familiar, the eyes…I try to picture it on the side of a boxcar, vibrant with color. It’s a shame he threw it out.

I fold the paper and slide it under my mattress: maybe I can figure out who it looks like later.

-------

High school is shit and public high school in the city is the shit of shit. And waking up at five-thirty on a Monday morning to go to public high school in the city is the shit of shit of shit. Especially when you’re this generation’s version of the hippie – emo/punk/goth. Toby’s the only one of us who doesn’t fall into that category, but he’s good enough at pissing off the jocks that he fits in just fine.

We all walk to school. I have to go the farthest being about seven blocks from the apartment on 33rd. We meet up there and head over. If it’s warm, Toby and I joke around and Laura chats about people and classes and life. If it’s real cold, we pretty much just walk.

It’s fall, and Laura and Toby are bitching away about the advanced math class they’re taking. Richard stares out into space, sketchbook under his arm, and I’m trying not to look at him or the book.

First class is a dreary blur of authors and symbolism and talking pigs and Rich, across the room, swirling his pencil around a new page in his book. I get in about fifteen minutes of extra sleep, woken up later by the bell.

I walk to second period alone, dragging my knuckle along the brick wall to wake myself up. When the pain goes from dull to piercing (like rubbing alcohol in a cut), I pull my hand away. That way, the wound wouldn’t bleed, just look gross for a few weeks, then scab over. There are two scabs on my right hand and three on my left. Some older ones from last year had left tiny white scars, but I’m sure they’ll eventually fade.

The back of my neck tingles and I look up to see a pale face three inches away. I stumble back, and the face smiles. It’s Rob, one of the kids from my next class, History.

“Did you get into a fight or something?” Rob asks me. I realize he’s staring at my knuckles.

I shrug, and reply, “Yeah.” Let him think what he wants. Rob isn’t on the same tier as me. He’s one of those average, smart, maturely-dressed, journalistic, non-athletic, gets-along-with-everyone guys. Not popular or unpopular and not really caring either way. He always treats my friends and me the same as he treats the jocks and preps and stoners. “Socially blind,” Toby had once called him.

Rob follows me into the classroom.

“Well, did you win?” he wants to know. I can think of a few things to say to that, but he hasn’t done anything to me except get nosy and talk too much, so I hold my tongue.

We take our seats, him one seat over and up from me, and he chats away to the blonde girl next to him about what we’re doing in class today.

History class enforces one of the worst ideas ever created: assigned seating. And the jock next to me hates it just as much as I do. He glares at me every single day I sit there; that’s something like 50 days so far. 50 glares. I think his name is Carter. Fuck if I care. Halfway through the glare, I’m in another world. My thoughts wander from the McDonald’s we had the night before to whether or not my mom’s boyfriend will be there when I got home to what I’m going to do with Toby’s sketch. I imagine myself trying to explain to him why I pinned it to my wall. The thought makes me smile, and Carter snickers beside me. He leans over to my ear.

“She’s out of your league, trust me,” he whispers, smirking. I realize I’ve been staring at the back of Rob’s head. I guess Carter thinks I’m looking at the blonde girl beside him.

I decide to mess with him a bit. I turn my head and smile, narrowing my eyes. “I don’t swing that way,” I say, my voice low, and I lick my lips.

He’s shocked to say the least. Moments later, when the bell rings, Carter hasn’t moved a muscle. I’m sure I’ll hear plenty about it later, though.

-------

Sometimes I feel like there’s something missing. Like I need to be doing something, but I don’t know what; or I left something somewhere. I used to dig through my backpack in the middle of class, searching for whatever I felt I needed, something to fill the gap. I could never find it, like an itch beneath my skin or a tingle on the back of my neck that won’t go away. I went home one night when I was fourteen, and I didn’t know what to do. There was nothing in my room or apartment to make it go away. I lay on the floor of my room, door closed and lights off, and blasted My Chemical Romance through headphones. It was nice, distracting, but the itch was still there. I listened to the screaming lyrics and scratched at my left arm until it felt wet. I etched long lines into my forearm, and the throbbing sting was enough to overcome my feeling of having lost something important.

The door swung open; I’d forgot to lock it. I pulled my left arm up to my chest and opened my eyes. Jeff stood there, my mom’s boyfriend, he looked at me strangely: I was just lying in the middle of the floor. Jeff called something out, probably to my mom, and closed the door. They were gone when I emerged from my room, half an hour later.

In the light of the living room, I looked at my arm and swallowed thickly. My left forearm was smeared with blood and long trails of broken skin.

I cleaned my arm. The etches weren’t even deep and the bleeding stopped a few minutes later. It was barely there, except my arm was red from all the itching. Plus, I felt better, though a little weirded out from the blood. I figured the whole mess had passed.

The lines were clearly visible the next day. It looked like a cat scratched up my arm again and again. I kept my left arm close to my side, cursing my mom for putting my long sleeve shirts in storage until winter.

Nobody noticed, and despite the light stinging, I forgot about it by lunch. That’s when the principal decided to escort me to the school counselor’s office.

“Are you having problems at home, Calvin?” the counselor asked. She was young and pretty and nice and I was having a hard time trying to care. I knew I was blushing, my whole body felt warm, dizzy. I was afraid.

“No, no problems,” I replied, then shut my mouth tightly: my voice had been high and quick.

“So, do you want to explain this to me?” she asked, slowly, quietly, then took my hand and turned it over, completely exposing the long red lines on my forearm. I swallowed and pulled my hand back from her light hold.

I didn’t know what to say. The truth freaked me out, so there was no way she’d leave me alone after this if I spilt what happened. I needed a lie. A car crash? On my arm?

“My mom just got a cat,” I said quickly. “It doesn’t like me very much.”

The counselor didn’t say anything, just peered at me for a few moments. I swallowed again: she didn’t believe me. What would happen to me? Would they put me in an institution? Or call my mom? Or kick me out of school? I had no idea…

“Calvin,” the counselor began, looking me in the eye, “I’m going to let this go if you can make me two promises.” I nodded warily. “First, promise me that this hasn’t happened before.”

I shook my head and replied lamely, “We just got the cat.”

She continued, “And second, promise me that it won’t happen again.”

That sent my thoughts whirling: I couldn’t imagine making myself bleed, but one look at my arm said it was possible. Oh well, better give her what she wants.

“I promise.”

And I kept that promise. I never made myself bleed again.

-------

Sure enough, two classes later, in the hallway, I’m getting whispers and giggles and fingers pointed at me, and I completely regret opening my mouth to a jock.

“I’m not gay,” I say after school to my friends for the thousandth time. We’re all sitting on the steps to the apartment on 33rd.

Laura snickers.

“You know you’re most likely to get HIV that way,” Toby tells me.

“Oh my God, shut up.” I squeeze my eyes shut.

“’Oh my God?’ That’s kind of a girly thing to say isn’t it?” Laura teases.

“It is.” Toby seems completely serious.

“I’m not gay,” I remind them lightly. “I was just trying to freak out that jock guy.”

“By trying to kiss him?” Laura asks skeptically.

“What?!”

“I heard he rubbed his leg,” Toby adds.

“Wha—no!” I’m starting to feel sick.

Richard’s voice is a few feet down the sidewalk. “I heard Carter caught him making out with Rob Krokowski in the janitor’s closet.” He sounds angry or annoyed or something.

“Hey Rich,” Toby greets, smiling up at him. “Finished painting the town all ready?”

“I was distracted,” Richard replies, glaring down at me.

“I’m not gay,” I repeat once again, this time to Richard. He just looks away.

“Look,” I begin, “I didn’t do any of that. I just jokingly said that I didn’t like girls, then I licked my lips at him.”

Laura and Toby start laughing.

“You managed that with a straight face?” Toby asks, amazed. “He looks like a bulldog! I wouldn’t have been able to pull that off, even if I did swing that way!”

That makes me chuckle, and we all share a laugh. Except for Richard, who solemnly plops down beside us on the step.

-------

That night, I lock my door and peer, again, at Richard’s sketch. Small, light eyes, narrow nose, lightly parted lips…suddenly I know who it is.

The eyes are the same, identical. The way Rich drew the lips, they are too large, swollen. The face looks exhausted, surrounded by billowing clouds instead of light brown hair.

It’s Rob.

There’s a knock on the door. A voice calls in, I think it’s Laura, but I just stare at the picture, trying to figure out what Rob had to do with Richard, and why Rich would draw him this way, and why he would throw the drawing out.

I came to and stuff the picture back into the mattress. Laura is outside my door wondering whether or not I want to go to McDonald’s with her and Toby. I grab my coat and leave with her, ignoring my mom’s boyfriend as he yells about how late it is.

-------

Sometimes at night, when I was younger, I would wake up and talk out loud to my ceiling. I talked about leaving and I begged to be taken away. “If you’d just reach out far enough,” I’d say. None of it made sense in the morning, if I remembered it, and I don’t know who I was talking to. Maybe my dad who died when I was four. Maybe Laura’s Jesus. Just anyone who was listening, I guess. I realized later that no one was listening. But I still sometimes wake up in the middle of the night. Instead of talking, I sit very still. But no reply ever comes.

-------

It’s Tuesday, and Laura’s parents are away at a seminar, and her older brother has a night class at the college, so we’re just spending the afternoon at her place.

Laura has a house. As in a lawn, a garden, a second story, the whole idea. Her parents aren’t really loaded or anything (well, compared to my mom…), but her family always lived there, just on the edge of town, with all the joys and freedoms of suburbia in plain view.

Richard is out…painting something, I guess. Laura, Toby and I are sitting in the middle of her living room floor playing war. She has her parents’ radio blaring Greenday, and we each have a bottle of coke beside us.

Toby wins like three time in a row, and gets up and pretends like he’s pissing in my face, then sits back down again. I win the next hand.

“I’m thinking about getting a job,” Toby says. I’m pretty sure he’s just mad about me taking his queen, but he looks serious.

So I make a face and ask, “Why?”

He looks at me like I’m retarded. “Because I’m seventeen, and I’ll have to get one eventually.”

Laura shrugs. “So get a job.” The phone rings and she goes off to get it.

We lowered our cards. “Get a job with me,” Toby suddenly says.

“What?”

“It means money. You like money, right?”

I scoff. “If you want to spend all your time after school working your ass off, be my guess. Don’t drag me down with you.”

He just frowns and looks at his cards. “Whatever.”

Toby really pisses me off sometimes.

Laura wanders back in just as Toby is about to take a peak at her cards. She shakes her head at him and doesn’t sit down.

“That was my parents,” she says. “They’ll be home soon. We’ve got to go.”

Something about the way she says it gives me chills, and I suddenly have flashes of us all in a spy movie, racing out of the house and squealing down the street in a get-away car.

We clean up, put classic music back in the CD player, lock up the house, and climb up on the roof. The sun sets slowly as we chat away, and Laura’s parents pull up and go inside about fifteen minutes later.

She gets up. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” she says, and hops onto the garage roof, then onto the deck on the second floor, and in through the sliding door. I watch as she moves; Laura has an eleven o’clock curfew, and she uses it. But it’s only nine now, and here she is turning in.

I frown and lay back on my hands, watching the sky darken. Toby shifts around beside me.

“What do you want to do?” he asks.

Like I have an agenda.

“You wouldn’t get to ask that question if you had a job,” I remind him. He scoffs at me, and takes off a few minutes later leaving me alone on the roof, finally in the complete darkness full of light that can only be found in the city.

-------

I am aware that suffering is universal. A person doesn’t have to study under Buddha to figure that out. My friends hurt, my teachers hurt, my mom hurts, my mom’s boyfriend…probably hurts, though I find that harder to picture.

People are stupid. Alcohol is a depressant.

It’s a stupid thing to do, but after Toby leaves I wander through town alone, checking out all the places I’ve seen Richard paint in the past. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but all the spray-painted faces I see are unknown to me. Maybe they’re people Richard knows or used to know, or wants to know. There are no clues in the two dozen pieces of graffiti that I’m able to find on our side of the city. On about half of them, though, he’s written in small print in the corner, “People are stupid,” and “Alcohol is a depressant,” like they’re his signatures. I don’t think Richard drinks regularly, but he once brought over a jug of rum, sat in my room, and drank the whole thing as he went on about art. He passed out on the floor for a few hours, then stumbled out at three in the morning. I never asked him why he did it, or why he did it at my place. I guess it isn’t important. Rich is sort of a mystery to me, and probably to the others, too, and maybe he’s confided in them. But not in me. Sometimes I feel I knew nothing about him.

-------

Laura isn’t in school the next day. Toby seemed real surprised by this, but not me. The way she acted last night, she was probably in trouble with her parents. I can’t see them keeping her home from school, though. Maybe they’re keeping her away from us.

I guess I shouldn’t think so deep into it, because guilt is eating away at my stomach. I can’t concentrate not even when Toby’s trying to tell me about how he tricked a teacher into failing some nerd. During my last class, I’m staring out into the hallway trying to figure out how I’m going to convince Laura’s parents to let her come back to school, when a couple of students walk past the door, speaking in low voices. I immediately recognize Richard’s heavy black sweater and Rob’s shaggy hair. Then they’re gone.

I stare into the empty hallway. Maybe I can sneak out the door and follow them into the hallway and see what the hell is going on, but I just sit there and the bell rings a few minutes later.

Richard’s gone after school, but this time I wonder if he’s drawing or painting and is anyone with him?

I wander around with Toby for a while, but we split up around four: I guess we don’t do too well without Laura or Richard around. We just annoy the hell out of each other.

Anyway, Toby heads off, maybe home, maybe to the arcade, I don’t know. I start for Laura’s house, but I find her sitting on the steps of the apartment on 33rd. Then I find out why she wasn’t at school today. And why she went inside early last night. And why I’ll probably never see her again.

Everyone deals with death in a different way. Laura’s parents dealt with the death of their nineteen-year-old son by deciding to send Laura to a private Catholic school on the coast, across the country. She would leave her family and friends behind and live with an aunt she’d never met, for the remainder of her senior year. Then, it was straight off to the Catholic college in the same town. This was their idea of dealing with death.

Dustin was shot as he walked to his car two blocks from the college. He died at three this morning. He wasn’t even conscious the last few hours of his life, and no one really knows how it happened.

Maybe Laura cried when she first found out. But now, she just sits on the step and she tells me exactly what happened and what’s going to happen, and she says, “I don’t blame God.” But who else is there to blame?

It’s probably the last time I’ll ever see her, but I leave just the same. I can’t stand there anymore. And I’m so fucking selfish.

-------

I go home. My mom says something to me, but I walk past her, into my bedroom, and lock the door. The floor is a mess of dirty clothes and CD cases. I fall onto my bed face first and cling to the sheets with my fists, waiting for the horrible itching on my arms to go away.

I stay up that night, watching the numbers on the clock change, doing nothing. I wonder if these few hours of my life will matter in the long run, and what else I can be doing and how it will affect my future. Or will I still die tomorrow?

At five a.m., Laura’s plane leaves for the coast. I can feel the jets rumbling through my body and fade away into the distance. And at five-thirty, it’s Thursday, and time for school.

--------

The morning goes by in a blur. I can feel Richard watching me closely in first hour. I don’t know what he’s looking for or waiting for, so I ignore him. I receive my usual glare from the jock in second hour and it takes me half the class period to realize that Rob isn’t there. His seat is empty and the blonde beside it is chatting away to the guy in front of her.

Toby and Richard sit with me during lunch. Richard is being predictably quiet, munching on a burger, and Toby is chatting away to me about everything that happened since I last saw him the night before.

“The guy two apartments down said some kid at his college got shot,” Toby says conversationally, and I stop my hand, halfway to my mouth with a fry. I look up; Toby’s still eating probably trying to decide what to tell us next. Across from me, Richard is staring straight at me like he’s waiting for me to do something.

I drop my fry, stomach in knots, and lean back in my chair.

“I just think it’s ironic,” Toby continues, not noticing anything around him has changed, “that Rich has been pissing off the gangs for years, but it’s this random college kid who gets the bullet.”

“You think I should get shot?” Richard asks coolly, finally turning away from me.

Toby smirks at him. “It’s only fair.

-------

I used to have a house. It was a real house: three bedrooms, two baths, a kitchen, living room, second story…I had a weeping willow in my front yard. I used to hang on it. My mom and I moved into an apartment in the city about a year after my dad died. I started kindergarten and met Laura. We became friends, and in first grade I went over to her house and we played on her weeping willow.

-------

I go straight home after school, not wanting to be alone with Toby any more than I have to be. But my mom is home cleaning, and the whole house smells like bleach. Over the sound of the vacuum cleaner, she asks me how my day was and I head back out the door.

Honestly, all I can think about is the look on Richard’s face during lunch: he knows what happened, and probably that Laura is gone. I want to know why. I probably won’t have the guts to ask him even if I can find him, but I hit all his spots anyway, and there he is, far downtown in an alley, surrounded by cans of spray paint. And on the wall above me (beside him, he’s standing on a pile of crates), is the vague outline of a face surrounded by clouds. It is exactly like the sketch hidden under by mattress, except the facial features haven’t been defined yet. It could be anyone.

Richard looks down at his paints and he catches sight of me. I see surprise in his face and feel like I’ve accomplished something, but then Richard looks troubled.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, and I suddenly feel foolish. Angry at the feeling, I push it aside and spout out the first question that comes to mind.

“How did you know about Laura?” And the foolish feeling returns, because there is no evidence that he knows anything at all.

Face blank, Richard climbs down off the crates and stands in front of me. He eyes me for a moment, then gestures up to the unfinished graffiti.

“You’re not supposed to see this,” he says. I feel an awful wave of guilt because not only do I see it, but I know exactly what it’s going to look like when it’s finished.

I don’t say anything, and he shifts around, which looks strange since it’s more of a Toby thing to do.

“Laura told me what happened,” he finally says, probably just to break the silence.

“She’s gone,” I say calmly.

He nods. “Yeah.” And through the following silence, a huge weight is lifted from my shoulders. I look at Richard, who is staring up at his painting, and I think he’s not such a mystery after all.

Richard and I spend the rest of the day wandering around town together, sometimes in silence, sometimes talking about Laura. He seems to know so much about her; it almost makes me jealous. Then I realize it doesn’t matter anymore.

It must be around midnight, and I start heading home. I think for a moment that Richard would do the same, but I turn and see him walking back down the opposite way towards the alley and the painting.

-------

Sometimes it’s hard to know how important people are to you and what role they play in your life, until they’re gone. Then it becomes very clear.

I was four when my father died, but I remember the way life was before and how life is now. And I know that he is the missing piece that made it so drastically different.

Sitting around in McDonald’s after school on Friday, it is very clear what part Laura played in our lives. She was the one who laughed. The only one. Toby makes fun of someone and Richard and I just glare at him. There should be laughter along with the glares, keeping us grounded and maybe stopping Rich and I from killing Toby. But it isn’t there anymore. And I know that every one of us feels it.

Toby makes a few more attempts at conversation/bashing people, but he gets the same response: two glares and no laughter. It’s like we don’t belong together anymore we’ve stopped meshing with no one there to smile.

Toby finally gives up and just angrily chews his food. I’m waiting for him to blow up and finally ask, “Hey, where’s Laura, anyway?” But he doesn’t. It’s like she was never really there.

We split up again: Rich heads toward his alley; Toby, to his house; and me, I don’t know where to go. I seem to have more time by myself every day, and I don’t know what to do. I can’t go home: Jeff is home, and I don’t like seeing him. I don’t want to follow Toby, and I can’t follow Richard because he doesn’t want me to see the painting.

I wander around for a few hours, then go home and fall asleep on my bedroom floor.

-------

It’s the weekend again. I hate the weekend. Even being in our shit-for-school is better than two long days and nights of complete and absolute boredom. At least school provides some twisted distractions.

Richard’s spending all hours of the day alone in an alley painting the face of a person I barely know, but he obviously knows quite well. I don’t see Toby at all, and I wonder what he could possibly be doing.

So I spend the weekend alone at home. Sometimes my mom and Jeff are there, sometimes not. We have dinner together Saturday night, almost like a real family except dinner is delivered pizza and Jeff keeps nagging my mom about cutting my hair and getting me different clothes because “a man doesn’t wear that shit.” I go back in my room soon after I’m done eating and turn on my stereo. A pile of schoolbooks is laying in the corner of my room. I pick one out, barely able to come to terms with the idea that I’m bored enough to do homework, and the spine cracks when I open it.

But my mind quickly wanders beyond the War of 1812 and over to the coast on the other side of the country.

-------

Before she started dating Jeff, my mom and I used to spend Sunday nights watching martial arts movies. She said it used to be a tradition with her and dad. We’d be up ‘til something like two in the morning watching Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, then play fight with wild kicks and wild battle cries. It would all eventually become a heap of laughter on the living room floor, and I’d spend the next morning trying to stay awake long enough to learn how to divide.

When I was ten, my mom quit her job as a cashier and started working in a factory that packaged meats and cheeses. There she met Jeff, and he moved in two months later.

She had boyfriends before that, but none of them moved in. After a year, I started to wonder whether they were going to get married or not. After seven years, I don’t really care.

But they always work Sunday nights.

-------

Laura is back on Monday, smiling, laughing, telling us all how horrible Catholic school was. Toby makes fun of people. He tells Laura that donuts smell like God. Laura doesn’t laugh, just pushes him over and he falls down long flights of steps and lands on the pavement outside the apartment on 33rd. Rob bends over him and checks his pulse.

“He’s dead,” Rob reports. “He was shot by a gang just outside the college.” I look at Laura. It wasn’t a gang, it was her! But I don’t say anything. I just look down at Toby’s still, pale face and pretend that it was a gang.

Richard goes to Rob and lays a comforting hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay,” Richard says. They look at each other, then go into spasms and fall to the ground.

Laura turns to me and smiles. “I have to go now,” she tells me. “I have to go to the other side of the world. Where God is alive.”

Panic rises within me as I look down at the bodies of my friends. “You can’t leave.” I fail at leveling my voice.

But she skips down the steps, maneuvers carefully through the bodies and disappears.

I sit on the steps. The kid next to me passes me a joint and I take a long drag.

“So,” the red-headed kid says. “What kind of shampoo do you use?”

And then my alarm goes off, and it’s five-thirty Monday morning and time for school.

-------

I leave school early to wander the streets checking Richard’s alley to find a long gray tarp over the painting. There’s no one on the steps on 33rd. They seem deserted.

By the time I head home, my legs are burning from walking for so many hours. My mom is in the hall putting her shoes on when she sees me.

“Do you know what time it is?” she yells, removing her shoes and sweater.

“Eight, nine?” I offer.

“It’s almost eleven, Calvin, where have you been?” I shrug. “I got a call from the school today that you skipped your last three classes. Are you even going to graduate this year?”

I shrug again. “I don’t know.” I really don’t. I hadn’t even thought about it. What does it really matter anyway? I’m not Toby.

My mom sighs angrily and plops down on the couch next to Jeff. Having eaten nothing all day, I grab a bag of Doritos from the kitchen and wander into my room.

-------

I get a detention Tuesday for skipping. Richard isn’t here today. Neither is Rob. Or Toby.

Wandering around after school, I find Toby in a huddle of kids outside of a convenience store just down the street from my house. He’s grinning and speaking in a low voice, sometimes pointing at the store. I pause across the street, narrowing my eyes. It couldn’t be, could it?

Toby and two of the other guys go in the store. The other three guys stand around outside looking nervous and suspicious: every time a car goes by they freeze up. A few minutes later, Toby and his guys come out with triumphant grins. Toby receives a couple of pats on the shoulders, and the group moves away from the store. I imagine Toby retrieving hand-fulls of candy bars from deep in his pockets, and making a glorious feast of stolen chocolate. Then I imagine Laura is beside me, and Jesus’s glow is shining off her like the sun, and I ask it, “Why did you let them get away?” It doesn’t answer. “’Thou shalt not steal,’ right?” Still nothing. So I come back to reality, looking straight at the store, wondering why Toby always had such a damn easy time doing things like math and thievery.

I wonder over to Laura’s house. The air is getting cooler; some of the trees in her yard are bright yellows and oranges, and the grass is scattered with similar colored leaves. I know Laura’s parents still live there, but when I look at the house, I see something hollow and abandoned. How are her parents dealing with the loss of both of their children?

There is no car in the driveway, so I climb up onto the roof and watch the sunset. Just for old time’s sake.

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Richard’s back in school today, but he doesn’t draw: not during first hour, not during Mr. McCormick’s class. He looks pale. At lunch I ask him if he knows why Toby hasn’t been coming to school.

“Toby dropped out,” Richard says casually. He has a tray of food in front of him, but he hasn’t touched it.

“He dropped out,” I repeat.

“Yeah, he got a job in a car shop and dropped out of school.”

“He got a job?”

“Mm.”

Richard’s eyes wander slowly around the cafeteria. He’s distracted. I realize that Rob wasn’t in class again today, and I get the intense urge to ask Richard about it…but the bell rings, and we each go off to a different class.

Sitting around at home after school feels unbearable. I almost envy Toby: he’s out right now doing something…something interesting at the very least. Maybe he’ll get arrested. Or maybe he’ll make a fortune stealing shit and selling it to his friends while I sit in my room and stare at the wall. Laura would condemn him if she were here. She would start talking about morals and ethics and the bible, and she’d give him that look…the one that said, “Don’t even try it.” And he wouldn’t. At least, he didn’t in the past.

As I sit, images of Toby, things he’s talked about, come to mind. What about all the times he talked about criminals, praised them? Did he mean what he said when he told us that the New York sniper was a genius? What about when he spoke, fascinated, about Laura’s brother’s death?

The scenes play against the bare wall across from me. Toby murdering a woman in the street. Toby laughing at her death, taking her purse. I snap my eyes shut. Why am I worried about him anyway? I don’t even like him.

God, my arm itches.

The scenes continue in my head. Toby spends the money on drugs, selling most of it and keeping the rest for himself. Richard finds him in an alley and yells for him to stop. Toby kills Richard. Laura is in the convent that Toby burns down. And once again I’m sitting alone on the steps on 33rd, but there’s no joint being passed around, nothing to distance the pain, so I cry.

The itching won’t go away. It won’t stop.

Toby stands in front of me, ready to kill me. The bloody knife that killed Richard in one hand, the lighter that torched Laura in the other. He’s smiling, but he’s blind, pretending not to know that I’m sitting in front of him.

I grip my right arm. The itching won’t stop, and it’s swarming by body, it won’t go away!

“Why did they die?” I ask Toby. He replies, “They always die.”

I rub my arm with my fingernails.

The knife and lighter fall to the sidewalk, and Toby reaches his wide hands for my neck.

I scream and wake myself up. The sun has already gone down, leaving the room pale blue. My arm is aching: I loosen my grip and see a red imprint of my fingers across my forearm. I grab my shoes and leave.

A coat would be nice, I think as I walk down the empty streets. It must be pretty late, because only a few cars go by, and most stores are closed. Twenty minutes later, I’m downtown, staring up at the long tarp covering Richard’s painting. I glare at the wall for a while, imagining the colors hidden underneath. I wrap my arms around myself, trying to keep warm. I don’t know why I’m here. I want so badly to tear down the tarp and to rip up my arm. Here are two things that won’t go away.

Far away there are voices and footsteps, and it’s only just occurred to me that I’m downtown by myself in a thin black t-shirt shivering in an alley at what must be after midnight. The footsteps come closer, and I panic, suddenly seeing Laura’s brother right in front of me, dying in the middle of the day under the safety of the bright sun. At least no one could say he was an idiot kid wandering the streets in the middle of the night.

Panic overcomes my pride, and I jog back into the alley, crouching down behind a dumpster. The footsteps move into the alley, and a great whooshing echoes across the walls. The tarp!

I peak out around the dumpster. It’s Richard, the tarp rumpled around his ankles. He stares up at the painting, but I can’t see his face, I can’t see what’s happening to him. My eyes move to the wall. The painting is finished.

Rob’s face is etched into the wall, but not the exhausted, lost face on the drawing I picked up last week. The expression in the painting is something of immense pride, strength, and clever, squinted eyes…smiling eyes. A powerful expression with laughter in the eyes. It is startling; it’s the best painting I’ve ever seen of Richard’s.

And Richard gazes up at his work, shoulders shaking. Is it anger? Fear? What is wrong with him?

A sudden cry rose from him, and he swung his hand back, then forward quick as light, planting his fist in the wall, hitting the clouds below Rob’s lips. I wince, hearing the impact, the scrape of his skin against brick and the folding of his knuckle. He cries out again, a sound full of rage and terror together. I can’t take it anymore, and I jump out from behind the dumpster, yelling his name.

I expect the same anger that resounded in his cries, but he looked at me with only the fear. Moving closer, I could see his bloodshot, unfocused eyes gazing at me in distress and confusion.

“What the hell are you doing?” I shout at him, angry, though I’m not sure why. He holds one hand in the other; blood drips from his knuckles.

“None of your business,” he replies, but his voice is tiny and slurred, thin, and there is still no sign of anger in his face. I suddenly realize that he’s drunk.

“Come on, let’s go home,” I say, my own anger melting away. I take his arm, but he immediately pulls away. “Richard, you’re drunk and you’re hurt. What the hell is going on?”

He slips down onto a milk crate against the wall, still holding his hand. I know I can’t move him anywhere by force, even if he is drunk: he’s too much bigger than I am. I consider leaving him and heading home, but the idea passes, and I plop down on a crate on the opposite wall, waiting for him to make a move.

The painting is above me, and he doesn’t take his eyes off of it. Sitting in silence, I can’t help but wonder what Laura would do were she in my situation. Am I supposed to drag him home? Or go get help? Or just sit here, or talk to him, or hit him, or what? Laura would know the right thing to do. And if she didn’t know what was right, she would at least do something, rather than my nothing.

The streetlight illuminates the right half of Richard’s face. Tears roll down his cheeks from wide, bloodshot eyes still focused on the painting. His arms are at his sides now, and the knuckles on his right hand are disfigured, covered in blood. Maybe I should wrap something around it? Is that what Laura would do?

“What are you doing here, Calvin?” Richard suddenly asks, his voice small and calm.

I snort angrily. “You’re asking me that when you’re the one with the mangled hand.”

His eyes move down from the painting and he stares at me. I stare back, confused. There is a secret in his expression, something he craves to do or say, but it won’t come out, even with all the alcohol he must have consumed to do something as crazy as punch a brick wall.

Then his voice becomes pained. “Why do you hurt yourself?” he asks me. My entire body freezes, tenses. Because he didn’t just say that. And he isn’t looking at me with tears in his eyes, drunk out of his mind, and revealing not his own secrets resting at the edge of his tongue, but mine, my secrets, the secrets that I alone have the right to reveal or to forget!

“What?” I ask, because I know I heard wrong. I know I must be drunk with him and imagining things.

It’s like the painting is gone. He’s leaning forward on the crate, staring me in the eyes, tears rolling down his face, and he says it again, “Why do you hurt yourself?” And I know now that he said it, but it’s insane! And my anger is there in an instant, screaming in my skull, FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU!!! At Richard crying in front of me, and probably at myself.

I stand, knocking the crate over, hands balled in fists. “Fuck you,” I say out loud, because it won’t stay inside. “Fuck you, you don’t know what you’re talking about!” I see my body in my mind; the scrapes on my arms from freshmen year are gone, smooth skin on my arms, there’s nothing there. I’m clean, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. “Fuck you,” I say again, and walk towards the sidewalk.

But he takes my arm and slams me against the wall, against his own painting, and I’m afraid. Richard stands in front of me, holding me to the wall by my shoulder, his right hand limp at his side.

“Why do you do it, Calvin? Why!” For a moment I think he may hit me like he hit the wall if I don’t answer, but I don’t have an answer, so I swallow thickly and stare back, waiting for the pain. And it scares me to death that I don’t fear it.

He grabs my wrist and twists it up to my face. Pain shoots through my arm, but my fear overcomes it. Across my knuckles are scars and fading scabs, and one fresh scrape from about a week ago. I don’t see them in the darkness, but I know they’re there, and I know Richard knows. I remember the nice, pretty nurse, pulling my arm between us, exposing the long line of scraps on the underside, long red lines. I look at Richard, but he’s shadowed and I can’t see his face. He’s good at that, he’s so damn good at keeping secrets, and Laura is so damn good at making decision, the rights ones. And Toby’s so goddamn good at everything.

Richard lets go. He wanders back into the alley, face low like he’s searching for something along behind the crates. I can’t move, caught between the wall and everything else in the world that won’t leave me the fuck alone, my wrist aching as I cling it to my chest. He comes back a moment later with a can of spray paint, and he shakes it, not looking at me. Just staring up at the painting. Climbing on top of a couple of crates, Richard drags the paint across the graffiti, covering Rob’s smiling eyes, his confident, mischievous grin, with bright yellow spray paint. He squiggles lines over the clouds where Rob’s shaggy blondish hair would be. Then he turns, and with a wild cry full of anguish and rage, casts the empty spray can at the opposite wall. The can topples to the ground and rolls out onto the sidewalk.

Richard stumbles off of the crates and leaves the alley, not looking at me once. I feel like he’s all ready seen too much of me anyway. I feel naked, cold, like there’s nothing left of me if there is no secret. Richard took it with him.

I stand there for what seems like forever, listening to people out in the streets, distant sirens, domestic violence in the apartment above the alley, a man hitting a woman and the woman crying. I feel like I’ve heard it all before. It all adds to the itch.

‘You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,’ something inside tells me. ‘There’s nothing there.’

I turn and back away from the wall and stare up at the painting. That stupid, damn painting that Richard worked on for over a week. Longer than I will ever concentrate on anything my entire life.

-------

All the rage and pain that pulsated through me when the painting was destroyed is gone hours later in the early morning, leaving me exhausted. I keep thinking about moving away from this town and everyone in it. But the idea always kind of floats away, because thinking it is one thing. But where would I go? I find it’s easier not to think at all.

So, instead of thinking or going home, I go to Laura’s house. I walk through her pretty, clean lawn and pretend that she is right behind me, and Toby and Richard are following us along the long path to her backyard, and climbing with me up to the deck and onto the roof where the cool air rushes over us and caresses us as we lay, facing the bleached sky. Laura left to be with Jesus. Richard left to be with Rob. Toby left to be with everyone. I’m alone, and it is like the whole world has come to a stop except me, but the sun keeps moving for whatever reason, defying all reason; and rises, leaving behind another city night, bright as day.