Green

‘See you tomorrow, Paul’, said one of the girls. There was a titter of laughter, mostly happy and carefree, but in Paul’s ears the sound echoed cold, bitter and mocking. He grinded his teeth together and managed to smile at them, waiting until Monica had finished hugging each one of her friends. She then jumped down the stairs, slid her hand into his and practically bounced, a steady up and down to his left side as they walked away from her school.

Monica told him that all the maths questions he had helped her with had been correct and that the teacher had given her sweets as a reward, she also told him that in her English class, David had fallen from his chair once again.

Her bouncing became less energetic and his grip on her hand firmer when they passed the last of the posher houses and moved out into the area where people didn’t have enough money to water the lawn in their front gardens, leaving it shrunken and dry.

Paul’s smile grew tighter as he listened to Monica’s chatter that seemed too loud; they now left for the area where people didn’t have front gardens anymore, walking the same route they took everyday when Paul picked Monica up from school.

Their house was one of the grey and ugly, graffiti-covered boxes at the edge of the city that only needed three month to be erected and that had the whole vast land as their back garden.

They stopped in front of the door, staring down at the crumbled mortar on both sides of it.

‘You don’t have to pick me up’, Monica spoke softly in that heavy accent she had since she had relearnt how to speak.

Paul lost his smile, knowing that she was able to read his moods. The phrase ‘like an open book’ uselessly crossed his mind, Monica couldn’t read books anymore.

She looked up to him expectantly, but he only touched her shoulder, saying ‘It’s all right, I don’t mind the walk’, not knowing I the grim set of his jaw and shoulders gave him away or if she could feel the burden of responsibility radiating from him.

Paul placed the frozen food in the microwave and draped some linen around Monica’s neck in case she started drooling. Her singing overpowered the beeping of the microwave, but Paul knew how long the food needed and prepared it before he gave it to Monica, watching her munch it with enthusiasm.

After she had finished they went into the room they shared, leaving her half-eaten dinner on the table.

‘If it isn’t genetically programmed whether you are gay, but you need a reason in your upbringing, then I’m very likely to become a queer’, Paul mused while he helped Monica undress, feeling no attraction for the full-grown woman she was.

The sun was still shining through the naked blinds, but Monica fell asleep almost immediately, exhausted from filling the empty apartment with too cheerful silliness.

Paul returned to the main room and cooked two other dinners, setting the table for himself and their father, who would be – for a lack of better words – home any minute now, also cleaning up in the meantime.

Instead of the click of keys turning in the lock, the phone rang, making Paul jump and pick it up as fast as possible; he didn’t want Monica to wake up again, after all.

It was their father, saying he was in a meeting and wouldn’t be home for another few hours.

Paul noticed he did feel quite sick and not hungry at all, so he put the plates back into the cupboard and the dinner in the bin, all with a strong sense of déjà vu. He felt as if someone had pressed the rewind-butting, not to undo but to repeat the past.

Paul knew he should be doing his homework, but he had left his schoolbag in the room in which Monica slept at the moment and going in could wake her too easily.

They didn’t have a TV or a computer, nothing that could keep his mind from being wrapped into the deadly silence that filled the apartment like a physical force.

He needed to get away, even if it meant leaving Monica alone.

The door closed too loudly and Paul listened for some breathless seconds, but Monica didn’t scream for him.

He ran down the street, the exact same way he and Monica had come. He knew every curve, every stone off by heart. It had begun to drizzle and Paul wondered if tomorrow, the grass in all front gardens would be green.

When he finally came to a halt, he was breathing rapidly and his fists were clenching and unclenching at his side.

‘I need help’, he said, his voice hollow and empty.

No answer came and when he couldn’t take the silence anymore, he started to laugh, bubbled of laughter that had been enclosed and bottled up inside of him now rising to the surface, forcing him to drop down to the ground, escalating in almost hysterical sobs; a poor substitute to screaming and crying.

How ironic and funny that he, who hadn’t been involved in the accident that had made his father so guilt-laden he drowned himself in work to forget and that had done such a great deal of damage to Monica, that he was the one who had to deal with its consequences and compensate them.

Here he was, a sixteen-year old with no perspective, unable to explain to his father that there were other means of support than financial one, about to fail nearly all of his classes, responsible for his handicapped, mentally underdeveloped, older sister and talking to his mother’s tombstone.

Maybe he deserved the mocking laughter of Monica’s classmates.