Dead Leaves for the First Time Again

I open my eyes, but I don’t want to move. The bed is so enticing. The soft cotton pillow beneath my head hugs my ears. I look up at the ceiling. The fan rocks back and forth, squeaking like one of those plastic dolls that scream every time you squeeze it. I smell mulberry and mold, and sit up.

Sorry, pillow.

There’s a pair of dirty socks laying across the checkered Vans on my right. Dark-ash jeans and a white t-shirt lie on the left. I don’t recall wearing those yesterday. I need to do laundry before Mom sees this room. Out of the window, the leaves on the dogwood tree dance as the wind brushes the branches. A slight tint of red has begun to speckle the leaves. Soon, autumn will choke out the green entirely.

I turn my legs and stretch until my toes can taste the carpet, snap my heels onto the floor, and stand up, pushing my arms up to the ceiling fan. I stick my hand between the blades and catch one. I can feel the motor weeping through the vibrations in my palm, and I let go. It commences its happy squeak.

Time to get ready for school. I slip on a blue tee and take a quick glance at the picture on the wall of me and my brother in the cockpit of the single-engine Cessna. We’re both smiling and holding up peace signs.

I haven’t flown in a while.

I squeeze one leg into a pair of tight dark jeans, and freeze. Above my bed, at the top of the wall next to the ceiling, are two ketchup packets nailed side by side.

I try to think of what I did last night, and no memories come to mind. I must have nailed them to the wall in my exhaustion. There’s something written over each one in Sharpie ink. Dates? 10-01 and 10-02, but it’s still September, isn’t it?

---

Rayna slips the headphones out of her and her boyfriend’s ears and stashes them back into her back pocket next to her phone as I finish drawing the scene in my comic book. The bus is unusually crowded today, but I’m sitting alone near the back while Rayna is sitting two seats ahead next to her boyfriend. She has a license, but she always rides the bus with him because his parents won’t let her drive him to school. I place my finishing touches on the drawing, giving Rayna pencil-line eyebrows and her boyfriend thick ones that connect in the middle. I also give him a pointed hat with the word “dunce” written across the front. I draw a line up from her pocket that splits halfway and connects to an ear bud in her right ear and another in his left. From her open mouth, the dialog bubble reads: Midnight is the best time for a picnic. This time of year, the falling leaves sing softly as they fly through the current of the winds.

Such a good line. I wish I had thought of it. Who knows? Maybe I had. According to what my notebook tells me, it would be hard to know one way or the other.

---

It’s cold. I open my eyes and sit up in bed. To my left, a small portable heater is plugged into the wall. It’s on, but it’s not doing a very good job. The fan above is off. No squeaking. I throw off the blanket, and the skin on my chest tightens. I look down and try to rub off the goose bumps. Unsuccessful. I move, instead, to sit in front of the heater. I hold my arms close to my side and extend my hands toward the heat. It softens the skin, and I rub my chest again, wiping away the goose bumps like fog from a mirror.

Out of the window, the bare branches of the dogwood are tossed violently by the wind. Dry wind. Winter.

I need to get ready for school. I pull out the ash jeans and a white tee and take a quick glance at the picture on the wall next to the closet of me and my brother in the Cessna. We’re both smiling and holding up peace signs.

I haven’t flown in a while.

I slip the shirt over my head and breathe deeply as it falls onto my body. It smells like dead leaves and chocolate.

My mocha-spill jeans are on the floor next to my feet. Did I wear those yesterday? I don’t think so. Maybe I need to do the laundry. Maybe I need to-

What’s that!?

Above my bed, nailed to the wall in rows and columns. Ketchup packets. About a hundred or so. Is this some weird trick my brother pulled while I was asleep? They all have numbers written above them, like dates. They go from 10-01 at the top to 1-13 about halfway down the wall. I look out of the window again. There’s snow on the ground. It must be January. I take a couple steps back as I stare at the grid on the wall.

There’s a notebook sitting on the nightstand. It’s the kind I always use to draw comics in, but this one’s different. Written across the cover in big letters are the words Read Me. It’s in my handwriting. I open the book, and the paper’s rippled in spots. Previously wet spots. The first page is a drawing of me and my brother flying a plane. The plane is going down, and as I stare, tears drip onto the page.

---

I drop my pencil, and it falls through the oak branches, lost in a pillow of snow. If I wasn’t careful, I would have fallen, too. I’m not sure how I got up in this tree. Orion’s shield is directly overhead. It’s the middle of the night. I shuffle a little to the left to get a wooden knob off my tailbone. In my lap is an unfinished drawing. Rayna’s house. Everything is finished, except for her window.

Now I remember the oak I’m sitting in, and I look up. Rayna’s house is sleeping quietly. All the lights are off, except for hers, but the blinds are closed.

I look back at the book. This is my guide, my journal. How I keep up with my thoughts. I can’t recall much of what’s in it, but I’m starting to remember the first few pages even before I open it. They tell me why I am this way. The book tells me there was a time when I would freak out every time I learned about the accident that happened four months ago.

At least now I’m starting to remember that I have a memory problem. The book says the doctors call that progress. They say my mind will heal after a while.

It’s weird how it works. Every day up to the crash is still in my head, but after that, I never retain anything beyond a few hours. Once those few hours are up, I have to start over, like I just woke up, but I’m fully clothed and sitting in a tree, drooling outside Rayna’s window.

I take another pencil out of my pocket and begin drawing in the window blinds where the vacant space is. I fill in almost the entire space before I see her shadow walk across the room, and I freeze, the muscles in my eyes tensing like the muscles holding the pencil. She walks back and stops at the window. The blinds begin to turn, opening gently, as if peacefully waking from a deep sleep. I lick my lips as I close the book in one hand and lean forward on the other. She is wearing a polka dot t-shirt and blue pajama pants. Her brown hair is pulled back into a ponytail, and her spotless face shines in the golden red lamplight like the morning sun, or the feeling you get when sipping mango smoothies as a child. She looks out the window and smiles. Is she smiling at me? No. Couldn’t be.

She walks away from the window.

I need to leave.

I stick the spare pencil back in my pocket and feel wet plastic against my hand. I pull it out. It’s an empty ketchup packet. I stick it back in and wipe the ketchup from my hand on my jeans before jumping down from the tree.

---

I’m proud of this drawing. Mr. Thick Eyebrows wearing the dunce cap and a frown on the bus, the seat next to him covered in frost. As I look at it now, for the first time again, I can see it in a unique way, through the eyes of a first-time observer, admiring the comedy of the dunce cap, the symbolism of the frost, seeing it all for the very first time. But what did it mean?

She drove to school today. Why didn’t she ride the bus? Her boyfriend sat alone. It’s all here in my book.

My meatloaf surprise is getting cold, and my milk is already gone. Across the lunchroom, Rayna is sitting with a small group of laughing girls, but she isn’t laughing. Her boyfriend is sitting next to the jerks from the soccer team on the other side of the room. He isn’t laughing.

Did they have a fight?

Maybe I need to look back a few pages in the book:

Mom helping me find my toothbrush this morning. In the mailbox.

Dad pouring a bucket of ice on my head in the shower. A dialog bubble reading Winter’s almost over, son!

No answers. Maybe this has been going on a while. I need to go back further. I flip back about thirty pages. There’s a drawing of Rayna’s house from the oak tree in the yard.

Back further.

Rayna driving to the gas station…to church…to the movies. Sleepy Hollow was written on the marquis.

I flip the book all the way back to the first page. It isn’t me and my brother in the plane anymore. There’s a new page in front of it now. It had to have been drawn somewhere near the back, and then ripped out and inserted into the front. It was here so I could see it every time I open the book. It’s a picture of Rayna and her boyfriend. Rayna’s holding a glass up in the air, and a bubbly liquid sloshes out of the rim toward his face. He’s clenching the dunce cap in his hands and steam erupts from his ears. There’s no dialog, but at the top of the page, there’s a caption. It’s written is bold letters: They Broke Up.

My fingers shake, and I look up. She’s already gone. But she left something on the table. An empty packet of ketchup. I could take it. Then I would have something of hers to keep by my side. I stand up, realizing my need for her discarded trash, and rush to take it before anyone else sees.

---

Whose car am I in? I recognize the trees racing by, the dogwoods of my neighborhood.

“Are you alright?” Rayna asks from the driver’s seat.

I’m afraid to move. My eyes burn as I stare at her. What am I doing in her car? Does she think I’m a freak?

She smiles. “Did you have one of your black outs? Okay, my name’s Rayna. I’m your friend from high school. We’ve known each other for-”

“I know who you are, Rayna.” Her name rolls off my tongue like silk.

She shakes her head. “Of course you do. It’s how you got in my car that you don’t know.”

I nod.

She laughs. “You asked me if I would like to take you home, silly boy.”

“And you said yes?”

“No, that’s why you’re still at school in the cafeteria waiting for the bus, and I’m halfway to my house, and we are not having this conversation.”

I blink my eyes and allow my muscles to relax themselves. “Very funny.”

“You kinda asked for it.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” I turn to the trees outside the window. The flowers are starting to fall, replaced by green leaves. I open my backpack and grab my book, hoping to find answers. I open to the first page, see the bold print, They Broke Up, and snap it closed.

After staring at the windshield for a while, I fold my hands behind my head and smile.

“What are you so happy about?”

“Life.”

“What?”

“Simply beautiful.”

She looks out at the road for a moment, apparently debating the statement. “I suppose, but then again... I mean, there’s a lot of pain in the world.”

“But pain in itself is a form of beauty.”

“Yeah?” She smiles again. “How so?”

“Well, think about your pain, and all of the magnificent feelings and emotions it brings. It stirs you up. Makes you feel alive.”

“I dunno.”

“Like love, for example. You never realize how much you can truly love until you love someone from afar, and they never see you, like you’re not even there. It’s emotions like that that show color. Artists have depended on them for their inspirations. They’re invaluable. Beautiful, even.”

“You have a funny logic.”

“I’m an artist. I have a twisted mind. I know what I’m talking about.”

“Well, you do have a twisted mind. That much is for sure.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“Not you, no. Just your mind.” She laughs.

“Well, I guess that’s okay.”

We pull into my driveway, and I get out of the car. “Thanks for the ride.”

“No problem.” She shifts the car into reverse and rolls down the window. “Oh, and by the way, I’ve been driving you home from school for about a month now.”

---

The flavors, salty and smooth. What is it? Chicken. I swallow and open my eyes. Rayna is sitting across from me. At school? No, Mandarin Chinese Restaurant. We’re alone.

There’s a calendar on the wall next to the register. September. A year since the crash. I look out the window. Pisces is in the sky. Eight o’clock.

“So then what happens to Captain McMillan?” She asks with a smile.

Captain McMillan? Was I telling her about my first comic?

For some reason, this all feels natural, and I smile back at her. “Um…where was I?”

“The battle in the potato field with the flying pitchforks. It was very interesting.” She reaches out an arm and grabs a notebook lying between us. On the front, in bold print, it says Read Me. “Is this it?” She asks as she opens it and looks at the first page.

“No.” I reach over the table. “Can I have that back?”

She flips through a few pages, and snaps it closed. Her smile is gone. “Is this a joke?”

“No, it’s-”

“These drawings are me!”

“Well, yeah, but-”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re the tree guy? The stalker guy?” She leans back in the chair. “I don’t believe it,” she says to herself, and then chuckles. “My parent’s have filed police reports on you. A bit ironic, huh?”

“Listen, Rayna, I don’t always know what I’m doing. Where I am at times. I sometimes find myself in the middle of drawing those pictures. It doesn’t mean anything. Really.”

She picks up her glass of ginger ale and starts spinning it in small circles, the bubbly liquid sloshing around the inside of the glass. “Doesn’t mean anything?”

“No! Not that you don’t mean anything to me. That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean then?” She spins her glass more violently, and some of the liquid spills onto the white table cloth.

“Just that I shouldn’t really be convicted for something I’m not even sure I’m doing.” I swallow. “At the time, that is.”

She snaps the glass back down on the table, causing a couple of ice cubes to tumble across to the glass votive centerpiece. “Because you’re crazy,” she says.

I feel my throat contracting as my opened mouth dries.

“Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” she says. “It’s just that this is ridiculous. I mean, I even let myself fall for you.” She stands, slams the book on the table, and walks off. “Find your own way home!”

---

The dialog box says I saw your notebook! I rip out the page, ball it up, and throw it across the room. I try to start over, but my tears keep dripping onto the paper. I draw her face one more time, trying to capture the horrible look she had when she snapped the book closed, but it doesn’t work. The comic Rayna cannot hate me for the stuff in this book nearly as much as the real Rayna. At first, I could see it. Clear as a photograph. Her face, that horrible face in my mind, haunting me as I rushed to capture it on paper. Every attempt, a failure.

Now, I don’t even remember what it looked like. As I start to draw, I don’t even know why, only that I have a vague image in my head that needs to be out on paper. Why am I crying? I throw my pencil at the wall across the room. It hits the photograph of me and my brother. As I stare at his face, I find a new reason to cry, and bury my head in my knees.

My vision is blurry. My eyes…watery. How long have I been sitting on the floor? I need to get ready for bed. I slip off my pants, and take out the stuff in my pockets. There’s an empty ketchup packet. All around the room, empty ketchup packets are nailed to the walls in rows and columns. I guess that’s what this one’s for.

---

I turn and stick my nose to the window in the corner of the school hallway. Its cold glass steals the warm steam from my breath. There’s a dogwood next to an oak out in front of the football field. The wind steals their dead leaves in much the same way.

Rayna’s walking in the main entrance. This is the first time she’s come to school in two weeks. That’s what the book tells me. There’s a page that was ripped out, crumpled up, and then reentered. It tells me she found my notebook.

I run to the front door and meet her there. She looks at the ground, clutching her backpack tighter.

“Rayna! Listen to me. I-” When I reach her, I can see the tears in her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s the same thing every day. When I come in, you run up and apologize.”

“You haven’t been coming to school.”

Her chin trembles as she stares into my eyes. “I missed a day because I got food poisoning at the Chinese restaurant. But since then, I’ve been ripping pages out of your notebook.”

“What?”

“So you’ll forget that I was here.” She cries harder.

“What’s wrong with you!? How could you do such a thing!? And to someone with- And why are you crying if you want me to forget you!?” My fists are shaking.

“Because I drove by your brother’s grave today.”

Her words make my body still.

“You’ve been through a lot. So much.” She wipes her tears with her sweater sleeves. “And I feel the pain. For you, I feel it. And I erase myself each day from your book to become invisible so that I can sort through what happened at the restaurant. But I’ve come to realize something. Listen, you never know how much you can truly love until you love someone from afar, and they never see you, like you’re not even there. It is beautiful, but not as beautiful as when you do see me.” She wipes her tears again. “I want you to see me. I’m so sorry. I know this probably doesn’t make any sense. But it’s so hard. When you don’t even know. And every time’s the first time. And you’re not able to see me the way I see you. So I thought I could make myself invisible. But I don’t want that. That’s not what I want.”

I feel lighter, like a rope that was wrapped tight around my body has been cut loose. I smile, reach out, and touch her face. It’s chilled, except for the warm trail of tears. I don’t fully understand, but I know that she cares. “I do see you.”

---

There was a folded sheet of paper in my pocket that said Give to Rayna on the front, so I tap her on the shoulder in the cafeteria.

“Hey,” she smiles up at me.

“I have something for you.” I hand her the note, and she opens it on the table. I look over her shoulder to see what it says.

It’s a comic. One of mine. There are two panels. In the top, I’m handing her a bouquet of flowers and say I’m sorry you got food poisoning, and in the second, she throws up on me and says I’m allergic to flowers, silly boy.

We both laugh.

“You know what we haven’t done in a while?” She says.

“What?”

“Go on a picnic.”

“Midnight is the best time for a picnic,” I say. “This time of year, the falling leaves sing softly as they fly through the current of the winds.”

“Hey, those are my words. You stole them from me. Did you read that in your little book?”

I look through Rayna, my eyes coming out of focus as I dig through my mind for the source of those words. “No. I mean, it’s in there, but I haven’t read back that far in a long time. That was a year ago.” The words didn’t come from the book. I remember something about the school bus.

Her eyes open wide, like a smile, and she becomes still. “You mean…you remember?”

I look up at the ceiling, and the most peculiar thought comes to mind. I never realized it before. It always seemed so important for some reason, but now I can’t figure out why. I look back at Rayna. “I’ve been stealing your ketchup packets.”

She laughs. “I know. You’re my personal stalker.” She smiles, never taking her eyes off of me. “Just so you know, I’ve been leaving them on the table.” She reaches in her back pocket and pulls out another note. “I drew you a new picture for the beginning of your notebook.”

She hands it to me and I unfold it. It’s a picture of the two of us. We’re sitting on a patch quilt spread out on the dead leaves. There’s a basket of food between us, and we’re both smiling. The bubble out of her mouth says Ask me out for the first time again. The caption above reads She’s Mine.

a/n My first story. Be brutally honest. I am not shy.