The Process of Finding
It's been eight years since I started following him. They were years I could have spent doing more important things, but somehow I'm glad I didn't. We've driven across the country and back again, probably several times, and there are always new things to see, new jobs for us to take when the snow sets in and we are forced to take up a residence for the winter months. But once the snow melts and the grass turns verdant again, he'll gently touch my arm and say, "We have to keep moving," or ask, "Can we leave yet?" interposing my name for a pleading effect, and we'll leave whatever city harbored us from the cold season's weather to get back on the road.
His name is Worth, because his parents always thought he would amount to something, and he's trying to live up to their standards every breathing moment in a way I could not hope to do for my family. I'm the kind of son who always tried, but I eventually gave up in all my attempts to meet a standard and began to live up to my own expectations.
Worth started the trip to look for his missing sister, Worry, who ran away late one autumn night eight years ago. By spring, when she hadn't returned, the family grew anxious and, when the police results were inconclusive, sent out their son to find her. That was the cold spring day that he came to me, took my hands in his, looked at me directly with the big green eyes shared by everyone in his family, and asked, "Merit, will you come with me? I can't do this alone."
If he needed me, what could I say but yes? I could have said no, actually, and that I had better things to do with my time than play hide- and-seek with his younger sister for eight years. I could have said no, and that I hated Worth, his personality, and his sister. I could have said no, and that I would rather have sat at home and played video games until my brain collapsed in on itself, but none of it would have been true. Maybe his eyes are what convinced me to agree to the trip, and continually persuade me to stay.
Things haven't changed much since then. During the winter months we settle down and get jobs, usually random ones. When I bring in a stack of phone books, he smiles and starts leafing through them looking for his sister's name. Our system is based on an assumed lack of change, assuming that Worry never changed her name or was married. It's possible that she's left the country, and we've even begun to wonder if she's died, but we won't voice that of which we have no proof.
I feel like we never make progress unless we're moving, driving for twelve hours in the direction of the setting sun or cooped up in some motel where the rats scurry around beneath the floorboards and dirty pinkish shag carpet. There is always a short family visit each year where Worth's parents tell him how much they miss him, scold him for not finding Worry, then promptly send him back out again. It takes two hours and then, like clockwork, he appears at the car door, smiling and telling me that I don't have to keep going.
I always do.
"We're leaving in two days. Are we going shopping today?" Worth is lying down on the bed amidst the documents he's so far collected and organizing the new ones. Worry isn't exactly the most common name, and we've kept track of all the women we've contacted who have it.
"Sure. I can go if you want to finish the files," I say, searching for my favorite blue tennis shoes, the dirty ones with the black laces. They stopped fitting three years ago, but I've stretched them out so much that I manage to get my feet into them. I can't remember where I kicked them off yesterday, but I find one in a corner half obscured by the peeling wallpaper, and the other is under the bed making friends with the local dust bunnies. I have to spend an additional four minutes looking for a shirt, since everything has been packed away for our approaching departure. "We're leaving early this year, aren't we?"
I grab the neon green one, the color of radioactive snot. It has a hole in the shoulder that you can only see when it's being worn, and big fluorescent purple letters across the front that say, "Ask Me Anything," while the back proclaims, "Pathological Liar."
Worth looks at me and shakes his head good-naturedly in mockery of my fashion sense, then smiles crookedly (exposing that tiny hereditary gap between his canine teeth and lateral incisors, a trait I'd always considered strange) and says, "I guess it seems unusually early because there's still snow outside, but it really isn't." He looks down at the papers covering the sheets and adds, "I should be finished by this afternoon, if you want to come on back then. Otherwise, there isn't much you have to do." He runs a hand through his light brown hair that nearly matches the toffee-colored hotel room; the carpet, the bed sheets, the wallpaper, the doors, and the lampshades are all the same hideous color that are only brightened by Worth's presence there. "Go out and have fun or something. You're always cooped up in here with me, and I feel bad."
I nod slowly, as if half-deaf and quite dumb. I can't quite grasp the concept of going out and staying out if I'm not going to be working, and so I decide that after shopping I'll just come back, for a lack of better things to do. Grabbing the keys off the table, I dismiss myself and shut the door.
It doesn't bother me to be with him, and I don't think he understands that I'd much rather spend my hours with him than without. We never fight; he's too amiable and I'm too agreeable for us to ever argue over something trivial that can easily be fixed.
Our car is a little nondescript vehicle, dark blue and utterly plain. I don't even remember the make or the model, and I've been living in it for a large portion of my life. It blends in perfectly with the city's scenery, a snowy forest of office buildings and restaurants, and the native savages in their business suits and winter coats. As I slip haphazardly on the ice and attempt to scrape the windshield clean, I think of all the people who forget that they're stationary because they drive eighteen miles to work each day. I almost envy those not cursed with the nomadic wanderlust that separates us from a static life.
Early afternoon sun shines brightly off the snow, rendering me nearly blind, but the streets aren't crowded as people return to work after their lunch breaks. The markets are just as empty and I get my shopping done in an uncomfortably short span of time. I drive around the city because I feel like getting lost, but then I remember Worth's absence and, being mindful of the groceries in the trunk, I start heading back.
Worth and I are rarely apart for long, even during our brief hibernating states when we stop for a few months and attempt to get by on the talents we have to offer, so that we may continue to live in our small room in an inexpensive hotel or apartment that we rent. We apply for any job, from lumber hauling to floor cleaning, and the winter that just passed had me filing papers for an accountant in the mornings and manning a cash register at an antiques store in the early evenings.
Even so, I still manage to meet him for lunch; really, the miracle was that he was able to meet me while juggling three jobs and searching the phone books in his spare time. He's extraordinarily talented and I admire the perseverance he's had on this journey that we've undertaken. His abilities and my respect for him are some of the few things that have kept me from running back to my family. Plus, he's my friend, and it upsets me to think that I have so little a spine that I would run off and abandon him.
My gas tank is nearly empty, and I curse myself for just now noticing that the gas prices have risen again. I mindlessly pull into a station hoping that our car's fuel efficiency will keep me from being drowned in the rising tide of prices. The sign on the pump requests payment before pumping and I feel guilty using Worth's credit card for something like this. Of course, this pump is the farthest from the building and I walk up chilly and frustrated, wondering if people realize that it's cold outside.
The annoying little silver bell at the top of the door rings and I step into the line behind a father gently arguing with his young son over whether the child can have a grape sucker. They step up to the counter and pay for the gas, leaving the purple candy in a rack of maps and magazines, and then turn to leave. Then the father sees me and stops suddenly, confusing his son. The child, who can't be more than six and looks nothing like his father, regards the sucker still out of reach above him sorrowfully with big brown eyes.
"Merit?" The man asks quietly, "What are you doing here?"
I look up from eyeing my ice-encrusted sneakers straight into clear green eyes the color of ripe apples. "Pardon?"
"Daddy," says the child with a perfectly logical tone, "don't talk to strangers."
"It's you, isn't it?" He looks either excited or frightened or both, and I'm sure that I don't know him despite the fact that he knows my name.
".Yes, my name is Merit." I push my curly black hair out of my eyes but I still don't recognize him.
"I knew it was you! But. why are you here?" He smiles in confusion, and suddenly I do recognize those vivid green eyes, the light brown hair, and those indicative gaps around his canines.
"Daddy, Daddy, I wanna go home!" His son is getting impatient, pouting his lips and threatening on the verge of a tantrum in the way that only children can, his face reminiscent of storm clouds on the horizon.
"Can you jerks up there move?" yells a burly black-bearded man behind me and starts up a crowd of complaints in the quickly forming queue.
The man stares at me intently, nearly glaring, and says, "If you see Worth, tell him not to search for his sister anymore-"
"Daddy!"
"-because she's dead."
"Hey, you wanna pay for your gas yet buddy?" The barrel-chested, impatient, and wholly intimidating guy behind me slaps a hand on my shoulder, and I hastily pay for my temporarily forgotten gas.
The station attendant looks up from his book only to give me my change, wholly uninterested in the entire scene. When I look around, I no longer see the green-eyed man and his mismatched son. The artificially flavored tooth-decay developer is still sitting atop a map of Ohio.
This gives me a few short minutes to conjure a way to convey the information to Worth, which won't be nearly enough to tell him that our lives as we know them are over. When I consider it, I wonder why it has to end so suddenly, so abruptly, so painfully. My heart stops for a moment, and I can't breathe as I step down into the still air that smells of cold sunlight and frost.
It reminds me of a day eight years ago.
+Obligatory Author's Note+
Hmm. Not much to say about this, I guess. I entered it into a young author's contest in January of 2004, but I can honestly say I didn't expect anything to come of it. I just wanted the chance to express myself in a short story, rather than the long novels I'm used to working on. I think that it turned out exactly how I wanted it, with Merit sounding a little on the strange and introspective side. Although I had one friend who, before I revised it, thought Merit was a girl. *laughs* I guess I was projecting too much of myself onto him.
~Korukyu
It's been eight years since I started following him. They were years I could have spent doing more important things, but somehow I'm glad I didn't. We've driven across the country and back again, probably several times, and there are always new things to see, new jobs for us to take when the snow sets in and we are forced to take up a residence for the winter months. But once the snow melts and the grass turns verdant again, he'll gently touch my arm and say, "We have to keep moving," or ask, "Can we leave yet?" interposing my name for a pleading effect, and we'll leave whatever city harbored us from the cold season's weather to get back on the road.
His name is Worth, because his parents always thought he would amount to something, and he's trying to live up to their standards every breathing moment in a way I could not hope to do for my family. I'm the kind of son who always tried, but I eventually gave up in all my attempts to meet a standard and began to live up to my own expectations.
Worth started the trip to look for his missing sister, Worry, who ran away late one autumn night eight years ago. By spring, when she hadn't returned, the family grew anxious and, when the police results were inconclusive, sent out their son to find her. That was the cold spring day that he came to me, took my hands in his, looked at me directly with the big green eyes shared by everyone in his family, and asked, "Merit, will you come with me? I can't do this alone."
If he needed me, what could I say but yes? I could have said no, actually, and that I had better things to do with my time than play hide- and-seek with his younger sister for eight years. I could have said no, and that I hated Worth, his personality, and his sister. I could have said no, and that I would rather have sat at home and played video games until my brain collapsed in on itself, but none of it would have been true. Maybe his eyes are what convinced me to agree to the trip, and continually persuade me to stay.
Things haven't changed much since then. During the winter months we settle down and get jobs, usually random ones. When I bring in a stack of phone books, he smiles and starts leafing through them looking for his sister's name. Our system is based on an assumed lack of change, assuming that Worry never changed her name or was married. It's possible that she's left the country, and we've even begun to wonder if she's died, but we won't voice that of which we have no proof.
I feel like we never make progress unless we're moving, driving for twelve hours in the direction of the setting sun or cooped up in some motel where the rats scurry around beneath the floorboards and dirty pinkish shag carpet. There is always a short family visit each year where Worth's parents tell him how much they miss him, scold him for not finding Worry, then promptly send him back out again. It takes two hours and then, like clockwork, he appears at the car door, smiling and telling me that I don't have to keep going.
I always do.
"We're leaving in two days. Are we going shopping today?" Worth is lying down on the bed amidst the documents he's so far collected and organizing the new ones. Worry isn't exactly the most common name, and we've kept track of all the women we've contacted who have it.
"Sure. I can go if you want to finish the files," I say, searching for my favorite blue tennis shoes, the dirty ones with the black laces. They stopped fitting three years ago, but I've stretched them out so much that I manage to get my feet into them. I can't remember where I kicked them off yesterday, but I find one in a corner half obscured by the peeling wallpaper, and the other is under the bed making friends with the local dust bunnies. I have to spend an additional four minutes looking for a shirt, since everything has been packed away for our approaching departure. "We're leaving early this year, aren't we?"
I grab the neon green one, the color of radioactive snot. It has a hole in the shoulder that you can only see when it's being worn, and big fluorescent purple letters across the front that say, "Ask Me Anything," while the back proclaims, "Pathological Liar."
Worth looks at me and shakes his head good-naturedly in mockery of my fashion sense, then smiles crookedly (exposing that tiny hereditary gap between his canine teeth and lateral incisors, a trait I'd always considered strange) and says, "I guess it seems unusually early because there's still snow outside, but it really isn't." He looks down at the papers covering the sheets and adds, "I should be finished by this afternoon, if you want to come on back then. Otherwise, there isn't much you have to do." He runs a hand through his light brown hair that nearly matches the toffee-colored hotel room; the carpet, the bed sheets, the wallpaper, the doors, and the lampshades are all the same hideous color that are only brightened by Worth's presence there. "Go out and have fun or something. You're always cooped up in here with me, and I feel bad."
I nod slowly, as if half-deaf and quite dumb. I can't quite grasp the concept of going out and staying out if I'm not going to be working, and so I decide that after shopping I'll just come back, for a lack of better things to do. Grabbing the keys off the table, I dismiss myself and shut the door.
It doesn't bother me to be with him, and I don't think he understands that I'd much rather spend my hours with him than without. We never fight; he's too amiable and I'm too agreeable for us to ever argue over something trivial that can easily be fixed.
Our car is a little nondescript vehicle, dark blue and utterly plain. I don't even remember the make or the model, and I've been living in it for a large portion of my life. It blends in perfectly with the city's scenery, a snowy forest of office buildings and restaurants, and the native savages in their business suits and winter coats. As I slip haphazardly on the ice and attempt to scrape the windshield clean, I think of all the people who forget that they're stationary because they drive eighteen miles to work each day. I almost envy those not cursed with the nomadic wanderlust that separates us from a static life.
Early afternoon sun shines brightly off the snow, rendering me nearly blind, but the streets aren't crowded as people return to work after their lunch breaks. The markets are just as empty and I get my shopping done in an uncomfortably short span of time. I drive around the city because I feel like getting lost, but then I remember Worth's absence and, being mindful of the groceries in the trunk, I start heading back.
Worth and I are rarely apart for long, even during our brief hibernating states when we stop for a few months and attempt to get by on the talents we have to offer, so that we may continue to live in our small room in an inexpensive hotel or apartment that we rent. We apply for any job, from lumber hauling to floor cleaning, and the winter that just passed had me filing papers for an accountant in the mornings and manning a cash register at an antiques store in the early evenings.
Even so, I still manage to meet him for lunch; really, the miracle was that he was able to meet me while juggling three jobs and searching the phone books in his spare time. He's extraordinarily talented and I admire the perseverance he's had on this journey that we've undertaken. His abilities and my respect for him are some of the few things that have kept me from running back to my family. Plus, he's my friend, and it upsets me to think that I have so little a spine that I would run off and abandon him.
My gas tank is nearly empty, and I curse myself for just now noticing that the gas prices have risen again. I mindlessly pull into a station hoping that our car's fuel efficiency will keep me from being drowned in the rising tide of prices. The sign on the pump requests payment before pumping and I feel guilty using Worth's credit card for something like this. Of course, this pump is the farthest from the building and I walk up chilly and frustrated, wondering if people realize that it's cold outside.
The annoying little silver bell at the top of the door rings and I step into the line behind a father gently arguing with his young son over whether the child can have a grape sucker. They step up to the counter and pay for the gas, leaving the purple candy in a rack of maps and magazines, and then turn to leave. Then the father sees me and stops suddenly, confusing his son. The child, who can't be more than six and looks nothing like his father, regards the sucker still out of reach above him sorrowfully with big brown eyes.
"Merit?" The man asks quietly, "What are you doing here?"
I look up from eyeing my ice-encrusted sneakers straight into clear green eyes the color of ripe apples. "Pardon?"
"Daddy," says the child with a perfectly logical tone, "don't talk to strangers."
"It's you, isn't it?" He looks either excited or frightened or both, and I'm sure that I don't know him despite the fact that he knows my name.
".Yes, my name is Merit." I push my curly black hair out of my eyes but I still don't recognize him.
"I knew it was you! But. why are you here?" He smiles in confusion, and suddenly I do recognize those vivid green eyes, the light brown hair, and those indicative gaps around his canines.
"Daddy, Daddy, I wanna go home!" His son is getting impatient, pouting his lips and threatening on the verge of a tantrum in the way that only children can, his face reminiscent of storm clouds on the horizon.
"Can you jerks up there move?" yells a burly black-bearded man behind me and starts up a crowd of complaints in the quickly forming queue.
The man stares at me intently, nearly glaring, and says, "If you see Worth, tell him not to search for his sister anymore-"
"Daddy!"
"-because she's dead."
"Hey, you wanna pay for your gas yet buddy?" The barrel-chested, impatient, and wholly intimidating guy behind me slaps a hand on my shoulder, and I hastily pay for my temporarily forgotten gas.
The station attendant looks up from his book only to give me my change, wholly uninterested in the entire scene. When I look around, I no longer see the green-eyed man and his mismatched son. The artificially flavored tooth-decay developer is still sitting atop a map of Ohio.
This gives me a few short minutes to conjure a way to convey the information to Worth, which won't be nearly enough to tell him that our lives as we know them are over. When I consider it, I wonder why it has to end so suddenly, so abruptly, so painfully. My heart stops for a moment, and I can't breathe as I step down into the still air that smells of cold sunlight and frost.
It reminds me of a day eight years ago.
+Obligatory Author's Note+
Hmm. Not much to say about this, I guess. I entered it into a young author's contest in January of 2004, but I can honestly say I didn't expect anything to come of it. I just wanted the chance to express myself in a short story, rather than the long novels I'm used to working on. I think that it turned out exactly how I wanted it, with Merit sounding a little on the strange and introspective side. Although I had one friend who, before I revised it, thought Merit was a girl. *laughs* I guess I was projecting too much of myself onto him.
~Korukyu