Victories

I counted ten inactive streetlights on the roads between the Bainbridge house and the pharmacy. I didn't have a good reason for counting them, there was fog and rain flying over the windscreen so the patches of darkness stood out more when my headlights probed the denseness of the air. I suppose the temporal inconsistency of the night had brought on these odd observations. I felt like I'd been waiting an hour when I parked up in front of Lyle's house and texted him that I'd arrived, but from there to the edge of his neighbourhood I felt time shoot by, only to have it fall back to a creep again once I pulled out onto the main road.

All of which is to say that I remember having some odd feelings on this particular night. With Lyle poking around in my head and nature clouding all my other senses, I didn't expect to have such a vivid moment of clarity. There's an analogy there, I feel.

"I've told Janet that you're my girlfriend now," he said as we drove down Richardson Road. It always made me cringe when I heard people call their parents by their first names. Lyle explained that calling a person by anything else would be submitting to their power, giving them a title that they'd done nothing to earn. But it still made no sense to me.

"Why?" I asked.

"I doubt she'd have let me out for any other reason. She thinks I'm depressed."

"You are depressed."

He seemed to scoff at my comment. A kind of titter that I knew had initiated a sort of discussion in his mind. He was thinking about how ignorant I must be, and was probably firing off a chain of clever quips at his imaginary driver in her imaginary car.

"Janet lives between bottles of whisky and painkillers. There's no view of the real world from hers, so she can't say shit about me or anybody else."

He was definitely depressed.

"My Mum thinks I'm okay," I said. "At least I think she does."

"Maybe she just doesn't care."

"Yeah, you might like to think so."

"She doesn't think you're a failure?"

It was my turn to sneer. "My mother keeps my trophies and paintings up on the living room mantle, I hear her stop in the hall when she walks past my room when I'm practicing violin. She doesn't think I'm a failure." I paused for a minute as we passed the park where Jenny had cut me. I felt the steering wheel necking under my grip.

"So she's not a problem, then."

"The only problem is the forced character of our world. She tells me that every day is an accomplishment. Every song I learn is an event, every test score, every volleyball game I play, every act is an achievement. It's all wrong. It's all forced. I want some truth."

"I hear that." He grinned at me, his swollen eye somehow allowed his brow to arc up and let him smile. The pleasure was authentic and it made me think my mind was in the right place.

I didn't notice the Band-Aid on his left ring finger until we got to the first pharmacy in New Windsor. He reached into his back jean pocket for his wallet and I saw it right there on his dark digit. It looked like it had been there a while so I should've already noticed the gash, it wouldn't have helped anything to ask him about it now. I started to notice the rest of him after that. I saw his unironed button-up shirt under his hoodie, the black covered the brown which was sort of how his eyes appeared under his round brow and fading bruise. He'd seen better days. We both had. When I looked at myself in the visor mirror I hated what I saw.

Japanese girls looked nice with short hair, but they also looked good in short shorts and tight tops. No cleavage, but plenty of bust. Those girls had parts to show off, tight thighs, sweet smiles, perfect test scripts. I was tall, lean, and clever, but I hadn't smiled in weeks. I didn't know I had a hoodie, but I found a pink one in my closet last week and it had quickly become my favourite jacket. It was just what I needed. It allowed me a sense of hiddenness, a way to just disappear. At any moment I could hide myself away, but the feelings of hollowness came in force whenever I saw myself in the mirror. I would have to wonder how I came to be here. To be in this place. To look like this person.