Before the Rain

One: I Can Play Your Game of Despair with My Eyes Closed

I know that this doesn't make quite as much sense as it could; I'm a white, middle class teenage boy from a safe neighborhood with loving, yet so blindly ignorant parents. I've got a healthy body, at least externally, and one could say I've got potential.

There's always someone worse off, and there's always going to be someone better. But I don't think I want to be better or worse. I don't want anything. I want eternal silence...or hell, whichever prevails.

Either way, I have something to look forward to, and that's enough to keep myself from complaining any further.

But as I sit and watch the other teenagers sprinting up and down the court, their sneakers making a terrible noise against the polished wood, a few of more of them enter through the locker room exit. Unfortunately making their way towards my inevitably alone self.

I expect them to make fun of me or something for sitting out as they approach, however, a tall boy with a backwards cap and long dark hair beams downs at me, "Hey you wanna play a game of horse?"

"Matt no man what are you doing? Bennett's fucking weird," I hear another one poorly attempt to whisper to this strange "Matt" figure.

I have no idea what horse was, or any kind of intention to play the game whatsoever.

I stayed silent, waiting for the group to just leave me alone so I could get back to ultimately nothing. I just need this time to reflect with myself and company would just decease my chances of feeling any kind of happiness towards my opposition at all.

The boy called Matt takes a slow breath inwards, his hands on his hips and his eyes on his trainers, "What's your name?"

I stared up at him in a wild delirium of incredulity, "Cal."

A few of the others in the group snickered, which is understandable.

Matt shot them a deafening glance before turning his attention back towards myself, "I'm Matt, and uh-yeah. So do you wanna play a game with us or not?"

I shook my head, declining his proposal desperately. I wanted to thank him at least, but after I had made it extremely obvious that I wanted them gone, they got the hint and made their way back towards the court.

I leant backwards against the metal railing on the bleachers. Everything will be over soon. I won't have to turn in anymore bullshit assignments; or fake a terrible attitude around my parents. I won't have to be anything.

That kind of ebullient freedom makes me wish I'd thought of this sooner.

Perhaps I needed this though; this experience. All of the quite unfortunate things that'd so generously carried me through my entire life all sort of piled up onto one brilliant decision. I might be at least a bit thankful for that much.

I had thought about my parents as well, and how they would take it. Of course they would be upset and probably angry with me for just leaving their Prius on the middle of an overpass. But they'll move on, just like very one else does. And eventually I will be just as unspoken and invisible as I am now.

❧

A few hours passed at school and I began to realize the actual pain of it all: What if I didn't die? What if, somehow, I just hit the ground, breaking my neck and ribs but still breathing?

After that my parents would never let me leave the house; and I would be prescribed to a therapist, again, and the whole goddamn process would start over.

I repress those fortuitous thoughts for a little while longer, simply distracting myself with one of my favorite books, The Scarlet Letter. I'd probably read it about a hundred times, most in which took place whilst at the brink of breaking down. However, this situation couldn't have been more of the opposite.