Trying To Endure

Chapter Seven

SONG: Human Touch - Promise Not To Fall

What are your thoughts on Bodie?

🌺

Derek Matthews

Sitting in the back of classrooms, reserved and placid, observing students, observing people, is thoroughly enticing. Once you are objective, once you use your sight and mind accurately, people are simply open books. Their subtle gestures, the way they speak, the words they choose, the way they dress, move and walk tells details of a story, if not their whole story.

Approximately a year ago, a group of boys in our grade (we were in Year 12 at the time) were sexually violating girls in the dorm bathrooms. Ines's ex, Holden Tasse who goes to a public school in the city centre, insinuated it.

Great-Uncle Grae, my grandfather's brother, intermittently expressed a life hack. 'Our Lord is enigmatic,' he stated. 'He desires our world to revolutionise on its own, to let our intelligence grow, thus He does not interfere.'

'So He left us?' I asked. Young me was a Protestant, as any child raised in a religious family would be until they reach the age of questioning.

Uncle Grae smiled. 'No, Derek. He is present, albeit He does not interfere. There are times that He decides to twist the pages of events, but overall He cherishes free will. He wants us to progress alone. At times we do, at times we do not, and the moments we do not was when He mercifully sent His Begotten Son to us—' Great-Uncle Grae briefly Crossed himself, the mind, body and soul, and kissed his fingertips '—as well as His other prophets, like Prophet Muhammed, peace be upon him. However, the days are elapsing quicker. Life is becoming more grave than it normally is. So, again, He mercifully helps us.'

'Has He helped you?'

'Yes. But not in the way I hoped. Often when I ask for assistance, my experiences are instantly turmoil.' Uncle Grae shrugged. 'I go with it. I see it as cleansing.'

'Like Job,' I thought, and he nodded, delighted I understood so swiftly. I think Uncle Grae was a pussy for being Job. He was passively obliging, like a robot. He should've shown his anger, kept asking why his life was shit.

'So,' I said in a frown, 'what signs does God show to help us?'

'Birds of a flock stick together.'

My frown deepened, my curiosity heightened. 'Birds?'

'Everyone is on a different wavelength,' he explained. 'We attract those similar to us.'

'I'm confused.'

'You attract what you are,' he summarised, and my bewilderment eased. 'To be cautious of people, you discern who they talk to, who they smile at. It exposes their nature. It reveals the kind-hearted and the ill-hearted.'

That is what those selfish, repellent boys — the birds of a flock — wanted: an excuse of a leader, Holden.

Something flickered in Great-Uncle Grae's knowledge. He endeavoured to smile, although it was strained. He withdrew a cigarette, inflamed the end, inhaled and exhaled whilst his eyes watered. 'God be with us,' he mumbled, 'when we see the truth.'

That was the last time I saw him. He died in a plane crash with his wife and son.

The streaming beams clash with the gloom. An atomic fusion of gasps, exclaims and whispers detonates. The four officers: fair, noses long and bulgy, lips thin and snarling, eyes diminutive like slits, hooded and sunken.

I witnessed a great share of arrests. This ... This is an overwhelming shock, a brief iron-deficiency spin. 

Sexual assault? I stare at Bodie, his dark palms raised high, mustering each spark of willpower to forcibly calm his quivers.