Wonderlust

So You're Atticus

I must have stared at the wall for hours. I can't go back to school tomorrow. I can't. I'd already bitten off all my nails down to the skin and my bottom lip was bleeding from fidgeting. I bit down hard and sucked on it, enjoying the sharp pain that lasted a few seconds from it.

The time on my phone screen read 11:49 and I ran my hands through my grubby, oily face. A cold breeze came in through the window and I walked over, turning off the light and starring out across the horizon. There was a dim light shining where the sky touched the earth on all sides. I reached for my bedpost where my shark-print hoodie hung and pulled it over my head.

I pushed up the window slightly, then pressed my finger on the corners of the screen and watched as it popped out. I was holding onto the string (that I tied on there) to keep it from falling and to pull it back in when I got back. Then I gently laid it against the side of the house. Then I carefully crept across the roof before jumping down onto the ground.

It wasn't something I did often but I think tonight called for it.

There was a can of spray paint and a little bucket of wall paint in a container behind the broken board of one our neighbor's fences. They moved out six years ago and never used it. I liked to take it and go go into the woods near my house. There was a hill and some boulders that I had vandalized. Nothing obscene just... drawings. Scary venty drawings that I hoped no one ever saw.

After trekking through the woods for twenty minutes I set down the bucket and pulled out the spray pain, going over a semi-empty spot (I didn't like the other drawings anyway, I never did) until I had a black empty square and a can of white paint. Then I set to work like the worlds most overly emotional and insecure caveman. Cavewoman. No, caveman. Invalidating myself never helped.

In had been about an hour and all I had done was write 'fix my body' about fifteen times when all of a sudden I heard it. A faint strumming of some stringed instrument, too low to be a guitar. I wasn't actually sure what it was. A ukulele? I had never heard a ukulele before, I'm not even sure what one looked like. That didn't even matter because as soon as I heard it I went dead quiet and turned off my phone flashlight. Then I pressed up against the rocks and made myself as small as possible. I had to get away form here, I couldn't be found by some stoner-murder type with a guitar/ukulele walking out in the middle of the woods for no good reason. Oh God, the strumming stopped.

"Hello?"

Then all of a sudden I recognize them. Blue haired, enamoring human. Fake flowers. We held eye contact for a moment before they recognized me.

"Uh... You come here often?" They looked about as confused as expected for someone in their situation.

My mouth dropped open and that's all I was able to do. They stepped closer, enough to see all my dumb vandalism. They didn't seem surprised though, they set down their ukulele and plopped down on the dirt a few feet away. Then turned back towards me, with a curious look on their face.

"It's alright if you don't want to talk. I'm cool with that. I'm Dylan, I don't know if you do pronouns but mine are he/him."

He gave me his pronouns. He actually did that. Eleven and a half years and the only people I had met who used that kind of language existed purely on the internet. I was shocked, and didn't really know what to say, so I didn't. It made me feel horribly awkward but I had no idea what to do.

"Are you the one who painted all this?" He craned his neck to look at the underside of the rock.

"Um...yeah." I replied quietly.

"So you're Atticus?" Dylan was definitely holding a ukulele, he gestured with the other hand to an older vandalism of mine where I just wrote my name over and over.

"Yeah." I pulled the strings of my hoodie uncertainly.

"That's cool. I've always wondered who made all this this. You know I used to think it was some crazy old man who came out here to get high and painting was a side effect of whatever crazy crap he was on. Sad teenager makes a lot more sense though." He nodded, picking at the ukulele strings in an off handed manner.

"Sad?" I raised an eyebrow at him.

He raised right back at me. "No offense, but some of the paintings you've gone over were pretty screwed up. I'm using it as an understatement."

I blushed. God, this was embarrassing. No one had ever caught me back here before and I didn't know what to do now that someone had.

"Wait, so you come here often?" I said snarkily repeated his first question back to him.

"Oh yeah. All the time. Mostly in the day though. Previously, when I thought you were a crazy old man, I figured I didn't want to show up here in the middle of the night. I might get myself gutted or something. I have to admit you're a lot less intimidating in real life."

"You're under the impression I still won't stab you?"

His eyes flicked form the ceiling down to me. Then a cheeky grin pulled at the corner of his mouth. "Oh, I'm terrified. Not of you but of your mind. This is some scary crap you've got here Atticus."

Despite the conflicting feeing of how-was-I-still-making-this-conversation-work, I had to admit it felt really good when he said my name out loud. It was good to hear it. I had grown up actually liking my dead name, but ever since I started questions things the sound of it grew less and less appealing. Presently I hated it. Hearing it felt like a slap to the face, so yeah, Dylan saying my real name felt really, really good. I wanted him to say it more.

"Um... thanks." I decided that was a good answer.

He laughed, it was a surprising noise and sounded like windex on fiberglass. "I like you. Why aren't we already friends?"

I shrugged. "I don't have any friends."

"Never?"

"Not since... a while."

I had a friend who was a girl once. She pretty much ostracized me once I let her in that I thought I might be into girls. The she switched schools sophomore year and I haven't seen her since.

"Well I can change that. Allow me."

He cleared his throat and picked up his uke. Then strummed a few chords while I watched in hesitant curiosity. Dylan had a song prepared for this... ?

"Hey your name is Atticus, I think that's really raddicus, please be my friend."

I couldn't help laughing, but since I was already kind of uncomfortable it came out in a super embarrassing way. You know those kind of laughs where you already feel awkward so your laugh is awkward and you just want crinkle up like a balled up newspaper and slam dunk yourself right in the trash. God, I'm a mess.

"I came up with that on the fly if you can imagine." Dylan smirked. "So what'll it be shark boy?"

I froze, I couldn't believe what he just said. Shark boy? Boy? Does he see me as a boy? I mean yes, duh, I've already got him calling me Atticus. My heart skipped a beat because I hardly dared believe it was true.

"Oh, um. Oh you mean my sweatshirt." I realized I was indeed, still wearing the shark-patterned sweatshirt I tugged on before I left. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, you can be my friend. I guess."

He smiled again from ear to ear like my own personal ray of sunshine and I just about died. "Yay! We should totally hang out. Tomorrow! I'll see you at school tomorrow. Oh! That reminds me I mean't to give this back to you."

He reached into a bag I hadn't seen before in the darkness. To my horror he brought out my sketchbook. He was the one who had it all along.