THE VISION IS A PLACE | ✓ {complete}

Chapter 56 : Saturday, the second part

Noah doesn't know how to walk away. How do you say goodbye without saying goodbye? How do you just walk off, knowing it's the last time? How do you leave the people you called home for the last year? Why does this feel so wrong all of a sudden?

...Is it wrong? Why don't I know the answer to that anymore?

"Noah," I say again. I can see that he's struggling, but, in the span of one exhale, he straightens his back.

"Yeah, ready." He takes off through the growing crowd, propelling himself in long, swinging strides.

I try to keep up, but it's hard to maneuver two instruments through all the market-goers. Everyone has come early to beat the rain by the looks of it. A few people stop to admire his crutches. Usually Noah's like a puppy, excited to talk to anyone, but today he brushes them off.

When we're far enough from the table, he finally lets me catch up with him.

"Where are we going?" he asks, avoiding making eye contact. He knows the second he looks at me, he's going to break. I can hear it in his voice; he's so close. So he looks anywhere else.

I lead us the rest of the way, and help him down onto on of the tree's roots. The trunk shields us from the table, and we have a view of the baseball diamond and narrow parking spaces that run alongside it. It must have been a long time since anyone has actually played there. The dirt is sprouting witch grass and dandelions, the bleachers are sinking, and the rusty chain link fence is making a seventy degree angle with the ground in some spots.

He tips his drum on its side to use as a footrest, while I sit on my guitar case to lean back against the wide trunk. Following the parameters of being within sight of the table, we're in about as good a place there is; about a hundred yards away, and low to the ground. They'll only be able to see us well when the crowd thins.

Hopefully all of this will be over by then.

"I'm freaking out, Case," Noah says, twenty minutes in. The jitters have taken over. "What if they changed their minds?"

"When's the last time you talked to them?"

"Yesterday morning."

"We're fine then," I tell him, although I'm starting to think maybe we should have come up with a backup plan just in case they were to bail. Thing is, I don't really think there's another option for Noah. If this falls through, he's not going to bolt. Even if he tries, he'll get caught before he makes it very far on crutches. I think, if this doesn't work, he'd rather go back to the farm and call it fate, rather than risk getting caught trying to leave.

Stressed, he starts searching his pockets. "Will you ask someone for a light? You know that guy, right?" he asks, nodding towards the coffee shop. The blonde-haired barista is plugging his guitar into an amp next to the door. His parents don't let him play inside anymore. He told me so the last time he came over to our table with one of his mixtapes, back when we were still friends, sort of. But then, one market, he stopped coming over, and that was it. We haven't talked since. I kept thinking Heath said something to him, or maybe even Addison did. But I never asked.

I'm ashamed that I never went to him. I guess I've just been scared. Scared that he might not want to talk to me, in case it was something I did that made him stop wanting to come over. "Um...I can light it at the prayer fire," I offer, even though the idea of lighting a joint from the same fire a woman is using to pray for her sons at feels a little off.

"Nevermind. I got it." He starts picking at the dead grass around us. Once he has a good handful of it, he moves onto the tree. Using the knife he keeps at his waist, he shaves off some of the dry bark, catching the fibres in his cupped hand. "...Remember when you me and Kyle tried making spruce gum that once time?" he asks, now chipping away at a big chunk of crystallized sap.