Some Place Better Than Here

Chapter 23: Bridge Over Troubled Water

"Yeah, yeah. It is," he said. So Connor was the other boy on the family photo wall, not an old Kindergarten friend. He then asked, "How do you know?"

"You left a drawing in your sketchbook with his name," I said and left it at that. I had questions, but I did not want to pry. For I began to wonder, with everything that had happened between us, why was I in his room to begin with? The memory of his hands on me crept into my mind, but I was too weak, too desperate for the safety Danny made me feel to let it flood my thoughts.

After a minute, Danny got up to put on a record he said I would probably like. I certainly wasn't in any position to argue. Most likely because I didn't really care what music he wanted to listen to.

He went to lift the plastic case off his turntable and replaced whatever record was on there with Untitled Album and dropped the needle. First, it was silent, and then with a thump and the crackling grains, the first strings of a guitar sounded. Danny sat back down on the bed, opposite me, as the singer, with nothing but a lonely sounding guitar and a lonelier sounding voice, filled the space. We sat through a handful of songs without saying a word.

Danny's eyes were locked on the window. I made off and on glances at him, I wanted to see the rare green in his eyes again. Despite the welcome numbness of the painkiller, the constant movement of my eye began to make my head hurt. With his fingers curled under his lip, he looked deep in thought. I considered asking him what he was thinking. Danny had never been that quiet with me before.

Eventually, we made disjointed eye contact. My head erupted. My eye screamed. It was as if I could feel some sort of ooze from the glands slowly encrusting my eye shut. Inside, I had what felt like guilty butterflies. I just wanted to be anywhere else. He was being mean by not talking to me. I was so ashamed of myself. I hated myself.

My eye rapidly throbbed, as if it were bubbling. I felt so ugly. My appearance repulsed him. I just knew it. His bedroom was a place of peace; I didn't deserve to be there. At the end of the day, I knew what I was. And despite being crazy and ugly, as well as homeless and trash, I wasn't good enough for him. I didn't deserve him. After all, I had to con him back to me with the disease of misfortune that was my life.

And then, out of nowhere, he laughed.

For a regretful split-second, I believed everything I had felt was true and wanted to die. But then it occurred to me that I had my thumb wedged up my nostril, and I was scraping crusted snot off my nose ring. I plucked my thumb away and looked at the disgusting crud collected beneath my nail. My glance shot from my thumb to him. Danny's laugh arrived in silent heaves. I couldn't help but join him. I felt so stupid, but I didn't feel so ugly anymore.

===========DANNY============

The rain swept over the street in hard white lines. Tattering periodically against the road as if pounded out from the base of a marching-band drum. The ceaselessly redirecting wind fluxed the trees and whipped through the leaves mourning in coarse whispers.

The weather was far from favorable, and the umbrella Mary and I sheltered behind was all too determined to blow away with every new change in the wind. But braving the storm was a challenge, and the challenge had made it fun.

If anything, I was happy to be getting along with Mary again. It began to feel like old times, and I began to miss her, even though she was right beside me. Maybe I knew then that our time together wasn't going to last forever.

Gradually, the weather receded into a gentle rainfall, and in place of the storm, we talked.

"...And that's when I realized I was the only girl without a mom." Mary sniffled, not from crying, but from the chill of the damp air. "It was the worst day of my life," she continued, unveiling the piece from her past as we walked through the misty evening.