Burden of the Soul

2.

I crossed over 98 street and saw Alli up ahead, tapping her foot. I was late, but only by a few minutes. And in my defense, I was usually late.

My pace quickened as she turned and spotted me. She pulled her white headphones out and swung her bag around to her front and reached inside, pulling out a wrapped box finished with a neat bow. She even took a second to straighten the ribbon before presenting it to me.

“Happy Birthday,” she said, with a big smile.

“Thanks.” I cringed at the sound of my voice. It cracked a bit when I said it, but that’s because I noticed a few people looking at us as they passed. I was terrible when put on the spot.

“It’s just something small. I saw you eyeing it the last time we went downtown.”

Afternoons wandering the city were usually chaperoned by our moms who had become friends by proximity. They did, however, allow us the illusion of freedom by waiting for us in a nearby café as we strolled the streets.

With Allison it was always easy. Our friendship, I mean. Neither one of us carried the popular genes that just seemed to come naturally to some, but we didn’t carry the outcast genes either. We both floated somewhere in the middle and therefore took the ride together, helping each other along the way and sometimes coming to the other’s defense.

There was one time in our first year at Hunter that a guy, Jason Wheeler, picked her out of the lunchroom crowd to tease, making jokes about the neatly wrapped sandwich and note her mom had included in her lunch. Allison’s head had gone down immediately, prepared to take the verbal beating and hold her tears for the girls’ bathroom afterwards.

I was generally a pretty quiet kid, but something new burned in me that day. As Jason and the other bullies laughed and surrounded Allison, something ached in me to save my new friend and put this jerk in his place.

I took a moment, concentrating on my conflicting wants of helping Allison and remaining outside Jason’s sphere of focus, and then this other awareness crept in. It encircled the edges of my thoughts, foreign to my own memories but somehow there. I could see a living room that wasn’t my own. I could hear the echoes of a couple arguing over antiques broken by a basketball thrown in the house, an expensive work of art ruined by their son’s artistic interpretation with markers, and in later years sneaking out at night and late-night calls from the police.

I could feel the boy’s motivation—attention. But I could also feel his guilt and regret when he thought it was his behavior that disintegrated their marriage. I felt the weight in his chest and burning behind his eyes as he listened to his Dad pack an overnight bag and leave, knowing he wouldn’t be coming back.

Without really thinking about it or making sense of the thoughts, I allowed my mouth to open and the words blurted out before I could think better of it.

“Maybe her mom’s grateful she didn’t chase away her dad. Maybe that’s worth a note in a lunch.”

His eyes met mine for a moment as his group of followers turned to him waiting for a response. I saw the breaking in his eyes, the heartache renewed and immediately felt bad about the words I had allowed to slip out. But I held my ground and tightened my hands into fists to disguise their shaking as strength and not fear. I knew nothing of his life and could make little sense of what I had seen in my mind a moment ago—images as if cast from my own memory. Part of me tensed, preparing for the backlash. If all I could offer my new friend was a distraction of her attackers, then that was the best I could do.

But the anger behind Jason’s eyes took a turn and shifted from fire to water as his eyes glistened over at the edges. For a moment, I thought I saw his chin quiver. The sight broke my heart and sent it soaring with victory all in the same breath.

“Yeah, well… you better watch yourself, newbie.” His eyes flipped back to anger as he said it, but at least they didn’t trail back to Allison. As he stomped off, the rest of his followers turned to me, looking me up and down with equal parts confusion and irritation, and then followed their master to the next table of fresh victims.

Both Alli and I had mostly been left alone in the coming years at Hunter, though we made a few good friends through different classes and clubs. We were both active members of Chapter 11, the school’s satirical publication.

As the two of us walked through the winding paths of Central Park on our way to the East Side, we chatted back and forth about the upcoming issue and our respective assignments. As we were walking with the Reservoir to our right, joggers dodging in and out of our peripheral vision, I couldn’t help but notice the massive, dark-skinned man sitting on his usual bench.

He was there every day, it seemed. And if he wasn’t on this particular bench he was sitting somewhere nearby. The repetition had caught my attention sometime last year and I was all the more shocked to see him again when the school year started back up.

“Do you notice that guy is always there?”

Alli turned around looking for the man I was referring to. I motioned with my hand, but pulled it down immediately when I saw his eyes slide up from the newspaper he was reading and look directly at us.

“Him? Yeah. I mean, we’ve passed him a couple times,” said Alli, brushing off the encounter with more ease than I could muster.

“Every day, Alli. We pass him every day.”

“Clara, it’s New York City. People have their daily rituals. It’s a park, he’s allowed to sit there.”

He seemed to follow us with his eyes as we kept walking. I risked one quick look over my shoulder and saw he had turned back to the paper in his hands. He was smiling.

“Oh man, I had so much trouble with that Algebra assignment. It took me hours,” she said. Alli was really good about redirecting conversation when she had an agenda, but she was terrible at lying. I heard the unspoken intent of her comment. She was checking up on me to see if I needed any assistance in the last remaining minutes of our walk to school.

“It wasn’t so bad.” I lied.

“Yeah?” Her eyes were asking me the real question on her mind, which was whether or not I was lying and, conversely, whether she was allowed to stop worrying about my math grades.

“Yeah, it was total cake. I’m sure you’re fine.” I couldn’t help but laugh a little to myself at this game of trying to make her feel better about it. She was fine. I knew that. And she certainly didn’t need to be worrying about me. Allison would carry me all the way to Columbia University if she could. But the likelihood of me ending up there was getting more and more grim with each assignment that was passed out, so the time had come for me to begin letting her off her self-imposed hook.

“Good,” she said, with both relief and enthusiasm. “I knew it, Clara. This is totally our year.”

She was looking straight ahead allowing herself to wander through her mind into her own dreams. We didn’t talk much about my obsession with Dave, or her obsession with Cole, but we both knew the score. So I could only imagine where this dreamlike state was taking her, but I would bet it had a lot to do with Cole asking her to Homecoming, and reaching the highest GPA in our class. Because that was Allison—her mind was somehow able to split itself fully between boys and grades.

We exited the park on 5 Avenue and headed south, crossing at 95 Street toward the Brick Prison, a nickname given to Hunter High School for years. It was a massive, nearly windowless building. The former Armory, as someone had mentioned years ago. Its red brick façade took the shape of a castle with a few modern additions made throughout the years.

We passed professionals skirting ahead of us on the sidewalk with the clappity clap of their fancy shoes while other teenagers adorned with bulging backpacks maneuvered at our same meandering pace; none of us too anxious to get to class.

After we piled in through the back doors within the swarm of teenagers, we climbed the stairwell to the third floor and followed the turn of the pale green linoleum floor to the Sophomores’ hall.

Alli gave me a go-get-‘em-kid look and then took off to her first class, mine being in the opposite direction. There wasn’t enough time to stop by my locker and drop off the surplus of books I wouldn’t need until later hours. Instead, I headed straight to first hour math and awaited my fate.

I passed my homework up the row where it was collected by Ms. Dallacqua at the front and settled back in my seat with every intent of paying full attention to the lecture, but that never really happened.

My mind began to drift off, first to Dave, to my jagged fingernails, then back to Dave (of course). But as Ms. Dallacqua’s honey-infused voice warmed the air, I settled more deeply and the daydreams became more real.

I was in the field I had found myself in time and time again—both a recurring dream and daydream of mine for as long as I could remember. It varied in some ways, but in others always remained the same. I was always in the same spot looking out over the field with rolling green hills in front of me, and there was always a tree back toward the horizon. The tree seemed old, its core winding upward toward the sky with a thickness that seemed intimidating even from faraway. Sometimes the tree was full with a green canopy, sometimes its blossoming took on autumn colors or vivid greens. But always, the tree was there.

This time, there was the boy ahead of me, just beyond the tree. When he was present, which wasn’t often, he stood silently. As I aged, he aged. I remember the first time he appeared in the vision, just a young boy no older then six years old. But at that time, I was no older than five or six myself. He was a mirror image of myself, yet opposite. A reflection.

I could make out the blonde of his hair and his stocky build, but if ever I moved toward him in the vision, he moved back—never by moving his own legs to take the step, but rather as if my vision couldn’t make out any detail of him closer than that perspective. I never got any closer to him, so I eventually stopped trying. I just stood still, taking in the scene having grown accustomed to his observing presence, and observed him back.

“…Miss Gaber?”

Oh crap. Ms. Dallacqua’s voice calling my name snapped me out of the field and back into the claustrophobic, windowless classroom. She must have asked me a question, but there was nothing I could do to pull that question or its answer from the air. There was no other choice rather than to own it at that point.

“Uh, yeah?”

The class snickered at my faux pas, while a peppering of hands shot up to the ceiling, welcoming the chance to answer a question correctly and outshine a fellow classmate in one swoop.

Ms. Dallacqua eyed me as she called on Joy Hart, in the front row, to answer her question.

“Z equals X plus five,” said Joy, taking the opportunity to both shoot a smile oozing with confidence to Ms. Dallacqua and turning to shoot the same smile to me, but with an added squirt of snarkiness.

“Very good, Joy,” said Ms. Dallacqua, her eyes never leaving mine. “Others would be advised to pay attention. Now, if Z equals X plus five and…” Her back was turned to the class again, and immediately I was gone into my thoughts. That’s how fast math repelled my attention.

The day passed pretty quickly as I floated in and out of daydreams during class and lounged in the Sophomore hall with friends during breaks. At lunch they took me out for ice cream a block away from school to celebrate my birthday. On the way back, conversations and people weaving in and out on the sidewalks broke us down into pairs. Alli and I chatted about classes and the party later that evening.

“So… did you see the post from last night?” Alli was a regular reader at Dave’s blog, though for a different reason. Cole.

We were crossing the intersection back to Hunter in a wave of other students returning from lunch. I was trying to think of a way to avoid the question when someone came to my rescue.

“So, see you guys after school?” It was Scott Braden, who had been following closely. He was tall and lanky with an off-balance smile. A bit quiet but really hilarious once you got to know him. He was Chapter 11’s editor.

“Crap, I totally forgot. I won’t be able to make it today. I can email you my rough draft though, if that helps.”

He smiled shyly trying to cover up that he was disappointed.

“No problem. I guess I’ll see you at 7,” he said.

“Yeah, definitely.”

Finally, the last class of the day came. Art—my sanctuary. I couldn’t have asked for it to be at a better time, either. It was the perfect way to end the day, like taking a bath to wash off the dirt and grime struggling through the other classes left on my skin.

I was taking a stab at photography for the first time, and looked forward to the solitude of the darkroom. I noticed myself moving a little faster as I gathered up my film, trays and chemicals and headed off. When I heard the click behind me I let out a big sigh and felt my shoulders relaxed for the first time that day.

Everyone else rushed through their darkroom work in the first week of school to get to digital photography, but not me. The darkroom was so quiet. I loved the solitude. That was the crazy thing about New York City. Even at times I was by myself, I never felt completely alone. For some reason the only two places I felt like I had complete privacy were in the darkroom or in the shower.

I got to work printing negatives where I had left off the day before. I had shot a roll of film over the weekend, just around the house so every image included my mom pretending to not notice. Her annoyance came through in a few of the pictures.

It was an image of her I was waiting to see float up from the bottom of the basin when I heard the outer door open and close behind me.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize anyone was in here.”

My spine stiffened at the sound of his voice. I didn’t need to turn to know who it was. All of my limbs froze in place as my inner monologue begged me to play it cool, to say it was alright, to ask how he was doing, to tell him I loved him, to speak at all.

Instead I just shrugged and kept my eyes planted on the photo in front of me without turning. I heard what sounded like the thump of a book bag hitting the floor. Then a zipper was undone and some shuffling.

“You like Mumford and Sons?”

I felt the heat cascade under the skin of my cheeks and air catch in the back of my throat suddenly making my mouth dry. I was busted.

All I could think to do was try to cover.

“Should I know what that is?”

He laughed just a few small pops rooted in his chest, my eyes and face still locked on the chemical basin in front of me. I listened as he crossed the small room to my left. Through the corner of my eye I watched as he docked his phone into the stereo system and tapped away to select a playlist.

“I think you’ll like them. At least I hope you do,” he said.

My cheeks blazed with heat then and I turned away from him to block my face from view, then turned back again as he crossed behind me to his backpack.

Why did he hope I liked it? Why hadn’t I just said I knew who it was and pretended to be a huge fan? I could be a real idiot sometimes.

“Um… why?”

“Cause I don’t see myself printing in silence or giving up rights to the stereo,” he said, coming up on my right side. Within such close proximity I became super aware of how perfectly I would fit under his arm. I was just the right height for my cheek to rest comfortably along the curve of his collarbone. The thin hairs at the nape of my neck stood up as I pictured it from every possible angle. His golden brown eyes seemed black under the red lights, but it only seemed to intensify him.

Crap. Too much silence had passed. It must have sent the wrong message because he took a step back and spoke with more softness in his voice.

“Unless you really don’t like it, I mean. I was just kidding.”

It was the same song I had listened to that morning on his blog. The thumping bass drum with twanging guitar and banjo. Without thinking, I turned to him and saw the shadows of his angular jaw cast in red.

“No, it’s fine,” I managed. “I mean, it sounds good.”

The deep lines I knew so well became visible, growing deeper and more present like a developing photo as his lips turned up in a grin.

“Great,” he said, holding my eyes for just a second. “Then we should get along just fine this semester.” He reached up and gently pinched my elbow between two of his fingers as a gesture of… what exactly? I had no idea, but the room started to swim at his touch and for the first time I looked straight into his eyes. They seemed familiar, as if I had been staring into them for years.

“Cool.” That was it. That was all I could come up with. I tried to shadow his pinching gesture, but my arm got half way out, decided it was too far and then retreated back, clinging to the side of the large chemical sink.

“Cool,” he mimicked with a half smile, following the path of my hand with his eyes. “Looks like that got a little overcooked, but nice shot.”

Then he turned and walked back to his spot as I looked down and saw the over-developed, darkened image of my mom glancing at me sideways with an accusatory look in her eyes.