“Fuck everything about this shit.”
In the months since I’d met Michelle, I’d learned that the little mousey girl with a big heart had the mouth of a sailor. And not even a respectable navy kind. She was worse than a pirate. Worse than Jack Sparrow after a million bottles of rum. Not cutesy either. She was terrifying.
I’d thought she was a cute little girl when I first met her, now, I didn’t even know how to take it. This girl had a heart bigger than China, but she was wild. I could hold her off with one hand and keep her safely out of reach, but I would lose my arm in the process. I would lose to her in a fight, badly. I had 6 inches and 50 pounds on her, and she would be able to kick my ass without trying.
Not that I would hit a girl, or fight a girl, ever. I just knew that if she ever got angry and wanted to kill me, I was fucked.
Luckily, she rarely wanted to fight me outside of wrestling, which we did sometimes, and she would never win, were I in tip top shape. She had an advantage because I was on medicine that was fighting my body and the cancer. I was sure that if I was near my top potential, I could stand up and have her clinging to me, trying to pull me down.
She didn’t want to fight me. She wanted to fight math and every number involved that had a roman identity or otherwise. Numbers 0-9, derivatives, tangents, all of it. If she could fight them, they would die. And her frustration didn’t help me any, because she was asking me for help. And…fuck if I wanted to make her seem stupid.
“It’s not that hard.”
“Fuck you it’s not that hard, this shit is harder than an elephant sucking on a boulder of mother-fucking viagara.” I stopped, stunned at the mere…image. It took me a few seconds to bleach it from my mind’s eye.
“Come on…look at it this way.” And I tried again to explain it to her.
Midterms were tomorrow, well the calculus one; it was the last test before fall break, thanksgiving. I had a doctor’s appointment on Friday to get an update on the cancer and plan for winter break, where I would get surgery if necessary.
It was midnight. I was bushed, but we still had a chapter and a half to go. I was sure I was going to do well, but it wouldn’t hurt a little more studying with her to make sure she at least passed…
It took until 2 AM, and after countless mugs of coffee, energy drinks, and soda, despite needing sleep for an early exam, I was wired. I didn’t drink caffeine before college, I was super sensitive to it. One cup of coffee and I was up for hours. A coffee and a red bull? Good luck.
“Let’s go for a walk.” She suggested, and I laughed. It was November in New York, bitterly cold, especially at 2 AM.
“Let’s not.” I muttered, scratching my head and tugging on the hair which now was kind of alien to me. I had hair now, it’d grown in since the start of school, and it was nice to have, especially with it getting so cold.
“No come on, we need to burn off energy somehow…just a short one, to the track or something.” She begged, rolling over her bed and looking at me upside-down. “Pleeaaassseeeee Bray? Pleeeaaassseee?!” She was whining, begging. I stared at her and tried to even fathom what was going through her little mousey brain.
“It’s cold.” I whimpered in a weak defense.
“Then we’ll walk fast.” She commented. “I need to get out and move around! And I can’t go alone.” I stared again; her rationality was…She didn’t have any.
And I knew she would go whether I went or not. And She knew I knew that. And she knew I wouldn’t let her go alone.
“Fine.” I sighed, getting up and grabbing my books. “Come into my room when you’re ready.”
I pulled on jeans over my pajama pants, needing the extra insulation. I even checked the 5-degree weather forecast on my phone to grunt and whimper. Socks, my running shoes, a thermal, sweater and jacket over my t-shirt, gloves, and my knit cap. I looked at the door and saw her just leaning on the stop in jeans and a hoodie.
“You’re a weather puss.” She smirked. “It’s not that cold.”
“You’re high.” I commented.
“Be safe kids!” Jake called from his bed, instead of studying he was playing Madden, totally acceptable.
“Yeah, see you in a few.” I muttered, stepping out and pulling my door shut. Jake and I were still getting along, shockingly.
Michelle led the way, sticking back with me as I was slowed by my all-weather clothing choices. Her eyes were everywhere, looking over the blue-cast grounds as the leaves crunched under foot along the pathways. Her brown hair slid off her shoulder as she tilted her head back and watched the sparse cloud cover skirt over the dark star-studded sky. The stars were bright out here, much brighter than near the city.
“You know what I think about sometimes?” She said softly, her voice sounding much quieter than I would have expected, it caught me off-guard and I almost didn’t hear her.
“What?” I asked, looking at her, realizing she’d stopped and was staring at the sky.
“They say the kings of the past are up there.” She quoted. “Looking down on us.” I stifled a laugh with my glove, bowing as I looked at her and was overcome with a smirk.
“You think about the Lion King?” I chuckled, smiling at her.
“No.” She looked at me then. “But I don’t really…know…if his is right…” She bit her lip, pulling the cross she wore out from under her shirt. She held it between her thumb and forefinger, displaying the Christ spread across the gold cross around her neck.
I stayed quiet, letting her have the room to talk as she felt. She looked down at the cross then at the sky. “I’ve been in this biology class, talking all about evolution and stuff…and I believe that.” She nodded. “I…it’s hard not to.” She bit her lip and looked down. “If it all happened by accident…if no one controls it, no one makes us, no…. there’s no soul…how can…there be a heaven?”
“How do you know there’s no soul?” I asked and then took a breath. She shook her head and shrugged as she looked at the ground.
“I don’t know why I believed…outside of…it’s more comfortable to think that there is more than just this. It’s more comfortable to think that this isn’t it…that…there’s more.” She bit her lip. “What if there’s none of this…and what if one lifetime isn’t enough?” She laughed and looked at the track that wasn’t that far away. “You know…I believe…because I’d like to think that I have a lifetime and more to spend with people…that if they die, I have eternity to love and care about them.”
I looked at her and my leg twitched, deep within my jeans and pajama pants. My leg, filled with a cancer that wanted to take my leg or kill me, whichever was more devastating. “A lifetime has to be enough…” I said softly. “To love all you can love, and be all you can be.”
“It’s not enough.” She shook her head. “There are so many people…my parents…you…that…I don’t want to have for just a lifetime.” I blinked, taking a step back at the ‘you’. Her eyes went wide as she realized what she’d said. “I didn’t mean…Brayden.” Her voice trailed off as she stared at me, and I stared back at her. Her shoulders fell forward as she stared at me, and her breath quivered in a way that lead me to believe she was about to cry or was scared. I didn’t have anything to say, I couldn’t think of anything to say. It felt like I had become a tree and my feet were roots, pinning me to the ground, and taking away my ability to talk. Her shoulders rolled with her breath and her eyes seemed deeper than the Mariana’s trench, or as deep as I could possibly fathom it was.
“I…” She shoved her hand into her hood over the top of her head and pulled her hair. “I…you….” She got frustrated and her hand swung with her anger. She stomped her foot and grunted and I could do nothing to stop, or comfort her, because I was a tree-boy.
“I like you.” She blurted out. “And I don’t know how well I can know you, and I don’t want to think that for any reason, I can get hit by a fucking bus and not know you really, really well…I want to know that there’s a fucking God up there who, if I get hit by a bus, will put me in a little holding cell so I can wait for you to come visit me and I can spend forever knowing you more and having you be my friend, cause Brayden, you’re fucking awesome. You’re a cool guy and I wanna be friends with you for a long time cause you’re really…cool.” Her face went red as she sucked in the cold air and her nose was running onto her upper lip. “But I’m scared that I don’t have a holding cell up there for me, and I’m scared that there is no guy, cause if we’re all made up of these little atom fucking things and ordered until there is no order, there cannot be one great order. I cannot imagine a greater order if the purpose of the things that make up the order is to decompose into chaos…and die.” She stared at me. “And if this is all I have and I die and there isn’t a holding cell…I’m scared.” Her chest heaved and her lip quivered. “Say something.”
She was begging a tree-boy to speak, and I wasn’t from Lord of the Rings. I wasn’t an ent. I bit my lip, looking at my feet as I tried to think of something, anything to say, to calm down this little farm girl who grew up going to church on Sundays and believing that there was an afterlife. I refused to even consider death, because it was my constant friend. You don’t think about your friends. I was going to die, and I was going to die soon. She shouldn’t worry about leaving me from a bus; she should worry about me leaving her, from cancer or a heart that was struggling to mend itself.
“Be…” I said softly, trying to force my dry throat to make noise. “You…we…” I stopped and tried to think again, trying to slow down my brain. “Be my friend.” I finally said, taking a breath and shaking my head. “Be my friend…we can’t control…being taken…going away…” I shrugged. “So…you can’t be scared…you…well I mean…you can be scared…but…you can’t…be upset…over the inevitable.” I looked at her. “You just gotta…live and be happy…and hope…that you know…there is a holding cell up there…” Despite my layers, I felt bone-numbingly cold. “You…don’t know…but you can’t plan for that…you can’t plan for what you don’t know…so…you can’t…you can’t wait and think that you’re gonna have that…you know…cause if you don’t…well…you’ll always regret…well…you won’t regret…cause…you’ll be dead.” I laughed dryly, rubbing my neck uncomfortably. “Just…we can be friends.” I sighed. “And…what happens…happens.” I shrugged.
“You suck at comforting me.” She barked. Bitch.
“I don’t think I could say anything…cause I don’t have the answers.” I shrugged. “I could die tomorrow, I could die in 70 years.” I was probably going to die tomorrow. “But I can’t live in fear of an ending that I can’t foresee, or further and more, what’s after it.” I couldn’t…cause I wouldn’t move to that further. The stress would probably force me to off myself, the stress of considering my own demise, and then considering what happens cause I didn’t have the 90 years that everyone else had. If I dwelled on the unfairness of it all, I would go insane, more than a fucking breakup with a girl I loved had already.
She stared at me as she thought it through; she looked down, then at the track, then at me.
“I want to run. I want to run as fast as I can and forget it…” She said, her eyes fixed on mine, then at the track.
“Then run. “ I shrugged.
“Come with me?” She asked, looking at me. “You said you were a runner.” I cringed back at the question, but knew I couldn’t get out of it.
“ok.” I nodded. “Alright…” I took a breath. She grabbed my hand and dragged me down the hill to the track. She bolted right for the line, and I stood in the grass, kicking off my shoes and taking off my jeans, feeling the cold penetrate my pyjama pants. I was down to my thermal over my chest and left my extra layers in a heap.
“You’re a cold puss.” She commented.
“I’m a runner.” I looked at her. “On your mark.” I chewed my lip, feeling anticipation, feeling my leg already starting to hurt with just the thought of running.
“Go!” She yelled and we threw ourselves forward in the November night, feeling a self-generated wind hit you with an icy wintery sting. It was a motion that felt alien, but familiar, like seeing a friend you sat next to in first grade. Like holding hands with a girl after the love of your life broke your heart. Like walking into a church after you screamed that you hated God. My feet knew the track, but my body didn’t trust them, and was rigid as I sliced through the air, anticipating the lancing pain of a disease that unfairly claimed the identity of a boy who no longer had a safety net. I was expecting to fall, and yet I kept going, kept running, and it became familiar as I entertained the emotions, as my body slipped into the fluidity of a runner’s stride. Michelle’s grunts and pants filtered into the sound of the wind, and I sprinted, a pace that I rarely fell into, but one that felt just as freeing as the mountain breeze halfway through a half-marathon.
My feet skidded to a stop; Michelle was seated on the lawn.
“you run fast.” She commented, then grabbed my jacket. I felt the sweat on my shirt and looked at her. “And you can run for a while.” I looked at her and shoved myself quickly into my jacket.
“A while?”
“I sat down like 15 minutes ago.” She smiled meekly. “you…couldn’t be stopped.” I paused and stared at her, seeing her windblown hair tucked into her hood. I took an uneasy breath and nodded, focusing on my leg, which didn’t hurt.
“Oh.” I laughed. “Just…got…distracted I guess.”
“you looked happy.” She said softly, picking up my jeans and starting back up the hill to the dorms. “free…I guess.”
