Just because I’ve always known the outcome of a decision doesn’t mean that they were always easy. I can tell you that in confidence. Sometimes it made the decisions harder, sometimes you want to sacrifice a future you’d spent your entire life building because the guilt is too great.

I never really knew that until freshman year of high school, where the lesson was made in the most stark way. I was the star quarterback that I knew that I was always going to be, it sounds conceited, but there was hard work behind the success. I’d been playing since I was five and my predestined future allowed me to start really studying the sport in middle school. Between my early start, and my knowledge of my role, I was set to walk in and help be a phenomenal athlete.

I was getting a start this game, something that was a bit of a rarity. My competition was Todd Jones, who was a senior quarterback I had to respect. He earned his tenure and his starts; I would have 3 more years to be the star, to get the attention for my work. I knew the girls, the newspaper articles, the championships would all come, and right now it was Todd’s turn.

Here is the funny thing about the plan, the plan doesn’t hallmark every moment of your life. Rather, it hallmarks the majors, high school awesome, playing for West Point, joining the Army, Caroline, and my three kids, for example. I didn’t know the small little things, like when a pop quiz would knock me on my ass, my plan was always minutely affected by the free will of others.

The free will of others, however, was just one step behind my knowledge, and that was a godsend. The free will of others could easily come into and change my plan, but I was always given the tools to prevent that, and see one step ahead.

The huddle broke as we split into our offensive line. It was the start of the fourth quarter in my 6th start as quarterback. I knew all my teammates, and they all knew me but the team, simply put, didn’t have many freshmen on it. That strained trust a little bit, and although I was great, I wasn’t perfect, they knew that, I knew that.

Another funny thing about the knowing, you would think that because you’re expecting something, life would seem to go in slow motion. It doesn’t. It goes just as fast, sometimes faster than you would think it normally would, because the decisions we make are not always this or that decisions. Sometimes, they’re this step or that step, sometimes they’re a pace, and sometimes, they’re just a reaction. Knowing and evaluating works best with a yes or no, this or that decision, and my brain could easily get overloaded and mar my judgment when it was something drawn out.

This broke down into a murky progression of foresight, the ball spun from between the legs of Chris Bantam and into my hands. Instantly, decisions flooded my mind and instantly the ideas started blurring. I couldn’t throw to James Murphey, as 54 in blue would crush him, Brock Tobin wasn’t moving fast enough, and for some reason Terrance Love wasn’t breaking through the defense. The knowing also doesn’t tell you about decisions you don’t think of on your own.

And then I saw it, a flash of blue coming right at me for the sack. I stared at the blue stripe at the center of the helmet as it barreled at me and a careful decision broke down into pure instinct.

I could stay there and be run over, or duck and get away. It took a second to decide to dive out of the way, and another to feel guilt of my mistake. I landed on my belly and rolled over to see what had happened in my mind not even a moment before.

Christian Marksman was a flanking defender who’d seen the barreling blue bully get through the defensive line, and was charging full speed ahead, to either: 1, defend the star quarterback or 2, give me an extra second to make a damn throw to Terry, who’d broken through and was sprinting ahead for the first down.

Helmet hitting helmet sounds like bones breaking, or a car accident. It was the worst sound in the world to my then 14-year-old ears. The sound was just another taunt to making a bad decision. I could have taken the sack, and Christian would have just landed on top of Blue 25. Instead, Blue 25 didn’t see him coming, and when I got out of the way, he reared his head up instead of diving after me, lining him up on a collision course with Christian.

And Christian, one of the few freshmen, was stuck, face down and not moving on the grass. Blue 25 rolled away, slowly righting himself to sit. Christian hadn’t moved, and it was my fault.

And sometimes, knowing the outcome of your decisions, even knowing the right, sometimes isn’t enough. Sometimes your knee-jerk to save yourself is what ends up making things more complicated. The knowing makes me know what’s going to happen, it makes me a few steps ahead of others’ free will, but it doesn’t command my will, it’s purely reactionary.

And it’s reactionary guilty when I was the one who caused the trainer to run out and lean over a face down Christian, who still hadn’t been moved, it caused the paramedics to come and it caused me to feel the worst I’d ever felt. I’d always made THE best decision, for me, for the plan, and for everyone. And this was the first time where I had made the wrong decision.

Christian had woken up and was talking when they strapped him into a stretcher that was my fault, and he could move everything, all good signs. I played the rest of the game, I had to. No one could or would know why I would be so shaken, because it was an accident. I couldn’t have known it would end like that. It was a freak accident.

We scored a touchdown by pure luck and won the game 35-22. I didn’t get any congratulations for the win and frankly I didn’t want them. The locker room was quiet as we got changed and cleaned up, and the coach informed us that Christian had a severe concussion from the hit. Everything was quiet, except for my mind, which couldn’t slow down even if I wanted it to, making the silence of the solemn evening ring deafeningly in my ears.

Christian didn’t play again that season, but he still dressed and celebrated the first championship that the school had gotten in 10 years. When he couldn’t play our sophomore year, I learned that the wrong decision had ended Christian’s football career.

Christian became my best friend, which dampened the pain a little bit. Making the bad decision ended up being in my plan overall. Christian and I would go on to get accepted into West Point together, and would join the army in different focuses. Christian’s concussion didn’t disqualify him, after 4 years he was fine and ready to be sent to war, but instead of holding a gun, he would be a medic. I had been practicing shooting with my uncle since I could hold a rifle, I was going to war.

But I never forgot the moment that I reacted before I saw all the outcomes, and how Christian suffered for it. Going to war scared me; I knew I would be faced with those decisions every day of my life.

On September 11, 2001, I was in the beginning of my senior year of high school. Ms. Johnson from the history room across the hall ran into my first period physics class, crying in hysterics. The class watched as she ran to the TV and turned on CNN and the sight of smoke billowing from the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

“My cousin works there!” Christine Austin screamed in alarm, grabbing her cell phone and running from the room. Physics class was over, it was American History 101.

I knew what was happening as I leaned over and nudged Christian. This was our defining moment. The reason we’d apply to West Point.

“The world is ending, bud.” Christian whispered, looking over his shoulder at me.

“No it’s not.” I whispered.

“Everyone’s gone crazy.”

“Just some.”

The world had truly gone crazy. The second plane hit 15 minutes later, and class was over, but no one left. It took until lunchtime to get everyone to go home. We were frozen as we watched the attacks on our country ant it’s people, lives ending and for me, futures, and plans, stopped by one act of free will.

My entire life I’d known that this was happening, but I never knew what. I knew something, a war, an attack, something would make me join the army, and again, I felt like the knowing was a curse. A curse of knowing, but unable to help.

Anyway, my first country song. “Shotgun.”

Shotgun

We’ve been friends for quite a while
You’ve seen me cry and seen me smile
So now this should come as no surprise
I feel an itching through my veins
A late night haunt that feels like pain
And I’m sure you’ve seen it coming from a mile

But you know me well enough to know I’ll say
There’s only one reason I have to stay
And I’m looking for you to come on an adventure
I wanna see this big ol’ world
Yeah I’m just a little girl
But two of us can raise a bit of hell.

I wanna go surfing off of Malibu
And I wanna make sure you’re coming too
Let’s pack the truck and leave at sunrise tomorrow
Let’s go camping in the sticks
And take the route marked “66”
I’m sure we could make one wild run
So I’m asking, do you wanna ride shotgun?

It’s a cycle that happens every few years
Where I’m sick and tired of the same old gear
I need to rev my engine and start again
And now I’m asking don’t you wanna
Wake up and be in Oklahoma?
Or fly a balloon in New Mexico?

Just 5 hours off the path
And we could start tracing back
You’re on the way that I was taking to see DC
We could run like wild ‘round the capitol state
And then before it got too late
Hit the road and head to Carolina…

I wanna go surfing off Malibu
And I wanna make sure you’re coming too
Let’s pack the truck and leave at sunrise tomorrow
Let’s go camping out in the sticks
And take the route marked “66”
I’m sure we could make one wild run
So I’m asking, do you wanna ride shotgun?

But sometimes the hardest heartbreak
Is when things go and start to change
And You find you’re stayin’ the same
You’re starting off just a little to late
And your shotgun jams and you find you’re
Flyin solo’

I wanna go surfing off Malibu
And I’m really sorry you’re not coming too
I’m packing the truck, leaving at sunrise tomorrow.
I’ll wander out in the sticks
Go speeding down route “66”
And I’m sure that I could make one wild run.
I just wish you’d still be my shotgun.

And I can’t be bitter and I won’t be sad
Just an unfortunate change of plans
I couldn’t make myself, relax for a while
So the truck is packed, rackin’ up the miles
First daylight’s come and gone
And I’m layin’ somewhere called ‘Bon Ton’

And maybe if I’m lucky
at an all night diner
Drinking coffee for an all nighter
I’ll sit next to, another soul like mine…

And he’ll wanna go surfing off Malibu
And I’ll say I’m headin’ there too
Packin’ the truck and leavin’ at sunrise tomorrow
He’ll wanna go camping out in the sticks
And we’ll race down old route 66
I’m sure we’ll make one wild run
And…then he’ll be riding shotgun.

And I’m really sorry about you too
You’ll see the pictures from Malibu
And my shadow, from a balloon in New Mexico.
Or from the water tower, in Nebraska…
And I’m sure you’ll be askin
Why you couldn’t make time
To just have fun with your life

But I’ll tell you, I’m loving mine….

I went surfing off Malibu
And then we hit to Oahu too!
And I’ll be home sometime tomorrow
I went camping way out in the sticks
And found love while lost on ‘66
And damn, I made such a good run
That I didn’t even miss you riding shotgun.

You found my business card right? I left it at the bar, you came in about 5 minutes after I left it. You drank two beers before you looked down and saw it on the bar, rung with condensation fro the beer. My name was smudged, but you got here just fine I see.

What were you expecting to find here? Were you taking a chance? Were you scared? Were you excited?

What if I were to tell you that I never felt an ounce of fear in my life? What if I were to tell you that I never took a chance?

It sounds remarkable, to you it must. It was only natural for me, if I were to tell you I knew every outcome of every decision I’d ever made, you’d probably think that I was lying, I was full of shit. If it wasn’t for a week of chances, I would never know that my knowledge was strange, to be honest. I wouldn’t be telling you what knowing the repurcussions of every action was like.

I never knew what a butterfly effect was. I knew not to tread on delicate wings.

Let me tell you a story. It’s a little long, we have to start at the beginning. It’s a story about knowing as much as it is about not knowing. But I guess most of the story, is about Serendipity…about…finding things when you didn’t expect to find them. It’s a lot about Serendipity.

Part 1: Knowing.

“Eli, what are you up to?” Mom placed her hand on my back, leaning over my shoulder to see the flow-chart graphed on a piece of construction paper on the kitchen table. Construction paper because I couldn’t take printer paper from Dad’s office, if I did, he wouldn’t have enough paper for the fax that would come in from the firm tonight, if he ran out he wouldn’t be prepared for his case on Thursday and he would lose. The construction paper was from my room.

“Planning.” I said matter-of-factly. I was six, everything was matter-of-factly. Everything had always been matter-of-factly because I always knew better. I pointed at the chart with my finger, careful not to touch it with the tip of the marker, because that would cause confusion when I was 36 and still referred back to this very plan. “This is everything I have to do from now, until I’m….” I looked at the chart to find how far I had gotten in the span of my life. “…48”

“Oh yeah? You’re gonna join the army?” Mom asked inquisitively. I hadn’t been exposed to war or anything militant at that age, her question was valid. Sure, cowboys and indians was like warfare, but it wasn’t anything that referenced armies. Dad wouldn’t even let me watch programs such as MASH with him. I had no clue what the army was. Or shouldn’t have.

“Yeah huh.” I nodded affirmatively. “And then I’m gonna marry Caroline Montgomery.” I informed her in the all knowing way that I knew. “And then she’ll be Caroline Cosgrove.” I grinned up at her, proud of how much I knew was going to happen with my life.

“Oh yeah?” Mom sat down in the seat beside me and stared into my eyes. She had bright blue eyes, like mine, and she was blonde like me too. I took after dad’s muscle structure, I was told anyway. “What’s Caroline Montgomery look like?”

“Well.” I touched the paper to push it away, but stopped myself as soon as I felt it beneath my fingers. If I pushed it towards the cut in the table between where the extra piece came out to make it longer, it would fall to the floor, then when mom picked it up, it would get snagged and tear. I took my hands away from the edge and folded them on the bare dining room table, leaning in to eagerly tell my mother about my future wife.

“Caroline has long dark brown hair that is kind of curly but not really. Not like…really curly, but pretty, round, big curls that bounce kind of. She’s got big green eyes like grass in the springtime, or like trees, they’re big and pretty…and she’s got a nice round face with a little chin, and she likes to run around houses, she does it so she can keep skinny I guess, but I don’t know what that means, and she always wears sneakers except when we get married or go out dancing. I’m gonna hate dancing but I’ll do it for her because I love her. And…” Mom stopped me there, I was talking too much, and she covered my mouth with her hand just to get me to shut up. “she’s tall!” I blurted against her hand.

“Eli slow down.” She giggled, pulling her hand away. “So I’m gonna be looking out for little girls with curly hair at kindergarten huh?” She grinned.

“No momma, I’m gonna meet Caroline when I’m in the army.” I explained. “I’m gonna be on my first leave and we’re gonna meet after I finish boot camp at a bar. And then we’re gonna talk all the time on the computer and stuff, and then we’re gonna start dating and she’s gonna fall in love with me, and I’m gonna fall in love with her, and I’ll engage her on the second time I’m home from war, and then we’ll get married when I’m back.” I saw the look of fear in my mom’s eye. There was no sign of the country going to war yet, in fact, the towers had no risk of falling. Life was good in the United States, especially in New Jersey. It was 1988.

There were times when mom chalked the things I said, up to just creativity and imagination. Mom didn’t know, or understand my gift, and I didn’t’ know or understand it enough to tell her what happened in my brain every step I took. Every decision I made had a natural weight of the world, of my future, relying on it. I had known my plan since I knew how to think, and the plan said at six, I write down the plan once I learned how to write in kindergarten.

The things I was saying to my mother in this moment, scared her. I was talking of a war that I would be involved in, in the midst of the US and Russia still being on uneasy terms. Things were improving, but the world still watched with baited breath to the interactions between Gorbachev and Reagan. I ha no knowledge, of course, what the Cold War was, and wound never know the fear that my mother had of me talking about a war that would start when I was 19, that I would fight in during my early 20’s, right to the day I got married.

My mother also didn’t know what ‘talking through the computer’ meant, or how I could keep a relationship active through the army, as letters weren’t truly efficient, and phone communications were, although reliable, often costly when conducted over long distances (the concept of calling anywhere in the country still hadn’t caught on, and if you called anywhere outside your town, you would pay exponentially as a result.)

You didn’t marry anyone that you didn’t know from the time you were 12. Mom and dad met in middle school. Caroline was from Kentucky, but was in college at Rutgers. I would meet her in a club while I was on leave and she was just taking a night off from studying.

“Eli, you watch too much television.” She smiled, brushing my hair out of my face. That was all she ever said, and that was all she really could say. She kissed my forehead and slid out of her chair, pushing it in. Her hand stayed on my head for a moment or two before being pulled away with her as she walked off. “I have to start making dinner before your father gets home.”

And I went back to making my plans, working right up until suppertime, and able to get right to age 98, where I died of a stroke and in my sleep. As I looked through the long list of lifetime goals, achievements and milestones, spread across 5 pages of red, orange, green, yellow and white, all in black marker, I couldn’t help but feel proud. I was going to have a good life ahead of me. I carefully stacked my list and carried it, and my supplies, back to my room before settling down with my parents for dinner.

I put the list in the back of a photo-album, a place where I will reference it time and time again for the next 13 years, until I have it laminated so I can bring it with me to the army.

I take off my socks so I don’t slip down the stairs when I run back to join my parents for dinner. My mother informs my father of the story of my life that I had told her about. Dad approved, but still took me aside to talk to me as Mom mandated. I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned that Caroline ran to be skinny.

I didn’t want my friends to see me and ask about what was going on. I didn’t post it on facebook, and I didn’t tell anyone what was happening. I sat on the couch, playing, watching movies, trying to just make it seem like I was functioning, but it wasn’t. My body was in one place and my mind was in another. The place my mind was in, however, was not much better than the one my body was in. I think that my leg, was in better health than my mind was.

It was unfortunately a lot of time in my shell of a body to think, and I was thinking too much, and about too many things that I couldn’t handle thinking about, not in a delirium of sadness. My life was falling apart.

By Sunday I couldn’t live with myself. I also couldn’t live with Durango scratching my leg at every possible moment, because he knew something was wrong. It was Durango who told me that I had cancer in the first place. Of course he was a god, so he couldn’t really tell me anything, but he could sit there and scratch and claw at my leg, which he did do. If the pain didn’t tip me off to know that something was wrong, Durango told me.

And he was doing the same thing, and he’d been doing it since Wednesday night. My leg was scratched to shit and bright red from his persistence, which was starting to hurt. I just had to get out of the house that cancer built.

I packed my crutches, and told mom I was heading to Sam’s, so she wouldn’t ask where I was going and wouldn’t ask what I was doing. I had a cell phone, the damn inventions made it so much easier to lie and not go anywhere that you were supposed to go. I remember when Jason and I would go on wild adventures just to be foiled when mom called Jason’s mom to ask where I was. Now…I wouldn’t have to worry about that, she’d call me, and I’d just say that we were on a walk.

I drove to a park and stopped the car. Despite everything in me that wanted to leave the crutches in the car, I pulled them off the back seat of my pale blue-gray Taurus that I wasn’t allowed to take to school because of my leg. I wondered how I would drive once my leg was gone, or how much a custom car would cost, so I could drive.

I started hobbling, that was really the only way I could describe how one moved with crutches. It was also, kind of like swinging, being a human pendulum between two titanium legs. Being a miniature pump jack, siphoning up oil from a dry well. Rusting up, and being useless.

But I couldn’t run, so I could swing, back and forth along a side walk, trying to keep my crutches on the sidewalk. It was a wide stance, something I wasn’t fully comfortable with, because I never used them, and I still didn’t like using them, and I probably never would. I should get used to it, because I’d be walking with them for the rest of my life.

I ended up in a cemetery, I didn’t know how or why, I kind of lost track while I was just walking. I was staring at a head stone of Rosemary Carrigan. There was no birth date, or no death date, one of the two. There was just, date. May 7, 1902.

And I stared at the date, I stared at the name, I stared at the tiny little headstone, that was crammed next to countless other tiny little headstones that had slid down the side of the hill where the babies were buried. They were shifted and crooked, sliding down the side of the hill, like crooked teeth. I thought they could use braces, be reset to perfect rows of…headstones marking the gravesites of dead babies.

It’d been a hundred years since these babies died, and their bones weren’t there, and their memories weren’t there. I didn’t now Rosemary Carrigan, and even if Rosemary Carrigan had died a week ago, se wouldn’t mean much more to me than she did now. It was just sad, because, a baby had died. But Rosemary Carrigan would be dead by now anyway, if the very idea of being born in 1902 might have killed her.

Cemeteries suddenly seemed so silly, and the idea of being permanently remembered, but not for any reason, just because there was a slab of marble with a name and a date. I realized that Rosemary’s family loved her, but the marble slab didn’t do much for Rosemary. Rosemary was gone, and her mother, father, her siblings, who there were probably 10 or 11, cause of the time she was born, cause of the time she died. They all were gone too, and they didn’t remember her, all who knew Rosemary existed, was probably me, a sad boy who accidentally staggered into an abandoned edge of a cemetery.

If I ever died, I wouldn’t want to be shoved on some edge of a cemetery for someone in 100 years to find my headstone and wonder who the hell I was, and what I ever did. Or what I could have been. I crossed myself, the father, the son, and the rest of it. It seemed like something Michelle would do, something she’d like.

“I dunno you Rosemary.” I whispered. “But I’m sure you coulda been a great girl.” I wheeled on my left crutch, carefully negotiating through the worn pathway with my titanium arm extensions that I swung my way about with. I looked at the ground as I hobbled back to the car. With a new thought process, my mind realized how far I had walked between the park and my destination. I also realized I’d left my phone in the car.

I slid my crutches into the backseat after an hour of hopping. My left leg was sore from bouncing back and forth for so long, and it was only when I plopped down in the driver’s seat and unlocked my phone to see that I had been gone 3 hours. I shook my head and was boggled, and was just as boggled to see the missed text messages. I checked them, replied, and relaxed for a moment, letting my leg just hang and look at the trees, with rusted leaves barely hanging onto the bare branches.

Tomorrow, I was going to wake up with two legs, and then I would fall asleep, and wake up with one, and a knee. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to make it through…but…I was sure I was going to find a way…

But the moment I woke up, the first thought in my head, was “I am not Natalie Portman.”

To understand this comment, I must take you back a few months, to sometime between February and March. My friend’s kitchen, with a beer, a half bottle of wine, and another half beer, all in my system. I also had about half a pizza in me, but that does not matter. 2 beers and I’m already well on my way to some sort of alcoholic destruction.

I was drinking because I was upset, and I was with friends, one of which was a mean drunk, one who wasn’t drunk, and one who was kind of sadly writing in a notebook. I was texting a guy I like, when suddenly, I stopped, looked around, and in a lance of pain and sorrow, screamed in that small kitchen. “I AM NOT NATALIE PORTMAN!”

When drunk, I have the uncanny ability of being very coherent, but just making no sense. I then proceeded to tell my confused drunk cohorts over and over, as I drove myself to near insanity with sadness, that I was in fact, not Natalie Portman. I was Meg Leach. And this was a problem, because I didn’t want to be Natalie Portman.

As my friends started to console me, I went further into my nonsensical, upset panic, by saying that I WAS Natalie Portman, just not as cute or amusing, not as endearing, or especially cute. I have about 9 inches on Natalie Portman. I was telling my friends how I didn’t want to take some guy to a junkyard to scream, or that I’d never meet Zach Braff at a party and sit by a fire and ask him if he wanted to see me tap dance, because I don’t know HOW to tap dance.

For those playing at home. In my maddened, alcoholic, miserable state, I recounted the major parts of Garden State, where Natalie Portman is a specimen of rom-com fixture called a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Something that is described to be fictitious in today’s world as a real kind of person.

False. I am a manic pixie dream girl, and for those who don’t know, I’ll put some links about the discussion at the end of this post.

But for the sake of being able to write this post, and so that you can follow, a manic pixie dream girl, is an unfalteringly happy, bouncy, fixing girl. She bounds into the life of a sad boy and makes the romantic comedy happen. She fixes things because she is spontaneous, really not bound by the emotional constraints of others. She’s a chipper, pleasant, and her happiness…fixes the main character, the sad boy.

And from the moment that I heard about it, I knew, that was me. With or without the sad boy, there is something about “that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” That is just…me.

And in that drunken moment, I realized that I was a fixer, and I was Natalie Portman. But fixers didn’t get a happy ending, Manic pixie dream girls didn’t get fixed, they didn’t have a happy ending, they simply moved about and fix. Natalie Portman never had her wedding at the end of these rom-coms she did. In real life, yes, but in the movies, she didn’t. It may have been implied, but as someone who lives in a shallow life, I didn’t want to believe it unless they showed it.

I woke up this morning and looked at the bunk bed above my head and muttered “I am not Natalie Portman.” But it feels that I say it because I don’t’ want to admit it, I cling to the idea that if I am not Natalie Portman, I will have a happy ending, and avoid the endless cycle of falling for fixes, who get fixed, and in their fixedness, move on, and have happy lives, leaving an irreparably broken girl behind to bound through life in wanderlust.

I want my happy ending, because what the critics call a shallow, cinematic creature in the movies, is actually an irreparably sad girl, who uses her own quirkiness to cheer herself up. An irreparably broken character, which the critics don’t understand or acknowledge because it’s not shown. But, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl becomes a fixer, who pushes away those who try to fix her.

Being Irreparably broken as a person, albeit deceptively so, is a key to being a manic pixie dream girl…it’s not shallow, it’s not something that doesn’t exist outside the movies…it’s real people, who are weird, who love forever, who are as they are because they’re partially afraid to be themselves, broken. They’re lovers, hiders, and weirdos.

And that love is a real big part of it. They fall in love, and when they are passed over, they hurt, and they break, they crack a little bit more than they are already cracked…but they still love. They bury their dead and move on, but never really do. It’s all part of that strangely permanent facade…where a life becomes a collage of pain, turned into a beautiful painting of happiness. Pain is a motivator to love more, to live more, and be more. I think we are seen as fictitious not because we are, but because we seem to react to pain fleetingly. Intense for a moment, but then, it is just a motivator to live, to love, to smile and to be what makes a manic pixie dream girl, what she is.

And although I don’t want to be, although I don’t want to be Natalie Portman, it’s something that I realized on the floor of my friend’s kitchen, and something I realized this morning. I don’t think its’ something to be fixed, or something wrong. It just is. I am afraid to live, so I hyper-live, and I take people with me. And sometimes, they feel better, and less broken.

I’ll never tap dance in front of a fireplace for Zach Braff, because I don’t know how to tap dance. But I teach people how to hyper-live. And maybe it’s not so bad, being a 5’9” Natalie Portman…It’s not something to be sad about. It just is.

Wikipedia- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manic_Pixie_Dream_Girl
TV Tropes- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ManicPixieDreamGirl

My phone buzzed in my pocket and I noticed the little jump as I wondered who it was. I stopped, my plate on my knee, my hand halfway into my jeans when I realized that I was hoping it was someone in particular who’d sent the text. I paused in that moment, it was a weird feeling…knowing I wanted to talk to someone…I wanted…someone.

Michelle: Happy thanksgiving! Gobble Gobble!

I grinned and laughed, placing the plate on the floor and flipping open my phone to text her back.

Gobble, gobble? We kill our turkey before we eat it. Happy Thanksgiving!

I smirked and slid my phone back into my pocket, resuming my potatoes and gravy and watching the Browns and the Bears, or the Vikings and the Colts, whatever was going on, on the screen. I wasn’t sure about the teams, and wasn’t too big on football to begin with, but I always watched, just to watch something. I was sure I could get into football if I wanted to.

My family had asked about my friends at school, and my classes. I told them about Jake and Benny and Dan, and that there were girls next door that Jake tried to date, however I was careful to not bring up Michelle. It wasn’t that I wasn’t thinking about her, which was totally not the case; I just didn’t want anyone to think anything about it. We were friends…if I mentioned girls names, it’d be more.

But I thought about her a lot. We hung out so much at school; it was hard not to think about someone you spent at least 2 hours a day with. And that was being conservative. She was my best friend there.

I needed more friends. Maybe when I got back I would hang with Benny and Dan more.

But I missed her, and that was weird. But I could tell the little mousy girl anything and she’d be there. She was reliable when I really didn’t have anything to rely on.

The phone buzzed again and I smirked, picking it out of my pocket and unlocking the screen once more.

Michelle: Bet my dad cooks better turkey than your mom.

False. No one cooks better turkey than my mom. If Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima and Paula fucking Deen all piled together their cooking skill, it would still lose.

Michelle: Aunt Jemima only makes pancakes.

Maple Pancake stuffing.

Michelle: That needs to happen.

Fuck yes it does!

I didn’t notice I was quietly laughing to myself until I put the phone away and choked on a slice of cranberry sauce. I shook my head and removed myself from the living room, tossing my paper plate into the trashcan and going to scope out the dessert table.

“you’re too skinny Brayden Michael! Eat!” Grandma shoved a plate of apple pie with a large scoop of ice cream on top into my hands. I had a psychic grandma apparently. “Sit with me. You’re so big now! I want to talk to my grandson!”

You know that feeling of dread when your senile grandmother wants to talk about what you’ve been doing for the past 3 months? I would give up my slice of pie to get back to the football game.

Bu it wasn’t bad. Grandma asked how I was feeling, about chemo, about school and about track. Cancer was kind of a taboo subject in the house, and no one would ever talk to me about it. It was always directed at mom, who would quietly tell them that we didn’t know until Friday. Grandma didn’t fuck around like that, but she, herself had survived lung and breast cancer, while still going all over the place with Grampy to see the 50 states. She wasn’t afraid of cancer, and she was kind of a hero in that way.

Maybe I’d take after her and not die from this thing. And that made talking honestly about it with her possible. I sliced into her warm pie and ice cream and talked with my grandma the way I would have talked to dad if he would stop pretending I wasn’t sick. She was comforting, and made me hot chocolate to go with my pie, she hugged me and said that it would be ok. She was the best Gram ever.

It was nice to think that I would take after her and beat it. And I did, right up until the doctor came in the next day after an x-ray of my leg. I’d never seen Dr. Coble look so helpless.

I wasn’t going back to school. I had emergency surgery Monday morning. The cancer hadn’t slowed down, it’d spread. I was losing my leg.

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.”

Here I am, lying in my bed
A lightning storm going off in my head
And I wonder to myself
Am I better off dead
Cause I really suck when it comes to being a friend
Cause I always get caught up in the drama
Caring to much and knowing I never had a father
And getting into pathetic little pissing contests
Making it seem like I have an ounce of confidence
When really I’m just a sad little girl
Who’s scared of the world
Scared of the truth be told,
I’m just gonna be alone
Staring at the ceiling as the storm unfolds
And wondering what it’s like to be
Anyone but me
Cause I suck you see
I’m not meant to be truly happy
Cause when the cards are laid out
I’m going down the river
It’s just a game of poker
And I just know that I’m gonna fold, her
There’s always a better option
She’s totally rockin’
And I’m just forgotten
So I sit here in my bed
Watching the lightning going off in my head
And wondering if it’s an epileptic seizure
And I’d like to meet her
if she really exists
dream girl who’s not me
who’s truly happy
and doesn’t have a care in the world you see
cause I’m just closing my eyes
and the lightning goes off
does it hurt to die?

And I spin the ring on my finger
I touch my heart, let it linger
And I know that it’s coming on fast
But I love how that feeling always lasts

These nights feel so cold, without you near me
And I wish I could just have you hear me
Whispering in the cool blue night
And I’m trying so hard to hold it
But I know that you know it
That my thoughts are racing
And I can’t stop chasing
You.

And the rain starts and I hear it tap against the window
And I just wish that I could let you know
That I bet that it’s so warm
And I want to splash through the puddles
To meet you right up the middle
And kiss you with everything I have.

And as the thunder rumbles
I feel my heart jump a beat
and I can’t help but think
that you’re watching the light show too

These nights feel so cold, without you near me
And I wish I could just have you hear me
Whispering in the cool blue night
And I’m trying so hard to hold it in
But I know that you know it
That my thoughts are racing
And I can’t stop chasing
You.

And I pull that hat on backwards
Feel the callous under my ring finger
And wonder what it’s like on the other hand…
And I watch the headlights on the wall
And I can’t imagine feeling so damn small
But this world never felt so big without you here.

Cause these nights feel so cool without you near me
And I wish I could just have you hear me
Whisper how much you mean to me.

Cause you don’t know how much you mean to me…

It’s 3 AM and I’m wide awake
Thinking that just for my sake
That I could hit the road right now.
Make it there some how.

These nights feel so cold, without you near me
And I wish I could just have you hear me
Whispering in the cool blue night
And I’m trying so hard to hold it
But I know that you know it
That my thoughts are racing
And I can’t stop chasing
You.

Another sleepless night, staring at the ceiling
Trying to chase away this feeling,
And I see the headlights shine across the room
They illuminate that hat you gave me
And I’m sitting here, thinking maybe
You’re thinking of me too.

I didn’t like sympathy, or pity, even though that’s kind of what I wanted. I just wanted someone to support me. Someone who gave a damn, and someone who I could feel comfortable talking to about my worries. I could call Sam, I could call Jason, but there was something horribly different about complaining to a guy who didn’t worry about telling you to smarten the fuck up, or tell you the same thing you’ve been hearing since late June.

And frankly I was becoming sick of hearing those things, because they only made me feel stupid, clingy and childish. I didn’t need to feel those things when my chest felt full. It was never that good way it used to feel, when your heart swelled and you felt awesome, invincible. It felt like my heart and lungs had shrunk and in the negative space someone had filled my chest with balled up newspaper and lighter fluid. I was filled with the possibility of a brilliant bonfire.

Some days, most days, I just wanted to take a lighter and let it go, and see how brightly I’d burn.

A drop of wetness appeared on the derivatives and tangents beneath my hand, and I watched the lines of text and graphs slowly fray and feather in the moisture. I rubbed my eyes, my fingers splashing in a small puddle of wetness formed at the corners. I wish I could have considered this a rare occurrence, but I couldn’t. By now it was almost routine that I would start crying without even the slightest knowledge, since everything felt like a deep pit of sadness…there was no differenciation between crying-sadness and just sad-sadness.

I sucked in a breath through my nose, feeling the unmistakable resistance and sputter of crying as I tried to breath. I sighed and sniffed again, rubbing under my nose with the back of my hand to clean myself up before climbing from my desk, leaving my calculus 101 work to be finished at a later date.

I slowly crawled onto my bed and slid my hands under my head, looking up at my ceiling. I could feel the ever-growing layer of fuzz that was my hair slowly coming back. I was known for having a short-but-messy mop that had the potential to hang in my eyes when I was sweaty after a run. Having no hair made me look like an alien, and made me considerably colder than usual.

I scratched at the fuzz, it was a little itchy and uncomfortable, but usually when I wore a hat, the scraping of the hat covered any pain that the growth made. I sighed and looked at the ceiling, feeling the tears slide down my cheeks as I stared up. I realized then I was feeling an emotion I’d been unable to name, because for so long…I didn’t really know what it felt like.

Loneliness.

I sat up and grabbed my iPod, plugging the earbuds into my ears and turning the music up to drown out even the sound of my heartbeat, which I was wishing I didn’t have. Music started blaring in my ears to the point where it almost hurt to have it so loud. And then I turned it up a little louder; happy Jake wasn’t in the room and wouldn’t have to hear it.

I stared up at the ceiling and took a slow breath, feeling my chest expand with the deep intake of air. I felt the paper in my chest crinkle and compress as my shriveled lungs expand to try and fill the void. The paper threatened to ignite with every breath, the friction sparking and heating up. I wished I would burst into flames.

I took another slow breath and closed my eyes, blocking out the ceiling of the room. It was hard however, because everything came back. I could see her face, smiling behind my eyes, still with that smile she used to give me, maybe just a twinkle in her eye. I could see images of her, running around, moving through the history of our world together…the world that didn’t exist…the world that was no more.

And I realized the unfairness of it all. I realized how unfair it was that I could sit here and miss her while she was off at Marshall, enjoying her life, probably meeting guys, and…enjoying her life…without even a thought of me.

The unfairness of missing someone who didn’t miss you back. The unfairness of feeling the void, feeling a part of you missing and there was no way you could get it back.

And it was the hardest thing to learn, but the void just hurt. But the idea ticked in my head that made it all seem silly. I’d read it earlier on a facebook status, and now, it almost seemed real.

“You can love someone so much…But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.”

Maybe that was it. Maybe I was thinking foggy because I thought I had something I didn’t. Maybe I was remembering a girl who I didn’t really have a relationship with. Maybe I was remembering a girl who was gone a long time before the best and worse night of my life. Maybe I missed her more than I ever could have loved her.

I covered my face as I listened to the music that blared loudly in my ears. I took a slow shuddering breath. And now, I truly felt alone, without my girl to trust, and without my mind to tell me what was real and what was not.

I sighed and sat up, prepared to go for a run. It would make my leg hurt like hell, but I needed help, I needed something to take my mind off of it. Maybe I would end up shaking some of the cancer free on accident, I didn’t know if that was possible. But whatever the cancer would do…the run would do so much better for me…I truly needed it.

I pulled the headphones out of my ears and moved to the closet, pulling my running shorts out of a drawer and started getting changed.

“Brayden? You there?” came with a loud knock at the door. I blinked and leaned over, peeking through the eyepiece and seeing a huge dark eye staring back at me. I blinked, pulling open the door and seeing the tiny little Michelle smiling at me.

“Oh…Uh…hey Mel” I smiled, still holding the shorts in my hand.

“Hi Bray. I just got back from class, was wondering if you wanted to catch dinner?” Her teeth pulled at her lip and her eyes were aimed right at me. Those eyes killed me, so round, so blue and hopeful. I sighed, unable to say no to them. I chucked the shorts back onto my dresser and grabbed my wallet.

“Alright.” I smiled, sliding into the hall, watching her bounce with excitement. She was always so happy…I couldn’t help but smirk. She did that to me.