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wightknight) wrote2014-08-06 12:22 am
wightknight) wrote2014-08-06 12:22 am
煙々羅 Part 2
[Continued from here]
I know what you’re thinking. This is an old cliché story, the tried and true tale about how two kids from different worlds end up becoming best friends. Saint would be the innocent Christian choir boy raised by perfect loving parents who just needed someone a little more worldly-wise to be his friend and defender. Me, I’d get C grades and ditch school and start drinking when I was 16, and people would call me… I dunno, Scamp. Something lame. We’d be Saint and Scamp and we’d have this whole alliteration thing going on, and I’d be headed down the wrong path until his tragic untimely death inspired me to go to college to study theology or something else I hated.
The problem is that there are too many tragic untimely deaths in this story.
Saint’s mom died from smoke inhalation that night in the hospital. I didn’t see him again for a year.
I heard later that he got sent down south to live with one of his aunts for a while. His little sister ended up with serious burns, and his dad rented out a room and hired a nurse and spent every waking moment caring for her. There wasn’t any time for a second kid in the equation. So Saint left, the shell of his house was cleared up a week later, and I moved on with my life as quick as I could. It stayed with me for a while – I’d look out my window at night and jump every time I thought I saw firelight; sometimes I’d wake up and I’d swear I could smell smoke. I’d have these bizarre nightmares about my own house going aflame, or about lighting a candle except it would be my dad instead, and he’d melt and then his smoky ghost would scream about how I only made a B- on my bio project.
Dreams are weird.
Saint reappeared exactly a year and a month later. He showed up in homeroom and smiled quietly the same way he always did while Miss Hanna awkwardly announced that there was a new student in the class halfway through October. She was new; she had no idea what had happened, but all the rest of us sure did. His time as ‘the guy nobody remembered’ was about to be replaced with three years as ‘the guy everyone awkwardly avoids ’cause his mom died in a fire’.
It just seemed wrong.
So I nudged my buddy to my left and said, “I feel kinda bad. Should we say something?”
He said, “…Nah. Bet he doesn’t wanna talk about it.”
I said, “Yeah.”
Then we all got up and said the Pledge of Allegiance really slowly so we didn’t have to look at him, and I figured my duty as a distant acquaintance was done.
Yeah, I know. He’s the one we called Saint, OK?
News spread about his return. Saint was our favorite topic of discussion for a week, and he went around pretending not to notice the people eyeing him with funny looks when they thought he wasn’t paying attention. …He probably wasn’t. After losing his ability to be the world’s most successful wallflower, he’d compensated by learning to put up his own walls and melting into those instead. He wandered around the halls with his peaceful smile and his unobtrusive aura holding a book in his hand. Half the time, it was still the Bible. To be totally honest, it would have been creepy, even imminent-psychotic-break creepy – but sometimes, I’d see him brush at his eyes or swallow hard as if there was something in his throat. And here and then, the smile would tremble for the briefest of moments before it was carefully fixed back in place.
He was having a hard time.
I helped by avoiding eye contact and mumbling awkwardly whenever I saw a break in his façade.
Yeah, I know. But teenage boys don’t ask other teenage boys if they’re crying.
Life went on, and my 16th birthday passed. I got C grades and skipped school now and then and tried a few drinks and threw up. Sylvester’s Tragedy was replaced by Sophie’s Pregnancy as the hot topic making the rounds two weeks after his return, and Saint melted back into the wall where, if he wasn’t exactly happy, at least he didn’t have to try so hard to pretend to be. I was happy for him. I didn’t really care that much, but if it were me in his shoes, I’d rather be forgotten. He must have felt the same way; I stopped seeing the trembling smile and the casual brush across the eyes.
I remembered him again three days before Thanksgiving.
They muttered afterwards that it was an ‘unusually dry fall’, which seemed to me to be a halfway decent explanation for why a tree might burst into flames. I wasn’t so sure what it had to do with houses. Probably they were trying to avoid anyone coming up with the theory of spontaneous combustion; our town’s education system was already enough of a joke.
I saw it biking home from school after stopping at the store. Massive, thick clouds of smoke roiling and writhing in the distance; it seemed almost unnatural, the way it clung to the house and hung low to the ground as if something was preventing it from dispersing. The firemen were already hard at work when I pulled up, and a crowd milled about a short distance away. All the memories I’d pushed down came spilling back out in the blink of an eye.
‘Not home’, I heard, and that was enough to get my heart to flop out of my stomach a bit. ‘Terrible tragedy’, I heard, and secretly, all I could think was that I wouldn’t place this anywhere near the same level as ‘dead mom and critically ill little sister’.
That’s when I saw him. Right up at the very front of the crowd, almost too dangerously close to the blaze.
My first thought was, ‘who let this kid near another burning building?’
My second was, ‘is he taking pictures?‘
His hands trembled so badly he could barely hold the camera but there he stood, snapping shot after shot. I didn’t know if it was inappropriate or stupid or maybe even illegal, but it definitely didn’t seem like the right thing to do when somebody’s house was burning down.
So I took a few steps forward.
“…Saint?”
He didn’t respond. I realized then that, despite thinking of him that way for over a year, he probably didn’t even remember the nickname I’d made up for him.
“Sylvester?”
…Still no response. And after a long, awkward silence, I decided it wasn’t my problem. I began to back away.
“Wait.”
He whispered so softly I almost didn’t hear it.
I waited.
And then, for the second time in my life, I led him home like a lost puppy. He didn’t say a word the whole mile back, just latched on to me again and silently followed. I didn’t know what was running through his mind, but I was finally ready to be a decent human being. For a little while, I stopped caring about being associated with strange kids who took photographs of burning buildings.
He had that look on his face again.
I sat him down in the kitchen when we made it back, and I poured a glass of water and recovered some cookies from somewhere deep in the pantry. Maybe the same ones I’d stuffed in his mouth when we were eight. He had his head buried in his arms, and two pictures waiting on the table for me when I got back.
One I recognized as his mother, a warm smile on her face and creases around her mouth that came about from laughing too much. Her hair was dark brown, tinged with gray, and fell in waves past her shoulders. She hadn’t ever been beautiful, but there was something compelling about her – like she was smiling directly at you. She wore a simple, silver cross necklace, and she held one hand over her heart, resting partially over the cross.
The other picture was still on his camera.
It was a close up of a second story window in the house we had just left. My heart plummeted back into my stomach when I saw it, a shadowy face pressed up against the window. Barely visible, almost like an illusion caused by the smoke, but… there it was. Eyes wide, mouth half-open in surprise. The clothing even seemed vaguely identifiable. I was about to scream out – why hadn’t he said anything, how had he known she was there, we had to go back and tell someone.
Then I remembered.
‘Not home’.
He looked up at me, then, his expression just a mask of misery.
And I knew.
Even before I saw the cross, I knew.
I know what you’re thinking. This is an old cliché story, the tried and true tale about how two kids from different worlds end up becoming best friends. Saint would be the innocent Christian choir boy raised by perfect loving parents who just needed someone a little more worldly-wise to be his friend and defender. Me, I’d get C grades and ditch school and start drinking when I was 16, and people would call me… I dunno, Scamp. Something lame. We’d be Saint and Scamp and we’d have this whole alliteration thing going on, and I’d be headed down the wrong path until his tragic untimely death inspired me to go to college to study theology or something else I hated.
The problem is that there are too many tragic untimely deaths in this story.
Saint’s mom died from smoke inhalation that night in the hospital. I didn’t see him again for a year.
I heard later that he got sent down south to live with one of his aunts for a while. His little sister ended up with serious burns, and his dad rented out a room and hired a nurse and spent every waking moment caring for her. There wasn’t any time for a second kid in the equation. So Saint left, the shell of his house was cleared up a week later, and I moved on with my life as quick as I could. It stayed with me for a while – I’d look out my window at night and jump every time I thought I saw firelight; sometimes I’d wake up and I’d swear I could smell smoke. I’d have these bizarre nightmares about my own house going aflame, or about lighting a candle except it would be my dad instead, and he’d melt and then his smoky ghost would scream about how I only made a B- on my bio project.
Dreams are weird.
Saint reappeared exactly a year and a month later. He showed up in homeroom and smiled quietly the same way he always did while Miss Hanna awkwardly announced that there was a new student in the class halfway through October. She was new; she had no idea what had happened, but all the rest of us sure did. His time as ‘the guy nobody remembered’ was about to be replaced with three years as ‘the guy everyone awkwardly avoids ’cause his mom died in a fire’.
It just seemed wrong.
So I nudged my buddy to my left and said, “I feel kinda bad. Should we say something?”
He said, “…Nah. Bet he doesn’t wanna talk about it.”
I said, “Yeah.”
Then we all got up and said the Pledge of Allegiance really slowly so we didn’t have to look at him, and I figured my duty as a distant acquaintance was done.
Yeah, I know. He’s the one we called Saint, OK?
News spread about his return. Saint was our favorite topic of discussion for a week, and he went around pretending not to notice the people eyeing him with funny looks when they thought he wasn’t paying attention. …He probably wasn’t. After losing his ability to be the world’s most successful wallflower, he’d compensated by learning to put up his own walls and melting into those instead. He wandered around the halls with his peaceful smile and his unobtrusive aura holding a book in his hand. Half the time, it was still the Bible. To be totally honest, it would have been creepy, even imminent-psychotic-break creepy – but sometimes, I’d see him brush at his eyes or swallow hard as if there was something in his throat. And here and then, the smile would tremble for the briefest of moments before it was carefully fixed back in place.
He was having a hard time.
I helped by avoiding eye contact and mumbling awkwardly whenever I saw a break in his façade.
Yeah, I know. But teenage boys don’t ask other teenage boys if they’re crying.
Life went on, and my 16th birthday passed. I got C grades and skipped school now and then and tried a few drinks and threw up. Sylvester’s Tragedy was replaced by Sophie’s Pregnancy as the hot topic making the rounds two weeks after his return, and Saint melted back into the wall where, if he wasn’t exactly happy, at least he didn’t have to try so hard to pretend to be. I was happy for him. I didn’t really care that much, but if it were me in his shoes, I’d rather be forgotten. He must have felt the same way; I stopped seeing the trembling smile and the casual brush across the eyes.
I remembered him again three days before Thanksgiving.
They muttered afterwards that it was an ‘unusually dry fall’, which seemed to me to be a halfway decent explanation for why a tree might burst into flames. I wasn’t so sure what it had to do with houses. Probably they were trying to avoid anyone coming up with the theory of spontaneous combustion; our town’s education system was already enough of a joke.
I saw it biking home from school after stopping at the store. Massive, thick clouds of smoke roiling and writhing in the distance; it seemed almost unnatural, the way it clung to the house and hung low to the ground as if something was preventing it from dispersing. The firemen were already hard at work when I pulled up, and a crowd milled about a short distance away. All the memories I’d pushed down came spilling back out in the blink of an eye.
‘Not home’, I heard, and that was enough to get my heart to flop out of my stomach a bit. ‘Terrible tragedy’, I heard, and secretly, all I could think was that I wouldn’t place this anywhere near the same level as ‘dead mom and critically ill little sister’.
That’s when I saw him. Right up at the very front of the crowd, almost too dangerously close to the blaze.
My first thought was, ‘who let this kid near another burning building?’
My second was, ‘is he taking pictures?‘
His hands trembled so badly he could barely hold the camera but there he stood, snapping shot after shot. I didn’t know if it was inappropriate or stupid or maybe even illegal, but it definitely didn’t seem like the right thing to do when somebody’s house was burning down.
So I took a few steps forward.
“…Saint?”
He didn’t respond. I realized then that, despite thinking of him that way for over a year, he probably didn’t even remember the nickname I’d made up for him.
“Sylvester?”
…Still no response. And after a long, awkward silence, I decided it wasn’t my problem. I began to back away.
“Wait.”
He whispered so softly I almost didn’t hear it.
I waited.
And then, for the second time in my life, I led him home like a lost puppy. He didn’t say a word the whole mile back, just latched on to me again and silently followed. I didn’t know what was running through his mind, but I was finally ready to be a decent human being. For a little while, I stopped caring about being associated with strange kids who took photographs of burning buildings.
He had that look on his face again.
I sat him down in the kitchen when we made it back, and I poured a glass of water and recovered some cookies from somewhere deep in the pantry. Maybe the same ones I’d stuffed in his mouth when we were eight. He had his head buried in his arms, and two pictures waiting on the table for me when I got back.
One I recognized as his mother, a warm smile on her face and creases around her mouth that came about from laughing too much. Her hair was dark brown, tinged with gray, and fell in waves past her shoulders. She hadn’t ever been beautiful, but there was something compelling about her – like she was smiling directly at you. She wore a simple, silver cross necklace, and she held one hand over her heart, resting partially over the cross.
The other picture was still on his camera.
It was a close up of a second story window in the house we had just left. My heart plummeted back into my stomach when I saw it, a shadowy face pressed up against the window. Barely visible, almost like an illusion caused by the smoke, but… there it was. Eyes wide, mouth half-open in surprise. The clothing even seemed vaguely identifiable. I was about to scream out – why hadn’t he said anything, how had he known she was there, we had to go back and tell someone.
Then I remembered.
‘Not home’.
He looked up at me, then, his expression just a mask of misery.
And I knew.
Even before I saw the cross, I knew.