Breaking Down the Unbreakable

"What are you doing in here?" Once my laughing subdued a little, I was able to see his expression went from critical to worried.
"I didn't want to go back and listen to you and my brother fawn over electronics. Sue me."
"So you thought you'd invade on my house?" Maybe it wasn't worry. It might have been anger. He grabbed the frame from my hand and placed it back in the exact spot it had been in.
"I'm not invading. I was forced to come here, and I was just looking around. If you don't want me here, I'll gladly walk back to my room and leave your precious house alone. Trust me, I don't want to be here anymore than you want me here."
"You don't know that."
"I think I do. I mean my brother carried me over his shoulder. I think that displays the negative desire factor."
"No, I mean you don't know that I don't want you here." That was a change. I mean of all the things he could have said!
"You would only want me here to try and annoy me further." I folded my arms and strolled over to the window seat next to the bed and stared out the window at the small park behind our neighborhood.
"Again, you don't know that."
"Then explain it to me." I turned and looked over my shoulder at him, still standing looking at the picture frame.
"I can't."
"Why not?" I turned my body fully around facing him and took a half step closer to him.
"It's complicated." He kept his face down to the photograph.
"I'm 17 years old and I haven't lived in the same town for more than a year of my life. I spent the first 7 years moving from one boot camp to another and training with the 19-year-old soldiers and beating most of them. My family is falling apart at the seams and I haven't seen my brother in 3 years."
I took a few steps towards him. "If anyone knows complicated, it's me."
"Just because you deal with complicated doesn't mean you'd understand." He was yelling and turned towards me. "No one understands."
"That's because you won't let them!" I threw it back at him. "Just because you have problems doesn't mean no one else does. Everyone has issues they have to work through."
"Why should I bother telling people my problems when all they care about is getting theirs and getting out. That's all anyone cares about." He was taking steps towards me now too. The closer he got the more I wanted to sock him.
"That's bullshit." I threw my hands in the air. "If you would get over yourself and your stupid idea that the world is out to get you for whatever reason, maybe people would be more understanding."
"Yeah, because everyone at school cares about why I act the way I do. If they gave a damn I would have been questioned and counseled since freshman year."
"Not if you pushed them away before they could try." I was poking his chest with my index finger and looking right into his eyes,
"I don't push people away. The push me away." He grabbed my hand.
"You pushed me away." I ripped my hand out of his grip. "My first day of school was today and the first person I met treated me like garbage and told me I was a pawn. If that's not pushing me away I don't want to know what is."
"You surprised me." He looked away to the window behind me, like if he looked into my eyes any longer he'd break down and explode.
"And that's supposed to matter why?"
"What do you want me to say?" He'd snapped again and flailed his arms out. I was surprised no one had come in thinking we were trying to kill each other. "Do you want me to break down and tell you my sad life story? Do you want me to tell you why I act the way I do?"
"No, I want you to stop spitting out lies and tell me something real, because so far all this shit about nothing being your fault is ticking me off."
"You want to know something real?" Like that's so hard to believe?
"Yeah."
"I don't care what people think. They can talk and believe whatever they want to, just as long as I can live my life without having to let others see inside."
"Why can't others see inside? Your inside looks pretty good from this angle."
"Which is exactly what everyone at that dumb high school thinks too." He pointed behind me out the window to the world that lay outside. "Which makes me think you're not as smart as they say you are. It makes me think you're a lot like them."
Seth turned to walk out the door, but I wasn't about to let him insult me like that.
"If I was just like them, I wouldn't be standing here." I stood in the middle of the Barbie covered floor staring at the back of a guy who wanted the world to think he was indestructible. He tried so hard to build up his walls, and I wanted desperately to know why.
"You're standing here out of curiosity." He glanced over his shoulder. "Not out of any desire to help me."
"No." I took a step towards him again. "I'm in this house because my grandpa forced me. I'm in this room because of curiosity."
I placed a hand on his wrist letting him know I was still there and making sure he didn't try to leave.
"I'm here talking to you, trying to figure you out, and wondering what could possibly have made you feel the need to build a wall the size of The Great Wall of China around yourself because I'm not like those other people you look over. I'm here because I have a feeling you're not as strong as you think you are, and because according to Ali, you've paid more attention to me than you have to anyone other than your best friend since the 4th grade."
We stood there in the pink room for a while. Just me and him. Him staring at the ground by the door, and me holding his wrist waiting for him to say something.
But he never did.
He just stood there. Staring at the ground. At least until his mom called up the stairs.
"Seth, dinner's ready. Bring Riley and Avery down."
It took a few more seconds for us to break the trance.
"Come on. We should go. Your brother might start to think you tried to rappel out the window."
He slipped out of my hand and out the door, but I stayed where I was. I wasn't going to let him get away that easily. I was going to figure it out. No matter what it took.
I gathered myself and brushed through the room back to the door, glancing one last time at the happy face of Seth smile out of the sand, and I knew that boy was still in there.
He'd just been lost and caged for too long.
But I'd find him.
No one should be locked up.
Not even guys that think they're better than the world.
Not even guys that are jerks just because they can.
Not even guys like Seth Rider.