Care For Me Not, I'll Hurt You Too Much

An amazing thing happened to you just now. You spoke, and possibly began to make a friend.

Friend. The word startled and puzzled you at the same time. You realized now that he was actually serious and compassionate with the things that he did. Did this actually mean he was your friend? You just left it alone and began to contemplate how long it had been since you really had a friend.

A long time. you answered yourself.

When you were little you never really had any close friends. Sure there were the kids that you hung out with on the swings or the jungle gym, but you never really got close enough to anyone for you to consider them your friend. You only had your sister, then your brother after he was born and grew up. Your only real friend had been your cousin other than that, but things became complicated no matter how much you relied on each other. She was gone now, and that was all that you could get.

You shake your head, the memories seemed painful enough when you were forced to remember with every blow of your father’s fists every night. That was enough to knock you out where the dreams plagued your subconscious relentlessly. Instead you diverted your attention to your current situation. Gerard.

You were still sitting on the swings, although some time had passed. You never moved, and he never asked you to. Instead, he just sat down on the grass near the swings. His black bag was now strewn on the ground next to him as he sat and stared at the people passing by in the streets surrounding you.

You talked to him for a while…well he talked to you. You sat and stared at the ground beneath your feet while still keeping the slight rocking motion you gave yourself. He spoke to you as animatedly as he would have to someone that actually responded. He didn’t ask you any questions that didn’t require any yes-or-no answers, and he hardly looked to you for any comments or remarks to his anecdotes. He was catching on quick that the speaking was something knew to you, and you figured that he understood that in the silence is where you were most comfortable. You didn’t’ know how he knew, or you didn’t know how you knew he knew, but you did. He just talked to you.

You found out a lot about him then…it seemed like a lot to you anyway. He was seventeen years old, born in New Jersey, his middle name was Arthur, he was half-Italian and half-Scottish, he had one little brother named Michael but everyone called Mikey, and he liked to draw. You like the latter comment the most, yet you didn’t show any acknowledgement that you even heard.

He seemed really fond of his brother the way he described him to you. He joked that he recently went through a growth spurt that caused his family to have to buy a whole new set of clothes for his growing body. He joked about his clumsiness and the way he wore his glasses at the very edge of his nose so that he had to tilt his head back far enough just to see something straight ahead. He told you about his family and how he grew up with his mother and father to this day, and how he liked helping take care of Mikey when they were younger, and how much he depended on his grandmother for a lot of decisions that he made that were important to him. He said that she was the one that prompted him into a school play—that he didn’t say anything more about for some reason—and that she was the one that helped him really develop his love for drawing and all things art related. He mentioned singing in a passing, but he really concentrated on the drawing portion of his story.

He basically talked to you more than anyone has ever spoken to you in a long time. The weirdest thing happened to you while you were sitting there though, you found out that you 1) like the sound of his voice and 2) you enjoyed having someone pay attention to you in a positive way. It felt comfortable, yet alien.

Now you sit at the edge of the seat, slowly rocking yourself to a silent rhythm as he sits and stares at the patches of grass lining the trees at the edge of the sidewalk. He stopped telling you about himself a while ago. The way he spoke, it seemed like he’d been waiting to tell someone. It was like he’d rehearsed telling his background—in that order—to someone new. You remembered that feeling of wanting so desperately to tell someone something that you had imagined conversations and situations. You knew that feeling, so you understood.

The first time you really became quiet, after the accidents and after your father began beating you…you wanted so badly just to speak. You’d sit in the back of the classroom watching everyone in their own conversations, just waiting for someone to see you and walk up asking “what’s wrong?”. But that never happened, and your silence carried on to the point where you didn’t utter a word for an entire year. That was how you realized how you had no friends, and how you were just part of the scenery to everyone else at school.

“Kendall?” Gerard’s voice interrupted your train of thought.

You look up to find out that he’s standing near your swing. He must have called you before, but you had been so lost in your own head that you hadn’t noticed.

“Uh…since before you uh-, seemed to live nearby…and uh-, well you kinda already know where my house is and yours is, uh…do you wanna walk back with me before it gets dark?” The last part he blurted out in such a rush that you barely caught it, but you understood what he meant.

It was getting dark and you should be back before dark, considering the town that you lived in. But you never saw that as an issue before. It seemed like before you didn’t care one way or another. You supposed that you still don’t, but he had a family, and a mother that worried about him. You wondered how the woman with the slightly graying hair in his house was worrying about him now that he’d been out for hours after school ended. You wondered how it felt to come home to hugs and kisses, and smiles…instead of fists and bruises, and insults. It weighed in your heart and made you feel as if you were sinking into a dark hole that you made no effort to get out of. You didn’t do anything, but nod in silent agreement.

The walk back was pleasant, if you could use a better word. You walked in mainly silence. Every now and then he’d say something about school, or about the town, or even the weather, but other than that, it was a comfortable silence. You felt awkward at first though. You had to adjust to walking with him instead of walking away from him. He was several inches taller than you, so in order to see his face whenever you felt compelled to do so, you had to look up. You just couldn’t get rid of the feeling you had in the bottom of your stomach every time you saw his eyes. It was hard to manage.

Your houses came up, unknowingly to him that yours was right next door to his, and that your room was parallel to his as well. But you didn’t want to tell anyone that. You stopped in front of his house as you always did on the way home. It still had that calling to you, even though you knew the interior was different. That safety still hovered over it and you wished slightly that he didn’t live there still.

“It’s quiet in this part of town. Nobody lives in the houses around me so we don’t really see a lot of people.” He laments, staring down the walk toward his new home. You began to stare at your house, how different and decrepit it was compared to his. It really did seem as if no one lived there.

He must have caught you staring because he continued, “I don’t know if anyone lives there. My mom said she saw someone walking into that house a couple of times, but it was usually really late at night, or early in the morning. Sometimes I hear a door slam in the house or the sound of a car if I leave my window open, but other than that it’s quiet. I don’t even see any lights come on.”

You have no idea what goes on in that house. You tell him in your head.

“I guess some people just want to be left alone.” He says in a lighter tone than the one he used before. This catches your attention and you see him glancing back and forth between you and your own house, although he doesn’t know that’s what he’s looking at.

“Where do you live?” Simple question, difficult answer.

You settled for the vaguest answer you could manage. “Further.”

You hoped that he didn’t notice the way you now took deep breathes and avoided looking at your own house at all costs. You glanced repeatedly down the sidewalk at the quickly darkening sky and threw most of your gazes at your feet instead of in his direction like before. You chewed your lip as the thought of him discovering where you lived pushed its way into your head.

Even this simple response brought a slight smirk to his face as he looked down the sidewalk though. He must have not noticed your furtive glances at anything but the house next door. “I see.” He breathed.

You stood beside him for a while, letting memories form in your ever-wandering mind as you looked back up at his house and saw shadows pacing back and forth behind the curtained windows. His mother must be worried. You think as you notice the constant retracing of steps. Eventually the shadow stops at the window and pulls the curtain back an inch to see the two of you standing at the end of the walk. The shadow immediately heads for the door and opens it to reveal his mother standing there anxiously.

“Well if you ever need anything, just stop on by.” Gerard comments as he spots his mother in the doorway.

You looked at him again. The street lights around you had come on due to the setting sun, but you could see his face in the pale light. Again, there was compassion, true and blue. You stared into his eyes longer, attempting to burn that image into your mind. You knew it might help for when you finally walked through the door to your house. You just needed something to look back on and find comfort in when it felt like your body was being destroyed. You hoped that his honesty would keep you holding on for a little while longer, although you didn’t know why.

You nodded and he began to walk up toward his house. He turned and waved back a “bye!” for you as you saw his mother standing in the open door to his house, already readying to embrace her son. You saw her expression, worry, relief, fear, and…love.

You waited until he was near his door before you turned and walked away. You walked until you knew he couldn’t see you from his door then turned back and went up to your own steps. You took a deep breath and turned the handle.

You woke up in your bed this time. Your lip had split and your ears rung, other than that, everything had just hurt worse than before. You struggled to get yourself up, automatically going into the bathroom for the stack of washrags you kept easily accessible. After returning to your room, you changed and kept the light off as you opened your window.

In doing so, you saw the flicker of a television through the thin curtains of Gerard’s living room. You saw three or four people seated there, only ghostly images and silhouettes of the real people enjoying the shows inside. You tried to determine who each person was, but you were really just wishing that you could have kept the family you had like that.

“If you ever need anything, just stop on by.”

The words stung.

That night you fell asleep with the rag against your face, the blankets wrapped around you comfortingly and securely, and tears staining your cheeks. You kept replaying the images on Gerard’s face, and his mother’s face over and over in your head. You just wished you still had that.