Helping Hand

Karen was so much more interesting than philosophy class. My teacher had nothing on her.

"Every girl wants to be just like Audrey Hepburn. They want to be classy and beautiful and loved by Gregory Peck. But it just doesn't work that way. You're born who you are and yeah, you can make yourself look a little different, but you can't escape who you are. And I think that's what horrifies people more than anything. It's not the world; it's not people. It's who you are and how you handle yourself. Think about this."

"I'm thinking," I said.

"You are you. Always. You can't look through my eyes and I can't look through yours. And you must get so damn sick of yourself. It's like you need a vacation from yourself. But the only vacation available is permanent, if you catch my drift. So basically, life sucks. And you can deny it until you're blue in the face, but no one really grows comfortable with themselves. They can't live with themselves. That's why we feed off of other people - off of our friends and our children and whatever. We live vicariously through others so our lives look and feel less miserable."

It took some effort, but I got her to hang out with me. She liked to talk and I liked to listen. Our budding friendship was effortless. It flowed like water and was heated like electricity. She discussed everything that was confusing, and sometimes I felt like my brain was jogging to keep up with her fast logic. But she made me think differently, and different was good because different was interesting. I could never had a boring time with her. It was weird sometimes, but I was getting used to her lifestyle and her tenacity. I couldn't adopt it, and I could never really be a part of it, but I could observe it. By her definition, I was living vicariously through her so that my life seemed less miserable, apparently.

That day we sat in Union Station watching the people and the trains move all around us. It wasn't very conventional, so, naturally, it was Karen's idea. I counted the red suitcases and she counted the blue ones. It was crazy, the ease with which we did these things. I wasn't used to it, but it felt nice, like when you're trying out a new sport that you haven't got the hang of, but still feel the thrill of exercise.

"I might have to disagree with you," I began. "I know that's a pretty horrifying thing and you must be terribly taken aback, but hear me out. I'm looking at this from my clean-cut perspective, remember. It's just that... People really do enrich your life, but I don't think that we feed off each other like parasites. I can see your point if, you know, your friend gets accepted into Yale or whatever and you're so happy for them because that happiness is not yours. You don't possess it or own it. But the thing of it is, I don't think emotions are to be possessed. They're to be felt. I sound like a jackass, I know. But the way you look at things is so dark. I can respect it, but I can't believe that everything sucks. I mean, I have to have faith in things. And I'm an atheist, so that says something. If I can't have faith in God, then that only leaves people. This friendship is a concrete example. If I didn't have faith in you, how could we have become friends?"

"You think we're friends?" she asked.

"Well, yeah. Don't you?"

"Fuck no we're not friends."

I whipped my head around to face her.

"Don't you raise your eyebrows at me, mister," she said. "By the way, you missed a red suitcase."

"Why aren't we friends?" I interrogated. "Is this not the definition of friendship?"

"We're not friends because you won't acknowledge me in the hallways. We're not friends because we don't hang out with other people. We're not friends because you can never admit to your sausage-brained buddies that you are my friend."

"That is bullshit!"

"Prove me wrong."

"How?"

She nodded her head at a figure in the distance and my limbs suddenly felt heavy. I was cold in my hoodie and I knew my face had to have looked more placid than a dead body. Jake and some of my other friends were paying for convenience items at the Relay. I could face them. I could run. I could hide. I could hop a train.

I looked back to Karen, but she was gone.

She didn't even give me a chance.