Putting Life on Hold

I didn’t have friends; I had people that I invited to sleepovers, people that I went shopping with, people that I studied with, people that I occupied my one hour lunch period at school with. I had girls that only liked me because I was wealthy and guys that only liked me because they knew my sister. I had a fair share of people that I chose to spend my time with on frequent occasions, but I didn’t have friends. The difference was, in my opinion, that the people I wished I could call my friends, I actually knew nothing about. Sure, I knew the generic things, like they’re favorite color and movie and book and store and holiday and vacation spot, but I didn’t know the deeper things, the more important things. I didn’t know they're darkest secrets or their happiest memories or, most of the time, their middle names. I didn’t know their greatest ambitions and the one thing they wanted to do most before they died. The things I knew about my “friends” were the things you could find out within the first five minutes of a conversation with them, but I never knew the things that took month’s worth of friendship just to build up the courage to say, or the things that they’d only told their diary in the sixth grade. I never cared to know, if I was being honest, because friendships would come and go, and where I was going was too high up for the kind of friends I would’ve made in high school.

Although, the moment my sister ditched me when we reentered the kitchen and I was lost in a sea of people I knew, but never really cared to know, I wished I had taken the time to form better friendships. I knew these people’s faces, had seen them at my school and at the grocery store and out around town, but I didn't know them personally, hadn’t even had real conversations with half of them.

Everyone was still engrossed in the television, the last thirty minutes or so of the movie playing out across the screen. Half the people I had seen when I walked in were asleep, and the other half didn’t seem to notice, or just didn’t care about my presence. The couches were filled to the brim with people, and so I found myself walking across the room to stand in the corner, sliding down the wall and bringing my knees up to my chest. I didn’t know where my sister was, where she could’ve gone, even, for I did not know the house, but I knew that she wouldn’t leave me there for long.

I was wrong, however, -- something I shouldn’t have been surprised about, but was nonetheless-- when I was awoken two hours later by way of a shaking to my shoulder. I brought my hands up to rub the sleep out of my eyes and was sure that they popped out of my sockets when they caught sight of the green glowing letters on the cable box across the room. It was hard to tell, without my glasses or my contacts, whether the number was correct or not, but either way, I was sure I had been asleep for more than just two hours.

“….a ride?”

My head snapped back to the boy crouching in front of me, his eyes holding a mixture of concern and confusion as his chocolate orbs met with my own dull grey ones. The sentence fragment made no sense in my mind, and I had just opened my mouth to voice my own confusion before he spoke again.

“Everyone’s just left. Do you have a ride?” he asked for what must’ve been the second time. He dropped his hand from my shoulder and stood, outstretching the same hand with a small smile as I took it in my own and he pulled me to a standing position. My neck ached from the odd angle and my legs were sore, but that was nothing a hot bath wouldn’t fix.

“What do you mean everyone’s just left?” I asked. My eyebrows furrowed as I looked up at him, pulling the rather large sweatshirt closer to my body as best as I could. He made a gesture with his hand, waving it about in a way that told me to survey the room, and it was then that I noticed that everyone had indeed vacated. The couch previously filled with people was empty, a blanket thrown haphazardly across the back and the pillows tossed in the corners. The floor was a mess of crumbs and plastic and dirty napkins. The credits to A Little Mermaid were scrolling down the TV screen, casting an ominous glow about the room. “Even my sister? I came here with my sister, she shouldn’t have left, are you sure she’s not upstairs, or in the backyard? I could help you look for her, if you’d like. It’s just, my house is rather far away and it’s dark and I’d rather not walk and I just… I really hope she hasn’t left yet.”

I rambled when I got nervous, or panicked. I was both, in this case. I had never been ditched before, but I was sure this was the feeling that everyone got, the nervous flips of your stomach and the increase of heartbeats, and had my breathing quickened too? I wasn't sure, too busy making myself look around the room countless times. Surely she was there. Surely she hadn’t left me in some stranger’s house.

Surely I was wasting my time thinking that she wasn't capable of any of those things. She had left me on and off too many times to count in the past three years, leaving me at a party shouldn’t have come as such a shock.

The mysterious boy only chuckled at my ramblings, turning on his heel without a word and wandering around the room. I followed behind him quietly as he went around, picking up empty popcorn bowls and soda cans and candy wrappers, gathering it all in his arms before heading off to the kitchen. I watched him set everything in either the sink or the garbage before he turned to face me once more, wiping his hands off on his jeans before speaking.

“Doesn’t sound like your sister’s the kind of person you can put faith in, does it?” If he only knew how right he was. I nodded my head at his words, stuffing my hands in the pockets of my denim jeans and staring down at the moccasins on my feet. I hadn’t brought my phone, I couldn’t call my house for fear of waking my parents, and would my sister even answer my call? Probably not, considering she had left me all alone.

I looked up one last time, taking in the awkward stance of the lanky boy in front of me. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of his too-tight jeans, his arms bent at an odd angle and his shoulders hunched in an unflattering way. His hair was too long and hung in his eyes, and the black cardigan hanging off of his skinny frame made him look even smaller, like he was drowning in an ocean of fabric. With his head down, I couldn’t make out the expression on his face, but I was sure it ranged somewhere between amusement at my situation and annoyance at my presence.

“I guess I should start walking then,” I said, and I turned to walk away. I made it to the front door, my hand stretched out to grasp the knob, before he pulled me by the shoulder, turning me to face him. His eyes were crinkled at the corners from the wide smile on his face, and if I hadn’t been in that situation—stranded in a stranger’s house because my sister was too indulged in her own self to remember me— I might’ve laughed at the sheepish look he adorned.

He reached out beside my head, grabbing a ring of keys from a series of small hooks nailed into the wall on the right side of the door and locking his eyes with mine. This close, I could see the hazel specks throughout the sea of brown, the green that lined his pupils and the joy that I saw in them that seemed to spread warmth throughout my own body.

“I don’t know the area very well, so as long as you can get me to your house safely and give me a good enough idea of how to get back here, I wouldn’t mind driving you.”

I didn't know him, not even his name, but I wasn't about to deny his offer. I smiled back at him before turning on my heel and swinging the door open, walking out into the cool night air with the tall, mysteriously generous stranger right behind me.