South 2

South 2

Jace's car wasn't home at nearly 3 AM, and I was getting worried. I was already literally shaking from the electric anxiety of sneaking out so late. He didn't live far from me, but I still took a huge risk doing this, and now I couldn't even be rewarded for my self-imposed struggles. I felt vulnerable, and the air was humid. Sitting on the curb outside his apartment building, I began searching the yellow cones under the streetlights for signs of him or signs of anything else that would concern me.
All I found under those lazy suns were questions. Why would he leave? What could be this important? Just like always, Jace had the answers, so I waited silently beneath a storm that only I could feel.
After nearly an hour of waiting and hoping, I grew impatient and hopeless. Instead of his resonant, confident voice in my ear, I only had the restless traffic to keep me company. When I finally reached my limit I stood up, looked once more in the shadows of the past day for Jace, and turned in the direction of home. I worked over my dilemma in my jean pockets, wringing the hypothetical particulars between my fingers. This was an important night for me. I was finally free of football, and all I wanted was to celebrate my freedom with rebellion and with him, but I was going home looking over my shoulder instead. It must've been nearly 20 minutes of walking and stewing before I reached the hospital.
This particular building had sentimental value to me. Not because a family member died in it or because it saved my life or anything like that; this hospital was the one establishment in my entire town that was constantly changing, and that comforted me in an unknown way. It was a little green stem of potential and growth among the stubborn sands of time. I stopped to sit and lean my industrious head against its cool marble bricks, and I could feel the life from within. New procedures being used, new equipment ordered, new patients admitted and released, everything about this place was new. Even I was new that night, and it took painted mortar to relieve the creeping cracks of doubt.
I decided I needed to get home, so I pried myself away from my calming beacon and started towards my house. About five minutes of blandly putting one foot in front of the other, I saw something down the street that made me look twice. Ahead of me and under the fluorescent sunlight, I was seeing someone in a wheelchair traveling in the same direction as me, but suddenly they turned around as if to approach me, then they spun around once more and started in the original direction. They were pacing back and forth. I thought I'd be the only one out this late, and I wasn't prepared for any kind of confrontation, so I crossed the street and kept my eyes on the sidewalk before me. When I passed by the figure in the chair I could see that their body was too small to correctly fit into it.
"Hi," his voice was childish in pitch but mature in tone. I awkwardly raised a hand at him and grinned, wishing to continue my journey. "Whatchya doin'?" I didn't stop walking but I turned towards him.
"Just walking," I forced through a practiced grin.
"Hmph." The boy couldn't have been older than 15, but he watched me with such a cautious curiosity that the early morning dark casted years over his face. I nodded, threw up that act of hospitable farewell, and continued down the graying road. My anxious hands never left my pockets until I got home, where I untied my key from between my fingers, let myself in, and showered the sweat and worry out of my hair.
I slept until noon, but I woke up feeling approaching dusk.