How Arcas Changed My Life

Later on that night I put them on the bedside table in my room. As if I needed some reminder of him every morning. I suppose Derek was right though, I did want them. When I got that aching feeling in my chest it reminded me that Theo was someone worthy of being missed. He could not just be forgotten.

Even cold in the ground Theo demanded me to feel something. He was my genius that didn’t care. No one had any idea how truly smart he was.

The day of his SAT was shortly after what happened with his mom. Even then his ‘scores that sucked’ were a total of eighteen-fifty. Average. Inebriated he became a philosopher. High he could recite over forty of those fables from memory. Sleep deprived and strung out on his last nerve he got a higher score on his SAT than I would. He didn’t care about any of that. He wanted a perfect score, whatever the circumstances. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t enough for him. That’s why I don’t think he did it on purpose. He had work to do.

The only thing is I'll never know if he meant it. If he knew that if he stayed in longer he'd die. I'll never know if he was just too tempted by the feeling of nothing or if he tried to get out of it. Maybe he had just been too tired. This world made him too tired too often. I'll never know if he thought he could just slip out of this world and nothing would happen or if the cold had taken him by surprise. He told me without responsibility he could die without regrets. Maybe by dying he thought he could absolve his responsibility. I don't know if he thought removing himself would repay that debt or if he really was under pressure. I wished I could have read him as easily as he read me. God I was so lost in his book I couldn’t figure out how to turn the next page. I was so lost in him I didn’t want to get out. That was it. It was just so easy to get lost in him.

One day it occurred to me in some History class I wasn’t paying attention to: he got out. I didn’t have him anymore to bring me along. I knew that with him around he could just carry me out of this town with him. I may not have had him to help, but then again I didn’t have anyone else to hold me back. It seemed now more than ever I wanted to go on to bigger and better things. Maybe I dreamed of palm trees more often than I should have, but I wasn’t going to stop anytime soon.

So when my English professor told me to write about someone who changed my life I began it with: I met him in the most unlikely of places, all things considered.