In the Year of Our War

This is the closest thing to an autobiography I've ever written.

 

To speak of Love:

 

I really don’t know what it is that I am waiting for when it comes to love && dating. I already know so many nice guys, actually met quite a few recently. Why is it, I ask, that I am completely unable to envision any of them ever as anything more than a good friend? As I am quite certain of the direction of my sexual orientation, no other explanation can sufficiently explain my indifference. To rub salt in my own wound, why do I push away the good ones when they do come around? Be it fear of being broken or a disease of my mind, I cannot yet determine. I cannot be sure, but I believe my psychiatrist is becoming quite put off with my increasingly frequent trips to her office… -

 

 

A knock on my bedroom door, followed promptly by the turn of the handle and a growing column of bright yellow light that spilled across the white carpet floor like daisies greeting the sun. The silhouette of my mother’s body soon appeared to block the light like a solar eclipse.

 “Mother what is really the point of knocking if you’re just going to come in anyways?” I inquired without raising my eyes from my laptop. I could feel her withering leer from the top of my loft bed. I was glad the dark hid my chagrined smile.

She flipped the light switch and I let out a small groan of pain as my eyes were forcefully adjusted to the brightness. I can’t say that I didn’t take a little satisfaction from my dark blue walls absorbing most of the soft light radiating from the ceiling fan.

Mother’s expression did not change, but I knew her well enough to know that, for some reason, the hues of her daughters chosen palette rubbed her in the wrong direction. So sue me, I hate pastels. My hair is dark, my eyes are dark, my skin is dark; dark colors look good on me and around me. She had been promising me that we would paint my room since freshman year and that the horrible lilac color I couldn’t stand would go away. About a month ago on my 18^th birthday, I took my Silverado down to Home Depot, bought some paint and did it myself. I had been thinking of her and had mentally compromised; because of her scorn of all things black I hadn’t painted my room in my favorite color. I really had no idea what was so offensive about silver and dark blue.

After forcing me to endure her critical eye systematically and mentally berating each and every one of my walls for a few moments more, she finally turned her gaze back to me.

“It’s 6:45, I thought Travis was supposed to have picked you up for the movie by now?” she countered my rhetorical question.

A metallic feeling suddenly appeared in my mouth, and my stomach was viciously assuring me that I had suddenly and miraculously swallowed a ball of lead. My pillow managed to hide my teary eyes.

“He canceled. Something about his mother dropping the vacuum on her foot and him having to drive her to the hospital. Might be broken.” I felt very proud of myself; that had come off just as nonchalantly as I had wanted it to.

I saw her raise an eyebrow out of the corner of my eye. “Canceled? Isn’t that–“

“-the second time in a week? Yeah, it is. Nothing he could have done. We’re trying again Friday night.”

She was quiet for a little. During the ensuing silence I feverishly tried to keep my mind on what I was about to type in my journal as I pretended to innocuously check my MySpace page. She didn’t know I kept a diary, and she certainly didn’t know I was seeing a psychologist.

“Did you try calling Retta?” she finally inquired a few minutes later, making me jump at the sudden noise.

“Out with David. Seeing some new romantic comedy. She extended me a pity invitation but I didn’t want to be third wheel.”

Her red lips pressed together in a hard line and she turned away as if she had given in.

“You still going out with dad tonight?” I asked before she could close the door. She smiled at my apparent newfound interest in her pastimes.

“Yes, we’re going across town to that new strip mall that just opened up. There’s a little Italian bistro in there that your father wants to try out,” she responded. Her smile fell just a little. “If you end up making any plans just give me a call sweetie. Ok?”

As many differences as there were between my mother and I, this rare display of concern for my social life meant enough that I actually smiled in return. A thought came to me.

“Actually I think I’ll try calling Kris if that’s ok. I don’t think he’s doing anything tonight.” Her smile brightened instantly; for one reason or another that I couldn’t fathom, she absolutely adored Kris, sometimes more than me.

“Alright honey that’s fine, have a good time. We’ll be back late, don’t bother waiting up.”

“Alright mom, have a good time.” With one last little smile she finally closed my door. A few moments later I heard the garage door opening, and soon my fathers black Mercedes was zipping out of the cul-de-sac and quickly disappeared into the night.

I all but jumped out of bed. I fumbled around in the dark for a few moments searching for my cell phone until I realized that it was in my pocket. A brief text message soon flew through the airwaves on its way to Kris’ pocket, and an even shorter one came almost instantaneously.

“15 minutes.”

I smiled. Genuinely. Then, I ran downstairs to look for my coat.

 

 

********************************

 

Headlights soon shone through my living room windows, blinding in the cool darkness of my house. 7:05, right on time. The curtains fluttered in the wake of my passing as I scampered out the front door into the cold winter night. A silver Mustang was waiting in the driveway with my best friend smiling at me from behind the wheel. I took only enough time to lock the door behind me before I was sliding into the smooth black leather of the passenger seat.

We threw ourselves into a bear hug simultaneously, squeezing until we were both laughing and gasping for breath. He finally released me and we fell back into our seats. Kris’ blue eyes twinkled under his spiky black hair.

“Where to tonight milady?” he asked with a warm smile that would have melted any other female.

He knew before I even answered. “Memorial stadium.”

 “As you command.” He winked.

The Mustang’s engine purred as it glided down the smooth streets of our little Texan town.

“I thought you were going out with Travis tonight?” he asked as we pulled out of my neighborhood onto the main streets. His nose wrinkled as if he had just smelled something particularly pungent.

The semi-permanent smile that appeared when Kris came around suddenly vanished and the metallic taste crept back into my mouth, along with the lead ball in my stomach.

“Yeah, he had to cancel on me. But it’s no big deal really, his mom might have broken her foot and he had to drive her to the hospital.” Speaking the words neither released my taste buds nor spared my stomach.

Kris’ hands clenched on the black steering wheel and the speedometer flared ever so slightly. “Well, I think I’ve told you how I feel about him.”

His protectiveness brought back the smile to my face. “Yeah I think you might have mentioned it 7 or 8 million times.”

“I’m serious Katherine. You can do so much better than him; he’s not good enough for you.”

“Well, you know any nicer good-looking guys you’d like to pass along to me?”

He turned towards me and a wolfish grin spread across his features.

“None that I’m willing to share with you.” He suddenly shifted the car into park, and I realized that we were already at the gates to the stadium. Time always flew around him.

The gates were locked, as usual. And as usual, Kris gave me a lift over the metal fence before heaving himself over using nothing but his own immense body strength.

“Careful, might tear a hole in that pretty blue Hollister shirt,” I teased as he landed.

“That might actually increase the value on this shirt.” He stuck out his tongue, exposing himself for the five-year-old-trapped-in-an-18-year-olds-body I knew him to be.

We wandered down the pitch black tunnel leading towards the football field. It was always strange how quite and dark this place was whenever Kris and I came here. On Friday nights nearly every able bodied member of our small but growing town was in this stadium, polluting the air with their inconsequential prattle and drowning out the stars under the Friday night lights. I preferred the quiet. It was cold outside and I shivered. Kris put his arm over my shoulder; that helped a little.

We didn’t talk as we climbed the empty steel bleachers, both of us preferring at the moment the echo of our footsteps off the visitors’ side bleachers and the rustle of the wind like satin through the trees. The view from the top was why we loved coming here. We were at least a hundred feet up, and we could see for miles. Far to our right we could see headlights speeding down the highway, probably towards Austin or San Antonio. To our left were the houses where all the “lower class” families in town lived; the so called “upper-middle class” families that Kris and I belonged to lived on the other side of the highway. The view in front of us was most of the commercial district; its perpetually sterile white lights stretched all the way to the far-off horizon. My favorite view, however, was directly above us; the distant canopy of endless, cold fiery pinpoints of light that graced this sleepy town every night with more beauty than most of the indifferent residents here deserved to walk under.

We sat down with our backs to guardrail and let the silence lengthen. I put my head on his shoulder and he kept his arm over mine. We stayed that way for several long minutes. Kris started getting fidgety just as I was getting comfortable. I moaned in protest and reached out to tickle him through a hole in his jeans but he quickly squirmed away. In the dim light his chiseled face looked pained.

“Oh Jesus. I’m sorry Kate,” he murmured as he dug around in his pocket and pulled out a pack of Camel Lights. I scowled as with shaky hands he put one in his mouth and lit it. Something was bothering him; he only ever smoked around me when he was exceptionally stressed, as he knew my doctor-father could smell all cigarette smoke within a ten mile radius of his present location.

“Kris?” I asked cautiously.

The butane lighter finally caught, the tiny orange flame illuminating the soft planes and curves that compromised his serenely beautiful façade. Eyes closed, he drew in one long, slow drag from the cigarette, his eyelashes throwing shadows across his high cheekbones. Exhaling slowly, surrounded by the hazy white smoke, he looked like an angel lost in the clouds. The lighter went out.

I tried again to speak, softly, but he quickly reached out his hand and took mine in his, so I stopped mid-syllable. I waited for him to break the tension.

“It’s David.” He took the cigarette from his mouth and held it between his fingers. “He… he broke up with me after school today. I was going to wait until tomorrow to tell you because I knew you had that thing with Travis tonight, but then I got your text and well, here we are.” The cigarette returned to his mouth. The bleachers felt suddenly harder and colder then only moments ago. A strangled sob escaped Kris’ throat. His hand shook in mine. My mouth hung open as I stared at his face silhouetted in the dim light. He threw away the butt of the cigarette. He was crying.

“We were just sitting there, on his couch watching TV. My head was on his shoulder and we were holding hands. We didn’t hear his dad’s truck pull up; he wasn’t supposed to be home for another hour so we thought we were safe. David leaned down towards me and we started kissing. His dad came in from the garage and saw us-...” Kris’ voice broke, and it was several moments before he continued. “He started yelling ‘f****t’ and calling him a liar and a godless sinning b*****d. He started coming towards me but David jumped up and started yelling right back. His dad punched him in the mouth and David fell to the ground. I… I saw blood. David told me to go start my car, I said I didn’t want to leave him, he told me to go. I did. He came running out a minute later with a handful of money and blood all over his face. He jumped in the passenger seat and told me to drive. His dad came out the front door so I floored it. He told me to drive him to DFW Airport; he was going down to his mom’s house in San Antonio.”

Kris’ speech came faster. “It didn’t even register in my mind at the time what that meant. I just knew that I loved him and I had to get him away from there.” His eyes seemed dangerously close to spilling over with moisture. “We got to the airport and he bought his ticket and all of a sudden I just thought ‘He’s leaving me, oh my God.’ I turned him around and just begged him not to go, said he could live with me until graduation, then we could move in together. Nothing I said did anything, he didn’t care, he just shook his head and said he had to get out of here.”

Serenity suddenly washed over his face, though it did not leave him looking tranquil. His eyes were vacant of their former brilliance; he looked dead.

“I asked where I could reach him. He smiled and told me I couldn’t contact him. He said he loves me, so much more then it’s even possible to love another person, but he wants better for me. He doesn’t want me to have to sneak around all the time, that I should find someone who can take care of me, that I should find someone… better. Then he was just gone; lost in the crowd, probably sitting in some strange living room a hundred miles away where I’ll never see him again.

I already bought his Christmas gift.” His hand reached inside his pocket; it emerged holding a square black velvet box. I gasped. He didn’t need to explain what it held.

His hand fell to the bleachers with a resounding clank, fingers uncurled; the little box tumbled down stair after stair until it slowly, languidly came to a stop halfway from the bottom. The gravity of the situation hit me like a hurricane.

I took my free hand and turned his face towards mine. His eyes watched my neck, their endless azure depths seeing nothing at all. Two perfect, gleaming tears fought their way down the smooth hills and valleys of his now pale countenance and met underneath his chin in a watery embrace. They fell onto our joined hands.

Slowly, meaningfully, I lowered his head to my left shoulder, and a waterfall was unleashed. His reached his left arm around grabbed at my right shoulder and I held him as a mother would a child while he bled out his heartache on my sleeve.

A fire burned inside me, in a place I had thought provisionally dead. His pain smoldered in my eyes. As his tears ran out and turned to great heaving, shuddering breaths, my mounting fury rippled through my skin in harmony with the waves of convulsions undulating down his back until I thought I was sure to be shaken apart by their magnitude.

We sat like that for an hour at least, maybe more; time had stopped for us, being decent enough to allow an hour or so of grieving for the things that we had lost inside, for the little pieces of our hearts that had starved, withered and died. Mostly, we grieved for the things we could never get back and would likely never encounter again. The tenderness, the warmth, the happiness and perfect bliss; all the trappings of the perfect love martyred before its time.

We were children, and we were already broken.

Author's Note

I'm mostly concerned about Kris' long monologue, and whether or not it interferes with the flow of the story as a whole.

Reviews

[Tomás Ó C..]

Long monologues can take from the piece, just a little editing could help...