The Warmth

Jamie is walking through a graveyard in the mid dark night, not a soul around, wondering what the light will have for her next. Its pitch black and all you can see are the graves and the path she walks. Moonlight creeps in from behind the trees. She feels a presence, theres a soul here, a soul like no others. One step after another she starts to ponder, ponder about certain people, ponder about what they actually bring into this world. Jamie doesn’t need herself or anyone else to bring any new light into her life, it will come on its own. Each grave she sees is like a new face, a face that she will never remember when she’s older, but there will always be that one face that sticks out from all the others. A face that will bring light into her life without even trying. That light she will accept, and with that light she will cherish. She’s come to a stop directly in her path, moonlight reflecting off of the graves giving her path more light. There is a man standing 20 feet in front of her. This overwhelming feeling arises from her feet to her chest in a matter of seconds leaving her speechless. She could die right there and be absolutely fine with it. 

The alarm goes off. Spread across the bed with limbs hanging off and blankets covering only some parts of her body. She takes a quick shower and gets dressed. Brown lace up boots, tight blue jeans, Led Zeppelin tank-top, and an american flag bandana to top it off. She heads downstairs, grabs one piece of bacon off of her mothers plate and slams the door. She gets into her 1995 volvo 850, and before driving away, she puts Tangerine by Led Zeppelin on, and blasts it! She backs up out of her driveway, screeching her tires louder than a screaming pregnant woman in birth. She shows up to class 15 minutes late and sits down in her seat that is assigned to her for being late everyday. The whole class is staring at her, amazed and stunned with her appearance. Boys jaws drop and girls clench fists in jealousy. The teacher continues to go on with her agenda trying to ignore the interruption; Ok class, let’s get started on the writing project that you were assigned this weekend. Now the project was on how you felt about school so I am looking forward to your papers. Jeremy, why don’t you present your paper to class.

Jeremy is the type of kid that would come to your house in the middle of the night and suffocate you for just taking his lunch money at school. He wears pretty much all black, black boots, black jeans, white t-shirt, and a black sweatshirt. You never see his eyes. He’s either looking down or his hair is covering his face. There are always rumors going around school saying that he has the brightest blue eyes that anyone has ever seen, and if you look at them you’ll drop dead. He stands up from his seat and staggers to the front of the room like a man walking to his jail cell for the first time. He pulls out a crumpled piece of paper from his left pocket, along with some change and a box of matches that fell to the floor. He begins to read the paper. “Run from them, their selfish minds are focused on things that they shouldn’t care about. Too many restricting arms around you, all you want to do is rebel, we can accomplish many great things, go to many great places, but we’re all locked in with their brainwashing papers and teachers, for there is hope, don’t listen to what they say these bad dream a******s won’t stop holding you down, this penalizing sentence is almost over, lets keep faking the smiles for all these ignorant f***s, don’t fall for their tricks, a mind is too cruel to waste, a million eyes could not come close to what kind of things go on inside my head, for those million eyes are too busy wanting to be someone else, waiting to be someone else is a waste of who you are”

Half the class starts to laugh, even the teacher snickers a little bit. Jeremy just stands there not affected by the laughter. Just standing their with a slight smile on his face like he’s king of that classroom. When the laughter subsided, Jeremy speaks out with a powerful, vicious voice. “Just wait!” is all he says, and then walks back to his seat. No one thinks anything of it, except Jamie. She has this bad feeling about him and doesn’t have words to describe the types of vibes she got from him. The rest of the day, Jamie’s in a fog. Jeremy got her thinking about a lot of stuff. Thinking about her life and what has she done with it and if she’s brought anything into this world. 

Jamie spends the rest of the day brain storming ideas of what she’s going to do with her life. She wants to make a change and do something thats meaningful. She started to write how she felt in a way that was meaningful. She was tired of all these people smothering her and her school making her conform to things that are pointless. “One way street signs point in the direction of the wrong path. The wrong path for the adventurous spirit. Trees and rubble block the path I seek. The path they hold in front of me is stalking me, rapping their restricting arms around me, smothering. Heads or tails... give me truth... Surrounded with beauty or the American Dream? Lets burn the place down ...the all mighty tower, and walk slowly from the fire... just to be a faded memory.” She then starts to think about traveling and how there are so many places that she wants to go. She made a list of places: Nicaragua, Denmark, New York, Newfoundland, British Columbia, California, Colorado...

The next day she wakes up and looks outside. Taking a deep breath of warm fresh air, she gets ready for the day. Today’s different. Today is better than normal. She gets ready and heads out to her car. She turns her radio on and put in Ooh La La by The Faces. The sun shines brighter than a hot summer day. On the way to school she notices this over-whelming feeling that she had. At every stop light she lays her head back to soak in the sunlight, jamming to this song, and loving the vibe she feels from the weather. She peels into the school parking lot and went inside. This time Jamie’s half an hour late and her teacher makes her sit in the front of the class. She noticed that Jeremy’s not here today and is pretty relieved that he’s not. The teacher calls on her to present her writing project. This time the writing project was a creative free write, meaning you could write it on whatever you felt like.

Jamie stands up in front of the class, and pulls out her notebook, starting to read; 

“Children walk silently to the circus. 

Holding the hands of their parents. 

They don’t say a word... 

they sit down...

the children look at their parents and ask... “Is it over?” 

children’s eyes filled with tears. 

The parents don’t say a word.

The children look back down at the spotlight shining on the host of the show. 

The parents slowly look down and say “It’s only just begun”. 

She kind of snickers at herself and realizes it wasn’t very long and detailed but she likes it. The teacher seems to enjoy it the slightest bit and same with her classmates. As Jamie closes her notebook, the door opens... It was Jeremy. Standing there wearing all black, black combat boots, black pants, black bullet proof vest, black and grey camouflage jacket, two black guns strapped to his waste, black belt with bullets wrapped around him, and a black gun pointed right at Jamie. Jamie catches a glance of his eyes, they’re the brightest blue eyes she had ever seen before. It’s her first time seeing his eyes. They give off this warmth that can’t be explained. Breath shortened as she falls to the floor. She feels it. It’s warmth captures her and sends her to a state words no one can define. The seconds slowly ease by like walking in the rain in slow motion from a tasteless movie. Left alone with nothing but her thoughts. Shaking like a leaf. She’s growing tired. Chest collapses... Vision turns black...