14
In yellow lamplight a boy is pulling a green knit sweater over
his head. It is winter or maybe late autumn, at any rate, the
branches are bare and his room is cold. He’s forcing his feet
into a battered pair of Converse with frayed laces that he never
unties. On his stereo, Bob Dylan sings a song about a girl from
Canada; the boy pushing his arms into the sleeves of a blue
jacket, far too thin for the weather, dreams of the blondest girl
and the way she waved goodbye. His footsteps echo down the
wooden staircase, follow him out the backdoor. The cold stings
his cheeks, makes itself tangible with each exhale, his thighs
turning pink through their layer of corduroy. With his
headphones on he doesn’t hear a sound, his pathway lit by the
lights from other houses, television screens flickering through
windows. The pond by the high school looks frozen over,
though the layer is probably not thick enough to hold him. He
cuts across the dead grass of the Little League field, taking his
hand out of his pocket to run his fingers along the grooves of
the rusted out chain link fence. The weatherman has promised
snow, and the boy’s heart is bubbling with hope that the
schools will stay closed in the morning. He’s thinking about
when he was little, digging out shelters in the snow banks with
his sister, and how in those tiny caverns it felt he could live
forever, anonymous and alone. He is thinking about what his
mother meant when she told him he was born old. A cat runs
down a driveway, a man walks his large black dog, a shivering
couple splits a cigarette on their front porch. The boy is looking
downthe road, thinking about how no one ever comes when you
want them to. He stops at her house, jams his hands deeper in
his pockets, looks up at her bedroom window. There she is,
sitting at her desk, perfect posture, reading from a hardcover
book with fairies dancing on the cover. He pays attention to the
hollow feeling of his chest, hoping to excavate some kind of
courage, some kind of confirmation that fourteen years of life
has amounted to this. He images throwing a stone, but sighs
instead, and turning on his heels walks home. Somewhere an
airplane blinks overhead, snowflakes making their first
ominous descent into the atmosphere. When he gets home the
house is dark, his parents gone to bed. In his room he empties
his pocket of loose change onto the top of the bookcase, and
sits down on his bed. Hands clasped between his knees, he
chews his lips, and takes momentary joy at the feeling of
sadness creeping into his lungs.