Falling Is Like This
I have cornflakes this morning. Smiling, slightly soggy, like the brown flakes floating in the milk, I stare at the tabletop, wondering what time it is. Not that time really matters anymore. I flick a hunk of my long hair out of my face, and think about the pros and cons of hair. It always gets all over everything, leaving me with a pillowcase covered with golden hairs. Cornflakes. Mother says my thought processes don't make sense. They do, really, just not to her. Lately I haven't done much but think. Not that I really want to think either. Usually, most all the time, what I'm thinking about is Chuck. But then, thinking is better than sleeping, and the possibility of dreams. Mother calls it bad karma. I call it nightmares. My dreams leave me with an awful empty feeling, and I wake
up gasping for breath and shaking violently. I never remember what the dreams are about.
I remember the first time I saw Chuck. We were six, and it was my first day in a new school. The teacher did what teachers usually do with new students who come late. She stood me up in front of twenty pairs of curious eyes and introduced me. She pronounced my name wrong. I remember that Chuck was the only one who said my name the right way at first.
"Mercedes" I slowly lifted my head from my hands and stared into a pair of bright blue eyes. The boy squinted at me and a grin spread across his face.
"Mercedes. That's the way you say it, right?" I looked him over suspiciously. I still didn't trust children my age. They always made jokes, and always at my expense. Finally, I decided I'd answer him. I gave him a short nod.
"I thought so. Hey.. can I sit with you?"
That's how everything was with Chuck. He always had tons of friends, but I never got along with kids well. I didn't play the fashion game, and I didn't want them as friends either. I disliked them, and they disliked me. Chuck and I were best friends since that day he asked to sit next to me. We were surpnsingly alike, and we didn't do much without each other. Chuck was the reason I got invited toparties. He never understood why I wouldn't come. I think that my paranoia of people was the one thing Chuck couldn't understand.
Anyway, so Chuck was my one real friend until last spring. Graduation from high school. I remember we talked about what we were going to do at college."Chuck, love is like falling. And falling is like this. I'm going to miss you so much." I looked him straight in the eyes. He laughed softly.
"You don't fall in love, Mer. Not you. You're not the type." He looked away, down at his bedspread.
"What am I supposed to do without you? I can't even go sock shopping without your input." I tried to keep my tone light, but I don't think it worked.
"We still can write each other" he said, and grabbed my hand. "Come on, no more pouting. Let's go outside."
"It's raining outside," I pointed out. "We'll get all wet."
But we went out anyway. We went downstairs, grabbed boxes of raisin bran, and ran outside, pelting the passing cars with raisin bran and laughing hysterically. I don't much laugh anymore. The week after we went out in the rain, Chuck caught a cold, and had to go in for all sorts of tests. He tested positive for HIV. He died in June - the cold turned into pneumonia, and his body couldn't fight back.
Now it's September, and my life is worth nothing to me anymore. If you could imagine missing someone so much that nothing else matters... you can't. You can't experience it until it happens to you. I'm not going to Cornell like I had planned. Two weeks after Chuck's death, I tried to slit my wrists, and my mother found me, bleeding and sobbing on the bathroom floor. She won't let me go to college now. She says I'll be just fine at home. I imagine what I would say to him, if I could have one more conversation...
"I was falling Chuck... I was..."
Robin Prentiss, gr. 9