Too high in that stadium.

Box seats below, we slummed it up above.

Three kings and three queens

And there were none in the world

Who could call themselves our betters.

Most fortunate yes, your pale

Hands folded with mine

Like a hair clip grasping tight to the moment.

HE was back with his lady

Laughing and moaning as

The Vikings collapsed on the astro-turf battlefield.

Your brother and his girlfriend

Did the same but quieter

Sensibilities must be respected after all.

Oh it was wonderful to hold you

And hand the camera up to HIM

So he could take a picture of our smiling love.

It’s a shame his girlfriend didn’t

Have a camera when she walked

In on the two of you fucking at the New Year’s party.

Now instead of a picture I can delete

A frozen moment to be forgotten

I have to listen to the echoing play by play of his

Every.

Fucking.

Thrust.

Just goes to show you that it’s

Always better to pay for a ticket and find a seat

Than to listen to the broadcast.

Yeah baby you can have anything, anything you want,

Yeah baby you can have anyone,

But baby you can’t have me, no baby, you can’t have me,

I loved you girl, no other way to say it,

Tell the truth I still do, I ain’t one play it,

Spent my money and my time and my fragile sanity

Giving you a love so sweet you was dancing to my melody,

Just kissing you felt just like making love

But just once a month I guess wasn’t enough

Long distance didn’t make your heart grow fonder

Long distance made your green eyes start to wander

Yeah baby you can go anywhere,

Yeah baby you can have anything, anything you want,

Yeah baby you can have anyone,

But baby you can’t have me, no baby, you can’t have me,

And little shorty, you know I loved her too

Not my daughter nah, but man what could I do

No one could look in that sweet baby’s eyes

And not want to cry, so yeah, I treated her like mine,

Playing in the bath tub, washing her hair

Changing up the diapers when you wasn’t there,

Buying her the things that you couldn’t afford,

It kills me I won’t get to see that little girl no more,

Yeah baby you can go anywhere,

Yeah baby you can have anything, anything you want,

Yeah baby you can have anyone,

But baby you can’t have me, no baby, you can’t have me,

Yeah baby I’d have taken you anywhere,

From the Taj Mahal to Graceland, Tennessee,

Yeah baby I’d give you anything,

Gold and jewels or those heels you liked off of Etsy,

Yeah baby you can have anyone,

Cause clearly one man wasn’t enough for you,

But baby you can’t have me,

Cause after what you done, girl, baby we’re through

Yeah baby you can go anywhere,

Yeah baby you can have anything, anything you want,

Yeah baby you can have anyone

But baby you can’t have me, no baby, you can’t have me,

Yeah baby you can go anywhere,

Yeah baby, you can have anything, anything you want,

Yeah baby you can have anyone,

But baby so can I, yeah, baby so can I,

Yeah baby I can go anywhere,

Yeah baby I can have anything, anything I want,

Yeah baby, I can have anyone,

But baby I don’t want you, no baby I don’t want you.

She was in her bed, because there isn’t much real-estate in her old bedroom, and it was the largest clear area. Plus, Katie likes to sleep. Especially around midnight. There is a mural of a young Katie riding a unicorn (or Pegasus, I can’t remember which) on one wall, painted by a family friend when she was much younger. Her single incandescent lamp gave the images a warm cast.

“Happy Birthday bubby,” she said. She was fifteen, but “bubby” was still acceptable when it was just the two of us. Still is.

“Thanks sisky,” I said back. You can thank my mother for that strange word.

“You’re eighteen!” she said, grinning.

I was. I had turned legally eighteen at midnight, July 25^th, 2004. I was a grown up.

“It’s weird,” I said, shrugging. Not a “move-on” shrug, but a “what the hell” kind of shrug. Parents confuse the two frequently, but there is no one so confused as a teenager.

“You’re an adult now,” Katie noticed.

“I guess.”

“You guess?”

How to explain? Here was this transformative moment, this line in the sand. I had just stepped from childhood into adulthood. Except I was the same person.

“Nothing has changed,” I reflected.

“Well you can vote. And buy cigarettes. And porn I guess.” She made a face. I was her older brother after all.

“Ugh, but I don’t feel any different!”

Adults looked so much more confident. Like every 17 year old, I had just assumed wisdom came flying at you out of the ether and making you a functional person when you became an adult. And a change had happened, though I didn’t realize it for a long time. Suddenly I was very aware, and very scared, of my ignorance.

“It’ll be okay bubby,” she said softly.

I looked at her then, and thought about what she must see. She was an adorable fifteen year old girl, with bright eyes and the same round cheeks as me. I was tall and skinny, a mess of hair on top of my tan frame. I was six foot one and maybe one hundred and fifty pounds and no future, but she looked at me like superman.

I have always struggled with that look, trying to understand it. The love of a younger sibling is like the love of a child for a parent: it’s rarely earned. I had let Katie down in so many ways over the years. I hadn’t stopped the man that had hurt her. I hadn’t held myself together when my mom was sick, my dad was working 12 hour days, and someone needed to be strong. I had let her see me scabbed over from hurting myself. She had heard my ex hitting me in my bedroom not ten feet from hers. She’d listened my parents fighting over what to do with me, because I was going to fail out of high school. Those are just the mistakes I had made up to that point.

“I don’t know Katie,” I said simply, looking at her. “I don’t know anything!”

I sat down on her bed beside her. I was a Junior in high school, but I felt like I was already half dead. Birthdays are a time of memories, and most of mine were of failure. The ones I was thinking of anyway. My inner life was not exactly rich.

“Well what did you think would happen?” She asked, one eyebrow arched.

That was a good question. I had no answers. I never did.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

She pulled me into a hug then. She squeezed me tight, because for all my screw ups, for all the ways I hated myself so desperately, I was her older brother. And she loved me.

“It’s just a birthday,” she said looking out her window.

I rested my head on hers and smiled just a little.

The First:
My mother is crying, in the terrible little apartment that our family started in. I am young, so young that this is one of my first memories that is more than a simple snapshot. I am in a jersey shirt and shorts, and the coffee table is taller than I am.
I hear a sound, one I have never heard before. My little legs are wobbly and uncoordinated but I make to the source: my mother. She is holding her face in her hands, and there is water on her fingers. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a big person cry before.
“What’s wrong mommy?” My voice is high pitched and too loud, as children asking uncomfortable questions always are.
“Grandma Peek-a-boo is gone,” she managed, her beautiful face red and her eternal smile, which had never left before, is gone too
The Worst:
I am sixteen and walking up to the house with my grandmother. We’re visiting in Maryland, the whole family come. My great-grandfather has been in the hospital but is on the mend, and we’ve just had a celebratory lunch. I might be sixteen.
As I open the gate, for the cars to come in, I see my aunt come walking out of the house. Her face is pale, and her eyes are red. My grandmother turns as my aunt calls her name. My aunt says something and then my grandmother’s legs go out.
She screams, the most unbearable sound of pain I have ever heard in my life. I cover my ears and turn to my parents, who have run up, eyes wide.
“I think Grandpa Peek-a-boo died,” I say, the scream still echoing in my ears.
The Best:
“Grandpa Bear is dead,” my father says, his eyes red and bleary.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Broken heart,” he says simply. “He’d been with Nanna for over seventy years Michael.”
Nanna had died two weeks earlier, from a cancer that had ravaged her body and left her in a coma before finally taking her away.
It hurts, my eyes well up with tears, and that deep ache that accompanies loss settles into my chest. But I smile and hug my dad tight.
“He just missed her too much,” I say simply. I’m seventeen, and for now at least, I’m sure they are together in heaven.

It was not a good day. He had forced himself to skewer the lumps of squid on the hook, his fingers shaking and his stomach roiling. He gotten red faced but stayed silent when thrice the eight year old in the spot next to him had gotten their lines tangled. He’d glared into the middle distance as the deckhand reminded him, for the third time, to let the weight hit bottom before he reeled six clicks.

This was his vacation. He had taken a week away from work and his family, a trip down with his college buddies to let loose. Have a few drunks. Fuck a few hookers. Relive their glory days before things got stable, and boring. Before first his wife and then he had gotten fat and complacent. And a throng of children worshipping him and calling him daddy despite the fact he had no idea what the hell a father was, and had no interest in finding out.

Nothing had shown. As everyone pulled up fifteen pound red snappers and stringers of whites built up in the cooler, Arnie’s rod had sat forlorn, but for the occasional gentle tug of a rock bass nipping off his bate. Arnie would pull the line up then, sun burned face creased and sweaty, before putting new disgusting hunks of squid on the hooks and dropping another easy meal to the bass.

Arnie wiped his brow, and glanced towards the sun. It was hot down here, hotter than hell. The sunshine state sounded pleasant until you realize it never stops. Arnie reached for the over-priced but delightfully cold beer he’d bought inside the cabin. His friends were back at the beach house, too hung over to come out. Arnie was too hung over too, but he was NOT going to blow the $95 he’d paid for the 12 hour fishing excursion.

Suddenly the rod shook in his hands. It wasn’t the nibble of the bastard rock bass, but a hit, an honest-to-God hit. Like a bass on a lure back in the rivers where Arnie grew up. He ignored the earlier admonishments of the deckhands and gave a great pull, thinking to set the hook. Somehow the line didn’t snap and Arnie pumped the reel furiously.

“Wahoo!” He bellowed, all the displeasure melting from him as he strained against the fish.

It fought like hell, and soon Arnie’s arms burned. His grin turned to a grimace of determination. Finally a sleek silver form came writhing to the surface. It slapped against the ship, glistening drops of water flying. The eight-year-old’s eyes were wide and his mouth gaped as he looked at the fish.

“Amberjack, and a good sized one,” a deckhands shouted.

“Damn right he is!” Arnie grinned as they pulled the fish up.

“Want a picture with it?”

Arnie shook his head and took in the massive fish. It was longer than his arm, sharp teeth and wide eyes glaring at its captors.

“Suit yourself,” the hand said, before throwing it overboard.

“What the hell!” Arnie bellowed lurching over the rail and watching as his fish dove into the darkness with three quick strokes.

“Out of season.”

It was only three, but it looked like twilight, the heavy clouds suffocating the sunlight and leaving only an eerie green twilight. Representative Dowsing had called him in for an emergency lunch at some sushi place on the Maryland side, and now Gerald needed to get back to Arlington for his appointment. He needed to get to the appointment, because Dowsing’s chief-of-staff had told him he was fired if he didn’t stop moping. Not that getting fired would matter much, but work cleared his mind and that was something.
Gerald lifted his eyes from the tiny explosions of falling raindrops and scanned the skyline for a moment. The city was strange, over five million people and only two buildings taller than two-hundred feet, at least till you left the district proper. The nation’s capital sat low and uniform and he didn’t mind that the sheets of rain seemed to wash the city away past a quarter mile. Most people hated when the early hurricanes rode their way up the Atlantic coast to dump on the city. Gerald was glad; like the remnants of the storm named Arlene, his life was disintegrating.
The train came blasting through the rain, its lights bright and its breaks protesting loudly as it rumbled to a stop. Gerald waited for the bell announcing the doors were open then started towards the car. He crossed the rainy gap in five long steps, but that was more than enough time for the rain to soak through his hair and stain his overcoat with long wet trails.
He sat down heavily in one of the seats his friends in New York called remarkably clean. They didn’t feel clean to Gerald. He grimaced as he thought about the long parade of ever more self-absorbed asses that had sat there before him, though he smirked at his own pun. He shook his sleeve up and checked his watch, an anachronism he held dear because it was exactly that. The train was three minutes late, and while Gerald would normally have been annoyed, this time he sighed with relief. He was not looking forward to his appointment with Dr. Hannah Felder. At best, it would be a brief talk and a prescription for some antidepressant he had no intention of taking.
He ran his hands through his damp brown hair, and down over his face. He felt stubble there, something he hadn’t allowed until two months ago. He could feel the bags under his green eyes, and let out a sigh. His face was warm in spite of his frown, and that helped the pain in his fingers.
With a frown Gerald flexed his hands. They ached when the air pressure changed like it was during the storm. The ugly scars that marked where a dog had bitten him years before stood out against his pale skin and shifted as he went through the painful exercises to try and loosen them up. He’d be trying to get his favorite toy away from the neighbor’s prized Rottweiler. His hands had broken in six places in the left and eight in the right, and the joints had never recovered. He still struggled with typing and was almost incapable of writing. Since he’d been fourteen, he’d had only partial use of his hands. Gerald sneered and let out a soft bitter laugh to himself. That was what happened when you fought for things that weren’t worth it.
“Crazy people laugh to themselves,” someone said, the male voice brittle.
Gerald’s head snapped up and his eyes darted over the car. A stout Guatemalan woman who must have been forty was sitting a few seats ahead of him. She was the perfect analogue for the horde of Latin immigrants that kept D.C. clean. She looked up with surprise herself. That left the bum with a guitar sitting in the back. It was a skinny guy, kid really, with an emaciated tuft of a beard trying to cling to his face. An unseasonably enormous coat, stained with an incredible amount of filth, seemed to consume the skinny kid.
“Excuse me,” Gerald said, forcing a smile.
“You’re not excused,” the boy said. After a minute he glanced up quickly, flashing a brilliant white smile, before looking back down to the ground.
Gerald watched him for a moment before shaking his head and looking forward again. His eyes fell to his hands again. He massaged each in turn, using the stiff fingers of one to rub their equally crippled partners on the other. It brought a soft measure of release, and he closed his eyes as then painful tension faded.
His reverie was broken by the sound of an acoustic guitar being tuned. Gerald had heard the progression enough walking past the steps of the dorms in college, every guy who could play three chords would sit out there during freshman year, hoping to earn the attention of a girl. Gerald felt himself sneering at the memory.
The kid, because that was who was playing, was evidently better than those serenaders back in college. Soon the car was full of music, a song Gerald knew he knew but could not identify. His brow bunched as he tried to anticipate the rhythm, and his mouth pursed as it became more and more frustrating.

“Free Bird,” the Guatemalan woman said with a helpful smile.
Gerald flashed her a wan smile of thanks and nodded. Free Bird. This kid was playing Free Bird by Lynard Skynard. Jesus. Gerald was 28, the song had been old by the time he was born, why the hell was this kid playing it? And how the hell did a Guatemalan woman know it? Did they play Lynard Skynard in Guatemala? Andrea would know, she’d studied abroad there.
Andrea.
He shook his head and looked out the window at the walls of the tunnel. His right forefinger brushed the empty spot around his left ring finger where a white gold band once had been. Where it should have been. Instead it was in an envelope in his desk, beside the matching ring she had handed him two months earlier.
Handed him. She hadn’t thrown it at him in a rage. She hadn’t screamed that he could take it and sell it for all she cared. She hadn’t left it in his mailbox, too distraught to face him. She had handed it to him, calmly, with eyes that were sad but already looking ahead. And like that, it was over.
“Doors opening,” the automated voice alerted. Gerald turned from his reflection in the window with a start, shaken from his thoughts. Almost immediately the music descended into a few discordant notes as the kid started cackling.
“You were pretty zoned out dude,” he said.
Gerald didn’t have anything to say. He just glared at the kid, who smirked and looked somewhere a few inches from Gerald’s feet.
“What’s up man? What’s in the window you’re so pissed off at?”
Gerald flushed and his eyes narrowed. Then he forced a smile. “Sorry, it’s been a rough day.”
“Oh man I bet. Shoes that expensive, it’s gotta kill you to get em wet.”
Gerald flushed hotter. His throat was tight and his hands clenched painfully on the rail. “Must be nice to not have to worry about that.” He nodded towards the worn and broken boots on the kid’s feet.
The kid let out a hoot. “Oh man! You got me! It’s true, I don’t give a good goddamn about my shoes! Shit. Sick burn bro.” He made brief eye contact during the last line, sneering with his white white teeth. Then he turned back to his guitar.
Gerald shook his head in disgust. “Get a job.”
“Ooo, then I could be like you,” the kid said with a sneer, starting “Free Bird” up again, drowning out the conversation.
Gerald glowered and turned back forward in his seat. His face was burning and he struggled to keep his composure. He felt like he was in middle-school again, getting embarrassed by the kids in sports. It made him nauseas to feel that way again, and he was furious with himself for letting the little shit win.
The jerk of the car at the Mount Vernon Square stop shook him from his rage. He let out a final sigh of disgust and looked out at the group waiting to board the train. There were more people than at the previous stops here, a small crowd. As the doors chimed, Gerald’s breath caught in his throat and he grabbed the seat in front of him.

Andrea was there, getting ready to get on the train.

Gerald’s mind went blank as his chest tightened painfully. She was right there, he was looking at her. They hadn’t spoken since she’d given him the ring, what would he say? How could he convince her in the brief moment they had on the train, to call him again? That was what it was of course, fate. This was how it happened, people bumped into each other after a long time and remembered why it had been so wonderful before.

And it had been wonderful before, hadn’t it? Yes, meeting her when she’d interviewed him back before she changed majors had been wonderful. Taking her to his parent’s place in the Piedmont had been wonderful. Her gasping out yes when he’d proposed at the top of the Washington Monument, looking out over their city had been wonderful. Their life had been wonderful and there she was again.
Except it wasn’t Andrea.
After staring far too intensely at the woman for ten seconds, Gerald realized it wasn’t Andrea. Her hair was the wrong shade, she didn’t have the freckles dusting her cheeks, her eyes weren’t the right chocolate brown. It was just some girl; she was very pretty and not Andrea. Gerald let out a shuddering breath and slumped back in his chair as she walked into the car ahead of his.
The doors chimed and slid shut; the train rolled forward.
Gerald licked his lips, and swallowed hard. For a second, the girl had looked like Andrea the night they’d listened to the National Orchestra at the JFK center, her cheeks blushing and her hands shaking with excitement. But Andrea had been excited by the violins, not his flowers, and whoever that girl was she didn’t care about either. The momentary butterflies turned to bile that crept up his throat and into his mouth.
The train slid along its course through the center of the city, a short fat snake that wound its way down towards Virginia. Gerald liked that thought, that he was in the stomach of some enormous serpent. He felt like he was being digested. No, he felt like he was digested. He felt like shit.
Andrea was gone. She’d never been there, as it turned out, but even thinking she had been brought the real leaving into sharper relief. Four – five years? He was livid with himself for caring. She was the one who had lost something, had lost everything really. She was a school teacher for Christ’s sake. What the hell was she going to do with that Georgetown apartment without his pay check? He smiled to himself grimly; Andrea couldn’t even afford the fee for breaking the lease. Things not worth fighting for.
He watched not-Andrea get off at L’Enfant, and thought how real-Andrea was really no different from everyone else. So full of her own ignorant certainty that she’d left, and like them, she would regret it. He opened doors, and brought flowers, and sang soft songs he’d written just for her. Where would a woman get that these days? A romance novel? No, he was keeping chivalry alive and the stupid bitch had left. Like the guys from the frat. Oh they talked a good game about brotherhood, but as soon as they’d graduated they hadn’t had time. And they’d wanted to do such stupid, childish shit. Idiots. Everyone was so damn stupid it was sickening.
The train exploded out of the tunnel and barreled toward the bridge over the Potomac. The sky, Gerald instantly noticed, was even darker. Thick bands of lightning stitched the clouds together in black mounds. The rain hit the windows with a sound like gunfire, and the kid finally stopped playing the guitar; the rain was drowning it out. The world was a blurred wall of falling water, the dark shapes of nearby buildings looming just outside the veil of rain.
The regularly rocking of the subway gave over erratic swaying as the wind buffeted the city. Gerald looked outside and let himself forget everyone for a minute. He’d never seen a storm this bad, not back home in Illinois or here in D.C.  The lightning was like the inside of the clubs the guys always drug him out to back in school. He was glad he wasn’t epileptic.
The train hit the bridge and Gerald looked down to watch the water heave. There were waves on the river, and he watched the barges struggle to stay afloat. There were no cars driving along the shore, no people walking. Gerald’s skin prickled. The storm had shut the city down completely, except for the Metro. Nothing stopped the Metro.
The world went white and then exploded in the loudest sound Gerald had ever heard.
The train was shaking, first with the sound of an ear-shattering explosion, and then with the struggle of the breaks which screamed and sent visible sparks flying along the sides of the car. Then with a painful jolt, the train stopped.
Gerald rubbed his eyes and blinked quickly. The dark cabin of the car swam into view, the lights all off, only the frequent flashes of the lightning revealed where the windows were. Slowly everything else came into focus.
“Rayo,” the Guatemalan woman breathed, and Gerald didn’t need Andrea to translate “lightning” for him.
“Damn,” the kid grunted.
“Yeah,” Gerald muttered.
The three people in the car were fine, and everyone else in the adjacent cars seemed fine too. At first the shifting of the train as it was hit by the wind roaring down the river startled them, but after a few minutes they got used to it. The rain still slammed into the sides of the car, but it wasn’t nearly so loud when the train wasn’t going forty miles an hour. The rattling when the thunder rolled over them gave Gerald goose bumps, but as the minutes wore on, it became less frightening. After ten minutes, worry started giving way to frustration.
“What the hell,” Gerald growled. He pulled out his phone and dialed 9-1-1. After a brief conversation with the operator, in which he assured her everyone he could see was safe, she told him help would be on the way. Then he called Doctor Felder’s office to cancel. No one answered, and he assumed they’d gone home because of the storm.
After that, they waited. For what he didn’t know and didn’t really care. It was almost predictable that something like this would happen. This is what the world did to him; things never went the way they were supposed to. He let out a loud sigh and stared out over the water to watch the monuments get silhouetted by the lightning branching towards the ground.
Then the kid started plucking at the guitar. Gerald turned, incredulous, to stare at him. He was playing “Free Bird.” Again.
“Is that the only song you know?” Gerald demanded.
“It was my dad’s favorite,” the kid said, intent on his playing.
Gerald was taken aback, and softened his tone. “Maybe try another one please?”
“He’d play it to me all the time growing up. It wasn’t the first song I learned, not by a long shot. But it was the first one I played for him.”
The Guatemalan woman nodded with a knowing smile. “Is good.”
“Thanks,” the kid looked up at her and smiled. It was more natural, and with less of those white teeth showing it didn’t look so much like a snarl. Then he turned down the guitar, his eyes wet. Something soft slipped from his mouth, but got lost in the sound of the rain.
Gerald cocked an eyebrow. “What was that?”
The Guatemalan woman lifted a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry.”
“Excuse me?” Gerald was confused.

“Don’t worry about it man,” the kid said, his voice thick. After a minute, he stopped playing and put the guitar in its case. When that was done he closed his eyes and leaned his head back in the chair.

Gerald turned back to the storm outside. He was irritated with the Guatemalan woman and the kid for leaving him out. Not that he wasn’t used to that feeling. He was always finding out about parties at the frat only when he’d ask what everyone was setting up for. Andrea was always texting someone else, and telling him it was nothing when he asked. He’d checked her phone to see when she was in the shower once, and had been ashamed to discover that’s really all it was. Just nothing; a nothing he wasn’t a part of. He took a deep breath and watched the rain as it fell into the river a hundred feet below.

A familiar desire entered his mind then. He could undo the latches of the window. He could force it out from the frame. He could climb up on his seat, and out the hole left by the glass, and just fall into the river. He wouldn’t pencil dive like everyone said could save you. He’d spread his arms and legs and scream like hell and then he’d die. He would not have to listen to the kid’s music. Or think about the kid not giving a shit. Or the frat guys not giving a shit. Or Andrea not giving a shit.
He’d just be dead.

“He said he miss his father,” the Guatemalan woman’s voice said softly.

Gerald blinked and turned to her.

“I think he’s father is dead,” she said sadly, looking at the kid, who seemed asleep.

Gerald hadn’t expected that. A deadbeat father sure, but not a deceased one. Something fluttered in his mind, like he was trying to remember a fading dream. His own father was distant but there when Gerald needed a loan or advice on which scotches to drink. Gerald didn’t know how he would react if his father died, but flushed when he realized he certainly wouldn’t be as upset as the kid clearly was.

Gerald looked back out the window again and sighed. He imagined his father would honestly feel about the same way if he, Gerald, were to die. Sad in a distant, things-left-unsaid kind of way, but no genuine sense of loss. Just a little disappointment, an extra glass or two of scotch each night for a month, and then?

Then back to work.

“Tempting, right?” The kid’s voice was flat. Gerald whipped around to see the kid looking at him with deadened eyes.

“Yeah,” Gerald replied softly.

“You could do it,” the kid said.

Gerald flushed, “well so could you.”

“I’m just saying,” the kid offered with a shrug. “You’ve always got that man.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you have that power,” the kid turned to look down at the river. “I mean whatever else you lose, whatever else you’ve already lost. You can always end it.”

The hope in the kid’s voice was uncomfortable. Gerald wasn’t in any place to talk someone else down.

“Why don’t you?” Gerald blurted.

He regretted it, who the hell asks that question? The Guatemalan woman gasped and glared at him in outrage. The kid just chuckled softly, and let out a long breath.

“My dad didn’t spend all his money on orthodontia just so I could grin on my way down,” he said, his voice slightly amused.

“What happened?” Gerald asked.

“I got a call, that he’d gotten real sick,” the kid kept watching the water as the wind fanned it out in waves. “I was in my first semester of school. I tried to take a greyhound back, but it got a flat in Cleveland. I hitch-hiked here, but by then dad was in a coma. He’d always had a cough…”

The kid faded out for a minute, just staring out the window. Gerald guessed it had been cancer that got the kid’s father. If you didn’t get check-ups, didn’t catch it early, it could happen like that. Andrea’s mom had been an oncologist, he’d heard the stories.

“I’m sorry,” Gerald said.

“Yeah,” the kid said. “Yeah.”
Gerald sat somberly for several minutes. He had no idea what to say to the kid. The Guatemalan woman just watched the kid sadly. Gerald felt small and stupid. He put his head against the cool glass of the window and let out a soft sigh.
He woke up when the train moved forward slightly. The car smelled like an ashtray, and Gerald was only slightly surprised to see a cigarette in the kid’s mouth. Gerald rubbed his aching neck, and absently checked his watch. He’d only been asleep for fifteen minutes. The kid looked better, there was some color back in his face and the wry sneer was creeping back up.
Gerald pressed his face against the glass and looked towards the last car of the train. Another train had pulled up and had just gently pressed its bumper against the back of theirs. The train started moving forward, rolling along the tracks at a careful crawl. Twenty minutes later they pulled into the Pentagon station. Two ambulance loads of EMTs stood among a small army of police as the train came to a stop. The doors were pried open, and the passengers all filed out in a numb silence.
An old black woman who worked for the Metro took Gerald’s name and contact information.
“In case of litigation,” she said helpfully. Gerald just nodded.
He walked outside, where a half-dozen metro buses and cabs waited to ferry passenger’s home. People were filing past a streetlight and onto the buses. Gerald thought he saw the Guatemalan woman amongst them. Behind them, an awkward figure with a guitar case slipped through the halo of the streetlight, walking down the sidewalk through the rain.

Gerald jumped in the nearest cab and pointed at the kid. “We’re picking him up.”

The cabby raised an eyebrow and looked from the shabby figure retreating down the sidewalk to the expensively dressed Gerald.

“Just do it,” Gerald sighed.

As they pulled up, Gerald rolled down the window.

“Get in,” he said. The kid blinked and his mouth fell open slightly. He looked around, narrowed his eyes at Gerald, and then opened the door. He wedged the guitar between them and sat heavily in the car.

“Where to?” the cabby turned in his seat to appraise Gerald.

“Where do you live?”

“This is stupid,” the kid said, reaching for the handle.

“Don’t be an idiot, it’s pouring,” Gerald said. “Where do you live?”

The kids hand fell back from the handle, but he just blushed and glared at his own feet. After a second Gerald nodded and gave the cabby his address.

They rode in silence for several minutes, the cab rolling through the mostly empty streets of the district. It was the lightest traffic Gerald could remember.

“I’m not staying at your place,” the kid growled, his voice almost shaking.

“You can just wait out the storm then,” Gerald offered.

“K,” the kid muttered.

“My name is Gerald,” Gerald said, thrusting a scarred and slightly shaking hand at the kid. His face was flushed and his throat felt tight.

For a long moment the kid just looked at the hand. He was frowning, and Gerald felt like an idiot. It was a mistake, the cab, his offer, everything. This kid didn’t give a shit, and why should he? Gerald could feel himself getting nauseous.

“Matt,” the kid said finally, taking Gerald’s hand and giving a single strong shake.

“Nice to meet you,” Gerald said, smiling at the awkwardness.

“Yeah,” Matt said, returning the smile. “You too.”

Gerald stood and watched the rain at the Fort Totten station. It was coming in heavy, and the sound of it crashing against the concrete in curtains filled the empty space left by all the people that had decided to stay in for Saturday rather than brave the storm. Gerald didn’t miss them, or really notice that they were gone. It wasn’t because the rain was so interesting; he just didn’t care anymore.

It was only three, but it looked like twilight, the heavy clouds suffocating the sunlight and leaving only an eerie green twilight. Representative Dowsing had called him in for an emergency lunch at some sushi place on the Maryland side, and now Gerald needed to get back to Arlington for his appointment. He needed to get to the appointment, because Dowsing’s chief-of-staff had told him he was fired if he didn’t stop moping. Not that getting fired would matter much, but work cleared his mind and that was something.
Gerald lifted his eyes from the tiny explosions of the falling raindrops and scanned the skyline for a moment. The city was strange, over five million people and only two buildings taller than two-hundred feet, at least till you left the district proper. It was low and uniform and he didn’t mind that the sheets of rain seemed to wash the city away past a quarter mile. Most people hated when the early hurricanes rode their way up the Atlantic coast to dump on the city. Gerald was glad, because like the remnants of the storm named Arlene, his life was disintegrating.
The train came blasting through the rain, its lights bright and its breaks protesting loudly as it rumbled to a stop. Gerald waited for the bell that annoucing the doors were open, and then started towards the car. He crossed the rainy gap in five long steps, but that was more than enough time for the rain to soak through his hair and stain his overcoat with long wet trails.
He sat down heavily in one of the seats his friends in New York called remarkably clean. They didn’t feel clean to Gerald. He grimaced as he thought about the long parade of ever more self-absorbed asses that had sat there before him, though he smirked at his own pun. He shook his sleeve up and checked his watch, an anachronism he held dear because it was exactly that. The train was three minutes late, and while Gerald would normally have been annoyed, this time he sighed with relief. He was not looking forward to his appointment with Dr. Hannah Felder. At best, it would be a brief talk and a prescription for some anti-depressant he had no intention of taking.
He ran his hands through his damp brown hair, and down over his face. There was stubble there, something he hadn’t allowed until two months ago. He could feel the bags under his green eyes, and let out a sigh. The warmth of his face helped the pain in his fingers.
With a frown Gerald flexed his hands. They ached when the air pressure changed like it was during the storm. The ugly scars that marked where a dog had bitten him years before stood out against his pale skin and shifted as he went through the painful exercises to try and loosen them up. They had broken in six places in the left and eight in the right, and the joints had never recovered. He still struggled with typing and was almost incapable of writing. Since he’d been fourteen, he’d had only partial use of his hands. Gerald sneered and let out a soft bitter laugh to himself at the injustice.
“Crazy people laugh to themselves,” someone said, the male voice brittle.
Gerald’s head snapped up and his eyes darted over the car. A stout Guatemalan woman who must have been forty was sitting a few seats ahead of him. She was the perfect analogue for the horde of Latin immigrants that kept D.C. clean. She looked up with surprise herself. That left the bum with a guitar sitting in the back. It was a skinny guy, kid really, with a sad excuse for a beard trying to cling to his face. An unseasonably enormous coat, stained with an incredible amount of filth, seemed to consume the skinny kid.
“Excuse me,” Gerald said, forcing a smile.
“You’re not excused,” the boy said. After a minute he glanced up quickly, flashing a brilliant white smile, before looking back down to the ground.
Gerald watched him for a moment before shaking his head and looking forward again. His eyes fell to his hands again. He massaged each in turn, using the stiff fingers of one to rub their equally crippled partners on the other. It brought a soft measure of release, and he closed his eyes as he enjoyed the feeling.
His reverie was broken by the sound of an acoustic guitar being tuned. Gerald had heard the progression enough walking past the steps of the dorms in college, every guy who could play three chords would sit out there during freshman year, hoping to earn the attention of a girl. Gerald felt himself sneering at the memory.
The kid, because that was who was playing, was evidently better than those serenaders back in college. Soon the car was full of music, a song Gerald knew he knew but could not identify. His brow bunched as he tried to anticipate the rhythm, and his mouth pursed in frustration.
“Free Bird,” the Guatemalan woman said with a helpful smile.
Gerald flashed her a wan smile of thanks and nodded. Free Bird. This kid was playing Free Bird by Lynard Skynard. Jesus. Gerald was 28, the song had been old by the time he was born, why the hell was this kid playing it? And how the hell did a Guatemalan woman know it? Did they play Lynard Skynard in Guatemala? Andrea would know, she’d studied abroad there.
Andrea.
He shook his head and looked out the window at the walls of the tunnel. His right forefinger brushed the empty spot around his left ring finger where a white gold band once had been. Where it should have been. Instead it was in an envelope in his desk, beside the matching ring she had handed him two months earlier.
Handed him. She hadn’t thrown it at him in a rage. She hadn’t screamed that he could take it and sell it for all she cared. She hadn’t left it in his mailbox, too distraught to face him. She had handed it to him, calmly, with eyes that were sad but already looking ahead. And like that, it was over.
“Doors opening,” the automated voice alerted. Gerald turned from his reflexion in the window with a start, shaken from his thoughts. Almost immediately the music descended into a few discordant notes as the kid started cackling.
“You were pretty zoned out dude,” he said.
Gerald didn’t have anything to say. He just glared at the kid, who smirked and looked somewhere a few inches from Gerald’s feet.
“What’s up man? What’s in the window you’re so pissed off at?”
Gerald flushed and his eyes narrowed. Then he forced a smile. “Sorry, it’s been a rough day.”
“Oh man I bet. Shoes that expensive, it’s gotta kill you to get em wet.”
Gerald flushed more. His throat was tight and his hands clenched painfully on the rail. “Must be nice to not have to worry about that.” He nodded towards the worn and broken boots on the kid’s feet.
The kid let out a hoot. “Oh man! You got me! It’s true, I don’t give a good goddamn about my shoes! Shit. Sick burn bro.” He made brief eye contact during the last line, sneering with his white white teeth. Then he turned back to his guitar.
Gerald shook his head in disgust. “Get a job.”
“Ooo, then I could be like you,” the kid said with a sneer, starting “Free Bird” up again, drowning out the conversation.
Gerald glowered and turned back forward in his seat. His face was burning and he struggled to keep his composure. He felt like he was in middle-school again, getting embarrassed by the kids in sports. It made him nauseas to feel that way again, and he was furious with himself for letting the little shit win.
The jerk of the car at the Mount Vernon Square stop shook him from his rage. He let out a final sigh of disgust and looked out at the group waiting to board the train. There were more people than at the previous stops here, a small crowd. As the doors chimed, Gerald’s breath caught in his throat and he grabbed the seat in front of him.
Andrea was there, getting ready to get on the train.

Gerald’s mind went blank as his chest tightened painfully. She was right there, he was looking at her. They hadn’t spoken since she’d given him the ring, what would he say? How could he convince her in the brief moment they had on the train, to call him again? That was what it was of course, fate. This was how it happened, people bumped into each other after a long time and remembered why it had been so wonderful before.
Except it wasn’t Andrea.
After staring far too intensely at the woman for ten seconds, Gerald realized it wasn’t Andrea. Her hair was the wrong shade, she didn’t have the freckles dusting her cheeks, her eyes weren’t the right chocolate brown. It was just some girl; she was very pretty and not Andrea. Gerald let out a shuddering breath and slumped back in his chair as she walked into the car ahead of his.
The doors chimed and slid shut; the train rolled forward.
Gerald licked his lips, and swallowed hard. For a second, the girl had looked like Andrea the night they’d listened to the National Orchestra at the JFK center, her cheeks blushing and her hands shaking with excitement. But Andrea had been excited by the violins, not his flowers, and whoever that girl was she didn’t care about either. The momentary butterflies turned to bile that crept up his throat and into his mouth.
The train slid along its course through the center of the city, a short fat snake that wound its way down towards Virginia. Gerald liked that thought, that he was in the stomach of some enormous serpent. He felt like he was being digested. No, he felt like he was digested. He felt like shit.
Andrea was gone. She’d never been there, as it turned out, but even thinking she had been brought the real leaving into sharper relief. Four – Five years? He was livid with himself for caring. She was the one who had lost something, had lost everything really. She was a school teacher for Christ’s sake. What the hell was she going to do with that Georgetown apartment without his pay check? He smiled to himself grimly; Andrea couldn’t even afford the fee for breaking the lease.
He watched not-Andrea get off at L’Enfant, and thought how real-Andrea was really no different from everyone else. So full of her own ignorant certainty that she’d left, and like them, she would regret it. He opened doors, and brought flowers, and sang soft songs he’d written just for her. Where would a woman get that these days? A romance novel? No, he was keeping chivalry alive and the stupid bitch had left. Like the guys from the frat. Oh they talked a good game about brotherhood, but as soon as they’d graduated they hadn’t had time. And they’d wanted to do such stupid, childish shit. Idiots. Everyone was so damn stupid it was sickening.
The train exploded out of the tunnel and barreled toward the bridge over the Potomac. The sky, Gerald instantly noticed, was even darker. Thick bands of lightning bound the clouds together in black mounds. The rain hit the windows with a sound like gunfire, and the kid finally stopped playing the guitar; the rain was drowning it out. The world was a blurred wall of falling water, the dark shapes of nearby buildings looming just outside the veil of rain.
The regularly rocking of the subway gave over erratic swaying as the wind buffeted the city. Gerald looked outside and let himself forget everyone for a minute. He’d never seen a storm this bad, not back home in Illinois or here in D.C.  The lightning was like the inside of the clubs the guys always drug him out to back in school. He was glad he wasn’t epileptic.
The train hit the bridge and Gerald looked down to watch the water heave. There were waves on the river, and he watched the barges struggle to stay afloat. There were no cars driving along the shore, no people walking. Gerald’s skin prickled. The storm had shut the city completely down, except for the Metro. Nothing stopped the Metro.
The world went white and then exploded in the loudest sound Gerald had ever heard.
Everything was shaking, first with the sound of ear-shattering explosion, and then with the struggle of the breaks which screamed and sent visible sparks flying along the sides of the car. Then with a painful jolt, the train stopped.
Gerald rubbed his eyes and blinked quickly. The dark cabin of the car swam into view, the lights all off, and only the frequent flashes of the lightning to reveal where the windows were. Slowly everything else came into focus.
“Rayo,” the Guatemalan woman breathed, and Gerald didn’t need Andrea to translate “lightning” for him.
“Damn,” the kid grunted.
“Yeah,” Gerald muttered.
The three people in the car were fine, and everyone else in the adjacent cars seemed fine too. At first the shifting of the train as it was hit by the wind roaring down the river startled them, but after a few minutes they got used to it. The rain still slammed into the sides of the car, but it wasn’t nearly so loud when the train wasn’t going forty miles an hour. The rattling when the thunder rolled over them was disconcerting, but as the minutes wore on, it became less frightening. After ten minutes, worry started giving way to frustration.
“What the hell,” Gerald growled. He pulled out his phone and dialed 9-1-1. After a brief conversation with the operator, in which he assured her everyone he could see was safe, she told him help would be on the way. Then he called Doctor Felder’s office to cancel. No one answered, and he assumed they’d gone home because of the storm.
After that it was just waiting. For what he didn’t know and didn’t really care. It was almost predictable that something like this would happen. This is what the world did to him; things never went the way they were supposed to. He let out a loud sigh and stared out over the water to watch the monuments get silhouetted by the lightning branching towards the ground.
Then the kid started plucking at the guitar. Gerald turned, incredulous, to stare at him. He was playing “Free Bird.” Again.
“Is that the only song you know?” Gerald demanded.
“Nope,” the kid said, intent on his playing.
“Maybe try another one please?”
“You don’t like Skynard?”
“Those guys died in a crash before I was born. That was a while before you started playing, if I had to guess.”
“So?”
Gerald licked his lips. “So I’d appreciate it if you played something else.”
“I’d appreciate it if you shut the hell up and left me alone rich boy.”
The Guatemalan woman shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
“Excuse me?” Gerald couldn’t believe what the guy was saying.
The kid put the guitar down and grimaced out the window.  “You heard me asshole. Stop forcing that bullshit confusion onto your face. You don’t own the Metro, I can play whatever I want.”
Gerald’s face burned. “Look I just don’t want to hear the song again.”
“Well I do. Unless you have a real convincing reason why I should do what you want instead of what I want, you’re just gunna have to hold your hands over your ears and hum Norah Jones or whatever it is you listen to.”
Gerald winced at the pain in his tightly clinched fists. The kid was unbelievable. What the hell had Gerald ever done to deserve this kind of shit from him.
“You look surprised man,” the kid sneered, “not used to not getting what you want.”
“I’ve had plenty of disappointments,” Gerald said. He raised his jaw defiantly. “And I still made something of myself, more than I can say for…”
The kid cut him off with a snort. “Oh yeah. You’re one hell of an AmEx account, I’m sure.”
“Screw you asshole,” Gerald said, waving the kid off. “It’s not my fault you’re a goddamned bum.”
“Damn right it isn’t. You don’t know the first thing about me rich boy, so don’t even think about talking about me.”
Gerald let out a bitter laugh, “Pardon me if I point out what a hypocrite you’re being when you say…”
“Oh shut up dude. I don’t give a shit what you say, I really don’t. Have your little fantasy argument in your head or whatever, think of all the real zingers you’d give me, cause I don’t give a rat’s ass bro. It’ll be a lot more rewarding if you keep it to yourself, I promise.”
Gerald felt like he’d been slapped. The kid’s contempt for him was complete. A familiar feeling of futility crept up Gerald’s chest, he had the incredible urge to shatter the window. He could feel himself actually shaking, and he hated it. He took a deep breath and watched the rain as it fell into the river a hundred feet below.
A familiar desire entered his mind then. He could undo the latches of the window. He could force it out from the frame. He could climb up on his seat, and out the hole left by the glass, and just fall into the river. He wouldn’t pencil dive like everyone said could save you. He’d spread his arms and legs and scream like hell and then he’d die. He would not have to listen to the kid’s music. Or think about the kid not giving a shit. Or the frat guys not giving a shit. Or Andrea not giving a shit.
He’d just be dead.
“Oh my God, just do it already dude.”
Gerald cringed at the kid’s voice. He realized he was holding the latch, halfway standing as he looked down at the ground. He looked at the Guatemalan woman, who seemed sick to her stomach and who watched him intently. He licked his lips and felt his face burn.
“D-do what?” Gerald asked.
“Cut the shit dude, you were looking at that water like it was that chick you freaked out over earlier.”
“Huh?” Gerald was beyond confused.
“You know, the one you watched like a hawk and you got all stiff and half jumped out of your chair when she looked like she was going to walk in here. What was that shit?”
Gerald felt sick. “Forget it.”
“Aw, rich boy got a crush?”
“Shut up.”
“Ah, rich boy’s got an ex.”
“I said shut up.”
“And I said jump already. You aren’t listening to me so I’ll just keep”
“Shut up!” Gerald snarled the last word and slammed his fists against the seat, ignoring the pain that shot up from his hands.
The kid was not impressed. “You are such a little bitch.”
Gerald envisioned himself clawing the kid’s eyes out. Strangling him and throwing the body into the Potomac. He’d wanted to shake Andrea, make her understand. The kid wasn’t worth that kind of self-control. He needed an ass kicking. “Watch it punk.”
“Oh please, you haven’t been in a fight since you could aim where you pissed. The biggest struggle in your life was getting out of your mom’s cut. Probably got a c-section so you wouldn’t have to work your little arms.”
“What is your problem?” Gerald’s eyes burned.
The kid looked at him finally. His eyes were a brittle blue, and seemed to glow in the darkness of the stopped train. “You’re my problem asshole. You and all the other guys in fitted suits with two hundred dollar shoes that look at me and shake their heads. Who lose a ten thousand dollar bid and freak out.”
“I didn’t say anything about money…”
“No, you didn’t say shit. You just look out at the window and don’t jump. You see some chick in the other car and you don’t go get on it. You want to punch me in the mouth and you don’t even move from your seat. And you’re just thinking how unfair the world is, how mistreated you are.”
The kid was shaking, and his words were thick with emotion.
“You’re plenty healthy to kick some ass. You had some woman to lose in the first place. You’ve got a life to throw away in some grand dramatic mistake. You got money and a job and a stupid freaking watch and you still feel all sorts of sorry for yourself.”
Gerald blinked.
“It’s bullshit. You’re so much bullshit. You are a rich white dude in the capital of the most powerful country in the world and you don’t give a shit about it. Things aren’t going the way you planned for them to go, the way they were supposed to go. Your dog gets run over and you lose your mind. Because you people get one crack, one tiny little fracture in your perfect little world and nothing else matters.”
“What the hell do you know about any of this. You don’t know what ‘us people’ are like,” Gerald said. He exaggerated looking the kid up and down. “You don’t know anything about my world. They wouldn’t let you past the front door.”
The kid spat. “I’ve been falling through the cracks in your perfect world my whole fucking life.”
A clap of thunder rolled over the train then, shaking it slightly. The kid was looking out the window, his eyes squinting at the water below, his lips pulled slightly back from those bizarrely white teeth. Gerald thought the kid looked the way he must have moments before.
“Why don’t you do it,” Gerald sneered.
“Because I don’t want to asshole. If I wanted to I would. I wouldn’t sit there thinking about how justified it’d be, how sorry people would be, what a loss the world would be suffering. If I wanted to jump out of this train, I sure as hell would, and I wouldn’t need a piece-of-shit cheerleader to help me work up the balls.”
Gerald sat sputtering for several minutes. The Guatemalan woman just watched him evenly, whatever she’d understood she’d agreed with. Looking from one to the other, Gerald saw nothing. They didn’t care, didn’t look back. It was over. He put his head against the cool glass of the window and let out a soft sigh.
He woke up when the train moved forward slightly. The car smelled like an ashtray, and Gerald was only slightly surprised to see a cigarette in the kid’s mouth. The kid didn’t meet his eyes, but the glare he gave the ground dared Gerald to say something.
He didn’t.
Instead, he pressed his face against the glass and looked towards the last car of the train. Another train had pulled up and had just gently pressed its bumper against the back of theirs. Slowly the train started moving forward, moving along the tracks at a careful crawl. Twenty minutes later they pulled into the Pentagon station. Two ambulance loads of EMTs stood among a small army of police as the train came to a stop. The doors were pried open, and the passengers all filed out in a numb silence.
An old black woman who worked for the Metro took Gerald’s name and contact information.
“In case of litigation,” she said helpfully. Gerald just nodded.
He walked outside, where a half-dozen metro buses waited to ferry passenger’s home. Gerald opted for a cab instead. Ignoring the pain in his hand, he jerked the door open and growled his address at the driver. As the car pulled away from the curb, he turned and looked back at the station. People were filing past a streetlight and onto the buses. Gerald thought he saw the Guatemalan woman amongst them. Behind them, an awkward figure with a guitar case slipped through the halo of the streetlight, and was gone.
Gerald looked out his window and watched the rain.

She and I are awkward conversationalists on the driveway in front of my parent’s house, and the sky is dark and brooding. It’s sometime warm because I’m wearing the obnoxious khaki cargo-shorts I loved in high school and some t-shirt trying far too hard to be funny. She’s wearing an air-tight top and jeans that are tastefully torn.

“I love you,” she says. Her lips are wearing the absolutely perfect amount of lip gloss, the way they always are.

“I love you too,” I say in the way you absolutely have to when your teenage sweetheart says she loves you. Of course, I’m a teenager too and the falsehood and truth in this statement are just ruining my world.

Her top has no sleeves, so you can see the scars on her arms; she looks like the inside of a prison  cell – hash marks carved all over her, counting down the days till she can leave. As long as I’ve known her, that’s how she’s felt, like a prisoner. Of her parents, of me, of life – I don’t fucking know. Even with the scars and the memory of calling 911 when she made them, her arms are beautiful. She is beautiful.

You can’t see the scars I made playing monkey-see-monkey-do; when I carve myself up I do it on my thighs and I’ve made sure ever since I started to keep my shorts knee high or lower. I am awkward, gangly with hormones and a 17-year-old’s metabolism. There is a sparse patch of hair on my chin, struggling for life.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. Her eyes are the perfect shade of chocolate brown I will never, ever shake my addiction to.

“Nothing?” I say, and of course I’m lying because no one can honestly answer that question with “nothing” and I’m a seventeen year old; the list of things I think are wrong could fill several book shelves.

This isn’t our first time doing this.

This whole day is wrong, everything about it. She’s so messed up, and I’ve caught the disease myself. Okay, you can’t catch bipolar disorder, but I’ve got it anyway and she isn’t any help. She is sex and drugs and rock n’ roll. When you are struggling to survive a crippling mood disorder, none of those is especially helpful.

But when you’re trying to break up with the girl you’re in love with, my good wholesome up bringing isn’t helpful either. Relationships are something you work for, something you make work. You marry the girl you have sex with (though you’re supposed to do it the other way around). You don’t make girls cry.

The whole day is wrong; she has come over here to spend time with her boyfriend. I’m the boy she loves, and the first guy in her life to treat her right her father included. She is here because I make her feel safe and loved and, if she’s to be believed, I’m a champ in the sack. You cannot imagine how endearing that is unless you are a seventeen year old boy who had never even kissed a girl until this relationship. Which I was.

“What’s on your mind,” she asks, trying a different angle. There are no better words for getting someone to spill their guts. I should know.

“Looks like rain,” I say, because I’m not doing this this time. I’m not dancing this dance.

The whole day is wrong because I realize this relationship will absolutely not work. There are a lot of really thoughtful factors to consider here of course: her family and mine are so different no one even jokes about meeting each other over dinner. She has no discernable plan for the future, at least not one that will be the same in a month. I am going to college, because that is what white middle-class young men do and I’ll be damned if I deviate. As a half-Filipino girl, she lacks that sort of societal directive I suppose. My parents also don’t like her at all.

Now I know what you’re thinking: why wouldn’t parents raising an up-till-recently nice young boy want him dating a one hundred pound girl with a shock of fluorescent pink hair, clothes from a punk rock magazine, and a predilection for weed and alcohol?

That’s why it won’t work. That and the fact I can’t forget all the guys she cheated on me with. Of course you might call them guys-she-had-relationships-with-when-we-were-officially-broken-up-but-really-I was-always-there-for-her-so-it’s-like-we-were-together. Okay but really she did cheat on me a couple of times beside that, and at seventeen this is all some heavy deep shit that I will never get over.

“Michael, talk to me,” she says and she takes a defensive stance. She suddenly realizes I’m not thinking about my sister’s piano recital tomorrow; this isn’t run-of-the-mill, every day me moping. This is pointed, things are tense moping and it’s targeted right at her. Passive-aggressive doesn’t even begin to describe it.

“This isn’t working,” I blurt because I’m not a natural; this is the second time I’ve ever broken up with someone and the first time was with her and it was not an organized affair. She had left my parent’s house after beating me with my painting easel and slapping me repeatedly. In her defense, “I love you like a friend” is one hell of a way to wrap up sex.

Like I said, I’m not a natural.

This time she starts off sweet. She plays dumb, asking what I mean. Then she tries to convince me, explain that things will be different. She’s trying to negotiate because this is how it always worked before. But it’s not working and she gets mad. She shouts, she threatens, she guilts. Oh boy, does she guilt me. If she had a super-power, it would be pulling off that hair color. If she had two, the other would be guilt trips.

But it’s not going to work this time because I realize this will not work. I realize I’m tired of playing out her (in)fidelities with other men all night long. I’m tired of playing second-fiddle to her friends even though that is a roll I am destine to repeat again and again. I’m not prescient, so I don’t know that yet. For every offer, argument, and shame there is, in the back of my head, the constant mantra of “this is fucked.”

She gives up eventually and just cries for a while. I stand there and watch something going on somewhere else in my field of vision. I can’t look at her because I can’t watch her cry. That’s not when men do, men don’t make girls cry, and I very much want to be a man. But with time she calms down the sniffling and wipes the tears (and a half pound of mascara and foundation) from her cheeks. Then she goes inside to call for her ride.

I’m alone for a moment, out by the garage door. My heart is pounding in my chest, and I feel like complete shit. Inside she is ignoring the appraising looks of my parents who have certainly not been listening from a nearby window. But outside I am shaking slightly, wishing I had bummed a cigarette from her before doing this. A raindrop falls on my face and the darkness turns the automatic porch-light on.

She comes out and stands beside be under the eave. We don’t look at each other, just give ourselves hugs and watch the night fall along with the rain. I can feel how small, and scared, and cold she is over there. I can imagine how soft, and warm, and good she’d feel in my arms. But I don’t want to.

“Please,” she says, soft as one of the prayers she whispers when she thinks I’m asleep after sex. She turns me then, making me look at her. I haven’t looked at her yet, really looked at her. Her hair is disheveled; her make-up has huge holes smeared out of it where you can see her skin and the teenager’s acne that hides there. The beautiful chocolate brown eyes are blood shot and swollen.

I can’t look at her like that. I did it, I made her look that way, and I’m sick. I want to do anything to make it up to her. I want to make her feel like a princess again, I want to be the knight in shining armor. I’m the good guy, I’m the one who’s had the moral high ground forever and for the first time since I gave her my virginity I don’t feel like I’m the victim. I can’t look at her like that, and so I turn and walk down the driveway.

She follows me. Of course she follows me. I can hear her flip-flops smacking through the hiss of the falling rain. She’s right behind me, pleading.

“Please, don’t do this.” She isn’t guilt tripping me, she isn’t really talking to me. She really is praying I think, trying to negotiate with God since I wasn’t listening.

“I have to,” I say, answering for both of us.

I’ve reached the bottom of the drive way and I step around her to head back up to the house. She catches my hand and makes me look at her again, just as her ride pulls into the cul-de-sac. His headlights cut through the rain, which is really coming down, and gives her a halogen halo.

She’s looking right into my eyes, her hair plastered to her skull.

“I want to at least kiss you good bye.”

I freeze. She gently holds my face in her hands and pulls me towards her. She closes her eyes and tilts her head. The air smells like wet concrete and wet clothes. She smells like Camel Turkish Golds and foundation. Her lips are wearing the absolute perfect amount of lip gloss.

I turn my face.

She looks at me, her eyes confused. She sucks in a sobbing breath, tears mixing suddenly, unexpectedly with the rain.

“Not even a kiss good bye?”

I’m already walking to the door, my own tears mingling with the rain soaking into my clothes. I hear her  friend get out and guide her, sobbing, into the car. I turn and watch her driving away, the blades of the headlights cutting across the neighbor’s house. Then she is gone and all I can hear is the rain.

I walk into the foyer and stand there alone for a moment. The house is silent but for the soft drumming of the storm on the roof. There are no lights on, just the filtered glow of the porch-light coming in through the windows. I sit down heavily on the first step upstairs.

I’m regretting it. I’m trying to shake that image of her perfectly silhouetted in the headlights, rain and tears streaming down her hurt, confused face. I’m starting to wonder if maybe I was right all those times before, maybe we were meant to be. When you’re seventeen whether something is meant to be is such a critically important consideration. I’m starting to think I fucked up.

Then the music starts. A perfect melancholy melody, simple and soft as it mixes with the sound of the rain outside. I’m shaking now, tears streaming down my face. I feel like a piece of shit; I feel like I’m going insane.

Then I remember my sister’s recital. I remember hearing this damn song for weeks. I’m smirking to myself, and now I’m laughing. It’s called “Nadia’s Theme,” and I remember my mom saying the song is from the Young and Restless. The Young and the Restless!

Now I’m laughing at all of it. I’m laughing at the rain. I’m laughing because I’ve just ended the only relationship I’ve ever had up till now. I’m laughing because somehow I’m still alive.

And I’m laughing because the piano music was just too fucking much.

And we’ll make believe that it all gets better with time,

But the fact is like the fiction it just changes like your mind,

And just like the future, you’re impossible to find,

Because every day has been the present, it’s like we’re racing through the past,

And tomorrow will be better, but tomorrow never lasts,

Cause it’s here and it’s gone, yeah every photo fades,

But memories aren’t photos and your memory still stays,

And so do I,

My parents taught me compassion and curiosity,

But you can’t get into grad school if you only work with C’s,

My teachers taught a lot but couldn’t teach me sanity,

And you can’t cancel what you know with what you want the world to be,

But I’ll never give up, no I’ll always persevere,

Cause failure has a flavor, like boxed wine or shitty beer,

And the more of it you taste, the less bitter it comes to seem,

No dying gasps for me, I’ll go out with a scream,

Can you hear,

Life is just a story friend, our memories are fiction,

But in each lie there is some truth, whispered if you’ll listen,

There are no higher goals, bigger pictures, or holy missions,

Every breath we breathe is just one more act of contrition,

For sins we’ve all committed, or wanted to anyway,

Kind things we didn’t do, the right words we didn’t say,

And so I’ll keep on living, through the bliss and through pain,

One of six billion dying martyrs yearning to live again,

But we can’t.