1.1 | Lost & Found

iii. jeffery

I N D I G O

For as long as I can remember, my mind has been in a state of internal conflict. The silent unworded wars that rage on in my head battle against my heart. It's always been like this. And it's wearing me down every single second. I can't seem to remember a time when my eyes weren't burdened with the shadows of the past, or when my shoulders were free of the weight of the world.

On one side there's my heart that involuntarily keeps me alive, a flawed human organ that makes us fragile. On the other side fights my mind that refuses to thrive on that single spark of hope that my heart yearns to set free. With my heart, on the front of the battlefield, stands my soul, still fighting against the brutal world to treat it a little more humanely. But the firm logic that my mind has allied with believes that letting people in means making oneself more vulnerable.

It happened once.

It happened twice.

And then it happened too many times to count.

So gone is the energy that used to course through my blood. I don't think I was always this numb.

The Policeman whose name I've learned is Jeffery tries to make me as comfortable as possible in his tiny comfy cubicle in the police station. Which isn't all that hard because it's actually quite cozy and homely with a mug of half-drunk coffee still steaming on his pinewood desk. Just behind the rows of organized pencil stands lies a bulletin board filled with Christmas greeting cards and pictures of a pretty brunette with a young boy who looks like a mirror image of Jeffery.

It's his family.

A small pang of pain blooms in my chest as my eyes gloss over with fresh unshed tears that blur my vision. It's not like I'm jealous, that's not the case at all. The biggest irony in my life is that our apartment was never actually my 'home' and mom never treated me like 'family'. Old mom never let me starve and made sure I kept my grades up. But now she's gone, replaced by a monster with an unquenchable thirst for cheap alcohol and god only knows what-

I sniffle and hold my sobs back. I won't cry even if the world compels me to because life rejected me a long time ago.

Jeffery breaks me out of my stupor by handing me a cup of cocoa. I don't accept but I thank him nevertheless. I can't remember the last time somebody asked me if I was hungry or even thirsty for that matter.

"Just take it, kid. It's the least I can do after that heavenly ramen you gave me. The best hot meal I've had in ages." I sense a melancholic undertone behind his statement but I'm not one to pry. Heck, I've never been one to draw outside the lines. I hide in the labyrinth of my mind. It's dark and cold and lonely, but it's the closest I've ever got to feeling anything even if it's utter isolation.

I look up at Jeffery, standing there with sparkling eyes and a smile full of kindness and warmth and my heart thaws a little. Something that hasn't happened in a long, long time. A slight smile adorns my lips, tilting it upwards by just a few centimeters, another thing that has not happened in a long, long time. The secret smile feels foreign against my face.

A different kind of foreign.

A good, different kind of foreign.

The kind that my heart welcomes but my mind is skeptical about.

I take a sip of the cocoa, the heat radiating through its flimsy styrofoam sides slightly burn my hands but it tastes like ambrosia. It has just the right consistency: Not too thick, not too creamy but just enough to coat my mouth with sweetness and take away any traces of the residual bitter aftertaste sadness that mom's passing left.

I spend the next hours playing Uno and go fish with Jeffery. I've been bleeding him dry stealthily throughout the game and he definitely knows he's losing quite badly against a sixteen-year-old, but he doesn't seem to show it. Funny how when you give a person just enough strength and hope to be themselves, you realize how lucky you were to meet them out of the 7.9 billion people that roam the Earth. You realize how beautiful their souls are, that the world isn't all darkness and rigidity either. You realize that to be human is a wonder.

So just like that in between shuffling cards and watching Jeffery lose (quite badly if I must add), I learned that Jeffery's Wife and Son called Daniel lived two states away. He told me that even though they facetime every day it never felt the same without them. I learned all about Jeffery's scandalous, law-breaking college days. Not bad for a policeman.

There's a quiet peace that has settled over the office. Now and then Jeffery glances at his watch and makes some phone calls while his colleagues sit by and try to initiate an idle conversation with me. They only got idle monosyllable answers but that was because I'd retreated into myself again. Jeffery and I take a short Uno break when suddenly the office doors are flung open and a tall boy walks in. He looks more a boy than a man...perhaps somebody who was forced to grow up too soon. He looks around twenty-something.

His eyes scan the office in desperation before his gaze settles on me and softens. I look up at him curiously, never meetings his eyes because I am too much of a coward. It's a fact I've known for a long time. He is tall, lean, and has a lithe-like appearance with cool steel grey eyes that look like they have trapped streaks of lightning emblazoning within its burning embrace. His dark hair, much too similar a shade like mine for comfort, looked as if it had been run through too many times with his hands. His mint polo shirt was slightly frayed, but overall looked smart with his jeans and sneakers.

Jeffery got up and shook hands with the stranger talking about things too softly for me to hear, but all the while the stranger's eyes were on me. I found it quite unsettling. Another thing was the stranger's similarities, we shared the same high cheekbones and the same freckled noses. I looked down at my own worn-out jeans.

The same jeans that have embroidered honeybees and flowers on the back pockets because the Old Mom said that there just wasn't enough sunshine in my outfit to radiate the beauty of my soul. I miss her so much sometimes.

No, maybe it's not that.

Maybe it's the person who she was that I miss.

Maybe I'll miss her for the rest of my life.

The truth was that I didn't lose my mom to a car accident that took place exactly 22 hours, 16 minutes, and approximately 34 seconds from now...I'd lost her the minute she'd given up on herself, on me.

I excuse myself to the bathroom and in heavy strides splash the water over my face in slurred broken motions. I feel the stranger's eyes bore laser circles into the back of my hooded head. Once my seventh grade English teacher asked us to write an essay about losing a loved one. Write how it feels, to lose a mother, she'd told us.

I didn't have the words, I'd replied, but I can tell you how it feels to look into the mirror and see my eyes without her anymore.

As I look up into the mirror, I see the same lackluster shadowed brown eyes that stare into my soul.

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