Bad feelings are one part of what sucks about this world. Good feelings are the other. Because the good stuff is what can get taken from you, the rug that gets pulled out from under you. A warming feeling that, once it's gone, leaves you out in the...
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C A R L
The palms of my grimy hands cling firmly to the rough denim of my pants. My knee, just below the grip of my palm, bounces up and down, nervously.
I watch as the woman across from me takes her time with the setup of her camcorder. She slowly glides around the room, just before settling down on the sofa across from me. And with one press of a button on the side of the camera, the red indicator light turns on, making me feel even more bare and exposed than before.
"Let's get started." The woman, Deanna, starts. She laces her fingers together and crosses one leg over the other, before cupping her knee with both of her palms. "Carl—is it?" I offer the woman a nod. "What brings you here? To Alexandria?"
I maintain my empty stare towards the woman. "Aaron."
"A little apprehensive, aren't we?" Deanna offers a chuckle at my blunt statement. The answer that she was looking for didn't seem to be the answer that she got. "And how did he get you to come here? Was it the walls? The shelter? The people?"
I sit on a plush cushion, across from the well-manicured lady, who clearly hasn't touched the despair of the outside world. Although the seat brings a comfort that I haven't felt in a long time, my body remains tense as sinking into the chair would go against my every, learned instinct.
It is clear to both of us that I am out of place. That I don't belong here.
Not knowing quite what I've done to deserve even a crumb of this luxury leaves me having my first ever true feeling of imposter syndrome. And the one who really deserves this place—the person who I owe it to, to simply even be sitting here—waits outside with Aaron and Eric on the front porch, anticipating an interview of her own, after I insisted that I do mine first.
My head haphazardly shakes, just beyond my blank expression. A hesitance proceeds my words. "I'm not doing this for me."
"Then who is it for?" The woman furrows her thin eyebrows. Words dance around on the tip of her tongue as she only has one option to base her approaching assumption on. "The girl you came with?"
"She deserves a break." Folding in my lips, I offer her a nod. I avert my eyes from Deanna's, before sucking in a breath and reconnecting our gazes. "And I'm just here to make sure that she gets it."
"From what I've seen, I take it that you deserve a break too," The woman starts, wearing an amused look about her face. "Don't you think?"
