The Shapes We See In Stars

3

The last time that I talked to all of them together was on a Monday. At least, I think it was on a Monday. It could have been a different day that just felt like a Monday, but I guess that doesn't really matter. We met in the parking lot just like we always did, and it was nighttime, just like it always was. Charlie was talking at the speed of light, and Asher was patting his knee to the rhythm of her monologuing. Asher was always trying to find a rhythm in things that didn't have rhythm.

Alexandra held up her hand, and Charlie slowed to a stop. Alexandra had a special way of saying things with her hands. Her hands talked in a language more universal than words. If I could write like Alexandra could talk with her hands, maybe the world would make more sense.

Something is different.

Everything was the way it always was, but it didn't feel the way it always was. It was the cars, I realized. I didn't notice it at first, but the sound of cars on the highway was strangely absent. I had gotten used to the murmur of engines and the zoom of automobiles during my nights with them. I used to not like the way they sounded, but, like Charlie used to say, people can learn to like pretty much anything. 

I later learned that the lack of cars came from a major crash that had happened somewhere further up the road. I imagined the road was a forest stream and the crash was a dam built by a family of industrious yet mischievous beavers. The water wants to take its natural path, but the beavers get in the way, so the water becomes stagnant and lazy. I then think that maybe the stagnation is the water's natural path. After all, the beavers are as much a part of the forest as the water. Don't they have as much a right to build their dam as the river has to flow? 

Something about that felt wrong to me, but I wasn't sure why, so I stopped imagining. 

That night we decided to buy some waffles. Normally, we didn't buy food, but we were all feeling hungry. At least, Charlie said she was hungry, but 'we were all' and 'Charlie' pretty much mean the same thing. With all that food in our mouths, nobody really said much. We were all slow chewers. 

Talking wouldn't have felt right anyways. It wasn't that kind of evening. The events of the last semester had settled over us like a wet blanket, and talking too much felt unnatural. So, we just sat on the cold concrete and ate waffles, and listened to the song of a lonely cricket chirping somewhere out in the darkness. 

If we weren't eating, Charlie would have talked about how strange it was that there was a cricket since most crickets die at the end of the summer, and, given that it was fall, he was probably a very lucky cricket. Then, I would have thought that maybe he wasn't such a lucky cricket since all his friends were dead. I would have wondered if his song was a song of mourning-- a tuneful remembering of all the time he spent with the other crickets, a melodic wish that his lonely existence would soon end. Alexandra would have waved at me. It's just a cricket. It probably doesn't even know what friends are, she would have told me with her hands. All the while, Asher would have tapped his foot to the nonexistent rhythm of the cricket's song. Then, I would have looked at Asher, and he would have looked at me. He would remember the difference between noise and a song, and I would remember that life wasn't so terrible after all. It was moments like those where there was a glimmer of things making sense.

None of that happened, though. We were too busy chewing.

Somehow, we decided that it was time to go home. No one said anything as we each stood up and wandered away from the group. I was the last one to stand. Last to come, last to leave. I think that there's something metaphorical about that if you squint your eyes a little. I don't believe in most metaphors. Most of the time metaphors call themselves metaphors, but that's how you know they don't really mean anything. It only counts if you can't tell it's a symbol; if it could be equally interpreted as mere coincidence. 

I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe saying you're a metaphor is a metaphor for something else. I'm only 18 and ideas like that are for old men with time to sit and think about things all of the time instead of just during thunderstorms. 

When I got tired of the cricket, I stood up and walked home. On the way, I thought about the things that we would do the next time we met. I'm not going to tell you about them. There's enough fiction in this story as it is. 

That was the first night I didn't hear footsteps behind me as I walked home. I should have known that it was a bad sign. I felt relieved, but I shouldn't have been. I should have thought about the footsteps instead of hypothetical tomorrows.

The footsteps were following someone else that night.

And they should have been following me.