He healed Me

~chapter eleven~✔️

~chapter eleven~

Dario opened the backpack and searched. The last time he put it in there. He couldn't even remember when that was, when he last used the cell phone, it seemed like forever ago.

Eventually he found it between a used handkerchief and a half-eaten slice of bread.

He switched it on: Pling, pling, pling, pling pling pling pling... fifty-six missed calls. And that in just under two days. Even the President didn't get fifty-six calls in just under two days, which was practically two calls an hour. Dario had to smile. And ignored them all. Then he scrolled the screen for the music files. He got neon green headphones out of his backpack and put them on Andy. "Here, listen to that." And pressed play.

Andy opened his mouth, raised his eyebrows, he saw Dario laughed and then he laughed too and swung back and forth to the rhythm of the music "usic," he shouted loudly.

"Yeah, but not like church stuff. This is real music."

Dario started the engine and off they went.

They drove all morning along the road that curved around the hills, Andy completely absorbed by the music. The helmet slanted and low on the forehead and the neon green headphones on the ears.

Dario liked music. But he only used them when it was necessary. The lessons at the Delfrati, for example, were such a necessity: how could one endure the Delfrati without a pounding in one's ears? It was a way to pull the plug, be on your own. Just like weed. Music was MP3 weed, weed you smoked with your ears. Dario laughed as he glided through the fields, he laughed at the thought that Andy was something like grass at that moment, a way to unplug and be away from it all for a while, from school, from that world that wasn't Andy.

Andy. Just like weed. Andy laughing and having no idea what the real world was like out there that the others had to live in every day. This world wasn't beautiful, it was mud, a river of mud that swept you along without you being able to do anything about it. And as that mud pushed relentlessly forward, the Andy world spun on its own axis just a little above, like a sun with its planets. And nothing can harm such a sun with its planets, not even this current that runs under it; it is an independent, perfect system that always remains in balance because it revolves only around itself.

Yes, Dario envied Andy. There was something immortal about him, something untouchable that wasn't subject to the laws of humans. Andy was half-god, half-human, and half-wheelchair, like some mythological creature, a centaur. How should one not envy such a mythical being?

They paused at the top of a hill. A row of houses stretched just over the hilltop, at the top the street widened to a small square where there was a gas station. Dario pulled up to a gas pump and switched off the Rakmobil.

"Damn hoe," the gas station attendant said as he approached. He looked the wheelchair up and down and wiped his hands on his coveralls. "What's that?"

"It's a wheelchair, can't you see it?" Dario replied.

The man laughed out loud. "Well, of course,"he exclaimed. "But one like that I've never seen it. Does it run on petrol?"

"No, I'm just here to have a chat with you." Now the man wasn't laughing anymore. “Can you fill up with Super?” Dario askeed.

"No," the man replied. “I'm just here to  play cards with my friends."

Dario looked at him more closely. That was a good man. You can see that in people's eyes, the way they look at you. Your eyes tell you a lot. Maybe that's why people who have something to hide prefer not to be looked at in the eye.