July 14th, 2012:
I slept through most of my 16th birthday.
Last night, I turned my phone off so I wouldn't be bothered by any calls, and I stayed up until midnight. I sat at my desk—conveniently placed right in front of my bedroom window-and stared out at the sky. Before going to bed, I waited till the time of my birth. 12:04 in the morning. I have no idea why. I think there was a large part of me that was hoping things would be different at 12:05 when I was officially 16.
But alas, when the time came, and I was done with the age of 15, things were not different. There was no crash outside that called my name. There was no shake of the house that told me to sleep and see what waking had in store. I was the same person. The same insecure, exhausted person.
So, I went to bed.
I woke early this morning. I rose with the sun—promptly at 5:40. I sat up in my bed, and immediately, I felt overwhelmed by what I wasn't feeling. So much so, that I lied back down, and I stared at the ceiling for a while. Sometimes it's nice to just exist in a place where there is no weight. There is nothing but me and my ceiling, and I am the happiest and the lonliest I have ever been at the same time.
The deafening silence of my bedroom and terrifying exhilaration of being a teenager is unlike anything else in this world, and I am disgustingly infatuated with the feeling. I am devoted to the feeling. I am addicted to the feeling.
I listen to the sound of my parents as they get ready for work. I even get up and crack my door so I can hear them better. They laugh and speak lightly with each other. I've never heard them like that before. The laughter always stops when I enter the
room.
It has to be my fault that they don't laugh this way more often. I mean, when the first time you hear your parents let out genuine laughs is a time they think you aren't around, wouldn't you assume that you made them unhappy? With that realization comes another that hurts me even more: the realization that I have always known I made them unhappy, and I've denied myself the truth of that fact because of what little evidence I had. It's a shame to learn you mean nothing to your family on your birthday.
After the two of them shuffle out of the house and their cars drive off, I get back up and slam my door. It's not loud enough, and I feel I wasted some of my anger, so I open it back up and shut it with more force.
I listen to it echo about the sad, empty walls of my bedroom, and I'm reminded of how those walls represent me. I get back into bed, I roll onto one side, and I stare at one of those walls until my eyes begin to play tricks on me. I fall asleep again, and I don't wake up for a long time. My parents had been home for hours by the time my eyes opened again.
I tum on my phone—which I'd taken great care to silence in case anyone bothered to call—but am met with the expected "surprise" that no one remembered my birthday. I can't say I'm shaken by this, but I was hoping that one person might remember, even if it were just my mom or dad. I then trudge down the stairs and into the kitchen to see both of my parents cleaning up the remnants of their finished takeout order. My mother politely smiles in my direction, and my father just stares at me.
"Well, look who's finally awake." He says, passively.
I just nod, and I sit down at the counter—to which, he immediately shakes his head. I stand back up, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. He hands me a tied-up trash bag and points towards the back door.
I—somehow—manage to walk slower outside than I did down the stairs, and even watching gravity take hold of the bag after I let go didn't convince me that my life is moving any faster than my feet are.
It's the slam of the lid that wakes me from my sleepy haze. I look at my surroundings in some desperate attempt to bring myself back to who I was this morning: a boy, listening to his parents laugh, unaware that he's the reason they don't more often. Only, I can still hear them. Standing here, at the side of the house, in the dark, I can hear it. And this time, I am not unaware.
Their laughter replays in my mind over and over again, and it becomes louder than the cicadas and the man down the street who chose 9:45 as the time he would mow his lawn. They are louder than the unnecessary brightness of all the streetlights on my road and the barking of my neighbor's dog.
With each passing millisecond, my heart beats faster and harder in my chest. The increasing need for air worries me, but the feeling of my heartbeat as it makes its way through my fingertips only reminds me that I am alive. It has been that way my entire life; my heartbeat is nothing but a reminder, and when I don't feel it at its highest capacity, I am as good as dead.
In the midst of what I thought would be some kind of breakdown, I hear the sound of music. It's faint, but nevertheless, it found a way to wake me up. I follow the sound around the side of the house to the driveway. This time, instead of the laughter, my steps bring the nagging of my mother, telling me to put on shoes rather than ruining my socks to pursue self-indulgence (what she calls curiosity).
I continue anyway, and I even almost walk all the way out to the road just to spite that stupid voice in my head. I stop at the sidewalk. The music is coming from the house across the street.
Scott Harvey's house. His garage door opens, and I can see him—shirtless and sitting on top of a pool table in the back corner, scrolling on his phone.
He and I met when I was in kindergarten and he was in second grade. He had just moved to the neighborhood because his dad got a job working as an associate for my parents firm. The day we were introduced, he told me to call him "Scotty," and that I was his first friend after the move. He was my first friend ever, and I almost told him, but I thought he would think I was lame or something, so I never did.
He ended up thinking that anyway, and it didn't take long either. All it took was him starting school with kids his age, and I was pretty much an afterthought. I wasn't as hurt by it as I sound, I promise. It's just noteworthy.
When we were little, we would go weeks without saying a word to each other. Then, I'd see his family out on a walk, and he would wave at me with the biggest smile, and I'd think—just for a second—that he missed me just as much as I missed him. So, I'd stand up in my yard, where I'd been lying all alone, and I'd wave back in the hopes that we would beg his parents to let him stay with me. But he never did. Instead, he'd turn back to his sister, and he'd continue to entertain her with stories of his school friends, and I would lay back down, cloud-watching the empty sky.
As we grew older and closer, we discovered we had more in common than just the street we lived on and the law firm our parents shared. On the days our classes passed each other in the hallway, he would tell me what time to meet in between our houses by flashing the number on his fingers, and our teachers would separately scold us. We'd still smile and laugh on our way by. Sometimes we were even able to sneak a high-five in.
On those days, I'd go home and sit in front of my homework, staring at the time on the microwave. My father—who sat at the other end of the table—would look up from his work, and he's ask me if I was finished. To which, I'd nod and run out the front door no matter what I actually had done or what time it was, and I'd sit out in my driveway, listening to the cicadas, waiting for my best friend to descend the steps of his front porch.
He was always late and never as excited as he was at school, but still, we talked about baseball and music, and we made fun of the girls he didn't like. Then, in high school, he would try to set me up with those same girls.
"I thought you hated her," I'd say, and without looking up from whatever he was doing, he'd laugh and shake his head
"You were so gullible as a kid," he'd tell me. "I dated her."
We would have that conversation several more times, and with each time I was called gullible, part of my world would fall apart, as the system upon which we built our friendship had always been pointless lies, and the only thing I could trust from him thereafter was his poor opinion on the Chicago Cubs—of which I have always been a big fan.
I'd always just laugh it off with him, but I did wonder what it felt like to be as bored with life as Scotty, who felt inclined to date girls he had no interest in. I wondered if the girls felt the same way about him. I wondered why anyone has those feelings at all, and then I wondered why we, as people, act on them more often than we act on real feelings of love.
Of course, then, I'd never loved anyone before, and seemingly no one had ever loved me either, so I really had no authority to declare any official opinion, but I couldn't help what I wondered. I have still never loved or been loved, and I still have no authority to declare an official opinion, but I can help wondering now—because I really do want to experience some type of love. Scotty does too, but it doesn't seem to affect him as much. All he needs is the love from his family, and he has more of it than he knows what to do with. I have less than I know how to grieve for, and I spend every waking hour questioning what it is I did to become such a disappointment.
Scotty—still in his garage—jumps to his feet and turns up the music. His taste is real old school. He listens to a lot of music from the 70's and 80's. I'm more of a 90's and 2000's type of guy. Boston's More Than a Feeling plays over his speakers, and I watch him dance until it is over.
I pull out my phone and dial his number. He picks up almost immediately, as if he knows he's been caught. Although, I don't know what he was expecting when he decided to open up the garage door.
"Hey, buddy." He says, out of breath. I laugh.
"What are you doing?" I ask, and I watch him turn in circles, looking for something. I don't know if he is looking for an answer or for me, but I give up trying to guess, and I clear my throat to get his attention He, somehow, knows exactly what I meant and turns in my direction with a child-like glare. He hangs up the phone and begins walking out into the street. We meet directly in the middle, where he wraps his arm around my shoulders and drags me back to his house. Drops of water from his hair fall and hit me, and his skin sticks to my shirt.
"Why are you soaking wet?" I ask, a little disgusted. He just laughs.
"No, no." He says through laughter. "I was just in the pool."
"Alone?" I ask, and he just smiles. He must be a little drunk.
He says a lot less when he's drunk. He lets go of me and stumbles back into the garage to turn the music back on. This time, it's even louder, but he
continues to dance. Scotty is the type of guy who doesn't really care to explore emotion, but he unknowingly loves to experience it. Everything he does is completely in stereo. All the way up or
all the way down. He can't choose, and he doesn't want to. He wants to live his life full of surprises, and he, unlike me, has learned to appreciate the downs.
I watch him, and I notice he has looked mostly the same since I met him. He's tall and strong not too thin like me. He has curly, jet black hair and beautiful honey brown eyes. His face is covered in freckles, and he has a very strong jaw.
He runs around the garage, sliding in his socks. I stand there at the top of his driveway, just watching. He runs up to me, grabs me by the arm, and drags me in. His garage smells like cedar and cheap alcohol—which, weirdly, is a comforting smell to me.
Taking up the majority of the room is the pool table and next to it a circle of lawn chairs. The walls are covered in large peg boards that hold different tools on the two parallel walls, and on the back wall, two bikes. There is a work bench at the left wall and a countertop along the back with classic spinning stools. The space with the lawn chairs is largely occupied by Scotty. It's where he keeps a mini-fridge (which his parents almost didn't let him buy), his speakers, and lots of other useless junk.
Scotty turns down the music, and we both sit down in two of the lawn chairs. He hands me a beer from the fridge and cracks one open for himself. I'm hit with a feeling of nostalgia, as we look just like our fathers used to. Only, they sat across from each other in expensive chairs with expensive alcohol, and we sit in chairs that fold and alcohol that has an expiration date.
"So," he says.
"So," I repeat. He takes a big sip.
"It's crazy that you're going to college, you know?" He says, and I nod. I drink the beer he handed me in small and slow sips. "You're, what, 15? And going to a university?"
"Yeah," I say. "Well, I mean, I'm technically not 15, but same difference."
He sits up, his eyes wide. "What? I could have sworn you were still 15, man."
I shake my head with a polite smile. "No, I'm actually 17–as of yesterday anyway."
He stands. "No shit."
I laugh, and he crashes back into his chair. It almost breaks beneath him.
"That was not funny." He tells me, "I thought I had missed your birthday twice in a row."
He actually did, but I'm not going to say anything. He forgot my birthday both this year and the year before. When I turned 14, he only remembered because his mom did.
He takes another long sip. Looking in his eyes, which are losing to his tired eyelids, I wonder what he is trying to hide from with all this drinking. Or maybe it's what he's chasing. I have never known. I have always been scared of alcohol. Until I was 14, I felt uncomfortable being in the same room as a bottle. Over the last two years, however, I've gained a weird appreciation for it. Something about it draws me in.
"The Cubs won today." He says, blankly. He leans back into his seat and shuts his eyes. He drifts in and out of conversation. He's probably been drinking for a couple hours by now.
"I saw." It's actually news to me, but if I said that, he would call me a fake fan or something.
"Why do you like that shitty team, anyway?" He asks me, snickering. "You're from New Jersey. You should like the Yankees or something. Besides, they haven't won the World Series since, like, 1855."
"The first World Series was in 1903." I correct, and he shrugs it off.
"You are such a nerd," he says. "How do you even manage to get girls?"
What is funny about this is that I don't get girls. I shake my head and he laughs. I don't find this humorous in the least, but his humor is typical in that way. He thinks anything about girls and one's inability to have a roster of them is just hilarious. "Probably because I know that the Cubs won back-to-back in 1907 and 1908." I say, sarcastically, and he laughs hysterically.
"Like I said—1855." He continues, "pretty close guess, if you ask me."
I laugh too. "You couldn't have been further off."
He shakes his head with a smile, his tired eyes still closed.
"First of all, players weren't even paid until 1865," I tell him, and he laughs harder with each word. "And second, 1855 was 157 years ago. 1907 was 105 years ago."
He slides out of his chair and rolls around on the floor, laughing uncontrollably. His beer even spills on his face, but he's too busy laughing to notice.
"You know those numbers off the top of your head?" He asks through deep breaths. "How long it has been and everything?"
"It's easy math, Scotty," I tell him.
Eventually—after an awkward while of his prolonged laughter—he sits back in his chair, and calms down. He drinks the rest of my beer after spilling his. I listen to him ramble on about Kris Medlen, a pitcher for the Braves, for almost 15 minutes before I decide to leave. He is very drunk now, so I walk him inside and upstairs where I dump him off to his older sister, Katie.
On my way out, I can hear her lecturing him. It's nearly 10:30 PM, and I figure I can slip in through the back door without my parents seeing me. I slide the door open, and the kitchen lights are dim, but not completely off.
I walk quietly through the kitchen similarly to someone who has something to hide, and I am interrupted by my mother clearing her throat. Staying true to cliches, she flips the light on as I turn to her. I meet her cold, green eyes, and I proceed up to my room. Only, as I pass the counter, and my lower half becomes visible, she stops me.
"What are you wearing?" She asks, almost horrified. I look down. Socks, shorts, and a T-shirt.
"Clothes?" I say, and it's definitely far too sarcastic for her taste. She scoffs.
"Did Jamie and Becca see you like that?" She asks.
Scotty's parents are just like him and Katie. They don't care about things the way my parents do. "They aren't even home." I say, "besides, Scotty and I were in the garage the whole time."
She nods, still horrified. I keep walking, and my foot is just inches away from the first step when she says: "at least put on some shoes next time."
I pause, my foot hovering just above the stair.
"Sorry," I say, looking back behind me. I can't see her or her disappointment, but I can feel it, and that's arguably worse.
I want to tell her that it's my birthday, but I know she doesn't really care to be reminded. If I tell her, and she actually did forget, she would lie and say that she already knew, because in her eyes, knowing and not caring is better than forgetting. On the off chance that she did remember, I would be able to see it in her face and that would crush me.
So, I leave it alone, and I go up to my bedroom. On my way down the hallway, I notice all the doors have been shut. They are always kept open, but I ignore it because I am too tired to over-analyze why my parents decided to shut a couple of doors.
My room is dark and lonely—just how I left it—and nothing has changed aside from something being left on my desk. Sitting there, neatly folded is a gray crewneck with Rutgers stitched across. Just on top of the crewneck is a sticky note that tells me happy birthday. At the bottom it is signed with a J, but even without the signature I would know who it's from.
My older sister, Jenny, has been my only friend in this world. She is the only one who remembered my birthday. Emma, my oldest sister, is far too busy to remember, and I think my parents forgot it as some sort of trauma response.
Jenny and I are "Irish Twins," which means that we were born within a year of each other. She was born in August of 1995 and I was born 11 months later in July of 1996. Although we should technically be in the same grade, she was a particularly gifted toddler and started kindergarten at 4. Then, the next fall they learned she was even too smart for that, and they decided to kick her up another year. As a consequence of my sister being completely ingenious, and my parents being too exhausted to handle another kid so soon, my intelligence was not realized until much later, and by then, it was even less common to let kids skip grades.
Because we are so close in age, but two vears apart in school, everyone who learns we are siblings is tremendously surprised. It also doesn't help that I am the black sheep in the family—both in personality and looks. Emma, Jenny, and my parents are all very social and well-spoken. I am extremely anti-social and am known to stay quiet unless I m spoken to first. Those typically aren't Michaels-family traits, and both Emma and my parents make sure to remind me of that every chance they get.
Jenny, however, has always been much nicer to me. Even though she is sweet and outgoing—two things I am not—she talks to me almost every day. I know that's a low bar, but before today, I hadn't spoken to my parents in three days and I haven't even seen Emma since early March. Jenny is easily one of the most considerate people I have ever known. She gets me things I like when she sees they're in stock, she listens to me when I ramble about Cubs games, and she doesn't eat dinner until I'm home to eat—even when our parents try to force her. I don't know exactly what that is about, but I appreciate it nevertheless.
I think she is nice to me because she too feels the separation between us and Emma and our parents. My mom and dad have always let Emma do whatever she wants, which I understand because she is responsible and can handle herself, but they only do that because she is destined to be a corporate lawyer like them. Jenny is going to Yale to study medicine, which they respect, but it doesn't win her the privilege that Emma has. They are proud of her, but I still don't really think that they like her. I can't imagine what it must feel like to be loved but not liked by your own parents, and I think about it all the time.
Thankfully, I don't struggle with that feeling because they don't love or like me. They have told me I'm too naive, and that I need to be more realistic about life. They hate almost everything about me. They don't like my sarcasm, they don't like that I resemble my grandfather in his youth, they don't like my career choice. Every time I speak to them, I am hit with a lecture. Even when I don't speak to them, I'm hit with a lecture.
Jenny bears that prestigiousness my father preaches and praises, but she does it in her own way, and I think he respects that. She—effortlessly—is her own person, and I envy that. Often, I get lost somewhere along the line of wishing I was just like her and hating her. It's horrible, I know, but she is everything I've never been able to be. She is the embodiment of perfection, and I am the embodiment of destruction.
Still, I miss her more and more each day she's gone and living her new life.
