Fateful Signs (Ballad of the Seer, Book Three)

Chapter 36 - Speechless

The door to Duncan's new bedroom - or old, he supposed - opened wide. A short, stringy boy with dark hair and glasses so thick they made his eyes look enormous, strolled in and threw himself into the desk chair, which rolled halfway across the floor. "So, I heard you had some kind of brain-suck thing going on."

Duncan stared at the other boy. He felt that same gnawing feeling he got around Lily. He knew the boy - his face was familiar - he just couldn't place him. It was on the tip of his tongue, and it was so frustrating. Finally, Duncan just said, "Yeah," unable to think of a proper response.

The boy pointed to himself. "Bobby. Your best friend. The most awesomest guy you know." After a pause where he furrowed his brow, Bobby added, "I really need to stop hanging out with Dianna. She totally wrecked my vocabulating skills."

Duncan gave a half-hearted smile. He didn't know who Bobby was talking about. He thought Lily had mentioned someone named Dianna, but he couldn't be sure of anything anymore. The things he learned were hard to keep straight.

"Hey!" Bobby said, excitedly, sitting forward in the rolling chair. "Do you know what's great about losing the last year of your life?"

Duncan was positive that this was some kind of joke. It had to be. There was nothing good about this situation. He shrugged.

"You get to rewatch all the best movies that came out and skip all of the craptastic stuff that you hated."

"I don't remember what I hated." Duncan reminded him.

Bobby waved that off. "Don't worry, man. I got you. We saw most of them together anyway."

"Cool." Duncan said, trying not to hurt the boy's feelings. Because he didn't give a damn about a bunch of movies that he may have seen. He was missing a huge chunk of his life. And it seemed to be an awfully important chunk.

It was clear that Bobby was doing his best to cheer Duncan up the only way he knew how. Besides, it wouldn't hurt to watch one or two. Just to take his mind off of his problems.

That's exactly what it did. For two hours he forgot that he had forgotten so much. He was enraptured by the movie. "Holy shit," he said after it was over. "That is like the best comic book movie I've ever seen."

Bobby laughed. "That's almost word for word what you said the first time."

Duncan's face fell, with the realization that everything he did with Bobby or Lily or whoever was just going to be a repeat of something that already happened. Anything he might say was probably something he'd already said. His thoughts and actions would be retreads of some earlier time.

On top of that, Bobby apologized, making him feel worse. "I really didn't mean to upset you."

Duncan swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stuffed his socked feet into his old, faded Chucks. "I need to get outta here." he told Bobby. He grabbed the army jacket off the hook on the back of his bedroom door before running down the stairs and through the front door. He could hear Bobby following him, but he didn't look back. Not even when his mother called out to him, curious and maybe even a little concerned.

On the side of the house, he found the orange dirt bike, hidden beneath a green tarp. He hadn't known that it was there, until he pulled the tarp back. Something just led him to that spot when he decided he needed to leave.