Unicorns On Wheels [Petekey]

26. Wednesday

2016/03/16 Wednesday

Before Pete and I were friends, Thursdays were my favourite days because I could do my favourite things. I could read The Boy in Striped Pajamas until I knew the words forwards and backwards. But Thursdays weren't my favourite days anymore. And reading The Boy in Striped Pajamas wasn't my favourite thing to do anymore.

At one point or another, Friday's had become my favourite days. Because I could do my new favourite things. I could see Pete, Ryan and Hayley until I memorized every detail on each of their faces. But Thursdays aren't my favourite days anymore. And seeing Ryan and Hayley weren't my favourite thing either.

In fact, now my favourite days are Wednesdays because I can do my favourite thing. I can go to visit Pete (with his pink hair) and Cherry in the hospital until I could map out every dynamic of the hospital room and draw the expressions on Pete's face.

Mr Bowie helped me with the chemistry that I've been struggling with and I wondered whether it was too late now to drop the subject and take tourism or business instead. In fact, I contemplated the idea of a wheelchair fetish night club where I could strip for money to people with a fetish. (You know, like you guys.)

The truth was that none of that was going to work: there's not much I could do except study the things harder than I'd ever studied anything before. Harder than I'd studied Group Therapy by Bernard Levinson and harder than I'd studied The Boy in Striped Pajamas. Which meant that I was going to be studying extremely hard.

This kept in mind, I ate some cereal and watched Dead Poets Society like that might change my chemistry mark or do my history homework. It did keep me entertained, though, and it gave me goose bumps the way it always did. I liked it, almost as much as I like The Boy in Striped Pajamas.

It also made me extremely inspired and interested in poetry even though it was short-lived because when I actually opened my University Anthology of Poetry novel, I got bored on the second poem that I read. I suppose that the only interesting poems are the ones I can correlate with Pete.

But that's the way it is with everything, isn't it?

Frank came to take me to the hospital and when we got there, Pete wasn't sitting next to Cherry. He was sitting on one of the chairs that faced the glass wall that I looked through to see him. His eyes were closed and I could tell that he was trying to keep his facial expression neutral.

He was trembling and it showed – his entire face twitched uncontrollably like the ends of his mouth and eyebrows were connected to invisible strings that were yanked on by no one in particular. I didn't want to look, didn't want to soak in all the details but I couldn't peel my eyes away from them.

His eyes were closed and his lips were slightly parted as he pressed his head against the wall behind him and tried not to cringe or flinch but doing it anyway. He was in pain – dying slowly and painfully. His cheeks were hollow, like they had been as of late. And his skin looked papery translucent.

I remembered the rosy cheeked Pete that I accidently dropped me in the parking lot and compared him to Pete in the chair. They were miles apart: for one, I wouldn't trust the Pete in the chair to carry me at all. He looked old and on the brink of death. He looked pained and weak and like he was slowly decomposing before my very eyes.

He hadn't been sleeping, the tell-tale dark rings under his eyes stood out intensely against his papery thin, white skin. I wanted to scream. Wanted to cry and yell and tell him that he didn't have to do this: that he didn't have to die for a cause.