Something About Us

Part Six

Part Six

        Seven Evans rang the doorbell to my house at exactly 1:00pm on Saturday afternoon. Seeing him there at the door and remembering our forgiveness exchange I remembered I wasn’t to feel bitter towards him. Looking into Seven’s brown eyes didn’t make me feel bitter at all. Instead I felt embarrassed every time I thought about the dream I had about him.
  
      “I brought a pizza box. We can put the board game in there. It’s never been used so it’s not like there are grease stains at the bottom,” Seven said with a chuckle. “Tonight’s going to be a really clear night and I brought my telescope so we can star gaze after if we’ve got time.”

         I laughed. “Do you really think we’re going to take that long?”

         “Well yeah, man. All we’ve got is the stuff we both agreed to do. You typed out the instructions to the game, right? Good. I’ve made the question cards and all that,” Seven said. We decided to work in the living room where the computer was along with the table.

         "So I have all the stuff we should need right here. I was thinking that one of us could draw little icons of the characters for each of the playing pieces. Like a pair of glasses for Piggy, a cross for Simon, a spear for Jack, a rock for Roger. And then we could take those pieces and put them on cardboard and then stick them in this clay that'll dry as playing pieces." Seven explained. He pointed at the sketch book he had open on the table, and then the folded up, empty pizza box. Seven had good taste in pizza, as the box was from Pizza Nova. And then I noticed the scars running down Seven’s arm. They were vertical and went down to the middle of his forearm. One was red and raised; a scar in the process of healing.

       I reached out and touched the scars. Seven snapped his arm back as though he had been burned. His eyes were wide and his breath picked up. I could see his jaw clenched through his skin. “Can we not talk about this?”

      “I can’t ignore it,” I said. After I said that, the whole room fell silent. Seven swallowed, I could tell because his Adam's apple bobbed up and down.

       "Why do you care?" He quipped. “What are you going to do? You hate me because of what I did to you. After summer school ends we don't need to see each other anymore. You can go back to Hunter and Holiday'll take you back. I can just go back to no one like I always have.”

         “Seven, what are you talking about?”

         “I haven’t got friends, Ryan, that’s what I’m talking about. I’ve never had friends. My parents move around a lot and it’s hard for me to make and keep friends when I’m only at a school for six months before having to leave. Ryan, the loneliness is just . . . it’s too much.”

        If he treated all of his friends like he treated me I didn’t feel any surprise at the fact that he had difficulties making friends. At the same time, it wasn’t his fault his parents were constantly uprooting him. That had to be difficult. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself,” I said.

        “Can we work on this project?” He pleaded.

        We worked quickly after that. Pausing only to speak to each other about matters of our game; Beelzeboard. When Seven began to paint the board game after he had finished drawing a rough sketch of what he planned to do, I finally found the courage to speak. “As hard as it might be for you to accept, I’m your friend, Seven.”

            Seven studied me for a good while. His eyes got all squinty. Then as though he never heard me, he got right back to work. We finished our work at seven forty eight and Mom came downstairs to offer us dinner.