A Living, Breathing Bullet Through My Unsuspecting Heart

One After Another

"hi, give me a sec..." I told a nervous sounding Milo who was on the other side of the call.

"Okay. You don't have to talk, I just wanted to see if the number worked." To be honest I was waiting for any distraction to take my mind off of a disturbing Japanese anime that I started this morning. 

I nodded to my mother who gave me a confused look. She knew as well as I that I that I had no friends. Now that I had broken up with my boy friend I should be moping and sitting in a dark corner. Wait, that was the dump-ee's job. I was the dump-er. Well, don't I feel like I wasted all that time thinking about Jonas. 

Can't be helped.

I moved out onto the back patio and looked out to the park behind our house. Little kids were climbing the slide backwards and tripping all over each other. I gave a short snort into the phone and could feel the nervousness radiating off of the air around his words.

"So..oo..oo.." was all he said.

"Thanks for calling, but you could have just texted me." I told him, with no emotion as usual. 

"Well..." He stopped for a moment. Most likely thinking about just how much he should tell me, some freak he met at a sketch-ass gas station on the sketch side of town. "I just have this weird problem of over-thinking things. I kept wondering if you were going to answer the text or think I was some random weirdo, or you would just laugh at it with your friends..." His voice trailed off again and I herd a smacking noise, something like a face-palm that people seem to do.

"What friends?" I said as a reflex. I immediately mentally face-palmed myself really hard for that one. What the hell? Why can't you just not be creepy for two seconds while I talk to the kid who's got a lot of courage to talk to the psycho he met almost three days ago.

He seemed to really think about that question before answering, "The people who I'm sure you're swarmed with day in and day out due to your unwavering, and frankly, inhuman ability to not be awkward on first impressions." He didn't pause, or stutter, or choke. But I started laughing. When I say laughing, I mean the full hearted, belting, hold-your-sides-cause-they-hurt-like-a-mofo kind of laughing. I almost dropped the phone. 

I could feel the nervousness seep away from our conversation as he joined in. "What's with that?" He asked in an innocent voice once we had calmed down. 

I too a deep breath. Really, it wasn't even that funny. I told myself as I recomposed my frown/scowl/bored expression at a kid who had begun to stare at my red face. "Nothing. But I wouldn't go around labeling creeps who helped you out once as popular under any circumstances." I took another breath as he gave a soft chuckle. 

"So what would you label you as?" He sounded a lot less like he wanted to hang up on me, and was asking a genuine question. He wanted to know more about me. It occurred to me that I could be anyone at this moment. I could tell him anything and he'd have to take it, with no other label or anything else to go on to tell him about me. But then I thought How stupid would that be? To tell a potential friend all of this crappy stuff about you, only to have him find out that that's not you at all.  

So I honestly told him (with a hint of a smirk because of the tv reference [Man, I need a life{Wait, who really needs a life? Me of all people? Ya, I don't think so.}]) "I am a high functioning sociopath, with your number."

He laughed and said, "So, Sherlock, modern day and completely real." With every bit of awesome sarcasm. I think this kid was growing on me.

"Well, a man can dream of being that amazingly kick-ass, can he not?" I snarked the comment and he gave another laugh freely. 

"Back onto earth, I was wondering if I could meet with you tomorrow? I still haven't even seen the school yet, and if you couldn't tell, meeting people for the first time makes me nervous." My head did a little spin at his first choice of wording (So he thinks of being frequently floating in outer space too?!) but I reigned in my emotions and tried to focus on his once again quiet words.

"Sure, and just a heads up, but everyone has a clique and the entire school is running for the biggest-douche-of-the-year award so don't take anything personal right away. With your looks you're sure to be singled out. That could either mean singled out to be part of something, or to be shunned." I told him, out of the tiniest sliver of kindness that I had in my heart. 

"Hold that thought!!" I ran off of the patio and back into the house, flinging open the door to the inside and making a mad dash to my book bag in the corner of the kitchen on its little hook. 

With a dramatic Zing! the zipper was pulled and it's contents were pawed at until I had produced the set of sketch pencils and my pad of paper. My hands flew wildly around, testing the shades and sharpening when it wasn't doing it right. Finally I pulled the image from my memory. An empty heart, the inside spacey, but the outside making the inside look small, and crowded. The heart was filled almost to the brim with things like Despair, Loneliness, Yearning, Anger, Fear, and Nothingness.  I wrote all of them down, each of them in a different, made up font. then in the very back of the room in the heart, there was a small sliver of light, labeled Kindness and Hope. 

 "Um. Hello?" I heard the faint voice from the phone that I had set down. "Trevor?"

At the sound of my name I was thrown back into my own head instead of acting through my fingers and eyes. What? I looked around at my bedroom. Then down at the phone.

"Uhh, ya. Sorry about that," I told him as I took one more look at the desperately depressing ( 2 point adjectives for beginning with the same letter) sketch. "You just made me think of something, and if I didn't write it down I would have forgotten then had to murder myself later on tonight."

"Well, you did take almost 20 minutes... Just a question, but were you drawing? I mean I could hear all of the noises made by rapidly swiped lead on a piece of fine sketch paper... I mean.. not to be weird or anything... Oh, who am I kidding that was a little too weird." He sounded flustered.

Well shit, this kid is good. "No! You were spot on actually. If your lucky enough to guess my mind again tomorrow I'll think about showing you what it is." I said with a smirk. 

I heard an exasperated sigh. "Thanks, bye then." 

"Wait!"

"What?"

What indeed.

"What made you stay on the line for 20 minutes listening to my scratching?"

"Well... umm." He was again radiating nervousness like it was going out of style.

I laughed in my head. One direction sucks.

"You were... uhh, just humming something. I thought it sounded nice."

 And with that for me to think about all night, the little twerp hung up on me.