Nerds & Boyfriends (unfinished)

Robots & Love

    Who was Carson? He knew so much about me, but I didn’t know him. I flipped through my sketchbook to find that my diary entries had not been opened.

  I would fold each diary entry a certain way, and when opened, slightly damaged the paper. Each diary entry had stayed completely intact.

   I flipped through to find drawings I had not drawn tucked into the back folder. One was of me. I was placed on a desk. It was drawn from a right side view.

He drew me in class?

I must have not noticed.  I was engulfed in his art.  The spontaneous detail, the form, the story.  It had a taste of both mysterious yet bright and loud. Like a statement piece. A message.  It was so free-handed and imprecise yet perfected and well thought and collected.

    My fingers kept tracing the slight indents of the note. He thinks what I do is perfect? What I do is perfect the way it is? He said I constantly planned, that I never thought about what was going on at the very moment.

   To be honest, that was all I was ever taught in life. Perfection. Preciseness.

   “What you are now isn’t important, it’s who you’re going to be,” My parents’ words ringed in my head.

   “It’s all about your future,” I could never forget.

   My whole life I was taught to think ahead, to plan out my entire life before I live it. Why would it be different now? I was always told to be the best and do the best for my future.

   After a while, that just became me, all that I was. It was just a habit. I was to do what was best for my future and nothing more.

   But what about freedom, independence, enjoying my youth?  What about doing stupid acts of fun and thrill. Messing up and picking yourself back up to learn from your mistakes.  What about living life, being unique. Straying from the path...

   Ari what are you thinking?  You worked to damn hard to throw your life away for a boy or a taste of little freedom.  What does any of that even mean to you? It's irrelevant.  Your future is so bright and perfect you can almost taste it. 

   My future, it's all set.

   I couldn’t let anything stand in my way, no distractions.

   Carson was a distraction.

   When I was with Carson, I felt something, something I never felt before. I was confused yet drawn. I didn’t know what I was feeling. Was it attraction, or maybe love?

   I felt like a robot, just a piece of machinery. I was built, created, to do what I was told, what was right. I never did anything for myself, really. Why?

   My future was on the line.

   “Forget Carson, Ari,” I whispered to myself,  “He’s just another distraction,” I nodded and walked off.

    I quietly opened to door, hoping no one noticed I was out.

   “Ari, Jean’s here,”

   Jean. I hadn’t seen Jean in the longest time. For the summer she visited Vermont. Her parents were spending the summer in Las Vegas and didn’t want Jean to feel lonely and bored, so they shipped her to her aunt. I hadn’t seen her for the whole summer.

   Jean and I lived a couple miles from each other. She moved two years ago. She and I attended the same pre-school and grade school classes, even middle school, but ever since the new high school was built, she was to attend there with all the others.

   I missed Jean.

    She and I sat across the television; ‘Think Like a Criminal’ was on. We watched it together every weekend, until she moved. Now, whenever she came over we would watch re-runs and recordings. We were obsessed with the shows.

   “You were out for a while,” she laughed, the slightest tone of suspiciousness in her voice.

   I confessed.

   “There was this boy and-” Jean cut me off.

   “Oh my god, oh my god,” She chirped, jumping around like a maniac.

   “Don’t knock over the popcorn,” I warned, grabbing her arm and shifting the buttery, fattening bowl of goodness to the other side and trying my best to calm her down.

   “Spill it, loser, what’s his name,”

   “It’s Carson, I met him in-”

   “Carson?”

   I could tell by the way she said it, in her tone.

   Jean knew Carson.