The Boy in the Gray Hoodie

SEVEN | Delete

It wasn't easy being seventeen. Too young to be considered a 'grown-up' by anyone but yourself, and too old to swim at the public pool for free. Still, adults had such a sweet deal according to Lisa's observations. They could go where they wanted, make their own decisions, and be cruel whenever they felt like it. Seventeen was so close to eighteen, which was basically adulthood at it's finest. Isn't that what everyone said?

Except there was just one problem. Every adult she'd ever met was utterly miserable. Adolescence seemed to end with the realization that it was easier to hate your life than try for anything better. Her parents had hated their life together. And isn't hatred at the core of every divorce? Or is it indifference that drives the deepest wedge between humans?

Lisa sat on the living room floor pondering these questions, waiting for her crimes to be discovered. The evidence was everywhere—on the walls, the furniture, her hands, in her hair, across one eyebrow...

She knew exactly what would happen when her father got home. The lecture that would ensue, the fake calm, the silence. How closely are silence and indifference related? Could they be siblings? Or distant cousins, like the kind that can legally marry?

It was getting late. The sun had gone down. Amber was probably already sleeping easily with her clean conscience while the rest of the world did whatever 'other' people do. Everyone she didn't know, couldn't know, who lived lives she never would. People who exist as ideals, like the wholesome, perfect family in that one car commercial. Fake people.

The real version of herself—the physical thing curled up on the carpet—wasn't an ideal. Lisa was not the kind of daughter every parent dreamed of, that was for sure. She didn't fall prey to stereotypes or mimic angsty teen movie characters. She wasn't fake. More like a copy or a reproduction. Lisa was the product of two unique sets of DNA and guaranteed to turn out a little bit like both of her parents. That was the ultimate sham—the promise of a fingerprint like no other mixed with an expectation of inheritance. Both her parents were doctors. They healed things. To be an individual, she had no choice but to do the opposite. Destruction was the only way to be her own person. Toss her coffee onto someone's sweater. Scuff her shoes. Step outside the imaginary and into the real. It was the only way to feel alive.

Lisa sat straight up at the sound of the front door opening. She stared at the entryway, waiting. When he stepped into the hall, he saw her. His eyes moved over her body, taking in the paint smeared all over her clothes, and then he saw the rest. The lines around his mouth tightened, and he took off his coat.

"Hi dad," she waved, a smile forming on her lips.

He tossed his coat onto the entryway table and turned his back on her without a word, heading into the kitchen. She heard the fridge open and the sound of a glass clinking against the countertop. A moment later, he carried a tumbler of wine up the stairs without looking at her.

Look at me. I'm here. I exist. Look at me!

Lisa kept her gaze locked on the staircase until he was out of sight. Then she began to breathe again. She wasn't surprised at all. She knew him too well—as well as she knew herself. They were, as father and daughter, partly the same person. Outside, she chuckled a little and laid back down on the carpet. Inside, there was nothing to laugh at.

***

E7 didn't want it to be real. The blood, the suits charging in with a gurney to strap him down, the needles. He wanted it all to be some kind of terrible fever dream, like the kind he had after the injections that made him see all the doctors melting in their suits. That way he would wake up, and none of this would've happened.