Fallen Angel

♱ CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

♡ Amal

     THE PICTURE EYES ME, burns me with its gaze. It pins me down like the beady eyes of a hawk. Its focus is ever-present, stifling, disconcerting. The faces stare out at me at all hours of the day. Unseeing. Unblinking. It does not give me the familiarity, the nostalgia that family photos are supposed to give. Instead, it fills me with a forlorn sense of longing. Everything is different now. There is so much they don't know.

     My father didn't need his son to be the star quarterback. He never asked for his son to win championships or be the spokesperson for masculinity. All he wanted was for his son to be the kind of respectable young man who would one day marry a respectable young Sudanese woman. His son's name was Abdul.

     Abdul was never the spokesperson for masculinity. Abdul was never the star quarterback, or a quarterback at all. In fact, Abdul never once picked up a football during his seventeen years of living. Abdul never won any championships. But he would also never wear a suit at his nikah ceremony, and he would never grow up to marry a respectable young Sudanese woman.

     He was just never interested in those kinds of things. What exactly is the appeal in a bunch of sweaty guys throwing a ball around, chasing after it like animals? No, Abdul much preferred to create his own hobbies. The human body — medicine and healing — were what interested him the most. For years, he kept journals in which he documented his experiments. Plants sometimes. The human body others. He used to drive his mom crazy by documenting her cuts and burns, checking in with her everyday to document their progress. But it fascinated him — the steps, the process.

     First, a cut. Then, the bleeding. Then, a clot. Then, a scab. Then, the shedding, the rawness of new skin. Everything had an order, and the human body fascinated him. But his own body was just... wrong. It felt to him like a set of baggy clothing, a grey sack, a funeral shroud. The human body could do amazing things, but his own body only served to disappoint him. Nothing he did could fix that, it seemed.

     Abdul hadn't met many people in his seventeen years of life that truly seemed to understand him. But he did know Blaire, and at just fifteen years old, she seemed like such a person. Such a character. Someone who already knew herself, knew what life was about. Apart from being the nicest person Abdul had ever met, she was also the subject of his truest, deepest, mushiest, most romantic feelings. Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! Blaire was real and multidimensional. She never made him feel like an outsider.

     Abdul and Blaire had been childhood friends, connecting on the playground over a mutual love of monkey bars. They would chase after the ice cream truck together, sneak into the rich side of town and dare each other to take a dip in someone's pool. They would do their homework together, Abdul helping Blaire with the math that made her head ache. Abdul had finally made a best friend.

     But the woes of childhood have a way of pushing kids apart. Blaire's schoolmates teased her relentlessly about her "fifth-grade boyfriend". Abdul didn't have many friends to begin with, but he began to question his friendship with Blaire. Was it weird that his best friend was two years younger than him? Insecurity soon slithered in, a serpent overtaking the delicate rose of friendship. The pair broke apart, making it the second split relationship of Abdul's life, the first being that of his divorced parents.

     There was a period of time, a dark time, when Abdul resented Blaire for her effect on his social life. His classmates became his demons, calling him names and making fun of his "third-grade girlfriend". How could he have ever been friends with Blaire? Look at what she did to him. Look at how he felt, like the teasing would never ease up, like he would be alone forever.