The Nerdy Girl and the Emo Boy

Sidewalk Letter

I remember when I was ten and I was on vacation with my parents for the summer in some sort of caribbean island, back when we were a happy family. There was this boy who lived not to far from the hotel we were staying in. His name was James, he had dark eyes and light brown hair. We met when I was chasing after a bird and I had followed it off of the hotel grounds and I couldn't find my way back. James noticed me walking around aimlessly and decided to help me. I was hesitant to let him help me because he looked scary. His dark eyes looked so lifeless, bruises covered his entire body, certain parts of his skin looked like someone had put a scorching hot knife to his skin and cut him all over. Apart from all this I accepted his help.James didn't even ask me where I had come from he knew I wasn't from around here and assumed I was on vacation so he knew to take me back to the hotel.

 

There was something about that boy that intrigued me. I could feel his pain and I'm not talking about the cuts and bruises. I could feel how the sadness radiating off of him. Even back when I was younger I was still shy but I saw bites and pieces of Chandler in this boy. No, Chandler wasn't abused but he was depressed. Both boys had the same lifeless eyes.As  they had nothing worth living for. No hope, just complete and utter sadness. It tore me to see Chandler like that and even with this boy. I couldn't leave him like that so the next day I went back to where he had found me and sure enough after waiting outside the house for about twenty minutes I heard screams and cry a couple seconds later he ran out of the house. I quickly stood up and wiped myself off. He saw me and froze. It wasn't until then that I saw his nose was bleeding and he had tears streaking down his face. A loud sound from inside the house seemed to snap him back into reality and he ran towards me, grabbed my hand and ran.

 

I didn’t protest to the running but I was having difficulty keeping up with him.His long legs gave him the advantage to run fast and well me, lets just say I looked more like an eight year old then a ten year old so I had short legs to say the least.After running for about five minutes we came to what looked like a jungle and without saying anything James made his way through all the plants while still holding my hand. Not long after we came to a small secluded section of a beach the water was two feet away from where we stood but then James let go of my hand and pointed up towards the sky. I looked up and noticed he was pointing to a tree house hidden behind the tree leaves. James started to climb up the tree and soon enough he was up in the tree house, his eyes encouraging me to climb the tree. It took me a couple tries to make it up but I eventually made it.

 

The treehouse was rather large it had windows that looked out to the beach. Inside, there was a chest. I made my way over to it and looked back at James silently asking if I could open it and he nodded. I opened it and saw that he had water and water containers, dry fruit, some clothes, a sleeping bag, an emergency kit and a ton of books, and when I say a ton, I mean like fifty books.I knew that this was his hide out, but why did he bring me here. I closed the chest and sat down across from him.

 

We sat there for a long time, just sitting there in silence. I saw the dry blood running down his face so I climbed down the tree house and found an a flower that looked like a bowl and filled it with the water from the ocean and climbed back up to the tree house.When James saw me he looked surprised and relieved at the same time. I smiled at him and gave him the flower with water inside as I ripped off a piece of my shirt. I took back the flower and dipped the cloth into the water and started to clean his face. The whole time I did this, James just stared at me. Once I was finished I smiled, proud of my work.

 

“I thought you left.”