Letters For Youth

on Cooper.

'You ever think about where we go when we die?' I will ask you.

This time we'll be walking to your car on an autumn afternoon, with the sun setting just beneath the Maverick Activity Center. You'll be skipping pebbles down the road, trying to kick each as far as possible. I'll be tailing the shadows of your footsteps. The weight of my bag will pull down against my frame while the sun sears the sweat into my skin, and you'll be flexing your back muscles the entire time.

'There's a void,' you'll say.

'A void?' I'll ask, smiling. 'Like – like a black void?'

'Yeah – you just sit there,' you'll say.

'Forever?'

'Yeah,' you'll say.

'Dude,' I'll tell you. 'That's nuts.'

'What do you mean?' you'll smile. 'I'm right!'

I tease you about this for a while. I tease you about your car too, a beautiful car on the outside; a silver Toyota. On the inside, however, is an attempt to control chaos. There are energy drinks, some cans clumping together, and others about your car floor. There in the cup holder is an empty Boba cup. The backseat has all your gym clothes sprawling around – every one of them smells like expiration – and a car seat in the back, where you put your backpack. You say that the car seat is for your baby cousin. I don't argue with that intel. We slam the car doors close – gently, of course, since you treat your car better than people – and then we'll take Cooper home.

You didn't know this, since I didn't know, but Cooper St. started out as a shortcut. A path made to make travel from Arlington to Mansfield more convenient. In the late 1800s – early 1900s, a man named James Daniel Cooper made 'Cooper Rd.", as people called it back then, and gave travelers extensive land holdings in the surrounding area. You'd say, 'If it were a shortcut, then why'd it always takes so long to get home?' Though, I have to admit, we do take shortcuts. Didn't we? If there is one thing we share, it's a quiet desperation to get to the end as quickly as possible.

After the end of our car rides home, on this road, you'll tell me – and your other friends, of course – about a girl you'll fancy for a while. I'll tell you that I didn't understand. I will not understand at that moment, but I will in the future. Later on.

'I just want a girlfriend, dude', you'll tell me. 

'Yeah,' I'll pause for a half-second. 'I getchu.'  

'I mean, I got a girlfriend in high school,' you'll be talking like you're about to frame an argument; you'll look out at the road like it's a debate with Cooper. 'But it's not the same.'

'Yeah,' I'll start to confess. 'I don't think anyone would ever love me. Or even could.'

I honestly don't understand. How someone like you, with an athletic build and a puppy dog smile, could struggle by the same amount as me in dating. You dress well, somewhere between skater-punk-hoodlum and 20th century university student. A carbonate personality. How are you like me, struggling to find someone to look at you? That sentiment won't last long, though. You'll be unaware, as you drive down our road during that long Freshman year, of this long-term relationship heading your way.

'Do you want to get anything?', you'll say. This time, we'll be at the counter of Unitea.

You'll spend a lot of your time at Unitea once your relationship starts. That's if you're not either working out or taking your girlfriend to Austin. The inside of Unitea, another attempt to have a Boba shop name that pretends it's somehow clever, is actually nice. A large open space that no amount of furniture could fill, just the 'cutest' little tables that clearly don't plan on fostering the leagues of procrastinating students that walk through its door, and a long display case displaying trinkets that didn't have any correlation with milk-tea or speak to the quality of the food. One could, probably, imagine the building in the past finding use as a warehouse, with its blank space and the metal beams that crisscross above without a proper ceiling. The wooden floorboards, always finding something scratching against itself like a wooden chair or impatient sneakers, couldn't hide the smell of desperation that cling about the buildings of Cooper. The ghosts of Cooper.