Wearing My Smile | ✔

Friday, January 23rd, 1998

Throughout our childhood and early teen years, when people asked us when we'd started to become friends, you'd crack up. You'd grin at me and say, “Dude, you've got to tell them!” and I suppose I could see why you thought of this as hilarious. I could only remember it as something horrible, but I told them anyway.

Remember, Sam? Your family just moved in that house across from mine where an enormous mango tree sat with its branches so wide they covered up half of our street. It was the biggest tree there. You climbed painstakingly, your parents were nowhere to be found, and I found myself worried. Curious but worried, because you could have fallen and who were going to catch you then?

You looked so serious, you had this intense single-mindedness even then. But I suppose single-mindedly trying to climb a tree is much better than single-mindedly trying to destroy yourself, so I should have thanked my lucky stars at the time. I couldn't have, of course, but as I always used to tell you, it is nice to dream. God knows I dreamed of that first day so many times over the years, amongst other things—you know what.

I watched you, your blond hair glinted in the sun. It's what I do, I always watch things. I don't participate, and everyone in my family has told me over and over that being in love with silence is not always healthy, but they say that because they don't get it. Not like you did. You always got it, because that was what you call us: a lone wolf.

I always used to disagree with that even though I didn't say anything. I knew I wasn't one, but you. You were a lone wolf, Sam. You were alone because you drove yourself away from your pack willingly. I was in your pack, I wanted to stay there, I swear, but eventually you left me because I know it was in your blood. It was a calling that I've known for a long time. You had this hostile urge to get away. You always had it and I understood it, but that was the thing: I didn't understand how much you wanted to get away, that you'd do absolutely anything to escape.

Then you fell with nobody beneath to catch you before you touched the ground. I could say something like, I should have known, I should have gone there because my intuition is rarely ever wrong. Of course you'd fall; we were eight, it was a huge-ass tree. I ran to you and yelled until your out-of-their-minds-drunk parents came out and called the ambulance. I mean, I should have seen it right there, their failure of being an actual pair of parents, but I was still so little and I would finally understand it by the end of my middle school year. It was too late by then; you were already so bitter.

I saw you again with a cast on your left arm the next day. I was sitting on my front porch, reading encyclopedia about world's mythology, when you strolled to me shyly. All alone. You cleared your throat, you said, “Thank you for yesterday.” and then, “I was being stupid.” and then, “I just thought I’d like the view from up there.” and finally, “I'm Sam.”

“I'm Rumon,” I told you, “but everyone calls me Roo.”

You grinned. It was a wolfish thing. “Little Roo. Like from Winnie the Pooh. I don't watch that anymore, of course. I'm eight now.”

“I'm eight, too, but I watch it anyway. It's good.”

“But it's for kids.”

“Grown-ups watch children shows all the time.”

You appeared to be thinking about it. “That's true.”

I pointed at your cast and sling. “Does that still hurt?”

“Not much, but the doctor said I wouldn't be able to use it for at least forty days. I want to use it as soon as possible. You can't play with only one hand.”

“Play what?”

You shuffled your feet, looking down, somewhat nervous. “Violin.”

“That's so cool.”

You looked up, an uncertain smile curved at the corner of your mouth. “Yeah?”

“What do you play?”

“I'm practicing on Moonlight Sonata.”

I laughed. “I don't know what that is, but I'd like to listen some, after you got better.”

I didn't know it then, but after—years after, I would know this to be cruel, because this was where things started to get bad for you. This was where your dream started to wilt, where it started to slowly die, where your hand which used to be used for creating beautiful things would end up being used for destroying things later in the future. I was the lone witness of it. The only one with the burden of that knowledge, because right after I told you that, you smiled so happily at me I still ache from the memory sometimes.

I asked you if you'd like to play soccer. You said yes. You asked me if you could play pass with me. I said yes, and yes, and yes, the start of so many yeses in years to come.