Wearing My Smile | ✔

Thursday, August 7th, 2003

You told me you'd see me at school, but you didn't.

At first there was this flash of irritation, that you still decided to avoid even after that morning, or maybe, more after that morning. I was upset and it gave me a slight panic because I was rarely ever upset, wasn't I? You must have known this already, Sam, you knew everything about me.

But as I rode back home from school, waiting for you to come by at home, I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. You knew full well how I'd feel about being left alone without any news. I remembered the way you had run away as I'd called you and how unfailingly you had waited for me to come out for school the next day. You would never leave without telling me if you could help it.

Except when you couldn't, and when it happened, I was certain it had something to do with your parents.

I'll tell you now, Sam, that in my panic, I'd tried to call to your house's landline, which of course ended up in voicemail. No one in your house would ever pick up telephone, except perhaps you when you were home. We had no cellphones—we didn't need it anyway since we saw each other every single day—but that day was the first time I wished we had.

You weren't coming to school the next day either. On my way back to home, I stopped to stare at your dark house, always with its curtains closed. Sometimes, your mom forgot to turn on the lights of your front porch. On your neglected front yard I saw the abandoned tires and wooden boxes for I didn't know what which had always been there since years ago.

The mango tree in front of your house was bigger then because no one at your house had cared enough to fix it up. I remember once or twice over the years someone from the neighborhood would offer to cut some of the branches off because it could be dangerous for when there was storm, but there would be yelling and crashing involved, so later no one bothered to ask anymore.

Sometimes police would come by for an hour or two before they'd leave. I wondered why they couldn't just take your dad away. I asked you this weeks before—I know now it was such a shitty thing to ask, but I did anyway—and you gave me this uncharacteristically blank look that you always wore when we talked about your family. You said to me, “They have money. Both of them.”

I eyed the neglected yard and the paint which was peeling off your house's walls. “What money?”

“Money that lasts for many generations without having to work.” You hesitated. “From what I know, we came from a powerful family.”

I frowned at you. “What does that even mean?”

“I'm not sure. We don't really talk about it.” You scoffed as if it was funny. How ridiculous the idea was, that they would talk about anything with you.

“Why did you move here in the first place?” This was a question that had been plaguing me for years, but I could never bring myself to ask. After I knew the dark part of your family, I always forced myself to ask everything I thought I needed to know, no matter how pissed or uncomfortable it would make you feel.

“I don't know, Roo.” You sounded exasperated, or maybe pissed off, I wasn't sure.

“What do you know then?”

“That I came here to practice and relax, but you keep interrogating me!” You slammed your hands onto the living room table, our glasses of juice clattered with the sudden movement.

That wasn't the first outburst of yours, so I just blinked and touched your shoulder, waiting until finally you sighed and calmed, but the first time it had happened I was so surprised. You had looked shocked and then guilty as you walked out the door.

I sat right beside you after you calmed. “How are you doing, really?” And I knew you understood what I actually meant : how was your family doing?

You were gritting your teeth, your hands curled into fists, but I knew you would never hurt me. “Are you just going to keep on interrogating me, Roo?”

“I will until you give me actual answers.”

“What do you care?”

I bristled inside. “Oh, don't give me that. I'm the only one in this world who gives a shit about you, Sam, so don't fucking give me that.” I watched as your face crumpled, your fight dying along with it, so then came my guilt. You used to tell me that I almost never raised my voice, but I knew just where to stab.

Trying to soothe the moment, I added, “I'm worried about you, Sam. If it's up to me, I'd take you from that bad place and just put you here under my family's roof. Dad asked me about it once, you know? They'd love to have you here. You'll be safer here. But it's not up to me, is it?”

I saw you clench your teeth again. If I think about it, think about everything carefully now with clear eyes that I have now, Sam, perhaps I should have noticed then. Your potential. Every people alive have a potential of violence, but you, Sam, you were a wolf and I watched how you struggled every day to control your anger. You were constantly on the verge of explosion, sometimes even when you were with me.

I wonder if you'd noticed this about yourself. If this was one of the reasons why you'd decided to just end it, because the Sam I knew never wanted to hurt other people, even though you ended up doing just that many times over the years. Maybe one day you thought how fed up you had been, how you had had enough, how you didn't want to live with control barely within your grasp anymore.

“You can't.” Your voice was low and harsh and painful. “You swore, Roo. You swore to me.”

“I know.”

“You can't take this from me.”

Maybe you'd meant it as chance to make your family better, but what I heard was how I could never take your pain away from you. “I'm not going to.”

I had my camera and video recorders. It would be so easy, I thought, to just install them around your house. It would be all the evidence I needed to take that monster away, locking him up behind the bars for all eternity, but a sense of loyalty did strange things to people. It made you stupid sometimes, the way I was then.

After a while, your breathing turned normal again, and you told me softly, “It's not getting better.”

My heart twisted at the hopelessness of it. “What can I do to help?”

You scoffed. It was scratchy, like you were on verge of tears, but I knew you wouldn't. Cry, that is. They broke something in you other than your bones that night, something I realized I might never be able to fix. “Nothing, Roo. Just. Just stay here. Can you do that?”

“Of course, I can.”

“I need you to be here. Do you know that, Roo? This place is my home. You are my home.”

There were tears clogging up my throat and it hurt, Sam. It hurt to be here sometimes, it still does. “You are mine, too.”

When you held onto me, your arms around me, your fingers clutching tightly onto my T-shirt, your face and your hard breath on the crook of my neck, there was something—something unfurling. I didn't know why I didn't notice it then, why I didn't notice it before the kiss, that you needed so much more from me than just a friend.

What you needed from me, Sam, was everything.