Wearing My Smile | ✔

Friday, November 5th, 2003

You once told me, when we were fourteen, what a gift it was to be able to play violin.

“It's not just the sound, Roo,” you told me that time, after you practiced playing the instrument at my house, your eyes alight with hopes and dreams which hadn't yet been crushed by your parents. “The vibration moves from my arms to my ears and to here.” You touched your chest fleetingly. “I can't explain it. It fills me up right into the corners of my being. I was empty before, but now I'm not.”

It was such a beautiful thing to say. You had this way of making beautiful things sad. You must have seen it in my eyes because you put away your violin to cup my face and kissed me softly. It was chaste and innocent, just like you were, so I wrapped my hand on the back of your neck to deepen it, surprising you by giving you everything I had. It was sloppy and new and exhilarating, but I wanted to have it so badly and I was tired of waiting. Your skin was almost too hot to the touch yet I craved it. I didn't know when it happened, just that I wanted you so much I didn't know what to do.

The year had passed by with us just hanging out the way we always did. The longer time passed though, it was apparent there was something there. Something different, like an undercurrent of electricity ready to be brought alive. I'm certain you felt it, too. It was in the heated way you looked at me sometimes.

You were still flushed and out of breath, sitting right beside me on the couch, our shoulders brushing. You cleared your throat, embarrassed, and asked, “Do you know what your gift is?”

I hesitated a little, but then I told you, “I can remember everything.”

You peered at me warily. “What, like, everything?”

“I have a photographic memory. I looked it up.”

“And that means what?”

I felt my lips curve with fondness. Patiently, I explained, “It means that I can remember everything I've ever seen, no matter how brief it was.”

You barked a laugh then slumped your head to the back of the couch. “Man, that's so convenient for tests! No wonder you always got perfect scores. That's so unfair.”

I grinned at you. “You're just jealous my gift is better than yours.”

You snorted loudly. “In your dreams, Roo.” You rested your head on your side, watching me, thinking. I waited until you said, “You've never told me this before.”

It wasn't a question, but a statement. “I haven't.”

You looked confused then. “Why?”

“Remember the dreams I told you about?”

“Your daily nightmares? The one with forest and fire and—oh.” I watched as understanding dawn upon your face, how you tried to cover up your horror under a calm mask, but I knew you too well already for it to be useless. You sat up. “You think the dream came from a real event?”

“I don't know,” I shook my head, answering you honestly, “I don't think so.”

“But you saw it almost every night.”

“Yeah.”

I regretted the confession immediately because of how sad you looked. You had noticed by then how exhausted I'd been. You'd known I almost never slept and when I did, I slept very lightly I heard your soft knocks on my window some nights you wanted to run away from your home.

This was my gift, but I knew everything about gifts as I was certain you did, too. There was always the downside. From your eyes, I knew you understood what I meant: sometimes you couldn't tell the difference between a gift and a curse.

I touched your cheek and smiled. “It's alright.

But you put your arms around me, pulling me into you. The night was silent, no sound came other than the muted conversation in the television, and we were on our own inside our little world. I held you in my arms so tightly I wondered why you didn't flinch from how painful it was. The warmth of you, the fleeting scent of your soap, sweat, and shampoo. I wanted to drown myself in all of it, I wanted to drown myself in you.

This is one of the memories I have so vivid inside my mind, Sam. How it hurts me to remember because these are doors, upon doors, upon doors, upon doors. And I am waking, crashing into one room to another. My memories are a series locked up doors that I know are there but I don't want to open anymore. I find myself running after you, after your laughter which sounded as crisp as the autumn leaves under my boots. You told me years later that your dream had died along with the cracking sound of your bones as they broke inside your left arm, but me, I still held mine tenderly inside my arms.

“It is such a gift,” you said to me ruefully after a long silence, “to be held by you.”

But I didn't believe you. How could I? There was no glory in the coldness of my arms, no serenity in the shape of my unsmiling face, no peace in how hard life turned me to be. I was always the void, but you, Sam, you were supposed to be the blinding light.

Sometimes you can't tell the difference between a gift and a curse.