Wearing My Smile | ✔

Monday, July 9th, 2007

Around three months after your funeral.

His fist swung fast across my jaw and I watched, as if in a slow-motion, thinking of how that must have been what you'd felt like months ago when you'd fought those guys at the back of our school's stadium, angry at the whole world for everything it didn't do to you, until you'd crawled yourself bloody to me. This boy, not quite a man yet, held almost as much rage inside of him as you had and that moment, the moment where his fist finally connected to my face, I decided that I couldn't. I couldn't hate this person at all, Sam. You were right when you'd told me years ago that I hadn't had it in me to hate other people. I would have seen too much to do so.

I suppose I should be grateful. He didn't mess me up too bad. He wasn't one of the usual ones and I wondered about that, why people suddenly used me as an excuse to be angry. His friends shifted around him, not quite know how to react. I could tell they didn't want to hurt me, but loyalty was an odd thing, it could make you do the things you didn't want to do just because you were loyal to the wrong people. Their uncertainty called out to me, reminding me of how I'd frozen the first time you started to throw punches to someone who looked at you a bit funny, thinking where did all of that violence come from and how come I didn't notice it before?

Long minutes passed and I painfully wretched myself away from him. His friends pulled him back, his nostrils flared as he tried to come at me again. I felt blood trickle down my nose to my mouth. I wiped it as if I could wipe your expression away, as if it wasn't already etched so deeply inside my memory.

I told him, because I knew this to be true, “Beating me into pulp will not bring your parents together again.”

There was shock, then I saw grief there, flickering in his eyes before it was replaced by smoldering fury. “What the fuck do you know? Someone like you?”

“I know enough,” I told him softly, “And so do you.”

For a second I thought he was going to go after me again, but his tense shoulders winced away from me, trotting past his friends to wherever he went to cool down when he wasn't punching someone weaker than him.

Then, I remembered you, Sam, the way some days you came into my house with bloodied face and knuckles. Your expression was hard as stone. The way you sat by me on the couch as I tended to your bruises, how you looked away like you were trying to hide your shame, or grief, I couldn't really tell their differences on you. The way you held onto me fiercely when I pulled you into my arms.

I tried to go home, but I still felt raw and weak, so I sat down on my front porch, watching as the leaves fell all over your neglected yard. Every reminder of you made me ache—it makes me ache, still—because I needed you there with me, Sam, and you were nowhere to be found.

I remembered the way you'd smiled at me after you'd played your violin in my ninth birthday. I remembered you so vividly when you were thirteen, as you leaned down to kiss me for the first time, and I was drowning in your sad, sad eyes. I remembered the way we lay down looking at the stars with you confessing that someday you wanted to play your music on a stage and as I promised you everyone would listen.

These pages were like words upon words in letters I wish I could have sent to you and God knows, I miss you, I miss the sound of your laughter, the curve of your smile, I miss the weightless way you jump from those trees and our swing set, I miss the sound of your violin that you'll never play again, I miss your company, your bone-tired wisdom, your thoughts.

I remember telling you once that I believed in my heart that things would get better, but now you'll never get to fix anything, you'll probably never see it, so I'm writing this to you, Sam. So maybe somehow you'll see that it does, because I believe it, I still do.