𝖡𝖫𝖤𝖲𝖲𝖤𝖣

𝗍𝗈𝖻𝗂𝖺𝗌

You’ve lived here since you were born and yet you still didn’t know everyone’s names or faces beyond ‘that guy who sometimes eats at the diner down the street’ and ‘lady with the three noisy black dogs’. You’d seen movies and read books in which the main character was a small-town-something and the town is like one big family but if that was the way things were in your hometown, you weren’t part of that family. Keeping to yourself was always comfortable for you and you didn’t have plans to stay here forever- though you were a little apprehensive about leaving. It wasn’t familiarity itself that meant a lot to you but the idea of forcing yourself to branch out somewhere new with faces you weren’t used to seeing. There was a small part of you that wished you’d been an army brat or in a more nomadic family but unfortunately your family was well nested.

While you didn’t know names, you were still fully aware of how bleak this town was to most of its residents. Everyone succumbed to a mundane daily ritual so predictable that the most exciting thing to happen in the past 15 years was one of the fireworks going awry during the 4th of July celebration in the empty lot on Cedar Street and setting a trash can on fire. It was always the same kids playing in the sparsely populated dollar store parking lot with the same beat up kickball stained with asphalt, the same rinky-dink 20 year old car parked in the principal’s spot at school with its dented BOSS1 vanity plate, the same types of teens who collected around the deck of the ancient ice cream parlor between the white church with the chipped siding and the rust-eaten park any parent unwilling to give their child tetanus would avoid.

Even if the teens were different people throughout the years, it was always the same types with the same cheap weed sales pitches and packets of flour with the smudged marker label of “crack” they’d market at the edgy middle schoolers.

Sometimes you’d sit at home staring at the clock on another sleepless night daring yourself not to go to school in the morning. You’d make up whole scenarios where you leave the house as if to go to school and then take yourself to the diner or the ice cream parlor or loiter at the dollar store like a rebel but the more you thought about it the more heavily the concept of “there is nothing to do in this place” settled over you and school sounded like a more entertaining option.

The previous year there was an exchange student from Denmark but you were a little too nervous to talk to him. He struck you as overexcited and at the edge of something unwell. Perhaps he had others fooled but you always had a sense that he was hiding more of himself from others than you were and it wasn’t something you wanted to be involved with. Then along came another student but you weren’t sure where he was from. He had a soft accent you couldn’t quite place and a very quiet nature you could appreciate but prevented you from approaching.

You were so accustomed to the pierced and acne scarred faces of your peers, frizzy dyed hair and tattered outfits that left little to the imagination that the church boy appearance was jarring by comparison. With such a thin frame, perfect and pale porcelain skin, jet black hair neatly combed to one side, and a crisp white dress-shirt under pressed black khakis and a pine green wool knitted sweater that must have been made in the 1960s. You’d almost mistaken him for a doll or a time traveler that stepped through the wrong wormhole into the future.

What caught your attention most were his eyes. They were such a strange and nearly unnatural pale, glacial blue that a simple stare was all it took to feel scolded by him even though you’d done nothing wrong. You’d seen him occasionally interact with the Danish exchange student but something changed in the late fall and he fell into a much more solitary state. You were always tempted to say something to him but despite all the hypothetical conversations you played out in your head you could never seem to find anything to say to him. You knew nothing about him but you wanted to. You’d never seen him anywhere but in the school and part of you mused that he was some kind of magic being and befriending him would rope you into some sort of fantastical and terrifying adventure.

On an afternoon in late November just before the Thanksgiving break, you spotted him as you were leaving the school for the day. He sat alone on the picnic table near the front entrance, dark hair ruffled, sweater gone and crisp white button-up now wrinkled and partially unbuttoned. He sat as if he was recovering from a shocking experience, staring into space, hands resting between his legs against the edge of the table. It was odd to see him anything less than ironed perfection and it both worried and intrigued you.

You had your chance to have something to say, however.
     
Cautiously you approached, studying his face to see if he noticed you yet. When he didn’t give you so much as a glance you spoke up, voice cracking slightly and regrettably at first. “A-are you okay?”

He turned his head a bit towards you though not moving his eyes to look at you for several seconds. “Why?” he replied in a short breath. 

A question you weren’t anticipating. In your experience, questions like yours were usually met with a curt “yeah.” You cleared your throat a bit, straightening as his eyes were now focused intensely on yours.

“I’m just… wondering. Sorry.”

“Why?” he repeated, lifting his chin a bit defiantly. “Why do you want to know? Who are you?”

You chewed the inside of your lip a bit as you observed his now tense posture. It was clear he didn’t trust you. “I don’t know. I just wanted to ask.”

He studied your face for a long and painful minute before raising his head some more and relaxing his shoulders a bit. “Can I ask you something?”

“Okay,” you said, shifting your weight to your other foot nervously, feeling as if speaking to him might have been a mistake.

“Are you one of them?”

“One of who?”
   
“Them. The fools in this school that seem to believe that whorish inclinations and deliberate stupidity are the means for a ‘fun’ and ‘fulfilling’ life.”

“No.”

He pursed his lips a bit and nodded in acknowledgement. “... good. Do you-” he looked over his shoulder before turning his attention back to you. “... believe friendship can be bought?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On the person.” You shifted your weight again, feeling the pressure in your feet. “I uh… I have to go home. So-”

“What’s your name?”

You introduced yourself a bit gruffly- starting to question the sanity of this boy- and he gave you the strangest and most artificial closed-lipped smile.

“Lovely. Tobias. How do I buy your companionship?”