Heavy Is The Cost

Heart to Heart

Sarah sat outside on a shallow cement staircase. Up the stairs was the front door to Horus's house. Horus remained inside the house, likely wrestling or playing card games with Jeremy and Mike, who'd both decided to stay the night. Sarah, on the other hand, could not stay the night, and instead solemnly waited for her mother to arrive. Tracy had been picked up about an hour earlier; she'd had homework to do. The sky had begun to fade from its simmering orange and dull into a lightly dusted blue, trees outlining the sky in stunning silhouettes like black ink on grey paper. The air had grown crisp and chilly as the sun began to set. Beside Sarah sat Suzie.

Suzie droned lightly, "I don't feel like going home."

"Are you always so impulsive?" Sarah asked, "You don't even know us."

"Pretty much. I like to live life on the edge. I guess this time it was pretty comfortable, though."

"You had that much fun? I'm surprised. You seemed bored."

"Oh, I was," she said with a sigh, "Seems I always am, these days. But that's not why I don't want to go home."

Sarah considered, "Oh, do you have homework, too?"

"No," she sighed again, "I don't know why. I don't know why I'm this way."

"What do you mean?" Sarah pressed.

"Sad, I mean. Bored. I don't know why I'm this way. My parents are happily married. We aren't really rich, but we ain't poor, either. And that's the worst of it all. They raised me right and I still feel this way all the time. Someone else could be out there, losing every ounce of their life, and I'm over here, losing none, and somehow that's worse." Sarah studied her face, which remained unreadable and bored. She seemed to find something- not in her face, but in her voice, in her solemn tone and heavy sigh once she'd said what had been bearing its weight on her. Sarah found an odd comfort, an odd relief, an odd... familiarity. An odd I know exactly how you feel.

"I get it," Sarah finally said, sincerely, letting the words linger in her mouth for a moment, letting her emotions tie to them willingly, freely. It seemed to be the first time she'd tasted anything other than anger cross her lips in over a year. "I think..." She stopped searching for the words, picking them apart in her mind and choosing the best ones to comfort a friend. Instead, she breathed lightly, and let her soul spill the words gently, "I think we all feel that way. Guilty, I mean, whether we deserve it or not. We all hurt, and we all feel guilty about it. But we shouldn't. Its all relative. You can have the perfect life and still hurt. It doesn't mean you don't, it doesn't mean it's any easier. It doesn't mean anything. If someone else has a worse life..." Sarah trailed off, staring at dark tree silhouettes in the far distance. She thought about her mother. My mother had hurt, hadn't she? And hadn't I invalidated her? Was my hurt so much worse than hers?

Suzie's quiet, monotone voice zoned Sarah back in, "We all hurt the same. We're humans, I guess."

"I guess."

"Sarah?"

"Yeah?"

"You're not too horrible, and neither is your pet."

"My pet? Oh. You mean Jeremy."

She nodded smugly, "The fact that you just knew-"

"Well everyone seems to joke about it," Sarah tempted a laugh. "What changed your mind?" She asked, "I insulted you basically as soon as we met."

"It was a pretty lame insult. You shouldn't be so tough on yourself."

"What'd you mean?" An unfamiliar, small vehicle pulled into the drive, its headlights blinding the two for a moment and its wheels crunching audibly on the gravel.