Hendrix
Sitting on a stool in the garage, I mess around on the guitar. Just a few rolling chords to help soothe the edginess and anger rumbling deep inside. I hurt Elle tonight, and while I regret it, I also don’t. Seeing her with Andrew cuts me deep. Each and every time. She doesn’t see it, but I do. I see how that’s the man her parents want her with, and it kills me because I want to be her man, not just in private, but in public.
“Hey,” Marcus enters the garage, picks up a battered acoustic Axle bought at the Music-Go-Round for him and takes the stool next to me. “How are you?”
I shrug while my fingers continue to move over the strings. No need to talk about Elle or Holiday. Our house is so small that we hear when the mice take a dump.
“Yeah,” he says. “I feel like that on most days, too.”
Marcus listens for a few minutes, watches my choices on the strings, listens to the broken melody and slowly begins to join in, playing the same chords, but on a higher scale. The melody we play is sweet and sad, it’s broken and raw. It describes me. It describes Marcus. I wonder how many more people in the world could relate.
“You didn’t apply to the youth performing arts school, did you?” I ask.
“What do you think?”
I think he should have. “You’re talented enough.”
“Maybe.”
I place my hand over the strings to stop the music. “Why didn’t you?”
It’s his turn to shrug. My stomach drops because I see it—fear—and I hate that it’s taken up residence in a guy who I consider one of my best friends. In a guy I’d bet who has never feared another human being in his life.
Marcus strums a few more strings, then stops, but the last note continues to vibrate. “I don’t know.” A pause. “Did you ever feel like life before was easier?”
I nod because I know what he’s talking about. Before being arrested, before going through the program, before looking too deep into myself to see all the hurt and anger that had been controlling my decisions without my knowledge. Back when I didn’t care that the path I was going down was leading to an implosion.
“Every day I wake up, whether it’s here or at home, and I wonder if I have the strength to not mess up, to keep going. Each morning, I know it would be easier to go for the high again. It would be easier to not care, but I do care, and I don’t miss the high, but I’m also scared of failing.
“Each night I don’t return to the life I had before, I thank God for it. It may not seem like much to some people, but just getting through a day feels like I’ve survived the bloodiest battle of a war, and I’m proud. I didn’t have it in me to try for the youth performing arts program and fail. Not when it’s so tough to just survive the day.”
I watch Marcus and can’t help but wonder if he’s a mind reader because he just said all my fears aloud, but the difference between us is I’m more scared of my life remaining in this daily battle to survive.
Marcus is stronger than this. I know he is. During the three months in the forest, we would hike for most of the day, sometimes it felt like in circles, and then we’d set up camp. Every few days, though, we’d come across some obstacle course, and we’d be expected to run it through.
One of the courses was to climb up a sheer cliff and then rappel back down. I was tired, I was weary, and my mind had settled into a dark place. I didn’t see the point anymore. Not in walking, not in setting up camp, not in completing another obstacle, and all I wanted to do was give up. On the program, on my family, on myself.
But Marcus, he didn’t give up. He never gave up.
He had already climbed the cliff, he had already rappelled back down, and so had everyone else. I sat on the ground, my equipment beside me, and I wasn’t going to do it. Throughout the day, counselor after counselor came and sat by my side. They tried talking to me, joking with me, and demanding of me. They even sent for my therapist, and I stonewalled him by my silence, too. I was done, and it just wasn’t with the program, I was done with myself.
I reached a point that I didn’t care if I lived or if I died because living hurt too damn much. It hit me that morning exactly what they were trying to teach us. That the cliff? The walking? The setting up, then tearing down and then doing it all over again? That’s what life was. Life was up and then back down. Life was hard, life was tough, and life meant there would be hurt, and it was up to me to keep going. Life was for the strong, and I wasn’t strong enough to survive.
“You want to eat?” my therapist said. “You’ve got to try.”
“What are you going to do,” I bit back. “Starve me?”
I saw the answer there on his face. They wouldn’t. They couldn’t. It was an idle threat, and if I wanted I could have stood up, headed back to camp and stared all those all-knowing adults in the eye and eaten every piece of food in the camp, and they wouldn’t stop me because they couldn’t. The state would never risk a story of starving a teen.
“That food will taste better if it’s what you’ve earned,” he said.
I shrugged. “Food is food.”
The disappointment that covered his face kicked me in the nuts, but I still didn’t move. He left, I sat, and the sun began to dip in the western sky. Everyone, even the adults, left the cliff. Left me alone, and from the distance, I could hear the laughter and chatter of the other teens as they set up camp. I could smell the smoke from the fire, and my famished stomach cramped with the delicious scent of meat being cooked in the pit.
Alone didn’t feel good. Alone was awful. But alone felt safer. So did any wall that was slowly being built up around me.
A stick snapped, and I shot a look over my shoulder. I unloaded an f-bomb at the sight of Marcus. He dropped down beside me, and I expected him to give me one of his two thousand lectures he’d given to drag me through detention, but he didn’t talk. He just sat, and the two of us watched that cliff like it might come alive and eat us both.
The bell for dinner rang, more excited conversation and laughter drifted on the breeze from behind us, but Marcus didn’t move. Just stared at the cliff.
“You should go eat,” I said. “The younger ones don’t think to keep enough for anyone else.”
“You don’t eat, I don’t eat.”
His declaration caused me to swear. “I don’t have it in me.”
“The cliff?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Everything. I’m going to get out, I’m going to go home, and I’m going to screw it all up all over again because that’s who I am.”
Marcus released a breath and stood, my gear to climb in his hands. “Get it on.”
I opened my mouth to argue, and he shut me down with a glare and a harsh tone that even I knew not to mess with. “Get it on.”
I stood and I did, still having no intention of climbing, but it shocked the hell out of me as he also suited up. “You’ve already done it.”
“Yeah.” A look straight into my eyes. “I did, so follow me, and I’ll show you the easiest way up the cliff. Because, sometimes, that’s what we need. Someone to show us how to get there.”
I blink several times as emotion still tears me up when I think of that moment. My throat’s constricted and it burns and I breathe out to try to contain myself. The guitar is heavy in my hands and on my lap. I climbed that cliff, and when I reached the top I’m not ashamed to admit I wept. Something broke in me, and that’s what I needed. The pieces had to be shattered, so I could repiece myself back together.
Marcus saved my life that day. He saved me, and it’s time for me to repay the favor. I’m going to get into this program, and I’m going to get him in, too. He dragged me through my fears before, and this time I’ll be the strong one.
“You know I’m not going to give up on this,” I say. “You’re only a junior so there’s no reason for you to not apply next year.”
“I had a feeling you’d say that.” He begins to play again, and this time, I’m the one who follows his melody. “Dominic and I are talking about taking Kellen and Holiday to the lake soon to get Holiday away from here while you and Axle are working out-of-town jobs. He thinks it would be better if I ask Holiday as she won’t see me as trying to put a wedge between her and Jeremy.”
“Are you?”
He chuckles. “Yes.”
“Thanks for having my back with her.” And with me.
“Anytime.”
Marcus and I, this is how it’s going to be—a friendship where neither dominates or controls. A friendship where we’re both going to have bad days and the other will carry the one down on his luck until he’s strong enough to stand again.