A writer chooses his path without will.
He is nudged by teenage fervor, sometimes by disguise, rarely by true, self honesty.

S. was biologically wired to compose words onto paper. He would write lines like these without purpose. He rarely read; he found it boring to read about characters he would never meet. Why bother meeting false personalities? And yet, his fingers moved across his notebook like they were dancing a tango, eloquent and smooth, with a threat of danger.

S. remembered that he was to meet C. at the library in an hour. He thought of her almond-shaped eyes, the way they flickered like flint when she got excited. She wanted to find a book on how to care for orchids. C. was convinced that the orchid she gave her mother would die without her care. S. thought C. gave the orchid to her mother simply so she could care for it.

At first S. despised the way that C. would look at him sometimes, with large, pitying eyes. When C.’s mother was put in jail, everyone knew about it. That’s the way Witherbee was. No one talked about so-and-so’s father who was ill and perhaps would like conversation, and pies were never found on the front porch on someone’s first day in the neighborhood, but news of someone being put in jail – that was morning delight.

S. had first noticed C. in art class last year. He was a sophomore, and she a junior at Witherbee High. S. found himself slightly amused by the haphazard way C. painted. She plopped her over-sized paintbrush into a jar of Golden Sunset, and dragged it across the canvas as if it were a brick. For such a beautiful girl, C. had little grace, and lacked the gift of observation. She had no idea that S. existed until the hallways filled with “Psst! Did you hear about S.’s mom?,” Psst! S.’s mom is in jail, you know! I heard she went crazy!”

C. saw S. in the cafeteria a week or so after the rumors blasted throughout the school. She had been meaning to say something to him, Sorry would have been trite, but something else that would make him feel better. She didn’t know what to say, so she just watched him for a while. He rarely spoke. He looked at the ground most of the time. C. didn’t even know what S. looked like

“Hey. Mind if I sit here?”

S. didn’t respond, so C. sat down across from him. S. stared at his plate of macaroni and cheese.

C. straightened her hair, popped open her can of Diet Coke, took a gulp, and watched S. for the entire lunch period.

At the end of the day, C. saw S. under a large oak tree near the students’ parking area. He was writing in a notebook.

“Hi, again.”

“Hey.”

C. took this as an invitation to sit down. “Whatcha writin’?”

“You think I’m a freak?”

C., surprised with his blunt question, stammered. “I, uh, no…”

“Cool.”

C. couldn’t hold herself together. “I think it’s horrible what everyone’s saying. I think it’s so mean of them, and I just wanted to say hi, introduce myself, maybe talk with you a little, I mean, if you don’t mind, or maybe you want to be alone, and continue writing or do whatever you’re doing, or maybe…”

S. couldn’t help it, so he let out a quick laugh. “Wow, you gotta lot to say.”

But C. was on a roll, and couldn’t hold in the wave that was bellowing in her stomach. “Don’t you want to do something evil, you know, when they’re all whispering about you, when they’re saying things about your mother? Don’t you want to yell at them to ‘Shut up’ or I don’t know, tell them to ‘Fuck off’?”

She breathed. “I don’t know, you’re just so…” she searched for the right word, “…compassionate about the whole thing. Like a silent monk or something. You a monk?”

S. smiled. “No, but thanks.”

That night, C. called S. She sniffled into the phone. “I don’t know how you can take it. I can’t even take it. My parents…” and she started to cry.

S. realized that he was starting to love her.

S. had ragged hair and a family to match. His ambivalence to rules and proper behavior naturally charmed C. who was attracted to mayhem and disruption. She liked to fix messes, relished the lip-licking satisfaction in resolving someone else’s issues. The beautiful thing about it was that it was full of possibilities, and C. could be certain that she would have infinite satisfaction. Despite her inability to find it in daily life.

The first thing C. noticed about S. were his hands. They were smooth as ivory, as if an art student had made them for a thesis project, perfect like the limbs of David. How effortlessly his hands folded into each other, as if protecting a treasure in its palms. How could such delicate hands live such a disastrous life?

“Hey.”

No answer.

“Whatcha doin’?”

S. tilted his head, left eye closed to block out the sun.  He made out a sphere, with long, black hair cradling its edges.

“Writing.”

“’Bout what?” C. peered over his shoulder, trying to glimpse shadows of an unwelcoming mind.

S. shrugged his shoulders, closed his notebook, and stood up to face C.

“You’re always writing. When you gonna tell me what you write about?” C. asked.

“I dunno. It depends on if it becomes something. If I feel like it.”

“If it becomes something? It already is something. It can’t be becoming something if it’s already something else.”

C. and S. started walking among the orange and scarlet trees, their silhouettes eventually blending into the indigo horizon.

Conversations like these frequented C. and S., flowing in and out of their lives like ships with huge white sails. C. implored, questioning every movement of S., and S. would shrug them off, never showing annoyance or frustration, never creating any storms.

As the friendship strengthened, this characteristic of S. is what triggered C.’s acknowledgement of her friend’s unhappiness. She saw him as a sponge, someone who observed, who soaked in details of life and the people in it, but never being able to participate in what he saw. Like he were a ghost.

It made C. sad, which in turn, made her heart swell with desire.