Two Peas in a Pod

At fifteen, I held someone’s hand while they died. My grandpa passed away from cancer in a hospital bed, and when his spirit left his body, the goodness in me seemed to go with it. Afterward, I became as hostile as a yellow jacket, always hovering just above my friends’ and family’s skin. Over the next few years, relationships crumbled as I went from “the nicest person” someone ever met to “why don’t you just put a knife in me” kind of disappointing.

I’d been on a rotary of psychiatric medications, and yet I still counted calories and lacked the motivation to finish my algebra when just two years prior I’d made straight As and eaten extra-butter popcorn every day after school. Ironically, the SSRIs made me too sleepy to do homework and be happy and my stomach too sick to hold food. Nothing short of an exorcism would have cured me.

So, during my junior year, I stopped taking my Effexor at school because it made me too drowsy to move. And I spent my lunch period drawing instead of eating. I sat in the corner of the cafeteria at a table by myself. I was a grouch like Oscar from Sesame Street, hiding in my garbage can while the junior high kids (a plague at my consolidated high school) did laps around the room. A few formed somewhat of a fan club around me.

“Draw something,” a seventh grader said, clumsy as a preschooler, leaning on the lunch table to get a closer look at my paper.

“Wow, look at how she even added the button and zipper,” said another.

But just as quickly as they came, they dissipated into a herd, already forgetting why they’d stopped at my dim corner in the first place. And then I wished I could take my Effexor simply so I would get ill and have an excuse to go home.

“I like that,” came a clear voice next to me. I looked up to see a boy, no older than twelve, holding his lunch tray between his hands. His bright blue eyes, framed by strawberry blonde lashes, were fixed intently on my sketchbook. He wore a hoodie with the sleeves rolled to his elbows exposing thick, cream-colored arms. His jeans were tucked into clodhoppers, a fashion staple in this rural Ohio county.

“Thanks,” I said, a tight smile on my lips. I had become accustomed to the fanfare and by now, tired of it.

“I like to draw, too,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?”

He nodded. “Can I sit here?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I pulled some textbooks out of the way. Normally, I’d turn away any kid who wanted to stick around long enough to swindle me out of pencils, but he was unusually polite.

“I’m Damien,” he said, putting down his tray and shrugging out of his backpack.

“I’m Sarah.”

Instead of eating, he gazed across the table at my sketchbook with awe as if he was watching fireworks pop in a black sky.

“Wow, I don’t know anyone who can draw like that!”

“Heh, I’m not good, really.”

He looked at me incredulously. “What? Yeah ya are! That’s amazing!”

“Thanks.”

Finally, he peeled open his milk carton. “I don’t fit in with the other kids my age,” he explained. Wincing, he added, “They’re not that mature.”

I looked past him at the junior high kids, climbing over seats like a jungle gym, shouting and knocking trays together. Then my eyes flashed back to him taking a swig of his milk.

After he’d scarfed down his glob of turkey noodles, he began, “Hold on I—” and reached into his backpack. Pushing his tray aside with a squeal, he slapped a well-kept sketchbook in its place.

Opening it carefully, he revealed pages upon pages of colored pencil drawings, all of which were of animals: lizards, birds, deer, geese, et cetera. “I’ve had all kinds of pets,” he said as he flipped. “I love animals.”

I was taken aback, maybe as much as he was by me. He did like drawing. “Wow, I can’t draw animals.”

He gaped at me, pinching a page between his finger and thumb. “Whattaya mean? Of course you can, I know you can. You’re so good!”

I shook my head. “No. I really can’t. They're too hard.”

He let the page fall and smoothed it with his hand. “I bet you could.”

When he talked, he sounded like any other artist, describing his process, his inspiration, what he liked and didn’t like about each piece. And, like any other artist, he continued to compare himself to me.

“You’ll be better than me,” I told him.

He stared at me. “What?”

“One day, you’ll be better than me.”

Smirking, he said, “No way.”

“You will. I know it. I can tell.”

Somehow, the age gap seemed to grow wider. His round, freckled face glowed with wonder. With the fragile self-esteem of a young boy, he asked, “Do you really think so? I will be?”

“Yes.”

--

After that, Damien joined me for lunch every day.

“Here’s a buck I saw in my backyard.” To demonstrate the size of the antlers, he put his hands on either side of his head. “They were huge!” he exclaimed, his voice cracking.

Though I didn’t share his enthusiasm, hearing and seeing it made me feel a little more like myself again.

Other times, I resented him for being there. I would reply in curt sentences, forgo eye contact, and not offer even a hello or goodbye. We could spend the whole lunch in silence and still he remained as loyal as a puppy.

Despite the routine we’d established, I never spoke to anyone about Damien. At the end of every lunch period, I would jump from my seat and hurry to meet my boyfriend in the hall. And then, together, we would head off to Pre-Calculus. I never knew which way Damien went.

I wasn’t sure what to call the two of us. Could we be “friends” if I was seventeen and he was just twelve? “Brothers from another mother?” No, I’m a girl. “Buddies?” No, maybe if we’d played sports together or something. “Classmates?” Not even. “Two peas in a pod?” Maybe.

Considering how unconventional our “arrangement,” I thought if I told anyone they would surely label him a pest: “That’s weird, tell that kid to leave you alone.” And I felt so insecure in our peculiar friendship that I didn’t know if I could stick up for it.

Often, I wondered what kept him coming back. We didn’t draw the same things. I didn’t like mud boots or deer hunting. And our temperaments were opposite; him excited about life and me dragging my feet through every waking hour.

When he spoke, his eyes always glittered with joy and honesty. He started telling me personal things; for example, he had a little sister that he loved very much, and he was not (yet) ashamed to say so.

Maybe I didn’t talk about Damien to anyone, but he did tell his family about me.

“I was talking to my parents about you,” he said matter-of-factly once the holidays rolled around.

I flushed. “Oh?”

“I told them that you are really good at drawing.”

Of course I wondered what his parents’ perception of “us” might have been. Certainly, our friendship confounded his peers.

Once, a seventh-grade girl dropped by our table to ask, “Are you two dating?”

We were firm when we said, “No.”

Part of me wondered if that could be it; did he have a crush? Was that why he kept coming back?

Though I spent some days mired in bitterness, there were times when he got through to me.

After Christmas break, the two of us watched a husky, dark-haired boy Damien knew swagger between tables, his head bobbing to music coming through his headphones.

“He got those for Christmas. Now he wears them all the time.” Damien’s eyes widened as though in exasperation. “They’re a Turtle-something headset or headphones. They’re for Xbox,” he explained.

“Turtle? I haven’t heard of that.”

“He thinks those are so cool.” He spun his fork in his spaghetti then leaned in for a bite. “He looks like an idiot.”

I chuckled as I watched the boy jam, his own king of the lunchroom.

Damien smiled mischievously. Lowering his fork, he exclaimed, “Just look at him over there!” His eyes shot back and forth between me and the boy as though he were a news reporter witnessing something unbelievable. “Look at him!”

Hiccups of laughter came from behind my wrist.

“He’s…he’s…so dumb!” Damien cried, marinara sauce staining his chin.

I laughed harder. The dark-haired boy didn’t have a clue.

Then, Damien made a sound that emanated from the back of his throat. It barely escaped his lips. “Turtle,” he churred. “Turtle, turtle.”

Soon enough, we were wiping tears out of our eyes. “Turtle-turtle.”

--

He got through to me other times, too.

“Really? Are you sure?” I asked, though it felt more like a question posed to myself than him.

“Yeah, take it!” He held out a peanut butter and jelly bar from his lunch tray.

“I—"

“I’m serious!”

The sight of the oil-stained wrapper put a pulse in my shriveled stomach.

“Um—”

“I’m being serious!” he squeaked. “You can have it! Come on!” He wagged it at me. There was a bout of giggles already caught in his throat.

I took it like a bar of gold and wondered how he could possibly understand what was going on with me, inside of me.

Soon, I would learn things about him that I could not have guessed.

“When I was in the first grade, I would kick my leg like this.” He jerked his leg as though a zap of electricity had run through it. His silverware rattled on the tabletop. “It would hit the chair.”

I watched him in confusion.

“My teacher would keep telling me to stop. But I couldn’t control it!” he cried, laying his palms open on the table. “She was awful.”

This is where I started to slip off the wagon. Despite what an expressive storyteller he was, I couldn’t help but be skeptical. He must have been making trouble for the enjoyment of his friends. After all, I’m sure he would’ve agreed he was less mature those days. That or he’d contracted some sort of “dancing mania.”

“Why couldn’t you control it?” I asked.

“My medicine did it.”

“Medicine?” I asked.

He nodded. “I had leukemia.”

I felt like I’d skipped a chapter in a book. “And she knew that?”

“Yes!” His mouth hung open, amused by how absurd it had all been: his teacher’s ignorance and childhood cancer. “And she still got mad at me!”

--

Once the weather started to warm, the junior high kids would go outside and dawdle by the benches while the lunch monitors watched from the cafeteria windows. The air smelled sweet again.

For some reason, Damien became as distant as the winter months. Most days, he would twiddle his thumbs and wait for the lunch line to shorten so he could get his tray. Then, he would watch his classmates pile outside while he ate.

One day, he said, “I’m going to go out there,” and then paused as though for permission. “Okay?”

I felt a pang of something sinister inside of my chest. I thought you were mature. But I nodded and watched his back as he joined the crowd of pre-teens plugging up the double doors. I worried and waited.

Maybe the feeling in me wasn’t something cruel. But it was selfish. Not disapproval, but the peril of having an empty nest.

--

Eventually, I didn’t see Damien anymore. His going was just as mysterious to me as his coming. Though the former was harder to accept. Maybe his parents had encouraged him to make friends his age.

In late spring, wind tore infant blossoms off trees and tulips. I watched from the art room windows as a beautiful flower began a descent toward the ground, buoyant and still fresh. And then, that petal touched the cement where it started slowly to brown around the edges.

I told myself to stop being so distracted as I spent the final minutes of a free period coloring an Art III assignment. The room, usually rowdy with kids bumping into tables like pinballs, flapping papers, holding brushes under the blasting faucets in the back, was ghostly silent.

Just me and the teacher who busied herself around the room sorting paints, checking caps, putting away utensils. We had wordless conversation that I made up in my head: How’s it coming? Good, almost done, will turn it in tomorrow. Great, it looks FANTASTIC.

To my surprise, one of her Art I students walked in early. The bell hadn’t rung. I wondered if I’d missed it.

The boy took a seat in a corner on the other side of the room. He was taller, but had the same gentleness he’d always carried.

A secret got caught in my throat. I wanted to say it out loud to my teacher, not just part of the one-sided conversation I was having with her in my head—

He’s really good at drawing.

But I couldn’t say it because for some inexplicable reason, no one could find out that we had known each other.