Too Close To Home

I was walking towards the low-roofed adult home, it was just to my left. The wind brushed past my face with a nonchalant whisk, as if questioning my presence in such a rough neighborhood. It was cold, but not bad enough to prevent a midnight excursion. The hour long walk had put my hands to sleep, but my curiosity was awake as ever. Like a high school reunion - terrifying but necessary - there was something about my childhood block that called for an overdue rendezvous. 

I glanced at the grass on the sidewalk's edge where my brother and I used to count the cigarettes all those years ago. There were always more than we could count, which wasn't at all surprising in such a distressing environment as the hostel for the mentally challenged. A little further, look both ways, and there I am (or was). The past can be abrupt that way.

The duplicate homes lined up in a row. Not a single alteration to any of the exteriors. It was yesterday all over again, last night's moon a flicker of the white one above my currently contemplative head. What was I even doing here? I turned back to look at the home. It was too late now for anyone to be out on the sidewalk taking a smoke. The unfortunate souls inhabiting the place were always talking to themselves during the daytime, chatting up old acquaintances in their heads. Still, stupefyingly, content was creased on their faces. The poorest on this street, yet bereft of neediness, the endless hunt for wellbeing that harassed their coherent counterparts. How unfortunate could they be with stray thoughts like cats slinking around their heads and only nonsensical mice to catch. Funny how we used to think they were handicapped, when thoughts ran just as erratically rampant in the minds of all the other households on the block. At what point was the limit crossed, the point of no return for allowing thoughts to kill one's sanity? Perhaps some criminal history had landed them here. Or maybe neglect from overwhelmed relatives. It must have been the latter, I nodded to myself, and then I crossed the street.

Another landmark rose up and beckoned with some strange energy. It was there I needed to be tonight. An abandoned construction site for a building that 7 years later would become a cluster of apartments with marble countertops in the kitchens and sound-proofed walls running through each abode. At the moment the place was the drug dealers' lair my siblings and I always surmised it was. Scattered appearances of a grey van with tinted windows, though not infrequent enough to be missed when parked conspicuously across the street, was proof enough of said cannabis cabal. My skinny frame was quite capable of slipping through the crack in the fence. Not that I'd ever been inside the lot before, when the apartments were barely past the blueprinting stage, but the staircase's location was not a mystery to me. After all, its brown outline was clearly seen through my old house's front window where I used to sit on the old Chesterfield on boring days, staring mindlessly at the site. Two pushes at the side door, down a hall where apartments 3 and 4 would eventually stand, around and up the staircase (a lot more sturdy than the rickety thing I'd expected), and I was at a door. Behind it was what called me here, I was sure of it. Why else would I leave suburbia and my warm bed to catch a glimpse of a stale lifetime. Gingerly, my hand went up and tapped the door, which then moved soundlessly towards me. Before I could process that someone else must have pushed it forward, I was standing face to face with...her.

Nothing much changed in seven years. No reaction came to her face and none to mine. Could it be she didn't recognize herself? 

"Hi, are you cold? Come inside, I have hot cocoa," she laughed nervously. Like I said, nothing much changed, and personality wasn't an exception. Her awkwardness rankled me in a way I couldn't explain. 

"What's your name? How old are you?" were her next words. Typical. Always starting with the basics.

I moved inside and sat down on a cardboard floor with what looked like pencil shavings powdered over it. What to let on, I wasn't sure. Let the chips fall where they may, I thought, taking a sign from that floor.

"My name's not important. I'll be twenty in a month."

"Oh."

"Why are you here? Shouldn't you be..." I glanced towards her house but stopped myself. Why would I know where she lived. I didn't want her getting too nervous yet. 

"Where should I be?"

"Never mind. But you don't live here. Unless there's a pantry with cocoa downstairs." 

She swallowed and laughed me off again. 

"Oh no. I do live across the street. The eighth house to the right of the adult home. But I'm not crazy, really, don't call the police," she giggled affectedly. Social tone deafness was at an all-time high. Could this get any worse? Probably.

"You think they'll worry about you? Like if someone wakes up and sees you're not in your room."

She stared past me at the wall. "No, I actually left a little after 7 o'clock. Everyone was awake. Supper was over, and I asked to take a walk."

"Oh. Did they expect you back?"

"I don't know what they thought, but it was only to the boardwalk. That's the furthest I said I'd go."

If only the furthest was just inside the front door. But I couldn't let my disappointment show. 

"Here," she dumped a cocoa packet in my hand along with a hot cup. "Enjoy."

"Thanks." The heat started to wake up my tingling frostbite. More ice would have to be broken in this conversation, but it wouldn't be coming from her, that was for sure.

"So," I persisted, "Why did you leave anyway?"

Her forehead wrinkled a bit and the blood turned her ears a little redder. "I couldn't...I don't know. There were too many eyes on me."

"What color?" 

My question must have taken her by surprise. But I had to know. 

"Hazel."

"Oh. So it was just a pair then."

"A pair of what?"

Her spaciness was really starting to get to me.

"Eyes," I answered, trying to sound less irked than I felt.

"Right," she blushed further. 

"What else bothered you about the eyes. Bothers, I mean," We were still in the present, I chided myself.

"I need something from them. They should be looking at me. But when they do, I freeze like...like a," 

"Like a rabbit in a trap," I finished. 

"How. What. What do you know about me?" She anxiously backed away, tripping over a warped floorboard. Hot water sloshed on her hand from the cup, and she gasped for a second, then looked back to me.

I leaned against the wall. A motorcycle sputtered by.

"Listen to me," I began, trying to focus on her eyes which were scrambling to find some way out of looking into mine. 

"I don't know about you, at least now I don't. I thought I did, but now you're not as I thought. Well, not exactly. Please, let me start again." 

And then I was the one starting to get nervous. How could I let her know and at the same time keep time a secret? She really couldn't be tucked up as tidily as I'd explained her away before. Or maybe she could, and it was purely the power of the moment's past-ness rushing up on me. Old rabbits die hard. Relax, I told myself. So, her pain was a lot more intricate than you thought, but who cares? An identity based on thoughts is always a long shot, you know that. Just approach her as you would a stranger. All assumptions aside.  

"Okay. I want you to know something about what you need. More like what you think you need."

"Wait!" she interrupted then, her unsteady voice trying to sound assertive. "I have a question. If you don't know me anymore, why do you think you did? Maybe I just remind you of someone."

"What's important is not whether I know or knew you. It's what I want to tell you. It's who you are," I breathed.

She sat down cross-legged, too bewildered to fight or to understand. I couldn't blame her. 

But I could blame myself if the message wasn't planted after all that.

"What I do know is that you are looking for something. I can't put a word to it because it changes everyday. Do you know what it is you think you need? From those eyes, for example," 

I saw the outline of tears bulge under her eyelids. "Security, I guess," she sighed and looked at my comprehending face closely for the first time. I winced at her expression. There was something she needed from me, something she thought I could give her. A way out. But could I? No. I could never do it for her. I promised myself that, even without the knowledge I'd get to see her again. 

"Love, warmth, wholeness," she choked out. 

I nodded. The list was a lot longer, I knew, but I kept quiet. 

"You know where those are. You have them already."

"No, I really don't," came her stubborn reaction. Anger dripped down with the tears onto her pink hoodie. Why was I not surprised. 

"It's funny. I used to think the same. Then I realized I was looking in the wrong place."

"What's that supposed to mean? You don't know that. I need," she raised her thin fingers in a helpless motion. "I just need it from...someone else. I always think I will have it from, and I do have it from..." 

"Another," I quickly stopped her. I couldn't stand to hear the rest, just as she couldn't bear to say it. Finally, we had something in common. "But then it leaves, doesn't it always? So where does it go? It must still be somewhere," I continued. "You didn't lose anything, and you never will. Because it is you. Can you remember that?"

She stared at me, and for a frightening second I thought she recognized my face. The face of a trapped rabbit? Hardly. But a face she should trust. These thoughts flitted through me, but she just stood up and walked out, with neither a goodnight nor a thank you. I rushed towards the stairs to watch her depart from me for the second time. I had to know if there'd be a newly minted stride in the steps back to her front door. If she'd be alright. The first way she managed to leave me behind was over time, but on those stairs she left by leaving my space. I hoped she wouldn't regret it. I stopped at the landing. That's when I saw her fall. She was halfway down the stairs, but something must have tripped her. Her thick hair flew up as she tipped over the banister of the narrow frame and crumpled to the floor. A short cry came up, but then the side door was shoved open, and the cold came in to greet me. I moved over to the boarded-up window and bent down near an opening to see her for the last time. Too late. The door of her house met its frame, and a shadow passed over those cheap paper shades.

And I knew then that to her, a safe and maybe even happy ending was discernible, but only through the binoculars of a stretched-out hope: appearing nearby, but in reality, far from it. It would take many moons for her to realize the truth. Seven years' worth of moons until she discovered it. She really was too close to home.