Little time and little things are needed

All characters and plot are based on real people and personal experiences.

I watched Alan chuckle coyly at some of Joe’s jokes, Isabella discretely change the radio to her favorite rock channel, and Mark distractedly shove some chips into his mouth while looking to the sky, which I had no doubt was the bluest I had ever seen. The picture made me smile at myself, this was definitely a happy ending, well, maybe I should rather say a happy beginning, because thanks to them my story hasn’t but started. 

“What are you smiling for?” Sarah surprised me asking, as she took a seat beside me. Seeing it was her my startled expression returned to a smile and my gaze returned to the scene before me. “I was just thinking how much this place has changed these past months,” I replied.

She pulled a confused face, “It hasn’t changed at all”. I chuckled mildly but said nothing, for I knew she knew what I meant well enough, which she proved some seconds after. “Maybe it’s you that has changed”.

I widened my smile because she had taken the conversation just through the way I had expected, “Maybe”, I said with teasing intention, succeeding in my task. 

“You have become weaker,” she scoffed. 

“Maybe,” I repeated. She uses to tell me that, but I never deny it because it’s probably true, I wouldn’t change anything of the way I’ve changed though. 

“I liked you better before,” she insisted.

“I know,” I answered. She uses to tell me that too, but I never take her seriously. She just hates changes, and seeing me improve she feels lagging, she’s stuck in place and wants to drag me with her, I want the opposite thing though, I’ll drag her with me now that I can. And if this is a battle of willpower and not strength, I have faith in my success. Although I don’t have a plan yet of how to do it, because I have no clue why I changed myself. 

“I don’t know why I changed though,” I said, expressing my concern out loud. 

“I do”. Her answer surprised me to the point I turned to look at her with wide eyes. 

“You do?”.

“Yeah, maybe it seems clearer from the outside,” she replied, leaning back on the wall further.

“Maybe it does,” I thought, eager to check if it was true that she had found the answer to the question that had bothered me many nights. “Why is it then?”.

“You should find that out on your own,” she answered. She kept a cool expression but known to me was that she was smirking on the inside, wanting me to beg for her to tell me. But proud isn’t especially one of my qualities so I was willing to do it. “Oh come ooon,” I complained, taking surprisingly shorter than I had expected to make her talk. 

“It’s all because of that damn book you read,” she said.  

I let my eyes get lost as I remembered the book, I perfectly knew which she was talking about, yellow and blue cover, ‘the happiness project’ it was called.

I remember the day I took it, it was a mild day of spring and its title caught my attention, it was just what I was needed at the exact moment I needed it, which made me realize just how wise chance can be. 

I always carried it around school and took notes in my notebook, as I always do when I read a book, and already then Sarah complained about it. 

“Why do you keep reading that book?”, she would ask.

“Because I like it,” I would answer, “You should read it too, it’d help you be happier”.

“Why’s everyone’s goal to be happy? like, maybe I just don’t want to be,” she would say, reminding me of my past self. 

“You say that because you aren’t,” I would reply every time the conversation went that way, but my tone was never of reproach, rather light, for I understood her well enough as those same thoughts had once crossed my mind. 

“What are ya talkin’ about?”, Isabella’s lively voice took me back from my thoughts. Apparently, she had finished messing up with the rest of our friends, and we were the next on her list. 

“How that book of happiness and stuff killed the cool Jane,” Sarah answered, not skipping a side glare towards me. 

“Aw no way! If she is happier now let her be, I think it’s a good thing!” Isabella said with her bright simile, sitting between us and placing an arm around my shoulders. 

“Thanks,” I said gratefully, raising my eyebrows to Sarah, who just scoffed. 

“Although… what did you say of a book?”

“Yeah that book I read a while ago, she says it’s what made me change” I answered. 

Isabella looked to the sky in thought for a moment. “I see, I had always thought it had been before that, ya know because you started writing”.

“Huh?” I tilted my head, confused.

“Yeah, ya know, my life changed completely when I fell for skating, and as you always talk so excitedly about your writing I thought that the reason for this new you was that you had finally found your something,” she said with another beam. 

I had always created stories, I had always let my imagination wander through wherever it wished, so, naturally, at some point, that was not many months ago, I got into writing, fully and completely. 

The stories I had lately read inspired me to start, I wanted a piece of those readers too, I wanted to make people squeal as I had been made, I wanted to let all the stories on my mind be turned into very words that anyone could read. 

So, blissful day that one was, I took my computer and started typing. I feel like I never really stopped typing since that moment, faster, more skillfully, and just different, but I feel like I’m still writing the same story as back then. 

That definitely made me change, I had thought about it before already, and I have no doubt. Besides, although it seems uncharacteristic to that old, rotted me, I always wrote happy stories, with soppy beginnings, and even soppier endings, but always telling myself that “those feelings my characters have are not for me, I don’t want them and don’t need them, I’m better than that old-fashioned love, I would never fall that low”. Words of a fool, really. I can but laugh at the thought of that ingenuous wizened kid watching herself now, I guess at some point I couldn’t help wanting to have what all those characters had, they just seemed so happy!

“Well, I guess that’s a good hypothesis too,” Sarah said, putting a hand on her chin as if in thought. To be honest, I was surprised, to make Sarah recant her opinion you needed a really good point. 

“Although…” she continued, proceeding to turn to a wise man among us, as we would always do in times of doubt, “Mark!”. 

“Yes?” he said, not leaving his seat for he would wait to see first if our conversation was worth attending or not. 

“You have noticed how this girl here has changed right?” Sarah asked signing to me with the head. “Any ideas why?”.

A smug smirk appeared on his round face, standing up for the subject had caught his attention, “Of course,” he started, walking to us, “It’s natural that you ask for my help, and you do well because I do not doubt the reason,” he said with his usual wisenheimer tone, which made us roll our eyes. Although I was sure we all shared that curiosity his words had arisen. 

“The reason is Alan,” he finally replied proudly. 

“Alan?”. Isabella was the only one to say it out loud but Sarah and I were just as confused. 

“Let me explain myself,” he said, taking a seat before us, “It’s because you helped Alan. Seeing someone suffer makes you realize how good your life actually is, it makes you want to help them instead of complaining about trifles. That’s what happened to you”.

We all looked down, he hasn't been in our class for long, and before that, his was a sad story. Only Joe and I know the details, and it makes my heart ache every time I think about it. Maybe Mark was right. 

It was one fall day a lunch break when we met, I mean, we go to the same school so I had seen him before, but I believe we had never talked. 

I was chatting with my friends when I spotted him, he was curled up in a shadowed corner, obviously crying, so I didn’t think it twice before standing up and walking to him, ignorings my friends’ confusion. 

“Hey, are you okay?” I approached him the only way I knew. 

He lifted his face from his knees startled, blinking a few times before being able to answer, “Y-Yes”. 

His lie was obvious so I wasn’t willing to leave him like that, I’m not one for meddling in other people’s business but I opted to make an exception because I knew I could be of help, I just hoped my eyes didn’t show pity in that very moment.

“Are you sure?” I insisted as softly as I could. This time he didn’t answer but looked away, sniffing and wiping his face with his sleeve. 

I got down and sat next to him, “My name is Jane”.

He gave me an awkward side glance before answering. “I-I’m Alan”. 

I gave the best of me to show a kind smile, although inside my guts were churning. I knew I didn’t know him, but I hated seeing him like that, which was a feeling with the potential of making me change. “Nice to meet you”, I said, before we returned to a silence that, although I didn’t find uncomfortable, I believe he did. 

“Hard day?” I decided to say, trying to sound light. 

He wavered for a moment but he then started speaking weakly, “All my friends are mad at me, they just snapped at me and yelled stuff, it started some days ago and I don’t even know why,” he said painfully. 

The fact that he had just told me that much, even if I was practically a stranger, made me know just how much he needed to talk to someone. 

“I’m sorry man,” I replied, putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder and encouraging him to continue. 

“They were my best friends but now they treat me as if I’m some piece of trash,” he said, a lonely tear managing to escape, which I barely got to notice as he wiped it quickly. 

“Bastards,” I said. I didn’t know them but anyone that makes someone cry and suffer and leaves them like that can only be a huge bastard. I thought for a moment about thoughts that had crossed my mind nothing but some months ago, and I felt like the huggest bastard of them all.

Alan gave me another hesitant look, in those blue eyes of him I could see for a moment how much his whole body wanted to call them that too, but, with a lowering of his head, he refrained. 

“No I- it must be my fault,” he said instead.

Back then I was surprised by his response. “Why do you say that?”.

“This always happens to me, something must be wrong with me”.

A blinked twice, out of shock. “Is he serious?” I thought, but I could tell he was, so I let my trembling heart reply for me. “Don’t say that! In no way can suffering be the one that suffers’ fault, don’t ever blame yourself for other’s meanness towards you”. And think those were words of the same person that had talked about having no mercy or pity just last winter.

He was taken aback but I could see how his body relaxed after a while. “You think so?”.

“Of course,” I assured. I really meant it, probably more than anything I could tell him. 

The confidence I had in my statement seemed to work on him, for his face lit up with a sole sunray that seeped through the clouds.

“Hey, my friends are back there, you can come with us if you want,” I offered, getting up and brushing off the dust from my pants. 

“No I-” he tried to refuse, but I cut him off with a smile. “Come on, they are nice”.

And just that was enough to save him, at least that day; it was enough to get him to sleep that night. 

As he continued tagging along with us, I soon learned a lot more about him, but none of his stories were happy. He was a gay boy in a Christian homophobic house with a tendency to get into toxic relations. He had lost many friends, and never in a fine way, and the troubles at school could only be forgotten at home for being replaced by other ones.

And, if that wasn’t enough, he’s abused at home too. I won’t forget the way he told me.  

“M-My mother, she hits me for anything, and I-I cry, because it hurts, so she hits me for crying because she doesn’t want the neighbors to hear,” he had said.

I can tell you I’m the best-tempered person I know, but in that very moment, hearing those words, something clicked deep inside my guts and the flame of an indescribable anger started burning inside me. One that kept the tears welling from my eyes all night, one that cursed me for not being able to do anything about this miserable world, one that had the power to make a person change. 

And think that was the same person that had thought about murder just a season ago. 

“Yeah, maybe your right,” I told mark, lowering my gaze at the memory. 

“Did you doubt it?”.

Sarah didn’t bother to roll her eyes at the reply, she was too busy looking guiltily at her lap. “So it’s because you helped Alan?”.

“What are you talking about Alan?” At that moment Joe’s voice from behind startled us, well, everyone except Mark. He pushed some of us aside making us groan to make a seat for himself and Alan, who was following him awkwardly.

“I explained to them how helping Alan helped Jane change,” Mark answered. Making Alan somewhat surprised and Joe brig a hand to his chin. 

“I see,” he replied, “She did change didn’t she? She was quite more gloomy and sad before…”. After saying that a bright and childish smile made its way to his face, and he put an arm around Alan next to him. “Like Alan before he met us!”.

As always, he talked without thinking, but his words gave us all the same thought, which was Sarah the one to express out loud. “Come to think of it, you kinda changed when you changed class and became friends with all of us too”.

Sometimes simple answers are good answers, and sometimes simple things are big things, Joe always makes sure of reminding us of it.

I smiled, out of genuine happiness, “You’re right”.

People have the power to make us change, we just have to make sure to be with people that use it to make us better, and use it to make others better ourselves.