Final Draft

Clack, clack, clack. Heads turn, a path forms and disappears once she’s passed. Make way for the captain of the cheer leading team, the most popular girl in school. A toss of her long blond hair, a flashy white smile here and there, and an ever-present smirk on her face because she knows everyone wants to be her. She rounds the corner and her puppy dog teammates follow on her heels. Around another corner and the puddle of pink and priss penetrates the circle of jocks in their letter jackets. She looks around expectantly, and furrows her brow in frustration at not finding what she’s looking for. Her boyfriend, the quarterback, the guy everyone in school looks up to, wants to be or date, the ultimate cool guy. “Where’s Jason?” Nobody says anything, dead silence as everyone looks around trying to find him first, and so reap the reward of that brilliant smile being directed at one of them. But Jason was nowhere to be found that day, or that week, or that month. No one knew what had happened to him, where he was, or if he was even still alive. No one answered the phone when it rang through the seemingly deserted house. A piercing reminder that all was lost, a new star had to be found, and an aching heart had to replace a missing lover.

I am alone. There is no one here with me, the house is empty save a mattress and a cell phone and a small fridge. Everything is gone, sold for money to feed my need. Now there is nothing left, no money, no electricity, no heat, no clothes but what is already on my back, and no drugs. I shake in a cold sweat every night, alone, wild eyed and crazy. No one knows I'm here, no one knows that I'm alive, no on knows my secret, and so I hide. I was supposed to be the cool guy, the one that everyone looked up to, the big superstar, role model for the incoming freshmen of this college. but now I am reduced to nothing, I am worthless, and always have been. The only way I could be "cool" was to feed my cravings so that I wouldn't become what I am now, this huddled mass, this shell of a person. I came to this school on a football scholarship, which is by now void. I don't know when I started to run out of money, all I know is that one day it was gone, the bank revoked my credit card, and there was nothing in my account. That's when I started selling my belongings. Piece by piece until it was as though I had never been there, it looked the same as when I had first moved in at the beginning of my senior year. The phone by the mattress stopped working a few weeks ago, I guess my phone plan ran out. It used to ring non-stop in the beginning, constantly flashing "Belinda" or "Mom" or sometimes even "Dad", and once or twice "Rick" or "Carl", from the team. But I think everyone eventually gave up on me, and found a replacement, probably Rick, he used to be my best bud, he was a junior and Coach always said that when I graduated, Rick would become the quarterback for his senior year. I guess his dream came true early, although I wouldn't really know, I haven't left the apartment in almost three months, except to go out maybe once every two weeks to scrounge up some food somewhere. It's painful. Very painful. Loneliness is a very dark and curious state of being. And I say it is a state of being because I do not feel alone, I am alone and so therefore I am living in loneliness, unable to contact anyone other than myself. I am certain I have gone insane since there is no one to talk to, and so I am always talking to my self mumbling, arguing, yelling, comforting, and just plain rambling on and on about nothing in particular. I don’t know what makes someone special, or what makes life worth living for, but I do know that my life has been a lie for so long. Everyone telling me how wonderful and gifted and talented I am, and how much respect they have for me. Respect! HA! I laugh at that, if they could only see me now, a bug under the lens of society, scrutinized and fried under the beam of hot light. Only there is no one here to look upon me and judge, I have successfully dropped off the face of the earth without actually going anywhere.

This is not ok, very not ok. How dare he not pick up his phone, I’ve called him about 15 times now, and still no answer. And no word from anyone, no one knows where he is. I’m worried. It’s not like him to not show up for school, and not tell anyone about it. Especially when it is right smack in the middle of football season. I should stop worrying; it’s bad for my complexion and mental health. Breathe in, and breathe out, and breathe in and breathe out. Much better. Now there has to be a logical explanation for all this, let’s see. Jason has been acting weird lately but I assumed he was just anxious to play our rival in the semi-finals next week. And he has been wearing the same outfit everyday this week, not like him at all; maybe I should have talked to him about it. But now it’s too late, how could someone like me not have a boyfriend? I mean I am the most popular girl in school, head cheerleader and gorgeous. But yet I am alone, and when I’m alone, I feel empty because Jason is missing, and no one else can take his place. I love him, and I wish I could have told him that before he left. Everyone thinks I’m superficial and don’t care about anyone but myself. But that’s not true, I mean it is, but it isn’t, I care deeply for Jason, for who he is as a person, not just because he the quaterback on the football team. He and I have a lot in common, but a lot of differences so we never get bored of each other. Without him I am incomplete and unchallenged. Rick asked me out the other day, as I suspected he would, since I’m supposed to be so “shallow”. But I barely even heard him as I continued walking like a zombie down the hall, I heard myself saying “yeah, sure, whatever”, and then the vague sounds of high-fiving and slapping of asses and whatever else it is that guys do when they “bag”. I hate that, “bagging”, what the hell am I? Groceries? A product? I think that’s what they see me as, a product of society, tagged and categorized in my aisle, by the society I grew up in and the social group I am a part of. Aisle 21, rich, pretty, popular, dumb, blonde, cheerleader, “help yourselves, there are some more of those ones being shipped in tomorrow”.

I remember when I first met Belinda. I thought she was one of those wannabe mean girls that you always hear about. The one that thought that since she was popular and you were popular, that it automatically meant you were dating. But when I agreed to go out on a date with her, just because I thought there could be a chance she wasn’t what she seemed, I found that there was a lot more to her then I’m sure she’d ever let anyone else see. She was kind, and funny, and surprisingly shy, although she could be very vain at times. I remember being completely blown away that this knock out of a girl had such a personality. She liked the same types of movies as I did, had the same kind of romantic fantasy as I did; a long walk on the beach as the sun is rising, holding hands as the cool deep blue water laps at our feet, our footprint leaving their mark in the damp sand only to be swallowed up by the tide, as though we were never there. She truly surprised me with her ability to hold an intellectual conversation without having to talk about paint nolish. After 4 months of going steady, I could tell that she was the one, and that I was falling in love with a girl I had originally judged to be the complete opposite of the closet I’d ever come to perfection.

I remember thinking that Jason would never ask me out. I was after him all of freshman year, before he become the “official” quarterback, and during my “just another cheerleader” stage. Until finally one day, I guess my persistence paid off, and he asked me if he took me on a movie date, would I please leave him alone? I replied, “Trust me, once you get to know me, you’re never gonna leave my side”. I winked and spun around and my girls and I went to go pick out the perfect outfit for tomorrow night. And as it turned out, that’s exactly what happened, we become inseparable. Always together, but never quite that typical couple who you wanted to kill for being so “cute”, you know the couples who dress alike or stick their hands in each others back pockets, ick. Anyways, I knew we were going to be together forever, even after college. And the weekend before he left, Jason had surprised me. In the long abandoned cafeteria, at around 3am on a Sunday night in May, he had set up a table for two, with a red table cloth, almost touching the floor, two candles, slowly burning in the center of the table, a rose laid delicately across my plate. He held my chair for me and pushed it under me as I sat down. As I picked up the rose, something slid down to my fingers, and when I saw what it was, my heart stopped beating. He took my hand and said “Baby, I love you, there is no one else in the world I want to spend the rest of my life with, except you. Belinda” he looked straight into my eyes, with his wonderfully mesmerizing soft green eyes “Will you marry me?” and I hate to say it but I fainted. When I came to, 2 minutes later, I started crying and he said “are you ok”? I said, yes, yes I will. And I couldn’t have been happier, ever. And now he’s gone. But where? And why? He gave me no notice, not warnings, he just up and left. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand, even if he came back and explained to me in detail the reasons for he behavior.

What makes someone special is a person’s ability to overcome his or her own internal battles despite the impossibility of a hopeful situation. Seeing these people grow and change and flow into a new person is what makes life worth living because it is then you know that you are never truly, all alone. Sometimes the truth hurts, and you can never redeem yourself because of the extent of the damage your behavior caused. But, you will always have your memories, of love and of pain, and dreams of a better tomorrow, and a hope that maybe one day, life will build itself back up again, and maybe, just maybe, paths will cross again.