buzzes.
Kurtis rips it out of his pocket like it’s on fire, eyes wide with joyous anticipation, but the dismay sinks in as he sees it’s only a message from Robin.
‘Hows the date?’ his friend had texted.
‘Its bullshit,’ Kurtis replies. ‘I got all excited and the stupid girl doesn’t show up.’
‘That sucks. Wanna grab a burger? Take ur mind off things?’
‘Sure. I’m already at little barrys. Meet me here?’
‘Y r u at little barrys?’
‘For my date that never happened. We were meeting here’
‘Uh…. U told me u were meeting her at the school’
Kurtis pauses as memories from three days earlier rush through him. The grind of the bus’s transmission whenever it encountered a hill. The yellow, baby poop color of the seats. The way the cute girl’s smile shined when she got excited about something. Her bright pink top and the white bra strap Kurtis could see poking out from it. The way she giggled and spoke the words, “sure, I guess I can meet at the school. Is 6:30 ok?”
‘FUCK!!!!’ Kurtis types into his phone.
‘Dude! YOU stood HER up!’
‘I know!!’
‘Y didn’t u text her, ask where she was?’
‘I thought u weren’t supposed to text the girl too much!’
‘lol’
‘What do I do?!’
‘Text her!’
‘What do I say?!!’
‘Tell her the truth. Ur an idiot’
Character
Kurtis is lying on his bed, cold beer in hand as he stares up at the spinning ceiling fan above. No worries. No fears, or apprehensions, or lingering thoughts in the back of his mind. He is absolute Zen.
The college degree collects dust on the wall above him. 5 years of work, for a piece of paper- one he never actually used. He majored in biology but somehow ended up as a programmer for a local startup. It turned out that the hobbies he distracted himself with paid off better than the actual classes.
The job is good, it allows him to swap out the domestic 6 packs for obscure foreign beers whose names he can’t pronounce. And the money rolling in encourages him to plan for some kind of a future- he isn’t sure which one yet.
Nick-nacks and odd memorabilia take up space on his shelf- the most valuable things in his life and they’re absolutely worthless. Photos from the roadtrip that he, Christian, and Charlie took to Guatemala. A receipt for a box of 5,000 lady bugs- the school prank that turned him into a god for a week. An old letter to Santa he made when he was 7. The journal Brian got published. A postcard from Amber when she was volunteering in Africa.
He misses his old life and his childhood companions, but he loves his college friends and his geeky work friends too. They don’t go to keggers so much anymore, but they do enjoy their modest Saturday nights, and the Sunday morning hangovers they nurse with greasy cheeseburgers and fruit from the farmer’s market.
His phone on the nightstand buzzes and he casually glances at it. It’s Amber, the message only says, ‘hi.’
Amber isn’t the kind of girl that you just go to bed and waste time with. She’s THE girl. The one to push and build Kurtis beyond what he ever thought he could achieve. The girl who adored all the odd quirks that Kurtis used to hate about himself. The girl who could make his heart melt with nothing but a smile, a peck on the cheek, a random text saying ‘hi.’ He grins happily as he texts her back.
And in that moment, when everything is just right, he thinks about all the shit he’s had to crawl through. The decade he spent drowning in low self-esteem. The agony-shaped whole in his chest that he knows will never grow back, not since he attended the funeral. The girls who never returned the affection he gave out, and the bullies who somehow took offense to his glasses and inherent awkwardness. He thinks of the years he spent busting and breaking his ass for minimum wage, the incorrigible bosses who treated him like he was nothing, and the deep seated fears that he would end up just like his old man- hating his job, never having a good story beyond his high school years, and being too afraid of the world to take a gamble on himself. And he thinks about all those times when life got hard, and he glared up at the heavens, and hated whoever was putting so many obstacles in his path.
But as Kurtis looks at his life, and all that he’s done for himself- not what he was given, but what he MADE for himself, he realizes that the universe was never punishing him. It was only making him stronger, forging him in the fires of contention and defeat. And he pities those who never learned the meaning of suffering. He knows they will never survive the depths of despair, nor soar to the heights of joy, that he has already experienced. And he knows, beyond any doubt, there is nothing he can’t do.
– BRIAN –
Journal Entry (#43)
Her eyes scream at me like truck brakes. They say the words that the skin and flesh of her face can’t anymore. I think she was burned. Her skin is warped, and everything from her forehead to her neck looks like melted plastic. Stretched. Twisted.
I look down to her hands, and they’re gone too. An insult to injury, my older brother would say. In their place are hooks. Not like pirate hooks though- they’re rectangular, with rounded corners. More practical. Less spectacular.
I think about it, and I hope she wound up this way through a good cause. I mean, I hope whatever sacrifice she made was worth it. Maybe something like out of the movies- saving her daughter from a chemical fire, or maybe pulling three people out of a burning building. I feel like it has to be three, no fewer. Otherwise it wouldn’t be worth this kind of punishment.
I want her to be ok with whatever ruined her life. I want her to be able to wake up in the morning, look at herself in the mirror, and not hate what she sees.
She looks my way and we make eye contact. She pauses. I’m frozen. She quickly turns away from me, and I know I’ve hurt her. I’m sorry for staring and she’s sorry for going out in public. She’s sorry for looking the way she does, and she’s sorry she survived whatever accident disfigured her. We’re both sorry and I’m so mad at myself for making her feel bad.
I am 13 years old, first learning the agony of empathy. And I finally understand what my brother means when he says “There but for the grace of God go I.”
Assignment #3 (Eng 461)
12:17 a.m. Staring at the ceiling, I’ve formed shapes out of the stain. I don’t know how long it’s been there.
12:29 a.m. Toss, turn, throw the blankets on the floor, and I know it’s going to be one of those nights.
12:42 a.m. Turn the TV on. It’s infomercials for a pill to make you lose weight. Turn the TV off, do push-ups, then go back to bed.
12:57 a.m. I see a Ferris wheel in the ceiling stain, then a monster truck, then a tumor. But I guess that’s cheating, and I want to laugh but am afraid of upsetting the boy.
1:09 a.m. Try not to think about it.
1:23 a.m. I go into the bathroom and, listening to the radio, I sit on the toilet. If I stay here, maybe something will happen. They say that waking up and taking a crap at night is the number eight killer of old people. I forget who told me that, or did I make it up?
1:43 a.m. No bowel movements. Feel guilty about not washing my hands anyway.
1:55 a.m. Try not to think about the picture.
2:06 a.m. Turn the TV on. He used to tell me that push-ups were for fags. I believed him, unaware that he did them in his room. I could never understand why he was always able to overpower me when the two of us wrestled.
2:45 a.m. No sleep yet.
3:05 a.m. Contemplate sleeping pills, but my dad would kill me if he knew. That just brings up emotions I don’t understand. Besides, I think I flushed them all down the toilet the same day I got the phone call.
3:42 a.m. Try not to think about the boy in the picture.
4:18 a.m. I see the email from mom, reminding me that tomorrow’s his birthday. She says to bring flowers.
4:59 a.m. Try not to think about it.
5:1
6 a.m. I can hear him scratching against the wood below my bed. His fingernails claw awkwardly against my floor- up my wall and down the shelves. I can hear his silence, it sounds like a-
5:29 a.m. I thought I had gotten rid of it. I thought I had trashed or destroyed it. Given it away maybe. I thought I had done everything in my power to keep him away from me, but he’s here. Seeing the photo, feeling the frame in my grasp, it brings back memories I thought I could bury. My brother wasn’t always a picture in a frame. He wasn’t always hidden under spider-webs in the space between my floor and my bed, he wasn’t always a thought to be avoided.
5:36 a.m. Cry.
5:39 a.m. Sleep.
Future Self (a play)
Foreward
When I was a child I imagined what I would be like in the future. My future self. And there were different versions. Big and strong, small and cunning, handsome and popular. There were so many people I could become. So many jobs I might do. So many women I might fall in love with. So many friends I might make.
As I grew, the number of future selves diminished. Greatly. But the ones who remained became more real, more possible, more human. They even started to communicate with me, cheering me on, telling me how to become that one in particular.
By the time I reached college age, however, reality had set in, life became darker, and they were all gone. Sometimes I’d see a shadow of one, or almost catch one out of the corner of my eye. But I couldn’t hear them anymore, I couldn’t communicate with them. And I worried that I might not have a future self, that I might end up just like my brother. But this is
Bloody Hands, Heartless Editors: 7 Deleted Chapters from The First Boy who was Broken Page 2
