Chapter 9
A few weeks later, I noticed an irregularity on our street.
There were more and more trucks that drove down our little street of Primrose, and I was surprised because our neighborhood was a pretty quiet neighborhood. Primrose was located in the quietest part of Woodbridge, where all the seniors lived, and perhaps that was why it was so peaceful all the time. Occasionally, you could see and hear the joy of little children running down the streets, but that was usually during the holiday seasons.
And in March, it wasn’t anywhere close to the holiday seasons.
You know, I was always fascinated by the seasons. Each one was supposed to represent something, and in literature, it was often used as a symbolic representation of an important motif or theme.
For instance, spring was always associated the rebirth, or childhood and innocence.
Summer was the passionate time of the adolescent and young adult years.
Fall was the fall from innocence, but the gain of wisdom as well as humans grew older.
And winter was decay, the time for you to return to the Earth.
I was always fascinated with the seasons, because I think you can tell a lot from a person based on which seasons they like. Most people preferred summer or spring, because according to most people it was the time with the best weather.
I, on the other hand, having been born in December, have always been obsessed with the cold, the winter’s frost. There was just something so cool about winter, I didn’t know if it was the cold, or the snow, or the rain that paired up quite well with my fashionable pessimism, but all I knew was that winter was the season where I was the most comfortable.
And I wondered what Claire’s favorite season was.
It was Saturday again, and Claire didn’t have a tournament so she told me we could hang out again. We couldn’t really hang out a lot during the weekdays because I had school, and she had tennis, but I would always try to catch a glimpse of the light that shone from her window a few houses past mine. I didn’t know if she felt the same way, but I really wanted to tell her.
I had made great progress in skating waxed curbs just yesterday night, and I was so excited to show her because I knew she would be proud of me. I wanted to show her that I was almost ready to sing her my song, and that maybe, just maybe we could be something more than best friends.
Best friends.
That pair of words was something that I never actually used in my life before I met her.
Every other friend I had were all too similar to the rest of them, and weren’t like Claire at all. And the only one that came close was Aileen, but she ended up being just as superficial as the rest of them after I found out she tried to be hipster because she thought being a hipster was cool, and not because she wanted to do the things she wanted to do without anyone’s influence, like Claire.
I would call Claire my best friend.
And I knew that she would too.
I wanted to call Claire something else.
And I hoped that she would too.
It was an intensely sunny day, the kinda days that I just hated. It was like 90 degrees outside, and there was not a touch of refreshing black shade on the ground. Woodbridge was super strict with the rules, and it annoyed me because all the houses were the same, and there was no place for originality or personality.
Which also meant you couldn’t grow trees on your front lawns.
And no trees, meant hell on a sunny day like this one.
Claire was waiting on her roof again, sitting back against her window with a soda in her hand, and a book in another. She had shades on, and she looked so cool just sitting there with her own black skinny ripped jean, and boots, and a white laced shirt that fit her perfectly.
And from my position in front of her front door, a full 6 feet under her, she looked like an angel who came down to smite the wicked. She looked like one of those models from straight out of a magazine, or a movie scene, you know what I mean?
I cupped my hands to amplify my voice.
“Hey!”
When she took notice of me, Claire grinned as well and motioned for me to wait.
And so I did.
A few moments later, she appeared from her side of the house, and opened the front door for me. Although I was taller than her, she was just like my brother in the way that she just felt so much bigger and better than me. It was almost like a student looking up to his teacher, or like a child looking up to his parents.
“Hey how’s it going?” She asked with a diminutive but still noticeable grin on her angelic features.
“Good good. Say, where’re your parents?”
She threw her head back and gave a light chuckle. Although, for some reason, I swear I detected an underlying dark tone under the chuckle.
Something was amiss.
“They’ve gone out to move some stuff. Come on, we have sometime before they come back. Let’s go upstairs to my room.”
That wording was odd, I thought to myself warily.
However, I nodded in consent precariously and followed her up the white picket stairs to her room.
And although I noticed that she’s always smelled like she’s had a rose garden in her hair, her house was like a botanical study if that was the case. The hint of roses, the scent of daisies, and the whiff of jasmine.
Her house was inflorescence personified.
But today, I noticed it was strangely empty, or maybe it was just a figment of my imagination.
Anyways, Claire’s room was interestingly bare for a girl who I thought was the world. It was painted a creamy white, and there was a single desk, and one bed, and one window, in which I was on the other side of last time.
The one particularly interesting thing about her room was the paintings.
Large, small, various sizes. They were all over her room, plastered on walls, stacked on the floor. It was like I walked into LACMA on Primrose, and all of them were unique and interesting. Some looked like a toddler’s child play, and yet some contained the venerated maturity that European masterpieces in the Renaissance period crafted.
I touched a simple artwork that hung just around the door, and I noticed it was hidden from view if you came into the door, and didn’t look closely enough.
It was a simple sketch of black and white.
Paris.
The Eiffel Tower.
I noticed the simple yet intricately crafted lines of pencil lead that created a beautiful masterpiece of art. It was so frustratingly simple, and yet it created a wonderful caption of the actual place itself. The drawing was centered in the frame on a piece of blank white canvas, and while Paris usually looked so vibrant, since the drawing was done with gray, it created a cool and powerful contradiction between the place itself, and the Paris as the artist saw.
And on the top of the tower, where a mechanical pole stands in real life, I saw a woman. Her dark luscious hair is lightly sketched in, and the curves of her body were clearly seen. It was a woman, one who looked she was so tired of everything from the way her body sagged against the woes of the world. And yet, she still managed to look breathtakingly beautiful.
I couldn’t see her face, but for some reason I could tell she was beautiful, angelic even. And for some reason, I could smell roses from the intrinsically beautiful painting.
Her head was turned sideways, as if she was watching over the city of Paris, and all of France like a guardian angel from Heaven. One hand held on the railings of the tower, clutched it even, as if she clung on to dear life.
I don’t know why, but that woman standing on the top of the Eiffel tower, well, she just gave me a sort of indescribable feeling, one that I knew was important to something, but at the same time was just so frustratingly out of my reach that I couldn’t grasp the notion of the idea.
She was hauntingly beautiful, and simplistically symbolic.
And a vine, a rose vine with leaves of dark gray emotion wrapped around the Eiffel tower like some sort of g
reat big infrastructure system. One leaf touched the woman’s outstretched hands, and she gazed at it as if it was something wonderful, something to be treasured.
And then I noticed the signature of the artist.
And I realized why it looked so damn familiar.
C. Dean.
Claire’s drawing.
I looked at the room as one hand flew over my mouth. All these drawings, all this art, they were her work.
“Claire,” I whispered in a profuse mixture of amazement and awe. “Did you draw all of these?”
She noticed my look, and simply laughed. However, I still noticed the light tint of rose pink that complimented the roses in her hair rather nicely.
“Yeah. I’ve always liked art. Ever since I was little, my parents told me I’ve always had an affinity for drawing. Then I started getting into tennis, because my father wanted me to. And then I kinda just stopped drawing, but this is all a part of my past. I mean, I just didn’t have the heart to throw them all away you know? I’m a sap and proud of it.”
I nodded, still in shock at her talent.
“What about writing? Why did you decide to do that when you’re so good at drawing?”
She sighed in reminiscence and something else as well.
“I suppose writing came from just a need, a drive to create my own story after my parents and everybody else got so damn manipulative and controlling you know? Like, to me, there’s no such thing as freedom anymore. Sometimes, I really wanna be a bird. I envy them so much. Birds get to fly everywhere they want, and they can do whatever they want because they have wings. I suppose that’s why I always put bird imagery in my books, because I want to be like them.”
I nodded.
It made sense, and it also made me angry again internally.
She was personified the term “caged bird”, and it made depressed that it was actually real. Because you’d think that in the 21st century in America, after we’ve come so far, you’d think that there would be some sort of freedom living in a nation whose ideals are based off of freedom and right of free choice.
However, all there is today is the fucked up notion of conforming to a path that everybody else follows.
“That’s really cool.” I breathed out.
She shook her head with a laugh. “Thanks I think. So what do you wanna do today?”
I pretended to think about it for a second.
In all honesty, I didn’t know what there was to do around Woodbridge. I know it sounds cliché but, there seemed to be nothing to do around this deadbeat town, and so I guess we just had to look for thrills the way we knew how, which was skating.
In the end, I just ended up asking her for her opinion.
“I dunno. It’s your place, do you have anything n mind?”
It was her turn to think.
“Hmmmm.”
She looked cute when she did that. Her eyebrows would scrunch up together, and she would get this weird duck face type of thing going.
“I-”
Whatever she was about to say was cut off by a loud beeping sound from outside her house. It was the bell of hell, and I had to cover my ear to stop the shock through my body system. Claire looked alarmed, but not the surprised type of alarm, the type of alarm that was brought to the surface when you expect something to happen already.
We both rushed to her window, and took a quick peek outside.
It was a truck, one of those trucks that I’ve seen occupying Primrose for the past few days. It was a gigantic behemoth of a car, clad in stainless steel and carrying the coat of a maroon paint job. The back of the car, where the box that carries stuff was located was all covered in a metallic steel that seemed colder than the frostbite itself.
And it was pulling up onto Claire’s driveway.
And then I noticed the sign.
Woodbridge Moving Company.
I gaped.
Time froze, and I didn’t know what to do.
In slow motion, I could see Claire turn away from me, and no matter how hard she tried to hide it, I still remembered this moment vividly. A lone tear, one of the few times that I’ve seen her cry because she was always so strong and resilient, slid down her face as she tried to hide it from view. However, she looked like she still wanted to tell me something and she looked as if she was prepared for this moment.
My brain couldn’t comprehend what was happening, but the aching in my heart, and the drop of my stomach told me that something definitely wasn’t right here.
Nothing made sense.
“Claire.” I said, my breath coming out of my mouth in short gasps of air. I didn’t know if I was hyperventilating or not, and I didn’t know anything anymore.
“Claire.” I said again, my voice almost broke. “What-”
However, Claire was still composed, with a ramrod straight posture. If it wasn’t for the single tear that I saw trickle out of her right eye earlier, then I wouldn’t have guessed it was another façade she put up.
“That’s part of the reason I wanted you to come over today. I wanted to tell you something.”
I was afraid to ask, but I knew she wanted me to ask.
And for the first time, I didn’t know if I wanted to talk to her. Her voice wasn’t broken like mine, and her posture was still rigid and stiff, unbent like her will. I wanted her to say something, anything that would hint that what was happening was just a big elaborate joke, and then we would’ve both laughed, and I would’ve shown her that I could skate on a curb, or at least the progress that I had made.
The truth is I just felt hollow, as if something extremely valuable to me was torn out of my chest and stomped on. I wanted to curl up and die, to crawl into a little corner and cry my heart out. I started sniffling then, and a few stray tears leaked out of my eyes as well.
At the sight of my tears, I saw a crack slam into her façade, and she looked away from my watery eyes.
“What is it?”
A brief moment of silence passed.
Both of knew what was going to happen, because I was able to connect the dots in my head already. I was just playing dumb then, pretending that something like this would’ve never happened, and that happily ever after was actually tangible in real life. Time slowed to a standstill as I gazed into her pair of chocolate eyes. A single tear had made its way down her right cheek again, and it was that tear that I found myself entranced by.
The tear represented so many different emotions and memories.
I saw the first day that we met, underneath the lamp lit street of Primrose right after I came home from that math test failure. It was the first time I became so infatuated with her, and the scent of roses in her hair. Back then, I was just like everybody else externally, and I wasn’t strong enough to translate my inner thoughts to outer strengths.
I saw the first time I made her laugh, and the first time I saw her strength and will power. I remember the adoration and respect that shot through me as I no longer only viewed her as a friend, but also an idol as well.
I bit my trembling lips hard enough to draw blood as memories of the past few weeks flew through my mind like a bird.
If she spoke, there could be nothing between us.
If she didn’t, there still could be nothing.
And so she chose the lesser of the two evils.
“I’m moving away.”
I had expected it, of course. I mean, I was able to connect the dots from her erratic behavior near the end of our weeks together, and her dad’s odd phrasing. He had told me to stay away from her in the time that we had left, and I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but now, in a morbid sense of fascination, it all made sense.
And still, it didn’t stop or even soften the blow.
The weight of her 3 words, 3 words that could’ve been so different and meant so many different things, slammed into me, and I fought off the bile threatening to rise in my throat. I didn’t know why, and I still don’t to this day, but I felt the sudden urge to burst out l
aughing hysterically.
It was so fucking ironic.
I had planned today out from head to toe in my dreams. I was going to ask her to be more than friends with me, and happily ever after was supposed to be as welcoming as a pillow. I was going to confess to her about how sweet young adolescent infatuation was supposed to be, and she was supposed to reply in kind. I was going to show her my progress in skating the curb, and I was going to tell her of my plan to sing the song I wrote for her. I didn’t think today would turn out like this, but then again, I don’t think my dreams ever did.
“Why?”
To her courtesy, Claire didn’t even flinch when I asked the question.
She seemingly didn’t even bat an eye.
“My parents want me to move away to be homeschooled. They found a better region up in Cerritos, where tennis camps are more frequent, and basically, they just said that it was a good town for tennis. They both agree that it would be a better place for me to increase my chances to get into UCI.”
Her voice cracked at the end.
Her façade was cracking. Already, there was a giant broken vein through the beautiful porcelain mask that she placed on herself.
I didn’t know what to think of it. Hell, I didn’t know what to think of anything. I didn’t know how to deal with the entire situation, and I felt like crawling into a corner and receding into a ball and crying my heart out. I just couldn’t understand how unfair the entire world is. On one hand, I wanted her façade to break so I could see the true Claire Dean. She showed her true colors to me before, and I wanted to talk to Claire Dean, the girl who could do anything, and not Claire Dean, the girl who put on masks to hide her emotions. And on the other hand, I didn’t want it to break for all the same reason. I was scared that if it broke, I’d lose my image of her, and in that case my fascination with her ideals.
I just couldn’t understand why God was so cruel in His supposedly benevolent creations, and His paths that He set out for us.
After all this time with Claire, I learned that it was okay to be different and have your own feelings and emotions. It was okay to show emotion, and it was okay to do what you want because you believe what you’re doing is right. It wasn’t only okay, but it was a right because that was our greatest gift, the gift of free choice.
And yet I didn’t understand how she dealt with the pressure of actually doing it.
I mean, I stood up to my parents and internally believed in what I was doing was right, but I still wasn’t brave enough to actually put my heart out and say that I would be a musician for a living because I wanted to. In the real world, things came with consequences, and it wasn’t a trivial matter when you chose the path of an artist against the condemnation of everybody’s opinions. People will hate you, your parents will be distanced from you, and you will be lonelier than you’ve ever felt, and Claire was okay with that. I didn’t understand how.
“How do you do it? How do you be you?” I choked out through broken sobs. I knew that it would possibly be the last question that I would ever ask her, but I needed to know the answer.
And I was crying now as well, my words were slurred together through salty tears and blurry emotions.
My heart felt like collapsing under its own weight, and my stomach had dropped into hell already. Fashionable pessimism suddenly didn’t seem real, and melodramatic melancholy turned into depressive sinkhole.
And through our shared pain, she understood, because I knew she would.
“Well,” she said as she gazed at me with as much emotion as she could. I could tell that she was trying to put a lot into these last few words. “You’re you aren’t you?”
She only said that much and I could understand the message she was trying to convey. Because I was me, because I had my gift of free choice, I should be able to choose my own path. I knew that already, I mean, but hearing her say it made me feel a little bit better I guess. I didn’t have the courage to do what she did, and I guess that was the difference between me and her.
She could skate a waxed curb, and perfectly balance everything.
I couldn’t.
“I believe in you.”
The emotional dam that held the rest of the flood back all but disappeared, and I fell forwards into her embrace as I cried into her shirt for dear life.
I didn’t want her to leave.
I didn’t want her to go.
I didn’t want her to leave me alone.
I didn’t want her to leave me in this cold world, this snow globe where everything appeared so hauntingly beautiful but was so damn heartless all the same.
“That’s,” I struggled to get the words out through clenched teeth and the train tracks that the falling tears were creating on my face. “But you haven’t even listened to song that I wrote for you yet.”
Another crack.
Another tear.
And I felt the raindrops in my own hair.
“Well can you skate a waxed curb now?” She shot back as she clenched her teeth as well. I felt a few more tears glimmer at the brim of her eyes, threatening to pool over as she held me.
A honk resounded outside the house, and she and I both recognized her father’s Prius pulling in to the drive way. And we both knew what this meant.
I didn’t know when she was leaving, but from the way her house was so chillingly empty, it would have to be soon. She didn’t have the quota of school, or the pressure of grades, and so she didn’t need to stay around here for anything. She didn’t have any ties here except for me, and her parents cut that for her with sharp daggers made of heart break.
“Through the window,” she managed to choke out as we both heaved into sobbing breaths.
“Go.”
I cried even harder at that, my tears staining the pure white lace shirt that she had on.
I had never been closer to her before, now that she held me in her arms and as I cried against the crook of her neck. I could smell the roses in her hair, her sweet scent was so achromatic, and yet so tragic.
But I had never felt so far away either.
She was asking me to leave her alone, and I didn’t know if I was ever going to meet her in this cruel world again. God and I had an interesting relationship, and so it wasn’t very likely we would meet again. We would both be loners again in society, and although I knew she had the strength to be herself, I didn’t know if I did.
Suddenly, the rattling of a key in a keyhole was heard, and downstairs, somewhere below my used-to-be Heaven, I heard the front door unlock.
I only had a few seconds left, and so I quickly pulled out of her embrace, turning away at the hurt expression that displayed on her face for a brief second. Her parents couldn’t catch me here, because if they did, they would force even more restrictions on her and I didn’t want to burden her more. I needed to leave for her.
I never thought I would say that.
As I lifted up the heavy window covering, I looked back.
“June 16th,” I chocked on the emotions threatening to overwhelm me as I whispered. I wasn’t even sure if she heard, because she was busy trying to clean herself up before her father came into her room to get the rest of her stuff. I could hear the workers down below, already moving the furniture, packing away emotion, and disposing of the scent of roses.
“Irvine Spectrum center, underneath the Ferris wheel, I signed up for a performance at 10 PM. Please.”
I didn’t have the time, nor the guts to finish that sentence as Claire didn’t even acknowledge my whispered request. Perhaps it was too quiet, or perhaps she heard and was too busy through emotional distress to respond, whatever the reason, I knew I couldn’t stay.
And as I let the last tear fall, I slipped out the window and didn’t look back.
I wish it would rain.