Lucas

Hello, my name is Lucas.  I am currently sitting on a bench near 2212 Stanley Rd. on April 30^th, 2014.  I am eight years old, it’s around six ‘o’ clock in the afternoon, and I think I just ran away from home.  Of course, I don’t have a sack at the end of a long stick like in the cartoons, I just have what I’m wearing.  I don’t know what I’m going to do now.  I think I’ve been here for hours, and I know I should probably move, but when I try to get myself to leave I wonder where I would go.  I’m not sure what else to do but wait, I guess.  Wait for Travis to find me and to listen to me again like he used to.

                Travis was my best friend since I could remember.  He is probably the coolest kid I’ve ever met, honest.  For years, he and I were side by side, the best of buds against the world.  We did everything together, from school to games to even family vacations.  Parents and teachers would call us inseparable.  They would also call us cute, and we’d look at each other and stick out our tongues in a manner of disgust, and they would laugh at our silliness.  Then we would run to his room where we played video games and eat snacks.  Most of the time, Travis would want to play single-player on his games while I watched, which was fine because I loved to watch his progress.  We didn’t play many multiplayer games because I wasn’t very good at them and Travis would often beat me.  I would sometimes tease him that I let him win, and he would hit me with his pillow which engaged an all-out war between the two of us, which usually ended with tired laughter and my surrender.  Fun fact: Travis’s favorite game system was his Nintendo Gamecube that his father had given him when he was younger.

                Most days I would accompany Travis to school during the week.  We merged into the group of students shuffling into the class when the bell rang every morning so no one would notice.  The desk that he sat at was pretty big, but there wasn’t enough room to fit both of us, so we had to pull an extra chair over from the corner for me to sit in.  The other students were jealous of us.  We could tell because they would give us dirty or confused looks and we would always ignore them and make fun of them later at his house.  The teacher didn’t even seem to notice, which was good for us, because during tests we could both look at his paper, meaning two times the brain power.  Sometimes I would stand up and sneak around the classroom, peeking at other student’s tests and memorizing the answers.  I was really quiet, like a ninja, because no one seemed to notice!

                After lunch in the cafeteria, we would follow the class outside for recess, where we immediately ran for the sandbox in the back corner near the fence.  That was our meeting area, where we hung out every day to play.  It was far away from both the slide and the doors and in quiet part of the playground (at least as quiet as a ton of playing kids can get).  Travis would pull out his Star Wars action figures and we’d reenact the movies as best we could, but with our own little flair.  I always let him play as Darth Vader, because he was the best.  I chose Princess Leia so he didn’t have to play with her, and because she was my favorite character in the movies.  She wasn’t as cool as Darth Vader, but she had a light to her that I enjoyed.

                Some days, one of the dodgeballs that the school gave us for recess rolled next to the sandbox, and this was a signal that Rebecca was coming.  She and her friends always played catch with the ball, and it would always seem to roll over to us at least once a day.  We’ve told her to be careful with the ball, but she never seemed to listen.  Most days, she would simply walk over and pick up the ball without saying a word, while other days she would attempt to start a conversation.

                “What are you doing?” Rebecca asked once, near the beginning of the school year.

                “We’re playing Star Wars,” Travis muttered without giving her a glance from the battle that was erupting on our laps.

                She gave him an odd look that he didn’t seem to notice. “Jessica says you’re weird.”  Then she took the ball and trotted back to her friends without waiting for a reply.  I looked at Travis, and he looked back at me and shrugged.  Who cared what Jessica thought of us?  We continued our battle in the sandbox during the rest of recess.  I had never spoken to Rebecca personally, but that was probably because she didn’t acknowledge me all that often.  She was always very attentive towards Travis, though.  She really only looked my direction whenever Travis mentioned me, and even then she didn’t even look me in the eyes.  In fact, that seemed to happen all the time.  People just ended up paying more attention to Travis than me.  But this didn’t bother me.  People rarely talked with us anyway, and the ones who did I didn’t want to be friends with anyway, and neither did Travis.  I simply got used to the lack of attention.

                At least, until this one day when the teacher, Ms. Atker, noticed Travis and I giggling at his desk.  She stopped her lesson and looked at us through her glasses that sat slumped at end of her crooked nose, just daring to fall off.  “Travis Zimmer,” she spoke with the tone that students feared to have their name spoken with.

                We stopped giggling and Travis’s face turned red.  “Yes, Ms. Atker?”

                “Is there something funny about the lesson?”

                Travis began to stutter. “N…no, I was just…” he trailed off, and his eyes shifted down to his hands which twiddled feverishly in his lap.

                “You were just what, Travis?” she asked, lowering the textbook in her hands, her attention now fixed solely on him.  The rest of the class was also staring at him, all of them caught like flies in the web of tense silence.

                “I… Lucas told me a joke, and-“

                The other students cut him off with their suppressed chuckling.  One of the girls rolled her eyes at Travis.  His hands went from dancing to clasping and he tucked his head in until his chin rested on his chest.  I wanted to say something.  I even looked the girl who rolled her eyes and stuck out my tongue, but she didn’t seem to notice.

                “Alright students, quiet down.” Ms. Atker commanded, and the chuckling died down. She looked once again at our table with softer eyes. “Travis, how about Lucas waits outside in the playground just for today?  Then he’ll be there when you go out to play after lunch.”

                His head shot up and shifted his gaze between me and Ms. Atker.  He looked frightened, and I was too.  My stomach felt shifty.  I didn’t want to leave the classroom.  What would I do for lunch?

                “What would he do for lunch?” Travis asked.

                “You can bring him something from the cafeteria, ok?”

                He started to argue, but the words seemed to stop in his throat.  His mouth gaped slightly opened as he tried to push his protests out, but logic and his will to listen to the teacher kicked in.  He gave me a sad look, and I knew that it was my time to go.  In a way, I felt it unfair as well.  Why don’t I get a say in this?  But I didn’t want to cause any more trouble for Travis, so I stood from my chair and slunk out of the classroom. 

                It felt strange walking the halls of this school without Travis.  The large, blue and gray walls felt alien, and the crudely colored posters that dotted their surface seemed to close in.  My shoes squeaked and echoed towards the doors leading to the playground.  It was quiet outside of the classrooms, and no one else seemed to be walking the halls.  At that moment, I felt incredible lonely.  I realized how so used to Travis’s company I was, and that moments without him felt awful.  Not to mention the guilt I felt towards getting him in trouble.  Ms. Atker was such a cow!  I delighted myself in imagining scenarios where Travis and I ran through her classroom and tore the whole place up.  Ripping the posters from the walls.  Breaking the pencils at her desk.  Flipping the tables and smashing the windows.  All while seeing the horrified look on her old face.  Even then I knew these thoughts were bad, but the anger and humiliation I felt then outweighed any sort of moral standard.  It was the worst I had ever felt in my life up to that point.

                I reached the end of the hall and pushed the doors out to the playground.  Everything was empty and barren without the other students running around, screaming and laughing and climbing on everything.  The chaos of recess was replaced with the chirping of birds in a nearby tree, and the whoosh of the wind through the grass.  The sandbox sat alone away from all of the other structures, and I gloomily walked over and plumped myself in the center of the sand.  I realized that, without Travis, I didn’t have any of his toys to play with, so I ended up dragging my hand back and forth through the soft powder, digging small holes and occasionally slapping the sand only to watch it explode in a cloud of grit.  I took my hand away, expecting an impression where my hand was, but there was nothing.

                After a few hour long centuries, the bell finally rang for the third time since I was sent out here.  A few moments later, a flood of kids began to pour out of the double doors.  My head rose eagerly at the sound of their scattering, and I scanned the crowd for Travis’s familiar shaggy hair.  Finally, as the crowd began to die down, Travis appeared at the doors.  When he saw me, he gave me a small smile and made his way over to the sandbox.  When he approached, my mood melted into excitement, and I forgot what I was thinking about.

                “Travis!” I exclaimed, beaming. “The playground was so quiet!  How was class?  You wanna play Space Pirates?”

                He gave another smile, but didn’t seem to match my enthusiasm.  “Sure,” he said, and squatted next to me in the sand.

                “Are you ok?” I asked, noticing his gloomy stance.

                “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, pulling out his Star Wars action figures, “but you won’t be!”  He tossed me Princess Leia, then immediately started attacking me with Darth Vader’s lightsaber.  I giggled and pushed sand on his figure, and we spent the rest of the recess playing in the sandbox.  At one point, in the midst of a heated duel between R2-D2 and a Stormtrooper, I noticed Ms. Atker, standing at the doorway, watching us.  Travis had noticed her too and kept glancing at her without stopping the game.  After a few minutes, she went back inside the building.

                This happened a few more times over the course of several weeks.  Ms. Atker would stop us as we entered her classroom and asked if I could stay outside.  After a while we stopped protesting, and it became habitual for me to head straight to the sandbox.  I guess she realized that having me around was unfair to the other kids.  I had gotten used to waiting for Travis, spending long hours alone in the sandbox.  Travis tried to give me some of his toys to keep me company, but I didn’t want to take them from him.  I didn’t want him to worry about me while I worried about him.

                Instead of blowing over like I hoped, however, thigs got worse.  One day, after the bus dropped us off at Travis’s house, we walked inside to his mother waiting for us in the living room.  She was sitting on the couch with the home telephone in her hand and a piece of paper in her lap.

                “Hi mom,” Travis said.

                She smiled warmly. “Hey hun, how was school?”

                “It was ok.  Math was really boring though, more boring than usual.”  He placed his backpack next to his shoes by the door.  “Lucas and I are going to play video games.  What’s for dinner?”

                She didn’t respond at first, but instead looked down at the small piece of paper.  I noticed it had writing on it that looked like a name with a phone number underneath it.  “Travis,” she spoke in a soothing tone that suggested she was going to say something big.  The last time she used it was when she told him that the neighbor’s dog died, and the time before that was about his dad.  “I’m going to take you to see someone today, is that ok?”

                “Who?” he asked.  I was curious too.

                “Well, his name is Dr. Mason.  He’s not like the doctor you go to for check-ups.  He deals with other things, and I think you should talk to him about some stuff.”

                He gave her a questioning gaze, and I knew what he was thinking.  “So no tongue depressors?”

                “No,” she gave a soft giggle and smiled again, “you’re just going to talk with him for a little bit.  Does that sound ok?”

                “Can Lucas come along?” I smiled a hopeful smile at his mom, who mostly said yes when asked this question.  But this time, she simply looked at Travis for a few moments before speaking.

                “I think Lucas should stay here for this one, ok?”

                The words hit me like a brick.  First I get kicked out of school, and now here too?  Why wouldn’t she want me to go?  I wouldn’t have caused any trouble.  I would’ve been good and sat quietly as Travis spoke to the doctor.  Heck, I would even talk to the doctor for him if he didn’t want to.  I knew Travis very well and there wasn’t a single thing about him that I didn’t know.  We told each other everything, even if we didn’t have much to say. 

                “But mom, he’s been waiting outside all day,” Travis protested.

                “I know hun,” she walked from the couch and leaned next to us.  She placed her hand on Travis’s arm, who looked very troubled.  “He’ll be here when we get back, I promise.  For now, he just needs to stay here so the doctor can talk to you alone.”

                “But what if the doctor wants to talk to me?” I asked.

                “But what if the doctor wants to talk to him?” Travis asked.

                “Then we’ll come back and pick him up.” she soothed.  Her hand began rubbing the sleeve of his jacket.  Travis’s face was red, and I could feel my face turning red as well.  My hands began to sweat and the shifty feeling in my stomach returned. 

                Finally, Travis muttered, “Ok.”

                His mother once again smiled, but this one didn’t have the same warmth.  She leaned up and kissed his head, then stood up.  “Ok, then let me get my purse and we can leave.” 

                She left and disappeared into the hallway to her bedroom.  I was stunned, but I didn’t say anything.  I was watching Travis, who was looking down at the carpet.  His face was no longer bright red, but he held a blank expression.  He had brought his hands together and they were fidgeting with each other in front of his chest.  I didn’t know what to say to him, so I kept silent as we waited for his mother to return.  When she finally did, she beckoned him to come.  Without looking up, he put on his shoes and started to follow his mother out the door.

                “Bye Travis!  I’ll be here, don’t worry about me.  Good luck!”

                He might have muttered a goodbye, but I didn’t hear him.  The door closed, and I found myself staring forward, staring into space alone in the living room.  All alone in the house.  I had never been alone in the house before.  It was very rare for me not to go anywhere with Travis, and even then he would be back within a few minutes.  I always knew he would be back as fast as possible, and I wasn’t fully alone.  Now this type of loneliness was crushing.  I had the house to myself, but my brain hit a brick wall.  So I sat zoned out, staring at the door for a few minutes before I forced myself to move.  Where, exactly, I didn’t know.  I ended up wandering to Travis’s room.  I didn’t bother turning on the light.  I ended up sitting alone in the very center of the room in the single block of light shining through the open window above his bed.

                I don’t know how long I sat there, but I came to when I heard the opening of the front door and footsteps shuffling in.  I sprang from the floor and happily ran to the noise.  Travis was taking off his shoes and jacket as his mother entered behind him, shutting the door behind her.  “Hey, Travis!” I said, waiting for him to finish removing his shoes.  When he finished, he glanced at me for only a second, then back down to the floor.

                “I’ll go make some dinner, ok?” His mother walked past him and began walking to the kitchen.

                “Ok.” He muttered.  When she heard the tone of his voice, she turned and gave him a sad look.

                “Honey, come here.” She bent on her and spread her arms.  Travis hesitated at first, then slowly walked over and placed himself in her grasp.  I watched, worried and confused as she stroked his hair and rubbed his back.  “You did great,” she whispered in his ear.  After a few moments of this, they finished her embrace.  She made her way to the kitchen, and Travis walked past me and towards his room.  I followed him down the hall, wondering what to say.

                When we reached his room, he shut the door behind me and walked to his bed, where he removed a book from the bedside dresser and began reading it.  I waddled over to a bean bag chair in the corner and sat down.  We sat in painful silence for what felt like hours.  Questions brewed in my head like a bubbling potion ready to burst out of its beaker.  Travis didn’t look up from his book, which he much have been really into because he couldn’t take his eyes off of it.  His brow furrowed in concentration, but the strangest thing was I never saw him even turn a page.  The book was a Star Wars novel that his father gave him before he died before I knew him.  Oh, fun fact: Did you know that his dad and I shared the same name?  I always thought that was a strange coincidence. 

                Things stayed like this for weeks, and it just kept getting worse.  Travis was very silent towards me, rarely speaking except in times he needed to.  At times I would catch him glancing at me, and I would try to catch his gaze and smile at him to make him feel better, but he always looked away before I had a chance. 

                Every Tuesday after school, his mother would take him to see the same doctor, and every night he would come back and go straight to his room to read his book without saying a word to me.  Had I done something wrong?  Was he embarrassed to know me now for some reason?  I thought maybe he was embarrassed that I had gotten kicked out of class that one time, so I tried to apologize to him one night.  His response consisted of a small grunt, and that was usually all I could get out of him.  I constantly wondered what he and the doctor had talked about, but every time I tried to bring it up in conversation, he would snap at me.  That was the only way I could get him to say anything to me.  This made me angry, but not at Travis.  In fact, I can’t exactly name who I was angry at, or even what I was angry about.  There were nights when I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t unclench my fists.  My face would feel hot and I wanted more than anything to scream at someone, but bit my tongue to keep quiet.  I would then spend the rest of the night watching Travis toss and turn in his sleep, which happened a lot now more than ever.

                Then Wednesday came.  Yesterday.

                I woke up that morning to find that Travis’s bed was empty.  I looked at the clock and realized that school had already started.  He hadn’t woken me up to go to school with him.  I sprang up and ran out of the bedroom and out of the house.  The school was about two miles away, and his mother had already left for work, so I decided to walk.  I guess I knew it would be a long hike, but that wasn’t where my thoughts were focused on at the moment.  Had he purposefully not woken me up?  Maybe he simply forgot, or maybe he was running late and didn’t have time to get me up.  He probably realized it too late and feels really bad about it.  I smiled at the thought of his face as I told him it was ok and that I understood.  I had to get to the school as fast as I could so he wouldn’t worry.

                I’m not sure how long it took for me to walk all the way to the school, but when I arrived I walked straight in and went directly for the classroom.  It never occurred to me that I had no perception of time at the current moment, and so when I walked into the classroom I was surprised to find it completely empty.  For several moments, I panicked.  My eyes eventually made their way to the clock hanging above the chalkboard, and I sighed with relief.  It was 12:46, meaning that everyone was outside at recess.  I weaved through the aisles of chairs towards the large windows on the far side of the room.  They pointed out towards the playground, where I noticed all of the kids running around and playing.  I found the sandbox immediately.

                There sat Travis, toys in hand, as Rebecca fought back with one of her own in the pool of sand.  They sat facing each other, laughing and throwing sand.  Rebecca threw a large handful that covered his hair completely, and he leaned over to her and shook it all off like a wet dog.  She squealed and laughed, and her words mouthed the words, “Stop it, Travis! Stop!”  Travis looked up and smiled his mischievous, young boy grin, and they both broke out in more laughter.

                I stared at them until my hands hurt from clenching them.  I would have kept watching if tears didn’t blur my vision.  I looked away from the windows and started rubbing my eyes.  I realized I didn’t want to look back.  I couldn’t look back.  Instead I grabbed the nearest desk and flipped it.  I did the same thing to two other desks, then clumsily threw a chair at the wall.  I went to the teacher’s desk and swept everything off the top of it.  Pencils, pens, papers, markers, little apple decorations, all crashed into a pile to the floor.  I hopped over it and began pulling out all of the drawers, adding more to the mess.  When the desk dried up, I began ripping the posters off the walls, tearing them up and throwing the shreds onto the floor.  I flipped two more desks.  I smashed the clock and tore books from the shelves.  I screamed and I sobbed.  I had never felt this horrible before, and I didn’t know how to take it.  When I finally finished, I turned back just before leaving to see that nothing had changed and the classroom still looked the same as it did before.

                I left the school and aimlessly walked down the nearest road.  I didn’t want to watch Travis.  I didn’t want to go back to his house and wait.  I didn’t even want to walk, but my legs kept pulling me down the road and out of the neighborhood.  I walked for hours in a straight line, with no clear indication of where I was going.  Eventually I found this park and collapsed on this bench.  I was completely drained of all energy.  I couldn’t even make myself cry anymore.  I tried to calm down and think about the situation, but the image of Travis playing with Rebecca kept protruding and growing in my mind like a weed.  Then I fell asleep.

                I don’t know how long I’ve been here.  Days, maybe.  Weeks.  I’m not sure.  When I woke up the first time, it was night, and I had no intention of leaving the bench.  So I sat up and simply waited.  I’ve been waiting.  For what I’m not sure, but if I just sit here patiently then something will come.  Maybe Travis will find me.  I feel bad for leaving him, and I worry that I won’t be there for him if he is in trouble.  Yet I still comfort myself with the thought of him finding me again.  I’ve decided that if he ever needs me, he will come and get me.  I don’t mind waiting for him at all.  When he needs me, I’ll always be here.  Waiting.