True Heroes (5 page)
The bell rang. ‘The universal signal to get the hell out of the building and go home.’ Caleb shook away his useless thoughts and picked up his handful of books before noticing the presence of two shadows over his shoulder. He glanced back and saw Sasha and Alex looking down on him as he stood to their level. ‘The longest standing couple in the school. Going on five years now, nearly as long as I’ve known them.’ Sasha—‘The bravest of the two,’— was the first to speak, “Hey, Cale, what’s up with the new look? Did something happen this summer or what? Me and Alex were pretty worried about you and thought we should ask.”
He looked into her eyes. ‘There’s genuine concern. Alex would never make eye contact long enough for me to tell, but I’m sure he’s concerned too. None of my other friends had that look when they nonchalantly asked about my change.’ “Yeah, something happened, but it’s no big deal it’s a temporary thing. I’m still me no matter what I wear.”
“You just don’t look like you anymore, man.”
Caleb smiled a little at Alex after he spoke. “Trust me; you guys aren’t rid of ol’ Caleb just yet.”
Sasha smiled at him. “Well we definitely gotta hang sometime, no matter what you wear. And know that we’re both here for you, okay?’
Caleb smiled wider and nodded as they waved while walking out the door. ‘How temporary will this change really be?’
- - -
A BMW pulled up in front of Carol’s house with Caleb in the driver’s seat. He highlighted the “P” on his driver’s panel and sat back, remembering all the closure he was about to fulfill in this night—‘Our last night. Only the third time I’ve ever been to her house, and it’ll be the last. I wish I had come here more; Carol was always so worried her mom would start something with me, and she knew I’d fight back. Carol swore up and down that she’d never hit her, but I’m not an idiot. I can put bruises together with a mother who feels abandoned by her family and drinks as often as she breathes. Male role models come in this household receipts and return policies, as they should in mine, which certainly doesn’t help the denial of her mom’s problems. Their house is depressing enough without the contents of their conversations spilling past its elongated, rectangular, ordinary shape that was so prevalent in the inner city. Maybe I am somewhat thankful she prefers my house to her own.
‘Focus on tonight and making this a good, last night for you and her.’ Caleb used the rearview mirror to wipe off the last remaining smudge of make-up under his eye. ‘The last thing I need is for her to see me look like a goth-freak on our last night together. My only wish, when it comes to my own mental health, is that she refrains from filling my head with airless hopes. It would be a misinterpretation on my part, surely, but damn it if I wouldn’t be convinced, for just a few seconds, that she really likes me. But, that’s just not possible.’ He pounded that idea into his head as fast as his mind could compute. ‘No depression. Not tonight.’
He glanced through the passenger side window and saw her walking down her front steps. His breath came in very long and slow and left quickly and shortly in an elongated sigh. The door to his passenger seat opened soon enough, allowing all his pain and doubts to be placed behind his wall known as Carol.
---
“Hey, Cale, how was another day wasted at school?” That small conversation starter was all the fuel her heart needed to go into a flutter. It wasn’t the usual caged butterfly, but rather a double-edged sword that would cut at her heart before mending it back together again. Carol wasn’t exactly sure when it happened—probably during one of their late night conversations where they talked about everything from foods to their most vivid dreams—but she had become infatuated with Caleb. It would’ve been just a crush if it wasn’t backed by years of some of the most intimate sessions of interactive speech she’d ever been a part of. That continued to be one of the reasons she turned down seemingly hundreds of guys: none of them gave her that all-encompassing comfort she felt around him.
“It hasn’t been exciting a single day since you left.” He shot her a smile before pulling out onto the street. “How was your first day?”
‘Maybe he still does….’ She had been well aware of his crush on her the first time they’d met, but he’d become very good at hiding his feelings from everyone, making it was difficult to see which of the ones he’d shown were real. It was the scariest feeling in the world for both of them to be potentially out on the same limb, and for that limb to be close to breaking. She knew it was going to come down to one of them telling the truth to the other. ‘Tonight then. He has a right to know.’ She opened her purse and took an anxiety pill from her prescription bottle, swallowing it dry. “That place was never exciting even with me there, and it was pretty boring. More orientation stuff.” She looked over at him. “So, where we going?”
He looked back at her with those amazing eyes of his and answered, as smoothly as possible, “Wherever the car takes us.”
- - -
Caleb swigged back the rest of his water under their parasol and the clear, starry night above that before letting his eyes wander around the edge of the scene. The bow of the boat was nearly deserted minus his, Carol’s and the retreating waiter’s occupancy. The river was calm below the wooden and metal churning paddle boat. As the full moon shone down as a reminder of the impending end of it all, both Carol and Caleb attempted to enjoy the final act of their magnificent half-day. ‘It was a stroke of luck when I found tickets on this riverboat. What a blinding flash, this day; we enjoyed the activities planned and the conversations sprung from the ground like daisies until it came to this particular dinner. She’d continued to play the part beautifully: her smile flashing at all the right points, her words causing intrigue and wonderment, and her eyes still trying their hardest to make me believe I belonged next to her. She’s been different since dinner started; she probably thinks I’m using this as a date.’ The waves passed under the moving riverboat as they both ate in silence. ‘Time’s about up for this pumpkin ride. She has the complete opposite interpretation of why we’re here. Time to test my theory.’ “How’s your dinner?”
He narrowed his eyes slightly as soon as he finished the last word and took in every part of her response. Her eyes snapped to his over the rim of the glass she was drinking from—‘Insinuating frustration, and there’s a deep breath while the glass falls to the table heavily-a nonchalant nod, with no eye contact, on the end of her long sigh.’ Sadness crept up and down his body as those details added up to the answer in his mind. ‘Game over. Do the right thing.’ “I think we need to stop this game of pretend.”
He’d gotten her attention, and she showed it by leaning her weight onto the table. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I have been holding this guilt and pain inside for so long and all it’s accomplished is destroying your life a little bit more. You already have to deal with your mom and you’ve been forced to be my friend ever since you made that promise, but none of it is fair to you. There’s no justice in it for you. Consider your debt repaid and, please, move on with your life without this part of your baggage.”
Carol actually smiled a little bit, but it wasn’t one of happiness. “You actually think you’re holding me back? You don’t think I wanna be with you after all this time?”
“Please, don’t tease my mind like that anymore, Carol. Every time you do something caring or elegant I forget for a second that that’s just how you are and I get the misconstrued concept that I’m special to you lodged in my brain. Then it takes root and it’s so hard to convince myself it can’t possibly be true. It’s not your fault, but it’s become too much for me to stand. It tears me up that I’ve done this much injustice to you for almost a decade now…ten years! All of it a mixture of playfulness that I can’t distinguish from real words anymore. It’s time for your life to be your own. There’s no justice in me keeping you bound to a silly childhood agreement.”
As Caleb sat back, glad and terrified at the same time, she reacted as he’d expected she would. Carol stood up and began to walk away, but she didn’t walk away; she knelt down next to his dangling arm and slightly clenched fist. The fingertips of his left hand uncurled and, while they were hanging off the arm rest, began to be caressed by one of Carol’s hands as Caleb just watched in slight shock. Heat; an enveloping, calming heat that emanated from her slender, perfect fingers began to slither through his nerves and body until he became as lucid as clay. His hand began to unclasp from the chair’s rest and allowed itself to become her hand’s molding sculpture. He finally refocused his eyes down at her pink, short sleeved shirt. ‘She’s been the same size for three years now. Why is she doing this? Why does this feel like my power?’ She was staring through his hand as she suddenly spoke, “Ever since I can remember, you’ve been the only guy-no, the only person I think about. In school, at home, even when we’re together and having the time of our lives, the tune never changes. I can’t stop thinking about the most important person in my life, and do you know why that is?”
Caleb could only barely breathe out a sarcastic answer, “My charm?”
He could feel a small chuckle leave her mouth as her warm breath splashed upon his hand like bubbling water on a beach. “Close. It’s because you’ve always been there for me beyond what anyone else could ever do or expect from another person. It goes beyond hearing what I say or giving me a shoulder to cry on. You…transcend that stereotype so much that even when we haven’t seen each other for a week or more, I still feel your confident words ring through my head. You’ve hard-wired my mind to never give up no matter what the odds are. You’ve used your unspoken feelings to wrap me up in an impenetrable blanket, and that means that the only justified thing in my life is the fact that I need you in it.”
Her two green, misty eyes looked up into his confused and shocked ones finally, and he didn’t have any words to follow her emotional speech. He couldn’t imagine her hunger for a response or reaction, but he was stumbling through the clutter in his mind for an eternity before he could find anything. “I don’t know what it is that you see in me, but I promise you I’ll try my hardest to not screw this up…if this is what you want I mean,” he said while lifting his hand in hers.
“Why is it so hard to believe that I like you as much as you do me?”
He blinked back his power. ‘I guess it senses my emotional turmoil, but still slightly unsettling that it acted without my permission, even if it was only for a split second. That lack of control with the force I can unleash isn’t good news for anyone….’
“Carol, I’ve been trying to stop caring for you so hard just so we could be normal friends. But it’s the one thing I can’t will away. I’ve always treated you like a glass house on a cliff, but now you’re telling me that there was a safety net the whole time…it’s just surreal…and I keep waiting to wake up.”
“Well,” she took his hand and placed it over her beating heart, “as long as that thing keeps beating, then I promise I will care for you far and beyond what a friend ever could. You’re my own personal superhero.”
That remark brought a pang of guilt. ‘I’ve never told her anything about my power, constantly pushing aside her questions and investigations. I always knew if I told her she would want to question everything about it, and I never wanted to face that myself. Maybe it’s time for both of us to face it, together.’ “If we are going to go into this, then there’s something I need to tell you—”
“Later!” She sprung from her knelt position and kissed him for the first time. Caleb wrapped his arms around the back of her neck and forgot the rest of the world. All the while, a man’s body thrashed by the bottom boat hull and into the propeller, his screams going unheard, and nobody feeling anything but a slight bump in their ride.
- - -
Caleb rubbed at his eyes in an overly-vain attempt to wake himself a little bit more before his meeting with Principal Hackard. He sat in a leftover elementary chair in the trophy hallway—‘All but about ten can be directly attributed to some participation or action of mine,’ –and waited for the principal to come retrieve him from the wood and brick. In front of him was a secretary. ‘What’s her name? Miss…I don’t remember. Apparently she’s not important enough for a nametag either.’ She gently tapped away on a very dated computer and ignored him the best she could. ‘I know for a fact I’ve raised more than enough money to at least put a new computer in the budget. It all goes through Hackard first, I guess. And most of that goes straight into the bi-yearly renovation of his office. Sixth one just finished up since my freshman year. For nothing but useful items I’m sure….’ His eyes wandered to the rickety fan overhead. ‘Ah a new game for the kids waiting for their yelling at by Hackard: Russian Roulette with the fan picking its victims at random. Summer in this room would be a verifiable hell, and it’s still, sadly, the best they can do here.
