Troubled Ties

[StephenJames]

Every face in the bar turned to me as the cue crashed against the pool table. Conversation stopped momentarily all around the room as I met their disapproving, suprised gazes with a challenging look as if to say, 'Yeah I did that. What are you going to do about it?' Only Peter didn't stop. With a hasty apologetic look to the room, he passed the incident off as nothing but an accident. But I knew what was coming next. The practically routine speech he'd given me every time I'd lost my temper.

'Damn it Cameron.' He always says in a low calm voice. 'It's was only a bloody game. You've got to start pulling yourself together and deal with your anger or one day you're going to do something stupid and get yourself in real trouble!' I didn't answer. 'Look, there's barely a bar left in town that'll still let you in so let's call it a night before this one bans you too.' That part was new.

I hated it when people spoke to me like that. As if they knew me better than I know myself. As if they felt they were qualified to tell me how I should or shouldn't act. People kept trying to 'help' me, or berate me for my attitude. Or tell me I might be bi-polar, turning from lovable and happy to dangerous in the blink of an eye. It's not too unusual to recieve a punch if you tell me that one! But I shouldn't hit Peter. I know that. He's one of the few people who knew me well that I haven't managed to alienate. Besides, he's in my class, and I'd have to see him almost every day.

Sighing, I force myself to relax. 'Fine, I have work I need to do anyway tonight.'

The work was an English paper I needed to finish before the weekend. I loved language, and loved the subject more than anything. You can't get mad at a language like you can at people. Downing the remains of my beer and saying a brusque 'cya' to Peters, I made my way outside, with just a moment spared for a glance at the manager who was still watching me, to make sure I was leaving.

The streets of Boston were unusually empty that night as I made my way home. Crisp spring air making my breath condensate in front of me. It suited me perfectly. Normally I'm a fun, crowd loving, happy person, but that night, I just wanted to be left alone. I follwed my normal route through the more residential areas of town for twenty minutes before turning in at a tall, sprawling building. Once a house, now converted into a dozen flats typically taken up by the more affluent students, like myself. This was my home. A sizable one bedroom flat that I don't have to share, unlike so many other students my age. Not that I personally had any money. But luckily, I've never had to pay a penny on rent so that's fine.

Settling down in front of the computer, I opened the file named 'A study of the evolution of the English language over 1000 years and the social effects of subsequent evolution' before promptly realising I had already finished it yesterday and I forgot in my haste to find an excuse to leave the bar!

Laughing to myself I found I had managed to cheer myself up a bit and went straight to bed for a change...

 

[heartofcourage]

“Momma, I don’t have the money.”

Most of the conversations I’d had with my mother since the age of 16 usually involved those words. Whether it was for booze, drugs, clothes, her mother always seemed to want something. This time, she’d been picked up by the cops for public drunkenness, her third in two months, and she was begging for bail money.

“Momma, please listen to me. I can’t pay. I don’t get my next pay check until next week.” I winced and pulled the phone from my ear as the usual diatribe of curse words and vile statements issued from her lips.

Cunt, bitch, slut…it was all pretty normal when she didn’t get her way. I had long ago learned to not take it to heart. There had been too many days in my youth that I’d spent crying over a woman who would never love me. She had never really been a mother to me. She always acted like a big sister, one that was flighty and unstable.

“Momma…” I started when the line went dead. She’d hung up or been forced off the pay phone. Either way, it was a small blessing.

Placing the cell phone down on my bedside table, I looked around my one room flat and thought about how far my life had come and how far it had yet to go. I lived in a very nice part of town, subsidized by a scholorship that I had applied for and won before leaving high school. It allowed me the luxury of going to school for free, pay for part of my housing, and still have something to live on. The slack was picked up by the two jobs I worked, one at the campus library and the other sacking groceries at a store downtown.

The other kids in the complex were spoiled rich kids. How I hated those people. It had been constant torment since someone had found out about my past. There were the quips about my dad being in prison, the jibes about my mother being a whore, and the constant comments about my clothing that had me hiding from view most of the time. I didn’t fit in and they made that plainly clear.

Walking to the window, I pushed it open, leaning outside to take in a deep breath of fresh air. I would have killed for a cigarette, but there wasn’t even money for that at the moment. Glancing across the courtyard, I could see into the apartment across the way. My neighbor was very handsome, I thought to myself as I watched him type something at a computer before he moved on. Our eyes met and I wondered for a moment if he’d seen me.

I gave a slight wave, a nervous smile on my face as he turned away as if I didn’t matter. Maybe he was just like the other people in the complex…and even waving was a waste of his time.

 

[StephenJames]

The week continued on in a slow, frustrating crawl towards a long awaited weekend. I had handed my paper in first thing in Monday so, aside from the regular studies that took up a bit of my time, I was left bored out of my skull for days. The week after wasn't much better. This semester was moving at a snails pace, and with everybody focused on studying for various exams (someone, somewhere in this town was always studying for some sort of exam) nobody was socializing much any more. College parties, like the ones that drowned the area at certain times of the year, were all but extinct till the hard slog was over. Boredom wad becoming an ever present companion now. It wore away at the soul, bit by bit, till I was becoming so frustrated, I was almost longing for some action. A fight, an argument, someway to let me vent my feelings without jeopardizing the tenuous control I had managed to keep over my bottled up anger.

It used to amaze me that other people never had this much free time, until I realised that every other student worked too. I found myself, completely unexpectedly, getting a part time job in a cafe. Solely to fill the hours. I certainly didn't need the minimum wage they thought was fair. The college fund my father had set up years ago, after my mother had left, still had plenty in it and obviously my rent got paid as well without a penny from me.

"Should probably call the old goat..." I said to myself one day as I got yet another email from him asking for an update on my life. I've had to put up with a few too many of those in my youth. Every month, like clockwork he'd sit me down in his lavishly decorated study and the conversation was always the same. A pre-rehearsed 'Yes Father', 'No Father', 'I'm working very hard Father' was enough to satisfy him. No love lost there. Sometimes I barely even saw the man in a month growing up, he was away so much. But it'd be idiotic to ignore him. That's my inheritance at stake in this email!

Lighting a smoke (something I started doing in the vague hope that he'd accidently find out and, of course he'd hate!) I turned to the balcony to think on the mail I'd have to write, and if I could manage to insult him somehow with clever subtext that he wouldn't notice, just in time to see a girl rush past in the courtyard below, arms full of books and wearing a downcast, hurried expression. With wide green eyes she briefly glanced up towards me before quickly averting her gaze as though suprised to see someone looking back.

"Where have I seen her before?" I wonder as a spark of recognition occurs to me.

 

[heartofcourage]

How could I have forgotten? That was the first thought that raced through my head when I was getting off shift at the library and I bumped into a professor. He had asked me how my term paper was going and instantly I started to blanch. My term paper over Pre-Raphaelite painters had been laying on my desk for over three weeks, begging for my attention. In the stress of dealing with my mother and my two jobs, I had completely forgotten.

I had given him a quick answer that it was going fine and he smiled, telling me that he would see me Monday and he couldn’t wait to read what I came up with. In a blind panic, I had run through the stacks at the library, taking every book I could find and checking them out. The stack filled my backpack and overflowed into my arms.

This would mean that I would have to write all night to get it done since the next day I worked at the store for nine hours and the next didn’t look too promising. What a way to ruin a perfect weekend, I thought to myself as I jumped off the bus at my stop and hurried through the courtyard on my way to my apartment.

I felt a strange sensation of being watched and as I looked up towards the other side of the complex, my handsome neighbor was standing there, staring down at me while enjoying a smoke. Oh, I would have killed for a smoke right then but my money had gone to buy more important things like food.

His gaze was intense and I found myself looking away almost as quick as I had glanced at him. Something about his eyes told me that he was a man that was use to getting what he wanted and it almost felt like he had his sights set on me. The very thought made me shiver.

I wasn’t watching where I was going and soon ran into someone coming out of the complex. I let out a startled yelp, my books scattering across the floor as I came face to face with another neighbor who had a reputation for being a meat headed bully. His name was Frank and he seemed to take special delight in tormenting me.

“Watch where the fuck your going!” He cried out as he looked down at the scattered mess around the two of us. “God damn, are you stupid or something?”

I stammered for a long moment, shaking my head and found myself glued to my spot like a deer in the headlights. I didn’t want to make a scene and I knew I had to move out of his way as fast as possible.

“Out of the way, bitch!” He cried out again, shoving me aside with one swipe of his meaty hand.

 

[StephenJames]

I watched the scene below in the courtyard unfold with horror. At first, I simply couldn't understand why the girl just stood there and took it without reaction. I knew Frank. Not to say well, or that we were ever really even aquainted with each other. More to say I knew of him. I disliked him. I disliked him more now. From what I knew, I would have expected this from a person with his reputation. But I would never have thought I'd see a person not even bother to stand up for themselves! It was a...humbling sight to see. I couldn't stop myself from feeling pity for the unfortunate bullied girl below.

As she gathered her books together, which had scattered about the ground in heaps (So many books! What must she be studying?), I took my first good look at her...

Her pale skin looked smoother than silk, her flowing locks of hair, brown just like mine, framed her face superbly. It seemed effortless. Natural as though no effort was put into her appearance, yet everything was flawless anyway. Her eyes were so big and bright, I could gave sworn then that a glint of the deepest green reached me even as far away as I was. She, in short, was simply perfect

But what struck me the most in that moment, what made it impossible to turn away even if I'd wanted to, and what would imprint her forever in my memory was her... 'Aloneness'. So stunning, and yet seemingly completely unaware of it. Her body language radiated meekness, vulnerability. She protected herself automatically, wrapping her arms about her body as if nobody had ever sheltered her from the harshnesses of life. She was a girl who needed to be protected, and I found myself unexpectedly with a never before seen thought in my head. I wanted to protect her!

Standing at the railing long after she left my vision, my ciggerete had long burnt out as I lost myself in thought. Frank Lombardo had a reputation in certain circles in the campus for other things than being an arrogant self-loving egomaniac. By knowing the right people, sometimes very interesting information can come your way. And I found myself recalling something very interesting about him...

Later that night I made my way through the halls of the building, reading the mail slots as I went to find him at flat number 16 easily. Is never had a problem with directness and never felt nervousness at this sort of thing before and so didn't hesitate at all before bashing loudly three times on his door.

"Who are you?"He said defensively, "What do you want?"

"Straight to the point then," I replied smiling mischievously. "I'm in one of your English classes. Do you remember our last term paper by any chance?" He looked taken back, as well he should have all things considered. He hesitated before replying,

"Yeah. What about it?"

"Well I happen to be very good friends with the person who did it for you..." There was no hint of amusement on his face at all. A mix of anger and fear clouded bus features very quickly. "Lisa Byers? An old teacher who got fired two years ago to helping students to cheat in exams? Ring any bells by any chance?" He looked positively petrified now. "Tell me, how much did she charge you for that paper? 200 wasn't it?" I was beginning to enjoy myself watching his face switching from fury to fear to desperation rapidly. After a long pause he replied, barely able to restrain his sudden hatred, though impressive that he was smart enough to know when he was beaten. He simply said,

"What do you want..."

" I want you to go to that girl that you knocked down this morning, and I want you to get on your knees in front of her and beg her forgiveness."

"What!" He exclaimed. "You've got to be kidding me!"

"I wonder what the punishment for cheating is here... Isn't it normally expulsion? Or do you think you can get off with less? Do you want to take that chance?"

Making a noise half between a sigh and a growl, he finally submitted realising that a small amount of lost pride is worth his education, and five minutes later he had led me to another door furthur along the hallway. Pushing Frank before me, I knocked and stood back to watch...

 

[heartofcourage]

I closed my eyes as Frank shoved his way past, slamming the door as I finally kneeled to scoop up the piles of books that had been scattered when I ran into him. His words had stung but I had sadly heard worse. I had long ago tried to let those words flow off me like water, but each one still left an imprint on my heart.

Shaking my head, I stood up under the strain of the books and shouldered my way into the building. The trek up the stairs was tiring, but soon I was in my little apartment, safe and sound. In my own little world I could relax, unwind, and not have to worry about insults and the outside world creeping in.

Popping in a frozen dinner into the microwave, I plopped down on the sofa and got cracking on the assignment that I had neglected. I had some long hours ahead of me, but with a pepperoni pizza and a bottle of beer, I could get through the lonely hours. Taking a bit from the still hot pizza, I heard a knock at the door. Who could be knocking at my door? No one in the building ever stopped by to see how I was doing and certainly no one wanted to hang out with me.

Wiping my hands on a napkin, I stood and looked through the peephole. Frank stood there with a man that I had seen from time to time walking around the courtyard. I think he even might have been the same person that lived across the complex from me and had ignored me each time I waved.

Opening the door slightly, I peeked my head out to stare at the two men, looking from Frank to the mystery stranger as I tried to figure out what they were doing there.

“Can I help you?” My voice came out in a shaky whisper, a note of fear appearing as Frank looked ready for a fight.