The asphalt six stories down calls to me, begging for an embrace. The wind is its matchmaker, whipping at my clothes, and with every gust, I feel the tips of my shoes slipping another centimeter past the edge of the roof.
"Good view from up there?"
I looked back and saw a ghost.
It was the neighbor. A tall, skeletal guy with skin so pale it bordered on purple, his eyes sunken into dark circles like hollow pits.
I'd crossed paths with him more than once in the hallways. We'd always lock eyes for a few seconds, never stepping closer, like a slab of bulletproof glass divided our lives.
"I'm bored," I replied.
"Same," he says, planting both hands on the ledge near my feet. He wants to push me. I can feel his urgency in the way his fingers drum against the concrete, analyzing the weakness in my legs. But instead, he asks, "Should we jump together?"
I kept quiet. Looking straight into his eyes, I understood he was just starving for someone to fall with.
I need that, too. I need it so damn bad it steals my breath and leaves my mouth dry. I'm dying of thirst.
I stepped down from the ledge. He flashes a surprisingly white smile, missing a lateral incisor on the bottom row. I found out later he lost it in a bar fight, after getting called a faggot and an illegal border jumper. The irony of it all is that it happened right after he blew the guy.
For Daniel and me, nothing is ever enough. We're hopelessly maladjusted. Unsatisfied with whatever life handed us, and with life itself. It's like looking at the world through monochrome contact lenses you can't peel off. Delicacies taste like dirt, jokes make us cringe, and stories are purely disposable.
Tiara, the woman who birthed me, dragged me to a shrink when I was a kid. The teachers told her I barely spoke and was detached from everything. They were right; they still are. Tiara stopped taking me when I started faking smiles and laughing at my classmates' jokes.
Monkey see, monkey learn, monkey do. I bet there are several among you who put on an act too, readers. Don't be ashamed to admit it; we're all sick in the head here.
The shrink insisted on keeping up my treatment. He definitely found something rotting inside me—like how I pissed the bed at ten and set a kitten on fire. But Tiara, being a single mom, couldn't afford to waste more time and cash. With two jobs sucking away her life and youth, she chose to stop hearing that her son was broken.
Daniel acted his part too, just to save himself the hassle. He got lucky and only had to play normal until he was fifteen. A short-tempered father, a cheating mother, an overconfident lover, add a phone call from the son and a .38 Caliber, and boom. You've got the perfect cocktail for a murder-suicide fit for the front page.
I'm 16. Daniel is five years older. That age gap never gets in the way of our search for salvation; we're two drops of the same stagnant water. We crave to be free of this crushing apathy that buries itself inside us, devouring us until we're nothing but walking shells or stiffs. If there's no cure, at the very least we'll accept death with the resignation of those who tried everything.
We looked for hope in art. Maybe Picasso, Hockney, or Pollock could inject some color with their unique ways of interpreting the world, but they turned out as interesting as scribbles pinned by magnets to a fridge door. We tried the alternative: Chris Mark, Michael Hussar, Vince Locke. We felt a natural pull toward the bizarre and the macabre. For a while, Daniel was obsessed with Maya Kulenovic's faces. He could sit in front of the monitor for hours, admiring them as if desperate to add his own face to the canvases.
Art kept us entertained for a couple of months. We decided to wander downtown. We visited indie painters at humble sidewalk galleries, hunting for a pearl to inspire us, but only found pebbles, flat landscapes, cheap knock-offs of more talented people's styles. Instead of artists, we found mercenaries willing to pawn off their battered canvases for spare change or a mayo sandwich. Phonies.
Daniel had the bright idea that we could paint our own singular reality. But the vision we share is too gray; even demons lose their charm under our amateur hands. I realized it the second I held the brush and slashed the paper with a jagged black stroke—it wasn't for me. Daniel said we'd have better luck painting houses; at least that way we'd score some cash to keep THE SEARCH (with capital letters) going a bit longer.
At dusk, we dragged the stereo down to the banks of the Mississippi. We lay back in the sand with the boombox between us. Daniel cranked the volume all the way up, and we let the soundwaves pound until we felt them in our marrow. It's hard to appreciate music when it never roars hard and heavy enough to move you. We explored beyond the most abrasive rock and metal; Daniel downloaded bootlegs of funeral dirges from archaic religions, or tracks trying to mimic cosmic, profane hymns in the name of the darkest fantasy. It was never enough.
"The only song that'll ever satisfy us is the one that ends the Earth," I declared, looking at Daniel. I didn't need an answer; I knew by sheer inertia that he agreed.
Daniel's eyes stay hidden beneath a tangle of brown hair. He parts his lips, revealing a row of teeth whose perfection disturbs me, so out of place on such a sickly face. But the gap reminds me that, just like me, he's missing pieces.
I crave to be whole someday.