Young Writers Society

Maybe this was all Leigh’s fault? I thought. She is the one who agreed to let me stay there. If she just would have said no to my mom that whole mess wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t know her true feelings about me and we could just continue to dislike each other in a polite manner.

“Damn,” I whispered. The rain had completely gone quiet by now and the only sound I could hear was the clock in the kitchen ticking away. Tick, tick, tick, it bothered, but the rest of the house rang in an even louder silence.

What the hell was wrong with me? Why did I make everyone’s lives so miserable? I really couldn’t understand. I tried my best to stay out of everyone’s lives, I knew that everything would be a whole lot better without me, but it seemed no matter how much I tried to get out, they just pulled me back in. Like Cody Maccabee. I tried to tell him his girlfriend was mischievous and get out of it, but he had to just come back and take it all out on me. And Leigh too. I just tried locking myself in my room so she wouldn’t have to see my face, but the one time I do come down, she rants on about how horrid I am.

And mom too. I did everything I could to keep my life away from hers, so she’d never get hurt, but then she went and interfered and saw right through my disguise. She may not have, but it sure felt like she did. It felt like she broke the glass in front of me, all of it shattering onto my skin. Puncturing and slicing. I ran my hands over my arms feeling the imaginary gashes. The eerie sensation that once floated around me had moved to inside of me. I could feel it streaming through my veins and running through the blood inside of me.

“Damn, damn, damn!” I stood up, flustered by the unreal feelings. I tried my best to hold back my tiny screams, but in place of them, I felt tears forming in my eyes. I wiped them from my cheek and became angry. “Why am I so stupid? Crying for such a dumb reason is shameful.”

But, what did I care? Why should I care if it was shameful or not? It’s not like I was some perfect child trying to live up to anything greater. I was just a failure at life, sliding through the cracks and occasionally spilling over. I didn’t have much of a meaning and I didn’t think I ever would.

“Who cares? Who cares?” I said aloud. At that moment life meant nothing to me. I realized I could do whatever I wanted because it was all going to end soon anyways. I had the attitude of If I’m going to die, let it be now and if not, screw it. Everything in the world had no meaning if I was just going to let everyone I knew down and die anyways.

If I was going to let everyone down, then let it be now.

I stared into the little glass sitting contently on the counter. The small glass didn’t mean to say such big words, but its twisted connotation left it speechless with only its contents to do the talking. Every time someone saw the little glass they immediately thought party or going crazy. But that didn’t explain the glass at all. It only explained the drug inside of it.

Did no one ever think to pour such deadly ingredients into a different glass or was this one chosen for its minute size? Its directness to the portions it could hold, giving you a limit. Were those the reasons for the tiny glass because, it didn’t allow its substance to go past the size of the glass? Well then, that thought was a totally waste. It didn’t matter what the assumed limit was, it only mattered how many times it was filled up.

“Why do you mock me, you stupid cup,” I asked the glass in front of me. Its response didn’t please me, so in return I gave it a sour look. “What about you Mr. Vodka? Are you mocking me?”

I grabbed the bottle after a few failed attempts and brought it close up to my face. I looked through the fuzzy glass and at the blue letters dimly lit by the one overhead light above me.

“Vodka, huh? You know, you suck. But, for some reason, I love you. Do you love me? Quit mocking me!” I said quickly tripping over every other word.

Becoming drunk wasn’t my goal for that night at all. I don’t even think I was drunk. I’d only had two little glasses. But I did sit there, staring at the intimidating cup longer than I should have.

I was sneaking through Leigh’s cabinets looking for disappointment food when I came across a secret stash. I didn’t quite know what I was thinking besides my new screw life attitude. And I guess that’s what told me to take the bottle, the thought that I could do anything and no one would care or try to stop me. I think maybe my loopy persona was just a psychological effect. I was probably just drunk off of wanting to be drunk. If I were truly tipsy, I would not have remembered that night at all.

“Hey, you know what. I can’t believe my mom left without me. Goddamn, I know I have school and stuff, but seriously? I’m her only child. The least she could have done was given me some money and left me at home. Then at least I could have suffered in fucking solitude. And, just to my luck, she leaves in November, just when the rain starts to go all crazy and a bunch of storms shoot in from whom knows where! Oh, and wait this gets better. Then she leaves me with my stupid, airheaded cousin Leigh. You know Leigh, the chick who has you stuffed away in the back of the spicy chips. Yeah, I hate her too,” I complained to the almost empty bottle. I frowned when the bottle said nothing, but really, what was I expecting it to say? “You are such an asshole! But it’s okay. No one wants to listen to me so why am I expecting you to?”

I sighed, my breath letting out a bitter smell. I looked out the huge window in the back of the kitchen. Outside the window I could see nothing. The moon was shrouded by the rainclouds above, but far in the distance there was a bright white light, obviously artificial. No star in the world could burn that bright or be that close even to a tipsy person.

I looked back at my vodka bottle with concern. “I wonder what’s out there, little dude?” I asked idiotically. “Maybe, maybe there are aliens! Oh my God, oh my God, we’re going to die! We have to go check this out!”

I poured another full tiny glass of vodka and swung it back at fast as possible. The tingles seized my brain with such an overwhelming sensation I could have sworn I was making love.

I ran with the bottle to the back door I’d noticed when Leigh gave me a tour around the house. “I knew this exit would come in handy!” I shoved on some of Leigh’s shoes that were sitting at the foot of the door and wrapped a grey scarf, that hanging was from a knob, around my neck. I cracked the door only slightly and shimmied through with only the sounds of a few hiccups and slurs.

The first thing I felt was the cold pinching my ears and saw only the light I was headed too. Nothing else could have mattered nor did it.

When I finally approached the light, I learned that it wasn’t aliens. It was just a couple tall stadium lights shining through the deepest hours of the night. But I didn’t turn back. I needed to get to those light. I felt the obligation to figure out what kind of mysterious thing they were shining for. Stadium lights couldn’t just be on in the middle of the night for nothing.

The closer I got, I more I could see. When I finally reached a high wooden fence, the stadium lights were directly overhead.

“We’re here, little dude! We made it,” I announced to my bottle in glee. It was time to celebrate. I popped the lid open and soaked up the last drops of vodka from the bottom of the bottle, not leaving anything behind. If only Leigh could see me now, I thought.

“Ah,” I moaned throwing the bottle down into the grass. “Let- Let’s g-go,”

I jammed my foot into a low whole in the fence and flung myself up. I grabbed ahold of the sharp edge and lifted one of my legs over. That took me a few times, but when I finally had a leg over I dropped myself to the ground of the other side, hitting hard onto the wet grass.

“Oh shit!” I hissed, trying to hold my words in. I didn’t succeed considering the curses that followed under my breath. I got up with my right arm feeling numb, but I rolled it around until I heard a snap, knowing it was back in place. It probably hurt more then I led to believe, but that much, I can’t recall.

When I finally got a grasp on my bearing, I looked around and found a treasure. It was an overgrown baseball diamond. The grass was tall and the white chalk had almost completely disappeared for good. The fence behind home plate was rusted and, in some parts, broken. The pitcher’s mound was flattened and the bases had been stolen and long gone by now. But the stadium lights beamed from above only lighting the field making up what I could see around me.

“Whoa,” I exhaled, taking in my surroundings. I tried walking but ended up limping all the way to the dugout where I sat down and just looked around.

The bench was cracked and damp from the rain. It looked like no one had used or even been around this field for years. Almost the entire field was lit up by the huge lights except for one part of the field, which lay casted in shadows. But in the shadows, I thought I saw something move.

I stood up flustered by the movement from far away. It could have been a coyote or some other animal, but it looked much too tall for that. It was obviously a person, but what could another person be doing out on an empty, abandoned baseball diamond?

And I think that question got the better of me because I started to walk toward it. Out of utter idiotic urges, I aimed myself towards the shadow and crept up on it. I didn’t go all the way though. I stayed within the light of the diamond, but the person was still so far away. I don’t know why I wanted to see them so badly, but it seemed like that was all that mattered at the time. It could have been some crazy murderer wielding an axe and I think, maybe, I would have been just fine with that. So I did what any other drunken teenager would probably do.

“Hey!” I yelled out, the sound of my voice scaring me. “Hey, you out there!”

The figure stumbled on itself, seeming to lose balance and drop something. But they quickly regained their posture and turned their body towards me. A weird feeling bubbled in my stomach when whoever was there started coming toward me. I can’t remember if it was a ridiculous sense of fear or the vodka fizzing in in my stomach and threatening to come back the way it came, but whatever it was choked my stomach and sent me to the ground. I fell back on my bottom, hitting the cold wet grass. The person moved closer and closer and closer, and before I could even think about getting back up to my feet they were only feet away from me, their face still casted in shadows.

“Hey,” a friendly voice said from the shadows. The person bent down, lending out their hand and it was then I could see their face. The mysterious shadow person was a boy.

“Are you okay?” he asked with sincere concern.

“I- I’m, yes. Yes, I am, fine. I’m okay,” I stuttered, trying to push myself up off the ground. It was a failed attempt considering I went plummeting down to the ground once again, but this time the boy caught me.

“Oh jeez, are you sure you’re cool?” he asked again trying to conceal his chuckles. I bet I looked like an idiot, but all I could do was stare at him. He wasn’t what I’d expected to come out of the shadows in the dead of night. He was just a sandy, choppy-haired guy that looked around my age. He was wearing a navy blue sweatshirt and jeans with wet spots on the knees. His shoes were old and worn held together by a curling Velcro instead of laces. His eyes looked tired, dropping down at the very edges, but his lips were full and displayed a selfless side grin.

“Hey, can you hear me?” he asked when I hadn’t moved and put almost all of my weight on him. He sniffed the air and a worried look drained the color from his face. “Okay, I’m just going to lay you down.”

“Alright,” I said with a smile. I don’t know why I did that. There was no need to impress the person who held your drunken body.

He picked me up fully in his arms as I lay limp and walked us to where there was more light. He set me down carefully on the grass while I stared at him some more. He had a couple light freckles on top of his nose and his eyes were a deep chocolate brown. His arms felt skinny and boney and his face was thin as well which made me feel bad about making him hold me. He felt like he could break so easily.

After setting me down, he sat down next to me, crisscrossed, and looked over me. I just kept on switching back and forth from staring straight up and right into his eyes. My eyes just kept randomly focusing on different things in the distance.

“You know, you probably don’t know what I’m saying, because you’re drunk and all, but you really couldn’t have come at a better time,” he whispered, looking into my eyes.

“What?” I managed to say out loud, my voice cracking. “Who said I was, uh, drunk?”

I sat up, almost slamming our heads together, but he backed up just in time.

“Sorry, I just kind of assumed you were ‘cause, well. You kind of smell, a lot,” he strained to say. I started to laugh insanely at that point. That definitely did not help prove my point that I wasn’t drunk.

“That’s okay,” I said between giggles. “Alright, okay, I’m drunk. I’ll admit it, but just because it’s the middle of the night and I’m in a baseball diamond and this is all probably a dream!”

He looked at me mystified. “I don’t think this is really a dream, but- Oh! Are you okay?”

“What?” I said. He lightly skimmed over the scar on my forehead left there from my incident with Cody Maccabee.

“Did you fall or something? I mean, I guess I can see that happening,” he shrugged.

“No, no, no,” I shook his hand off my head and sat up, picking at the scab. “Well, I guess I did fall, but, it’s kind of a long story.” I stupidly extended my words as I said this.

“Oh,” he breathed, looking out into the shadows where he came from. “Okay.”

We sat in what should have been an awkward silence, but ended up actually quite comfortable, while I thought about the previous day.

“Why are these lights on? It’s so late at night,” I asked him, with frank curiosity. It did seem strange that an abandoned baseball field’s lights would even be working, let alone, on.

He looked up towards the bright lights as a soothing grin progressed across his face. “Heh, it’s actually three in the morning. But, to tell you the truth about the lights, I really don’t know. They’ve been on ever since I can remember really.”

I was surprised. It was much later than I thought, but I didn’t let that really get to me. I liked sitting there with him. It was just so comfortable. “So you’ve been coming h-here for a while, huh?” I pried.

“Mm, I guess you could say that. But I know I’ve never seen you around here, so I have a feeling you don’t come here often. Well, sober at least,” he said the last part chuckling.

“Ha, you’re funny!” I said with an obnoxious tone. “I don’t really- don’t even know how I got here. I just kind of-”

“Followed the lights in the distance?” he cut in, merrily.

I looked at him with estranged eyes, if I were only a little more drunk, I would have come to the conclusion that he was reading my mind. “How’d you know?”

“Just a good guess maybe,” he shrugged once again.

“You know, for a random guy who hangs out in baseball diamonds at three in the morning, you’re a pretty cool guy,” I said a bit too loudly, scooting in closer to him.

“Um, thanks. For a drunken chick who wanders around following lights, you’re pretty interesting yourself,” he said uneasily. “If you don’t mind me asking, why are you drunk anyways?”

“Ugh,” I hung my head down shamefully. “It’s all my stupid, prissy cousin’s fault!”

“How so?”

“Well, she just really hates me is all. And right now I’m being forced to live with her, and as you can see, it isn’t going well. She and her husband are just so p-perfect, it’s like they have nothing else to do but sparkle, look pretty, and call me a demon!” I shouted angrily. “I just really hate the world right now, you know. I feel like everyone just doesn’t like me. I just want to disappear and make everyone’s life go back to the shiny cover-up they had on before I came meddling in without even trying.”

I don’t know why people have such an easy time telling strangers things rather than someone you’ve known for your whole life. It’s almost a natural thing to seek comfort in someone who won’t judge you by your past because they simply don’t know it. This rule seems to even apply to drunken me.

“I bet she doesn’t hate you. Someone can never really hate their own family-”

“No, but she does. I heard it myself: ‘She is the most selfish little demon! She’s just a bitter little girl who doesn’t even have a life!’ She hates me and I just don’t want to deal with her for the next two months! I just don’t want to deal with the world right now.”

He looked at me with solemn eyes, like he knew exactly what was going on.

“I- I just feel like, I don’t want to be on this earth right now. I feel like taking a freaking gun to my head and blowing the brains out of myself-”

“Now why would you want to do that!” he said over me, it wasn’t a question. “Come on, she can’t hate you that much. I know you feel like the worlds against you right now, but I can promise you, I’m not against you. I don’t even know you and I’m on your side even if it’s just you and me against the world.”

I was stunned by what he said. It was like he read a script from the back of my head again and said everything I ever wanted to hear someone say to me. But his perfect dialogue couldn’t faze me completely. “Thanks, but you don’t understand,” I said with a muffled hiccup.

“Maybe I don’t understand, but I can.”

I couldn’t believe a word I was hearing, whether it be because my imagination or all the vodka fumes swirling in my head.

“If you let me, I can understand. I think I kind of know what you’re feeling because I feel the same way. You feel like everything around you is balanced on your head again and it’s all about to drop. You’re worried about it all spilling out on the floor and hearing all the breaking and crashing, but at the same time, it’s bound to happen. You feel like it all isn’t worth it if it’s all going to come falling down sooner or later. Why worry about how much crap you pile on top of your head when it’ll all come crashing down whenever it feels like it?”

I couldn’t utter a word.

“Okay, maybe that’s not how you feel, but its how I feel. Heh, I don’t know why I just told you that. I’m kind of just in a screw life mood at the moment. Sorry to-”

“No,” I cut him off quickly. “That- that’s just . . . that’s exactly what I feel.”

He let out the apparent breath he was holding in relief. He was obviously getting nervous because of what he said. “You do?”

“Yes- yes! I just feel like, life is just a joke! I feel like I should just screw my life over as much as I can and when it ends, it’ll end,” I mumbled out the last part.

“Yeah, I just-” he choked on his words. He had the oddest expression on his face, almost like he just realized something. He looked at his hands and smiled softly.

“I don’t know why I’m doing this. You’re drunk!” he exclaimed. He laughed with pity as he shook his head back and forth. “You probably wouldn’t even remember any of this stuff when you wake up in the morning. Why am I doing this? I’m such an idiot.”

The disappointment in his eyes made me miserable. The look in his face was a horrible look of denial and gloom. He probably thought I was just a drunken teenage girl, over exaggerating on her feelings about trivial life. Which I was, in a way, but those were my true feelings! He described everything I was going through so perfectly, I couldn’t just let him sit there in sorrow of, what he thought, were wasted feelings.

“No, no, I promise I won’t be drunk anymore! I didn’t mean to,” I grabbed ahold of his shoulders trying to convince him I was going to remember him, but his frightened expression hurt me. I didn’t know what I was doing, so I left my mark in the first way that came to mind. I kissed him.

I pulled the collar of his sweatshirt up towards me and locked our lips together. I wrapped my arms even tighter around him feeling through his warm hair. His lips were chapped and tasted like metal but I didn’t care. I was not about to let the first person who felt the same way as me get away from me that quickly.

He didn’t wrap his arms around me or kiss me back. He just sat crisscrossed in the grass letting me do as I pleased. I kissed him and kissed him, squeezing him tighter and closer to me every time. I felt myself shiver and my ears burn from all the blood rushing to them. And when I finally let go, he sat there looking up at me in silence with a startled expression.

“I won’t forget what you said, I promise! I’m not that drunk, I just got drunk to get rid of those dumb feelings from before! I swear, I’ll remember every word, I can’t forget now! I’m not drunk at all, I swear,” I trembled over every word that came out of my mouth some not even making sense. Everything I said shook and so did my hands.

He looked at me for the longest time before his smile grew back on his face. I was filled with relief when he tried to hold his laughs in. “You know kissing someone to make sure you remember them is quite a drunken thing to do.”

I sunk into him, defeated.

“But, that’s okay. Now, I’ll have to remember you too,” his smile was so friendly and relaxed. I couldn’t help but feel welcomed to just touch him and hold onto his skinny shoulders for support.

“I think it’s time I get you home,” he said stretching out his arms, lifting me off from on top of him.

“Home? But, why?” I said nervously.

“Because I have a feeling you’re going to either crash any minute or your cousin or whoever is going to wake up and find you missing,” he laughed.

I frowned heavily. I didn’t want to leave, but I think he was going to be right about the crashing thing. “Alright, but you don’t have to take me home. I’m perfectly fine,” I said picking myself up off the ground in a chaotic rush. “See?”

“Hmm, I really don’t think I should just let you go off alone while you’re like, um, this.” He was obviously trying to avoid the fact I was tipsy to save himself from another one of my make out freak-outs.

“I’ll be fine, I promise.”

He gave me a concerned look, but he let me have my way. “Fine, it was cool meeting you. Maybe I’ll see you later?”

“You can count on it,” I answered. But before I had finished my sentence, he’d already begun running off.

I turned around, wobbling, about to head off back over the fence when I realized something. I never got his name! I spun myself back around to hurry and yell out my question, but he was long gone into the shadows of the early morning darkness. I wish I’d at least learned his name because I couldn’t stop thinking about what it might have been all the way back to Leigh’s.

I hopped the fence, almost killing myself again and didn’t make it back to the house until almost five in the morning. And when I did finally get home, I didn’t even make it to the stairs. I fell down on the living room couch in my cold, wet sweatshirt and fell fast asleep with only three things on my mind.

The boy in the baseball diamond, his name, and how I hoped it wouldn’t be raining when I woke up.