Royal Drinks and Marks

Before: We would chase each other in a vast, open field and catch dragonflies one by one, trying to make them fight each other, Royal in a plastic and straw in our hands, raised up corners of our lips splashing the blades of grass green and the dirt-caked black, navy blue and white uniforms we used to fit in with something I used to call 'colors of an invisible rainbow'. You would leave your watermark on the land with open arms.

You'd tell me about Smurfs. Tell me about how you were so interested in them. I couldn't tell you I was only there to listen about Smurfs because I liked you.

You'd raise up your plastic with Royal flowing inside, and proclaim you were Papa Smurf. I wanted to become Smurfette.

You said she should be smurfette. And I should be another smurf.

We'd walk along the corners of our adolescence-painted gym and I'd ask you repeatedly about who you liked.

Amongst the basketball court and the people in now seemingly unironed clothes and the sun-drenched bleachers and the youth-trampled skies, you would answer after several persuasions.

You would shrug, but you would answer: her.

"Oh, okay," I would reply in between miniscule gasps. I would mentally feel my chest if there was still something there.

You would always answer 'her', and on the last day I got to see you set foot on our school, still with your Royal close to you, you told me again that it was her. But now there was something else underneath that wrinkly polo and sketchy smiles and blue-tinted glasses and usual bed hair.

There was the stench of someone who wanted to leave a mark before he left. There was the stench of someone who wanted to wave his bitter goodbye before leaving for somewhere else. And there was the stench of me shutting up. The stench of me with closed, straight-lined lips, trying to not say I like you out of the blue. Trying to decipher whether I should confess in between the classmate farewells.

The stench of not being able to say that. The stench of watching you leave the classroom, backpack and all, Royal-stained lips and a face that wanted to leave a mark.

I would watch as days went by, seemingly forgetting you. The eyes of the sun would beam down unto your seat as if you were still there. My eyes would furtively switch to your former place in the classroom, to only be greeted by the shadows of our classmates and the dust-speckled chair.

I would trudge along the campus, and visualize our days in every place. The playground where we used to hang out in, hands inside pockets, push pops in our fingertips, the canteen where we used to squeeze into the massive crowd, trying to be patient in line for the bookstore in the corner, the dragonfly field where we would spill dews and squirts of Royal on the grass... And me with you who was hiding behind a wall, stalking her.

I would graduate every single year. I would move on, continue with my life as if the Royal-loving boy hadn't existed. I would smile at the camera each time I went on the stage. I would introduce myself to a whole new group of classmates each first quarter. I would write various stories, putting a cameo of you in every one. I would sometimes daydream inside the class, thinking if I should have told what I needed to tell that time.

I would unfriend you on Facebook because if I wouldn't, I'd get sick of seeing your new, strange face along the news feed. I would unconsciously include your name into a normal conversation with friends. I would ask my old classmates if they remembered the smurf-addicted, petit boy who wanted to leave a mark.

Some would shrug. But most of them nodded furiously.

Because that boy did make a mark on all the corners of our campus. That boy left a mark on hearts and his once chair and on the chalk-smoked blackboards, and on the campus pathway.

Now: the dragonfly field is gone, along with the dragonflies that swayed with it each day, the playground is bulldozed and fed with cement that it became a cafeteria, the once canteen now an unfamiliar building of seniors and college guys, the marks you left fading away like old, crumbling paint, that girl you used to like now only a bubble in my world, the bottles and plastics of Royal, well, they're long gone in my life.

How about you, there in Canada, Mr. Cruz?