Final Year of Solitude: Ch. 2 (October)

Writing this was tough. Warning: naughty language and references to illegal substances (teens deal with this stuff in real life anyways).

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Final Year of Solitude

Part 2 - October

It was warm and dry all week, giving me an awesome chance to hit the tennis courts. I completely forgot Samson and his pledge to radically change himself into a more likeable, more approachable, more social person. You could imagine my surprise seeing him walk into school wearing brand new Abercrombie and Fitch clothes with popped collars and torn, thready jeans. He strolled up to the cafeteria table my group and I were sitting at, looked right at me and said, “Hey Santiago, what’s up with it?”

What the fuck? “Yeah, Sam … new haircut?”

“Shit no, I’m just trying a new style, you know, something fresh for senior year.”

Shit no? Okay, it’s only been five seconds with the new, “improved” Sam and he was already more obnoxious than my eleven-year-old, autistic neighbor who yells, “Sacagawea, Sacagawea, Sacagawea!” from his backyard every night.

“Hey Santiago, guess what? I was at McDonald’s this morning trying to get some breakfast and I saw this worker guy who dropped my cup onto the dirty-ass floor and picked it up and went along and gave it to me.”

I nodded, while he looked at me. He continued staring, so I nodded harder, demonstrating that I listened to every word that he said.

“Isn’t that sick?” he asked.

“Oh. Oh, yeah, that’s very disgusting.” Now it’s my turn: “So who was there with you? Did he see it as well?”

“No, I went there alone.”

I smiled. “I see, alone. So that means you ate there alone as well?”

He caught my drift. “Yeah Santiago, I ate my McMuffin alone. So what?” He was pissed now. Good.

I smiled even more. “Nothing,” I replied, “just curious, that’s all.”

He was silent for a while. I swiveled around my seat to chat with my friends, leaving Samson alone at the very edge of the long table. He didn’t move until the PA politely directed us to head for first period. Sam and I walked toward Advanced Physics, an awkward stroll through crowded halls as students chaotically scrambled for their classes like disoriented bees.

“There’s so many goddamned freshmen this year,” I noted.

Samson didn’t say anything. I smirked, I knew he’d go back to his old, mute ways (which I preferred instead of that irritating, new pain-in-the-ass Sam). But I was surprised by Sam’s second trick of the day. He stepped ahead of me and blocked the door to Physics.

“What are you doing this Halloween?” he asked.

“Why you ask?”

He shrugged. “Wondering if you want to do something that night.”

“Well if you want to do something, all you got to do is ask.”

“May I hang out with you this Halloween?”

I grinned at the desperate prick. “Then you have to suck my dick,” I whispered.

“Shit no dude! What the fuck?”

I shrugged. “Okay, I guess you don’t want to hang out then--”

“Dude, I’m not doing that.”

“Fine.” I maneuvered around him and went to class.

Mr. Stegner’s lecture on the conservation of momentum was unusually not very boring today. Maybe that was because I wasn’t paying attention to him at all, he was just background music for the real show: Samson’s suffering. I watched Sam sit in his chair ahead of me, propping his head up on his hands, occasionally rubbing his eyes. I knew he was feeling lonelier than ever, and that put me in a very good mood for the rest day.

I forgot all about that incident for the rest of the month, for Samson’s attempts at socializing preoccupied my attention and provided me with daily amusement. The weather got colder, windier, cloudier, darker, signifying the arrival of autumn, worsening as Sam became more desperate. He tried talking to others at our table during lunch, but he had a talent of killing his own conversations. He had no similar interests as anyone else and had nothing to talk about except for the weather: “It’s so dark outside,” “Can you believe this rain,” “Damn it’s chilly outside,” “This sucks, don’t you think so?” And everyone would nod, wishing that this preppy poser would quit bitching and shut the hell up.

He’s not stupid, he gets it. Once he figured out that he was being incredibly annoying, he shuts up for the rest of the day, watching people and thinking about what he needed to improve on or what he should talk about the next day (which usually turned out to be a dull and whiney topic as well).

On Halloween Day, right when school ended, Samson was waiting for me by my Honda at the student parking lot. He must’ve frozen his ass off standing in the cruel October wind.

“Can I hang with you today?” he asked.

What a persistent little bastard, but you had to give him kudos though. “Okay, you want to hang out? I’ll pick you up at midnight.” I didn’t give him an outrageous deal this time. To tell the truth I was quite impressed, he did have balls after all. He really was following through with his personal metamorphosis; he might not give up on this.

Normally, I would flake out and ditch this sucker, but on Halloween night, three of my friends and I drove to his house. We let him into the Honda and we drove off. We were blazed and a little giddy, so we headed up to our school with five cartons of eggs and jumbo packages of cheap toilet paper. We wondered around the perimeter of the building to find a suitable gutter for us to climb up onto the roof.

It was blacker than Simon Cowell’s heart up there; every step felt like walking on water, because you didn’t know when you’d fall into the abyss. We got started on decorating our beloved Harrisburg High School. Skylights were our canvas, egg yokes our paint, but we didn’t need brushes. Samson stood there watching us, but it didn’t take much convincing to get him to join (we’d probably could’ve gotten him to bomb the U.S. Treasury if we promised to invite him to our birthday parties).

Our masterpiece was almost complete when Sam walked over to the other side of the building to take a piss. That was when we noticed the school night watch climbing up a ladder and onto the roof.

“Oh, fuck,” Owen hissed.

We dropped our stuff and backed away. We stealthily slid down onto the parking lot and got back into my car. It started raining hard.

“Shit, shit, shit. Go, Santiago! Go!”

My customized muffler roared as I sped us out of there. We drifted a little bit as we turned into the main road, with the rear tires burning black arcs onto the asphalt.

We went an entire mile without noticing that we were missing one man, we were far too busy laughing and hollering into the wet Pennsylvanian night.