This is another story...

Just wrote this, it's quite a bit shorter than the last one. (Can you spot The Dark Knight quote?)



I knew Trisha for three years before I ever made the move and then, even after that, it was all uncommitted. You wanna study at the food court on Saturday? I think I’m going to fail this physics test! I was always so envious of her determination. She would tell me she wasn’t anymore smarter than I am and sometimes she would yell at me about wasted potential, but I would just quote my Meatloaf to her and there’s only so many times that you can say “A wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age,” before someone absolutely forbids him- or herself from baiting you into it again. But she was a friend and a caring one at that, who would push her morals to the breaking points to get me out of a bind. Sometimes it felt bad, lying to her about why I didn’t do my math homework, I fell asleep right after I got home from work, just not used to balancing it all, you know?, or only skimmed three pages of the first chapter of a book we were being tested on, I ordered the book online, it’s in the mail, and once in a while I would nearly come clean. Mid-way through my senior year, it was; when I decided that I wasn’t going to lean on her any longer, and tried to make my own way. This did, however, take its toll, and it got to be where without my three cups of coffee in the morning, I couldn’t let myself drive, even if it was my day for the car pool. My friends, Billy, Sean, Tate, you know the crowd, they were surprisingly understanding, perhaps because of the change in my appearance and mentality. It seemed as if it was every other day someone who I’d never said more than three words to was like, “Damn, Jake, you look like shit,” and I’d say thank you and move on. I brought my grades up, because I was doing schoolwork in my dreams; fighting off numbers with a calculator, reading book reports in front of the class in the nude, and drilling it all into my head. I was becoming more distant, would stand Trisha up on weekends when we were supposed to meet, because any time I was free was spent making up for all the lack of sleep and she got really angry with me this one time, when I totally blew her off in the hallway. So I said that I’d take her to some party or other, don’t really remember what it was, and she got moderately excited, because we were both on the very outskirts of popularity and we’d never actually done anything together, which I’ll admit was a leading reason I relented in the fashion that I did, because I knew it would be the quickest way to get her off my back. And when we were there, I let myself go a little too much, found the right people, got drunk, and we started talking and it was like the first time we’d spoken in two or three weeks, but I wasn’t paying enough attention and so picked a bad moment to make my pass at her, attempting to steal second before I’d even seen a pitch. So she jumped away and said some things I didn’t catch and I called her a prude and gave up on trying to work anything out, even though I’ll admit now, it probably wouldn’t have been too hard. Maybe it was because I felt like my masculinity had somehow been threatened, it would probably have not taken much, since I’d never fucked before, and I felt that everyone thought I was a loser; a part of my relationship with Trisha was that I could place her under me on the social scale, a terrible thing I know, and for a woman like her to deny someone like me? It broke down all the walls I’d built up over the years to deal with life. I think…I think I was still rational enough to ask her if she could get a ride home, but I don’t recall any kind of response from her, all I do remember is gathering up my amigos, getting behind the wheel of (I think it was) Bruce’s car, and driving off into traffic. I don’t even know where I was driving, because the accident occurred nowhere near any of our houses, but rather somewhere out in the country and there wasn’t even another car involved, I just turned a corner going too fast and crashed into…something…I mean, here, my memories, they get vague. I moved out of the house, left my family behind, and moved into a new place that was very small, which didn’t help at all with my claustrophobia. I mean, the new digs, they weren’t terrible, I was closer to my friends, and all these people came by to say hey, which I truly appreciated. So you know, I fell into this new life for a few months, think it was about three, before the epidemic hit. It was kind of an overnight thing, I didn’t hear a thing about it, and all of a sudden, I’m infected-like, all of us in this part of town are coming down with the damn disease. And maybe it’s just a rationalization, but I start off to her house, because I’m afraid I’ll never get to see her again, and she does mean something to me, even if I did give up on us. When I get to her house, it’s dark, I don’t have a watch to check the time, and I walk up to the door and just kind of shove myself against it. When Trisha opens it, she gasps. “Jake?” she says, “But you and your friends are dead!”

And I say, “Brains!”