At a Distance

He moved here from the Quad Cities over the summer, and today is his first day at school. She does not yet know his name, but she’s seen him around town a few times, his forehead damp with the summer heat as he peddled by. He was always headed confidently in some direction.
But not today.
Today he looks awkward and out of place. He does not appear to have made any friends over the few hot months between his old life and this new one. This speaks more of the others than it does of him. There is not much room for someone like him here. He reads Voltaire and Rand; he writes in his spare time; he is on intimate terms with the record store. There is a pattern to follow here, a form to adhere to, and he’s breaking it. It makes them squirm in their trendy shirts and shiny new shoes.
It’s lunch, and rather than seeking a group to sit with he instead chose to sit alone at a corner table. She thinks of going to sit with him, but hesitates. He’s leaning back in his chair, relaxed, but the fingers of his left hand are drumming rapidly against his knee underneath the table. No food sits before him, just a notebook. He looks ready to stand and leave, but before he can a group finds him, and fills the hard plastic chairs around him. They are drawn to him like children might be to a rare insect- intrigued, terrified and ready to squash it at a moment’s notice. He forces out a smile, a pained one, to satiate the jovial faces that surround him.
She snaps her head back to the incessant chatter at her own table when he catches her eye through a stray lock of his matte brown hair. The look is subtle, but accusing. She looks back up after a moment, and he’s still looking at her. A weak smile turns up the corners of her mouth and to her surprise he returns the gesture before turning his attention back to the faces around him.
His shoulders don’t sag beneath the weight of empty conversation as she thought they might, as she knows her own would. No. Instead, in the midst of his discomfort, he is strong - almost forcibly so. He laughs, but keeps his arms crossed. He answers their probing questions, but keeps his voice steady. He smiles, but doesn’t engage any further. She will come to learn that it is his fear of weakness that keeps him so guarded. He hates sympathy. He relishes playing the role of the misfit, but he cannot tolerate the pity that succeeds weakness. She had made that fatal mistake once, when she told him later that she felt bad about ignoring him that first day. They had been sitting on the bridge near the edge of town. The sky had just begun to melt together into a sea of pinks and yellows when she wondered onto the subject.
“I still feel bad about not talking to you sooner. I mean, you must have felt so lonely. You didn’t look like it, but I knew you had to have felt it anyway. Everyone judging you and talking about you…must have been hard,” she had recalled.
“I would rather be alone than with them, it’s a choice, so save your sympathy.” His voice was even, but it was laced with irritation. He stood to leave, but he paused to look down at her for a moment.
“And you really need to stop worrying about what people think. Have a day where you don’t give a shit, it’d be good for you.”
Four years have passed since that first day. Now she sits next to him on the last day. They are pressed close together, their knees making soft contact, just the coarse polyester of the graduation gowns separating them. He sits next to her now as a companion. Though, when she stops to think about it, he never actually used the word friend. But they had a close relationship nonetheless. Still, in spite of their closeness, there is a distance. As the end of this day leads to a host of others, they will drift apart. He acquired a job at a nearby factory, ignoring the dozens of colleges that had extended their invitation. She chose to attend college a few hours away, and leave him reluctantly behind in the mediocrity of this small town.

He’s sitting next to her, a look of casual uncertainty about his face. He’s relaxed today, in opposition to her own nervous anticipation. He hasn’t bothered to put his cap on yet, he says it looks stupid. He asks her if she wants to blow the whole thing off and go have a smoke.
“I don’t smoke,” she reminds him.
He smiles. “What a shame.”
The ceremony draws to an eventual close, and he heads for the doors, choosing not linger in the sea of celebration spilling into the decorated cafeteria.
“Here,” she says, shoving a book into his calloused hands before he can leave. It’s a paperback of Anthem, his favorite book, wrapped in a bright teal ribbon. She had tied and retied the bow at least three times, until it looked as close to perfect as she could get it.
“Thanks,” he says, wrinkling the bow as he tucks it underneath his arm.
She asks if she can write him. He says sure, but mentions nothing about writing back. She offers her arms to him in a hug and he accepts. In the brief second before he releases her, she thinks how right his arms feel around her. On unsteady legs she steps back from him, giving him up to the greedy darkness beyond the glass doors. An impish grin lights up his face as he walks away.
Green leaves faded to shades of red and orange, and with the cool evening breezes came the start of college. She composed letter upon letter, written upon the splintering wood of her desk, and dropped them into the mailbox with a lingering hope. He never wrote back. What she wouldn’t give for a sheet of his scribbled handwriting or the sound of his rough voice. She still sends him letters occasionally, she doesn’t want to admit defeat, but she’s stopped waiting for an answer.
So, when she catches sight of him from across the street that rainy afternoon she is caught entirely off guard. She is in town to visit a friend for the weekend before returning back to school. As she sees him she misses a step, and comes to an abrupt stop. Rain is blurring his image, but she needs no second glance to know it’s him.
Scruff has taken over his lower jaw, and above it his cheeks have begun to hollow. His shaggy hair is plastered to his head as he stands waiting for the bus; he carries no umbrella. A thin jacket hangs limply from his shoulders, hunched against the pelting drops. His white tee shirt beneath is dirty and stained. Markings of a new tattoo wind their way up from under his shirt and onto his neck. His jeans hang precariously on his hips, with a studded belt doing its best to hold them there. Muscle appears to have given way to bone, and she suspects it has something to do with the lingering sent of smoke that has always surrounded him- even now a cigarette hangs from his mouth. It’s one of the only three things he spends money on: cigarettes, books and music.
His grey eyes are narrowed with his gaze locked straight in front of him. Beneath the dome of her umbrella her face is carefully hidden and he doesn’t appear to notice her. Water is pooling in the cuffs of her pants and seeping through the canvas of her tennis shoes, but she barely notices. Across the street his skin is damp beneath his clothes and she can almost see the drops that cling to his eyelashes and drip down his face.
A couple is standing next to him, their fingers woven together. They huddle under the dull red of their umbrella and murmur to each other contentedly. Looking no more than twenty-three in her bright green rain boots, the woman gently fixes the collar of her lover’s coat. Simple garments shield them from the rain and nothing about them speaks of anything but middle class. But looking at them now, she is jealous. Her gaze flicks back to him, and she wonders if the couple could have ever been them.
“Excuse me ma’am, are you lost?” The voice belongs to an elderly man who has appeared next to her. Deep blue eyes wrinkle in concern beneath the brim of his yellow hat as he peers beneath her umbrella. Standing here in the drizzle of the afternoon has caught the attention of someone, and she is surprised it hasn’t happened sooner. She must look odd staring off across the street.
“No. I’m just, waiting for…someone.” Her voice isn’t as steady as she would like it to be.
“Well shame on the person that’s making you wait out in this rain, not very considerate I’d say.”
She wants to look at the ground and wait for him to leave; she wants to walk away. Instead she forces her eyes to meet his.
“I’m fine.”
The old man’s face is the very picture of doubt, but he relents and continues on down the street muttering something about good sense. She turns her attention back across the street. Her breath catches as she does.
He’s looking at her.
Panic floods her veins and she angles her umbrella so that he can no longer see her. Seconds pass before she peeks out again. He’s back to focusing on something in the distance, no sign of recognition on his face. Relief loosens her limbs, but indignation keeps her heartbeat above normal. Had he forgotten her so easily?
The bus arrives, slinging a spray of muddy water clear up to his knees. Taking one last drag on his cigarette before tossing it to the curb, he walks toward the open door, but as he does so the couple rushes past him and the woman slams her shoulder into his, knocking something from underneath his arm to the ground. Muttered words animate his lips, she’s too far away to hear them, but it is impossible to miss the gesture he offers to the woman with his hand. The woman doesn’t break her stride. Leaning over he gently picks up the object, which she now can see is a book, and gives it a small shake before placing it in his back pocket. She watches as he turns and walks once more to the waiting bus. The title of the book looks familiar, but before she can blink away her sudden tears for a second glance, he is gone.
The foolishness of what she’s doing finally sets in and she resumes walking, but she can’t get the image of him out of her head. Old instinct had told her to cross the street and wrap her arms around his wretched figure, to stop the rain from beating down on him. He wouldn’t have tolerated it of course; he blurred the line between love and pity. Pointless tears run down her pale cheeks; she tries to wipe them away, but can’t keep up. Overwhelmed, she snaps her umbrella shut and lets it hang loosely from her wrist. Rain seeps through the fabric of her clothes and drips from her chin. She welcomes it. For the fifteen minutes it takes to walk to her friend’s house she feels close to him again. As close as they had been on that last day, and just as far away.