Blue Raspberry Clouds

“I’m dying.”

“We all are.”

He shakes his thin brown locks that don’t curl no matter how tangled and windswept they get, “You don’t get it.”

“Okay,” I toss loose pebbles down the low crested hill, “explain it to me.”

“You’re helping erosion by doing that,” he comments, gesturing to the small pile of rocks that have accumulated beneath us.

“And you’re getting grass stains on white jeans.”

Normally, he would stand up immediately and request we leave. Normally, he would chatsize me for distracting his train of thought. Normally, he would at least roll his eyes. Not this time.

“I’m dying.”

“So you’ve said.”

“Why don’t you care?”

“You’re not in a hospital, are you?” I ask a rhetorical question, he hates those. “And your hair isn’t falling out. And you’re only sixteen. And you don’t have any preexisting conditions. I’d assume you’re just over-exaggerating.”

“I’m not, I’m serious.”

Instantly, the mood changes. My fingers freeze over a medium sized gray rock with shiny minerals woven in. He doesn’t stop looking at my tennis shoes, blue vans with flowers that are stained with my blood from long ago. I focus on the rising sun. The clouds are lapis, cerulean almost. It’s a picturesque scene, the perfect backdrop for an ugly conversation.

“What happened?”

He doesn’t breathe for a moment, chest huddled in between sharp collarbones.

“I don’t like living.”

I want to laugh, say “welcome to the club,” and hear him join in with an easy smile. I don’t.

“Why not?”

“What’s the point?” He’s got that look in his eye that means he’s upset and has too many thoughts to communicate in one sentence. “Corona will never go away, school starts today, and I don’t wanna go back. The world government is in shambles according to a media that I don’t even know if I can trust anymore. My mom hasn’t spoken to me in two weeks, my dad wants me to be quiet, my sister locks herself in her room and watches Youtube videos she shouldn’t, and I haven’t seen my grandfather in a whole week.”

His voice dies off. With only one real grandparent left, he cherished the last few years they had left together. Being away from his grandfather would shatter him inside.

I expected him to continue, but he stopped.

“I get it.”

“Not really,” he scoffs.

“Stop.” I demand. “You need-”

He makes eye contact with me finally, to yell, “Don’t you dare tell me what I need!”

Tears prickle in my eyes. He almost looks sad before his stiff demeanor returns, guarding his real feelings. The bridge of his nose is crookedly pointed, aristocratic, Jane Austen would say. He’s got dandruff, but nobody would be able to tell in the golden glow of sunrise that makes everything seem perfectly imperfect in the best of ways.

“You’re doing it again,” he mutters, and I know what he means.

“Can’t help it, I have to make everything a story.”

I learned in sixth grade when I fought with my English teacher about proper grammar. She was always wrong, but who was I to argue with a superior? I wrote my own stories about horrific monsters who murdered schoolchildren with hanging participles and Oxford commas that will always be necessary to me. I wrote about Pluto and his strife with Jupiter, his struggle to be recognized. I learned that year to keep things to yourself like torn notebook paper and pencils shoved in Converse with stories flowing out of them. Pencils break at the hands of hatred. I made that up myself.

“Write me a story about a dying boy.”

“Writing about it makes it real. You’re not dying.”

It comes out harsher than intended, his wince proof of my carelessness. My fault.

“My mother denies it too,” he breathes slowly, in and out like afternoon waves, tide reaching back out, leaving me behind, “she’s scared.”

“People are scared of things like that.”

“I’m not afraid.”

He’s right. Never once have I seen him fearful or timid. Stubborn, annoying, practical, meticulous, whatever the opposite of wasteful is are all things I associate with him. But not fear.

“It’s a choice,” I try.

He rejects my attempt, “I’ve run out of choices.”

“When in doubt, pick C,” comedy has never been my strong suit.

“What if I ran out of questions?”

“Then erase a few and try again.”

“What if I ran out of time?”

“You’ve got as much time as you need.”

His shoulders hunch over again, like trees that bend and tug and pull with the wind but never break. Someday, I think he will. Not today.

I don’t have a watch, and my phone is in my bag. I assume it’s close to eight. I think we should leave, but I don’t want to. Neither does he.

“School starts today,” I comment offhandedly, still picking up pebbles but never dropping them.

I hear a sharp sigh, “Yeah, I’ve heard that three hundred times already.”

“Nervous?”

“Always.”

“Me too.”

“I have insomnia.”

“Me too.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“Me either.”

“I can’t do this anymore.”

“Me either,” I express carefully, trying to keep both of us calm, “but the show’s never been bad enough to leave.”

“Sometimes, I want to leave the theater and give someone else my seat,” we talk in metaphors, a habit acquired from a year of writing slam poetry.

“But there’s still popcorn left in the bowl.”

“And the film’s not over,” he adds.

“And throwing away half a blue raspberry slushie is practically blasphemy.”

“And I spent two hours in there already, why would I leave now?”

“Oh, the woes of life,” we smile together, both painful and solemn like a reverend giving a sermon but childish and lopsided like in the excitement of the moment, we forgot to heave the other corner of our mouth up.

The sky is painted in pink hues with orange interlaced. The clouds are outlined in charcoal, and for a minute, I think I could touch them. For a minute, I want to fly. I want to bring him with me, so we could escape together like Icarus. But Icarus fell and something tells me that we would too. Oh, the woes of life.