writing adventure 34- Home

     "Hey," he said tentatively as he stood in front of the small crowd. "My name is Raymond." He coughed, and wrung his hands together.

     "Hello, Raymond."

     The fact that they were so rehearsed, so perfect as to say that line together frightened him, and he contemplated bolting. Just run, his body was telling him. Just run and get the Hell out of this place.

     He sat down instead. "Would you like to tell us why you're here, Raymond?"

     "Oh," he said, and struggled back out of the chair again. The nervous sweat running down his neck made it hard to concentrate, and the silence around him felt heavy in the air. He surveyed the small circle that seemed to get closer and farther away at the same time. There were three women and five men. None of them looked like anyone he would remember. They weren't dirty, or openly sad. They were just people. They were just strangers. He sighed, the room spinning from his panic. He closed his eyes, and the group took notice without judging, but to Raymond the air was still thick and uncomfortable. "There's this window," he said, and almost laughed at the trivial fact. The corners of his mouth twitched upward. "It's in my room, and it's this really big window, and it reminds me of this girl." Raymond's mouth stopped twitching. "This damn girl," he whispered, but still his eyes didn't open. The group waited for him to continue.

     "We were seniors in college together. I mean, we went to the same college all four years, but we met senior year. She was dating my best friend at the time. God, she was pretty. I never thought she was sexy, or hot, or anything like that, but she was pretty. She had this light brown hair that was super short, and she used to giggle at everything Eric said. Eric was my friend, by the way." His arms waved around as he told his story, but his eyes never opened. He could see it, could see her, and Eric, and late nights in computer labs.

     "Anyway," he continued, "I knew her for like three months before Eric dumped her. Said she didn't care, or something. We were seniors, and he wanted someone serious that he could marry. I never heard her side of the story, though. By that point, we were already friends, but she didn't talk about Eric anymore. I don't know if it was because Eric was right or really wrong, but I was okay with her boundaries." Raymond backed up just a little too much, and felt the plastic chair dig into his leg. He focused on the insignificant annoyance on his leg for a second before moving.

     "It had been two weeks after the break-up when she got into a car accident, right outside her dorm. After that, she wasn't pretty. I mean, she wasn't scarred or anything like that, but she wasn't the same girl. She would just sit around, staring off in the distance. Eric wasn't the same, either. Maybe seeing her like that made him realize what he could never get back, or maybe he just evolved away from me. From us. Either way, Eric was out of there." Raymond sighed again. He heard sniffles from the crowd, and resisted opening his eyes.

     "But I wasn't," he said, and his voice cracked just a small amount. "I wasn't gone. I tried so hard to get her back. We moved in together, I protected her as best I could. Every time we went out, she would look at me with these vacant eyes, this vacant heart, and she would tell me 'You should party more, Raymond.' I never drank, because someone had to keep everyone off of her, you know? She was so gone all the time, someone had to stay in the moment." The sniffling turned to cries, and his voice got louder, the tears coming down his own cheeks as well.

     "She only ever did two things: party, and stare. The partying was usually done at this tiny hole in the wall, and the staring was usually done right out my window. I used to force her to come into my room for human interaction, but she would just stare out that window."

     "Well," he added, bitterly, "she left two nights ago, and now I can't stop staring at that fucking window, either, and I hate it. And I really want to hate her too, and I think I did for a time, because who was she to define my life by what she turned into?"

     Raymond heard the screech of a chair against linoleum, and quickly opened his eyes. The girl across from him was staring straight through him, straight to his heart, and suddenly the group knew.

     "But I don't hate her," Raymond whispered, and took a step forward. "I don't hate her. I just want her home."

     The girl blinked and remembered where she was. Mascara running, she hugged herself and sat back down. "I'm trying to be better. I'm trying to be what you remember," she said to him, and the rest of the group sat in awe of the exchange between them.

     "I'm glad," Raymond said, and took another slow step, afraid she would bolt like he was thinking of doing. "But you don't have to do it without me. I'm trying too."

     "I know," she said.

     "Come home, Maya."

     Maya looked up at him, and he saw the eyes of a girl that had died six months ago in a car accident, before she got addicted to the pills that gave her relief from that trauma, before she forgot the world around her.

     Raymond looked back at her, and all she saw was home.