Chapter Ten

In the pitiful amount of time I've walked this earth, I've known one thing above most; everyone wants to matter to someone.

No one ever wants to feel like they have to walk the earth all on their own. No one wants to think that there's not someone out there wondering about them. It's only human nature that we try and find someone who understands us for who we are.

For me? I've been running lone-wolf ever since the age of six, and haven't really looked back on that. Doesn't mean to say that I'm happy with that choice, just that it's a choice I was coerced into making. Given the opportunity, I like to think that I'd chose happiness over isolation. Then again, I don't necessarily know that for certain.

I learned a long time ago that no one wanted to be friends with kids like me. In the coldest winter, I learned just how brutal life could be; how expectations could be shattered in an instant, and dreams flushed away like some rotting turd in life's toilet bowl.

For as long as my heart has beat out of time for other people, I've known that it beats for boys. There's never really been any secret to who might know, or what might happen to me. At the same time, it's more of an open secret. The only people who seem to care about it are those who are quickly painting my face in splotches of bruised purple, green, and yellow. My own defiance to label myself in front of those only egged them on to do their worst, but it taught me how to be brave in front of people.

Their punishment was nothing compared to the ordeal I felt at home. Nothing could quite compare to that. To know that someone who was supposed to protect you, hated you with all of their guts for just being alive. It panged me to think about how he would feel if I ever told him about me.

And that's the thing, my reservation is not something that hinders me from making friends, but rather something that protects me from the storm. The less people know the better.

I don't know how long after Xavier left that I had started to get up. All I knew was that the night air was so crisp and bitter, and that the sky was clouded out, the remnants of stars being whisked away by rampant light pollution. Every now and again, a stray breeze would ship up, strong enough to turn me in place.

Eventually though, I found myself on the sidewalk, pacing towards home. I didn't even know if I could count my Aunt's place as home, but right now it felt like the closest thing to it.

My sneakers squeaked across the empty sidewalk, as a trail of streetlights led the way home. Every breath painted itself in this fog that made it almost impossible to not want to reach out and scoop it all back. Every now and then, a car would rattle its way through the street, though never staying for long. While it wasn't a particularly bad side of town, most people knew that things could only happen if you gave it the opportunity to happen.

The walk home was long, but it at least gave me some time to reflect on today and just how exciting it had been.

Beat up by high school thugs? Check. Get taken home by someone who doesn't want to throw me around like a human ragdoll? Check. Go to the park to think for a while? Check.

Meet up with someone who doesn't treat me like I treat myself?

Check.

I hated Xavier. I hated how he had just upset the natural balance of how things were supposed to be. I hated how he made me feel like I was actually someone worth stepping in the way for.

He was an idiot with so much bravado that I doubt he would never admit that he was wrong. I guess that makes the two of us then.

Too busy in my own thoughts was I, that I didn't notice the car pull alongside me till it honked its horn. I turned around with utmost caution, expecting to see my dad, slobingly slumped over the wheel as he sometimes was.

But no, it was him.

Like some sort of viral infection that just wouldn't go away, there he was. The light was minimal, but it was just enough to make out some of the more distinguished and sharper features on his face.

"Need a ride?" he asked.

I could have said no. I should have said no.

But nothing was stronger to me right now than the pull of a boy who maybe understood what it was like to wander the earth alone. I didn't know his story, not completely anyway. There were the whispers and rumors that floated about in the air. Xavier Sutton, the boy with the dead mother. Xavier Sutton, the boy who crashed his car into the tree. Xavier Sutton, the boy who stuck up his nose at all of his old friends.

There was pain there for sure. I wasn't entirely certain what that pain was, but right now I didn't care.

The car was a different one than the one he had ridden home in. This car was all edges and straight lines, standing out from all of the curves of the cars driven by moderately happy suburbanites. The heavy hum of the engine was the only noise for miles, and such an entrancing sound it was too. Without even thinking twice about it, I said the only thing that came to my mind.

"Sure."

-----

The car had only started its flow of motion for a few seconds, before Xavier broke the silence in the air. "So where too?"

'Anywhere but here,' was the first thought out of my mind. Where do lost souls even go to when they want to find some peace of mind. Where are we supposed to go to find respite from the harsh day.

"I don't know," came my lethargic reply. "Can we just drive?"

In an instant, I could feel the energy within the car change. It was no longer calm and hopeful, but rather sad, yet connected. Xavier's grip on the steering wheel seemed to tighten slightly, as his chest heaved with a large sigh. I could tell something about him in that moment. He was not the stoic boy he wanted to present himself to be; there was a side of him that felt things so immensely that it must have felt like an unbearable weight on his shoulders.

He said nothing for a moment, only following through with what I told him to do. Without upsetting momentum, Xavier drove through thin narrow streets that I would have never have thought to travel through. The houses felt so familiar, and yet so alien.

"Why are you out so late?" I asked him, being so unused to small talk that the words burned my throat for a moment.

He cocked a brow. "I could ask you the same question," he said with a smile that was equal parts forced, and tragic. Eyes starring off into the distance in front of him, he let go of a breath that filled the whole car up. "I like my night drives. Of course sometimes I have to walk to my car because it's at school." His tone was playfully angry. And yet despite knowing that, I couldn't help but to feel a little guilty.

And then I asked perhaps the only question I needed answered in that moment.

"Why did you do it?" I asked, eyes staring out of the passenger side window into the heavy night. "Most other people would have let it happen, but you didn't."

"Can I be honest?" he replied, his face looking infinitely wearier than it had looked at the park just hours earlier.

"Yeah."

Silence consumed our space. His face was like a brick wall, refusing to give way for much of anything. It was as if he felt that these answers were his to bear. And I could only think how hard it must be to carry the weight of an entire universe on your shoulders.

"I don't fucking know," he replied with a laugh. His eyes were wet, and ready to pool over. Except they never did.

Everyone wants to matter to someone. Maybe in a brief still-shot in time, I mattered to Xavier.