Sawyer

A short story from Unrequited 2

I don't remember meeting Sawyer. It seems as though one day they appeared as though they were there the whole time. Sawyer likes black coffee and Leonard Cohen. Sawyer doesn't care to worry if they'll be remembered, they know they will. Sawyer has chapped lips always. They ask if I want to skip class with them. I don't. I have already missed this class two times this week and I can’t do it again. As I am following them out the big metal doors that separate our highschool with the real world I wonder if they have this effect on everyone they meet.

They are rolling a cigarette and we are discussing bird calls. We are sitting on the cold concrete ledges outside school. I love our talks because they stem from an innate matter of factness. We are by nature creatures of curiosity. This curiosity did not lend itself to judgment, just a pure craving to understand something or someone. They tell me about all their summers spent in northern california watching blue birds dance under the redwoods. The sun is bright and loud and I feel as though I am there. I tell them it sounds beautiful.

They tell me it was lonely. 

“I was a lonely child but I don’t wanna talk about that. I think I've been alone all my life. I think that's why I get so consumed by people. I feel like my own person until I become enamored with someone and then I am a shell. Not just in s strictly romantic sense either, I just by nature obsess.”

I don't ask any further questions.

We are sitting in sixth period when they tell me they bought meth at the park outside school. I tell them I need to focus on this essay and I hear their bag unzip

“Look”

I oblige and there is a small bag with white crystals. It's sitting at the bottom of their backpack and to my surprise they pull it out. Our teacher is only twenty feet away, the risk of it being seen is high and they don't seem to care. I ask them why. They tell me they thought he was kidding. I ask what they are going to do with a bag of meth. 

“Keep it in my underwear drawer.”

Winter comes and I trade school for the looney bin. Two weeks after I stop showing up, Sawyer asks when I'm coming back.

I'm not.

I heard from friends that Sawyer stopped going to school. I ask them why. They tell me they stopped when I stopped,

“Almost as an act of protest”  They grin sheepishly and it takes everything in my power to not kiss them right there.

Sawyer ran away a few times, both up and down the coast. I knew they wouldn’t want to talk about the freight car rides and dirt so I never forced it. But God I wanted to.  

We are sitting on my bed when they ask me about my summers as a kid. This may be the first time  they ask about me but I don't mind. I told them it

was hard. I want to leave it at that but there is no leaving it at that with Sawyer.

They lay on my shoulder and I coo stories of my childhood like spinning wool into golden thread. I run my hands through their hair and wonder how I will make it out of this alive.

I tell them I am trying to find solace in a trailer park in Wisconsin I haven't seen since I was young. I don't remember how old I was and neither does anyone else. I only know I was knee high to a grasshopper. The air smelled both sweet and like american spirits. Don't ask me how both are true but they are. I tell them that dirty blonde was a double entendre. I was sweaty and free. We rode a four wheeler through the woods, somewhere here I learned I have some innate adrenaline junkie need for speed. 

They tell me they have the same desire to run. I want to ask about the freight trains but I don't.

I tell them how the sun slips through anything it can in this memory and the grass is tall and I am happy to be included. My stepmother gets slashed by a branch pretty bad somewhere along that trail. Blood is dripping down her back onto the seat, sticking to her shirt, drying but not quite. The deep red peaking through the whites of the cotton. She can't cry infront of her sisters so they sit in the four wheeler and me and my dad go to comfort her. I don't know that she's ever cried in front of them,  and I don't know why. I wish I could give her a hug and tell her to never go through with it with him, but then again I cant and there is no use trying to change what will always stay in some trailer in Wisconsin.

Sawyer turns to look up at me. I continue.

 I wonder why she couldn’t be upset. I wonder if she knows I can cry in silence because I didn’t want to be too much for her. 

Before I know it I am tearing up. I continue on.

“I wonder if this is something I can find solace for. She has a baby girl. About a year or two old now. She never said goodbye. Wisconsin will always feel like her. Summer will sound like that woman's laugh, the tv on in that goddamn trailer with the AC blasting.”

Before I know it I am mumbling cruelties to myself, shaking my head and biting my nails.

Sawyer sits up and asks why. 

I tell them I wish I could tell a story simply. Keep it on one track. Not twist and turn into a million points.

“Where's the fun in that”

I guess they're right. They ask me if I ever left that trailer. I tell them no. I tell them I fear I never will.

They tell me about the flies in their room. How they don't have the heart to kill them. Sawyer is a humanitarian. So instead they watch as the flies buzz and bump into the glass over and over until they are no longer flying right. Yet they just keep going. Bruised and battered and still trying to get the fuck out. I ask why they don't just open the window.   

They tell me I don't get it, the damage is done. 

We go to smoke. Sawyer’s kicked cigarettes six times this year. I wonder if it will ever stick. We climb out my window and sit on the cold stucco that lines my roof. I can't help it.

 “When did you first run away?” 

 “I was about twelve,” they say, their eyes shifting from the dark dark sky to meeting mine unwavering.

The sky looks like the ocean at night, all consuming.

“My dad and I weren’t doing well, see he went from me to my sister, yelling and stuff,” They arch their back and move to a more upright position, looking back down as if to properly recount, their voice stays fixed. Usually when people look away it is for some reason, “I’ve run away a few times, each start the same, my world becomes all too quiet, he is all I hear until there is nothing else, you see fathers have a funny way of absorbing atmosphere and oxygen until it is it, and then you can’t even hear what their saying and then you’re a goner.”

 They finish the first cigarette of this talk and put a new one in the left corner of their mouth, lisping a little as they find the lighter taking a long drag. Their eyes move back to mine, “So I’d leave, usually about eight hours or so, just go on very long walks, sit and cry and think.” 

“Would you bring anything?” 

“No. When I was in these periods I wouldn’t really know when enough would be enough, I never  thought of packing a knapsack or anything, sometimes I’d leave without shoes.”

 I have never run away. but I have planned it out. When I was fourteen I was in love, nothing was really stopping us from staying in love where we were, but everything just felt too inescapable. I planned on sneaking a few dollars from our parents wallets, once a week for a month. One night we’d take the train down to San Francisco, and become new people, I never did it but I spent months thinking. This is where we differ.

I ask about train hopping. They take a pen from their bag and draw all these symbols on my arm, explaining as they go on. Soon I go from a girl to their canvas, laughing along as the sharpie presses deeper into my skin, leaving red lines where they drew. I blurted out that I want to go with them.

They look at me sweetly as though I know nothing and it's adorable.

I tell them to stop doing that. 

What?

Don't look at me like I'm nothing.

They stop smiling. 

You want to go with me but you never will. We both know that.

I could end this in so many different ways, we could’ve ran away together. Joined the circus or started a life of crime. We could’ve dated casually or gotten married. But I think I will do it how it actually happened.

We kiss and I tell them I cant have sex and they say that's fine. They climb out my window and then without a word two weeks later they  celebrate their one year anniversary and I won't stop crying for months. 

I don't mean to suggest that I loved you the best

I cant keep track of each fallen Robin 

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel

That's all 

I don't even think of you that often.