“What are you chasing?” August
asked him, her blue eyes sparkling portentously, like stars.
David had
been sitting at his desk, back hunched over a paper, marking and scribbling
bits of thoughts and corrections on the manuscript with his dulled, chewed up
no. 2 pencil. At her question, he raised
his head and turned; a half-startled, half-confused look on his face. His mouth opened slightly to answer, but he
caught himself, and his eyes shifted their expression. The question had sunk into his psyche with
delayed effect, ripping and tearing him away from his stream of thought like a
barbed hook yanks a reluctant fish from coursing waters.
August,
with her dusky, sunset hair pulled back, looked a magnificent sage in the warm
afternoon light. She had her arms at her
sides, and her chin extended forward, as if to help stick the question in her
brother’s brain.
The young
man, his dark hair slung carefree over a knotted brow, looked down at their
apartment’s brown shag carpet. He rode
the question like a wave, deeper into his own motives.
What have I been chasing?
Suddenly
his life took sharper focus, against the half-filled picture of his future,
things popped into being: his vicious obsession with getting good grades, his
strict self-discipline for keeping his room and the whole apartment clean,
efficient, organized…and strongest of late, the thoughts that dwelled ever-increasingly
on the girl two apartments below.
Where am I going?
The second
question struck him harder. If the first
violent inquiry into his motives had been the hooking of a fish, this next one
was the swift slamming of its head against an unshakeable rock. Clearly, this wasn't catch and release.
It meant to eat him.
And this time, the enemy wasn't pounding on the walls from outside; it had slipped past his defenses and was
unashamedly beginning to wreak havoc on the inside.
“I…don’t
know.” He replied. The breath, lodged in
the back of his throat, sighed outward in tandem with him leaning back in his
chair; flopping, back in his chair,
to put it more aptly.
He looked
back up at his sister for her response.
She
smiled---or at least he knew she smiled, though her mouth did not show
it---with the loving triumph of a sister bringing her brother light when he’d
been walking in the dark; unaware of his path.
“Well,” she
said, turning on her heel, “You should figure that out.”
Before he
knew it, her retreating ponytail had bounced all the way down the hall and
closed itself inside her room.
Yeah…I suppose you’re probably right.
He turned
back to his desk, and stared at his midterm paper, due in a few days. His eyes unfocused themselves, and the white
page blurred its inky lines together, pushing him back into his thoughts.
What am I chasing?
