Like stars

“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?