Why did he get to be happy? What rules of the universe deemed him worthy of joy while I was suffocating in my own despair?
Fuck Flynn Hendrick and his smile. Fuck him and his apparent wonderful life.
I was having a hard time breathing. I wanted to leave. But I couldn’t stop watching this man that I blamed for so much. This man I had tried so hard to bring down and who was clearly better off for it.
Flynn turned his head, as though feeling the weight of my stare. The sun shone down on him like a freaking halo. How fitting.
And then he found me. As though I had a neon sign pointing in my direction. He frowned and I knew he was trying to place me. And I knew the moment when he recognized me.
He began to rub obsessively at the back of his hands. Something I remembered him doing when he became upset.
The rubbing became more pronounced, as though he were trying to remove his skin.
The older man beside him said something but he didn’t respond. He continued to stand there, like a deer in headlights, staring at me as though he had seen a ghost, rubbing at his hands over and over again.
Then some cruel part inside me that had been left to fester all these years lifted its ugly head. I grinned at Flynn’s discomfort. It made me feel good.
I raised my hand and wiggled my fingers in his direction. Letting him know that I saw him too.
Flynn’s hands stopped rubbing, as though he were making a conscious effort to stop himself. He shoved his hands back in his pockets, his eyes never leaving mine. I was surprised to see a strength that had never been there before.
It left me feeling weak in comparison.
He turned to the man beside him, giving me his back. Letting me know that he didn’t care if I was standing there or not. That I didn’t bother him. Not anymore.
And Flynn stood on the steps of a brick building, pretending he had never seen me.
But I noticed that he had pulled his hands out of his pockets again and was once more rubbing them furiously.
3
-Flynn-
Many years ago…
I couldn’t get comfortable. My mother hadn’t changed my sheets this week and they are rough on my arms and legs. I hate them. They hurt. I don’t want to roll over because then I’ll feel the fabric.
So I lie there in my bed, rigid, staring up at my ceiling.
I don’t sleep.
I can’t. Not with the sheets touching me.
I was staring a new school tomorrow.
Everything would be new.
I didn’t like new.
I wanted to be back in Massachusetts where everything was the same. Especially my house.
The bathroom was two doors down on the left. The light switch was just inside on the right wall. My room was brown with a green border. My bed was beside the closet. The stairs had exactly twelve steps.
It was the house I had lived in my entire life. It was the last place I had been with Dad before he went to heaven.
I didn’t like West Virginia. I didn’t like the house we live in now that I don’t recognize.
Here the bathroom is beside mine and it confuses me. My room is blue not brown. And there are fourteen steps. I hate counting them. Because it isn’t right.
It makes me anxious.
My mom tells me to stop being silly. She says that this is a fresh start. I don’t understand what that means.
I start rubbing my hands back and forth. Back and forth. Down my hands and back up again. Running over the smooth skin. Over and over again.
I lie there until I can’t take the feel of the sheets anymore. I rip them off my bed and throw them out the window. That makes me feel better.
My mother comes in to see what the noise is. When she sees my window wide open and the sheets and blankets gone, she gets me some new ones and makes up the bed again.
These sheets feel much better.
But I still can’t sleep.
So I lie there rubbing my hands. Over and over.
Until the sun comes up.
Wellsburg High School is much bigger than my last one. There were people everywhere.
“Stop rubbing your hands, Flynn,” my mother said as she pulls into the parking lot of my new school.
Telling me to stop only makes me rub them harder.
Up and down. Over and over again.
My mother reaches out to take my hand but I pull away. I hate when she touches me. She usually didn’t. I don’t like it.
“Flynn, please try and make an effort to get along with the other kids. Let’s make this time different,” she said with a sound in her voice I didn’t understand.
Her eyes are wet and I frown. Why was she crying?
I rub my hands a little harder.
My mother let out a breath and got out of the car. She opens my door and I slowly get out, making sure not to touch the rough fabric of the seat with my bare skin.
I follow her up the steps to the front door of the school.
I keep my eyes down. I don’t want to look at anyone.
I rub my hands again.
It is really noisy. Too much noise. And the lights are bright. Too bright.
It was better once we are in the office. It is quieter and I stop rubbing my hands.
My mom fills out some paperwork and I wait, not looking at anyone, though I can’t take my eyes off the tiny statue of a pyramid on the secretary’s desk. I reach out and poke it with my finger. It doesn’t look like the pictures I have seen in my books. It isn’t right.
I like looking at pictures of different places and then drawing them. I like the details.
“It has a crack in it. And the color is all wrong,” I said to the woman I haven’t looked at yet.
My mom makes a noise and swats my finger away from the pyramid. I touch it again anyway.
“It’s ugly. And it’s all wrong. That’s not how they’re supposed to look,” I said flatly. I tell the truth. It doesn’t look like a pyramid. I can make one a thousand times better than that.
The woman behind the desk clears her throat and reaches out to pick up the tiny pyramid and tuck it into her drawer so I can’t see it anymore.
“I’m so sorry. He has Asperger’s. He has trouble communicating,” my mother said and I feel the woman behind the desk looking at me. I don’t like the way she looks at me. People always look at me when my mom says that.
“Principal Higgins will be with you shortly,” the secretary said, her voice sounding funny and tight.
“Flynn. We talked about this. Remember what Dr. Johnson told you about not always saying what’s in your head?” my mother said quietly.
I remember. There isn’t much I don’t remember.
I start rubbing my hands again. Harder this time.
My mother makes another noise. She did that a lot. “Is there something in your throat?” I asked her.