passing trains

 

 passing trains

Whenever I looked back on my life, I could never quite pick out the exact moment when things started to change. When I was still a kid, things seemed so simple. I used to look forward going to school, church, games and others every morning because it meant seeing my friends and having fun at recess. Now, as I found myself entering this new strange world of High Life, those I used to call my friends now looked the other way whenever I walked down the them. Everything I said, every movement I made, was met with sneers and giggles. It was as though there were now all of these rules that everyone had to live their lives by, but I never got the memo. I was feeling myself quickly heading down the lonely path of desolation, becoming more and more invisible by the moment.
While I was having more and more trouble fitting in, I could only watch as Donna rose to the top of the social ladder. A long time ago, I used to call her my best friend. I’d go to her house every day after to school to watch cartoons and we’d sometimes watch the trains go by from the overpass, but one day she decided that she didn’t want to like these things anymore and that anyone who did was too weird for her. She became obsessed with makeup and magazines, things that seemed so foreign to me. She kept climbing higher and I was being left behind, I just couldn’t keep up. Donna had become a completely different person before my eyes, someone who could never consider me a friend.
Nowadays, I walked home from school by myself. I would hide myself away in the hood of my sweater, walking down the road, across the overpass, and right by Donna’s house. That house always brought up so many memories for me, but I wasn’t welcome there any more. It made me feel so empty, so I started walking with my head down. I didn’t want to have to look at that house, I didn’t want those memories. Donna didn’t want me anymore. Why bother remembering those good times knowing that you could never have them back?
I still liked cartoons. I liked doodling my favourite characters in my binder instead of taking notes in class. One day, one of the guys stole my binder and began passing it around the class. Everyone began laughing at me, tossing it out of my reach as I desperately grabbed for it. The binder went from person to person, all around the room, until it finally landing in Donna’s lap. She looked at all the characters drawn across the pages and she looked absolutely disgusted. I stared back at her with eyes wet with tears. She threw the binder down onto the ground, calling me a weirdo. I ran out of the room with tears streaming down my face. I hated Donna, I hated her.
I hid myself in the bathroom stall for the rest of the period. I cried and I cried. How could Donna be so mean to me? She could have stuck up for me back there, she could have told everyone to stop picking on me, but she didn’t. She was just like everyone else. Nobody cared about me, I was worthless. I heard the door to the bathroom open and someone walked in. The person walked up and stood in front of the stall where I was hiding. I was certain that it was someone coming to laugh at me again. Why couldn’t they leave me alone?
I wiped away my tears and clenched my firsts, ready to scream at whoever was on the other side of the door. I rose to my feet and swung open the door to the bathroom stall. There, mere inches away from my face was Donna. She looked sad, maybe even concerned at the sight of my puffy eyes, but I didn’t care. My blood was boiling, this was all her fault. She reached out her hand, but I swatted it away. I screamed that I hated her, before shoving her aside. As I left her alone in that bathroom. She didn’t say a single word.
By the time school had ended, I found that I had calmed down a little. As I walking home, I kept replaying what had happened earlier. Was I right to have pushed Donna away? I wanted to say that she deserved it, but then why had she been there? As I stepped onto the overpass, I noticed someone standing there. It was Donna. She was standing quietly all alone, looking over the railing at the train tracks far below. My body tensed, I wasn’t sure if I should keep walking with my head down and hope she doesn’t notice me, or run back the other way.
She must have sensed me standing there, because she looked up at me. She almost seemed shocked to see me. Her eyes were red, she had definitely been crying. I froze, I hadn’t seen her cry since we were little kids. The memories I had been trying to erase were creeping back into my mind. I wanted to ask her what was wrong, but what had happened earlier held me back. Just then, there was a loud whistle that caught both of our attentions.
“There’s a train coming,” I said.
“I know,” she whispered, so quietly that I could barely hear.
Donna reached for the railing and began climbing up. At first, I couldn’t make sense of what was happening. I remembered when we were kids and we would climb up onto the railing to watch the trains go by, but as she stepped over the metal bar, I realized what was happening. I screamed and ran for her, but it was already too late. In an instant, she was gone. I couldn’t think, this couldn’t be happening. I heard the roar of the train’s engine, but I didn’t want to look. I wanted her back. I wanted the memories. I wanted to be a kid again. I reached for the railing. I wanted to be with Donna.