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.
