Troubled

FORTY FIVE

CORA PHILIPS

There are moments in life when you say what you don't mean. Your heart wants something else but your head is strongly against it, because your head knows what is better for you. Like saying no to a juicy burger when you placed yourself on a strict diet, your heart and mouth wants it, but your head knows what's right and makes you say no anyway. Like telling your new friend to run away from you when you want him to hug you and tell you it was okay and he was there for you. My heart wants me to take everything I said back. But my head knows it's for his own safety, therefore he shouldn't be anywhere close to you.

So you pray and hope that they don't listen to you, even when you say to run away, your mind hopes to whoever was listening to let him be stubborn as a mule and say a big no. He should fight for his own say, he should say you are not the boss of me, you can't tell me where to run to, when to run, and how to run. I'll run when I want to. That's what you want him to say.

"Cora, put that fright in your drawing. If you remove that much terror from your voice and fix it into your drawing, it will be marvelous. Extraordinary."

I turn to look at him. He had a smile on his face, it was a permanent fixture on him.

"I'm being serious Kyle, you have to run, you have no idea what I can do.." I try again but he interrupts me.

"I heard you the first time Cora, but I still think you should put the terror in your drawing. Right now you want me to fear you, or fear something. That same energy, put it in your drawing, make me dear the drawing instead."

I stare at him in relief. I didn't want him to run. He was the only one that hugged me when I got a disaster attack. For the first time in years since it started. Someone hugged me and told me it was okay, they were there with me. For the first time I saw the light at the end of tunnel. A silver lining in the darkest weather.

"I could hurt you." I whisper, the fight had expired from my body. I want to give in, at the same time he could get hurt, was it okay to be selfish?

He smiled at me,

"Look, I know you are scared for me. I'm telling you right now that you don't have to be scared for me, I can handle my own weight. Instead, that thing you want me to fear so badly. That thing, I don't know what it is, only you do. Put it in your drawing, and you will see the difference between your old drawings and this one."

He was still smiling at me. My chest tightened with gratitude. I was extremely grateful that he didn't say okay and listen to me. Honestly, that's who Kyle was. He wouldn't ditch me just because I said so, he was going to meet my mother because he thought she whipped me.

"Okay, I'll do that."

He clapped excitedly.

"Splendid. Now, I'll be here tanning, while you, make that award winning drawing. That okay?"

I don't know how to tell him he needed to talk to bring out my artistic prowess.

"Won't anyone be mad that you're skipping school?" I start to spread out my drawing tools. It wouldn't be hard to draw out here since I brought a flat board thing, the surface was good for drawing, I highly doubt that was the original purpose but I was using it well so.

"They will actually be mad, but they don't matter. If you get thirsty I brought a few cans of drinks."

I swallow as the words, they don't matter rings in my head. He would rather be with me be in school, and whoever didn't like it didn't matter. That made me feel good. It wasn't a bad thing right?

"I have a question for you."

I start to draw, it was something that struck me for a while. I had to get it out of my system.

"Your drawings.. why don't you make them as scary as possible? I know you are purposely holding back." He was sitting up now, facing me with his hands at his back supporting him.

"Because I don't want them to hold power over me."

He looks at me with his head tilted a bit to the side.

"What do you mean?"

I take a deep breath before answering. This was one of the numerous things nobody knew about me. And yet I was on top of a hill, no reception on my phone, with a boy I met barely three weeks ago. He was striping me off my secrets and he wasn't running away. And I did trust him.

"They are mostly my nightmares. I draw them without the scare so they don't make me scared in the day time. I'm not so frightened anymore. They seem powerless when I draw them."

"You are so cool." He whispered.

My head whips to his direction. I must have heard in correctly. There is no way he said I was cool.

"What?" I ask just to clarify.

He shrugged,

"You have the raw talent to make things as powerless as you want them to be. People uncool as me are stuck with their nightmares for months unend, but not you. You can whip up your drawing, change it entirely into something else, something cool. That is awesome." He was smiling again.

I want to say they are not the same thing, my nightmares aren't nightmares they are things I can do if and when the disaster chooses to strike. But the smile on his face make me say something else.

"You have a really unique way of seeing the world."

He laughed a little.

"The world is crazy, if you aren't seeing it in a unique way, you'll go just as crazy. Maybe even more."

Kyle knows his stuff, he knows how to deal with things in a matured manner, maybe because of everything that happened with football. He had to grow up fast and started to see the world in a unique manner. Was I going crazy with the world? I suppose so.

I exhale deeply. The drawing was finished. It took about forty five minutes or so. It was a huge part of me. And now I was about to share it with him.

It was a drawing of a frightened little girl with blood smeared on her cheek. A bloody rabbit in her open palm. It was dead.