Sal Paradise from On the Road by. Jack Kerouac is truly the first character I've met and knew instantly that I related to on a spiritual level. Sal is a young writer, fresh out of college, waiting to take off on top and soar into the sky of fictional fantasy. He's hungry, innocent, infatuated with girls, and loves to write whenever he can, no matter the circumstances or the materials he scraps together. Now, with me living eighty-five years in the future, I have a little more of an advantage when it comes to writing resources, and the ability to keep my information stored in a computer rather than a few scraps of paper in a notepad in my pocket. But, like Sal, I enjoy writing and it almost takes over my body when it comes to the rush I get when the words are just right and the story is open enough for immense expansion. Sal has a recurring habit of always hesitating about doing things he knew he shouldn't like taking drugs, or sleeping with multiple women in a night, so I can testify that I am exactly the same way. Sal wants to make it on his own; at least to be given a few chances at making his way at life, and wants to know the true hardships about why life is set out to be so hard at first. Sal lives his own novelistic storyline throughout the three or so years that he sticks around in On the Road, and he loves the women he met, and the friends he made, and the writing he did. I know truly that Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road as an autobiographical piece, making me seem like I relate to the author more than the character, but Sal does technically count as his own character. I love Sal, and I love his ambition and his conquests, and his friends and neighbors and women and his aunt and anyone else that comes in contact with him. Kerouac wrote this character with intriguing memories of his own fruitful experiences, and the ability to conquer that in so high a magnitude after nearly ten years of passing, it can go without saying that it truly was incredible. Sal Paradise is forever now one of my favorite protagonists from novels, going on the same list as Holden Caulfield, Jonah (Cat's Cradle), and Dennis Guilder (Christine).

In the midst of things, I’ve made up my mind on several sloven ideas that could potentially affect everything moving forward.  Gruesomely speaking, it's for the best, and metaphorically speaking, it’s more beautiful than having to suffer, doncha think?  How can you characterize the idea of suffering in just a few words?  Life on a tree branch; hanging on the edge.  One swift blow from mother nature’s breath, and you’re stuck drifting onto the wrinkly roots of a spruce tree, wondering if your life would amount to a hill of beans, or if a landscaper would pass you over with a leaf blower and you would continue your flight in the air, only to be sat in a pile of other deceased, rotting away into a brown pulp in the ground.  Spring comes along and you’re forgotten; the rebirth of dormancy, but at what extent was this rebirth cradled and brought forth?  I picked up my tab from the little silver tray with a pen, and scribbled a name at the bottom, hoping to sit in the presence of natural sounds for a little while longer.  Dense rain clouds rolled through the moon’s face, showering the streets, enigmatically, with a blistering melancholy, creating distress for the wanderers finding their way home from work.  I dropped the pen on the ground, intentionally, waiting for a response from the beautiful waitress walking by; she noticed me leaning over to reach the pen in the middle of the small aisle separating the row of booths against the wall and the streaky, sticky countertop.  My fingernail scraped the side of it, but I only managed to push it farther away, cursing while I did.  The beautiful waitress—who remained nameless by association with the diner’s policy and her own personal ethics—picked up the pen and handed it to me, making sure to smile and she made sure  I noticed it.

“Thanks,” I said, clicking the pen a few times.

“No worries,” the woman said, looking me up and down.  Before she walked away too far, I touched her sleeve, having a thought and not wanting it to flee.

“Hey, wait,” I said, as she careened across the aisle a little more.  She glanced back, seemingly confused from another interaction.

“Yes?”

I fished out a few coins, dumped them into my left hand, and stuck it out, careful not to let the coins roll out and hit the ground.

“Play your favorite song for me, would you?”

Another confused look and the woman walked back over, pocketed her pad of paper, and took the coins, smiling again.  The jukebox was near the bathrooms about thirty paces away, and I continued to slowly sip my drink until the ice was cracking from the lack of liquid.  The last of the sun was down behind the world, showing a ray of orange and purple like a ruffled flower: I watched the headlights flick on, and the street lamps ignite.  A young girl had slipped stepping off of the sidewalk and onto the crosswalk.  There was blood on her knee and on her fingers where she rubbed it.  Her mother walked off, not hearing her daughter’s cry for help against the blaring engines of the anxious workers leaving their jobs.  She cried and cried for her mother, with sweat forming on her little, round face.  I was rooting for her to get her attention; practically waving a large orange foam finger with a number one painted on it like I was at a football game.  Eventually, there was another man a few steps behind them, headed down, and noticed the girl crying her heart out.  The man’s deep bellow—from what I could comprehend from my seat—got her attention, and the mother sprinted back across the crosswalk, and ripped off the bandana she was wearing to wrap around the bloody knee.  The mother picked the little girl up, holding her head against her chest, and shed a tear at the thought of near negligence.  Even children carry the worth for salvation, it seems.  They live sanguine lifestyles, with little to no worries about a house eviction, or an arrest, or getting addicted to drugs; in the midst of things, a child is innocent to a world of churlish, counter-cultured delirium.  Once the people moved along and any recollection of that ever happening disappeared, I noticed a small blood-stained section of the white-painted crosswalk.

“That’ll Be the Day,” by the great Buddy Holly began playing loudly across the diner; it was swell.  I glanced back at the waitress glancing at me, wondering if I secretly approved of her song choice.  I bobbed my head and mouthed a few lyrics in a response.  I ate the few remaining fries on the side of my plate, barely dipped in ketchup.  They were cold and hard, yet I let them collect some moisture in my mouth in order to not so much as suffocate myself.  Once the song ended, I got up from my booth, left a tip, and went up to the waitress again, hoping to make this conversation seem more innocent and cordial, rather than racketeering a few forced words from her mouth.  I touched her shirt sleeve once more, grazing it like passing my fingers through weeds in a meadow.

“I’ll be back again tomorrow,” I said.  She looked at me oddly, probably hoping that I wouldn’t remember having said that.

“I’ll be here,” she said, making the words come out unnaturally.  I walked off, got my coat from the booth, and popped up the collar to protect from the incoming rain, or hail, or snow, or whatever Illinois felt like performing that night.  Just outside the diner, there was a man sleeping sitting upright on the bench, with a cigarette hanging from his mouth.  As if common courtesy was absent from my mind, I walked on, listening to the whistling of factory horns, car wheels, grumbling people, and jingles of bells from doors opening on the strip.  Mt. Delver was a large city, but not quite as large as Decatur.  The street signs were smaller and the sidewalks were thinner and rougher to walk on.  Then again, I’ve only heard harmonic stories about life in Decatur;  I’ve never really set foot in the city.  We populated 70,000 of Illinois’s twelve-and-a-half million.  We had a courthouse, some churches, restaurants, a movie theater, a park, a few high schools, a recreational soccer field and baseball field, a bowling alley, a shooting range, a harbor connecting to the lake, and even a hill where the most expensive houses were built.  I’d only seen one other relatively average sized city like this one before, and it was when I was eleven and I visited my uncle Gary in Tennessee.  He lived on a hill similar to ours, except the land stretched more, and he owned fifty acres rather than my family owning a half acre plot with a house taking up most of the space.  It was the summer, and the sun hit the ground harder in the south.  We’d take trips down to the gas station for a fill up and a Coke, sipping the foam off the top of the bottles.  He smoked nasty old cigars, and I watched him cough a few times.  Whatever change he had left over, he’d always let me buy a Hostess Twinkie or Ding Dong, depending on what they had in stock.  After nine, Uncle Gary showed me how to mow the grass on the (what I called) “Driving Mower.”  It was a Snapper, and had a good kick to it—the engine was older than he was, but the paint job was still clean surprisingly.  He promised to give me a sip of beer if I managed to mow half the land by lunchtime.  I took him to that bet and sweated like a pot-bellied pig, dying of thirst, and managed to mow more than intended.  A few moments where the grass was driest, I had to put my shirt over my nose to protect myself from summer allergies that I tried so hard to avoid.  My mother would have had a clinical fit if she heard me talk with a stuffy nose on the phone.  I had my few sips of beer over a plateful of bologna and mustard sandwiches.  Around two o’clock, Uncle Gary flipped on the TV and we watched the Red Sox play the Orioles at Fenway Park; towards the seventh inning, they were tied, and there were a lot of stolen bases.  Unofficially, there was a selection of Boston fans from eastern Tennessee that never congregated, but secretly liked Boston only when the teams played well.  This was explained to me, and I never fully understood the purpose.  There was a homer and the game was over, with the Sox claiming the win, per the usual as my uncle had said.  It was weeks later that I began mowing regularly and hearing stories about my uncle’s jobs working on trains and in factories throughout his twenties and thirties.  He shuttled around boxcars of things all around the tri-state area, along with some long distances here and there along the Mississippi and other smaller cities up north.  I didn’t care too much when he acted interested in telling me these stories; all I really cared about at the end of the day was going to sleep.  About three years ago, Uncle Gary got cancer in his liver and died a year later.  Mt. Delver was just the same as any other drab city, and it wasn’t really a discussion worth having.

Farrington Road became the intersection of Crouch and 28th; and with it came cars performing an array of rolling stops, blowing horns at pedestrians crossing with the right of way, and at least three curb-hoppers—and all of them women.  I passed by the high school where I attended, and saw their baseball field glowing with large fluorescent lights, as one of the rival team’s basemen struck out and another moved to second when the shortstop hit a sacrifice fly into right field.  A dull cheer erupted over the sounds of clouds rumbling like an empty stomach.

“Hit ’em hard, Devil Dogs!”  I screamed, cupping my mouth with my hands.  One of our basemen saw me walking and gave me a thumbs up, running the bill of his hat through his fingers.  Its purple highlights glistened in the mystifying night.

Once I went inside my house a few blocks later, I was home alone; my mother was out and my father was out working.  When I went upstairs to my room, I saw that I’d left a small notebook on the edge of my desk from the night before with a number written in the top corner of the page open.  That number was:

2,401

That number represented the number of days since I had fallen in love for the first time.  A little under seven years ago…and I was still starstruck enough to keep track of it.  Thus, I began today’s query in my notebook that would be the most difficult thing to write in short detail due to lack of space: my suicide note.  I want to make it clear that I don’t want attention, or sympathy, or therapeutic help, or drugs to compensate for the dreary mindedness.  I am completely well off without the uses of psychological blockades; what matters is getting something like this note right on the first try.  This wasn’t the typical thing that you go to your parents to ask how to do.  You can’t ask for help from anyone except yourself.  You have to make it deep, and powerful, and aggressive, and passive, and full of contradictions that confuse the readers.  That’s the point, right?  What is the point? 

In the midst of things, I’ve made up my mind on several sloven ideas that could potentially affect everything moving forward. Gruesomely speaking, it's for the best, and metaphorically speaking, it’s more beautiful than having to suffer, doncha think? How can you characterize the idea of suffering in just a few words? Life on a tree branch; hanging on the edge. One swift blow from mother nature’s breath, and you’re stuck drifting onto the wrinkly roots of a spruce tree, wondering if your life would amount to a hill of beans, or if a landscaper would pass you over with a leaf blower and you would continue your flight in the air, only to be sat in a pile of other deceased, rotting away into a brown pulp in the ground. Spring comes along and you’re forgotten; the rebirth of dormancy, but at what extent was this rebirth cradled and brought forth? I picked up my tab from the little silver tray with a pen, and scribbled a name at the bottom, hoping to sit in the presence of natural sounds for a little while longer. Dense rain clouds rolled through the moon’s face, showering the streets, enigmatically, with a blistering melancholy, creating distress for the wanderers finding their way home from work. I dropped the pen on the ground, intentionally, waiting for a response from the beautiful waitress walking by; she noticed me leaning over to reach the pen in the middle of the small aisle separating the row of booths against the wall and the streaky, sticky countertop. My fingernail scraped the side of it, but I only managed to push it farther away, cursing while I did. The beautiful waitress—who remained nameless by association with the diner’s policy and her own personal ethics—picked up the pen and handed it to me, making sure to smile and she made sure I noticed it.

“Thanks,” I said, clicking the pen a few times.

“No worries,” the woman said, looking me up and down. Before she walked away too far, I touched her sleeve, having a thought and not wanting it to flee.

“Hey, wait,” I said, as she careened across the aisle a little more. She glanced back, seemingly confused from another interaction.

“Yes?”

I fished out a few coins, dumped them into my left hand, and stuck it out, careful not to let the coins roll out and hit the ground.

“Play your favorite song for me, would you?”

Another confused look and the woman walked back over, pocketed her pad of paper, and took the coins, smiling again. The jukebox was near the bathrooms about thirty paces away, and I continued to slowly sip my drink until the ice was cracking from the lack of liquid. The last of the sun was down behind the world, showing a ray of orange and purple like a ruffled flower: I watched the headlights flick on, and the street lamps ignite. A young girl had slipped stepping off of the sidewalk and onto the crosswalk. There was blood on her knee and on her fingers where she rubbed it. Her mother walked off, not hearing her daughter’s cry for help against the blaring engines of the anxious workers leaving their jobs. She cried and cried for her mother, with sweat forming on her little, round face. I was rooting for her to get her attention; practically waving a large orange foam finger with a number one painted on it like I was at a football game. Eventually, there was another man a few steps behind them, headed down, and noticed the girl crying her heart out. The man’s deep bellow—from what I could comprehend from my seat—got her attention, and the mother sprinted back across the crosswalk, and ripped off the bandana she was wearing to wrap around the bloody knee. The mother picked the little girl up, holding her head against her chest, and shed a tear at the thought of near negligence. Even children carry the worth for salvation, it seems. They live sanguine lifestyles, with little to no worries about a house eviction, or an arrest, or getting addicted to drugs; in the midst of things, a child is innocent to a world of churlish, counter-cultured delirium. Once the people moved along and any recollection of that ever happening disappeared, I noticed a small blood-stained section of the white-painted crosswalk.

“That’ll Be the Day,” by the great Buddy Holly began playing loudly across the diner; it was swell. I glanced back at the waitress glancing at me, wondering if I secretly approved of her song choice. I bobbed my head and mouthed a few lyrics in a response. I ate the few remaining fries on the side of my plate, barely dipped in ketchup. They were cold and hard, yet I let them collect some moisture in my mouth in order to not so much as suffocate myself. Once the song ended, I got up from my booth, left a tip, and went up to the waitress again, hoping to make this conversation seem more innocent and cordial, rather than racketeering a few forced words from her mouth. I touched her shirt sleeve once more, grazing it like passing my fingers through weeds in a meadow.

“I’ll be back again tomorrow,” I said. She looked at me oddly, probably hoping that I wouldn’t remember having said that.

“I’ll be here,” she said, making the words come out unnaturally. I walked off, got my coat from the booth, and popped up the collar to protect from the incoming rain, or hail, or snow, or whatever Illinois felt like performing that night. Just outside the diner, there was a man sleeping sitting upright on the bench, with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. As if common courtesy was absent from my mind, I walked on, listening to the whistling of factory horns, car wheels, grumbling people, and jingles of bells from doors opening on the strip. Mt. Delver was a large city, but not quite as large as Decatur. The street signs were smaller and the sidewalks were thinner and rougher to walk on. Then again, I’ve only heard harmonic stories about life in Decatur; I’ve never really set foot in the city. We populated 70,000 of Illinois’s twelve-and-a-half million. We had a courthouse, some churches, restaurants, a movie theater, a park, a few high schools, a recreational soccer field and baseball field, a bowling alley, a shooting range, a harbor connecting to the lake, and even a hill where the most expensive houses were built. I’d only seen one other relatively average sized city like this one before, and it was when I was eleven and I visited my uncle Gary in Tennessee. He lived on a hill similar to ours, except the land stretched more, and he owned fifty acres rather than my family owning a half acre plot with a house taking up most of the space. It was the summer, and the sun hit the ground harder in the south. We’d take trips down to the gas station for a fill up and a Coke, sipping the foam off the top of the bottles. He smoked nasty old cigars, and I watched him cough a few times. Whatever change he had left over, he’d always let me buy a Hostess Twinkie or Ding Dong, depending on what they had in stock. After nine, Uncle Gary showed me how to mow the grass on the (what I called) “Driving Mower.” It was a Snapper, and had a good kick to it—the engine was older than he was, but the paint job was still clean surprisingly. He promised to give me a sip of beer if I managed to mow half the land by lunchtime. I took him to that bet and sweated like a pot-bellied pig, dying of thirst, and managed to mow more than intended. A few moments where the grass was driest, I had to put my shirt over my nose to protect myself from summer allergies that I tried so hard to avoid. My mother would have had a clinical fit if she heard me talk with a stuffy nose on the phone. I had my few sips of beer over a plateful of bologna and mustard sandwiches. Around two o’clock, Uncle Gary flipped on the TV and we watched the Red Sox play the Orioles at Fenway Park; towards the seventh inning, they were tied, and there were a lot of stolen bases. Unofficially, there was a selection of Boston fans from eastern Tennessee that never congregated, but secretly liked Boston only when the teams played well. This was explained to me, and I never fully understood the purpose. There was a homer and the game was over, with the Sox claiming the win, per the usual as my uncle had said. It was weeks later that I began mowing regularly and hearing stories about my uncle’s jobs working on trains and in factories throughout his twenties and thirties. He shuttled around boxcars of things all around the tri-state area, along with some long distances here and there along the Mississippi and other smaller cities up north. I didn’t care too much when he acted interested in telling me these stories; all I really cared about at the end of the day was going to sleep. About three years ago, Uncle Gary got cancer in his liver and died a year later. Mt. Delver was just the same as any other drab city, and it wasn’t really a discussion worth having.

Farrington Road became the intersection of Crouch and 28th; and with it came cars performing an array of rolling stops, blowing horns at pedestrians crossing with the right of way, and at least three curb-hoppers—and all of them women. I passed by the high school where I attended, and saw their baseball field glowing with large fluorescent lights, as one of the rival team’s basemen struck out and another moved to second when the shortstop hit a sacrifice fly into right field. A dull cheer erupted over the sounds of clouds rumbling like an empty stomach.

“Hit ’em hard, Devil Dogs!” I screamed, cupping my mouth with my hands. One of our basemen saw me walking and gave me a thumbs up, running the bill of his hat through his fingers. Its purple highlights glistened in the mystifying night.

Once I went inside my house a few blocks later, I was home alone; my mother was out and my father was out working. When I went upstairs to my room, I saw that I’d left a small notebook on the edge of my desk from the night before with a number written in the top corner of the page open. That number was:

2,401

That number represented the number of days since I had fallen in love for the first time. A little under seven years ago…and I was still starstruck enough to keep track of it. Thus, I began today’s query in my notebook that would be the most difficult thing to write in short detail due to lack of space: my suicide note. I want to make it clear that I don’t want attention, or sympathy, or therapeutic help, or drugs to compensate for the dreary mindedness. I am completely well off without the uses of psychological blockades; what matters is getting something like this note right on the first try. This wasn’t the typical thing that you go to your parents to ask how to do. You can’t ask for help from anyone except yourself. You have to make it deep, and powerful, and aggressive, and passive, and full of contradictions that confuse the readers. That’s the point, right? What is the point? Something so sinister and heartbreaking can only have a few meanings and relevance when the idea of closing your eyes forever slowly crosses your mind. Whether the person is in front of a mirror, a window, a television, or a bedside table, they have to do some—if not a lot—of thinking before going through something like this. Can they process such a bold, emphatic act of superficial emotion? Do they believe they are hated upon with dreadful anguish and harsh connotation? Have they incorrectly judged a scenario and made a grave mistake while doing so? Has someone left through the door of closure and left a metaphorical hole in the belly of our hero? How philosophical are you allowed to be when an innocent person's life is at stake? On the contrary, the majority of the time such a miserable act is committed, there is a justifiable reason that a person could be prone to feel that way. Based primarily on the assets provided after the act is committed, there could be a note carefully explaining the reason why: the reason we all would love to figure out. As the bitter tears drip down their forlorn face, they fire that gun, cut with that razor blade, breathe in that carbon monoxide, and drown their lungs in a vat of lukewarm water. It seems that nobody can ever finish a thought when they do it. It. They're in the middle of synchronized memory plundering, while scaring their souls into pitch darkness, and descending into the plain of clinically insane and justifiably wholehearted. They're scared, nonetheless, perhaps viciously terrified of the harrowing outcomes of their discovery by someone. Are they selfish? Has any sane person have the nerve to cast prejudice on the person themselves, rather than the severity of the act? They roll a projection of any pictorial ounce of happiness that once pierced their veins and gave them a will to live jovially. Unfortunately, the amount of times that emotion surfaced and thrived had to have been short-lived, while graciously being shadowed by a deeper morose, feeling like a citizen of the dreary doldrums. It's never understood; never explained to the meaning in which it makes the most sense to an outlier. The person on the sidelines wants to cheer that poor person on, while never truly knowing what was brewing inside of them. Something sinister, and horribly unfortunate, and vaguely justifiable. It seems that the only thing going through a head in which has convinced itself that suicide is either the only way out, or the answer to the unsolvable question to the pursuit of happiness, is the idealist form of detrimental nihilism. They criticize the idea of life, and determine that ridding the world of one less soul will be the answer to every ounce of cold hardship.

As idealist as this sounds, I want to spark not only an inkling of emotion from the stoic people of Mt. Delver, but I want to believe that there is a place better and happier for me in another spiritual realm. I closed my bedroom door and sat in my desk chair, pulling it close to the paper, and stretching the lamp across the paper where my shadow didn’t overhang. There was a red pen sitting in my cup and I had a moment of laughter for a second, relishing the funnier times. I wouldn’t be so morbid as to write in red ink. I grabbed my blue pen and wrote my name and date in the other corner like what was drilled into our heads in English class for essays. And I began with an opener, then descended into what seemed like an imploring message not for myself, but for others like me that are hard to sniff out from a crowd, like so many people are incapable of doing practically every day. In the evening when the sun had gone completely, I was fast-approaching the natural born gift of sleeping. My parents hadn’t come home yet by half past seven, which seemed unusual, but I suspected there was some party or gathering or event that they reminded me about in brief passing that I forgot about. It had happened before.

I had ripped a few holes in the pages, but recovered quickly and scraped together around five or six pages worth of a note that was delicate, literate, mature, and humorous in the appropriate ways. There was a wet spot from a tear that dropped onto the corner of the page when I went to turn it over. When the ink smeared the second time, I got irritated and wanted to start over. It was like trying to preserve a future fossil, except that it was as fragile as a human. There were a few instances when I chewed the end of the pen in a way to blend together thoughts about what to write, and how to break the blockade in my brain. I was craven in the beginning—and unfairly so—but there was a glimmer of dense magnitude that let me complete this note to an extent that I felt it was done and over. I loved the feeling of the imprinted letters on the other side of the paper, rubbing them like I was reading braille. I tore the papers from the notebook and folded them up into fourths; there were some car headlights drowning my window for a second, but then they reversed and turned back around down the other side of the street, revving the engine to oblivion. The fan light in my room flickered. I should give her a call.

“K?”

“What?”

“Will you have lunch with me tomorrow at Beaux’s?”

A moment of irritating silence.

“Okay sure, at noon then.”

The phone clicked as I could practically smell her minty fresh breath travel through the wireless connection, coating the telephone poles with a cooling sensation like that of a pool in the summertime. Interesting enough, she hardly expressed this much interest in an idea like this before. I was always the bad guy for impeding on a relationship that was not only long distance, but the mere fact that I was not trying to cross any boundaries while asking a friend to have lunch with me. She viewed me as an obstacle to cross, yet I never stuck out as a sore thumb before with her and her boyfriend, let alone any other time before they started going steady. I was the quiet one, making small talk at the lunch table, cross examining the ideas of sports rather than her love life because, frankly, I stopped giving a shit a long time ago. I’m sorry—that’s a lie, and I promised to not lie as much anymore. I care very much about her and only want the best for her in life; if there was one person to deserve it, then it would be her…wouldn’t it? Going through the motions of captivating proximity every day for a whole school semester was quite intense for me, while she wasn’t faltered by it. It never made any difference to her, by God. I shared cookies with her, she gave me a sip of her water, we laughed about the Cincinnati Bengals losing yet again by a worse team than them. I talked about books and movies, while she brought up Kentucky basketball—I cringed every time she said those words in that order. It seemed to me that all things were in apple pie order, according to whatever imaginary façade I concocted in my head, for her to shit on. I loved her, honest to God. Who wouldn’t?

After the front door opened and closed lightly, I heard my parents’ footsteps come up the stairs, creaking the floor and into my room. I heard them open the door and predicted they peeked their heads in, seeing my motionless body facing my window; more often than not, I pretended to be asleep to avoid confrontations or merely to smell the perfume and alcohol on their clothes. It was dreadfully sickening. Another short close to my door, and the footsteps continued in their bedroom while my father turned on the TV and I heard Alex Trebek hosting a rerun of season seven of Jeopardy; it was one of the college specials. They left my desk lamp on, probably wanting to ridicule me into jokingly paying the electric bill for the month, poking my sides, and sticking their tongues out with me like children. My parents were lenient, modest, well off with money, a little immature, and seemingly alcoholics after 7 P.M… And can you blame them? They both worked in an office building in the city, dealing with all things in advertising. They issued new claims and statements to companies every day for the commercials, magazines, and news ads that were printed and distributed every morning; the billings for the ad agency was close to ten million in profit, and almost fifteen for the paying companies. To an extent, I asked about their work processes, and to an extent they told me the long and short of nosy clients, unfair money claims, and the desperation brought forth by nearly bankrupt companies for just a smidgen of a passing glance. I pictured the agency as a pair of pilings holding up a pier on the beach on the coast of eastern Florida, and the clients were the waves traipsing to the pilings, crawling and soaking through the barriers of sand to get the attention that they thought they deserved. In a nutshell, my mother especially told me that people in life accept the things they think they deserve, but too often there are companies who will remain entitled throughout the whole process, constantly bickering while they have that sand in their shoes, making them sink further into the Earth, further away from salvation. I took that to heart as a piece of advice in life: never consider yourself entitled unless you want to be viewed poorly.

I was already, from the countless acts of helpful heroism in math class, viewed poorly by the whole of the student body merely for the fact that I didn’t talk much, nor enforce the idea of conversation with my day-to-day plans. I had a very close-knit group of friends who I saw at least once a week. Even then, I barely talked to them while they forced me into questionnaires, wondering why I was always so down in the dumps, rather than celebrating my adolescence…should I be? What are the great parts of life, right now? I’ll wait a little bit…I’ve got nothing but time for you…

* * *

It was Saturday, but it was quieter than usual. I usually set my alarm so as to not oversleep too much on a day of no school, but this morning was shockingly difficult for me to conquer. I liked the idea of dreaming too much… The lamp was still on. Against the rain clouds, the sun was trying to caress the clouds enough to shed only a sliver of light, but was unsuccessful—it was heavenly, the light, and never got the chance to prove its capabilities. A beautiful shame for its sloven fame…but the sun hardly came out anymore! There was a note on the kitchen counter from my father to remind me to take out the trash and finish the leftover chicken salad from Tuesday during my lounging day; I had laundry to do also. The note was signed: Love, Dad, as a signal of something wrong with mom. He was attritious with my mother, but when something was even slightly wrong, he prepared for it like a war. I didn’t care much anymore whenever they went on their meaningless tangents with me or each other; mostly about my school’s policies or something to do with work. The note said they had dinner plans with a Mr. Jake Blair and a Mrs. Carolyn Blair of Birch Avenue—two streets over. They were some of the “secret informants” of my parents’, and had the guts to get themselves in deep with these companies in exchange for enough money to keep even the President quiet. I hadn’t met them before, but I’ve heard their names in conversation over brandy with other house guests. It was a heartless business filled with emotionless people to scoot around pesky clients flaunting money in their bras, and seeing how many quarters can go up their noses; my mother and father never took any serious precautions out of fear for the company, but they’ve done what was necessary to keep the boat afloat. It was around nine thirty when I ate a few spoonfuls of chicken salad for breakfast, and began drinking a bottle of Dr. Pepper; it would be one of four for the day.

The kitchen smelled better and the laundry machine was throbbing away at the spinning clothes sucking the air pressure out of it; I changed clothes and prepared for my lunch date. There was a buttoned shirt, green and white, that I liked to wear occasionally; I chose to wear it today, along with a pair of jeans and a pair of Chuck’s. There was an effervescent feeling collapsing in my stomach, yet I wasn’t meant to act this sort of way. Perhaps it was the idea of seeing K after such a long hiatus; it had been nearly four months since I had last eaten lunch with her, as we discussed our Christmas plans, and talked about college. Life after high school was so far away in December, but it seems closer in March.

* * *

She was late, of course, naturally keeping me waiting with a condensation-covered glass of soda. The waitress from yesterday made her rounds every few minutes, glancing at my cup to see if a refill was necessary, or if I was sure my friend hadn’t wanted to cancel our lunch date. I wasn’t sure about any of those things, let alone the true reason as to why I called her, besides the craving of seeing her face. In a tangible way, I want that statement to be taken with a grain of salt, because, frankly, I’m no creep when it comes to girls. I ordered a small plate of cheese fries covered in green onions and bacon bits; the cheese was separated and the bacon was chewy, but I ate in silence. I dropped some change in the music machine, hoping for a smoother atmosphere of ambience, rather than the all too natural clatter of porcelain dish plates, and the scraping of sausage into ketchup, and the meaningless banter of truck drivers running over birds in Missouri—who gives a rat’s ass? Once it was half past noon, I got the inkling that she wasn’t coming, and either forgot about it, or completely ignored my plea. It was a gesture, regardless of my supposed intentions, to just talk—what’s the harm in that?—about things. The door’s jingling bell sounded, and I saw her with a black trench coat shaking her hair, and making her way down the cramped aisle of booths; it was boiling in that diner for the majority of the afternoon.

“Hiya, K,” I announced, standing up respectfully. She gave a short smile, seemingly curt, but I wasn’t one to judge a gesture, now was I?

She almost drove me to tears, which would have only exacerbated things farther than they already had been previously. Besides the generously happy salutation, I remained solemn while she squeaked across the bench seat, moving around to a comfortable position, and ordered herself a milkshake: vanilla. She was quiet for a while, never really calling to my suggestion of lunch, but I began to think she liked the thought and dismissed questioning my motives even though I had them. I chose to wait to explain until she got her milkshake, and when it came I folded my hands together on the table, and leaned forward to talk seriously. Her lips formed an O around the straw, trying to suck the milkshake through the abnormally thin straw.

“Do you know why I wanted to have lunch with you today?”

“No.”

“There’s something I’ve got to tell you, K.”

Her gray eyes were bleak today; they grimaced with the dissatisfaction that only the world could grant somebody. It seemed that she had a bad taste going through her head, and filtered it poorly to the other parts of the body. I took a moment to hold eye contact with her, collecting any exuberance from her that I could for myself. I heard her nose breath in the dry air of the diner, letting out a smooth gasp against the roof of her mouth and out between her straightened teeth; her lips were glossy, but neutrally colored. They were a touch darker than her skin, which gave her a sultry sort of enchanting look about her. She became overbearing quickly, and not from annoyance.

“K, I’ve decided that I…I-I…I’m going to kill myself,” I stuttered into the unbreathable air. My nose was stuffy. After the words were out, I immediately leaned back in my chair and looked at my hands folded up, wanting to trace the wrinkles that formed the m’s on my palms. This so-called dreadful fantasy I had about her reaction was nothing compared to the dripping ounces of emotion that welted on her beautiful face. As I moved my head up, she moved hers down, folding her hands in her lap and took only a cautious glance back at my face. If she was letting the suspense build, it wasn’t really on my end.

“How could you do that to yourself?”

“You wouldn’t understand, K.”

“WHY WOULDN’T I? If I don’t, then explain it to me!”

In all earnestness, I fumbled my tongue to form the words necessary for justification; was there any silver lining in this? In my pocket was the bundle of notebook pages, held together with a small paperclip.

“Read this,” I said, sticking out the bundle, and watching several water drops racing down from the rim of her milkshake glass onto the used napkin she set the glass on. Once before when we were eating at a restaurant, she taught me that the way you keep your drink from putting condensation on everything and without ripping the napkin you use as a coaster, use salt on the bottom. Salt soaks the water, leaving it flat and drier to set the glass on, and for easy access when wanting a drink. I thought it was pretty nifty.

I handed the letter to K, whose hands shook violently while reaching across. The tears were on her cheeks long before she read her name at the top line in a fancy smudged ink that only my pens were capable of causing.

March 9, 2005

K,

I’ve done some thinking and I know that you won’t forgive me, but I’ve made a decision for myself and myself only. There is a small pavilion painted red and brown near the edge of the lake in Lundy Park. Do you know why I mentioned that? I’ll let you figure it out. The reason for this letter being made in the first place takes form in a great many ways. One being the fact that no matter how hard I want to create something and inspire people in literary or verbal ways, they seem to take it with a grain of salt. In life, God grants everyone a gift, and I feel that I’m the only living creature on Earth that is aware of his gift, but I can’t harness the power of it, and never will be able to. It’s right in my hand, yet I let it dangle in front of my stupid face like bait on a fishing hook. Which brings me to the next reason for this letter: you. This is our story together… In the late summer of ’98, I saw you for the first time; you lived in the house down the street from me. I was nervous going back to school for the first few days of sixth grade, but when I first saw you smiling, waving to your mother as you were getting on the bus, and making conversation with me, after offering the bus seat next to you, I was positively in love. If you remember, we were inseparable for the coming few months after that, using up the phone bill for all of our family members just to talk about what dreams we had and the people we hated, and the sports teams we liked to watch. And I loved the idea of your voice in my head, floating, every day because it gave me a sense that I could fit in. I was the new kid of Mt. Delver just years ago, and now we’ve come so far with our own forms of an illustrious history. Once things heated up slightly, I decided to make a move, which was countered with an act of anti-attraction on your part—you blamed it on you and my sister being too close to form a relationship between us. I was devastated as naturally as any sixth grade boy might be when his heart was meddled with in an uncanny way; it wasn’t a charge at you, just your ideals at hand. After a brief falling out, we barely spoke for the rest of our sixth grade year and well into the rest of our middle school careers, no matter how meager they eventually turned out to be. Don’t think for a second that you left my head for even a day during the passing years of middle school. For a long time, you were the most important person to me, above my other close friends. The love I had for you remained a secret from anymore asking who I was into, and I’d rather you left this letter between yourself and I for the time being, if you don’t mind too much. Creating this makes us have something to share, and having something to share makes our relationship all the more powerful, you know? I yearned for your presence, wanting to implore for a reason why you chose to flee, and why you never explained it to me. If you’ll remember, there was a moment in eighth grade when I asked you what happened and you apologized nonchalantly, shrugging your shoulders practically. You said something that hung over my head like a rain cloud until now: “Some things can never go back to the way they were.”

That was a pretty bitchy thing to say to me, let alone anyone you used to be close with. In retrospect, I thought I deserved a better explanation than you just dismissing my efforts to try and relive some of our moments together—it’s all I wanted. Now we move into the worst of the life chapters: the high school years. I formed this boiling, passionate hate towards you for the longest time once you had a falling out with my sister: you really hurt her, which hurt me. I complained to people about you. I told them you were nothing but trouble. For three years, I exemplified this escapade until one moment in particular where I saw your face in sunlight, and my dreary fury at you…disappeared. We were in our psychology class and I saw you with your hair down, no makeup, and just regular clothes, looking as beautiful as ever. I saw your eyes reluctantly glance at me sitting looking at you finding a place to sit; you seemed scared to sit next to me, yet it was the only option, ironically. On the second day, I said hello, and you curtly responded. By September, I ate lunch with you everyday and we chatted about middle school: life was so different now as it was back then. We laughed about the guys you liked, and me liking you forever. I always made sure to be respectful of you and Z. By the end of the quarter, our psychology class would change, leaving us without a class together, and without an ability to talk like we used to in the good ol’ days. I saw an opportunity to sew our holes in our relationship, but I hesitated to come completely clean. You’ll remember the letter I wrote you in late September explaining in detail the amount of love I felt for you previously, and the way that you tormented my life unintentionally for the better part of six years. It made me sick to my stomach to write to you, but I knew that it had to be done before we signed off for good. As you read the printed words, I saw the tears fall, and my heart broke, wanting to never see you cry again. You told me you felt like an asshole, and I forbid you to say things like that; you weren’t doing anything wrong, and I made sure to take the blame for any pain that I felt. Once I realized that you and I were scheduled to have the same lunch again—even though we had different classes—I regretted writing the letter. I knew you were smarter than me to find out the truth, and you did just that. After a brief interrogation, I was caught red-handed trying to hide my feelings for you again and wanted nothing to do with you again. Let me say this coherently. I LOVE YOU, K! You are the most important person in my life, regardless of your negligence to me and the way you feel about the way I feel about you. Nothing you say will change. You were the last glimmer of happiness in a life of unrecognized depression. From what I’ve discovered, life isn’t about just getting by and making money; there’s more to it than that, and I feel that I can’t do the basic things someone my age does. If I end my life, what will happen? Will the planes stop flying? Will the cars stop driving? Will there be a moment of silence across the PA speaker at all of the county’s schools? WHAT WILL HAPPEN?

You are the last person I wish to see in the flesh; you are the person I trust with my life, and I’m trusting you with it right now. I love everything about you; your ambiguity, your humor, your laugh, your smile, your eyes, your passion for passion. I want there to be feeling in this numb world again, and I don’t think that I can help the world in a way to spark a new innovation; if I can’t even help myself, then what really is the reason that I haven’t killed myself yet? And the sad part is that I don’t think I’ll ever teach myself to learn these skills; my mind has been made up about this whole thing, whatever it entails. If I could ask just one last thing from you: will you take my books and read them? All I want is for you to enjoy things the way I enjoyed them…

K held her fist balled up to her mouth, sobbing uncontrollably, tears dripping down her arms and onto her pant legs.

I’d like to make a toast. To all the bitter years that we push past us! 2,402 days! To taking change by its throat and shaking it unconscious. God bless you, K. I love you to Mars and back a thousand times. “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

Yours,

D.

The letter was folded up again, K stood up, and went outside for a moment. Her milkshake was melted, practically leaking from the sides, but the whipped cream and cherry remained intact long after she took her first few sips. A few customers looked my way as K pushed past a few walking to their seats. I didn’t meet their eyes; I dodged any chance of them asking what I did to her. Like the admission of love to K in the fall, I regretted showing her today only for a second. I didn’t have anyone left but her, but did I still have her after this? The waitress I had grown attached to came over to our booth, seeing me with my hands folded and looking down at my half-eaten, cold fries.

“Everything alright, sir?”

Looking up, I shed a tear of remorse; everything I did turned crummy.

“Couldn’t be better, now that you mention it,” I grimaced sarcastically. The waitress smiled uncomfortably as she watched a few more tears run down my eyes; I wiped them away quickly, and turned my full attention to my soda. The letter sat like burning wood from a stone fireplace flue, gorgeously flaunting its ability to act a certain way, yet the true contaminants were nothing but a dead end of trouble. That burning piece of wood would all but crumble into smaller, unusable pieces of shriveled matter, serving no purpose. That was what I thought I was.

K opened the Beaux’s front door, wiping her eyes with her palm, and made her away quickly back to her seat. Her eyes had changed colors from a bleak gray into an exuberant shade of hazel, shimmering from her glassy-eyed complexion.

“Why did you choose me?”

“You’re all I have left.”

“No, why did you want to sit with me that day in sixth grade? On the bus? What was the narrow instinct you had to want to get to know me?”

What was it?

“Whenever I saw you for the first time, K, I saw a look of pure innocence,” I began, “and I just had an inkling that we would have a good run, you know? Why does anybody know anything, based primarily on instinct for something? We just do things, want things, and become things that will help us. In a moment of nervous despair, with me trying to battle through a new school, I chose you because of the way you were. You and I have barely changed—if you think about it—since we met; and isn’t that beautiful?”

“You can’t do this to yourself! I won’t allow it!”

“It isn’t up for discussion, K. I’ve made up my mind, and I don’t expect you to agree, but you can’t persuade me.”

Out of impulse, K reached across the table and grabbed my right hand, looking me in the eyes. More tears dripped down my pudgy face, making the table look like it was the victim of a few leaks in the ceiling. I drifted my eyes to the table, feeling her lean her neck down. She rubbed the bottom of her thumb on the top of my knuckle, giving me goosebumps from sheer anxiety.

“I want you to keep the letter for yourself, K. Please?”

She didn’t respond, but grabbed my other hand with her free one, watching me cry harder.

“Just take it! If all you want to do is denounce me, like everyone else, then just take it and go!”

No response, but a few people turned their heads again, sipping their coffees and getting creamer into their whiskers.

“Take it, please!” I stuttered, with my voice cracking like a record player.

She got up from her seat and sat down next to me, cradling my head into her collarbone, stroking my hair like a careful mother, telling me to hush and everything will be alright soon. We stayed there for a few minutes, ignoring the glances, and sat in silence. Her shirt was soaked, but she was far from caring. She kissed the top of my head slowly, closing her eyes, and rubbing the spot compassionately. With her chin propped up on my head, she piped up.

“Do you remember the first time Mr. Nielsen asked us about our types?”

Mr. Nielsen was our psychology teacher, and quite the memorizing character when he opened up—it never took much. More often than not, he’d ask the class on what they liked, who they liked, why they liked different things, and how we thought it differed from other people.

“A little bit,” I said, raising my head up to her face.

“It struck me odd when you said that your type was the opposite of me. Why was that?”

“You’re not my type, you’re different in a way that I don’t want to categorize you because you have features I like. There are differences between you and others that I have made clear to myself. You aren’t just a word on a page, K, you are the whole book.”

She smiled, with tears welling up again, but it was happier. Our waitress came back over, with the familiar silver tray, and plopped it down with the pen. We looked at each other, and laughed, psychologically wondering who was going to pay for the bill. “That’ll Be the Day,” came on again, with more people bobbing their heads to it and K scrutinizing whether or not she liked it. The rain had cleared some, and the baseball field was full of our players warming up, pitching seventy-fives and eighties, and breaking a few cheap bats. Before we left, I saw K take the letter and pocket it in her wallet, next to her cash for safe keeping. Pumping carbon monoxide into the air, I saw her drive off in her Honda, restlessly trying to comprehend the magnitude of what had happened. I hung my head a little higher that afternoon, making sure to shout to the Devil Dogs to give them hell. I remembered that I hadn’t visited Uncle Gary’s grave in quite a long time, and would have to mention it to my parents when the time was right…

Early this morning, around 3 am, I finished Mad Men. Mad Men is a drama series following New York ad man Don Draper throughout the 1960s. He goes through his late thirties and into the mid-life crisis era of life with his marriage, kids, home life, job, and friends. It’s a seven season show and I started it about three months ago. This show isn’t about businesses and affairs and sexist men and under appreciated women, but it’s about growth, then decay, then TRANSFORMATION and REVISION! This show works on so many different levels: Dialogue, storylines, scenery, culture, and everything else that made the 60s exponential. This show is inspiring for me in all aspects of my life—especially for my writing. After watching the series finale, I was in shambles that my new favorite show—for which helped me on so many levels—was ending and it would never be the same after a rewatch. Don Draper had so many problems that he never expressed because it was the norm for men to never express their feelings out loud. Don mimics the great writers of the 20th century who never shared their feelings except in their writing. The show is over and now I have some writing to do. This show will be the foundation of my new book of stories talking about the lives of so many different people and characters. I love this show. I tip my hat to Jon Hamm.

Hello! My name is Drake C. Dyer and I am seventeen---almost eighteen---years old and a senior in high school. I first discovered my love for writing in 2015 at the age of ten when I read my first Stephen King novel: Christine. After I read it, I tried to spend the majority of the summer practicing writing poems, flash fiction, and anything else I could write. After about a year, I decided that I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't feel that I had the potential to make a difference in the simplicity of my writing; the sheer immensity of the idea of writing the next Great American Novel was such a dream, that it almost seemed impossible. In 2019, I started a novel called The Grey Affliction, which I didn't finish; it now sits in my desk drawer, collecting dust. After COVID, I really had the urge to write, and that's exactly what I did...Between February 2021 to March 2022, I wrote and completed my first book, "4:46 P.M: A Collection of Short Stories," which gave me the opportunity to finally share my words to the world in the way I wanted. September of last year, I started a project that was supposed to be a short story, but turned out to be the beginning of my very first novel called "Only Alice Knows Me," which was released less than two months ago on Amazon for $15.99. Now, I am very close to finishing my third book---another collection of short stories---called "Senioritis," which are stories, poems, and other writings that I have completed during my senior year of high school. I've always loved writing, reading, watching football, baseball, hockey, listening to music, watching old movies, and driving with my friends. I am attending the University of Tennessee in Knoxville studying finance and hope to write professionally, part-time, and built up enough financial security to support my family. Writing is the true love of my life, although we have a love-hate relationship that's lasted about eight years, I still am honored to have their presence in my life.

Can you imagine living in a world like the Peanuts's universe? A small town in Minnesota where all you do is hang out with your nearest and dearest friends, play baseball, go to a school where you learn the simplest of things, watch television, celebrate holidays like spiritual awakenings, and learning about the true candor of life from the small every day experiences. In this universe, there are inklings everywhere that growing up isn't going to happen for a long time, all the while you discover your first loves for beautiful things. Baseball is life, your friends love you, and you have the freedom to do whatever your kid brain thinks of doing---recreationally speaking. Everything and one is colorful and vibrant and exuberantly passionate about life, and you find that the little things satisfy more than the bigger things. There's beautiful music and snow and a summer breeze and a peachy deliciousness amongst everything. You want to soak up the world in a sponge and wash your hands with it.

I’ve realized that there is something I crave more than a delicious meal: the 1960s. Keep in mind, I don’t agree with the segregation, racism, sexism, or communism displayed during that time period, but I love this decade particularly for their culture. Every year of the 60’s there seemed to be something exceedingly important whether it be a song releasing or politics or war. Between 1960-63 we had a president assassinated, a few songs that have been more iconic than Elvis—including Elvis—and we’ve had Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reign supreme for the fight for civil rights; and what a justifiable fight it turned out to be. 1964-67, we had a new president step in and we entered our fifth war of the 20th Century: Vietnam. We also had a growth in the hippie movement and the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which decided that we could no longer judge someone based on their race, ethnic background, or gender—seemingly. We had several books make marks in history as being controversial and cast into a sea of disagreeableness, but people had started to not care so much anymore. 1964 was also the year my favorite movie of all time (Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) came out. 1965 was a magnificent year except for the fact of the Dodgers winning the World Series, and us entering our first campaign in Vietnam in March. Malcolm X was also assassinated that year. But several books and songs were written and released, which I love substantially. 1966 was the best year for music in my personal opinion: a year of The Mamas and the Papas, The 13th Floor Elevators, Jefferson Airplane, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, the Stones, and many others that I love to death. 1966 was also the year my favorite baseball team, the Baltimore Orioles, won their first World Series title, with the greatest pitcher of all time, Jim Palmer. 1967 is arguably the second greatest year for music, but most people consider it the best. The Doors (My favorite band), Beach Boys again, Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and so many more hippies that played magnificent music for generations to come. 1968-69 were very important years with two more assassinations and one of the most historic moments in all of American History: the Moon Landing. MLK and Robert Kennedy were assassinated because the world thought that’s how your problems are solved. 1968 was also the year of my favorite filmed concert to date: the Doors at the Hollywood Bowl, in July. 1969 was the year of the moon landing, along with Woodstock which was the largest music festival until Live Aid in ’85. They let people in for free after the one million mark. The 1960‘s are only my favorite decade for personal reasons, but I believe it to be the most historically significant decade of all time. So much happened, changed, and came commonplace for so many different people. We opened our doors more and accepted new faces. The music, the cars, the fashion, the cities, the sports, the books, the movies, the people! I’d love to be able to travel back there and spend a long summer vacation living in the different years. I love love the ’60s and wish I could have at least experienced them. But, the music will never change, nor the people, nor the books, nor the movies, or cars, or anything. It’ll always be there for me to endure and enjoy. God bless the 1960s and all their glory.

Best: "People are like watches: sooner to stop working than to break." (February 2023)

Worst: "I woke up with a speed bump, the first day of school." (August 2017)

In less than six years of attempting to write, I have exceeded and created a prolific lifestyle to constantly improve my writing; and with this comes the idea of me actually doing something worth while.