Detention 10

We ended up driving about ten blocks away. Chris took us to this playground that was next to my old elementary school. The playground was dark mostly, except for a few streetlights, and it was very isolated. “C’mon,” he said, opening his car door. I got of the truck too. We walked silently across a wide field of damp grass, then over some sand before coming to an empty swing set. Two swings sway back and forth gently, pushed by the wind, waiting for us to sit on them. Chris got on one of them, I got on the other. “I haven’t been on one of these things since I was like nine,” I told Chris.

Chris said, “Yeah...me either.” he sounded so melancholy.

“Tell me what’s wrong with you, Chris. You’re actin like somebody just died or somethin.”

“Just pissed,” he said. 

“About what?”

“All the shit that’s been goin on lately.”

“Like what? What happened at school yesterday?”

“That and other shit,” Chris said. “. Can’t fuckin wait to move out of my house. My fuckin dad is always fucked up all the fuckin time. We got in a fight last night -”

“Like a fist fight?” I asked.

Chris only nodded.

“Are you okay? What happened? Did you get hurt?”

“I’m cool, B. It’s just a lotta bullshit that I don’t wanna talk about right now. All I know is, the next fuckin time he puts his hands on me, I’m gonna kill him.” What was scary was how serious he sounded. I really wanted to know what was going on, but I knew that whatever it was, Chris wasn’t going to tell me. He didn’t trust me enough to tell me, which really hurt me, probably as much as he was hurting now. “I’m just fuckin tired of everything and everybody right now.” I wanted to ask if everybody meant me but I didn’t. I reached over and touched his hand. It felt kinda cold. I didn’t want to same some lame shit like ‘That’s okay, it’ll be alright’ or ‘everything is going to be alright’ or some stupid shit like that. 

Chris squeezed my hand tight and he started to warm up a little. “Sometimes I wish I could just go some where and never fuckin come back,” Chris said. “Everything in my life is so fuckin bullshit.” I wondered if he always felt this way or if it was just mainly tonight. 

I finally got enough courage to say, “What about me? Are you tired of me, too?”

Chris looked over at me. Even though it was dark I could still see his face very clearly. “You’re just about the only thing in my fucked up life that I don’t hate. But...” Chris grip on my hand loosened a little. I was really starting to get concerned.

“But what?” I asked.

“Nothin,” Chris whispered.

“You’re not fucked up, Chris. No more than anybody else in this world is.”

Chris chuckled. “Then what the fuck am I?”

“Complicated, annoying, mean...and then you’re sensitive, deep, sexy as hell... and you’re really smart. I don’t think people really give you credit for the great person you are. I don’t think you give yourself credit for the great person you are. I think you put up this image of yourself, of how you want people to see you, but it’s not real. I do the exact same thing. It’s how we keep ourselves protected against a world that really doesn’t like us. But then it crushes you emotionally.”

“...I guess,” Chris said. “You didn’t have to get all Dr. Freud and shit.” Chris got up from the swing and stretched his arms above his head. He turned back to me and beckoned with his hand. “C’mon,” he said.

Slowly I got off the swing. My feet sank into the soft sand. “Where are we goin now?”

Chris took me by the hand and started to drag me along. I gave up any efforts to resist him. “Just come with me.” We walked across the field and stopped under a large tree, whose many branches bent down toward us, their leaves making little whispering sounds as the wind rushed past them. Chris sat down, his back against the trunk of the tree, I sat in front of him, my back against his chest. He wrapped his arms around me. I felt warm and protected. Chris kissed my ear, making my body squirm in his hold. I looked up at the sky and was surprised to see that there were many stars in the sky, at least over three dozen, which from my experience is a rare thing. The night was quiet and peaceful. I rested my head on Chris’ shoulder; he held me tighter. “Sometimes I wish it was just stay like this forever,” I said. 

“No such thing as forever,” Chris whispered. 

I thought about what Scott Howard had said earlier that day on the bus, about how he thought that loving someone was supposed to last forever. But then he realized that it didn’t. Scott was only fifteen and he didn’t believe in love. I was seventeen and I believed in love--or at least I wanted to - I just didn’t know if it believed in me. 

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“`Cause it’s true,” was Chris’ simple answer. “And if you’re talkin bout relationships, then that shit definitely doesn’t last forever.” Chris sounded very sad when he said that.

“Well, my grandparents have been married for over thirty years and they still seem happy,” I said.

“That’s not everyone’s story, Brandon,” Chris responded.

“It could be ‘our’ story.” I knew I shouldn’t have said that. But I really wanted to say it, regardless of the consequences. I thought Chris was going to get defensive or tease me, but he didn’t say anything at all. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. 

“B, I don’t want you gettin too excited about...” I waited for Chris to go on, but he didn’t.

“You don’t want me gettin too excited about what?”

“Us,” Chris said flatly. “You know what I’m talkin about.”

“Chris, you’re just about the only thing I do excited about. It might make me sound kinda desperate, but nothin and nobody else makes me happy the way you do.”

“I just don’t want you to get all invested in all this shit...” Chris said. “I don’t want you to take it so seriously.”

I pulled away from Chris and turned around so that I could see his face. “What do you mean I shouldn’t take it seriously?”

“You keep talkin about ‘forever’ and shit like that. We’ve only been together for a couple of weeks. Don’t make it more than it really is.”

I couldn’t believe I was actually hearing this. Slowly I stood up. The air around me started to get really cold. I should’ve brought a jacket or somethin. “Why are you sayin all this to me? Why do you always go outta your fuckin way to hurt my feelings all the fuckin time?”

Chris just looked up at me nonchalantly as though he really didn’t care at all. “I’m just tellin you how I feel. You keep wantin me to be your boyfriend and that’s not what I want right now, B. I told you before, I just wanna chill and have fun without havin to worry about stupid stuff. I don’t want that kinda relationship right now.”

“What about all the things you said Saturday? You said you loved -”

“I never said a loved you,” Chris interrupted loudly. For some reason he looked around to see if someone had heard him. Of course they hadn’t because we were the only two people in the park. After Chris said that, I felt like my whole body had just went numb. “You’re the one that said you loved me,” Chris said. 

“You said that you could love me one day,” I told him.

“Well, sorry, B. But that day isn’t today.” Chris said it so effortlessly as though there was no emotion coming from inside of him. “Do you know how fuckin hard it would be for me to love someone, Brandon? I’ve been fucked over by everyone I’ve ever known, mostly from my own fuckin family, so I’m really not all that anxious to get fucked over by you. I like you, I think you’re a cool dude, but you want me to give you somethin that I can’t give right now. I wouldn’t know how to give it to you, I wouldn’t know ‘what’ to give to you.”

“I’m just askin for you. I’m not askin for nothin else.”

Chris stood up. He leaned against the tree. “You say you love me, B. But I think you only see the parts of me that you wanna see. If you know what kinda person I really am, how fucked up things I’ve done -”

“I know what kinda fucked up things you’ve done, Chris. You’ve done them to me for four years. And yeah, I do love you, the good parts and the bad parts. There’s a lot of times I wish I didn’t like you at all. But I don’t wish that now. I can’t wish it.”

“But I just can’t do it, B. I’m sorry, I just can’t.” Shadows covered Chris’ face, and I couldn’t see him as clear as I could before. “I just...” he stopped for a few moments. “I think we should just cool off for a while.” Those words were sharp enough to kill me. I didn’t understand how we had gotten to this conversation. Everything seemed to be moving so fast and nothing was making sense to me at all. 

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Chris said.

I could feel those tears coming back again. But once again I refused to let them fall. I was glad it was dark enough so that Chris couldn’t see the expression on my face. “Why did you let me think that you liked me? Just five minutes ago you said I was the only person you don’t hate. And now you’re sayin you don’t wanna be with me at all.”

“I did....I do like you, B.”

“No you don’t Chris, not really. I was just a convience for you. You never really cared.”

“Brandon, I do fuckin care about you!”

“So why are we havin this fuckin conversation then? You made me promise not to mess around with anybody else, and I haven’t because you didn’t want me to. I don’t believe in promises but I made one for you. I could’ve maybe started somethin with Jason Coleman, but I didn’t, because I wanted you, because I thought that you wanted me. But you didn’t want me to be with you only because you liked me so much, you just wanted to keep me to yourself because you a fuckin greedy ass, selfish bastard. You said that you don’t wanna love someone because you don’t wanna get fucked over. Well, goddammit, you’ve done nothin but fuck me over and I still love you anyway. But that’s not enough for you.”

Chris didn’t say anything.

“I thought you brought me here `cause you wanted to spend time with me, but you brought me here to tell me that you wanted to break up with me.”

“I didn’t want to tell you over the phone,” Chris said.

“Oh, because then you wouldn’t be able to see the expression on my face when you told me to fuck off.”

“It’s not like that, B.”

“I’m tired of liking people who don’t like me,” I said to Chris. “I’m tired of puttin effort into people just to get disappointed. It’s people like that make me hate every fuckin body. If you don’t wanna be with me...”

“Brandon, I didn’t say I didn’t want to be with you -” Chris said.
“Then what the fuck are you sayin Chris? Tell me, so I can know.”

“I think we should just let things settle for a while. We’ve been goin non-stop, spendin all this time together. I just think we need to be apart for a while,” Chris said. “Not forever, just for a little while. Just give me a little time.”

It sounded weird for Chris to say forever, especially since he said he didn’t believe in the idea of the word ‘forever’. “I don’t wanna wait around for you forever, Chris. I don’t wanna waste time waitin for you to realize that you want me. If you want me, you should want me now, not later. If not, then just forget the whole thing.”

“If that’s how you feel about it,” Chris said casually. “Fine with me.”

I felt my heart go cold. I turned in the direction of Chris’ truck. “I’m ready to go home now.”

We walked in thick silence to his truck. The ride home was even more torturous. We didn’t say one thing to each other. There was nothing I needed to say to Chris. And there was nothing I really wanted to hear from him. Five minutes later, Chris pulled up into my driveway. I opened the car door, and Chris said, “Brandon...” but he didn’t say anything else.

“What is it?” I asked. 

Chris’ eyes looked really sad. “Nothin,” he said. 

“No. Tell me what you were about to say.”

“...I can’t...” Chris said. It sounded like he was forcing himself not to cry.

“You’re such a fuckin coward.” Annoyed I climbed out of the truck, slammed the door shut, and went inside of my house. I didn’t hear Chris’ truck pull off down the street until a good five minutes later. My mother was sitting on the couch again, watching TV. When she saw me, she said, “I’ve been waiting for you to come home.”

I walked over to the couch slowly and sat next to her. I felt like crying and my body felt weak, as though I didn’t have control over it. “What happened?” my mother asked. She actually sounded like a concerned mother and not a dictator for once. I gazed at the TV screen and rested my head on her shoulder. I couldn’t say anything. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

“You were right,” I said a few minutes later. I hated to admit that. I didn’t want it to be true. 

My mother didn’t ask me what I meant by that because she already knew. She didn’t say anything and I appreciated her silence. I just stared at the television screen, looking at the images but not really looking at them. Finally the tears came, and I thought they would never stop.