(no subject)
hope you guys like it.
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The smell of fresh-cut grass is carried into my house by the breeze. I like that smell, it reminds me of when I would watch my dad cut the grass. He’s gotten older. Now, we have a yard service come and cut the grass for us.
There’s an oak tree in my backyard, one of the most beautiful oak trees in the world in my opinion. Its leaves are starting to turn, a clear sign of fall. Soon, those leaves will be gone. I can see winter in the distance. It’s a gaping mouth, coming closer and closer. Eventually, before you know it, we’ll all be swallowed whole.
Fall means school. Not the most pleasant thing to think about, but I’ve given up trying to fight it. As long as I make it past the first day, I’m fine. The first day is always the worst, with the kids telling their stories of vacation, showing off new clothes. I hate the first day. It’s not so much the fact that I don’t have anyone to discuss these things with, but more the fact that the first day is the day I hear that question, that question that hurts me every time it’s asked.
“Where’s Beth?”
You’d think that by now, everyone would know. I mean, there were rumors and stories floating around the hallways faster than the kids could travel themselves. Within a week, it was everywhere. It was the one part of school I couldn’t easily escape. This year, there are only a few people asking that question.
“Where’s Beth, where’s Beth?” they all ask. I land on the words like slipping on ice. Of course, nobody notices.
“She’s gone,” I say. “She’s dead.”
“Oh, oh, I’m so sorry,” they all say. They say it with such a tone that I can tell they don’t really mean it. It’s just the polite thing to do. You always say sorry when something bad happens to somebody.
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The first week was the most awful week of my life. I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. Beth haunted me in my dreams, and I’d stay up in desperation, struggling against sleep, hoping I wouldn’t see her. I missed her more than anyone knew. I’d sit up and watch TV and eat mint chocolate chip ice cream, my favorite. My mom bought the biggest containers until I couldn’t eat anymore and she started throwing it away because there wasn’t room in the freezer. She felt sorry for me, just like everyone else. Everybody had their own way of showing sympathy. My mom would buy me ice cream. My dad would pat me on the back and do father-son things with me. My little brother helped my mom bake me a cake, and on his own brought me a bucket of dirt.
“It’s special dirt,” he said to me.
After a while things got better. I started to sleep again. I learned how to deal without Beth. Everyone stopped paying as much attention to me, and things went back to normal. Despite all this, everything reminded me of her, and as much as I tried to shake her off of me, I couldn’t. She clung on to every word I said and everything I did. Every night, I’d cry until my eyes were bloodshot and I was so tired I fell asleep.
I loved her. I promised myself that I loved her and that I would always love her.
According to my high school, I was attractive. This didn’t earn me too many friends, but every once in a while a girl would come up and tell me I was cute. I did go on dates, but that didn’t happen very often. And it seemed like every time I would go on a date, I would just start thinking about Beth and end up ruining the evening. The only time a girl didn’t get mad at me for thinking about Beth was when I went on a date with this girl Jessica. She was pretty. I actually did kind of like her, but Beth stood in the way of that. And we sat on the boardwalk, and let our feet dangle off. I tried to hold back the tears. They glistened, and Jessica told me she could see them. They fell and made ripples in the water. I looked up at the moon, and Jessica smiled.
“She’s up there, you know,” she said. She kissed me on the cheek, and I felt as though she wanted to kiss me but she knew it wouldn’t be a good idea, and I felt bad about that.
“I can almost see her waving,” she said. She kissed me on the cheek again, and got up and left.
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The first day of school, I was miserable. I got home, and my mom could tell I was upset. She kept asking what was wrong, but I wouldn’t budge. She knew it was Beth, but she wanted to hear the words out of my mouth. Finally, she gave up.
“It’s Beth, isn’t it?”
Hearing her name again, I thought about her more than I had in a year.
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“Beth is a fat girl’s name.” That’s what I said to her on the first day we had met, down by the boardwalk. I had always though of fate as something people told you when they had just fallen in love, something to reassure themselves it was real.
She looked at me when I said that, and she gave me the meanest, coldest frown, so deep and sincere I knew she was laughing on the inside. And she said “Well, Joseph is a fat boys name,” but that didn’t make much sense to either of us, and we laughed.
She said it was love at first sight, and I agreed. We started going out, and things were perfect. As we walked home that first day, hand in hand, I thought about how amazing Beth was, and how she would change my life. Of course, I never really thought she’d change it negatively.
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School doesn’t get easier. It gets harder, and every day that passes is another day I’m left without her, my Beth. I’m constantly reminded of her, and in English, we read Romeo and Juliet, and I think of how awfully sad they must have been, and then I’m reminded that I was once that sad too, and could possibly still be that sad. Our teacher made us write an essay on sadness, and what it does to people, and I wrote about Beth. I didn’t give details. When I read my essay to the class, Jessica, the girl I had dated before, stood up.
“You are pathetic,” she yelled, audible for most of the hallway. She ran out of the room in tears, and slammed the door so hard I thought the window panes would fall out. Everyone looked at me. I sat down in my desk and stared hard out the window, at the leaves that once were green. I watched as they fell and were smothered under the footsteps of other students.
My mom still tries to keep me happy. The reason I love her so much is because she knows she won’t make me happy, but she still tries. I come home from school every day, and she’s there, either with some mint chocolate chip ice cream or some movie I had wanted to see, or tickets to something. She really cared about me. She sat with me, every day after school, while I stared blankly into the other room, and she held me and told me I’d be fine. She told me that someday, I’d meet another girl like Beth, and we’d fall in love all over.
“Love isn’t a one time thing,” she said, and hugged me tightly.
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We usually went to my house. Beth kept saying her house was ugly, and I didn’t really care about seeing it all the time, so usually we just watched a movie at my house. The school days passed slower than ever; I’d sit in class and think about Beth until the teacher finally called on me and I had no idea what she was talking about. Finally, school would get out and I’d rush over to the big statue in the front of our school. It was an important statue, and only the most rebellious kids would vandalize it. I thought it was weird how none of the teachers ever told us who it was, and I often wondered what that man had done to earn a statue that big right in front of the only high school in our town. The more I thought about it, the more I figured it wasn’t even some important person, probably just a good principal or something along those lines.
She always held my hand when we walked through school together, even though she hated it. She hated the way she could feel people staring at us. I didn’t mind at all, and I felt so great walking through the halls holding her hand. It was almost as if I was screaming “YES, THIS IS MY GIRLFRIEND AND I LOVE HER!!!” and I didn’t mind it one bit. She had drawn the line at kissing, though. Holding hands was one thing, but she hated to kiss goodbye. Once, she kissed me, and a boy started yelling “Isn’t that sweet!” and everyone around us laughed. She wanted to say something to that boy, I could see it in her eyes, and the way she was shaking I thought she’d walk up and slap him. She almost cried, and I gave her a hug and she ran off to her class. And after that, we didn’t kiss at school anymore.
The first time we did go to her house, her mom wasn’t home. She opened the door and started yelling.
“Mom! Mom! I’m home from school! I brought a friend with me, Joseph. I think I’ve told you about him!”
Then she looked at me and shrugged, and burst out laughing, which gave it away that the whole thing was an act. She had made sure her mom wouldn’t be home, and I wondered what she had planned for us.
She dragged me upstairs, and we ran into her room.
“You’re room is huge!” I said. It was a beautiful room. She had painted clouds on her ceiling and her walls had stars and moons on them. The bed was large, and was up against the two walls in the corner, and on the other side of the room was a dresser which had been painted the same pattern as the walls, and then a huge mirror was next to the bed.
She walked over and sat on the bed. I started to walk over, but as soon as I took a step, she smiled, and pulled her shirt off. I couldn’t believe it.
“Uh, Beth, what’s going on?” I said timidly, as she started to unbutton her jeans.
“Just take off your clothes and you’ll see.”
I took off all my clothes, and I stood naked in front of her awkwardly. I didn’t know what to do, and I tried not to move. She was beautiful. Her body was shaped so perfectly, and I had never seen a naked girl before, so I could hardly believe that this was really happening.
Finally, she got up. She walked over, and dragged me through the hall and into the bathroom.
“What’s going on?” I said again.
“I’ve always wanted to take a shower with a boy,” she said. She turned on the water, and we got in, and I kissed her and we let the water fall onto us. She didn’t touch me, but I was glad, and I didn’t touch her either. She didn’t look at me either, which I was really happy about because I didn’t want her to start staring at me. Because of this, I tried not to look at her for too long either.
After the shower, we dried off, and we went and lay in her bed. She fell asleep, and I laid there holding her, wondering how I had gotten so lucky with her.
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I started skipping school. It became overwhelming; I’d think about Beth all the time and there were a few times I asked to go to the bathroom, and I ran into the bathroom and vomited into one of the stalls. I missed her, and there was nothing no one could do about it.
Every Monday, my mom would call in and tell the principal that I was sick. I’d stay home and watch movies all day. I’d sit in my room for hours, staring at the picture of Beth that was on my dresser. It had been a whole year, and I still could not shake that feeling I got when I looked at that picture. She was sitting on a chair in her house, and her face is all twisted. It was the day I had gotten my camera, my birthday. I had gone to her house, and she was sitting on that chair and I caught her off guard. Just as she had turned around, I took the picture. I developed it right away, and every night, I’d stare at the picture, thinking about her. The girl that could make me happier than anyone else could. I looked at her lips, frozen in their position forever, and thought about how I had saved this one memory from being destroyed with her.
Christmas was coming up. I didn’t know what to get for my mom or my dad, and I started to spend my days being “sick” thinking about what to get them. I knew it had to be something big. I understood how much they cared for me, and how much they were trying to help. I wanted to get the something that would make them laugh when they opened it, say “Wow, Joseph, this is great.” I’d think about it until I got tired and would drift off to sleep on the couch in my living room.
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I loved my family, but for Christmas day, I asked my parents if I could spend the day with Beth. They understood completely, which I was very grateful for. They knew what it was like to be in love for the first time.
I had taken a lot of time deciding on what to get Beth. I thought for almost two months, and then once I had decided on what to get her, I did some research to find out more about it. I found a store nearby that would have it, and I bought it for her. It took some effort to carry over her house, but I managed to get there alright, and when she opened the door, she smiled the most beautiful smile I had ever seen.
“Merry Christmas,” I said. She took it and walked into the house, struggling ever so slightly with it. We went upstairs and she yelled to her mom “Mom, mom, look! Joseph bought me a record player!” Beth had such a passion for music, especially music from when our parents were kids. She had been looking for a record player, and I finally found a place that had old ones, ones that our parents were using when they were kids. Then I bought her a few records, some of the ones she had been mentioning.
“Thank you so much Joseph!” she said, and kissed me. We went into her room, and on her bed was a pile of papers. I was too far away to look at them, but I knew they had something to do with my gift. Beth walked over slowly and softly, and held them up to me, smiling. I took them and read the top.
Beth and Joseph
A novel
By Beth Sinclaire
I didn’t have to read any further to know what it was. It was a story. A story about me, about Beth. About us. I looked at Beth.
“Now you’ll never be able to forget about me,” she said, and I ran over and hugged her and kissed her on the forehead.
“I wouldn’t have forgotten you anyway, beautiful,” I said, and we laid there on the bed, just glad to be with each other.
We took a walk around her block. We talked about all sorts of things, things that we loved, things that we hated, things that we hated but wished we had the guts to love. Beth talked about clouds.
“Someday, I’m going to learn how to fly, and I’m going to fly up into the sky, and dance on a cloud for a day.” I laughed, but I made it short so she didn’t think I was laughing at her.
“Will you dance on a cloud with me?” she said.
We walked around her block for almost an hour, and when we had gotten to a streetlight at the corner, she looked at me. It was starting to get dark out, and the streetlight looked fresh. It had just been turned on. She looked sad. I opened my mouth to ask her what was wrong, but she kissed me, hard, harder than ever. I could feel her soft warm lips pressed up against mine, and she breathed through her nose onto my cheek. We stood there kissing for what seemed forever, and I just held her, glad to be alive, glad to be with Beth. She had made everything perfect. She was perfect. If I could, I wouldn’t ever let go of her.
Finally, we stopped. She told me she would walk me back to my house, something she had never done. It was a far walk.
She talked about everything she wanted to do, places she wanted to go to, and people she wanted to meet. We held hands, and she talked. It got darker and darker, and finally we could see the silhouettes of strangers who passed by us, and the stars were up, out there in the sky, waiting for someone to wish upon them. Everything in that moment was beautiful.
We got to my house. We stood outside in the front, in the cold, crisp air, shivering. I gave her my coat. We didn’t say anything to each other for a few minutes, and the silence seemed to envelope us, leaving nothing. Finally, I saw it. A single tear, forming at the corner of her eye. Then, she said something.
“Joseph,” she said. “Watch out, because someday you’ll be turned around, and life will be gone before you even know it.” She kissed me and walked into the darkness, back towards her house.
That night, I sat in my room, reading the story. I read over every word, every metaphor she had put in it.
There were some things Beth hadn’t told me. I wish she had told me about how her father abused her. How he forced her to do nasty things she didn’t want to do. She didn’t tell me about that, and I wish she would have. That night, while I was reading the story Beth had written for me, she was grabbing the handgun out of her father’s sock drawer. She was laying down on her warm green sheets, the ones I had laid on before. She was placing the handgun in her mouth. She was pressing her finger against the trigger, listening for noises, making sure her parents hadn’t gotten home from dinner yet.
And then it was over.
Her mom fainted when she got home, and her dad stood there over her body, crying, knowing exactly what had happened. They called the police, and Beth’s father watched as the police carried away the body of the girl that had once been his daughter.
My mom got a phone call at midnight. Her crying woke me up, and I went downstairs and asked her what was wrong, and I started crying too. I stayed up the entire night, reading the story Beth had written for me, and when I got to the ending I read it out loud:
“They loved each other very much, and nothing could change that. As Beth walked home that night, she thought about how beautiful he was, and how he had changed her for the better. She promised herself that they would be together for the rest of their lives. And as she walked into her house that night, she knew that that was a promise to keep.”
I feel asleep, sick and weary and wondering what had happened to everything that once was beautiful.
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I woke up this morning to the silence of falling snow. These graces of beauty have left me so cold. I once had a heart but hearts are like snowflakes, and snowflakes, one warm touch and they melt away.
There’s a new girl in my class, and she likes me a lot. She just moved here from Arizona, and she asked me if I wanted to go out on a date. I said that would be alright. So tonight, I’m going to go get her and we’re going to get pizza or something. Hopefully I won’t hurt this girl by thinking of Beth.
I get her, and we walk to the pizza place. Her name is Trisha, and I think to myself, “Trisha, Trisha isn’t a fat girl’s name.” I’m glad that she doesn’t know about Beth yet, because maybe that’ll help the evening along.
We get pizza. It’s okay. We talk about things, and after pizza we walk down to the boardwalk, and dangle our legs over the edge. She’s shivering, and I give her my coat.
“Tonight was nice,” she says. I stare up at the moon, thinking about Beth, wondering if she really is waving at me, hoping my date goes alright.
“Yeah, it was,” I say, not really listening to what Trisha is saying.
“Wait. Something isn’t right,” she says, and I freeze, hoping she hasn’t heard about Beth.
“No, what’s wrong?”
“I can’t put my finger on it but...wait. I know. You’re in love. I can tell by the way you’re looking up at the moon. Don’t worry though, I guess I understand.”
She sounds upset. I try not to move, or say anything, but finally, I say “You’re not mad?”
“No,” she says. “I’m not mad. I really like you though.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, can you at least tell me about this girl? What’s she like?”
I close my eyes, and feel the breeze stinging my face. I think about Beth, waving at me from up there in the sky, and I say “Well, she’s beautiful.”
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The smell of fresh-cut grass is carried into my house by the breeze. I like that smell, it reminds me of when I would watch my dad cut the grass. He’s gotten older. Now, we have a yard service come and cut the grass for us.
There’s an oak tree in my backyard, one of the most beautiful oak trees in the world in my opinion. Its leaves are starting to turn, a clear sign of fall. Soon, those leaves will be gone. I can see winter in the distance. It’s a gaping mouth, coming closer and closer. Eventually, before you know it, we’ll all be swallowed whole.
Fall means school. Not the most pleasant thing to think about, but I’ve given up trying to fight it. As long as I make it past the first day, I’m fine. The first day is always the worst, with the kids telling their stories of vacation, showing off new clothes. I hate the first day. It’s not so much the fact that I don’t have anyone to discuss these things with, but more the fact that the first day is the day I hear that question, that question that hurts me every time it’s asked.
“Where’s Beth?”
You’d think that by now, everyone would know. I mean, there were rumors and stories floating around the hallways faster than the kids could travel themselves. Within a week, it was everywhere. It was the one part of school I couldn’t easily escape. This year, there are only a few people asking that question.
“Where’s Beth, where’s Beth?” they all ask. I land on the words like slipping on ice. Of course, nobody notices.
“She’s gone,” I say. “She’s dead.”
“Oh, oh, I’m so sorry,” they all say. They say it with such a tone that I can tell they don’t really mean it. It’s just the polite thing to do. You always say sorry when something bad happens to somebody.
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The first week was the most awful week of my life. I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. Beth haunted me in my dreams, and I’d stay up in desperation, struggling against sleep, hoping I wouldn’t see her. I missed her more than anyone knew. I’d sit up and watch TV and eat mint chocolate chip ice cream, my favorite. My mom bought the biggest containers until I couldn’t eat anymore and she started throwing it away because there wasn’t room in the freezer. She felt sorry for me, just like everyone else. Everybody had their own way of showing sympathy. My mom would buy me ice cream. My dad would pat me on the back and do father-son things with me. My little brother helped my mom bake me a cake, and on his own brought me a bucket of dirt.
“It’s special dirt,” he said to me.
After a while things got better. I started to sleep again. I learned how to deal without Beth. Everyone stopped paying as much attention to me, and things went back to normal. Despite all this, everything reminded me of her, and as much as I tried to shake her off of me, I couldn’t. She clung on to every word I said and everything I did. Every night, I’d cry until my eyes were bloodshot and I was so tired I fell asleep.
I loved her. I promised myself that I loved her and that I would always love her.
According to my high school, I was attractive. This didn’t earn me too many friends, but every once in a while a girl would come up and tell me I was cute. I did go on dates, but that didn’t happen very often. And it seemed like every time I would go on a date, I would just start thinking about Beth and end up ruining the evening. The only time a girl didn’t get mad at me for thinking about Beth was when I went on a date with this girl Jessica. She was pretty. I actually did kind of like her, but Beth stood in the way of that. And we sat on the boardwalk, and let our feet dangle off. I tried to hold back the tears. They glistened, and Jessica told me she could see them. They fell and made ripples in the water. I looked up at the moon, and Jessica smiled.
“She’s up there, you know,” she said. She kissed me on the cheek, and I felt as though she wanted to kiss me but she knew it wouldn’t be a good idea, and I felt bad about that.
“I can almost see her waving,” she said. She kissed me on the cheek again, and got up and left.
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The first day of school, I was miserable. I got home, and my mom could tell I was upset. She kept asking what was wrong, but I wouldn’t budge. She knew it was Beth, but she wanted to hear the words out of my mouth. Finally, she gave up.
“It’s Beth, isn’t it?”
Hearing her name again, I thought about her more than I had in a year.
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“Beth is a fat girl’s name.” That’s what I said to her on the first day we had met, down by the boardwalk. I had always though of fate as something people told you when they had just fallen in love, something to reassure themselves it was real.
She looked at me when I said that, and she gave me the meanest, coldest frown, so deep and sincere I knew she was laughing on the inside. And she said “Well, Joseph is a fat boys name,” but that didn’t make much sense to either of us, and we laughed.
She said it was love at first sight, and I agreed. We started going out, and things were perfect. As we walked home that first day, hand in hand, I thought about how amazing Beth was, and how she would change my life. Of course, I never really thought she’d change it negatively.
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School doesn’t get easier. It gets harder, and every day that passes is another day I’m left without her, my Beth. I’m constantly reminded of her, and in English, we read Romeo and Juliet, and I think of how awfully sad they must have been, and then I’m reminded that I was once that sad too, and could possibly still be that sad. Our teacher made us write an essay on sadness, and what it does to people, and I wrote about Beth. I didn’t give details. When I read my essay to the class, Jessica, the girl I had dated before, stood up.
“You are pathetic,” she yelled, audible for most of the hallway. She ran out of the room in tears, and slammed the door so hard I thought the window panes would fall out. Everyone looked at me. I sat down in my desk and stared hard out the window, at the leaves that once were green. I watched as they fell and were smothered under the footsteps of other students.
My mom still tries to keep me happy. The reason I love her so much is because she knows she won’t make me happy, but she still tries. I come home from school every day, and she’s there, either with some mint chocolate chip ice cream or some movie I had wanted to see, or tickets to something. She really cared about me. She sat with me, every day after school, while I stared blankly into the other room, and she held me and told me I’d be fine. She told me that someday, I’d meet another girl like Beth, and we’d fall in love all over.
“Love isn’t a one time thing,” she said, and hugged me tightly.
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We usually went to my house. Beth kept saying her house was ugly, and I didn’t really care about seeing it all the time, so usually we just watched a movie at my house. The school days passed slower than ever; I’d sit in class and think about Beth until the teacher finally called on me and I had no idea what she was talking about. Finally, school would get out and I’d rush over to the big statue in the front of our school. It was an important statue, and only the most rebellious kids would vandalize it. I thought it was weird how none of the teachers ever told us who it was, and I often wondered what that man had done to earn a statue that big right in front of the only high school in our town. The more I thought about it, the more I figured it wasn’t even some important person, probably just a good principal or something along those lines.
She always held my hand when we walked through school together, even though she hated it. She hated the way she could feel people staring at us. I didn’t mind at all, and I felt so great walking through the halls holding her hand. It was almost as if I was screaming “YES, THIS IS MY GIRLFRIEND AND I LOVE HER!!!” and I didn’t mind it one bit. She had drawn the line at kissing, though. Holding hands was one thing, but she hated to kiss goodbye. Once, she kissed me, and a boy started yelling “Isn’t that sweet!” and everyone around us laughed. She wanted to say something to that boy, I could see it in her eyes, and the way she was shaking I thought she’d walk up and slap him. She almost cried, and I gave her a hug and she ran off to her class. And after that, we didn’t kiss at school anymore.
The first time we did go to her house, her mom wasn’t home. She opened the door and started yelling.
“Mom! Mom! I’m home from school! I brought a friend with me, Joseph. I think I’ve told you about him!”
Then she looked at me and shrugged, and burst out laughing, which gave it away that the whole thing was an act. She had made sure her mom wouldn’t be home, and I wondered what she had planned for us.
She dragged me upstairs, and we ran into her room.
“You’re room is huge!” I said. It was a beautiful room. She had painted clouds on her ceiling and her walls had stars and moons on them. The bed was large, and was up against the two walls in the corner, and on the other side of the room was a dresser which had been painted the same pattern as the walls, and then a huge mirror was next to the bed.
She walked over and sat on the bed. I started to walk over, but as soon as I took a step, she smiled, and pulled her shirt off. I couldn’t believe it.
“Uh, Beth, what’s going on?” I said timidly, as she started to unbutton her jeans.
“Just take off your clothes and you’ll see.”
I took off all my clothes, and I stood naked in front of her awkwardly. I didn’t know what to do, and I tried not to move. She was beautiful. Her body was shaped so perfectly, and I had never seen a naked girl before, so I could hardly believe that this was really happening.
Finally, she got up. She walked over, and dragged me through the hall and into the bathroom.
“What’s going on?” I said again.
“I’ve always wanted to take a shower with a boy,” she said. She turned on the water, and we got in, and I kissed her and we let the water fall onto us. She didn’t touch me, but I was glad, and I didn’t touch her either. She didn’t look at me either, which I was really happy about because I didn’t want her to start staring at me. Because of this, I tried not to look at her for too long either.
After the shower, we dried off, and we went and lay in her bed. She fell asleep, and I laid there holding her, wondering how I had gotten so lucky with her.
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I started skipping school. It became overwhelming; I’d think about Beth all the time and there were a few times I asked to go to the bathroom, and I ran into the bathroom and vomited into one of the stalls. I missed her, and there was nothing no one could do about it.
Every Monday, my mom would call in and tell the principal that I was sick. I’d stay home and watch movies all day. I’d sit in my room for hours, staring at the picture of Beth that was on my dresser. It had been a whole year, and I still could not shake that feeling I got when I looked at that picture. She was sitting on a chair in her house, and her face is all twisted. It was the day I had gotten my camera, my birthday. I had gone to her house, and she was sitting on that chair and I caught her off guard. Just as she had turned around, I took the picture. I developed it right away, and every night, I’d stare at the picture, thinking about her. The girl that could make me happier than anyone else could. I looked at her lips, frozen in their position forever, and thought about how I had saved this one memory from being destroyed with her.
Christmas was coming up. I didn’t know what to get for my mom or my dad, and I started to spend my days being “sick” thinking about what to get them. I knew it had to be something big. I understood how much they cared for me, and how much they were trying to help. I wanted to get the something that would make them laugh when they opened it, say “Wow, Joseph, this is great.” I’d think about it until I got tired and would drift off to sleep on the couch in my living room.
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I loved my family, but for Christmas day, I asked my parents if I could spend the day with Beth. They understood completely, which I was very grateful for. They knew what it was like to be in love for the first time.
I had taken a lot of time deciding on what to get Beth. I thought for almost two months, and then once I had decided on what to get her, I did some research to find out more about it. I found a store nearby that would have it, and I bought it for her. It took some effort to carry over her house, but I managed to get there alright, and when she opened the door, she smiled the most beautiful smile I had ever seen.
“Merry Christmas,” I said. She took it and walked into the house, struggling ever so slightly with it. We went upstairs and she yelled to her mom “Mom, mom, look! Joseph bought me a record player!” Beth had such a passion for music, especially music from when our parents were kids. She had been looking for a record player, and I finally found a place that had old ones, ones that our parents were using when they were kids. Then I bought her a few records, some of the ones she had been mentioning.
“Thank you so much Joseph!” she said, and kissed me. We went into her room, and on her bed was a pile of papers. I was too far away to look at them, but I knew they had something to do with my gift. Beth walked over slowly and softly, and held them up to me, smiling. I took them and read the top.
Beth and Joseph
A novel
By Beth Sinclaire
I didn’t have to read any further to know what it was. It was a story. A story about me, about Beth. About us. I looked at Beth.
“Now you’ll never be able to forget about me,” she said, and I ran over and hugged her and kissed her on the forehead.
“I wouldn’t have forgotten you anyway, beautiful,” I said, and we laid there on the bed, just glad to be with each other.
We took a walk around her block. We talked about all sorts of things, things that we loved, things that we hated, things that we hated but wished we had the guts to love. Beth talked about clouds.
“Someday, I’m going to learn how to fly, and I’m going to fly up into the sky, and dance on a cloud for a day.” I laughed, but I made it short so she didn’t think I was laughing at her.
“Will you dance on a cloud with me?” she said.
We walked around her block for almost an hour, and when we had gotten to a streetlight at the corner, she looked at me. It was starting to get dark out, and the streetlight looked fresh. It had just been turned on. She looked sad. I opened my mouth to ask her what was wrong, but she kissed me, hard, harder than ever. I could feel her soft warm lips pressed up against mine, and she breathed through her nose onto my cheek. We stood there kissing for what seemed forever, and I just held her, glad to be alive, glad to be with Beth. She had made everything perfect. She was perfect. If I could, I wouldn’t ever let go of her.
Finally, we stopped. She told me she would walk me back to my house, something she had never done. It was a far walk.
She talked about everything she wanted to do, places she wanted to go to, and people she wanted to meet. We held hands, and she talked. It got darker and darker, and finally we could see the silhouettes of strangers who passed by us, and the stars were up, out there in the sky, waiting for someone to wish upon them. Everything in that moment was beautiful.
We got to my house. We stood outside in the front, in the cold, crisp air, shivering. I gave her my coat. We didn’t say anything to each other for a few minutes, and the silence seemed to envelope us, leaving nothing. Finally, I saw it. A single tear, forming at the corner of her eye. Then, she said something.
“Joseph,” she said. “Watch out, because someday you’ll be turned around, and life will be gone before you even know it.” She kissed me and walked into the darkness, back towards her house.
That night, I sat in my room, reading the story. I read over every word, every metaphor she had put in it.
There were some things Beth hadn’t told me. I wish she had told me about how her father abused her. How he forced her to do nasty things she didn’t want to do. She didn’t tell me about that, and I wish she would have. That night, while I was reading the story Beth had written for me, she was grabbing the handgun out of her father’s sock drawer. She was laying down on her warm green sheets, the ones I had laid on before. She was placing the handgun in her mouth. She was pressing her finger against the trigger, listening for noises, making sure her parents hadn’t gotten home from dinner yet.
And then it was over.
Her mom fainted when she got home, and her dad stood there over her body, crying, knowing exactly what had happened. They called the police, and Beth’s father watched as the police carried away the body of the girl that had once been his daughter.
My mom got a phone call at midnight. Her crying woke me up, and I went downstairs and asked her what was wrong, and I started crying too. I stayed up the entire night, reading the story Beth had written for me, and when I got to the ending I read it out loud:
“They loved each other very much, and nothing could change that. As Beth walked home that night, she thought about how beautiful he was, and how he had changed her for the better. She promised herself that they would be together for the rest of their lives. And as she walked into her house that night, she knew that that was a promise to keep.”
I feel asleep, sick and weary and wondering what had happened to everything that once was beautiful.
!!!
I woke up this morning to the silence of falling snow. These graces of beauty have left me so cold. I once had a heart but hearts are like snowflakes, and snowflakes, one warm touch and they melt away.
There’s a new girl in my class, and she likes me a lot. She just moved here from Arizona, and she asked me if I wanted to go out on a date. I said that would be alright. So tonight, I’m going to go get her and we’re going to get pizza or something. Hopefully I won’t hurt this girl by thinking of Beth.
I get her, and we walk to the pizza place. Her name is Trisha, and I think to myself, “Trisha, Trisha isn’t a fat girl’s name.” I’m glad that she doesn’t know about Beth yet, because maybe that’ll help the evening along.
We get pizza. It’s okay. We talk about things, and after pizza we walk down to the boardwalk, and dangle our legs over the edge. She’s shivering, and I give her my coat.
“Tonight was nice,” she says. I stare up at the moon, thinking about Beth, wondering if she really is waving at me, hoping my date goes alright.
“Yeah, it was,” I say, not really listening to what Trisha is saying.
“Wait. Something isn’t right,” she says, and I freeze, hoping she hasn’t heard about Beth.
“No, what’s wrong?”
“I can’t put my finger on it but...wait. I know. You’re in love. I can tell by the way you’re looking up at the moon. Don’t worry though, I guess I understand.”
She sounds upset. I try not to move, or say anything, but finally, I say “You’re not mad?”
“No,” she says. “I’m not mad. I really like you though.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, can you at least tell me about this girl? What’s she like?”
I close my eyes, and feel the breeze stinging my face. I think about Beth, waving at me from up there in the sky, and I say “Well, she’s beautiful.”