Prologue
It didn’t take me a long time to figure it out. People pretend. We are all pretenders. I don’t mean that in a matter-of-factly way, or how kids pretend to be super heroes. I don’t even mean it in a Holden Caulfield “bunch of phonies” way. I just think we are essentially just a bunch of blind animals, made up of particles created out of complete chance, venturing around in this awkward thing called being alive. We don’t have any idea what anything is. Faces pass, one after the other, people overrating their own yesterdays, which reflects an imitated tomorrow as the perhaps of one day. We masquerade concepts, and theories, and morals, and communities, and societies, and put on a complete act as if this is what we are here for. Like there is a reason.
We make things up.
We pretend.
I guess we do it to not feel so darned shitty all the time. Or a more likely a reason is to feel smarter, and more significant in the scheme of things and the way they ultimately lie, no pun intended, that everything is everything and nothing at the same time, somehow. It’s not meant to be understood. So we shouldn’t pretend to. We know nothing—and that’s the way it should be.
I learned this at a very young age. Even more vividly than the sounds I hear around me now, I can still hear the lopsided tire on my red-orange huffy squeaking in rhythm against the newly paved street. Then following shortly, a small female voice and six very insignificant words that I will always remember, which probably pertains to me more than I would like to admit, “Take off the training wheels pussy.” she says, tread with spite and callous on her tone.
Scarlet Valens. The ten-year-old vixen-child that lived down the street. The tiny girl with scrapes on her knees and dirt in her fingernails. Known as the outcast kid with no parents whom already smoked cigarettes. My very first friend.
I didn’t have training wheels by the way.
Training wheels were for seven-year-olds.
I was nine for Christ sakes.
Going on ten.
My tire was messed up and my bike just sucked.
That’s why she was always so far ahead of me.
Yeah.
“My bike just sucks.” I yelled back hopelessly defenseless.
“Come on.” She responded, hardly sympathetic, “We’re almost there.”
Although I was trying desperately to catch up with her, like always, I really didn’t want to go where we were going. She told me she found a dead body and she wanted to show me. I was a pretty anxious kid, so you can imagine that I wasn’t very fond of this idea. I always just kept to myself but she made me be her friend and do stuff with her anyway. I hated that I liked that about her.
We cut through the Bolsters yard and took a trail into the woods. Scarlet whipped her bike sideways into a skidding halt in the middle of the trail. She looked really cool doing it. I looked like an idiot flipping over my bike onto my shoulder trying to emulate her. It was okay though because she was already galloping into the heavier woods before she had a chance to see me.
“I don’t think we should do this,” I said catching my breath and up to her, “We should tell somebody first.”
“Are you fucking crazy dude? The person that finds the body is always the one that gets blamed for the murder.”
“Really?” I say concerned.
“Duh.”
“How do you know that?”
“Law and Order.” She says in an “obviously” way.
“How do you know he was murdered?”
“She, and I think the bullet hole in her neck would be a hint.”
I swallow, “So what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know. Just check it out I guess.”
“Well what about after? We have to tell somebody after right?”
“No. Somebody will find it eventually and then they can deal with it.”
The farther we head into the woods the louder the sound of a waterfall gets. We got to the top of a hill, which then sloped down steeply to the bank of a river.
“There it is!” Scarlet rang out excitedly pointing ahead along the side of the river.
Disappointed that it wasn’t a waterfall and terrified to see the dead body I stood silent with my hands in my pockets. Scarlet ran ahead leaving a thick trail of mischief and excitement behind her almost apparent. Of course, I followed, apprehensively.
“I don’t see it.” I said confused.
Scarlet lifted branches from a bush off of a dead fox, “There it is. Cool huh?”
“I thought you said--”
“I wonder what happened to her.” She said ignoring me, surveying the dead animal. She continued to investigate and act like the fox was a dead woman for a good five to ten minutes. I just let her do her thing as I sat frustrated on large rock on the edge of the river. I was also secretly very relieved, but frustrated nonetheless.
“Enough!” I finally shouted.
“Isn’t this awesome!” She expressed excitedly, ignoring me even more aggressively.
“That isn’t a dead women! It’s a dead fox.” Scarlet stopped and looked at me blankly, like I was ruining her birthday or something. “Why did you take me out here? Do you like scaring me?” Still saying nothing she lit a cigarette and took a puff holding in the smoke as she looked back at me. “I’m leaving.” I said sharply.
“Yeah right, you won’t leave.” She said, exhaling the words into cigarette smoke against my face.
“Yes I will. I am. I was supposed to be home an hour ago already.”
“I know you, you don’t remember how to get back.” She said coyly.
I didn’t say anything. She smiled like the devil and then said, “Well if this isn’t a dead woman then what am I?”
Scarlet flicked her barely smoked cigarette into a spiraling bravura of sparks and smoke as she fell to her back simultaneously. She then lay there with her eyes closed and mouth open as if she was dead.
“Come on Scarlet, I have to go home.” She said nothing. “I know you aren’t dead, get up.” Still nothing. I have always been a stubborn person. I refused to tend to her antics and decided to sit there until she gave up. Of course she never did. In fact, she laid there, in character, for so long that she fell asleep. That was one thing I found really interesting about her. She always looked a lot happier when she was asleep. Like she was somewhere else. She took naps a lot. I think most of my memories of her are of her asleep. I remember specifically on that day, at that moment, I fell in love with her. Her heroin hair and the curly split-ends that fell like smoke rings down her back. I loved her switchblade eyes as she spoke with hangnails between her teeth, which left scars on her words, and pain in her voice. I loved mostly, how it was always just me and her, if that makes sense. She only wanted to hang out with me, and I didn't want to see anyone else. I was crazy about her and she was crazy about everything. We were both alone in this world. Alone together.
A horrible feeling came over me at that moment because I realized I really felt something for her and wanted to embrace it from then on. I wanted to stop pretending that it wasn't a big deal seeing her and being with her. I wanted to do things and go a lot of new places with her. I wanted to make her my girlfriend. It hurt so profoundly, right then and there, sitting on a rock, knowing that I couldn't.
I walked up to her and whispered with somberness in her ear, “Scarlet wake up, you don’t have to pretend anymore.”
She squirms into a different position and whispered back with her eyes still closed, “I can’t. Then no one would know who we are.” I think she just said that because she was half asleep and wasn’t making sense.
I picked her up in my arms and began to walk her out of the woods. I really did know how to get back but really didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay there with her. Either way, before I could even walk four steps she jumped out of my arms. She never liked people helping her or doing things for her. Refused to take anything from anybody. Unless it was cigarettes from her “bitch” foster mother.
She walked back toward the dead fox and picked up the cigarette from the ground, re-lit it, and stared at the fox. She stood there, arms folded, her pale legs shot straight downward from her white dress and her converse sneakers snug together square to her body. I walked up next to her. We stood there for minutes. Just staring.
“What do you think happened to him?” I asked.
“Well it’s definitely a girl fox.”
“How can you tell?”
“And her parents probably left her,” I looked over to her and knew what she meant. She flicks the ash from the tip of her cigarette, “Probably couldn’t survive being alone.”
"How do you get cigarettes so often?" She always had cigarettes and I never asked her how till then. I like how she never asked me to smoke with her for some reason.
"My foster Mom, parent or whatever, is a chain smoker and has cartons of them all the time."
"And you take them?"
"Who cares," She said as she pressed the tip of her cigarette twisting it into the dirt, "She's a bitch."
“Scarlet,” she finally looked away from the fox and at me, “Why did you say it was a dead body?”
“Forget it.”
“No. Tell me.” I said sternly. After a moment of her not answering I grabbed her arm, “Tell--” She rips her arm away from me.
“I was just pretending alright!”
We're all pretenders.
“Don’t you wish something like that would happen? Just something,” her sentence stifled by the cracking sadness in her throat. She paused as tears welled in her eyes, “just anything to happen.” She stared into my eyes waiting to see what they would say. I stood there baffled and taken aback by her burst of unprecedented emotion. Obviously, she didn’t see what she wanted to see because with one sniffle and wipe of her eyes she was back to her tough callous self and walked away. I don’t know what came over me but I ran after her, turned her around, and kissed her. It was one of those really quick tight-lipped kisses that nine-year-olds do. That was my last memory of doing anything with balls to this day. I think I just wanted to be that “something to happen,” for her. I still taste the smoke on her lips.
I don’t really remember what happened immediately after that. I don’t even remember the bike ride home. The last thing I remember from that day was when we got to the outside of my house. We were on our bikes facing each other. Our front wheels touching seemed really intimate at the time. Scarlet was smiling shyly. I don’t know if I had ever seen that vulnerability in her before. She looked really pretty when she tried to hide her smile.
"Will," I looked at her as she timidly stared downward, "do you like me?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean do you like me? Not like you like your bike or like how I like cigarettes, or how our pretend parents say they like us, like really like me?"
"Yeah, I like you a lot. I think I like, love you kind of." I say with a giggle.
She smiled, still looking downward, "I think you're really cute, and not like any of the other kids, or anyone at all around here.
She never says cute or anything like that.
“I think you are too.” I was nine. I didn’t know what to say to girls. Not that I do now.
“Seriously though Will, I think you are the only good thing I have. And you are the only one who gets me.”
“Sometimes I feel like I don’t get you at all.”
She starts laughing. “Yeah, but still. Sometimes I don't even feel like I exist. I feel like I am only part of someone else's dream or something. Like I am dead to everyone," She looked into my eyes fervidly, "Except when I am with you.”
The next few minutes there was just a lot of smirk silence and positive awkwardness venting between us.
“We should get married.” She said breaking the air.
“Okay.”
This time she fully smiled, “Do you want to go to the movies tomorrow?”
As soon as she asked, that horrid feeling returned and ached deep into my stomach. I can still feel the aching now. I kept forgetting that I wasn’t going to be around anymore. I had been shutting it out of my mind completely those last few weeks to the point where I literally forgot.
She noticed that my mood complete shifted, “What’s the matter? We don’t have to go to the movies if you don’t want.”
“I want to go to the movies with you but I can’t.”
“Why not?” She said tough.
Barely getting the words out of my mouth, “I’m moving tomorrow. I was adopted.”
I can’t describe the sadness that washed over her face when I said that. Her eyes tear up but they didn't cry.
“But I thought we were going to get married?”
“I thought we were just pretending?”
Those were our last words to each other. Just two kind of questions, with definitively no answers. For either of us.
Her face changed and that blank look returned. She turned around and peddled away. I never saw her again. There I was, standing there heartbroken, watching her pedal away, and realizing that I am leaving her here alone. I kept thinking about the dead fox lying in the middle of nowhere completely alone. I hated that I was nine and couldn’t make decisions for myself. I hated that I was taking the only person she had away from her. I still can’t get the memory of her peddling away out of my head. I don’t even remember going inside after that. In a way its like I am still there in my mind, sitting on my sucky bike, watching her peddle away from me. Forever. Forever hoping something, anything, will happen.
We are all pretenders.
