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Drama Queen
Drama Queen, that's what they call him. Don't encourage him. When he tells you his girlfriend died in his arms, don't sympathize. When he tells you he was the right hand man of the Kings' LA gang leader, or that he murdered thirteen people, don't look shocked. He's bi-polar, he's twenty-one, he's homeless and delusional. Change the subject, turn a deaf ear, keep him grounded.
Don't see him as the ragged, head-shorn punk with black trench coat and dark glasses, or with white puckered lines of scars where he used to cut himself. See him the way he was that day you first met him, at the gate of Six Flags Great America, being asked to turn in the dog chain that hung from his belt loop. See him as part of the group of homeless youth being taken for an outing by a shelter from Chicago's north side.
He was skinny, really, even if he did strut around like he was hot stuff and brag about how he used to deal drugs and slept with about a hundred girls. He blew the little bit of money they gave him trying to win cheap, pathetic prizes and didn't even seem to realize how lousy he played. He didn't have a chance. He was a loser.
I remember the thought that went through my mind when he talked about how many stuffed animals he won for this girl he knew back on the east coast. I just smiled, sure I saw right through him. Just another bullshitter trying to convince us his life doesn't suck.
The larger group had split up by then, after eating lunch in the parking lot: sandwiches and sodas pulled from a battered red cooler. It was just me and him and two girls I knew from volunteering at the shelter. (Erica, right? But the other girl, the one I knew was looking to me for something--friendship, acceptance, security?--she wrote poetry and finally let me read some one day. How can I not remember her name yet still see him so clearly?)
Jared and some other guy was with us too for a while, but when they split off, he stayed. No reason, it seemed. No reason to care either. Yet I did. Why? And when did that start? There doesn’t seem to be a beginning.
The sun got so hot I took off my jacket and everyone could see the tattoo on my shoulder blade. Not so old, eh? Not so boring and stuffy. He talked and he teased, trying to get us to go on the Batman ride. Nothing that goes in circles, I told him, nothing that goes upside down. He pulled on my arm as we walked, laughing, cajoling. The strap of my tank top slid off of one shoulder.
Maybe it's like the rush I get from roller coasters: breathless, alive, blood tingling. Something about the air gets clearer, sharper. Oxygen floods the lungs and sends a buzz to the brain.
He buzzed, too, like the neurons in his body danced so dizzy that the air around him vibrated. It pulled me in if I got too close, I could feel my own blood begin to dance.
But that might only be in retrospect. Maybe it didn’t happen until later, when we went back to the square, sitting on park benches waiting for all the groups to gather. Girl with no name (Lisa! Oh, thank God for my propensity to journal) asking for a quarter for the tampon machine in the ladies room, embarrassed. My pockets were almost empty—no coins of any kind. With conspiratorial intimacy, he found one quarter left from his voracious assaults at the water gun races. Feeling a bond as we nurtured this girl in need.
For supper, volunteers and staff were to pay their own way, but each youth got the same amount (Ten dollars? Fifteen?). Small groups started to wander off again. The four of us stood around debating where to eat. I didn’t care where, as long as they had something my last three dollars would buy.
He said not to worry about it. I said I couldn’t take his money. He insisted.
And I looked him right in the eye and the words came out of my mouth and I listened to them as if they had been generated by something other than my own brain. “Chris, think about it. I have a job that gives me a paycheck every week. You’re homeless and living at a temporary youth shelter.”
Looking back, memory cannot see the expression on his face, or hear if he had any response. But the heart remembers the thud of his spirit. The sun no longer seemed so hot, the energy no longer so high. Chris and I pooled our money and I let him decide what to buy for him and me, but it wasn’t enough.
Reality had returned.
The rest of the early evening is not in memory, except for the change in tone. The magic draining away like a slow leak in a water balloon. Chris wasn’t flying as high, and when he did it contained a frantic edge that grated the nerves. Erica’s studied indifference grew into actual fatigue. My betrayal of Lisa became final when I gave in to Chris’s insistence that it was too late for the water ride she and I both wanted to go on. Yet I stayed with Chris at the bumper cars, Erica and Lisa eventually ducking under the ropes to escape the long line, making their own way back to the parking lot. I stayed because he stayed, almost as desperate to recapture the earlier thrill as he seemed to be. To attempt to restore the connectedness.
I can’t recall driving the bumper cars, just know he did, and therefore I did as well. Afterward Jared turned up, wet from the water ride I had backed out of, a willing partner for the Batman roller coaster.
“It’s too late,” I said. “It’s getting dark.” But Chris’s energy had returned with the smash and crash of the bumper cars, an
energy near manic, like static electricity whipping the hairs on your arm to dance against their will. So I waited for them to finish, not sure where the ride’s exit ramp was, too many people, too dark, too easy to miss. Then they were there and the three of us hurried to the parking lot,
the boys joking back and forth, running independent of each other now, not a group anymore.
And I became an adult again, a volunteer responsible for getting to the vans on time, worrying I wouldn’t remember where we were parked. Wondering if Erica and Lisa had made it back all right.
The rest was an ending: sitting hip to hip in a crowded van against a soaked Jared; Chris in the lead van, Lisa in mine,
pulling out her poetry notebook to write in. Everyone so gray and grouchy it seemed it would have been better to come home at suppertime when
spirits still soared.
The first van in our convoy kept driving into the darkness when we pulled off the highway so one of the staff could be sick.
The third passed us by with a honk. Yet we were the second to get back. The lead had been seen on the side of the road, though no one knew why.
For some reason I thought about the chain they’d confiscated from Chris at the entrance. I could remember returning to the parking lot, running through the gates and not stopping for anything. And I imagined Chris in the van at the side of the road, imploring the driver to return for the chain, and being refused. Not knowing I would see him again, adding the guilt of this loss to the guilt that had
been building since reminding him of who he was.
No opportunity for reparation, no goodbye to say. I went home. Went to bed. Reliving each step of the day and weighed down by responsibility and a sense of loss. Already caught up in the drama that is his life.
Debra R. Borys has had several short stories published and her novel Painted Black is being released
later this year by New Libri Press. In addition, she has a wide variety of freelance credits, ranging from newspaper articles and feature stories to press releases and radio spots. She has been providing how to articles for How To Windows and How To Look.
She also maintains three WordPress blogs. To Self Publish or Not to Self Publish, Painted Black, the novel, and Debra R. Borys Web site.
Email: Debra R. Borys
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