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A wall he helped me build.
“You’ve got my number,” he reminds me. “The ball’s in your court. Just make sure before you toss it over the net that it’s what you actually want. Enjoy your Thanksgiving break.”
With that, he takes his things and leaves. I don’t watch him go. I just shut my eyes, lay my head softly against the locker, and breathe deeply as the emotions settle and find little homes in my twisted-up, anxiety-riddled body.
The rest of my day is a blur. I can’t even say with confidence what Kelsey went on about at the lunch table, or what we chatted about later in yearbook—likely something as thrilling as font sizes. But as I walk home, feeling the slight chill in the air of another cool front blowing in and making me regret my short-sleeved choice in a shirt today, I am haunted by Vann’s words to me. I don’t think he was trying to hurt me at all. He just wanted me to understand where he was coming from. His point of view—and the fact that he has one. He’s a window in the giant ranch-style house that is this town, and if I just learned to see him the right way, I might get a decent look through that window at the rest of the world.
That thought is comforting.
And then his other words rush back to me as well. The way he mockingly spoke of Spruce, of my naïveté, seeming to liken me to a child, thinking I need to grow up … Has he seen me this way all along, and our tensions are only now revealing it? Have I always been just a simpleminded country boy to him?
My house is empty when I get home, except for a very excited Winona. After dumping my things in the shed, I realize I can’t stay in it, too reminded of my nights with Vann. I sit on the back porch of the main house for a while and stare at the backyard glumly, feeling the cool air on my skin and listening to the whispering of grass as the wind blows, Winona seated next to me, panting. Then I go inside and sit on the couch, letting the silence of the house fill my ears like cotton. Winona, likely sensing my odd mood, becomes somewhat morose herself, curling up on the floor nearby.
I can’t work out my confused emotion with any more thinking or brooding. What I need is something no words can touch. My feet take me to the garage, where I chase the ghosts of a hobby I used to enjoy in here—before a certain someone’s truck ended it. I pull open every cabinet and search behind every rack for what I need. I manage to produce five colors of paint as well as an old brush with terrible, misshapen bristles. Without a canvas or easel to work with, I decide to use the next best thing:
The garage itself.
In a few minutes, I’ve made cerulean strokes across the walls, crashing and sweeping and swirling like ocean waves. In an hour, I have a beach that cascades from one end of the garage around all the four walls to the other—a full panorama, a 360. I’ve forgotten all of my worries, completely lost to the creation I’ve made of water meeting sand, a seaside shack, a restaurant, a rich and glowing sun, its light shattering across the waves, wispy clouds in the sky, a few colorful towels spread out on the beach with some couples enjoying the sights, distant waves crashing over the rocks of a nearby cliff … Hell, I can even hear the seagulls.
Through the seagulls, however, I sense heavy footsteps. Then the shuffling of a doorknob. And then—in the middle of a piece of my beach—a skinny door opens, and my stepbrother Lee plods in.
“What the hell …?” he grunts in his deep, dull voice. His eyes go wide as he turns in a complete circle, observing my work. His mouth always tends to hang open dumbly, but for some reason, it appears to be quite intentional as Lee takes in the scene, for a moment transported to my beachside paradise.
Then he turns to me. “Dad’s gonna kill you.”
“You think?” I shrug as I consider my work, paint splotches all up and down my arms, across my clothes, and likely in my hair. “I think it’s an improvement.”
“It’s …” Lee squints, walks up to one of the walls where a small shack is painted, then points. “Is that a couple of guys making out in a hammock …?”
I smile distantly at the sight of my little beachside shack. It’s the same dream home I imagined with Vann and myself, living on the water, right where he craves to return to, where we belong. I guess whenever I let the paint take over, there’s just no censoring or controlling what comes out of my wild, uninhibited strokes. My heart when I paint even let go of whatever negative feelings I have right now with him or what he last said to me; I just feel love.
