the pits where the asphalt flowers grow




His little white toes finally seem dark against the sidewalk. They’re wrinkled from retaining pool water and leave damp footprints behind him as he walks down the street, not that the sidewalk minds the water. Sidewalks are usually good like that, tolerating most people and their footwear, or their lack there of. They take anything that’s thrown at them, save for gum wads, which always seem to stay permanently and harden until they’re just like a scar on a face. The boy, who we’ll call Nick, sometimes wishes people could be more like sidewalks: uncaring yet sweet, tough and untouchable. Phased by nothing except gum. When someone says something mean to a square of sidewalk, even the ugly cracked ones don’t get upset. They just smile and support weight. Nick wishes he could just smile and support weight, because in reality, he can’t do either.

High-tops stuffed with socks and a clarinet case occupying both his hands; he wrinkles his nose and breathes in deeply at the smell of a barbecue from a house bordering the road. Nick looks coyly into a front yard and is surprised to see no one there. Just a small grill in the front yard, which is unusual nowadays because most people stay in their backyards. There’s two steaks above the flame, soon to be burnt if someone doesn’t come outside to tend to them. Nick doesn’t question it, he just moves his fingers around in the handle of his clarinet case, praying to God that no one from his school sees him carrying it back from the lessons he just had. He doesn’t need anything else to make kids his age hate him, they have enough fodder to last until college and maybe longer.

He’d give it up and conform, but he likes how he is, though he doesn’t tell anyone that. He likes his dorky hair and boring jeans and old shoes, and he likes his clarinet. If he cleaned himself up a little and tried, he could be good-looking. He has all the right structure to his body: decent skin, bright eyes, a long, sharp nose. Maybe if he found some fancy t-shirts and a good pair of faded jeans that were bought in this century, he could have more girls than anyone, assuming he wanted them. Nick thinks all this, then looks at his ugly feet and then at the sidewalk passing under them, and he scowls. Sidewalk squares have no need for clothes.

A long brown fence starts next to him, painted last year by the elementary school kids, filled with not-so-proud bears, lopsided daisies, and sunshines with sunglasses. It makes the neighborhood look cheap, Nick thinks, all those dumb drawings. If they wanted it to look good, they should have hired some professional painters, he decides, missing the point completely. The fence turns and stops, but Nick follows its path into the cul-de-sac of houses where he lives. He’s lived in the white house at the end of the street since the day he was born, but feels no particular emotional attachment to it for some reason or another. He’s had plenty of good memories there, doubtlessly, but he wouldn’t cry if they moved. As he’s walking towards it, he sees the old dilapidated swing set that his parents put in for his older sister, now twenty-three. Nick never used it as a kid, or not that he remembers. He’s sure his parents tried to force him onto it, though.

He walks up the driveway spotted with cracks and oil stains, past the garage, stepping under the overgrown branches of the enormous pine tree that grows in the front yard. The needle-covered boughs make an archway from the tip of the garage to the front door, casting forest-like shadows over the front steps and dark blue door. Nick slings the high-tops, shoelaces tied together, around the back of his neck so he can free a hand to open the door.

The door opens before he can get a hand around the doorknob, revealing his heavyset mother. Her fingers close around his wrist and pull him sharply inside, making the shoes around his neck hit him hard in the side of the face. His thick eyebrows raise when he sees the smudged make-up trailing down her cheeks, caught in tears. His mother is usually crying about one thing or another: a sad story on television, something that happened that day. Anything trivial like that.

“Oh, Nicky, it’s awful!” she sobs and pulls him inside.

Nick drops his clarinet case and shoes near the door and with his feet dried by the air, he lets himself be lead through the house, dim now with the blinds drawn. The house smells like old potatoes for some reason, drastically different from the usual smell of window cleaner and air freshener. His mother’s hands feel papery yet clammy against his skin as she pulls him gently but forcefully into the living room. Nick sees his father sitting on the ottoman in front of the armchair he’s usually sitting in. Now, he’s hunched forwards, hand near his mustache, elbow on his left knee. He’s staring almost unblinkingly at the television, eyes glassy and wet.

His mother just keeps shaking her head and crying, then she raises her hand and points to the screen. On the small screen is the local news channel with the anchorman who’s name Nick doesn’t know. He’s always thought he was sort of handsome, if not a little too handsome to just be on the news. His strong jaw moves as his features are stone cold serious. Nick listens to what he’s saying with shocked disbelief, eyes watching the newscaster’s hands twist around each other on table he’s seated at in front of the camera. His words are nearly lost on Nick because of their impact, because of exactly what he’s saying. No denial on Nick’s end and almost no worry. Just shock and truckloads of it. His hand goes limp in his mother’s. He can’t believe it.

“Just awful ...” his mother cries.


xxx

Seven in the evening. Nick has spent the last six hours of sitting in front of the television on the floor at his father’s feet, staring at nothing other than that one anchorman, this time not for his looks, but for his words. It’s just too much. His mother is murmuring to herself in between the fingernails she’s chewing on, sitting on her husband’s knee, one hand held tight and sweating in his. No one is speaking. No one can.

No one thinks of this, Nick thinks to himself, eyes sore from looking at the television. The same report and facts and scientists show up on the screen, and the commercials in between are falling on deaf ears. After too much silence as the sky darkens, Nick’s father finally speaks, voice hoarse, asking what everyone is thinking.

“What now?”


xxx

Eleven at night. Nick is at the highest point in town, alone. His parents are still in front of the television, as far as he knows, and he didn’t ask them to come with him. It’s too late, he thinks. Far too late. The airport is packed with sick frantic people, full of desperation that has no where to go, and neither do they. Nick settles down into the dirt on the top of the hill above the local mall, with nothing in his possession other than the clothes on his back and a small digital clock running on batteries. 11:12, it tells him. The city is in an uproar. He can see fires going in the streets lit by rambunctious teenagers, and there’s no doubt in his mind that people are looting stores at this very moment. He doesn’t blame them.

Nick tips his face to the sky, closing his eyes for no less than fifteen seconds. The air isn’t cold, but crisp, bringing the oddest sense of clarity to this moment. He isn’t afraid. He isn’t anxious. He searches his soul and in the depths of his self he finds nothing he wants to hold onto. He’s a good student, but that wouldn’t get him far. He has no lover, no one to cry with at this time, no one to miss. He thinks back to earlier today and with a happy swell of his heart, he realizes that he has no more need to smile or support weight. He’s free, once and for all, even if only for this short while. He likes that, now pitying those poor squares of nothing but concrete. He brushes his hair off his forehead and excitement sparks down his fingertips. He just grins out of spite and stares into the inky black sky, waiting for the comet.



back to archive ~ <3