The boy walked down the street pondering his situation. Deep in thought, he kicked the loose gravel strewn across the roughly constructed path he walked on. Unworried about the destination he reached, he had little need to look up. Not that it mattered; he would have no bearing to assist him in deducing his location, as he had never been anywhere quite like the place he was thoughtfully shuffling to. He was far more invested in winning the battle he was currently waging with his thoughts. No matter how hard he tried the events of the morning continued to emerge and make him angry all over again. At first he tried to bludgeon them to his subconscious with happy thoughts, like the pretty blonde girl he had met earlier that day, whose number was now securely stored on the folded piece of paper snugly nestled in his pocket. But still these events stubbornly broke through again and again. His next, more drastic battle plan was using the even sadder memories, ones he had already accepted as cold hard facts inscribed in the cold unremorseful history of his meager existence to distract from the morning.
He started off strong to try and stun the morning into submission. He recalled last year on February 16th at 11:47 am, sitting in Math class, staring at the wall thinking about lunch and different, creative, and graphic ways of doing away with Mrs. Grassior, who was then yelling at the most unfortunate Parker DiMaio for stapling his stack of homework on the wrong side. He remembered the note and the urgency of the office TA, the muffled sobs of Mrs. Keans, the heavy-set nurse, as her hug squeezed the life from his stunned body. But most of all he remembered sketching a mental picture of his mother, her smiling eyes, her soft smile, her calm explanations of things already asked, her quiet listening no matter what was being said. Then having it fade with the realization he would never see any of that again.
The man driving the big rig that plowed her car off the road was in jail, for 15 years. The judge seemed to think that the life of his mother was worth 15 years of a drunk ex-con big rig driver. At that moment he stepped down onto a paved road, his path had ended. He had won the battle, he thought glumly, as he looked about for another suitable path to lose himself on.
The next path was chosen and he was walking again. This path was not embedded with gravel like the first, but was instead dirt, lined weeds shrouding the edges. The skyline was obscured, but a canopy of ancient oak trees tangled amongst one another as if playing an unmoving game of Twister. As he picked his way through the squatty weeds, he realized how much he liked this path; it had not been wanted for a long time, and in this way was in solidarity with him. After the death of his mother, his father turned to drinking, the same thing that killed his mother, he thought disgustedly. His father now only paid attention to him when he was sober, which as this point was a rarity. He stopped his train of thought and paused waiting for a judgment or suggestion, but instead heard a glorious and thoughtful silence. In this space he felt as though he could divulge anything he desired.
After walking for a long period of time he was startled by an addition to his precious path. Green stones now went in jaded stripes across the path, the brief flickers of light that evaded the waving limbs of the canopy bounced off the vibrant green stones and flared in his eyes, making him squint, but he couldn’t bring himself to close his eyes completely as it was too wondrous of a view. Once his eyes had adjusted, his thoughts continued, as did the stones and their brilliant and sporadic bursts of light. His dad this year was too intoxicated to complete taxes, let alone have enough money to pay them. His father got a notice about tax evasion and actually sobered up for a whole morning, which set records, and went to a tax consultant. He was of course forced to come and sit in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs that were placed all around the lobby in semi-symmetrical patterns.
This trip however had turned out to be not a complete disaster, as he had met her. She was sitting on the opposite side of the bizarrely organized lobby. So he decided to go start a conversation. It went well; she was smart, funny, and pretty, and they exchanged numbers. He would call her, he thought, back in the moment. That is, if his Dad didn’t cancel their cell service to pay taxes, he said to himself, forcing a grim smile. The path had now come to a crest and it looked as though there was some object shining in the sun atop it. As he approached, it began to materialize in a stark, pearly white bench. As he looked around, he noticed at the crest the canopy seemed to melt away, letting the sun rays seep through and warm the bench, which seemed to be the most inviting bench he had ever seen. He slowly sat down, letting the tension out from his weary legs, and looked up at the sun, which stared back unchanging, quiet, and listening. He looked at the trees, and the ground, and finally the white bench, which supported him. And he began to speak. He told the forest all that had happened in the past year and everything listened, quietly and with full understanding.
After a few minutes he stopped and sat there processing all of the memories he released. When he was recollected, about to get up, he happened to look down directly in front of the bench. There was a stone with an engraving. It read: “Leave your story, leave your sadness, memories. Leave them here and never return to reclaim them. They belong to the path, leave them.” So that’s just what he did, took the folded paper with the number of the girl on it and began writing. After he finished, he set it down underneath the rock and never returned.
I sighed and looked up from the crumpled, rain-stained paper I had been reading for the past 15 minutes. I wondered how old this note was or what his name was, realizing I had asked this out loud. I waited for an answer, but none came. The forest, the path, and the bench stayed silent, forever holding the secrets they had stored deep within.