Hannah Lee, 12
"Boston"
photograph
notice how tired he looks. He sits with his shoulders slumped. His voice is lower, and missing the edge it had before.
“You don’t have to apologize for how you feel,” he repeats. “I know you like to forget this, but you’re human too.”
I let out a dry laugh. It almost sounds like he’s sympathetic. I go to make a witty remark in response, but the cold has made it increasingly more difficult to move the muscles around my lips. I stumble on my words.
He laughs.
And then I’m laughing too.
And then we’re both still laughing.
And we're sitting on the silver hood of my dead grandmother’s Honda, laughing even though our feet hurt and we can’t feel our fingers, laughing because we just spent hours sharing way more than we were comfortable with, laughing because life keeps punching us both in our guts until we’re bleeding from the inside out, laughing because I thought I hated him only a few months ago and sometimes I still think that. I don’t know.
As good as it feels to forget about our bruises, eventually the silence catches back up to us. December reminds us once again that it is here.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says and he climbs back into his own car. I follow suit, and soon we drive off in opposite directions, both going home to mothers who will chew us out for forgetting our curfews.
The road home is empty, and the night is as black as ever. There are no orange streetlamps here. The trees on either side of me are still evergreen, but I don’t mind it as much anymore. I keep the music turned off for once, to try to let myself think.
The hum of the car engine comforts me as I reflect on the past few months. It hasn't been easy, but when has it ever been?
I stumble upon this conclusion: maybe the point of life punching us in the guts isn’t to try to fight back. Maybe it’s just to learn how to take a beating.