Strings

The scent of tattered pages and glue dried against aged spines hits him like a freight train. It’s here, in this particular reference section, that Rowan always felt the passage of time slip away. It’s this area that doesn’t quite fit with the others. The hickory shelves in other areas gleam with a newfound shine. Here dust is collected like coveted jewels.

He isn’t all that different from this room. A forgotten legend, a tale whispered around campfires late when flames flicker low and coals gleam like ripe tangerines. Perhaps there was a time, (like the aged tomes) that he held relevance. Certainly popular culture enjoyed taking a failed attempt at the concept every now and then. But just as trends came and went, his own twisted origins faded back into irrelevancy. Something the others often expressed with sighs of relief.

Rowan isn’t among them. In fact this all may be easier for him had it been relevant once more. The answer would rest against the tip of the tongue waiting to be discovered.

Instead he rests against a chair that was constructed long before his birth. His fingers tap incessantly against a table that matches the chair in shade. It’s marred with etched markings of students before. Students that were more concerned about proclaiming “dany <3 alex″ than whether or not limits in precalculus existed. Not that he can blame them. Were Rowan any other boy in any other library in any other school, then and only then would he allow himself to engage in such trivial things.

Instead he’s Atlas. The weight of the world is pressing against his developing shoulders. It only grows fatter while his knees become brittle beneath the weight. He yearns to perseverate over the winter dance and whether or not his button up–a crisp blue would match Thalia’s crimson gown. (Because when wasn’t Thalia adorning themselves in bright colors?) He could be as others were in the past. Those his father speaks of with disdain. Lazy, good for nothing animals that were raised by those who preferred nurture to nature.

But not his son. Not the boy who came into the world with a scream so powerful, the man boasted that blood seeped from his own ears. The power coming off an infant so pungent that his arms shook with the weight of him. Whispers filled the compound. A second coming, a sigh of relief for those who longed for a continuation of stability.

Rowan would never be his own person. He belonged to another cause long before his conception.

“Sorry, I forget how long the walk is from the science wing.”

He hears the slam of books against the wood before Rowan can register her voice. It’s silk softly pressing against him. High, but not enough to be considered shrill. Especially in the way she registers with a husky whisper. So not to disturb the others crouched over similar worn tables, desperate for answers that lie hidden in used textbooks.

The chair skids back, and he silently chastises himself. Too absorbed in his own internal monologue to catch her soft footsteps crossing the threshold. To catch the scent of her, so soft yet sickly sweet at the same time. It idly reminded him of ripe berries. So much so that the first time Rowan caught a whiff he went home and devoured the container of blackberries Maude had purchased from the market. After he laid against the cabinets and groaned, his stomach now a member of the circus with incessant somersaults. His lips and fingertips stained a harsh navy hue, his tongue alarmingly pink.

But Maude didn’t chase him away, or snarl with disdain when she gazed upon him curled up in agony. Instead her lips upturned in a smirk that accentuated her aging face. Hands on her round hips and the shake of her head.

“It’s happened, hasn’t it?” She said with a teasing notion. Of course she knew it did. And she continued to tease him from that day on. Leaving little notes on the fruit containers: Save some for the rest of us, loverboy.

It only left him with a rose hue that spread from the apples of his cheeks to his ears, his neck, and even his chest. Just as he was now, knowing that she was here. That she was looking at him with such plain indifference while he fought every voice inside of him screaming to proclaim his desires. But that wouldn’t end well. Not really.

Instead he shrugs, feigning the indifference she so easily radiates. “It’s alright. I haven’t even started yet.”

Not a lie. Considering he was too distracted to open his notebook and review the notes taken feverishly during Mr. C’s lecture.

“Oh.” She replies, the chair skidding back away from the table as she prepares to sit. “I’m surprised.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know.” She sits. “You always have a habit of starting things before everyone else. Like you have to win the race or something.”

School isn’t a race. He yearns to tell her. But I need to get through it quickly. Let the real challenges begin.

There are other matters he needs to be concerned about. Issues that aren’t taught in the four walls of this institution. Rowan doubted there were books here outside of a fantasy novel that could provide even a semblance of an answer to the issues that kept him awake at night.

The clearing of a throat pulls him back. “Anyway, I don’t think we have to focus too much on what we talked about today in class. We’re only supposed to worry about the first chapter.”

Rowan nods idly, pretending to be considerate. She’s opening her notebook now. The writing was appalling, a code that took him months to decipher.

Siobhan Ryan was not ‘neat’ by any means. In fact, her writing was almost a preparation for those who would have to look into her head. Her thoughts were often scattered, led astray by the next topic that took up high prevalence in her mind. She often left her shirt untucked, only to have one of the teacher’s chide with shame that she appeared ‘disheveled’. Then with a discontent sigh she’d tuck it back in, only for it to return to its unkempt state a class period later.

Siobhan had a nasty habit of biting her nails to the quick, or shaking her knee against the table violently enough that her tablemate would often send her a threatening glare to cut it out. Her gaze, much like her mind, often shifted around. As if she needed to capture every last detail of her surroundings before focusing on whoever sat beside her.

These were things that everyone knew about Siobhan. Everyone knew that she lived alone with her aunt in the heart of the village. A cape cod that was nearly identical to all the others on the street. The only indistinguishable feature being a crooked mailbox whacked by one of the neighbors who refused to admit their crime. Everyone also knew that she drove a silver sedan that idly reminded Rowan of a tin can. Something fragile enough to be swallowed whole by a snowbank in the coming months.

But he knew things about Siobhan that most didn’t. He knew that she carried a sweet scent akin to ripe berries. That her hair took hours to dry, as it was often still damp when he shared sixth period chemistry with her. She often preferred to discuss things that interested her rather than herself. Her own origin story was likely reminiscent of a sad film. Something that would tug at heartstrings and cause locals to whisper. Oh, did you hear about the Ryans? It’s a shame they left their little girl behind.

Rowan knew that Siobhan despised her school uniform, but enjoyed not bearing the weight of choice every morning. She often ran on little sleep, and she hardly functioned without at least a tervis filled with coffee. When her aunt ran out of grounds, Siobhan would sigh and buy an energy drink from the convenience store down the street from school. But on those days by the time Rowan caught a glimpse of her in chemistry, she was crashing hard.

Of course he shouldn’t know these things, not really. His relationship with Siobhan was superficial at best. Two English partners who also shared free period and chemistry. Two people who had grown up in the same location, but within two very different spheres. He doubted she knew much about him. Likely the same superficial things he should only know about her.

But the world was cruel to creatures like him. Gods were often described in various religions as benevolent. They bore crooked fingers and punished their followers for simply existing. His religion, (if one could call it such a ridiculous thing), was no different. It scrambled his biology. On the outside he’s a typical teenage boy, but inside are a series of chemical reactions so odd that most wouldn’t believe they’re looking at fact instead of fiction.

Everyone who resembled Rowan had a Siobhan. Sometimes it might be an April, an Issaac, a Riley. But there was never any hint as to who it would be. Typically fate was kind enough to place your Siobhan in the same relative area. If they weren’t there, you might find your Siobhan when others like Rowan and his father gathered with their communities once a year. There was always the chance that one would find their Siobhan at something like that.

This is because your Siobhan usually wasn’t like Siobhan. Your Siobhan was like Rowan. The most recent gathering, almost a year ago now, was particularly haunting. It was shortly after the berries incident. When only Maude was aware of his dirty little secret. A female, towering with a haunting gaze that should have left him breathless. She followed him around incessantly. As if something would eventually snap into place if they were around one another long enough. But nothing ever did, because for Rowan it already had. By the end of it she had huffed and muttered how she wished it were him. Rowan didn’t possess enough cruelty to admit to her that someone else already filled the void they were all cursed to feel.

Sometimes your Siobhan was in fact like Siobhan. Others often viewed this as a weight. An obstacle in the middle of what should have been a clear path towards the future. If your Siobhan is in fact like Siobhan herself, then you know that they are painfully unaware of what they are, and who you are supposed to be. They simply sit beside you unaware that you’re crumbling in desperation.

At first Rowan settled for gorging himself with fruit. If only to calm the incessant ache that tore at his chest. Its awful claws shredded away at whatever remained of his heart. The discomfort cracked his bones until he felt like a disjointed piece, unable to find purpose with anything else. Then eventually he settled for taking whatever little bits of her he could scrounge up. Acquaintances were better than strangers at least.

“Did you hear me?”

He’s jolted once more. Shaking his head, Rowan attempts to not feel defeated by the soft, disappointed sigh that escapes from her lips.

“I asked what you thought of Jimmy Cross.”

“Oh.” He replies. “Yeah, he’s uh–sad I guess?”

She raises a dark brow. “Sad?”

“Yeah, I mean he’s sad because of Martha, and Kiowa. He doesn’t want to have to write the letter to Kiowa’s father. That makes the situation real.”

This seems to please her enough. She hums softly at his response and Rowan doesn’t have the heart to tell her that he hated the chapter. She probably wants to discuss the letter. The weight of it and the choices he had to make. But Rowan loathed all of it. He especially loathed Jimmy Cross because the bastard was almost as pathetic as he was. Focused on a woman who cared little of his existence. But for Cross, she was the moon.

“He wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered.” The words feel hollow on his tongue. Words that kept him awake at night, boring holes into the ceiling until his eyes grew heavy and fell shut. They shouted at him with such feverish intensity that he found himself tossing the book across the room several times before he had the courage to properly finish the passage.

But Siobhan appears perplexed. Was she surprised he was capable of this? “You memorized some of it?”

The monster of embarrassment returns as flush creeps up his neck. “No I just–”

Her light laughter cuts him off. “It’s okay. I thought it was brilliant as well.”

“You did?”

“Of course. He has a way of describing suffering. Its–” She pauses then, teeth idly biting down on the end of a blue pen. “It’s relatable, but poetic. Like we would never say that. I’d probably just say that ‘I loved her so much I couldn’t imagine anything else’. But he says that, and so much more.”

“Yeah, he really does.”

And what he doesn’t admit, is that O’Brien managed to manifest a carbon copy of Rowan’s fears in Jimmy Cross. A man riddled with desperation. Distracted from a duty he never quite desired, but accepted due to the sheer fact that you never refused your superiors. What Rowan refuses to admit to Siobhan is that he feels she is his Martha. No–he’s very aware that she’s his Martha. Jimmy finds himself going mad by the end of the passage with thoughts of her. If Rowan keeps this up long enough, he fears he’ll go mad too.

“I found the relationship with Martha interesting.” Her response is cruel, even if she’s painfully unaware of why it is.

“Yeah?” He remarks. A part of him wishes that she instead focused on Kiowa, or the relationships between the other men in the convoy. “Why’s that?”

Her posture becomes straighter, her gaze meeting him with an intensity that proves she’s thought about this for a while. “I mean think about what you just said, the quote. He’s obsessed with her. He’s decided that war is so horrible that he has to create this ideal picture of who she is to him. When in reality he hardly knows her at all.”

“I wouldn’t say he hardly knows her.” Rowan remarks.

“Oh?” She huffs. “He only knows that she plays volleyball and wants to be a nurse. He doesn’t know the little things.”

“Little things?”

“Yes.” Her voice carries more exasperation now. “He doesn’t know her favorite color, or the thoughts that keep her awake at night. He doesn’t know why she could have a scar on the back of her knee from a childhood accident. He only knows that he supposedly loves her, and that hardly seems enough reason to consume himself in her.”

I know all of that about you. So what does that make me?

Suddenly he feels defensive of Jimmy. Something he’ll surely carry shame over later. “Well how could he? He’s at war.”

“He wasn’t there the entire time.”

“No, but they only went on a single date. And during that date he only brushed her knee.”

Rowan doesn’t mention that Martha was utterly displeased by this action. But he doesn’t need to. Not when the accusation rests in Siobhan’s narrow gaze.

“He also wanted to tie her to his bed and rub her knee the rest of the night.” She snaps. “After she told him no.”

Rowan doesn’t maintain any form of defense there. He yearns to tell her that Cross experienced the possessive form of love. The rotten, ugly dominance that often consumed men who weren’t used to being told no. He witnesses it enough. How many times others like Rowan stuck their claim because it was theirs to take. There wasn’t a gentle transition. Instead raw desire poisoned all sense of sound judgment. But she already knew that. Siobhan didn’t need Rowan to explain the wrongs to her.

This is where Rowan differs vastly from Jimmy Cross. Bile rises in his throat at the sheer thought. Siobhan, with her gaze of fire, Siobhan, with her opinions that often left him in awe, did not deserve to be smothered. Even by him. Even if he was promised to possess every inch of her. There was a realistic component to those like Rowan, and then there was the reverie.

The thought of her suffering, of her anger as a result of him is enough to have his palms shaking against the old tabletop. He can’t quite look into her eyes, not when such awful things cross his mind. Siobhan is a gift. Something given to him to alleviate the weight and loneliness that often crushed those such as him. But whether this gift extends to brushing her knee cautiously in a dark movie theater, or simply gazing at her across the classroom has yet to be revealed. If Siobhan told him to piss off and never see her again, he would keep that promise. Even if it was comparable to slowly bleeding out. It was favorable to watching her miserably trudge through a life she wasn’t destined to control.

“Are you alright?”

Her ever observant gaze is both a hindrance and a godsend. He briefly dares to look up, her maudlin eyes only staring back with concern. But they aren’t focused on him, but rather his hands. Rowan silently wills his body to control itself. What would the others say? But it isn’t enough.

“You’re right, it was wrong of him to think that. I’m sorry for defending him.” Rowan’s voice shakes as much as his hands and a pathetic shame washes over him as a result. “I–I hope you don’t think I–”

“That you’re what?”

“Like that.”

“Why would I think you’re like that?”

“I don’t know.” He fumbles with the right words to say.

Her brow furrows. As if her mind is attempting to trace every moment they’ve spent together. Was there ever a sign that he was as desperate as Jimmy Cross? Does he appear to be the type of boy to hide rope under his bed and day dream fantasies so horrid it would leave her nauseous?

Rowan comes to the silent conclusion that Siobhan cannot recall a moment as such, or if the thought ever crossed her mind. Since she shakes her dark tresses and releases a soft sigh. It possesses him to apologize all over again. She shouldn’t feel bad. It’s not fault of hers that he’s cut from the same cloth as someone who she finds disturbing. It’s not her fault that he’s projecting his own insecurities and impossibilities onto fictional scenarios. As if they would really occur.

“I don’t.” She replies after some time.

He nods, silently as she flips through pages of handwritten notes. His fingers, no longer shaking, itch to tear through his own. But after this, he suddenly feels less superior than before. There’s nothing compelling hidden beneath the half cooked thoughts scribbled between the lines.

It’s when he’s finally opening his own notebook that she breaks the silence once more. “Do you feel bad for him? Wait no, you must. Otherwise you wouldn’t have cared what I said about him.”

“I do.”

“How so?”

This time he waits a moment before presenting a response. In many ways this feels like a test. And if he fails, Siobhan will surely want nothing to do with him. Because what he hasn’t had the gull to tell her (and perhaps he never will), is that he yearns for this. The moments lost in the library where life is paused and they can discuss whatever is on their mind.

He thinks of the others, how they wouldn’t dare challenge him in such a way. It’s their nature. An unfortunate circumstance of biology and bloodlines that leaves him at the top and the others groveling for a respect that he never quite demanded. Perhaps when the time comes he still won’t. But Siobhan lacks that knowledge of him. He’s just another classmate missing the meaning of something that so clearly screams out to her.

“I think he wants someone to love him.” He begins. “Sure he may have loving parents that we don’t see, or maybe brothers or something. But he wants someone who knows him. Someone who needs him more than the men that will either die or go their separate ways by the end of the war. He needs something real to come home to.”

“Do you think he’s really going about it the right way though?”

“No, probably not.” Rowan admits. “I don’t think she cares for him other than as a friend. Maybe he knows that too, but he doesn’t want to believe it. So he lives a lie because it’s easier to face than the truth.”

Dry laughter escapes her lips. “Love is shit then, isn’t it?”

At this he has to join her. If only for the irony, and the fact that she hasn’t written him off as some irredeemable miscreant. “It is. I mean not that I would know but–”

She laughs, and for the first time it’s a genuine sentiment of enjoyment. It’s enough for his stomach to stir into incessant somersaults. Her gaze brightly lit like a lamp in the darkness. It’s a relief in comparison to her reaction just moments before.

Do you know?

The words desperately wish to pry open from his stubborn lips. But he won’t allow it. The thought alone returns that hideous jealously that plagues him any moment he entertains the thought of her being with anyone else. The nature of what he is consuming all rationality that Siobhan is a beautiful girl who deserved something beautiful in return. Even if it wasn’t him.

But oh, how he wishes it were him.

“Unfortunately, that’s what most of this chapter consists of.” Says Siobhan, unphased by his sudden warring thoughts. “Maybe we can try to show both points of view? His and hers. Let the class figure out who they believe is right.”

“I would be okay with that.”

She hums idly. Uncapping the pen she begins to scribble on notebook paper. That familiar messy penmanship hastily filling each line. “It has to be creative though. I would say a venn diagram or something but you know Mr. C, he’s not gonna let that fly.”

“No,” He nods. “Duncan said last year he gave them a C minus for just doing a poster on their project.”

“I would say letters, but maybe that’s too obvious.”

He perks up this time this time. “Actually no, that’s brilliant.”

“But it’s simple.”

“Sure.” He begins. “It may be simple, but that’s how they communicate a majority of the time. Maybe we have them each write a letter. I’ll write his, you write hers. It’s one they never send.”

That brightness returns to her expression. “Oh, I like that.” She continues to write. “We read each letter during the presentation. Perhaps open discussion, or have everyone vote on which they prefer? No, I don’t know.”

“Well we have a few weeks to figure out the presentation. But at the very least we can start on the letters.”

She nods, her eyes scanning through the lines of scribble until she’s nodding again. There’s satisfaction perhaps that their afternoon hasn’t been a waste. Though for Rowan they could sit for hours beside one another without anything productive happening and he would feel enough satisfaction for weeks to come. But that was the difference between them. His awareness in contrast to Siobhan’s ignorance.

Finally, she looks up. “I really do like that, I hope no one else thinks of it.”

“I doubt they will.” And he truly means it. It’s too obvious. An answer sitting right in front of those who hardly open their eyes. Not to mention the fact that most of the pairs probably haven’t met yet. They’ll spend the last few days beforehand cramming information into half hazard ideas that Mr. C will enjoy criticizing.

Siobhan was the opposite. The reason the term ‘studious’ came about was due to people like her. Not that Rowan minds. It’s only more time he gets to spend with her.

But just as quickly as she arrives, he feels her inevitable departure. It’s in the way her attention is shifted once more elsewhere. Her watch, the hands he wishes he could turn back that signal they’ve been here for almost an hour. Though it feels like seconds. He wanted to ask her other things. What were her plans this weekend? What did she enjoy outside of studying because surely there was more to her than studious habits.

Rowan decides at that moment that he will not be Jimmy Cross. He will learn the little things, even if it’s far more tedious than not. When he sees her tomorrow in Chemistry he’ll ask about her day. Careful observance and pining will only get him so far, and the fear of her rejection is far less intimidating when her soft lips tug into that easy smile. As if it was made to brighten a dull world.

“Sorry, I know we haven’t been at it long, but I have to work in a half an hour.”

Was that regret in her tone? A soft melancholy that causes a hitch in his breath.

“It’s alright.” His reply is seamless. “I think we have a good amount figured out anyways.”

“I agree.” She begins to rise from the table. Everything inside of him screams to rise with her. To follow her out and continue the conversation down to the student lot. Where only then they will be forced to inevitably park into their separate vehicles. But he doesn’t want to smother her, make her worry that he’s trying too hard.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” He says.

She nods. “Tomorrow.”