The email read: "Hey, Adam, how are you? Just thought I'd send you an email. Nothing much happening here. I have to go to a family reunion at 3:00. Yippie—"
Adam grinned. He read further:
"—Gosh, I hate those. Half of them I don't know, anyways. LOL. At least there's good food. Well, I'll talk to you later."
Suddenly, an instant message popped up. It said: "Hey, new friend."
It was from Roseybabe1234.
Adam typed: "Hi, I was just reading your email."
"Cool."
"Family reunion, huh?"
"LOL. Yeah, it's a bummer. What are you doing?"
"Trying not to go crazy I'm so bored. But at least I'm not in school."
"Yeah," she wrote, "I really hate school. It's a bummer too."
Adam smiled. "What grade are you in?"
She wrote: "7, you?"
"9th. You're still in junior high. You're somewhat luckier."
"LOL. I dunno."
There was a whole moment of dead air through the Instant Message. To Adam's utter shock, she suddenly typed, "Do you have a girlfriend, or anything?"
The question caught him completely off guard. He could not remember one instance when a girl asked him this.
"Why?" he typed.
"Just wondering. You seem like a really nice guy. I know you're not a jerk, so I thought you would have had a nice girlfriend."
"No, I've never had one." He had mixed emotions about where this conversation was heading. "Why?"
Do I tell her I'm a loser? That girls hate me?
He let his fingers do the typing for him: "I am just very shy. I get real nervous around girls."
Especially when I know they will hurt me.
"Oh. You'll find a nice one someday, I'm sure."
"I hope so."
"You will." She put up a winking smiley face.
"What about you?" he wrote.
"No. Guys around here are jerks. I've never really had a boyfriend. I'm shy too. Boys aren't interested in me."
"Don't say that. You'll find your prince someday, I swear to you."
She put up another smiley face. "You're sweet," she wrote. "You won't be alone for that long. Before you know it, girls will be knocking down your door. Just believe in yourself."
You're sweet... sweet... weet... eet....
Me? Adam McNicols? And I've been told all my life by all my peers that I was nothing special, a large mistake in the gene-pool.
What does sweet mean?
"Thanks," he typed, tearing up. His eyes were like unstable faucets. He could cry at will if he wanted to.
"You're sweet, too," he wrote. A tear streamed down his cheek. Adam thought he’d been sprinkled with fairy dust.
"Well, I gotta go and get ready for the reunion. Wish me luck!" She put up a smiley face with a tongue sticking out to the side.
"Good luck! See you later," he typed.
"Bye!" she said and went offline.
Adam stared at that smiley face like there was no tomorrow. Something about those happy, perfect online smiles made the coating of his heart melt, fizzle away. He hurt seeing those blazing yellow spherical faces shouting their happiness to him. Partly, he liked the pain he felt by staring at it, in a masochistic way. He dearly wished he could carry an expression that beautiful, even for as small as a moment.
He also wondered what that yellow smiley would look like if he shot it with a gun—its happy brains blown out the back of its happy little head … and what the eyes would look like either Xed out or rolled back. Would it still be smiling?
***
Adam lost his way twice and had almost panicked once in under thirty minutes. There were no road maps to carry in the sewers unless you were a sanitation worker. Every turnoff looked the same, even though there were more than plenty spaces above ground where the moonlight shined in.
It was Saturday night, and the young adventurer was creeping through the underground tunnels like just another old rat. The tunnel was so vast, so quiet, so peaceful. Adam reflected as he turned right under a sewer grate that this place was a lot like him. It was lifeless and dark, with no real destination. It was just
there,
abandoned wreck, lost and alone, never allowed to see more than a few specs of light during the day.
But he kept going. While pausing briefly under the sewer grate, Adam heard and even felt sprinkles of rain fall against his high forehead. He watched as the clouds way in the distance parted just enough to reveal an orange full moon.
This was
his
lair.
He continued searching his new world, finding connections to almost every area of town. He knew he could go almost anywhere in a fifteen block radius without being seen or heard. All he had to do to exit was use a crowbar to open the grates or sewer covers. Simple. There was no end to it. And only he and Chris knew about it.
***
"Wow," he said, shining his flashlight down a very large, open pipe, through which sewer water was flowing out. Adam stepped into the round tunnel and watched the rippling current gleaming in the reflected moonlight. Sprawled out before him was the Ohio River, lit up graciously. Adam had made it to the main sewer line where human waste flushed right out into open waters. Surprisingly enough, there was little smell. The powerful light beam bounced off the pipe, rebounded, and struck Adam's face, making him look like the CHUD monster.
He approached the exit of the pipe and could feel the wind already brushing against him, could hear the sound of the water brushing up against dry land, could see some nearby tree branches swaying gently along the shore. Adam could not distinctly recall an experience so pleasing, and here he was, completely alone, draped in darkness and within a dirty old sewer.
***
"Adam?" his mom barked.
"Oh no," he said, thinking it was Monday already.
The door opened. Adam smothered his head with a pillow.
"Adam," his mother said, creaking into the room, "I'm going to go somewhere with Shari. Can you come downstairs with the dog? It looks like it's going to storm, and you know how she gets scared."
Thank God, no Monday yet.
“
Adam?"
"Okay." He sat up, less lifelike than his great grandfather.
Ten minutes later, Adam was sitting back in the recliner in the living room, watching television. Adam's favorite cartoon—Family Guy—was playing all day on Cartoon Network. No other show made him laugh harder. A true staple of raunchy humor.
Muffy, his Airedale Terrier, was lying in a doggy bed beside the chair, chewing on a stuffed bunny.
He turned off the tube and looked over at her. "Come on, Muff. Come on, pup, hang out with me."
The dog stood and leaped onto Adam's lap. He petted her as she licked his face. "How you doing, buddy? Giving me doggy kisses!"
The dog stopped licking him, but Adam never stopped petting her. He simply gazed forward, as if in a trance. Sometimes he slipped into dwelling binges, and they sometimes lasted as long as two full hours. Though he struggled to figure
it all
out, he never accomplished a single thing. Often he felt worse afterward. He remembered things as far back as childhood, when his father physically beat him with a broomstick, or things semi-recent, such as the bullies in middle school who used to literally make him eat dirt. He could not decipher the facts from the lies. There were far too many negatives.
"Muffy, Muffy, Muffy," he said to his dog, "people fucking suck. They kick you when you're down, spit on you when you're up, and treat you like shit. Animals usually love you no matter what, but people will hate you for no reason at all. That's why I like animals. Fuck all those biblical sayings about people being more important than birds, or cattle, or fish. Do you see them telling each other they suck? Or steal their lunch money? Or spit in their faces the first time they see you? No, because they're more civilized than we are. You don't see birds going to war over trivial matters, dropping bombs on people, invading countries where we don't belong, killing a lot of people with smart bombs that aren't even that smart. If an asteroid slams into the earth, or we all just one day die, then I'll admit—we deserve it. Fuck the human race. Nothing but trouble. And where is God in this, if He exists? You know where He is during all this? What He's doing? I bet you He's laughing His ass off, pointing and laughing like a sick, twisted little child. Yep. And there's no way to stop it."
His mother came back some three hours later. Around that time, he was just coming out of his pit.
"Email, email, email," he said, clicking onto AOL.
1 Message.
He clicked onto it. It was from Roseybabe1234.
"Hmmm, Roseybabe." He opened and read the message:
"Hi, Adam. Well, I survived the family reunion thing, thank God! LOL. There wasn't a big turnout this time like last year. I knew most of the people, except for a few. Some good food, fun little games and stuff. Almost everybody there that I didn't know, were young, probably in high school or something, and they all had a girlfriend or boyfriend. Kinda got on my nerves seeing them holding hands and kissing every 2 minutes. LOL. Anyways, well, I'm very nervous writing this, but I was wondering if you would like to be my boyfriend, or something more than friends? I know we haven't talked long, but I feel a strong connection to you. You're a sweetheart. I can always tell a good guy from the jerks. Believe me, there are plenty of them and few of you.
“
Gosh, I'm nervous writing this. I've never hit on a guy before. If I'm this nervous on here, imagine me in person! I'd be a complete mess. Anyways, if you don't want to—you know—be more than just friends, that's ok too. I hope you still talk to me! I sure don't want to scare you away by this email, but I feel like it's too late to delete it now. I've just been writing for 10 minutes! Well, hope to talk to you soon, Adam. Bye, bye!"—XOXOXO
A single tear hit the F button. Adam could not believe it. A jumble of mixed feelings crashed around inside of him. He truly believed he would be single forever, alone till death do himself part. But the impossible had happened. And his aunt had once told him he would never find a nice girl sitting at home doing nothing. He pulled it off. For once, God shined upon him instead of dropping rain.
Another tear, another key.
"Oh my God..."
He hurriedly responded to her letter. Instead of feeling accepted, liked and respected, he felt violated, on guard and frail. He went into defense mode and began typing a counter letter back to her, which read: "Thanks, but no thanks. I feel very flattered that you like me and want to be my girl, but I really can't. I'm sorry. I'd like to, but it won't happen. I don't really trust many people. I don't know if we can even still be friends anymore. I'm soooo afraid to get hurt." He sent the email. Adam stared blankly at the screen for ten minutes, almost filling his keyboard with so many stray tears that it should have short-circuited. He partly regretted everything he wrote to her, but he knew why he’d done it.
The reason was simple: to stay away from being loved and hurt.
The reason was complex: to belong without being hated and treated wrongly.
The two feelings collided like two Mack Trucks. Unlimited dualistic thought with no answer... a lake of water with too many different currents.
"Uh, hi!" Roseybabe1234 wrote in an Instant Message.
Adam gasped.
"I got your email :( " she typed.
Adam quickly typed: "Sorry, no hard feelings."
"Why? Why can't we still talk?"
He wanted her so badly; he would not let it happen. "I just can't do it, Erin." He waited a whole two minutes, and she did not respond.
He thought she was gone. Forever.
"I'm crying," she wrote. Adam was, too, but would not say so.
"I'm so afraid of being hurt, you know? I just can't deal with that kind of rejection," Adam wrote.
"I won't hurt you. I SWEAR. I'm NOT a heartbreaker, Hun—sorry I called you Hun!"
Hun....
You know you want to.
"I don't know," Adam wrote, "I'm so confused."
"I promise you I won't hurt you. And I don't break promises."
Love. Happiness. Somebody to hold.
"Just give me a chance."
Adam thought he could feel her pain via the internet connection. He felt wholly responsible for making her, a possible angel, actually cry.
I'm doing what kids in school did to me, and she likes me. Maybe she could make me happy.
She can break your heart.
She can heal the hole there.
He pictured Erin, a beautiful young girl, sitting home alone, hurt brutally by a callous weirdo who could not take a shot at true love.
(Frown face)
He could not stand that guilty frown.
"Erin, please, I—" he stopped himself and sniffled.