Seeds of Hate (12 page)

Chapter 16

Hanging Shoes

(Selah)

I tried to keep up with him, but his reaction frightened me. The invisible caution tape trailing at his feet gave me pause—I should've just left him alone. When I neared his stopping point, his shoes were off and hanging above his head. It didn't make sense. Shoeless again?

I yelled out for him, but as expected, he didn't respond. He just left. Again.

My hands sat at my sides, lifeless and bereft, knowing that they couldn't help. The students around me carried on with their day, only a few whispering and pointing at his shoes.

"Do you think he's special?"

"Maybe he's bi-polar."

"I had an aunt once that suffered from reality dissociation."

"Do you even know what that means?"

"Yeah, it means he's crazy."

Special. Bi-polar. This is what they thought of him? Various students began to bring up the past and talked about things I had never heard before. Self-mutilation, depression and a myriad of other disorders. All things I'd never attribute to Javier.

"Hey, Selah! Do you have a car?" Izzy's voice rang out from beside a van. An older woman inside was scolding and pointing at him. Not happy at whatever he was about to do.

"Yes, of course," I replied.

Izzy leaned in, kissed the woman on the cheek and slammed the car door behind him.

"Do you think I could get a ride?" he asked.

I bit my lip as my fingers trembled. The sudden urge to pee surfaced with my fear. "Is this about Javier? I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to touch him," I said.

Izzy's head pulled back and his face grew a double chin. "Touch him?"

The ears around us grew substantially as our conversation took a turn. I could feel them staring. I could feel them judging. I looked at Izzy and nodded. He grabbed my arm and started walking toward the parking lot.

"Let's get out of here first," he said with rushed steps and a fevered whisper. "Then we can talk."

I followed him toward the parking lot. My eyes twitched as I focused in and out—wondering who had seen me, what they would think and what would they say. I shouldn't have touched him. When we neared my car, I clicked the alarm and jumped in.

"What the hell just happened?" I asked through clenched teeth. My hands began to shake as I backed out of the stall.

"Stop!" Izzy yelled. My feet pumped the brakes and we jolted in the seats.

"Hold on," he said. He got out and started picking up little pieces of white paper that dusted the hood of my car. His body bobbed up and down alongside it, picking up more that had fallen to the ground.

He got back in, I hit drive and we took off. Nathan stood at the corner of the fence, flipping us both off as we passed him.

"I hate him," said Izzy, both of us staring at his statuesque form. Not a hint of remorse written on his face.

"I don't even know him, but I'm jumping on board," I replied.

"So did you see anything?" Izzy asked.

"Only the tail end of it, but I'm not sure much else happened before I turned the corner."

I pulled out of the parking lot and headed south.

"Make a left on Madison and head toward the bakery. Unless you want to go to your place?"

"No. They're home," I replied. The air was stifled inside, so I opened a window. "Is it his letter? The paper you picked up?" I asked.

Izzy looked down at the stack of shredded paper with light blue lines. "Oh, I don't know."

"I saw Nathan rip it. He tore it into a bunch of pieces and then tossed them into the air over Javier."

"Did Javi do anything?" he asked.

"No, he just stood there. His back was to him and I could tell he was breathing hard. But he didn't react."

Izzy's knee bounced up and down. He looked at me and then past me out the window. "Wonder what set him off..."

"Oh," I said, clenching the steering wheel and swallowing my own spit. "That was me," I replied.

"You?"

"Well, when I saw him walk by, a piece of the paper was sticking out of the back of his shirt right along his collar. I don't even know why, but I reached out and grabbed it. It just felt wrong for it to be there."

"You touched his neck?" Izzy asked.

"Yeah, my fingers grazed it. And then ... well ... he just started running."

"He doesn't like to be touched," Izzy replied.

"I noticed." I made another left and headed down the bakery's street. "What's wrong with him?" I asked.

"Many things. And at the same time, nothing."

We sat in silence. I didn't know what to say or what questions were safe. My thumbs strummed the steering wheel and I made bubbles out of the spit in my mouth. I should've minded my own business that first day of school.

A slow whistle exited Izzy's lips. He was looking out the window and smiling. The whistle turned into a song and he began to bob his head. His carefree acceptance of the day relaxed me.

"Izzy," I began. "Is he okay?" I tapped the temple of my head with my finger while I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye.

"Of course he's okay. He's just tired. Spent. Overwhelmed." He continued whistling.

"With Nathan?"

He stopped and thought for a moment. "Nate's a part of it, but he's not all of it. Javier's life is complicated. He carries a lot with him and it weighs him down."

"Do you know where he lives?" I asked.

"Why?" Izzy's voice was curious, but lined with protective restraint.

"I think I should apologize. I feel like it's my fault." It actually was my fault, but I had a feeling Izzy believed there was more to it.

He cracked his knuckles and played with the pieces of paper that sat in his lap. "I don't know," he replied. "I'm not sure that would be okay."

It seemed like nothing with Javier was okay.

"Why does he do it, anyway?" I asked.

He dropped the paper and looked at me. "What?"

I looked back at him before returning my eyes to the road. "Toss his shoes like that up on a telephone wire. I've seen him walking around school barefoot before. It's ... odd."

Izzy snorted. "You should ask him."

"Like he'll tell me," I replied.

Izzy started whistling again. "You never know," he said.

I pulled over as we arrived at the bakery. The store lights were off and no one was inside.

"It looks closed."

"It is. That's why we're here." Izzy opened the door and got out. Then stuck his head inside the open window. "We can piece together the letter and see what he told Nathan."

I followed, rolling up the windows and locking the door. "How come you're so curious? I thought Javier would've told you."

Izzy smiled. "Javi is selective in what he tells me. Especially in regards to Nathan. He worries."

"Nathan didn't even read it though." We reached the outside of the bakery and Izzy took out a large set of keys. "Why would he respond like that?"

He began to unlock the four different deadbolts. "It's not the first time Javier has had to write an apology to Nathan," he said. "I'm fairly certain they've all said the same thing."

"Have you ever read one?" I asked.

"No," he replied. The last lock clicked open and he pushed on the door. "But there's a first for everything."

The inside was quiet and eerie. It felt wrong. It felt empty. "Are you sure this is okay?" I asked.

"I wouldn't have the keys if my parents didn't trust me. I do this a lot when I need a quiet place to study."

I took a seat in the far corner next to the window. The same seat I was in the first time I came.

"Want anything to eat or drink?" he asked as he emptied his pocket of the ripped paper.

"Water's fine."

He walked away, stopped and turned back. "Food?"

My stomach growled at the idea of a sticky bun.

Izzy smiled and then left. "I'll see if we have any day-old muffins or buns," he said from the behind the counter. "Sometimes we don't sell out."

I heard cupboards open and close and the clinking of glass. Pushing the paper into the center of the table, I scooted myself against the wall. My eyes drifted out the window, the streets were still awake with people. Watching the lives of others had become an obsession. I would stare until I found a couple or a family that looked worthy of being a part of. Then I would imagine myself in the shoes of one of them. How happy they were, fulfilled, excited with life. I'd do this for hours on the weekends, even at school when I became fixated on another student. One who seemed popular, but not mean. Accepted, but not bitchy.

It always left me feeling emptier than before, but those few moments of bliss were worth it. Life seemed so full of hope for them—their possibilities and potential endless.

"Did you figure it out?" Izzy asked. I jumped at the sound of his voice, his words pulling me from the family of four playing peek-a-boo across the street.

"Oh, no. Sorry," I replied.

"Daydreaming?" he asked.

My face flushed. I didn't like being so transparent.

"You don't have to be embarrassed. What were you thinking about?"

"Nothing important," I replied.

Izzy took his seat, sliding a water and a muffin in front of me. "It's not fresh, but they still taste almost as good when reheated."

I licked my lips, not realizing how hungry I was until I smelled the muffin. "I'm sure it's perfect. Thank you."

"Of course."

We both took a few bites and began to spread out the paper. The rips were easy to match, but it looked like he had written something on the front and the back. We kept flipping pieces over until the words lined up.

"Do you have any tape?" I asked as we figured out the final pieces.

Izzy got up and ran to the back. "Here, this should work."

He threw a small thing of clear tape on the table and sat back down. Three more pieces moved into place and Javier's message was clear.

"What does it say?” I asked. I was looking at it upside down, the words too hard to decipher.

Izzy sat and stared, not responding.

"Izzy, what did he write?" I repeated.

He moved a hand to his forehead and rubbed his face back and forth. His eyes became two large pieces of coal as he said the words out loud.

"I still care. He wrote,
I still care
," Izzy replied.

"He still cares? About what? What does that mean?" I asked.

Izzy grabbed the tape and stuck two more pieces across the torn edges. When he turned it around he smiled.

"Well?" I asked.

"But I hate you even more," he said as he read the note again.

"How can he care when Nathan treats him the way he does?"

"They have a long past, Selah. A very long past. Imagine if you had a sibling that did horrific things to you—no matter how horrible they got, there's a small part of you that would always care."

"But they're not siblings. It's different."

"Yes and no. They grew up together. It was an intense friendship for a young age." Izzy kept flipping the paper over and over again. Reading the words with his lips, but not saying them out loud.

"So are you going to explain to me how this all fits in with the shoes? I still don't get that."

Izzy strummed his fingers on the top of the sparkly diner's table and looked out the window. He paused for a moment then looked back at the paper, turning it over once more.

"I can't tell you much of anything, but let's walk through what happened." He lifted his eyes to mine and strummed his bottom lip with his finger. "When did Javier really freak out?" he began.

"When I touched him," I said.

"Yes. And where did you touch him?"

I swallowed hard at the question. "On his neck," I replied.

"Correct." Izzy stopped strumming his lip and picked up the paper. "And what happened next?" he asked.

"He screamed and ran to the front of campus," I said, my heart replaying the scene as if it were occurring now. "I followed him and watched as he took his shoes off and threw them up on a telephone wire."

"Correct again," he said.

"Okay, am I missing something because I don't get how hanging his shoes from a wire correlates to any of this?"

"Repeat what you just said."

I pulled my hair back out of my face and breathed in. "Which part? All of it?"

"No, the part about his shoes."

I said it in my head before voicing it out loud. "He hangs his shoes from a telephone wire," I repeated. Looking into Izzy's eyes I saw nothing—no more clues, no more clarification.

Taking his pointer finger he touched it to the tip of his nose and smiled. Then grabbed our plates and cleared the table, taking the apology letter with him and tossing it in the trash. When he returned, he gestured to the front door.