“Twenty questions.”
“What?”
“You only get twenty questions. And I will let that first one slide.”
“That’s all I get?”
“Yes. Nineteen.”
“Wait! That doesn’t count!”
“I make the rules. Nineteen.”
“What happens after I’ve used all my questions?”
“I will decide if I will ever talk to you again. And you are wasting questions. Eighteen.”
The moment I stood up I knew there was no going back. Any courage I had felt drained away and was instantly replaced by a myriad of fears. I stared at my feet, willing them to move. Heads began to turn from the front rows, like a wave of dominoes that came crashing towards me. Slowly, I slid past the strangers sitting with me in the last row. That walk to the front of the funeral home was the longest of my life.
The minister motioned to the podium and I found my place behind it. I began to study the wood grain in an attempt to avoid meeting the hard gazes of people I had never met. Silence only fed my fears, so I took a deep breath and looked up. (more…)
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by…”
“What?”
“It’s a poem by Rober…. Nevermind. This is not an easy choice. Just give me a minute to think.”
Michael paced the length of the living room, drumming his fingers against each other.
“Dude, you’re not seriously thinking of picking him are you?”
There is an assumption among those who have suffered little that the anticipation of pain is worse than the pain itself. They are greatly mistaken. At 17 years old I should not know this. I knew so little of pain before tonight, but schoolmaster Auditore saw to it that I received a proper education on the subject.
It is rare to possess enough clarity to trace our choices back to the first step of the path we find ourselves traveling. Maybe this is a gift of the pain. Neither my blood stained sheets nor the smile I wear alone in the darkness of my room would exist were it not for the gardener’s gate.
