I threw the ball against the wall, squared up to receive it, then fired it back to the wall in an apparent goldberg machine, until a bad hop took me by surprise. It careened off of my glove, lazily rolling back to the wall. The glove wasn’t the dollar store glove my grandma had originally bought for me, but instead an old Rawlings i had used since i started playing kid pitch. It used to be an appalling orange, although now it had faded into the same color of the dirt in which I played on. A ball glove is a personal item to any ballplayer, especially one who takes pride in defense.  Although it was missing a lace and cracked near the palm, I couldn’t bear the thought of buying a new one. This was my glove, and my glove alone.
I was a light hitting second basemen, though i couldn’t really care where i batted. I took pride in the fact that everyone knew once i went out onto the field, dug my cleats into my spot, and took my stance a foot or so in from the grass, something incredible might happen.
After taking ground balls for about 20 minutes, i decided to take a breather. I took my hat off, and brushed aside my thick blonde hair. I had come to enjoy being out in the 97 degree weather. It made me feel like I was getting better. I had the strange belief that some college scout would see me, and ask me to play for them, based merely on dedication alone. It sounds much simpler on paper. I put my cap back on, and started the jog home.

Home had never been anything more than 4 walls to me. I didn’t like being confined. I wanted to always be moving, exploring. my family had somehow taken up the worst place of residence for someone like me, a small town called Enid, Oklahoma. There was never anything going on here. There was a theatre, which was the only optimal first date spot, a sports complex, a library, a museum dedicated to the dull history of enid, and a minute strip mall.
Inside the four walls were two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. I made my way  through the small hallway to my room, and flopped onto the bed. my room didn’t have the feeling of housing, but rather the feeling of a library. books were scattered among the floor and among shelves, in no particular order. I grabbed my laptop, and pulled up Facebook.I don’t particularly care for anything anyone i know has to post, and there’s always a certain amount of drama that’s created in small towns like these. recently, a man had attempted to throw a brick through the police station window. About a year before, a teacher was arrested for buying heroin from one of the students. Small town quirks.  It’s a sickness, I thought, while liking a picture of a friends dog. The dog wasn’t even that cute. She was, at least.She had autumn hair, and gorgeous hazel eyes. Even her name, Amelia, was pretty. The kind of pretty that you don’t need a really good personality for. The fact that she did was just the cherry on top.
“hey, what’s up?” She messaged me, moments later. We had almost had a fling a while back, but I was incredibly awkward when it came to these things back then, and i had the feeling she was as well. I still am, really.
“Nothing at all, i was just at the field.” I replied.
‘You really need a life, Khalil” she said, and i could practically feel her biting sarcasm through the damn screen.
“I would if i could, Amelia. Ain’t no rest for the wicked,” I said, with just as much sarcasm. We had a special bond, the type where you know you can be a little snappy at each other and know it’s nothing personal.
“well, listen, i know someone who’s interested if you are,” She said.
“No s***? Who?”
“You know who Lilly is?”
“F***. she’s cute.”
Saying Lilly is cute was an understatement. She had golden hair that seemed a stroke lighter than most, which was at the stylish point of wavy but not the nuisance of curly. She had one of those incredibly bubbly laughs, the kind that make you wonder why anyone had ever passed up on her. She was, in short, gorgeous in the most lackluster way.

I had never really had a problem with finding girls who were interested, but rather in sealing the deal. I’m quite naive. i was very prone to making laughable first date mistakes. i remember my first date. it was with a girl named Nicki, who showed up wearing an AC/DC Shirt and acid wash jeans. I wore a suit and tie. I hadn’t quite mastered the art of putting your arm over a girl, and never put my arm around her. She ended up leaving the date with a guy whose shirt said, “Restrict these guns.” We didn’t talk for awhile after that. She’s really great now, though.
The next girl I went on a date with, I was crazy about. Her name was Alexis. She was obsessed with classic books, an obsession I also share now, in part because of her. She introduced me to “The Great Gatsby”, a book I immediately fell in love with. We went to a party dressed up as Daisy and gatsby, a role i happily accepted. It was the first time i had worn a bow tie, and I had never been more uncomfortable in my life. She looked exactly like how I pictured Daisy. There was a small mole to the right of her upper lip, a sharp contrast to her sunshine hair.  She went on and on about wanting to live in a different time, and how romantic everything about the 1930’s were. I couldn’t agree with her more.

I had noticed Lilly a couple of times, as us sheep were being herded to class. she looked down, and she kind of bit her lip. I tried to wave at her, but i doubt that she saw. It didn’t matter.  That’ll drive any guy crazy. Our worlds didn’t collide in the slightest. We were simply two planets, orbiting the same school. It was dreadful.

I didn’t know it at the time, but LIlly was miserable. Not in a mood, but a state of mind. She was also, above all else, absolutely crazy. She had driven herself crazy, by looking for affection where it was nowhere to be found. Once again, she had her hopes high, just to have them slowly turned to misery. She had an unfortunate knack of finding people who didn’t quite appreciate what she was. It had changed her. There comes a point when you break your heart so many times, that it’s no longer a shell of what it used to be. Her heart had sharp edges, that people had promised to fix, yet nobody wanted to come near, in fear of cutting themselves. Once, she had found a letter under her desk, addressed to “Whoever takes the test next hour”, saying ‘Good Luck!:)”, attached with it a small Tootsie Roll. It made her entire week, that someone in enid, Oklahoma had cared so much about others as to do something small like that. She didn’t know it at the time, But I was the one who left all of the notes. it made me feel a little better about my s***ty day. I never saw who eventually took the note, or who ate the candy, and perhaps they were pompous jerks or people I shouldn’t be giving candy to, but maybe it was the quiet kid who needed a pick me up, and the possibility of that was enough to justify it. Of course, I didn’t know that one of those days, Lilly was the one who took the honors.

As I was leaving Algebra class, I was taking extra time to pack up as i was chasing an elusive jolly rancher down my backpack to give out with my note. I saw Lilly, hovering outside the front door. I finally scooped up all of my stuff, Lilly said, “Oh, you dropped something,” as I shuffled by. I said thank you, and quickly left. I was already running late for English. I sat down in English, just as the bell was ringing. I carefully unfolded the note. Inside, it had 10 digits. Folding it again neatly, I smiled and slid it into my back pocket.

At lunch, I took the note out of my pocket, took a breath, and sent a message. “Hey,” was my opening response. Hey? How asinine. Who says Hey anymore? What am I, 60? Hey was a nightma- Lilly texted back, with a more enthusiastic “Hey!” Texting is a mess. There’s no way to tell the other person's emotions from it. I smiled, and sent another message.

This was the first date I had been on in over 6 months. I wasn’t going to wear a suit and tie, or rather a bowtie. I put on a nice button up and a pair of jeans without any holes in them, as well as my Nike’s. I wondered what Lilly was doing before the date. Was she changing outfits as rapidly as I was? Or was she just about to head to her car, in the same clothes she had gone to school in? Maybe she would be just as nervous, or even be late. I then realized I was running late. Grabbing my nice sweatshirt, I started my short walk to the movie theater.

After about 10 minutes of nervously checking my watch and tapping my foot until it was tired, I saw a car take a veering turn into the parking lot, a rusty orange Chevy, and come to a screeching hault. Lilly flung herself out of the car. ‘Sorry i’m late,” she said. It was quite alright. She was wearing a dark red lipstick, and had on a delightfully plain dress. She smelled like blossoms on a dewy Oklahoma morning. She looked damn good.
That’s when it occurred to me, I wasn’t as nervous as I had remembered being. I felt as though it was because of her presence. it wasn’t intimidating, despite how stunning she looked. I thought maybe it was because she looked pretty nervous herself, and it was nice to know that someone who was so magnificent could be just as nervous as me.

We made some awkward small talk, about how school was, and what we wanted to see. I don’t recall what name we had decided on after a couple seconds of passive deliberation, because the movie was sold out. Instead, she asked if I wanted to go watch a movie at her house, and we could make popcorn and all. We walked out to the burnt orange Chevy, and this time much more carefully, pulled out of the parking lot and went to Lily's house.
Lilly played the alternative station at near full blast as she drove, with a basic disregard of the speed limit. That was fantastic. I sort of felt like I was flying along the road, and the music was so loud I couldn’t hear my own thoughts. She lowered the volume, and asked “SO, WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR HOBBIES?” Naturally, I told her I was very passionate about baseball. “I’LL HAVE TO SEE YOU PLAY SOMETIME. DO YOU MIND IF I STOP AT A FRIENDS REAL QUICK?” As I said okay, she stopped the car in front of a shady looking house, one with shingles falling off and a cracked front window. She scurried inside, and after tapping my knuckles for another year, she returned to the car, without the enthusiasm that she had left with before. The radio played at the same volume, and I was still flying down the road, but it was a peaceful flight now.
We arrived at her house, a much more well kept house compared to her friends. It was a faded blue, with secured windows, one of which had bars on them. I thought that was odd. She took me inside, and we went upstairs to her room, where she put in a movie. I remember the fact that she kept staring at me, because the first time I asked, she replied “Oh, nothing at all.” and the following time, I turned to her and directly asked “Hey, what’s wrong?” almost startled, she said “No, nothing, it’s just that I didn’t expect this to happen.” “Expect what to happen?” “I didn’t expect for you to ever be on that chair in this room, is all. It’s really just kind of a dream.” I smiled, and leaned a little closer to her. Later I went home, unaware of what movie I had just watched. It didn’t matter. I was just happy to have watched it with someone so fantastic.

Later that night I went to hang out with one of the guys from the team, David. David was a tall lanky pitcher with bleached wild hair and a tendency to be a hothead on the mound. He had been through a lot. He was a fighter though. He really was. I had heard some rumours about him doing drugs or whatever, but I didn’t believe them. His fastball had too much zip to be on drugs. We played video games when we weren’t playing baseball together. It was already too dark. I told him about Lilly “No s***, how was it?” he asked, as his thick english accent shone through. “She was.. wonderful. I’ve never met someone so perfect.” “Damn.” He said, and we sat in silence for a moment. “You know, it was just a first date,” He said, with the smallest trace of malice. “Yeah, I know, but i’ve never been on a date with someone so amazing.” “I’m just saying, be careful man. I’ve had that feeling twice, and we know how that turned out the first time.” He told me, raising his eyebrows a bit. He had once dated a girl who turned out to be absolutely crazy, who drank a lot and swore. I don’t know what he saw in her, but I recall him coming home from the first date telling me how absolutely wonderful she was. Just amazing. It ended when she burned him with a cigarette during an argument. The thing is, his new girlfriend, Violet, who he had been dating since a month after this crazy girl also smoked. He didn’t mind one bit. She really was sweet, and real pretty too. He loved writing poems about her. Cigarettes make good metaphors. They made a good couple. He wrote the poems on torn out pieces of notebook paper, and sometimes put them in her locker, or in a book he was letting her borrow. He was still troubled by that first girl though, I could tell. I didn’t want to be haunted by someone like that, to see them in everything you do, even when things are working out.

The next day at school, my friends buzzed around me like flies. “How was it? What did you guys watch? Did you put your arm around her?” My friends were a little excited that I was actually getting out of the house, or off the field. A couple of Lily's friends came up to me during the day, “Hey, are you dating Lilly?” When I said yes, some smiled and some gave me a weird look. It didn’t matter much to me, really. I was still smiling from last night.

Lilly texted me at around noon, asking if I wanted to go out for lunch. We met up by the picnic table just outside of the school, and walked to her Chevy. As we were walking there, she stopped to fish something out of her pocket. She handed me a note. Inside, the note said:
“Einstein once said that gravity will not be held responsible for people falling in love. If we fall in love, no one can explain it, and I think that’s beautiful.”
I turned to her, and we kissed.

I spent a lot of that night looking at the note. I studied it’s creases, it’s erase marks. I wondered what had been said before she had decided on love. I knew it was ridiculous to even bring up the word love on what was our second date, and we talked about how we thought it was ridiculous that people who were dating for 2 months said it to each other as it were just a puddle to splash around in instead of the tsunami that it means, but the way she floated it out there, in all of it’s hopefulness and authenticity, made me stop and wonder where she had been all this time. I realized I had wanted to know more about her than I had wanted to know anything about anyone.

A month later, I heard my phone buzz while I was in bed. The text was from Lilly, saying she was going to pick me up. It was 1 am. before I could reply, I heard a small pebble hit my window. I opened the door as quietly as I could, and hurried to her car, pajamas and all. “Where are we going?” I asked. “Stargazing,” She said, with a smile. We went to the park out by the middle school, and found a picnic table to lay on, holding hands. We sat in silence for a moment. “do you know about the infinite universe theorem?” she asked, and I said yes, but I wanted to hear her talk about it.
“The infinite universe theorem states that anything you can possibly think of, is happening in another universe right now. Anything you can imagine.”
“It’s just so crazy to think that all those stars that we can see,” as she pointed at the big dipper, “Most of them are like our sun, most of them have planets. There’s so many of them that could be just like our planet. They could all hold life. There’s no way we’re out here alone. And it’s crazy to think about what those life forms think. Maybe there is a war going on out there. Or maybe there’s a man coming back home from the war, and, yknow, he’s sick and all because of the things he saw, but he doesn’t know it. And there’s a girl waiting at home for him, and when he gets back, he realizes that she’s not the one, and she doesn’t understand that he’s coming back different. Of course he is. Or, maybe the guy comes back home, and he doesn’t have anyone waiting for him, and he kind of loses his mind a little, but he’s going to a clinic to get better, and he falls in love with one of the women who work there, just like some fairy tale or something. He just needed a savior.” “Do you really think that?” I asked. “Yeah. What about you, what do you think is happening on that star?” as she pointed to another spot in the sky.
“That one in particular?” I joked. “I don’t think they’ve figured out war yet. I think they’re still evolving to that, but it’s definitely coming soon. They’re figuring out that primal  urge to survive, and it’s probably not going to end well for them. Maybe we won’t see that star in the future. Also, maybe the Cubs have won a goddamn pennant in the past 100 years there. Sorry. was that too dark?”
“No, not at all.”
They returned to silence. Moonlight was, and always will be, sculpture.
“Where do you see yourself in twenty years?” She asked.
I thought about what David had told me once. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess I want what anyone else wants. i want a nice sized yellow house, with a fenced backyard for a dog, and a real futuristic looking kitchen. I want to be married, of course. I’d like to be making her pancakes in the morning as she comes down the stairs, with her bedhead, still in her pajamas and all. Maybe kids someday. I don’t know, it sounds awfully nice.”
I noticed at this point that Lilly had been staring at me with a somewhat startled look this whole time.
“You have a beautiful mind,” she said.
“Where do you see yourself in twenty years?”
“I haven’t thought about it that much. It’s too much to handle right now, right? I’m having a hard enough time right now, I don’t like the added pressure people put on me by telling me I need to do something, or be a certain thing.”
“Oh. Sorry I asked.”
“You’re fine, babe.”
More silence.
Followed by another moment of silence.
Lilly made a noise as if to speak, but kept her lips closed.
More silence.
We stared at the stars for a couple more minutes, then she drove me home, and dropped me off with a goodnight’s kiss.

Later that week, I went over to her place. She sounded less nervous when she saw me than she normally was. We went up to her room, and we both jumped onto her bed. She turned to me and said, “Listen, I don’t want you to get upset.” My heart jumped immediately to the worst conclusions I could think of. Was she dying? Did something happen to her? was this a breakup?
“I love you,” she said, her lips trembling.
“You don’t have to say it back yet. You wanted to wait awhile before you got carried away, I know. But i’m not just splashing words around. I mean it like the tsunami it is. I’d rather you wait than say it right now if you can’t say it with the seriousness I require.”
I knew she was right. I kissed her, and she smiled in a way I had never seen her smile before. It wasn’t a smile put on for show, It was a smile of pure bliss.

I went to the field with David to get some ground ball reps. He wore a Red Sox shirt, and I always made fun of it, saying “what do you call 40 millionaires watching the World Series? The Boston Red Sox.” To which he replied, “hey, yknow why they didn’t know what the world series was in Lion King? Simba was just a cub.” “hey, the Cubs got it this year. they’ve just been hibernating.” “Yeah, a lot of teams have a bad century.”
He hit a ground ball to me, and the ball stuck in the web. It took me a moment to fish the ball out of the loose web. “You  need to get a new glove, dude. Coach is going to be pissed if that happens in a game.” David’s girlfriend had bought him a new glove for their year anniversary. it was a blonde wilson with his name embroidered onto it. He had given her a promise ring. It seemed so strange to me, that he could be so infatuated with someone else, when he still had nightmares about his old girlfriend. David said it was the last glove he’d ever need. I looked down at my old glove, in its old, faded glory, and told him i’d just re-lace it. After he hit me ground balls for about half an hour, I caught a bullpen for him. He had an unorthodox delivery, using his tall frame to whip his arm around, hurling the ball even with his head, the ball hitting my glove with a loud *Thwap!*. He had become a great pitcher, he really had. Freshman year, he was one of the worst players on the freshman team. Now, a junior on varsity, he was selecting between scholarships. I was still hoping to get a scholarship by the time I was a senior. David threw one last slider, and said he was done for the day. We walked to the parking lot.
“Listen, can i ask you something?” I ask.
“Yeah, of course, anything man.”
“Do you really use drugs?”
David froze, put off by the blatancy of my question.
“Why do you ask?”
“You know the rumours are out there. I just want to make sure you’re okay and all.”
This seemed to free him up a bit.
“Yeah, they’re true. Sort of. I took them for awhile. I stopped as soon as I met Violet. She’s really been a savior.”
“What were you on?”
“I don’t know man, there was a lot. I was in a rut. I didn’t really want to live. You know who I was dating at the time. She supplied me. Cocaine and heroine, to name a few. That was all I waited for, everyday after school.”
“How did you stop?”
“Well, not talking to her anymore helped. I realized I had to change if I wanted to do anything with my life. If I wanted to keep playing baseball.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know whatever happened to her?”
I had seen her when they were dating, but I hadn’t since. Perhaps I just wasn’t looking.
“She’s okay, I guess. She’s with another guy now. I see the marks on her veins. I guess she’s happy now.”
“Why do you say that?”
“When you’re on drugs, it’s because you don’t want to feel a thing.”

Lily drove quickly down a dirt road, not slowing down at all for the turns. The radio played the Red Hot Chili Peppers, as I heard the sound of gravel bang against the bottom of the car. We had just been at her house, cuddling and watching a movie, and as soon as she heard the buzz of her phone on the table, she snatched it, and said she wanted to go to her friends house quickly. She had decided to take the backroad. I felt the tires losing their traction beneath us, as we hit a bump. Gravel flew, along with our car, giving us an unsure landing. She took back control of the car, and slowed down from 70 to about 65. I felt as if I had just flirted with death.

Lilly stopped the car, right before the driveway. She turned to me and said, “Listen, these people are my friends, but they’re probably smoking weed. You don’t have to come in if you don’t want to.” “yeah, okay.” I decided to sit in the car and wait. Oh. Sh. How was I not told this? Was this what her friends had been buzzing around me about? Had someone tried to tell me, or warn me? Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. She didn’t say that she was was going to as well. Of course, her friends did, and I had no reason to think otherwise. It wasn’t the worst possible thing she could do. It’s not cocaine or anything. Besides, she wasn’t obsessed with it or anything. I didn’t think any of my friends knew, or they didn’t really care. This was fine, I had decided, just as she stepped back into the car.

There are blatant discrepancies that you have no idea about when you start dating someone. For instance, the first girl I ever went on a date on, had a child while she was still in high school. The girl who introduced me to the Great Gatsby was later arrested for, ironically, taking the blame after one of her friends stole from a convenience store. She was eventually released in time for our Reunion. Whether or not these things happened to girls I dated is because absolutely Bellatrix Lestrange crazy girls are interested after me, or it is merely the randomness of life, has yet to be determined.

I texted Lily that night, trying to bring up drugs as nonchalant as possible. “I used to do hard stuff when I was younger. I’m fine though. I went to rehab.” This answer was enough to satisfy me. We all carry baggage, and I think we just need someone to help us carry it, and make it seem that it’s not quite as heavy.
I didn’t know it then, but Lily had struggled. She grew up without a chance. She wanted to be an artist. She expressed the pain in her life on a canvas when she was 17 by painting lines of deep blue and black across the harsh, unreal whiteness of the board. Life wasn’t like that. The lines made up a self portrait, a self portrait she never showed anyone, one that featured her with black hair and her lilac blue eyes crying out crude tears. She was absolutely high out of her mind when she did it.
Her family hadn’t bought her up in the best of environments, despite how hard they tried. Her parents split up before she was born, her father moving back to Bulgaria. When she was 12 she started hanging out with her 15 year old sister and her friends. Her friends introduced 12 year old Lily to prescription drugs. She had never felt so grown up before in her life. By her 13th birthday, she was hooked. 6 months later her mother found out, and sent her to a rehab center for 3 months. While there, they asked her why she did drugs. “It makes me feel better, I guess” she sobbed, closer to still holding her teddy bear than to legally being able to drink. At 14, she returned home, feeling better than she had before. Part of her had left though. Part of her still felt like it needed something to survive. part of her still felt like she was away from home. Part of her felt empty.

Just when she felt all but homeless, Nick came. Nick taught her how to live again, how to feel again. She felt like the center of his world, like he was the sun, and her life depended on him. Nick had his own struggles. mainly, he was bipolar. He was so sweet to her, bringing her flowers and chocolates when she felt bad, or writing her notes to try and make her day. Other times, he threw her against the wall and hit her across the goddamn cheek, telling her how terrible of a girlfriend she was. and she understood, she didn’t know why, but she knew she was.

One night, Lily laid asleep on Nick, lulled by the rising and falling of his chest. Nick smiled, then suddenly, had a small twitch. She sure does breath heavily, he thought. It’s kind of annoying. Suddenly, Nick became enraged over her snoring. He knew she was being malicious, that she just wanted to annoy him. He woke her up, and said, “Hey cut that s*** out.” she replied with a playful “sorry, i won’t breath as loud,” with a slight eye roll and a smile. Nick jumped up in a rage, muttering something about her having an attitude, threw her out of the bed, and kicked her while she was on the ground. She didn’t know what she had done to deserve that, but she knew she had. “You’re nothing but a f***ing druggie.” He said, leaving the room and slamming the door. Yes. that’s it. That’s why she had deserved to be treated this way. She had been clean for nearly a year, but she was still a f***ing druggie. It was like a scar that she was going to wear for the rest of her life. She knew she couldn’t escape her label. So she embraced it.

A week later, it was our 6 month anniversary. I had bought her a necklace, with a light bulb pendant, that had a Lily pressed inside of it. I had something else I also wanted to give her. The notion that I loved her. I had been saving it to myself, waiting for the most opportune moment. i knew tonight would be the most romantic night that i could possibly hope for, and couldn’t bear the anticipation. We went to her living room, and watched a movie, kind of a notion to our first date. Her idea. I thought it was adorable. We cuddled up on the couch, and waited through the credits. Bored, I kept poking her in the side, because she said she hated it, but I knew she really didn’t, because she laughed every time I did. “Stop!” she laughed, showing her large toothy smile. That killed me. I said, “Fine, i’ll stop.” right as I was poking her again.
“Ugh! I hate you!” she laughed, throwing a pillow at my face.
“I love you!” I blurted, with a smile on my face. Lily put the pillow down, and stared blankly at me.
“You.. You love me?” she asked incredulously.
“I really do. Of course I do.”

There comes a point when you’ve been handed a knife in the back by people that have said I love you, that when someone hands you a rose and says it without a doubt, you’re confused for awhile.

“Why?” She asked.
I didn’t know how to respond.
I didn’t know how to tell someone, whom I saw as my whole world, how much I loved her. How much I myself felt like I was a star, when she was a galaxy. So I told her the truth.
“I don’t know quite how to explain love, darling. It’s just when we’re cuddling up next to each other, and I see your eyes flutter as you wake up, and you sort of smile at me, and pull my hand closer to you. I don’t think i’ve ever seen a poem, or a painting more beautiful than that.”
She opened her mouth as to say something, but nothing literate came out. She told me later, her thoughts were so loud she couldn’t hear her mouth. I realized that all along I had been trying to plan the perfect moment, yet no moment was more perfect than one of sheer honesty. One moment of abrupt, naked vulnerability. I thought to myself, in this hookup culture we have, it’s so damn surprising to see someone truly reveal themselves and all. Her lips tasted like filterless cigarettes, and I wanted nothing more than to be an ashtray.

I left the next morning with a new energy for every aspect of my life. Suddenly, grass seemed greener, the birds chirped more melodiously. the potholes on Main Street seemed to dip not as irregularities, but as a beat. This feeling remained for a solid week.

It was then that I was emerged in a book, “A Perfect Day For Bananafish,” by JD Salinger. As I was nearing the end of the book, Lilly texted me, simply stating, “Goodbye.”. Not knowing what this meant, I replied “Are you alright?”, which was followed by “I Haven’t been this great in a long time. XOXO.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m going to miss you.”
Suddenly feeling the lump in my throat drop, I called, and waited for her to pick up. No answer. I tried several more times. 20 more times, to be exact. I started to walk toward her house, which suddenly turned into running. I could feel a blade being rested upon my neck, and ran even faster. As I was almost there, she called back. She said “Hello?”, in a cracking voice.
“Lilly, what’s going on?” I said, trying to catch my breath enough to sound serious.
“I did something bad.” she said, struggling to enunciate the words.
“What happened?” I asked, to no response.
“Where are you?” I said, desperately wondering if she was even there at all.
“I’m at my friends house.”
“Which friends?”
Still more silence. I asked several more times, and heard no response. I had a hunch. I instead took off towards her friends house, the one where she had stopped on our first date. As I ran, my mind flashed vivid pictures of the movies the school had made us watch, where they make drugs seem like such a “Bad kid” thing. Caught up in my own thought, I didn’t see the Semi Truck barreling my way, which came screeching to a halt inches away. I continued running, and arrived at her friend's house. I was running to catch up with her, before death did. I wondered if this was her natural state, already too high to look for something to grab onto.

I arrived.
I saw the door quietly open, and for a moment the earth stopped rotating. The trees stood still, the cars became silent.
She was smiling.
She looked like an angel, with a heavenly glow. No sin had ever touched her. The inside crevice of her elbow looked discolored, and she smiled, with a smile that could melt the snow. She asked, “What’s wrong?” and I didn’t have any words that meant anything. I hugged her tight as tears came streaming down my face. She wiped the tears off of my face, and asked again, several more times. She was smiling the whole time, yet her face had now taken the expression of a sickle bulb, a face of naivety and confusion. A face that I loved, even in this temperamental high that would soon be followed by a crashing down.

As the other foot came crashing down, Lilly was quiet. She didn’t want to talk about it, she said, and promised we’d talk about it later. Even now, I don’t know what the right thing to do was. Maybe I could have left. I could have decided this was too much to handle, that I didn’t need this in my life right now. I would have asked for my hoodie back, and talked to David about it. He would have told me I had made the right choice, I know he would have. Then, anyways. I would have trained harder, and maybe have had the opportunity to go to the same school as David. Lilly would have moved on, and fallen in love with someone who was worse for her. Or perhaps, someone absolutely lovely, her prince in shining armour, riding in and saving the day, and her life. Arguably, none of these things would have mattered to begin with. We’re just two of the 7 billion people on this world, and I find it strange to pretend that we make a significant impact. We do the best we can. Had any of these things happened, this might not be a story, or perhaps a simple love story. Maybe, by some miracle, had she not been introduced to drugs by her family, had she not had to go to rehab and cry out her emotions, this wouldn’t be anyone’s story at all, but it is. It’s my story, one that everyone has. Mine just has a few more twists and turns.

I didn’t leave, instead I felt more attached to her, like maybe I had something to do with her still being here. I think part of me needed her as well. I needed something to make me realize that lives are precious. Up to this point, I think I really had been just watching life go by, as if I was on a train staring out of the window.

I thought about what David had said earlier. He dated a girl, who he thought he was going to eventually marry. I- well, I didn’t know about that. I’d like to think I was still cautiously optimistic. She was wonderful though. The absolute love of my life. I took pride in knowing how she liked her coffee in the morning, or that her favorite kind of tea was ginger. I loved knowing her favorite color was lilac blue, and I loved that her eyes happened to be the same color. I loved that she smiled when she heard my heart beating on her chest. I wasn’t afraid to show her off to the whole world. She made me question why I had been so afraid to fall in love at all.

I threw the ball against the wall, and the ball and I were in an intricate dance, rhythmically pounding off the wall, hitting the soft leather of my glove. The glove was still holding up, but looked different to me today. The palm had worn so thin, I could practically feel the ball hit my hand instead of the leather. The tempo speed up, and at length I threw a ball to the right corner of the wall, so I had to dive to make the play. It landed squarely in the web of my glove, as  I got up and softly threw it back with one swift motion. That was a good one to end on, I had decided. I felt a bit woozy after being in the sun for so long. I took a swig of water, and started the jog home.
It was warmer out today than most days, and I felt as if I alone were on the hotseat. Only one car had come to the park in my 2 hours there, a white suburban, which had parked for 10 minutes, then left. I thought that was strange. That happened all the time at this particular park, and for the first time I thought perhaps it had something to do with drugs. It was the park farthest from the main road, as well as the police station. My second thought was that I just had a one-track mind. Surely not everybody in this god-forsaken town was on drugs. I slowed to a walk as I rounded the corner to my house. Our neighbors house wore the scars of nearly 30 years, and looked the part. Its shingles were falling off, and had weeds growing from nearly every corner of it. I went inside to my room, and layed down for a troubled sleep. I thought I had a dream that night, but it was only a cat screeching outside.

It had been 5 days since the last time we had talked. She hadn’t been in school all week. On this particular saturday, she had messaged me at 6:00 am, asking if she could see me. I walked over to her house, and before I reached the steps, she opened the door ever so slightly. Her eyes had seemingly glazed over, showing the brightest colors of the sun through her morose lense. I stepped inside, to see the house cleaner than I had ever seen it, with the only clutter being a blanket and bed pillow on the couch. She sat down and motioned for me to do the same. She curled up next to me, and we sat in silence for some time. Finally, she said, “I’m really glad I didn’t die before I met you.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t think I would still be here without you.”
She paused for a moment.
“You’re my knight in shining armour, you really are. I don’t know how I could ever repay you.”
“You repay me every day darling,  simply by being who you are.”
The tree outside came into view through the window, leaving an abrupt shadow swallowing us whole. She distressingly drew back from my embrace.
“What’s wrong?’ I asked, suddenly fearing the worst. I don’t know why. It’s just that anytime she looked upset, I got scared as hell. Drugs seemed to be the starting line, and everything else seemed to go by the wayside.
“Last week, it was all just me throwing a fit. It really was.”
“What happened, exactly?” I prodded, carefully.
“My sister died the day before.” She said, producing a tear from her left eye before the words could fully come out.
“Oh god, I’m so sorry Lilly. What happened?”
“There was a drive by. She was in Kansas City. That’s what they told us anyways. I didn’t see her or anything. She must have been buying drugs, she must have. There’s no way she would have been in that neighborhood otherwise. She had been clean for 9 months, or so she told me. We talked a couple days before it happened. She seemed so content. So goddamn content..” As Lilly’s voice trailed off, burying her head in my chest.
“What am I supposed to do, darling? What am I supposed to do when I’m pathetically waiting for her weekly text? What am I supposed to do when my mom drags me to church, and they tell us God does these things to test our faith? What am I supposed to do when everyone seems okay, and I dread getting up every day?”
“No one deserves it.”
“That’s why I did all of that. It’s hard for me to get up every day. It’s hard to see her face first thing after I wake up, and go out with a smile on my face. Those drugs let me cope with my dad when I was younger, and every time i’m miserable, that’s what I think of. I’m trying to quit. I really am.”
“You’re doing a great job, Lilly. I’m always going to be here for you, okay? I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s the most I could possibly give you.”
“You’re my livelihood.”
“and to you, love.”
She spent the next couple of hours laying on my chest, and later when I returned home I threw my tear stained baseball shirt in the hamper, and threw myself onto the bed with a small sigh.

Now, as this was a couple of years ago, my memory of this part is a tad bit hazy. It doesn’t mean it didn’t affect me dearly, or it didn’t shape who I am. It did, significantly. It’s just that some memories, if you don’t hold on to them tight enough, slip into the unknown of the unconsciousness.
What I do know is this: Lilly’s health became much much worse, despite contradicting that fact with every lie she told me. I don’t blame her. She was vulnerable, afraid. She didn’t want me to leave, and would have done every single psychopathic thing to keep me around. Saying that now breaks my heart.
I meant every word that I said, about staying together. I wanted to marry her, I really did. I wanted that yellow house, with it’s post modern kitchen, and I wanted her to be the one who came down stairs with her messy hair, stumbling out of bed. She indeed was my livelihood. Some people you just don’t let go of.

Around this time, David bought Violet a promise ring, and later, used it as their wedding ring. I know it hasn’t been too long since this story even began, but they are happily married and I personally have never seen two people so happy together. It’s one of the reasons I still believe in love, in the fact that two people from the town of Enid, Oklahoma can meet and just know. It makes you wonder what the universe has in store for you.

I remember around this time, David and Violet had their first argument. It was something ridiculously small, in the grand scheme of things, and I think they both knew it. The argument never had a declared winner, but instead it determined all on its own that it wouldn’t get in the way of the two lovebirds. The argument was about Lilly and I.

Violet, sweet and kind she was, had a way of finding out every bloody thing that was going on in Enid, and it’s no surprise to me that she’s now in school, studying to become a reporter. In any case, it took Violet approximately 3 days to find out about Lilly’s drug problem. I don’t know how she found out, I really don’t.

Violet had mentioned to David about Lilly’s drug problem. This was problematic for two reasons. One, I should have been the  one to say something to him, and two, he no longer trusted her in any way, shape, or form.

I remember one day I went to David’s and let myself in, per usual. “Guuueeessss whooo!” I stepped inside, throwing my backpack to the ground in dramatic fashion, anticipating a wrestle. Instead, I saw David in the kitchen, continuing to wash his dishes. “What’s up, dude?”
Without turning around, David said, “What the f***, man?”
“What? What’s the deal?”
“It’s not going to f***ing last.”
“What won’t last?”
“You know damn well what i’m talking about. This isn’t some game. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. There’s going to be so much pain involved, so much unnecessary pain, but you can stop it all right now. If you ended it all right now, the pain would be minute, just a small puddle, and instead you’re choosing a goddamn thunderstorm of misery. It’s been raining in my heart for years, don’t you understand?”
“You don’t get to choose who you love.” I said, my words already under a cloud.
“Don’t I know it.”
I left his house that afternoon with almost a sense of relief. I didn’t quite get his blessing, but I didn’t need it. Regardless, I knew he’d be there for me, even in the most unfortunate circumstances.

Seeing Lilly became nearly a daily occurrence. I don’t exactly know if it’s because I found myself delusionally in love, or if I was scared she wouldn’t be around the next day. In any case, she was getting better, so I thought. It was hard to tell, because she didn’t look different at all. However, her thoughts seemed more mundane, and she drove her car with a little less haste.

It was around this time that I decided to get Lilly a promise ring. There was one jeweler shop in Enid, which had miscellaneous shiny items ordaining the wall, and a mere two cases on the shop floor. on this particular day, the walls shone less than normal, as the skies were filled with clouds, and everyone anticipated a torrential downpour.  I folded my umbrella, and walked towards the main case.
“Good aftanoon young man, how can I help yuh?” said the woman behind the bigger case. She was perhaps wearing more jewelry than what was available to the customer.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for a promise ring.”
“Why, look at you! Who's the lucky broad, darlin’?”
“Her name’s Lilly.” I said, not to eager, as I questioned if this woman was related to her at all.
“I know her, ah used to work at the elementary school, way back when. Glad to see she’s hanging around someone proper.” She said with a hint of doubt, as she sized me up from head to toe.
“Here you go young man, it’s the only promise ring we got, i’m afraid.” she handed me a small golden ring, and it’s brashness reminded me of Lilly, in a strange way. It seemed all too delicate on its own, and the intricate pattern made me question what made it a promise ring, and not just another ring. The woman behind the counter seemed to read my mind.
“See that design in the middle? it’s just a really fancy knot. It’s supposed to symbolize that you are going to eventually tie the knot.”
I stood there for a moment, turning the ring in my hand, feeling it’s ridges and imperfections along my calloused fingers.
“Are you going to buy it, sir?” She said to me, after what seemed like forever.
“Absolutely” I said, pulling out my wallet.

I decided to walk to Lilly’s, instead of drive. I needed time to settle my nerves. I stopped by the local superstore to pick up some flowers, but I only had enough money for a single orange rose. Unfortunately, as I stepped outside, my umbrella refused to open, and I had to make a run for it. Mainstreet wasn’t so bad, as I could hide under the canopies for the most part, but Lilly’s house was several blocks away. After several tries, I forced the umbrella open, though I was soaking wet.
I made it to Lily's house, the bottom of my pants soaked from all of the puddles. She knew i was coming over, so I found it odd when the door was locked. I knocked, and waited for the door to open. I heard a familiar creak of the door, and felt as though the world stood still. Lilly peeped through the small opening, and said “Come in.” In a feeble voice. I stepped inside, and saw that the only item out of place was a tissue box. Lilly didn’t appear to be crying or upset or much of anything really, just tired. I sat down on the couch with her.

“I have something to tell you.” We both blurted out.
“You first, darling.” I insisted.
“No no, please go first. It’ll make mine easier.”
“Okay.”
I took a breath, which felt like I was inhaling a whole forest’s worth of oxygen. I took the ring out of my pocket. “This is a promise ring.” I said, rather sophomoric.
“I meant it when I said forever.”
Lilly opened her mouth as though to say something, but nothing articulate came out. Finally, she said “Oh god. Oh god, oh god oh god! I can’t believe I..” My chest immediately began to feel like an ashtray, each syllable another flick of ash.
“I.. sorry. I think I should just go.” I stammered, getting up from the couch. Lilly grabbed my shirt and pulled me back down.
“No, you don’t understand, I have something to tell you.” I had damn near forgotten, in the moment.
“What is it?” I said, in a rather biting tone. My patience for this news was quite thin.
“I- I’m pregnant.” She said, and my stomach lit another pack.
“Oh.” I said, repeating it to myself. Lilly was pregnant. There was a person growing inside of her.
“Oh!” I repeated, not sure what else to say.
“Yeah.” She said, and we had a moment of silence. I stared intently at the small puddle I had dragged in with me, hitting the couch with a deeper stain with every drop.
“Do you have anything else to say?” She asked, at length.
“Are you.. are you keeping it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh.”
Another moment of silence.
“I want to, though.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The loudest thing in the room was the sound of the neighbors children playing outside.
“Thought of any names?” I asked, returning to my sophomoric state.
“If it’s a girl, Daisy. If it’s a boy, Hawthorne.”
“Those sound lovely, they really do.”
“You think so?”
“Of course.”
We sat in silence for awhile, and I told her I loved her. She did the same.
“You have to quit.” I said, expecting her to know what I meant.
“Quit what?”
“Drugs, Lilly. You can’t do drugs if you’re going to have a baby.”
“I know, I know. I’m not stupid.”
“I know, it just needed to be said.”
“I need a cigarette.”
I poked at her belly and she laughed, though not in the same way she had before. I gave her the flower, and she promptly set it in her room on the window sill.  Thereafter, we talked as if our worlds hadn’t just started spinning in reverse. 17 is an awful young age to put yourself in this sort of predicament, however it helps if you are infatuated with the person you are in the situation with. I had watched all of those tv shows, where the teenage father was out of there the moment he heard the news, and the mother attempted to raise the child with her own mother, who was also uncomfortably young. That thought scared me, if just for a moment. I could handle this. We could handle this. I had thought about my own father, then and there and the way he left. He left when I was little, promising to call as often as he could. 10 years later, my phone still was unaware of what his current number was. It didn’t matter. I had decided, If I were to have a kid someday, I would be the best damn father ever.

School at this time was an absolute blur. Most of my classes dropped a bit, as I found it difficult to concentrate on matching the quotes to people in history class. “Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it.” I *believed* one of the Roosevelts said that, but I had no clue. The quote just struck a chord with me.

Math for me was the worst. I found it increasingly difficult to memorize the pythagorean theorem and the likes. I was more curious to know how much it would cost to raise a child. They ought to teach that, I decided, because more people in this school were going to become pregnant before they had lived a score on this earth, than become mathematicians.

Not telling anyone was the hardest part. The tricky thing was to string on a lie long enough until I could think of another one. “I haven’t been getting much sleep,” I said, which was an acceptable response due to it being so close to finals. “I guess I just ate something bad,” was also an acceptable response, due to the fine cuisine available in Enid. I recall one interaction towards the end of the semester going like this: “Hey Khalil, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing much, just not feelin’ it today.”, and truth be told, I hadn’t felt anything in awhile.

It was around this time that I started getting into the bands that Lilly listened to. Not the loud stuff, that could only be listened to while flying down a dirt road at 80, but the things she put on the radio as we were lounging around. One of the more frequent artists I heard was Elliott Smith, a sad sounding folk singer whose voice sounded as sincere as possible through those tiny speakers. Smith had committed suicide in 2003, after years of struggling with drugs, but his songs hadn’t dated in the slightest. He was still 34, singing “I’m never gonna know you now, / but i’m gonna love you anyhow.” Lilly quoted these lyrics often. “Drink up baby, look at the stars/ i’ll kiss you, between the bars” and though i’m sure Elliott wasn’t thinking of sweet tea when he sang these lyrics in a gentle whisper, i’m sure he would have smiled down at us amongst those stars.

I went to Lily's house after baseball practice Friday, the visits now on a daily basis. It was already dark, the gravel beneath my feet crunching as I walked up to her house. I let myself in this time, as I knew she was expecting me. I saw the light turned on in her room. The flowers were still on the window sill, though considerably more wilted, its golden petals turning a natural brown color, as if returning to sender. The house seemed darker than normal, even with the darkness of the night covering it like a knitted blanket. The door, for a change, did not creak. I noticed her mother's car wasn’t in the drive, and next I noticed Lilly making pancakes, in her pajamas, with her hair up in a bun and completely makeup free. I always liked when she went makeup free, because it always caught her a bit by surprise that I thought she was just as beautiful without all of the glamour caked on to her face. She was, of course. She really was. She didn’t have to look the same all the time to be the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She made an inviting smile, and I stepped into the kitchen and gave her a ‘hello’ kiss. Bon apres-midi. She smiled and flipped a pancake. “Hello darling,” She said, and I had one of my daydreams about her. We were in that medium sized yellow house, and this time she was the one flipping the pancakes, as I came downstairs still in pajamas. Ah. The daydream ended as Lilly fumbled the syrup, catching it before the glass bottle hit the ground, nonetheless spilling a small bit of the substance. That was a part I had left out of my daydream, I had decided, but it would be lovely in any case. I helped her clean up the spill, and moments later we were having these delectable pancakes that Lilly had made, I assumed by a mix. SHe had never been all that great at cooking. I wasn’t either, and we had decided most of our afternoons would be spent eating out. We liked to plan ahead. I had planned on spending the night, and had brought all of my provisions. The bed was just as fluffed as the pancakes, and Lilly and I both entered the sheets, and immediately started to fall into a peaceful sleep. There is nothing more peaceful, than falling asleep next to someone you love, hearing their heartbeat, seemingly only for you. I began to drift into a delightful sleep. I heard Lilly say, “No, I wouldn’t. I could never.”  It woke me up from my rest. “No, stop trying. I couldn’t do that to him!” she said, this time, a bit louder. Concerned, I asked “Honey?”
“Fine, but this is a secret, okay? he can’t find out, he can’t.” I shook her gently, seeing if she would stir. Lilly woke up with a gasp, and a strawberry red face. “What was that about?” I asked. “No- Nothing. Nothing at all, sweetheart.”
“really? It sure sounded like something.”
“It wasn’t, I promise!” she said, with more force in her voice. This had the opposite affect on me as what she would have liked.
“What the hell just happened?” I said, a little louder than she did. She turned away from me, trying to get out of the conversation. I pulled the sheet soff. “Babe.” I said. “What the hell happened?”
“NOTHING!”
“Okay. Cool.” I got up, and started putting on my jeans. What a night.
“What? don’t go darling, please.”
“Why shouldn’t I, if you can't tell me about a stupid bloody dream you had?”
“Because,- Because! you said you’d never leave!” She said, without a hint of melodrama.
“I just don’t want to stay the night here if you won’t even tell me about some dream.”
“It wasn’t just a dream.”
I looked at the clock, which read 3:08 am. People tend to be more honest so late at night.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I haven't told you the full truth.” She said, and paused, seeing if I would connect the dots. In retrospect, I think I was just too stubborn to connect them myself. “Go on,” I had said.
“There’s a chance… There’s a chance the baby isn’t yours.”
My eyes widened, and I took a deep sigh.
“Okay.” I said, and started walking out the door. If only, if only I had just continued walking, perhaps this wouldn’t be a story at all, just a tale that I would tell to my future wife. Instead, I heard Lilly shouting “Wait!” after me, and for reasons that can’t be explained anymore than love, I stopped and turned around.
“Don’t you want to hear what happened?”
“Is there really an excuse?”
“Yes.”
“Fine, what happened.”
“I was on drugs-” I turned away to leave once again, yet Lilly grabbed me by the shoulder.
“I thought I was with you! He looked like you, at least when I was high. The next morning I woke up next to him, and got up and vomited.”
“Okay.”
“Okay? That’s it?”
“What else do you want me to say, Lil? I forgive you for f***ing some other guy, whenever you were on drugs, that you promised you were stopping? Don’t pretend you were taking something soft, there’s no way you’d hallucinate like that. I don’t know much, but I know that.”
“I love you.”
This pissed me off even more, yet caught me off guard.
“I love you, too.”
“I want to marry you.”
I didn’t say anything back.
“Do you have anything to say?”
“yeah. I need a drink.”
I finally broke free of Lilly’s tyrannical grasp, and headed home.

I knew a guy who had been kicked off of the baseball team freshman year, named Alexander. He was a nice guy and all, yet always found his way into trouble, or rather, trouble seemed to find him. I still talked to him often, out friendliness. It’s uncomfortable when you meet people you used to talk to and now don’t have a thing to say to them, so I try to keep such things to a minimum. I texted him, “Hey, can I come over? gotta get away.” He replied “OKay” and I headed over there, rain still pouring. I had forgotten my umbrella at Lilly’s, but it was really the least of my concerns. My main concern was getting alcohol into my system, and making sure I couldn’t remember anything that just happened by tomorrow. (As you are reading this later, you know that my plan clearly failed.)

I knocked on his door and he let me in. Him and one of his friends had a bong out, passing it to one another every  20 seconds or so. I helped myself to the liquor cabinet. I made small talk, just enough to excuse why I was there drinking myself to death. He said some uninteresting things about politics, and asked me how baseball was going. “Good man, never better.” He also asked how Lilly and I were “Oh, that ended ages ago. It’s all good.”

After about an hour of this, I had finished an entire bottle of vodka, nearly like a baby uses a pacifier. I excused myself to leave, ramming my shoulder into the doorway on the way out. I carefully walked down the stairs, but still fell to the ground, my hands not being coordinated enough in the current moment to catch my fall. “Oh, I’m bleeding.” I thought, as I saw the gash that had spread along my cheekbone. I continued to walk, lumbering towards my house. I thought, in my state of mind, that the walk home would take about 10 minutes, as it would if I were sober. This is not the case when you are intoxicated. About 3 steps off of their curb, I decided to tie my shoe, and I believe a car almost hit me as I fell forward, unable to balance on one leg. Perhaps it was just a bicyclist. Everything was hazy, yet I remembered every bloody detail about the fight that had just happened. I remembered more of it, in fact, so much more that I thought I must be making things up. I could have sworn at some point she had told me she didn’t love me. In any case, I kept on walking home, and as 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes went by, I had realized that I was completely lost, and the only thing I knew about my current geographical location was where Lilly’s house was from there. My heart seemed to have a compass to her, keeping me crawling back every bloody time. I missed her already. I also missed my vodka flavored pacifier. Then, I blacked out.

Mornings in Oklahoma consistently leave mildew on the grass, and today not only was there mildew, but a hungover high schooler who desperately hoped the stain on his pants was merely a puddle from last nights rain. I looked up. My house was two houses down. Next, I looked at my watch. 5:48. What a lovely little nap. I snuck in, and changed into my pajamas, and then crashed for what I hoped would be eternity, but instead was until noon. I got up from my bed, wiped the sleep out of my eyes, and looked at myself in the mirror. The gash wasn’t a gash at all, just a tiny dot that could easily pass as a pimple to the unobservant eye. I was sure that now the car that nearly hit me was merely a bicyclist with his rear lights on. I was also sure now, that there would be consequences of my actions, but I didn’t know what. Lilly texted me ‘Good Morning, love.” Every morning, like she always did, rain or shine. The punctuation at the end determined how happy she was to say it. Love is stubborn. I hadn’t responded, not yet. I didn’t actually know if I was ever going to. Last night was a hell of an experience. Yet somehow, I felt nothing. I thought I would feel like I had been crushed by that SEmi that had nearly hit me, whenever I ran to her, as the world started to escape her. KI thought that I would feel like the night her sister died. I didn’t feel like any of that. I just felt an absence of something, an empty feeling. I didn’t particularly feel like going to the baseball field, but I did anyways. I Wanted to clear my head. I walked into the dugout, and looked out at the field. The mildew was still fresh in the outfield grass, the infield had been freshly plowed. The dirt around the shortstop area didn’t bear my cleat marks, just the marks of the rake, appearing as though I, nor anyone, had ever set foot on the field. The only indication was the faded white lines, leading to the foul pole. I layed down on the dugout bench, and pulled my cap over my eyes to protect them from the sun. I took a breath of the fresh, fall air, just cold enough to make you feel alive. Baseball had no timeline. It was the exact same kind of field people played on during the depression, albeit it with minor improvements. The fields had stayed the same. The dirt had been replaced after the dust bowl, but the core of it was still there. At The core of every ballpark was Satchel Paige, ‘Pitchin’ Man,’ who wrote fastball on his cleat so whenever he whipped his left leg high in the air and paused for a moment, batters knew what was coming. Instead of using home plate, to warm up he would stick a piece of gum in his mouth, then use the wrapper to throw over. This was the same field, in essence, that Mickey Mantle had played on, an Oklahoma native himself. No man in his entire family had lived over 40, so he intended to live every day like it was his last. And he did. He was forced into a marriage he didn’t want by his controlling father, and His rookie year, tripped over a water sprinkler, and nonetheless became one of the greatest players of all time, on one leg at that. This was the field that legends had played on, and if you closed your eyes, you could feel it as Wrigley Field, and you could picture the ivy, and the ramps going up to the highest seats. You could smell the hot dogs, and you could feel the excitement in the air as Ernie Banks made a diving play in the outfield. That Was there, and there was here, and at every ballpark in america. I stood up from the dugout bench, and started my walk home.

My bed at home had two wrong sides. It was the last day before we returned to school, and I had the bright idea to go look at the stars that night, to clear my mind. I walked to the park, and the crickets chirped around me. No children were there, just a silhouette of someone on a bench adjacent to me. I figured it was someone waiting for their dealer. There were only two conditions to be in the park as: One, high as a bluebird, the other; being madly in love. Both made the stars look just as beautiful, particularly if one was both. A car drove by, and I saw the silhouette had blonde, straight hair as the light shone on it for a brief second. My heart immediately cried “Lilly!,” but before my mouth could say anything, I heard a familiar, feeble voice say “Hey.” I rose from the bench, seeing none other than the bluebird herself. I another familiar feeling ran into my stomach, watering the flowers. ‘Hey.’ I said back, knowing it was her all along. She sat down on the bench next to me.
“Have you been waiting here for me?” I asked.
“Every night.”
We sat in silence for a moment, taking in the chill of the air.
“I’m keeping it.” She said, at length.
“Oh.”
“Don’t you want to know why?” I responded that I did.
“There’s a chance that it’s yours.”
“How good of a chance do you think, Lil?”
“50/50, I suppose.”
“Huh.”
“I’m going to quit drugs for good. I mean it this time, I really do.”
“I’m sure.”
“I mean it. For our baby.”
I glanced over at her. “Ours?”
“Well, I-”
“No, don’t finish that thought. You don’t know if it’s ours. You don’t know whether or not you’re carrying the baby of some random person that you f***ed, and you want me to be there for you when it all comes crashing down that it’s not your bloody child, don’t you? What am I supposed to say, that it broke my entire heart, and you appear okay? Why would I be there for you? You would never be there for me.” This last sentence had a sharp, biting pronunciation on the never. She fixed her stare on me, and said,
“This is bigger than us, Khalil. This is a child. This might be your child. I won’t put that burden on you if you don’t want it, but what if, Khalil? What if it is your child? I won’t make you pay child support, or even be part of it’s life if you don’t want it to be, but regardless of how i’ve treated you, are you going to let your child grow up fatherless?” She put the same emphasis on ‘father’ as I did ‘never’.
I had, quite frankly, heard enough. I slid off of the bench, and said, “Goodbye, Lilly.” as I was walking away, she asked “You’ll text me, right?” and this time, for once, I walked away without turning around.
I imagine after I was gone, Lilly looked back up at the stars. She imagined, in one of the alternate universes, and wondered what was happening in those alternate universes. Perhaps, in one of those alternate universes, I stepped in dog s*** while walking away. Or perhaps, I had stayed and talked to her about the situation, like a mature adult. Perhaps we would have come to some reasoning, and perhaps, I would help her raise the child. Our child, Hawthorne/Daisy. For the first time in her life, it took her two attempts to get off of the park bench. It wouldn’t be the last.

I woke up for school at 6:00 am, and grudged out of my room and into the kitchen, where my dad had made pancakes, topped with I-can-most-certainly-believe-it’s-not-butter, and maple syrup. “Morning, Champ.” He said that morning, like every morning. He would drive me to school, and I spent most of the day daydreaming, mostly about baseball, and waiting to play video games when I got home. My dad would pick me up, and we’d head to the park for awhile, just throwing the ball around. He’d ask me about school, about girls, and tell me how the Cubs did, whenever they had a game while I was at school. We headed back to the red pickup truck, which would be mine in a year, provided I excelled in my driving class. As we were driving away, My dad said, “Listen, son. I know about you and that girl.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, of course. Cmon, i’m your dad. Of course I would find out.”
“What do you think, dad?”
“I think you oughtta raise that child, if it’s your own kin, son. A man who won’t raise his own kid ain’t no man at all, understand? What did I teach you after all these years? Wouldn’t it hurt you if you didn’t have old pop’s around?” And with that, he opened the drivers side door, and rolled out. I looked back, and there was nothing down the road for miles, and nothing in the grass along the side of the rode. I then turned back around, and saw a semi-truck headed barreling towards me, drifting out of it’s lane. The driver appeared to be pulling a syringe out of his arm, and I braced myself for impact. There was a popping noise, like someone had simply pricked my brain with a needle, deflating it. there was no movement, No sound.

My lungs gasped back into consciousness, grabbing tightly to whatever air it could breathe. I was in my bed. My pillow was covered in sweat, and the rest of me shook in uncontrollable hysteria.
I hadn’t cried since the last time I saw my dad, around 3 years ago. The last time I saw him, was after another fight with my mother, over the number of days I spent with him every week. Being a child of divorce is not easy. When he left, he simply said, “I’ll see you next week, pal.” I never saw him again.
Somewhere inside, like every other child with an absent parent, I knew that he wouldn’t be around my whole life. I knew this, because when I would get upset over things, he wouldn’t try to comfort me, or anything like that. He didn't even give me tough love, or anything that his dad probably would have done for him. He floated through life, not really caring one way or the other. Maybe if he had a reality check at whatever point in time, he may have woken from his terrible way of living, and cared about something for once in his life. Instead, he bought me things, things that I didn’t need, or necessarily even want. He was always aloof, never wanting to stay in one home for long. And one day, he was gone. I turned to my phone, and texted Lilly. ‘I’ll be there for you.’ I said.

Seeing Lily on a regular basis again felt strange. It didn’t feel weird in the same way it feels weird talking to a stranger, but rather in the way that I was reliving a dream, that didn't hold any real life context. Generally, this is not ideal for raising a baby. She was still Lilly, in every sense of the term. Her blonde hair still reflected light in the same way, her smile was the same as when I told her that it could have stopped wars. Her eyes weren't aesthetically different, yet, I didn’t see the burning passion in them I once saw. They nearly looked dead. They simply walked through the motions, glazing over everything captured in their stare. She was the same person who had given me a note 6 months ago that said “Time slows near a black hole.” Yet, she didn’t look like she understood poetry quite the same. She didn’t like Koyczan's words as much, and had stopped carrying around her book of poetry. Perhaps it was because life was moving too fast for her, but I say, if your life is too busy for any form of poetry, what kind of life are you living?

We knew we couldn't keep news of Lily's pregnancy under wraps for long. Lilly, while wide at the hips, had a slender torso that would show the effects rather quickly. We still had 3 months to prepare. EVeryone in Enid loved to gossip just about as much as they loved to eat Fried pies, so we decided to wait until we no longer could to enroll in classes and the likes. In the meantime, I head down to the library, and picked up as many books on pregnancy as I could, and one on baseball, just for me. It was a book about the 1961 slugging duo of the Yankees, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, whom both were on track to beat Babe Ruth’s homerun record, until Mantle was out for the season because of injury. Maris did eventually beat it. His own record was broken in 2001, by Barry Bonds, who was juicing. How much of the blame goes to Bonds, and how much to the owners, is up for interpretation. Owners in the 80’s knew their players were juicing, yet they turned a blind eye, because it made them millions of dollars. Players are just players, and sometimes heros.

“They’re for my cousin, she’s visiting from Kansas,” I’d say, when the librarian would give me strange looks as I set the books on the counter. The Library always had a constant rotation of ladies who would work at the front desk every year, and this year the lady’s bags under her eyes and her aloof demeanor suggested that she seemed to have seen far too many books taken and never returned. Nonetheless, I checked out the books, and went to Lily's. It was strange, being forced to bond, as in usual circumstances the child would have been enough. The books were filled with grotesque images, that described how to change a diaper.The image featured a child urinating all over his mother, with a giddy expression on the child's face. Lilly snorted, and I started chuckling, the first time we had laughed together since I had poked her belly, which seemed like ages ago.  There was also an image of a c section, which was not as hilarious. There was a book specifically on teenage pregnancy. 80 percent of teenagers who become pregnant are unmarried. 80 percent of teen pregnancies are also unintentional. Only one third of every teenage mother graduate high school. 25 percent of all teenage moms have a second child within 2 years of their first child.

“That’s not going to be us, right?”
No, I replied, that wouldn’t be us. We made mistakes, both of us, but we were both responsible, for the most part. I still loved her, of course. I didn’t know if we would stay together anymore, but part of me wanted to. I still wanted to have a yellow house. I just never pictured it being this way. Perhaps, such images could never be restored by the same person who shattered them.

We were going through with it.  We didn’t know who the father was, But I knew if I was indeed the father, I would stay around as best I could. There was a book in the library, “Poems That Make Grown Men Cry,” in which held this poem:

The Mother

Gwendolyn Brooks

They will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,  
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,  
The singers and workers that never handled the air.  
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,  
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.  
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?—
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?  
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.

I don’t know if Lilly had read it, but I felt that she had. For a while, she read poetry at nearly every opportunity she had. It makes the drugs seem less lonely, she said.
I started going to Lily's house after baseball practice. Lilly had regained the color in her skin. Her eyes seemed filled with promise, instead of sorrow. The mark in the crease of her elbow had faded from it’s former violet glory. She said she was off drugs for good this time, and I knew she meant it, too. She was more down to earth, no longer the angelic figure that stood in the doorway that fateful day. Gradually, she was looking more like a mother. It had been 11 weeks, and the morning sickness had kicked in a while ago. The weird cravings had begun as well. Several times, I had gone home first to bring her Macaroni and Cheese, and Twizzlers, only for most of it to end up not going down. I helped her with school homework, which gave me the only chance to get mine done, as well. My A in history and English had both dropped to C-’s. Lilly’s, stayed the same, although she started to fail most of her tests. Her mother no longer said hello to me whenever I arrived, and I wasn’t surprised. It’s never your kids fault, never. By the second time this had happened, I found myself texting Lilly in the morning, asking her if she needed anything. We were clicking once again, bringing back a fiery memory. The image of us 6 months ago, holding hands, not wanting to let go until the last possible moment, made me almost have morning sickness. Then Lilly asked for Sour Cream Lays on her caramel ice cream, and the image went away. It had nearly never happened, yet, I found myself still madly in love.The trust was gone, but there was still a spark, like our hands had never un-twined to begin with. It hurt, and made me sick to my stomach, and I didn’t care. I was just so glad I had met her.

The 7th month of pregnancy is terrible for both parties. The mother, the obvious reasons. The father, anxiety. Lily had taken to her new frame quite well, and pregnancy had taken to her frame as fitting as a well made baseball glove. Though her feet were too swollen for her Nike’s, and maternity clothes have never once been stylish for the non wealthy, her fair hair and her tidal wave eyes were nonetheless as enticing as the day she had bitten her lip and put her head down as she passed me in the halls.

It was out to the world, of course, that Lily was pregnant. People had started to take notice at around 3 months. Although I had told my mother, it didn’t quite hit her until she saw Lily, 3 months in. She reacted about the same as Lil’s mother did. You’re on your own, kid.

She had gone to my baseball games occasionally, telling me it was “So the baby knew what his Dad loved most.” She said it with such sincerity, you almost forgot about the entire situation. Almost.

The rumours around school were the worst. You’d think, after someone is 3 months pregnant, the rumours would die down, but they didn’t in the slightest. There were rumours that she had gotten ‘knocked up’ after doing a dealer a ‘favour’ for his latest delivery. There were rumours that I was cheating on her, and doing copious amounts of drugs, too. My coach called me into his classroom one day, asking if any of the rumours were true. “No, sir” I said. “I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize my baseball career in that manner.”
“That’s debatable,” He said, dismissing me with a swift hand motion.

Every day, it seemed more and more that it was Lilly and I versus the whole world. Teachers didn’t treat me the same, even though I had kept my grades up as best I could, and so had Lilly. 75% of teenage mothers don’t graduate high school, and we did not intend for her to be one of them. Friends, if you want to be so liberal as to call them that, seemingly disappeared. As soon as word got out about Lily, most of them had scattered like roaches after you turn the lights on. David stuck around. He always did. He had committed to a school in California, near the bay area,  and He and Violet were going to attend classes together. The future had nothing prepared for him but greatness. By the time Lilly was 9 months, we had said our goodbyes.

I still had the ring. I twirled it in my pocket, and felt the cold metal against my calloused hands. I had nearly thought about throwing it into the lake one day, but had decided against it. I could always sell it, I told myself. Like when I said “I love you” for the first time, I was just waiting for the correct moment. I set out for my walk to Lily’s, like I had nearly 9 months ago. It was raining once again, the raindrops quickly fading into my coat. I was going to be an absolute mess once again, and I didn’t care. There is no time like the present. Do not delay, because you never know what may happen.

I let myself in with the key Lily had given me some time ago. Her mother wasn’t home. “Hello, love” I said, scanning the room for her. She yelled a smothered yell, and I went to her bedroom to find her under the blankets. I helped her sit up in bed, and gave her a kiss on the cheek.
“How are you?” I asked, taking off my coat and setting it aside on the chair. My umbrella from months ago still stood by it.
“I’ve had better days.” She says. “How was baseball?” It was the first game she had missed the whole season.
“It was great as always. We had our asses handed to us, during the game and afterwards during the coach’s speech, but you know me. It’s the love of my life.” I had the feeling the coach had gained respect for me, being able to balance all of these responsibilities at once.
“I know sweetie, I know.” She gave me a great big smile, then suddenly let out an audible gasp. Water was quickly fading into her sheets. “My water broke.” she said, matter-of-factly.
“Oh. Oh, s***! Babe, my water broke!”
I quickly helped her to her feet, as she leaned on me for support. We made it outside, although she nearly slipped on the slippery steps. I helped her into the car and leapt to the other side. It had been about, oh, 3 months since I had driven a car, and this was a manual shift, but no matter. Time was of the essence.

By the time we arrived to the hospital, Lily had started panting. “Deep, calm breaths” I, the hypocrite, told her. I grabbed one of the wheelchairs at the entrance, and wheeled her to the front desk as we checked in. The nurse gave us a dirty look. Nothing we weren’t used to, at this point. There was a kid playing his Nintendo, with his left arm bandaged heavily, and an older lady, who was too invested in her magazine to notice us, in the waiting room. We were sent back immediately, much to the despise of the others waiting. We were put in a room with another couple, a couple in their 40’s who give us another dirty look, and go back to conversing, this time a bit more quietly and with the occasional glare.
“We’re in high school. We know when someone is talking about us.” Lily says, and I stare at the man, who squints his eyes and turns back to his wife, because having a child at 40 is much, much more okay than having a kid as a teen. Lilly yelled in pain, and squeezed my hand with such force I felt as though my was putty. Just then, a nurse walked in.
“Sir,” She said, and it took me a moment to realize she was addressing me and not the other parent. “You can’t be in here?”
“What? Why not?”
“It’s against the law, sir.”
“No it isn’t, i’m the father for christ’s sake!”
“You’re not her husband and you’re not 18. You can’t be in here.”
I looked to the couple adjacent to us for support. Their expressions were softer, and showed a little guilt. The nurse took me out to the waiting room.

The boy with the bandages eventually went back, as did the old lady who gave us a dirty look. It’s strange, because there’s skeletons in everyone’s closet once their old, yet people still pretend that theirs are somehow not as bad as yours. Perhaps that’s just my situation. Perhaps they never had someone to help them carry the baggage. Those two went and then left, and other people took their places like clockwork. Whenever i’m bored, I tend to imagine the lives of people I see. Perhaps the lady who walked in with the leg in a cast was a marathon runner. She might be married, to someone who lost their leg in a war. Maybe she was all business, a corporate woman working her way to the top, and had only broken her leg because her husband had encouraged her to start training for a marathon, one of her life ambitions. Maybe she broke her leg finishing the marathon, and her husband had to help her finish, the two good legs between them finishing the race. I looked at my phone. 1:32 a.m. She probably didn’t run a marathon. It was certain that I tend to see people as what they might be, instead of what they really are. I read damn near every magazine in the building, memorizing every line. It was now 4:42. The 4 stale coffees I had made at the cafeteria were doing little to keep me awake.

Not 5 minutes later, I woke up with a jolt to someone tapping on my shoulder.
“Sir?” a nurse asked. There was no one in the room any more, the clockwork now still.
“Sir, I have bad news.”
I sat up in my chair.
“Your baby is fine, perfectly healthy, and nothing abnormal that we can tell you.”
The bad news?
“The mother died during the birth. Complications from the medication. Her body just couldn’t handle the drugs.”
The bottom of my stomach felt like an ashtray, which only reminded me of her lips that tasted like ash nearly a year ago. Her body couldn’t handle the drugs. No, it couldn’t. It never could. Lilly had been off of them for so goddamn long, not even having cough syrup, it’s no wonder her system couldn’t handle it. A person walked through the door.
“There was nothing we could do.”
No, there wasn’t, none of us could, except perhaps her sister.
“We want you to come see the baby, sir.”
I walked with her to the ward, unsure of what was controlling my legs. Trading one life for another didn’t seem fair. I tripped a couple of times. There were 6 glass cradles, all of which seemed prepackaged with a child and 2 blankets. I saw a child with blonde hair and ocean blue eyes. Daisy. The nurse picked her up and carried her to me, gently placing her in my arms. The one window in the hospital, as far as I could tell, managed to let through the gleam of the sunrise shine onto the back of her golden hair.
I understood, now. I had been searching to plant the wrong gardens. I had tried to plant the ivy at Wrigley, and had tried to plant a garden of Lily’s but neither had survived the winter. I left the hospital, ready to grow a garden of daisies.