All the Other Days. Jack Hartley

to my left, I see a girl. I only get to see her face for a couple of seconds as she walks past. Her long brown wavy hair is trailing behind her as the wind pushes on her face, her olive skin glistening as the sun shines on her. The light makes the makeup sparkle on her cheeks, and she is beautiful. I look back at her walking away down the beach, then I have to turn and face the other way before my Mom catches me staring. I feel my heart beating heavily, like my body needs extra blood pumped through me to take me out of this trance. Who is she, I wonder, because I live in a small town so most people my age go to my school. I can’t shake the image of her out of my head. Over and over, I see her face as we walk back to the car.

      As soon as we get home, I sprint upstairs to my room. I need to draw her face before she slips from my mind. I sit at my desk drawing frantically, trying to get all the details out onto paper, shutting my eyes, reliving those two seconds over and over until I manage to form the outline of her face. In the picture, she’s looking away with her hair trailing behind and I draw her soft lips smiling. As I draw the hands, I imagine what hers would feel like in the spaces between my fingers. How perfectly they would lock into the gaps. I imagine we’re in the photo from Birdsong and I’m kissing her, my body flying away into the sky, like two forces combining together. I know how creepy this all sounds. After all, I only saw her for all of two seconds and I don’t even know who she is. But my brain doesn’t work like most people’s. Well, at least, I think this isn’t how most people’s work. I obsess over moments. Moments are big for me. Why my brain chooses to remember certain ones and ignore others, I’m not sure. This moment must be significant for it to stick so deeply into the corners of my mind. I finish drawing and place this picture on the happy side of my room. Lying on my bed looking at the drawing, I can hear the waves crashing, and I’m so focused on that memory that I no longer feel my body. It’s like I’m floating in the water there with her. Peace is something that I don’t often feel, but in this moment in time, my mind is able to run away from here and sit still for a while.

      Judd

      Day 6299

      When it isn’t quiet enough at home, I grab my skateboard and go to the park to think. I ride down the sidewalk like I’m Jay Adams, ones of the original Z-boys in California in the 70s. Carving up and down the sidewalk with the wind blowing on my face, I feel alive. The faster I go, the bigger the thrill I feel. The street that leads to the park runs down a slight hill, and this is where it gets fast. Only looking ahead, I forget to look at the concrete below me and my wheels hit a stone. Off I fly from my board and hit the road hard and my knee grazes on the old concrete road and rips my jeans.

      ‘Argh fuck!’ I scream in pain.

      My knee stings as it bleeds and the skin peels off onto the cotton on my jeans. I walk the rest of the way to the park trying to shake the pain away. My favourite spot to go to in this town is the park not too far away from my house. There’s a seat underneath a big old oak tree on the corner that looks out over the field and the playground. This is where I go to think when my head isn’t clear.

      My school counsellor thinks I’ve got existential depression, a type of depression that develops when we struggle to find the meaning in life. I guess it’s probably right. I don’t understand the world, or why we do any of the things we do, why we hurt people, why we let people hurt us or why there’s this constant pain pressing inside my head. No one has these answers and it’s hard sometimes to try make sense of it all. I feel so insignificant that I sometimes wonder, if I were to die, how much would the world really change? It’s times like today when I just want to slip away from existence and disappear into another world.

      In the park, children with their fathers are kicking around soccer balls, and I get jealous of how their dads spend time with them, talking to them, playing with them. My father used to do this with me when I was little, but after Mom’s miscarriage when I was seven, he changed. He used to smile a lot and always make everyone laugh. These were the days I remember being happy with my family. After that, he started drinking more and fights happened a lot more often. He’d spend more time at work and less with us. He started to forget about us, and looking back at it now, I suppose that’s when his depression started. I didn’t really understand what depression was then, because I was too young. I just thought he was being mean. But as I started to realise the issues I had when I was older, I sort of put two and two together. It’s crazy how much it changes people, like they become a completely new person. That’s the Dad I try to remember, and I hope that’s the man Mom thinks of when she goes through the sad days.

      I look across to the other side of the park and only see Arthur so I skate over there,

      ‘Hey man. How are ya?’ I ask.

      ‘Hey Judd. Not the best. Mom just said they’ve got to put Scruffy down.’

      ‘Oh shit. I’m so sorry to hear that.’

      ‘It’s alright. He’s over fifteen years old now. He’s had a good dash.’ Arthur forces a smile out behind his teary eyes.

      He’s had that dog for as long as I’ve known him, and it makes me sad too because Scruffy is the closest I’ve been to having a pet ’cause of Dad’s allergies. When we were younger, we’d take him everywhere we went, and as we got older, Art figured out that girls liked dogs so he’d take him wherever he thought girls might be. We don’t talk much while we skate the ramps, and I don’t know what to say to cheer him up because I know how upset he is. After a while, Arthur pipes up and tells me about this cheerleader he slept with. I always feel a little uncomfortable when he talks about the girls he gets with, mainly because I haven’t had sex yet, so I feel a little silly trying to add anything to the conversation. I stay with him for a while, and eventually he loses the sad look on his face and then I head off home for dinner. I think about Scruffy on the way home and it makes me sadder than I was when I left to go to the park earlier.

      I walk through the front door into the dining room and sit down to watch the six o’clock news. Mom yells out from the kitchen through the breakfast bar, ‘How was your day, sweetie?’

      ‘It was good, same old. How was yours?’

      ‘It was okay. They’ve let off another two ladies at work though.’

      I walk over to her and hug her ’cause I know she’s worried about her job. It seems like every day they’re having to cut costs and get rid of workers. She’s already stressed enough as it is with everything going on between her and Dad, so I hate her having to worry about even more things. I go and set the table as we wait for Dad to come home, and then he walks through the door in his dirty work gear.

      ‘How’s my wife?’ he asks.

      I don’t see her smile like this often; he hardly ever asks how she is. The timing couldn’t be any more perfect though because even though he’s a dick, it just takes one nice thing from him for Mom to forget weeks and weeks of him treating her like shit.

      ‘She’s good, cooking your favourite. How was your day, darling?’

      ‘It was good. Got some new work coming up. The boss just signed a big contract with a new company that is setting up at the docks, so we’ve got a lot of work for the next eighteen months lined up.’

      I’m glad he’s happier today, but I know this won’t last long and soon he’ll snap out of this niceness and it’ll be the usual come home and escape into his own world sitting on the sofa. But for Mom’s sake, I’m glad she’ll be happier today than she was yesterday.

      I go to bed early tonight, drained from a heavy day of thinking. Some days I just lose my energy when I’m feeling depressed, and it’s like my thoughts push down from my brain onto my eyelids and shut them. I get out a Coldplay album and change to track four, Sparks, and put my headphones on as I sink back into my bed. I start to think of the girl at the beach as my eyes become heavier and force me to sleep. I dream of her walking down the beach and looking at me smiling. The wind blows on her face again making her hair trail behind her like a model in a music video. In my dream, she notices me and we lock eyes. This moment plays on loop in my head and I don’t want the dream to stop. I hear the waves crashing and see her run away from me into the water in a long white dress.