The Cassidy Boys

Chapter Twenty-One: All I Wanted Was a Juice Box

Chapter Twenty-One: All I Wanted Was a Juice box

     Avoidance.

     Now that's a word I've been puzzled with lately because that's what my life has come to. A state of complete and utter avoidance.

     Even if you break this word apart, it still means the same thing. You avoid something or someone by dancing around your problems, and for most people that perfectly sums it up. Just like the dictionary definition, avoidance is only the noun to the verb avoid.

     But people aren't dictionaries. We aren't machines that come with instruction manuals that map out how our life's going to go, and explain a step by step analysis of our personalities. If anything, we are thesauruses.

     We take a word, we have a characteristic, and we make it our own. We create and do things that other people never thought possible. We break out of the labels people place on us like the way ecstatic is somehow derived from being happy. Or the way depressed is derived from being sad, and indignant is derived from being mad.

     There's always more to us then what's on the surface, and that's why avoidance doesn't only mean you're avoiding something.

     It means you're uncertain.

     It means that somehow there's a break in our pattern, an obstacle in our path, a catalyst to our story that we just can't seem to wrap our minds around.

     We as humans have genetically developed into a species that craves instant gratification. We want to know when, where, what, and how things are going to happen. We crave answers, are only satisfied when we receive them, and then ask for more.

     But when we're unsure, when there is no instruction manual, and we don't know the answer, we take a step back. We automatically draw ourselves away from the situation—all but run away, in hopes to find some clarity. Hoping that the distance will give us the space we need to see the situation from all sides, but to our dismay the fog only thickens with the distance.

     Before I even stepped through my front door the other day I declared myself retired. I was finally going to turn in my pager, take off the mask, and leave the detective work for where it belongs—on television.

     Then a few days later I got a text.

     Hey

     I stared at the greeting until my screen went black, and I was forced to click on my home screen again. Despite my hopes, though, the message wasn't just a figment of my imagination. It remained there. Only this time, the time was sitting beside it promptly staring back at me, and antagonizing my conscience.

     Then I did exactly what I said I wouldn't do.

     I stood up, deserting my phone, the message, and all the homework that needed to be done, and dashed up to my room. I rummaged through my nightstand before finally pulling out a plain white envelope. I stared down at it noting the way the white made my usually pale skin look somewhat tan, and how the navy-blue nail polish that coated my thumbnails was chipped. The envelope remained clutched between my fingertips as I went to perch on the side of my bed, but I found myself quickly jumping back up again.

     I paced the length of my bed, once, twice, before yanking the cluster of papers out of the open end of the envelope, and tossing the now empty white paper in the air. I unfolded the first paper, the most worn paper, and my eyes scanned over the familiar writing before I tossed it on the bed in front of me. I did the same with the next paper, and the next until my bed was coated with lined rectangles.