Keep it a Secret (Frerard)

Chapter 1- The Artist

Mondays were everybody's least favorite day. Going back to work, or school, or wherever after a delightful weekend constantly proved to be a difficult adjustment for the people of my New Jersey town. The dull, gray, sky seemed to always threaten rain, and it did rain, almost always, but the sky seemed to get just a little darker on Mondays, doing no more than adding to the dull mood of the infamous day. It rained so frequently, I often forgot how the sky looked without thick, dark clouds looming dangerously overhead. The unpleasant weather symbolized the end of the weekend and the continuance of our usual, bland lives. The people in my town didn't exactly have the greatest weekends, but the weekends allowed them to just barely break through the surface, and take a quick breath of air before sinking back down to the bottom of the depths of their pitiful lives. 

Every neighborhood in my town was littered with ex-cons, so removing the picture of children playing outside in the sunshine and replacing it with the image of kids rotting away inside their sweet, safe homes, left the streets nearly empty. People only left their houses when they had to, except for the stragglers of course; I was one of those stragglers. Most people would have been rushing off to work or leaving for school right about now, but not me. I was not going to school today. I occasionally spent my Monday mornings walking along the drab sidewalks around my crumbling town even though I was still a junior in high school. Paint peeled from decaying walls that barely managing to stay upright. Everything was a smoky gray color. The town was fading away, and I knew I sure as hell wasn't going to fade away with it.  

I didn't usually have a specific destination in mind when I walked. I just kept walking with my battered sneakers smacking the hard cement. My destination was wherever the sidewalk would take me. I wasn't appreciating the weather-beaten buildings that were on the verge of collapse by any means. The flimsy material of my sneakers barely clung to my feet after years of use, but I didn't care. Walking would help me clear my mind. There were always plenty of things on my mind; I over thought everything. I couldn't just let things go; I was always analyzing just about everything, running words through my mind on loop, trying to depict deeper meanings. But yes, I was initially skipping school. I never got caught. Everyone had their own problems and paid little to no attention to the 17 year old boy walking around a ruined town. 

I wasn't invisible. Occasionally as I would pass by a small, family owned business, and the worker on the inside of the dull lit store would watch me carefully through the shaded glass windows, anticipating the troublesome-looking teenage boy to venture inside. I wasn't exactly a troublemaker, but from a first glance, people sure knew how to make quick assumptions in this town. I didn't blame them; our town attracted criminals of all sorts.  

Any stranger was a threat here. Being paranoid 24/7 was not the kind of thing I was into, so I chose to not give a fuck and hope for the best. Most chose to stay inside their safe little homes with their doors locked and windows shut tight. But even then they weren't safe. Crime could always find you wherever you hid, especially where you least expected it to. Sitting at home on my couch with my eyes and ears glued to the television watching the news was not how I wanted to spend the rest of my life for sure. I didn't know much about what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew I would take risks.  

I barely had any clue of who I was or what I wanted to do with my life. I could only describe myself with my ideological thoughts and nothing more. I didn't do much; I wasn't much. Other kids had their hobbies and sports that created who they were, but I lacked those things. I was just there. 

As I continued to walk, the temperature of the mid-January air dropped suddenly, and I found myself shivering slightly in my baggy sweatshirt. I could feel my ears throbbing as the sharp, icy wind tried to knock me off my feet, and my nose began to drip as the cold began to seep into my bones. I decided jogging would be the best way to get my body temperature up during the circumstances, so I quickened my pace. The steady beat of my numb feet slapping the sidewalk allowed me to zone out of the frozen world. I knew I would have to stop eventually and turn around soon, but for the time being I was pretty happy even though I was freezing my ass off.