The Framing

The Saturday

November 21st 2015 8:58am
I sat in the cafeteria of the school where I was supposed to meet Jeremy at 9 and tutor/mentor him until 10. I had a feeling he would be late, or just not show up at all. But to my shock, he arrived as soon as the clock struck nine. I was really happy this day was going off on a good note.

"Hello I'm Allison, you can call me Ally." I reached my hand out for him to shake it. He just looked at me weird and sat down, thanks for leaving me hanging. "Did you bring anything for us to get started on today?"

I saw that he had two notebooks, one said "Science" and the other had nothing on the cover besides a bunch of vulgar drawings and music lyrics. "Here." His deep, husky voice said and handed me his science notebook. I opened it up and it was full of little doodles and half written sentences with almost no grammar. "What did you want to work on?" I asked.

"Well I don't want to work on any of this, but if we have to start somewhere I guess we can start here." He opened up to a page and showed me that he didn't get it. It was a diagram of a cell and none of the parts were labeled, he also wasn't a very good drawer.

"Ok so this big thing right here is the nucleus, it's basically the brain of the cell. And these little things over her are called ribosomes, they make protein. And this is the mitochondria, the mitochondria is the-"

"Power house of the cell, yes that I know." I laughed, that surprised me because I thought he was going to be thicker than a brick. Maybe he just doesn't apply himself.

"Yes exactly, way to go!" I said. Maybe sounding a little too much like I was his mom and he was 3 and learning the alphabet. Or how to count to 10.

"I'm not an idiot you know. I'm a lot smarter than people think, and I do more than just write on the bathroom stalls and spray paint those pictures on the abandoned lake house."

"Oh my god, you're the one that paints those? As much as I hate vandalism, those are pretty good." I said eyeballing his notebook with all the crude drawings on the cover. He caught me and handed it over. "You can read it if you want to, it's a bunch of songs I have written."

I opened it up to a random page with the big quotes "Dad I miss you" and a bunch of random drawings all around the page, all better than the diagrams I found in his science book. I quickly turned the page as he wasn't looking and saw a bunch of words to a song he wrote, I moved my eyes across the page and read how well of a writer he was.

"No room for weakness, I'll be gone forever.

Dear mother, as this noose is placed around my neck.
I'm reflecting on these past few years I spent trying to forget.
I'm regretting all this time spent half the world away.
What will the children sing, what will the children sing,
When I'm dead and buried?
Dead and buried."

So maybe he wasn't such a bad person after all. Maybe he was just misunderstood, and that's when I felt it. The lust that Jules always felt for him, and always denied. I went through a lot of other pages that said things like "Dad come back home" and "Mom I have been doing just fine without you" I wanted to know him. I wanted to know his story.

Before I knew it, the hour was up. "Well I guess I'll go home then." He said blandly and got up out of his seat, "Do you want a ride home?"

I knew my parents weren't taking me home, I literally had to walk to school today. And if being with him in a car for the next ten minutes meant not having to walk again, then I was happy to say yes.

"Cool, my friend is just around the corner in the van." He said. I kind of got freaked out that I had to drive in a pedophile van all the way home, but again it was well worth it.

"There he is." He said and pointed to a gray van parked outside of school property. I didn't notice the driver as someone who went to the school. I hopped in the back and was introduced to an older man with tattoos up and down his body.

"Tom this is Ally, Ally this is Tom." I said hello, he slammed the door on his finger and screamed a bunch of profanity. "God fucking shit, damnit that hurt like a bitch." He yelled all the bad words louder than the others. My small vocabulary self almost squeaked at all the words I had just heard, but I didn't want to make a bad impression.

With the loud screaming music blaring through the car making my ears bleed, it was hard for me to hear anything. Yet I still managed to ask Jeremy a question without Tom hearing me. "Who is he and why do you know him?"

"He went to school a while back and got expelled, he's my neighbor so I have known him my whole life."

Well getting expelled is surely not a plan in my life. I always did my best to not judge people, but if you throw your life away, you have it coming. "Where do you live?" He asked, that's when I became aware I was about to tell two sociopaths where I live, great. "Right here." I said pointing to my house that he drove past. Great driving skills.

"Whoops sorry about that." He said turning around at the end of the road and going back to where I live, where I was left off. I was starting to doubt that this was better than walking home.

I opened the gate to my house, walked up the sidewalk to my door and opened it. It was still early in the morning and a Saturday, so that meant my parents were working and I had the house alone cause Logan was somewhere. I didn't care, it wasn't here.

I went into my parents room and found my phone in the drawer on a nightstand. Great hiding spot dad.

I turned it on and received all the notifications I had missed within the past week. This was the first time since Monday I was using it, so there were a lot. I opened the iMessage app so I could talk to Jules. "Hey." I said and hit send.

"Omg! Did you get your phone back?"

"No, no one is home so I just took it out from my dads nightstand."

"Oh, well how did the 'tutoring' go?"

"It went well I guess, a lot better than I expected it to at first. His friend even gave me a ride home which will never happen again."

"Well I hope it's all over soon, I hate seeing this happen to you."

Yeah I hated it happening to me too.