Hayden

Hayden caught my eye for a few reasons.
mainly, he was something new and I have a rabid and unsatisfiable curiosity.
but I've also always had a thing for musicians.

Now with the lights dimmed and everyone singing along with his strumming.
it's my turn to watch him.
and I do, unabashed.
everyone else is praising and swaying back and fourth. while I stick out like a sore thumb at the back watching a boy.
The difference I suppose, is they have god (and friends) (and developed social skills).
and I have myself and a strange fixation with boys who know songs no one else in this small town knows.

I know myself, so I know that there is no danger in dwelling on him for a minute.
so just this once I let myself indulge.

Jesus Christ that's a pretty face, the kind you'd kind on someone that could save.
I have to draw him.


But I try not to think about people that way.

If I'm being honest, I am not a good musician, this is because I suffer from sort bursts of will power and determination, that usually only last long enough to learn one new song.
But Hayden is a normal person, and a good musician.

Though apparently not today.
because his audience is doing most of the work.
He's playing solo for some reason today and he sounds like a folk singer.

I briefly wonder why the rest of the church band isn't here but that trail of thought is run a wry by the feeble and awkward clapping as the last song ends.
I don't clap, and I don't go get food with everyone else.
I go wait by the door, as perusal.

last summer, as part of my sister's loving but misguided and frankly sad attempt to save my mortal soul from the boiling soup bowl of hell.
I was dragged to my first sunday morning in the heart of jesus (that is a book reference, try to keep up)
coincidentally that also happened to be Hayden's first service.

I was at my usual station in the back, silently steaming, and thinking about all the ways I would kill Mia, while shaking   all at the same time.
I couldn't remember the last time I'd been in a room so full of people.
I was biting my nails when someone moved into the pew with me.
I readied my dagger eyes.
  I stole a glance, he was so plainly out of place it was laughable, and I felt my venomous attitude soften toward this lost boy.
For a moment I was struck with one of those out bursts of bravery that are almost always bursts of idiocy.
without looking up I said "Is that a flogging molly T-shirt?"
I wish I would've been looking at him, I try to Imagine what his expression was, was he surprised? annoyed?
"Yeah. Hey I'm Hayden,"
I look at him full on now, none of that furtive glances crap.
he looks so out of place and colorless, smiling at me under the colored class and faces of saints and I think that he has a charming if not lopsided smile, I sort of love it.
I Imagine my mouth and I are two different Fleur's, always betraying me.
and now it runs away with my words
"Florence      but my friends call me Fleur--or they would if I had any-" nice Fleur reallll nice, not admitting the friendless loser gas at all.
I shake his hand and try to smile like I've just made some clever joke.
"I'm new here" his smile deepens and he pretends I made a clever joke too.
"well that is frightfully obvious" he laughs a little and I notice he had dark undereye bags of his own.
                            

I remember how we curved toward each other like flowers, whispering under the pastor's words and dawning afternoon light.
  awkwardly talking about other things, but  he said " don't talk to me about the weather unless you really want to know if I feel the same as you" Listener
and we finally relaxed as the subject landed on music.
I remember smuggling him out of church and wandering into what we discovered to be the rec room.
I remember raiding the frig, him stealing big red, and me a diet coke, I remember him pausing, and maybe, looking at me a little differently, but not in a bad way, before he said "swords, diet cokes, and cigarette smoke" before lighting himself a cigarette.
I remember liking how he added the swords part, like a children's rhythm.
 I remember laughing as he played for me on one of the church's guitar, I remember him handing me that cigarette to hold so he could play and sing
and not being able to resist smoking it myself.
I remember him looking up from the guitar and smiling at that.

and then I remember sunday morning coming to an end and never seeing or talking to him again.