The River Ends With You

A little short story about two teens. Terrence and Alice, and their thoughts on the flow of life's river.

//The River Ends With You


The world is going to end soon. My world at the very least. There’s been a shift, a flux in the atmosphere if you will. Things aren’t quite the same. There’s a kick to my drinking water, the grease on my pizza is more pronounced, the sky’s a bit darker. All sure signs of doomsday. My name is Terrence McCoy. I’m sixteen years old, in my junior year of highschool, and completely irrelevant to the world. Or maybe the world is irrelevant to me. Don’t really know, don’t really care. I’ve always had a neutral stance to everything, I’m like a human Switzerland. There isn’t much to get hyped over, nothing ever holds any weight. All blinding flash, and no substance.

Flash.

 My room was pretty small, and everything in it. It looks as if it was once a normal sized room, it may have even been, but the walls were slowly closing in on me. Or it got smaller as my parents salaries got smaller. I headed out my room, towards the living room of my two story house. It was a pretty small house over all. Definitely getting smaller with the pay checks.
 My mom was in the kitchen, preparing dinner. I snuck in, and plopped a kiss on her cheek. She smiled, and laughed just a bit before asking me what I wanted. She knew me so well. “Momma” -I asked in my sweetest voice- “Can I head out for a bit? Two hours tops” I faked a smile. I really needed out. If she hinted anything was wrong, which there wasn’t, she’d want to discuss it. I appreciate the sentiment, really. She rested her head on her arm “I don’t know boy, your room clean?”
“Yes Ma’am!” Mock obedience saturated my reply. “Two hours tops” she said, “and don’t bother asking for money. Not a dime from me.”
“Yeah, yeah mom I hear you. Be back soon” I rushed out before she got the chance to give me a chore. Or to check if my room was clean. Lying. What kind of truth was I trying to escape?

******
I went to the local park. Wasn’t much of a stellar place, but it was relaxing. Nostalgic too, very nostalgic. I’ve been coming for years now. I knew all of it’s little secrets, and all the secrets of the people that inhabited it. People talk in public as if no one can hear them. Most people mind their business. I listen in, but I didn’t particularly care about what’s being discussed. It’s just something I do to pass the time, analyzing what people say, figuring what I’d do in their shoes.
 I sat on a bench lonesome. The park was somewhat layered. There was a stair case that lead down to an area closer to the river that ran by the edge of the entire park. Above the stairs laid the jungle gym, restrooms, those things. The upper level didn’t interest me much, I was to old to claim kingship on top of a play set, but the river offered an attractive view. The way the water seemed to fly across the ground underneath it. The way it simply danced around any rock that dared to block.
 It traveled on without a care. If you told it a terrorist strike was inbound, it would continue to flow. If you told it a ship full of people caught a leak, it would keep flowing. If you told it those same people were drowning, well it would just keep flowing. Not a care in the world. My sister always told me the great seas, oceans, rivers, and shoot all the puddles of the world, were something special. My sister was a marine biologist, but she was in it more for the ocean that housed the animals. She wanted to be a hydrologist, but my mom wouldn’t hear for that, she thought it was a pointless job.
I wish my mom would had kept her from water all together.         
 A small slender girl sat next to me, startling me. She smiled and waved at me. Her medium length brown hair seemed familiar to me. She wore glasses, plastic frames. Her face long, her chin gracefully square.. Her nose some what long, very narrow. Those movie star cheek bones albeit jagged. Deep black eyes, that swallowed any contact caught in there path like a black hole munching down on light.

Captivating, but it wasn’t here beauty. Her atmosphere was tugging at me.

“Hey! Never seen you here before.” I stumbled for a moment, trying to remember who she was. Figuring her importance.”I’ve been coming here since I was little. You’re a new face to me too.”
“You don’t say.”
She stood up and walked over to the gate barring the end of the park from the river. “You ever tried swimming in it. In this river?” Her voice seemed awfully distant. I was a bit confused as to whether she was talking to me or not. She trailed her finger along the rimming of the gate. I joined her side. “Water’s to rocky, wouldn’t make for pleasurable swimming” she laughed a bit. It was a truly frightening laugh. “Yeah I would guess so” a light seemed to flicker in her eyes, and she turned back to me. “So why did you bother talking to me today?” I asked, suddenly curious, though I couldn’t care less.
 “I don’t know, guess I needed someone to talk to” she kicked a rock into the river. “I felt like taking a gamble today, but I’m fresh out of money” she pulled out her pockets. “Mom’s spending it all on booze and what not.”
“Mom’s a heavy drinker?”  
“The worst. It’s just terrible at home.” -she made another hallow laugh before carrying on- “Make’s me wanna kill myself sometimes” She laughed even harder. My ears cringed.
 “But lets not dwell on dark things. Tell me something happy” I hate being thrown on the spot. She inched closer to me. “Something happy?” The sun was beginning to set, the river was painted over persimmon.
 “Look at the tint of the river, so easily influenced” Alice spoke, with a sigh. I suddenly felt bad for not having anything happy to say. I felt the need to say something, anything.“The river isn’t so easily influenced. It’s just indifferent. In a sense, you can say it just goes with the flow.”
“How boring” we both turned to each other, her eyes seemed as if to swallow my entire field of sight. I couldn’t divert mine from hers. “I should be heading home now” she spoke, her early cheerfulness dissipating. “Terrence can I ask you a favor?”
“Um sure”
“Can you” -she paused- “can you come back here tomorrow? Same time.”
“Um. Sure, if something doesn’t turn up” She gave me a hug, or more like clung to me.   As she left I felt this huge weight taken off of me. Something about her presence was overbearingly emotional. The river. Boring. I never thought of it as that before. It didn’t seem possible. It almost seemed insulting.
                                    
******
 So I sat on a bench overlooking the river. As I waited I  lost myself to my thoughts, staring out at the river. It was narrow, constricted. Linear, like most things in life. On good days it was fairly clear. The rock underneath offering a pleasant sight. The water almost seemed a gentle barrier to the rocks underneath, holding them in it’s self. On other days it was murky and muddled obscuring the rock underneath in a spell of depression.  
 I thought back on my childhood a bit, well not so much thinking back since I was still living it.  More or less. I thought about the last time my older sister brought me to the river. It hurt my eyes to think about it though. My sweet caring sister. With all the great love she held for the ocean, the waves were never gentle to her. They weren’t calm when she needed them to be. They didn’t hold her up when she crashed into them. They didn’t shy away from her lungs as they filled her up. It just flowed on, indifferent to it all.
 I sat up, beginning to take my leave. I’m sure Alice wouldn’t mind something this petty. As I walked up the stairs, she made her entrance. From atop she looked at me, a smile haphazardly sprawled out across her face. Another faux expression. “Sorry to keep you waiting” she jumped into my arms, I caught her almost falling over in the process. “Jumpy today are we?”
“Oh, you have no idea” she laughed, but it put me on edge. Everything about her seemed to have a sense of urgency to it. An underlying problem yet to be exposed. More peculiar, I felt it my duty to do something about it. She snapped out of my arms and rushed towards the gate. I followed behind walking. “Terrence, why do you come here so often?”
“I don’t know” it reminded me of my sister, but she didn’t need to know that. Besides, why would anyone care about that? “Yeah, we do things but never know why huhn? We never know why the sky is blue, why grass is green”
“The sarcasm sure is beautiful today” I chimed in playfully. She laughed, this time a tad warmer. A semi-sincere laugh perhaps.
 “I always come here because I wonder what it would be like to swim in that river.”
“Well I already told you right?”
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t jump in to enjoy myself” her voice, so monotone and yet filled with such loathing. “Then” -I paused- “you shouldn’t do it. Why go through the pain?”
“Why not? The world’s filled with whys, and why nots. Each answer would only be an opinion right? I want to jump, headlong into that river, and see what’s at the end. At the real end of the river. I want to see if it ends with me ya know. I have to know how personal it is”
“It’s never personal, it’s strictly nature.”
 She turned around now, leaning back on the gate, facing away from the river. “Nature. Human nature.” She covered her face with her hands. “Why am I speaking in metaphors?” She laughed, verbally kicking me in the chest. “So lets not speak in metaphors. Lets be simple” I sat down on the floor, facing from the river as well “Why are you so sad. What’s so bad that you want to kill yourself?”
“What isn’t? Life’s a wreck. I can’t really take it anymore”
“Your sixteen”
“I feel like I’m forty. Oh believe me I’m not crying about the standard issues. I know what’s important, and what’s not. But. Is it impossible for me to get a pair of binoculars, and look ahead  the long, long road of life, and see absolutely nothing? Why should I go on without anything to look forward to, and damn sure not a thing to look back onto. My family, they’re complete s**t, scum of the earth. If I told you, just half the things” she stopped, and took a deep breath in. “I won’t be capable of living a life worth living. Or rather I won’t consider that life worth living. Why is life consider a blessing, and death a curse? Are we that scared of what we don’t know? I look at death, and I see liberation. Sure it may be a juvenile way to look at it. But tell me this! Are adults so wise they know what awaits them at the end of the river? Or are they just scared of it? People are scared of commitment. And death, well that’s the ultimate kind. I’m not afraid of commitment.”
“Well-” cat and tongue syndrome. I couldn’t respond to that. How do you even respond to that? For the last six years, since my sister died I haven’t cared about anything. I’ve just been living like a river, flowing through life, indifferent to it all. For the first time in so long, I felt this desire to protect. As that flame grew it shot through my body, encompassing all of it. Lighting me up. Warming me up. Killing the cat, handing me back my tongue.
 With such warmth and compassion it even scared me I told her. “You said yourself, a question that starts with why, ends with an opinion. We’ll never know certain why something was done. But, we know how. Let me show you how to live the rest of life. Trips take time, your not ready to see the end of the river.”
What a bunch of emotional teenagers we were. Neither of us spoke above a whisper. I doubt anyone would had heard our conversation just now.
 
I wonder if anyone would care if they did. A day ago would I have cared, as much as I do now?  

 “Show me how? What if I don’t want to learn?” her voice was raspy, and she seemed somewhat frightened. “Ya know, I don’t even know why I told you all of this. I always put on a good facade. I mean I come here, I start off smiling and what not. But progressively, I don’t know, I just feel the need to talk.” She sat down beside me.
“Don’t be difficult. Some things, you should just let happen” she grabbed onto me, burrowing her face into my arm. She began to speak, her voice tickling my arm, and something much more. “You ever closed your eyes and didn’t want to open them?”
“Yes”
“Do you dream when you close your eyes?”
“No, I don’t”
“Me too” her voice trailed off.
 A spell of silence broke over us. Her voice so fragile. She let go of me, standing up. “I try sometimes. To close my eyes and not open them. I try many different ways. I try with jumping, with fire. My body holds the records of all this. I said I’d try one more time, I’ll try with water. With a nearby river. I promised if it didn’t work out this time I’d resign myself to whatever life had. I guess that would be the ultimate death. Closing my eyes forever, and not have a single dream. Know what though? I’m happy I failed this time” she turned my way, and smiled. A river of tears on her sweet face. “And maybe I won’t have to dream”
 I stood up then. My legs were sore. I hugged her tightly, not wanting to let go.
I knew something big was going to happen. I thought of it as the end of my world. I never knew how grateful I would be for that. I hadn’t done anything, I hadn’t lived for the last six years. I hadn’t even tried. But now, this girl. Alice. She’s taken a hammer to all my ideals. I wanted to care for something, I had to. No matter what, I couldn’t let go now.
“You’re gonna show me how right?”
“And so much more.”

Yeah. I’ll show her.

The river doesn’t end with you, but begins with you.             
                
 

   

Author's Note

Uhm, if this is shit be honest. But be honest in a way that's beneficial to me, and doesn't make you look like a dick. I think that works.