The Spiral
I still remembered the painful moment when I first met him. It was a cloudy fall afternoon; the air smelled crispy with dry leaves scratching across the roads. We were around fourteen, fifteen then, when I took a sharp turn from a dark alley into the street and bumped into him, who was skateboarding (he later would joke that I looked like the Shadow Fiend from Dota2 in my black outfit). It was a messy accident, with him tripping over and scraping his knees and me getting a mild concussion.
Later that day in the hospital, he asked, “so what were you doing back there in the alley?” I thought for a minute; eventually I decided to look away, as if hiding something ominous, and said, “it’s nothing.” He tilted his head and squinted at me. I kept calm, acting oblivious to his urgent curiosity while secretly relishing the irrational triumph and power it had granted me.
I wanted to feel it again.
When I was with him, I would express discontentment with myself, with occasional exaggeration of my own weaknesses, fears, and brokenness, such as “I have the dark magic to turn any conversation into awkward silence.” Then he would laugh, saying “that’s not true. Try me,” and I would fail to even make him stop talking. While I yearned for such temporary reliefs from reality, he enjoyed being needed and being a hero, a savior, just like those main characters in his favorite video games. From time to time, he would bug me with the same question, “seriously, what were you doing back there in the alley?” And like always, I chose not to answer. We were dancing in a downward spiral, swirling and pulling each other into deeper territories.
During winter break in senior year, somewhere from a book I was reading, three words caught my eyes, “a mutual addiction.” The rawness in those words cut right through me. At once, I thought about him, about us, but as he became increasingly frustrated with my self-deprecation, I wasn’t so sure about the “mutual” part of the addiction anymore.
“I bet no one will notice if I just disappear,” I said as I put down the book. I looked out of the window, hoping to see the stars. But the night was bleak and the room was well-lit, so I saw my own reflection staring right back at me.
“I will,” he answered casually while gaming, tapping frantically on the phone screen.
“But the world goes on; you move on,” I said, only to realize how nervous I was when my heart was hammering in my chest. This was a mistake; I wasn’t ready for his answer, and I probably would never be.
“Damn it!” He cursed when a big “Game Over” popped up. “Sorry,” he apologized and put away his phone, “well I’m sure you’d be kind enough to forgive me for not suffering forever from your unannounced departure.”
I clenched my teeth. That’s not how the spiral worked; he was supposed to stop me from leaving, or tell me that things would be different without me. He was supposed to save me. I asked, “would you even care?”
Surprised by my unusual straightforwardness, he laughed nervously, eying me as if asking “is this a joke?” Realizing that it wasn’t, he closed his eyes and sighed, “unbelievable.”
No. “Just answer me.”
“Oh come on,” he said, sounding so tired and helpless, “please stop.”
His deliberate evasion and annoyance almost destroyed me. In my head lightbulb exploded, window shattered, frosty wind blew into my face and I was all alone shivering in the cold winter night. I forced myself to breathe. “All right. I’ll stop,” I said as I packed my bag, ready to leave, “go on with your stupid game.”
He gave that short, uneasy laugh again, running his fingers through his hair and pulling it upward. While avoiding my eye contact, his eyes moved in a saccade, searching fruitlessly for a comfortable place to rest. He fidgeted, and I waited. When he finally opened his mouth, I inhaled with the movement in anticipation, hoping he’d say something, anything. But he didn’t; for once he let the silence spread. I had finally reached the bottom of the spiral, our spiral.
Just as I dragged my body halfway out the door, to my surprise, he asked, “hey… What were you doing back there in the alley?”
Hearing the struggle and reluctance in his voice, I knew it was his clumsy attempt to make up. I smiled, but I didn’t turn around for him to see it. I thought about that crow in the alley covered in shadow, solitary and arrogant, cawing on top a trash can, and the eerie green glistening in its oily black feathers. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” I said, imagining the spiral slowly compressed into a perfect circle, no beginning or ending, just us trapped in our mutual addiction, “I’ll see you soon, yeah?”
“Yeah, I guess,” he said. I knew he was smiling, too.