First Friday Fiction: June

     Well, my mood has improved drastically which is really good, and thank you SE for the pictures. They were pretty awesome. :) I'm posting so early today because I will be soooo busy for the rest of the day, what with my brother's graduation, my cousin's graduation party, and somehow squeezing in some lawn mowing in there somewhere.
     So this month's short story was greatly influenced by the movie Awakenings which I recommended the other day. I wrote it during my AP US class this week, since we are literally doing nothing at all. Writing always solves boredom. Remember that for the next time you're bored.

Charlie

                The girl was here again. Today she was wearing yellow. Yellow, like the color of the sun, Charlie thought. She was the sun, Charlie thought.

                He watched her silently from his chair in the corner. Saw her smile, and laugh, and brush the stray strands of hair out of her face.

                She didn’t stay long, about an hour or so, and when she left, Charlie was sad. He craned his neck down and looked at his red and blue striped polo shirt, the one his mother had lovingly slipped over his head. He looked down at his wrinkly khaki trousers—those he’d picked out himself. And down to his green trainers, one tied, the other loose, shoelaces dangling. There was a stain on his shirt from the corn he’d fed himself, with hands shaking, for lunch, and plenty of scuffs on his sneakers from the hard tile floor in the main room.

                He looked around the room and felt disconnected from its inhabitants, but at the same time, not. Sheryl sat near the TV, drooling, head droopy. Charlie was not like her. But Jeffrey sat near the radiator, bobbing his head un-rhythmically to his Walkman, and Charlie knew he was like him.

                He had a sour taste in his mouth because he knew that because he was like Jeffrey, and the others in the home, the girl who wore yellow today would not glance his way. Would never hold his hand and take a walk with him. Would never sit across a fancy dinner table from him and laugh at his stories.

                He sighed in quiet anguish, unrecognizable to those around him.             

                Charlie thought of these things, of all his burdens, until dinner time, when Nurse Johnson came to where he sat by the window and handed him a lukewarm tray of beige food.

                “Here you go buddy!” Nurse Johnson said, patting Charlie childishly on the back and handed him a plastic spork.

                “I’m not your buddy,” Charlie voiced, turning from the sunset drenched landscape outside the childproofed window.

                “What do you mean Charlie? Of course you are.”

                “No. All your buddies are stupid. I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want to be your buddy.”

                “Charlie,” Nurse Johnson said in his gentle, chiding tone. “You aren’t stupid. You’re special. Who told you that you were stupid?”

                Charlie blinked slowly.

                “No one. But if I wasn’t stupid, she would be my girlfriend,” Charlie explained.

                “Who?” Nurse Johnson probed, smiling. “Rose? Demi? Sheryl?”

                Charlie thought vaguely of their slack jawed-ness and strange ticks. He blinked slowly again.

                “Is that it Charlie? You’re having girl troubles?”

                “Not Rose or Demi or Sheryl,” Charlie answered, frustrated. “Not them. They’re stupid. The girl. The one who wore yellow today.”

                “Emily?” Nurse Johnson asked. “She’s Bobby’s sister. You like her?”

                “If I were different, she’d like me back. If I weren’t stupid like the rest of them, she’d like me back.

                “Oh Charlie, I’m sure she likes you just the way you are. I’m sure she’d be your good friend if you asked her.”

                Nurse Johnson patted Charlie’s back again and walked away.

                Charlie felt cheated. He felt stupid. He felt like a disease.

                He didn’t want to congealed potatoes in the corner square of his tray, or the tepid milk in the cardboard carton that he always had trouble opening.

                He sighed one last time.

                He looked back out the window.

                The sunshine was gone.

     So there you have it. I was really trying to capture what handicapped people think and feel instead of just what they seem like on the outside, because really, that's the only part that we, as outsiders get to see. Hope you enjoyed! Enjoy your Friday. I know I will, despite the fact that I will have not free time at all today. ALSO, GO SEE TFIOS!!!!

                       -VaughnDL