Face

            I remember his face. It had this indescribable quality to it so I won’t spend much time attempting to describe it. What is important to know is that his face was like no one else’s face had ever been in the history of the world. It wasn’t hideous; in fact, it was the exact opposite, but not a handsome face either. The important thing wasn’t that his face was so incredibly not hideous; the important thing was the power his face had. That’s where things get complicated. It had a way of affecting people. He could do plenty with it – popping his eyes out and other odd tricks – but he didn’t need to do anything with it, it just was. His face just existing was enough to affect everyone around him.

            I had a pretty standard childhood. I had two parents that loved each other. I had a brother. I had a cat named Boots and a dog named Roscoe. I loved them all. I got decent enough grades. I rarely got an A in any of my classes, but I also rarely got a C. I was a nearly straight B student – although that might have been best explained by the fact that I never pushed myself, not once. I always, no matter how mind-numbingly boring or as much as another class might be more interesting, took the easiest classes I could find from the easiest teachers. Although my life was perfectly fine, I picked up all the wrong messages. I focused too much on grades and not at all on learning anything. I focused on numbers of friends rather than any sort of closeness. Rather than simply enjoy my dog, I spent a lot of my time bragging about all the things he could do – play dead, jump through hoops. One time my brother and I got Boots to ride a skateboard from one end of my street to the next. Half the kids in town saw it, but I still spent the next three years telling everyone about it – I guess I didn’t have enough to be proud of for how proud I wanted to be. Boots died – of natural causes - and Roscoe ran away and I, still to this day, have never felt more shame. I told no one and when people brought up either pet, I would attempt to change the conversation as fast as possible. I had the best cat in the world and it didn’t make sense to me at the time that the best cat in the world would die. And, of course, the best dog in the world wouldn’t ever run away. For years after that, I’d make up things that Boots and Roscoe supposedly did in an attempt to continue having things to brag about and keep up the façade that they were still around. But I’ve started getting ahead of myself.

            There was a man that came, seemingly out of nowhere, one day and left the same. It was almost if he’d never been there at all, but he had left his impact on us all – there was no doubting that. I was only eleven years old when he came so my memory of him is foggy at best, but the one thing I do remember is that he definitely existed – which seems to be more than can be said for everyone else’s memory. No one ever really spoke of him after he left and it was hard to tell if everyone else had somehow forgotten about him except for me or if people just preferred to not mention him.

            The one thing he left with us was a baby. This baby isn’t what you think; he didn’t get anybody here pregnant. The man brought a baby with him when he showed up and simply never took it when he left. No one had a clue about the mother’s whereabouts and no one ever asked him or thought about it – until he left. We embodied that saying “it takes a village to raise a child”. No one even thought about slacking on helping raise the baby boy because we all realized that this two-year-old boy that had been abandoned by his father needed all of us to help raise him.

            Time moved on and that man faded from our memories – some completely forgetting him and others, like myself, remembering him and wondering about him, but never getting any answers and slowly learning to not care. I, like everyone else, moved on with my life. The baby boy was older now and people stopped thinking of him as an innocent baby. A woman down the street took over as his guardian. Everyone else kept an eye on him and tried to teach him things, but only            half-heartedly. He was a weird kid and we all sensed it – he wasn’t as cute and lovable as he was as a baby. This is always the case with babies, but especially so with this boy. No one could really blame him for being weird, he was abandoned by his father in a small town where he knew no one and no one knew him. All the same, everyone attempted to keep a bit of a distance between themselves and the strange five-year-old boy – even the woman down the street.

            It was around this time, when the boy was eight-ish – we never knew his birthday, just a general age – when Roscoe ran away, a few months after Boots had died. All my habits and decisions had clearly had an effect on my life as I now had no one to spend much time with. My brother had gotten older and moved away – to the big city as it seemed like so many people chose to do. I was only close with my parents. So I started spending time with that weird little boy.

            That weird little boy had only gotten weirder since I’d last really paid attention to him. He had the face of a much older person, but not a worn, old face – simply a more mature face, one of someone as old as 25. It was quite bizarre to see, but also quite fascinating. And the little boy, as odd as he was, was very interesting himself. He was interesting because he was odd. He was a little like me, with no close friends – at least I had my parents.

            He only got odder when he entered middle school. By this time, everyone was fascinated by the little boy. People had always been a bit curious about him. First when he was brought to our town only to be abandoned. Then when people started to wonder how he’d turn out with a life like his. After that, when people saw how he turned out with a life like his their fascination just continued growing. When he got the face of a much older person at such a young age, people just got even more interested in him. But people still kept their distance – which was probably for the best. However, he knew everyone was watching him from a distance; no one in this town was too subtle about anything.

            However, when he entered middle school, people’s interest in him didn’t grow – except mine. It probably had something to do with my parents having recently dying and the fact that I was now completely alone in this town except for this odd, little boy that interested me. People’s interest was still there, but it was clearly dimming. He was just a weird kid with a really odd, old face. As bizarre as he looked and as bizarre as he was, one starts to get used to it when they see him every day. There weren’t really any new developments with him and hadn’t been in a few years – at least as far as everyone else knew. The difference is that no one besides me had bothered to get to know him. It was in middle school when he realized that his face could do odd tricks. He practiced every day and often attempted to find new tricks that it could do. He’d show me, but he never showed anyone else because he knew they looked at him and judged him. I remember, every single time, no matter how many times, I’d ask him how he did those tricks with his face. He’d attempt to explain all the face tricks to me, but they never made any sense to me – although I’d expect nothing else from someone so odd as him. In eighth grade, he thought he’d perfected his face tricks and decided to enter the school’s talent contest – partially in an attempt to make friends and partially because, and I believe this was my fault because of all the praise I’d thrown his way and the ideas I’d filled his head with, to kind of brag about his talents to all the kids at once. Unfortunately, he died the night before the talent show. No one really knows why – or at least no one told me why. It might have had something to do with his older face or maybe he got so excited for the talent show that his heart burst or maybe it was just his time to go. Life never makes sense. All that really matters is that he was dead – and he never got to show off his talent.

            We obviously had to give him a funeral, so we did. The woman down the street gave him a nice eulogy – at least as nice as you would expect from someone who didn’t really know him. I was kind of upset, but got over it. If she – and the rest of the town – wanted to lie to themselves and act as if she truly knew him, so be it. Despite that fact, I still went to the funeral – as most of the town did. I think most people went to look like they cared because no one really cared. No one knew him or cared about him except for me. To everyone else, he was just a walking, talking sideshow exhibit living in their town. Sitting in the back row, I cried. I cried tears of blood. No one saw. No one needed to know about this. This was between me and that dead boy. I’d finally learned a trick that my face could do.

            Time moved on and that boy faded from our memories – everyone else completely forgetting him while I continued remembering him and wondering about him, but never getting any answers - how could I? - and slowly learning to not care. I never told anyone about my face trick, so don’t bother asking them. Don’t bother asking about the man or the boy or the boy’s face tricks either because I’m the only one who cared enough in this town to remember any of this and I’ve told you all I know here. I still do my “face trick” when I think of that little, misunderstood boy – or when I think of Boots or Roscoe or mom or dad or my brother who I’ve lost contact with.