Just Another Brick in the Wall

                              

                                        “Just another brick in the wall”

            

         It’s inevitable; boredom always had its sneaky ways with me, even with him. However, I wasn’t sure if I could pin this one on boredom, or the fact that he was starting to get out of hand. I liked his weird individual ways at first; he was so different and interesting. Even with his quirky trivia, witty sarcasm and computer skills, it just wasn’t enough to keep our friendship up. The whole thing was fun at first, meeting late at night, drinking orange juice and vodka in the forest. However, the feeling of excitement and spontaneity I got with him was running thin. His friendship somehow turned into silly kisses while parked in the shadows. Was that what I wanted? Or did I just need a friend, an escape from feeling stuck and alone. I guess we are all in search for something.  

            As a 16-year-old girl I felt as though I was trapped on a rock floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and truth be told, that’s exactly what I was. I was living in Hawaii, and was going to a small charter high school at the time, with about 10-15 people per class. My parents were their fist steps into divorce, and my best friend had just got herself her first boyfriend, meaning she was out of the picture for me all of the sudden. This left me with no one in school that I could really relate to, and all my other friends went to other schools far from mine.  Don’t get me wrong, the school I went to was a good school, but I just hated being that awkward pretty girl that didn’t like talking to anyone. I also didn’t exactly appreciate front row seats to my best friend and her boy toy sucking face every second, of every moment.  So I sat inside my head day to day.

            However, one day I got the strangest blocked phone call. I ignored the first call and brushed it off, but the fact that I started getting the same call, day to day, was a bit unsettling.  When I picked up the phone, all I would hear is static sounds, voices, clicking sounds, and music of some sort; it would all go on until I hung up the phone. Everyday? That’s not an accidental pocket call if you ask me. Then, I learned if I stayed on the phone long enough, it would connect me to a young mans phone line. The first time I heard his voice, he sounded annoyed and confused, just like me. What the hell did any of this mean?

            “Who is this?” I asked, and he responded with the same question; we both wanted answers.  His voice was low, monotone, and a bit raspy, he also had a hidden sense of sarcasm under his breath. However, with all that, I had fallen to liking his voice. One night, our phone lines connected us again, and we started talking as if we had known each other for years; I didn’t even know what this boy looked like. In this conversation, I learned about this guy, his name was Roger and he was my age. What a coincidence. Who was this guy?

            One night we talked on the phone till the sun began to rise, we talked about math, space, darkness, fear, and so much more. I found that his voice caused excitement in me, and that it was so easy to talk to him. We started asking questions about how our phones were tied together, and who had our phone numbers? The mystery began building more when Roger said he got a random letter in the mail addressed to him, and as I started getting animated cryptic riddles in my voice box. I had no idea what these riddles were, but yet I was unafraid of the challenge.

            This raspy voice became my friend, my only friend it seemed. He was a boy who did not exist to anyone but me, in a way he was my little secret, the voice in my head. He was the brain between us two, so I passed the riddles onto him to depict. He told me that they seemed to be linked to Pink Floyd songs, which was no surprise to me cause I never really listened to Pink Floyd. The letter he had, had pieces of paper, strings of numbers, and a few other things inside. We weren’t very sure what any of it meant, so we had made a mutual agreement to finally meet face to face. Since I could not see the letter, we thought it would be best to look it over together. Besides, it was about time for this voice to have a face.

            Roger pulled up in his moms little white car, I could feel my stomach in my throat, and since there was no backing out now. When he got out, he was exactly how he described himself, however he was much smaller then I imagined. His voice was so low; it didn’t quite match up with his soft pale skin, and his long silky blonde hair. He was an awkward little man, but that voice was unmistakably that same sturdy, funny sound I loved.

            We didn’t end up solving that letter, but it was nice to see him in person. We ended up talking on the phone again that night again, and he seemed to have more clues from a message he had just received. Who ever was messing with us seemed to want Roger and I to work together, and figure something out, whatever it was. As this little game of detective went on, we began to learn more about each other, letting one another into our own individual lives. He told me about his friends, one named Toby, and another was a British guy that lived in the UK but kept in touch by phone. The British guy seemed really funny, and the stories he would tell me about him were hilarious.

            Even though I knew Roger face to face now, he still seemed like a surreal character in my own little world; bringing me out of my stale pages. We began to hang out almost daily; sometimes he would even pick me up from school. We would have endless nights spent parked in his car, talking, laughing, and drinking. You have to understand: Hilo Hawaii is a small, run down little town, with empty streets and moldy buildings, where youth has no room to stretch. So sitting in a car till 1am was our idea of fun. We would sometimes roam into the forests by my house, and drink there. We were so different from each other, he was a nerdy computer brain, and I was an artist that was bad at math, but somehow our friendship was perfect.  I enjoyed the stimulation, I was usually always to one to win a fight, but discussions with him were so challenging; so new.

            One time, I invited for him to hang out with my friend grace and her boyfriend, Colin, at his house. We shared a bottle of vodka, took several shots, which Roger apparently had a hard time handling, because he ended throwing up over the balcony.

            Through our time spent, we seemed to forget how we met, or what ever happened to the riddles, the messages, and random letters. We got as far to understand that everything was following the story of Pink Floyds ‘The Wall’. Once we figured that out, things seemed to slow down.

            As time went on, things led on more strongly. Our drunken nights spent alone got us a little closer, and kissing was now the next best thing to keep us entertained. My secret character was molding me and I was out of control, I felt rebellious and alive. My friends, obviously, all thought I was insane. I was staying out late with this random guy no one knew, or have even heard of, playing games with the unknown, they knew this was not normal; but that’s why I loved it. It was even a thrill to know Roger didn’t even have a driver license, only his permit.

            Roger, one day said he had a surprise for me; he made me close my eyes and get in his car. We drove for a while, and then I felt the car park. When I opened my eyes, in front of me was an abandoned house. There were abandoned items astray all over the front yard: clothes, suitcases, shoes, books, you name it. It was so eerie looking, like a scene from out of a horror film, as if something terrible happened to this family. Roger took me in and showed me around, I was a bit reluctant, but in the end I thought it was pretty cool and we called it our ‘house’. We bought spray paint and decorated our house, and had a plan to clean it up and make it our new pad. Colin and grace even came over to check it out and helped with the decorating. This was our little secret.

                        As time went on, my boredom caught up with me once again. School was almost over, and summer would be starting soon. That was very exciting and terrifying at the same time. I was stressed with schoolwork, and hadn’t been seeing Roger all that often. I remember Roger wrote a paper for me, for my science class, he must have done a great job, because I got an A+. Roger seemed really antsy that I wasn’t around as much. He told me he was out late all the time; he seemed up to something. He had made this plan with Colin to steal a well-known Jesus statue from the Pahoa church. I thought that was so unnecessary, and wanted no part in that form of entertainment. Sure enough, it was in the paper a few days later.

One day Roger got in a fight with his mom, he said she hit him, and kicked him out. So I took him to my house for the day, and we just laid in bed all day watching movies.

Time with Roger was fun in the beginning, but I was bored. Drinking in his mom’s car wasn’t so fun anymore, and kissing him wasn’t either. I guess I was realizing that I never liked him that way, and it was the excitement of finding a new me that kept it going. No matter how many times we kissed or drank, I was still the same girl, in the same town.  I think I just enjoyed his friendship better than anything else.

            My new hope was for the new school year, I was enrolled in a different school, a public school, where Grace and Colin went. In addition, my old friend Evan was coming out from California for the summer; this didn’t sit too well with Roger.  I knew I wouldn’t be able to see Roger that much with Evan here, and honestly no longer was feeling the same way towards Roger. The feelings I had towards him turned a corner, and now were uneasy.

            Towards the end of everything, Roger said he had another surprise for me. He took me to our home, and walked me to the entrance. Inside there were more random things covering the whole place, stacked almost to the point that you couldn’t even walk through anymore. There were crosses, glass items, flowers, shoes, and even the churches statue of Jesus. It was all things he had stolen with his friend Toby. How could I have approved of this? This was definitely a surprise, but not a good one. I had no Idea what to say, I couldn’t believe it. He even stole things from off of graveyards. At that point I told him to take me home, and I wanted him to return at least the graveyard items. I think that was a wakeup call for me, even in my own boredom and unhappiness, I wasn’t about to reflect it onto others.

            I started realizing how unbelievably irresponsible I had been, meeting up with this random guy I didn’t even know and trusting him. I made myself so venerable, and had put myself in positions that were potentially dangerous. I was raised in such a small world; bad things didn’t seem to exist. School existed, my parents existed, and my loneliness and unhappiness was all too real. However, I never took the time to analyze what I had put myself in. Luckily Roger wasn’t harmful to me, but he could have been. I was so sheltered, I got a taste of outside, and I thought it was an escape.

            One of my last memories with Roger was when he picked me up, and we parked at the end of a dirt road. I hadn’t noticed he was extremely intoxicated till we got there. He said he had drunk about one and a half bottles of Robitussin, and at that point I was over it and wanted to go home. He said he would take me home if I kissed him. I did not want to kiss him. He grabbed me and tried to force me, however I was much stronger than him and pulled away. Then he started to ramble about ‘what if nothing was real’ and ‘how do you know what is real and what is not’. Then he took me home.

            After that, there was no more phone calls, no more messages, and my secret voice was lost. It was all so surreal. Not long after I got an email from Roger, he was talking about how he assumed I would go to this new school and find another distraction, hang out with attractive guys and start another story. He ended by saying he had something to tell me, but I needed to promise not to call the police on him. Sure enough when he told me, I felt like such a stupid gullible teen girl.

            He admitted to everything, that he was the one behind it all. He was the one leaving riddles on my phone, the random phone calls that ‘just happened’ to connect our phone lines. He lied about everything, even about his British friend that apparently never existed. His mom never hit him, she actually was a sweet woman, he just wanted an excuse to come to my house I guess and spend the day with me.

            How did I not see any of this? Was I so blind? I was in denial, and wanted to believe him, I wanted that voice. I was so tired of living in my own head day to day; I finally had someone else’s words in my ear every night.  In the end, he was exactly the same. He was fighting loneliness, and tucked away in his room all day, he only knew one world, the computer. So he used the only way he knew to get human contact. It was his final act of desperation and boredom, a cry for help. He found my face book, somehow got my number and begun the games. He didn’t know how to talk to people, or how to make friends, so he used his own methods.

            I on the other hand fell into it; my desperation was following the games, and believing the lies. We were so different, but in the end we were in the same situation. We were both searching for something in the wrong way. I realized I couldn’t just throw myself into a stupid situation to find happiness. Honestly, I don’t think I even realized how lonely and unhappy I was until this all happened, it was certainly a wakeup call. I hope he realizes too what he did, he got an upper hand of power and I guess he liked it. What he didn’t realize that I would have been his friend even without the riddles, even if he didn’t tell me funny stories about his British friend, and all the other stories he had made up. I liked awkward Roger nonetheless.

I guess he figured if he just messaged me on face book, I wouldn’t have given him the time of day. Which you know, I probably wouldn’t have. So that in it’s self showed me something, the beauty of people. It’s the quirks, and little things that are striking, and make a friendship. You don’t get to see them in a person until you give them a chance. You just have to be careful how you let people in, and don’t lower your standards out of desperation.

My email in response to roger’s was, that in the end, it wasn’t all his stories that made me like him. Even when the riddles stopped, I was still his friend. I just enjoyed him as a person, someone to call my friend, someone who actually wanted to spend hours in a parked car with me. That’s the Roger I liked, the pale blonde boy who drove his moms car, and made jokes about himself.  That voice I thought I got to know so well; my friend. That’s all I needed.