On that Hot Summer Day, the One-Side Reality
It is a ridiculously hot and humid day when I was visiting my parents during the summer. The temperature goes past the hundred, the plants blinding green, the sky so clear and surreal it hurts to look up. Staying under the shelter is always the safer choice in this kind of weather. There are almost no people on the streets. Yet despite all the reason and resistance from my subconscious, I decided to head out.
Two weeks into the summer vacation of my third year in college, I received a package from one of my high school best friends, Liam. He included a note along with the package, explaining how this bizarre surprise, or as he called it, “present from me in the past” ended up in my P.O. box. Liam went to a private university on the other side of the state and and majored in humanistic studies. He was leaving to study abroad for a year and a half in some developing country, so when he was packing he found some collection from our golden years and thought it was a good idea to send them to me.
It is not an unpleasant surprise. I am glad that he thought of me as the best candidate to guard his high school shame during his leave, though I believe the reason I am the most trustworthy guardian is because half of the collections probably contains my high school shame too.
Though I was excited to look inside the package, I waited until I went back to my hometown to visit my parents. Liam had always been a sentimental person, he would have wanted me to look at the memories at the right place, our high school, and the right time, the day he leaves the country. So on that ridiculously hot and humid day, I thought it was a good idea to walk to our old high school in our hometown, and remember our good old days there. For sentiments’ sake.
* * *
I could never tell if our school campus was built intentionally at the place it stands. The campus is in a field that is lower than the altitude of the surrounding area, which makes it very hot and irritating in the summer; and has the worst maintained turfgrass in this county all year long, which also makes it hot and irritating. But despite these maddening characteristics, the high school has been one of the most inspiring places in my life. I got to solve my problems, make some big decisions for my future, and pick up some lifelong friendships on the way. And just like what I used to do all the time in high school, I think about the never ending sorrow of having the friends I have as I walk towards the field of brown turf grass where we used to lunch.
Once I find a good spot of shade, I sit down and vaporize myself for a few seconds before I start to open the package. It didn’t sound like the package has much stuff in it when I got it, and it doesn’t. There are some scattered pictures, a few scratches of paper, and a used up journal. I can guess what the pictures and paper scratches are, but I could not place the journal even though it looks vaguely familiar. Though I have no clue as to what the content is, it is safe to bet that the journal has scribbled poems and lyrics about love and nature all over. After all, it’s Liams.
Like I’ve said before, Liam is a sentimental person. There are other words to describe him: emotional, optimistic, naive, “love and peace through and through”; but those are too specific for his nature. There was a phrase Liam repeated throughout high school, “we should always be together”. He kept saying it over and over again, like it’s a promise, an oath that will be kept forever if he could just say it long enough. We all teased him for being so sensitive about the future, told him to be reckless and have fun instead of thinking about what was happening next. After all, we should enjoy our last years as adolescence before starting to face all the responsibilities in adulthood.
I take out the scattered pictures and papers first. They are about the tiny ridiculous things that happened in those four years: pictures of the hiking trip we went on the summer of the second year, during which all of us got bee stings; snapshots of that disastrous homecoming spirit week senior year (though to me, all homecoming weeks were disastrous); doodles of our least aimable teachers/faculty staffs; and a ten years later family tree diagram that freshmen Liam made for our group of friends, which meme got quite popular in our school for some reason. Most of these things I don’t even remember until I see these scraps of memories, but then they all come back. No wonder Liam once had a fit not getting any support for the time capsule idea, these memories need physical forms so that we can recognize them, or else we will throw them into the dungeon of our subconscious, never seeing daylight again.
It sounds like I’m regretting about taunting his sensitivity in high school, but to be honest, I actually admired Liam for his sensitivity. True, everyone, including me, was trying to convince Liam to have real fun instead of to be bound by the future. But that was also the way we convinced ourselves that the pressure from adulthood was not yet upon us, even though that future was so near. We were cowardly in denial, trying to hold on to the last of the freedom to be ignorant, and unwilling to face responsibilities because we fear we are not ready. But Liam was able to talk about that future and that promise. I admire his courage and his clarity about life.
Moving on from the pictures and papers, I take out the journal. It begins to seem a bit odd that Liam would actually send his abundant high school collection to me. There’s no surprise that he would keep things seemingly simple for so long, but I would think that if he values them so much to keep them, he would take those memories with him, instead of sending them off to a friend whom he will not see for years. But nonetheless, I’m still glad that I hold enough value to him that he would give these things to me, probably as an insurance for our friendship. I open the journal.
Sweat is gathering on my forehead and my chest. It will soon be the hottest hour during the day.
* * *
I was right and wrong at the same time. The journal does contain poetry and song lyrics, praising love and nature, but not just for something in general, they’re for something, for someone. Yes. He wrote about the opposite sex he was attracted to in high school. That was to be expected, what’s not expected was the singular form for that noun.
Liam had many girlfriends during his golden years. Too many for me to remember their names, too brief for me to know them, too heartbroken for me to talk to them. Liam has this incredible ability to swoon girls in and push girls out before we even realized his status has changed. Sometimes I feel guilty for befriending this guy because I got to know him for being friends with his first ex-girlfriend. That went really well. But in any case, what I’m trying to say is, it’s really hard to believe that he was utterly in love with somebody all that time.
It is someone we both know and love as a dear friend. The writing is incredibly cheesy at the beginning that I could not continue without laughing and covering my face constantly in shame of reading about my friend from such a perspective and of knowing the person who regards her in such a perspective. After quickly skimming the first ten or so pages, the writing becomes bearable. The entries became more philosophical, more about how and why humans are in destined to attract others and be attracted to others. He created almost an alternate reality, a world all about the connection between two people. No one else is mentioned besides him and her.
The journal entries were all dated within days of each other. I can see the evolution of his affection for her slowly mature over the course of four years. At the beginning his remarks were passionate; then it became more in depth and thoughtful, though all the same bits of silliness; and at the end, he only wrote with genuine affection, passion buried deep inside. There is no more talk of mutual fondness and destiny for each other, but just general details about her life, his life, and our lives.
The last entry was on the day of graduation. It is brief with congrats and gratitude for her and his old talk of future. Pages after that are blank. I close the journal, only to find a note scribbled on the back of it.
She has left. I must move on too.
I can’t hold on to this anymore. It is at your disposal.
Thanks for everything,
--Liam
* * *
I was completely and utterly wrong about him.
Liam was not gifting his memories to me, he was disposing them.
He was not brave to mutter his promise to “always be together”, he was just as cowardly as the rest of us. His hope for the future was only to disguise his passion. When the passion ended, he selfishly pulled himself out of the bright bubble he created and bursted it for his own good.
I want to call him. I demand to know why he would betray that sentimental poetic image of himself, the image that I admired for years. Liam created this ideal future so that he could live in it with his delusional love, yet he did not know nor consider the fact that he got my hopes up. Now that Liam could not live in his little world anymore because she has left, he abruptly stops the dream and leaves. He chose to abandon me along with his lies and hypocrisy just because he can’t handle the empty dream he built.
But I stop dialing.
It is nearly sunset. I pick up the pictures and papers, close the package, and slowly walk back across the empty brown turfgrass field. My mind is empty, yet I continue walking, alone.
