I COULD NEVER UNDERSTAND HUMANS

CORE MEMORY NO. I

The sun was bright in the meadow, a bit too bright in my standards, but it was cheery and warm enough to snap me out of my pitiful mood. Such sky and temperature was rather rare in the times where fall became winter. With my sketchbook, accompanied by my rubber and pencil, I laid with my stomach on the ground and my sketchbook open in front of me, swatting the bugs that buzzed near my ear. A bed of tulips was to my left and while I was marveling at their beauty, I took the time to draw them into my sketchbook for a forever memory of them. One line, one flick of my wrist, and the rest went smoothly.

“Ray?” A lazy voice called out to me from behind, causing me to jump. How focused was I to be spooked by such a familiar voice. More than familiar, really, if such could be possible.

I looked to my side to see him, reddish-brown hair and all, with a dumb grin on his face as he regarded me. The sunlight streaming through the clouds brightened his eyes and the amber in them glowed like a gem. “Whatcha doin’? We’ve been out here for about…twenty minutes. Are you still drawing?” He yawned, but propelled himself up to roll in the grass, clunkily, with his eyes closed once more, until he was flush against my side. I watched this and rolled my eyes when he opened his and grinned again at me. I wondered how his face didn’t hurt from all that smiling.

He made a grabbing motion with his hands. “Lemme see.”

I frowned and did the opposite; I shut my sketchbook closed, mindful of the pages, and tucked it beneath my stomach when he started to make a move for it.

“Oh, come on, Ray!” His eyes turned pleading, the sun’s rays causing them to lighten even more and glow in their full glory. His bottom lip trembled; even the freckles on his brown skin seemed to beg. It called all my attention and made me flush. I ignored my warming face, of course, and shook my head, remaining silent. “You’ve let me see other things—like that one of my mum—let me see some flowers.”

He was right, it was just flowers, which I drew all the time, and I had let him see portraits of other people I’ve drawn—however horrid and deformed they were—but the flowers weren’t what I was worried about. We had been out here for a long time, as he had said, and at the beginning of it, I wasn’t at all interested in the flowers—they hadn’t caught my attention.

No, I was interested in him.

And it was such a horrible sketch. After all the time I put into it, after all the times I looked up to draw him to perfection, my brain still couldn’t understand what a human looked like. Yes, I was young, but I should at least be able to draw arms and legs, not deformed things that branched out to look like the stems of plants and heads that looked like the petals on a flower. I had flipped over to the next page, to cover up my failure, and that was when the tulips had caught my eye. Flowers were much easier than human beings, in many regards.

And for that reason, for that horrible sketch, he could not ever get hold of my sketchbook. Until I could toss the sketch away, of course. I could never keep him away that long.

“No. And that is my final answer.” I stood, placing my sketchbook, rubber, and pencil all in my satchel, then holding my satchel close to my chest in case he ever thought to try to dupe me and snatch it. He stood as well, cringing when he saw the green stain that the grass had made on his shirt and trousers when he had rolled to me.

“Ah…that may be a problem.” He smiled sheepishly, sharing a look with me.

“We should be going back.” I cringe myself when his eyes turn sad. “To eat. To eat. It’s not like I want you to be in trouble.”

“Of course not, I know you, Ray.” He patted his lean stomach. “You know, I think you're right.”

“Am I?” I started to walk to where the meadow met with the dirt road to our town.

“Yeah.” He ran up to me and slung an arm over my shoulder. “You usually always are.”

And that made me smile. And other things that I would soon regret, started to bubble up in my stomach. It was this happy fluttering feeling that I felt.

That same feeling would be the one to destroy us both.