I wrote this short story in my creative writing class. It's an imitation piece based on an excerpt from "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien. Enjoy
"Closure"
The fresh spring breeze blew against Kurt Maddrey’s back as he made his way down the wooded path. The wind would have flipped the pages of the navy blue sketchbook he held, had the grip of his right hand not been so tight. In his left hand he clasped a crumpled sheet of notebook paper, on which he had scrawled the address of the Crestwood Rehabilitation Center just hours ago. Now he walked away from the rehab center, making his way deeper into the trees. Kurt glanced down at his knuckles, where the skin had turned white, and sighed. In less than three hours, he would have to be back at school, pretending that he was the same, quiet, dorky Kurt he had always been—pretending he had forgotten all about what he was about to do.
Kurt’s school, the Ridgemount Preparatory Boarding School, was located in the remote hills of the northeastern United States. Unlike some other schools of its kind, its architecture was sophisticated yet modest; the large stone building sat reserved behind a large barrier of evergreens, as far away from the road as possible. The windows were few, and the curtains were most always drawn, so as not to pose a distraction to the students within. Inside, the floors were sheathed in grey carpeting, the walls displaying many old paintings. To a passerby the school looked bland and lacking personality, like a detention center. However, inside one could see a diverse group of high school students.
In addition to lockers in the hallways, there were wooden hooks lining some of the walls, presumably for the messenger bags many of the students carried, but most of the time these hooks remained empty. A majority of the students carried in their bags the student’s necessities: textbooks for class, pens, between-class snacks, notebooks, pencils. Some students also carried reading glasses; others tissues. Lawrence Marshall, who never liked to be disturbed while reading, carried several boxes of yellow foam earplugs. Marlene Johnson carried mascara and strawberry lip-gloss. Joseph Flannigan carried his top-of-the-line laptop, for “note-taking.” Elise Brobeck carried extra highlighters in every color.
What the students carried also varied by interest. Many carried iPods or MP3 players; some liked to bring along musical instruments of their own. Almost half of the 207 students carried books for pleasure reading. Lawrence Marshall usually carried five or six thick novels, leafing through their thin pages as he shuffled down the hallway. Some students carried cameras around their necks; Catharine Ford sometimes brought along magazines, and Elise Brobeck always had her journal. Jason and Cameron Oliver both carried guitars strapped to their backs, and they played them frequently during free periods. Daniela Carlisle carried a yo-yo in her pocket, with which she played constantly.
Kurt’s pockets were usually empty. He never carried an iPod, nor did he take any other means of entertainment along with him. However, in his messenger bag he carried a sketchbook filled with detailed drawings of the same woman. There were images of her profile, or of her in motion, or of her just sitting in a chair, smiling. Each drawing was different, but in each picture the woman had the same facial expression—not quite a smirk, but a teasing, “I know something you don’t know” smile. The smile was small but noticeable, and it caused the viewer to be inexplicably drawn to look at her again and again and, perhaps, smile back. Kurt didn’t always carry this sketchbook in his hands, but he always felt the weight of it in his bag, like an anchor. He never forgot that it was there, because it always was. It had always been—until now.
The things they carried were also for social purposes. Many students carried smartphones; a few carried postage for letters to their parents. Several proudly wielded their shiny new driver’s licenses, and others their very own credit cards, which gave them access to myriad popularity points. Joseph Flannigan always carried his fingernail-thin touch screen phone, for which the students admired him greatly. Daniela Carlisle carried several extra pencils, for which her fellow students were eternally grateful. And Marlene Johnson always had chewing gum, which seemed to make any student instantly her best friend.
When those peeking over Kurt’s hunched shoulder asked who the woman in the drawings was, he didn’t usually reply. Sometimes he muttered while flipping through the book, but it was unclear to his peers whether he was speaking to the pictures or to himself. Most people kept quiet about Kurt’s unusual mannerisms, but Joseph Flannigan teased him mercilessly for it.
Who’s that? he’d demand. Your imaginary girlfriend?
It’s no one, Kurt would reply.
She looks, like, 40.
Leave me alone.
Why don’t you go out and meet a real girl? Oh, right, no real girl would
ever come near you.
In response, Kurt would be silent, and he would carefully touch the photograph that was tucked into the back of his sketchbook. It depicted the same woman, only this time in color, her arms around the man who Kurt recognized as his father, a few years before Kurt was born. The woman wore the same smile in this photograph, the humbly attractive almost-smirk that Kurt had attempted to replicate in his drawings since the day he found this photograph in his father’s desk.
The things they carried were heavy. Each textbook that the students were required to own weighed about five pounds, the physics and world history textbooks being among the heaviest. Lawrence Marshall’s novels each weighed about half a pound, and together they were three. Jason and Cameron Oliver’s guitars each weighed approximately seven pounds. Catharine Ford’s collector’s edition magazines together weighed about two pounds. Elise Brobeck’s journal and numerous highlighters caused her ten-pound backpack to pull down on her thin shoulders. All the things they carried weighed them down, but they saw them as a necessary burden.
As Kurt continued walking down the path, the trees grew to be more sporadic, and he soon found himself by the creek. Turning the notebook over in his hands, his mind flashed back to what the man at the rehab facility had told him.
She won’t talk to you, kid, he had said. She hasn’t spoken in weeks.
Kurt remembered slowly stepping into the sterile white room and staring at the face of the woman within for the first time since he was an infant. To his dismay, the woman he had seen in the room was nothing like the mother he had imagined. The mother he had imagined had bright, friendly eyes; smelled like pink roses; and always wore that sweet little teasing smile that was displayed in the photograph. Yet the empty shell of a woman he had seen in the room was certainly not his mother.
The things they carried on their hearts were the heaviest of all. Joseph Flannigan carried the longing for his busy father to reply to his emails. Marlene Johnson carried the regret of not replying to her father’s emails. Daniela Carlisle carried an endless amount of insecurities about her prominent nose. Cameron Oliver carried his habit of constantly comparing himself to his brilliant twin brother. All this they carried, but they tried their hardest to push it to the back of their minds.
Now Kurt took a few more steps to the edge of the creek’s bank. He looked down at the clear water. He could see every stone that rested on the sandy bottom. He held the blue sketchbook up to eye level for the last time.
His thoughts once again flew back to the woman in the white room—her pale, thin lips; her scrawny body; her wide, unblinking eyes; her eerie silence. Then he snapped back to reality and stared wistfully at the photograph in his hand.
No more fantasies, he told himself.
In one swift motion, he ripped the pages out of the sketchbook and released them into the breeze. Like delicate flower petals, some of them floated gracefully down to the water. Like butterflies, the others flew up into the wind.
Kurt glanced at the piece of paper with the address he’d found in the phone book. When his father had visited him and insisted that Kurt needed to let go of his mother, Kurt had known that he was right. He threw the wad of paper as far as he could, and the creek soon carried it away on the current of time.
The only object left in his hands was the photograph. He stroked its worn edges with his index finger, but he couldn’t bring himself to throw it, too. He gently placed it beneath the nearest tree, between a few white crocuses. In the picture Kurt’s father’s eyes were focused on his wife. Kurt’s mother’s eyes, however, were looking confidently into the camera. As Kurt walked back down the path, her eyes looked up to the cloudless sky, where the last pages of the sketchbook drifted away with the wind.
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More works from my class yet to come!