by Cole
“Sir, I really don’t feel comfortable with this.”
The large man held out a bottle of lotion.
“C’mon, it’ll only take a bit. Do you want to live your whole life like this? Scared?” The man spoke in a Scottish accent that was as thick as the rest of him.
“Not scared, just uncomfortable. As in, I really don’t want to put lotion on your back,” I replied.
The large man scoffed and waddled away. I sat back down on my towel and resumed reading The Lord of the Rings. My bliss was interrupted a page and a half in by the lady next to me on her cellphone. It sounded like she was on a business call. Her son was making sandcastles a few feet away. He was on a leash. “Good job,” I thought to myself.
I was never a religious person. I’ve always believed that when things happened, they did so for no reason other than chance. Things go well because not everything can be bad. Things go wrong because, well, that’s just the way life is.
“Go to the beach. Get some sun. It might be the best thing for you.”
My therapist’s words echoed in my head. I sighed as I put my book down. The beach was completely packed. Mostly with pasty white people, and speedo-clad old men. In the distance, I could barely make out a bearded figure stumbling around. Where the figure walked, others seemed to steer away. Finally, the figure and I crossed paths. The bearded man stopped in his tracks the minute he saw me. “Jacob! What’s going on?”
My eyes widened. “I… what?” I said.
“It’s me, Tom! From high school?”
Flashbacks of mysterious paper bags and cheating on exams went through my head. I had nothing to say to this man. “Oh…Hi there.” I finally said. He didn’t blink that much.
“It’s been a long time! You busy later?” he asked.
“I… guess not,” I said. I shouldn’t have said that.
“Well if you’re not, I need to do some stuff, and if you’d give me a ride, you’d really be helping me out.”
His hair was long and scraggly. The width of his eyes, and the way he always looked behind was truly a sight to behold. Why I agreed to help him, I have no idea, but the whole time, I felt something I haven’t felt in quite some time. Alive.
“Drive that-a-way,” he said as we got into the car.
“All right.”
The way he looked around, quickly scanning the road reminded me of a rat. Somewhere along the ride, he pulled a rag out of his back pocket, and inhaled deeply. “You after a bump?” he said, handing me the rag.
“No, I’m… driving,” I said.
He coughed violently before saying, “Suit yourself.”
Finally, we arrived at some location. It was a poorly lit, scraggly neighborhood that matched Tom’s hair well. “Give this guy a second,” he said.
Across the street, a man came out of a house, if you could even call it that. The man was in his late twenties. He was wearing a clean white wife-beater and a pair of jeans that were probably blue at one point. His boots were covered in the same grime that covered his pants. I was pretty sure that this man only wore those jeans and boots, but washed his shirts.
“Do you have the money?” the man asked. His voice shook when he talked.
“I… No,” Tom said. The man put his head further through the window. The white in his eyes was especially white.
“He cool?” The man asked.
“Yes. Yes, I am,” I said without looking straight at him.
“All right, Tommy, I knew you weren’t gonna pay, so go to Train Bike’s house, and he’ll hook you up. I need it by tonight.”
At this point, I was already way out of my comfort zone. We pulled up to a house as dingy as the last. “Who’s Train-Bike?” I finally asked.
“A guy. Wait here,” Tom said before getting out of the car. I waited for about five minutes before hearing a bang in the house. Suddenly, Tom ran out of the house holding four VCRs that looked about ten years old. He got in, and threw the VCRs in the back. “Who’s Train-Bike?” I asked again.
“Drive!” he replied. A man ran out of the house wielding a metal baseball bat. As I put the key in the ignition, I dropped it. Baseball bat man yelled out “TOM” and smashed the back window. I finally got the car started and sped away.
“You should get a new license plate,” Tom said.
I dropped Tom off at the wife-beater man’s house and sped away before anyone could come out of the house. I don’t know what happened to Tom, or what the man wearing the wife-beater did with those VCRs, but I remember that day, because that was the day I found God. I knew there had to be a God because I survived.
There is a God, and he’s up there, laughing at us.
