I Love Mehg Callahan

Chapter 1

Mehg doesn't know what she's doing anymore. She thinks she's got a handle on things, but she's just grasping the smoky air for dear life. Maybe only I can see it. She's just a girl, but then I'm just a guy. I think I get it, but she doesn't know what's going on.

It's dark in this room but its not a dreary day. I figure the emails he sent must have been the thing that brought her down enough to pull that last cigarette out of the pack. Sometimes she needs life to go away. That's what she tells me as she lights it. "Wanna puff? she inquires, but I'm not one for suicide. She knows that. She knows me. She just always offers.

I watched the air fill with toxins. Mehg saw the beauty in the smoke, watching it dance upward and out the open window, carried away forever by a gust of winter wind. I always take advantage of these moments to glance at her. Her simple ways make her radiant, from her short, curly, yellow-blonde hair to her old tennis shoes she stole from someone, somewhere, so very long ago. I have to be careful, though. She cannot see me smiling. I force my eyes to the bleak walls.

"You have a way about you, Rekk," she says. I notice her eyes are on me. They are a simple brown. "How's that?" I ask. She considers the question. "You can speak without speaking and hear what I'm not saying. You can look at these walls and see colors and sing poetry with your heart." This all sounds like nonsense to me, but a good nonsense. The kind of nonsense that makes classic novels and heartfelt music.

We are quiet for a time, thinking deeply. I am thinking about her. She is thinking about Mark.

"You know, its not gonna last forever," I say. She nods in reply and takes another drag. A moment later she looks at the floor. "But I want it to," she mutters.

It hurts her so bad to not be wanted that she will settle for the lowest, most vile of all creatures on this Earth. Anything to make her feel loved. Even this guy, Mark, treats her like dirt and shell soak up every minute of it like a burst of sunshine in her muggy hole. She knows she deserves better but her modesty holds her back from having anything truly worth her while. Maybe she likes to suffer, I don't know.

Mehg looks longingly at her walls. They are the color of a desert, and just as barren as one. In her head she is planning a meticulous work of art, her eyes crafting each design into another coherently. Art is one of the few things in which she knows what she wants. Socially, she is clueless. I'm a hypocrite to say it, I know. But it worries me sometimes to see my best friend be so hurt all the time and only because of her own attitude towards life. I wonder if she realizes its within her power to change. She can make this room light again and breathe oxygen again and make all that dark world go away right now if she wanted. She just won't. Of everything in this room, she is missing the most obvious, the most key ingredient to her existence. She is missing me.

For seven years I have been right in front of her, watching her kiss her beloved boyfriends, helping her where her crazy mother couldn't, making up excuses for why she wasn't in class. It's like I'm not even there anymore. I'm just the shoulder she cries on when that boy disappears, the friend she can count on to help her run a house empty of any real forms of life. She doesn't see that I'm standing here, and that I know everything she's thinking just because I know her so well. She doesn't notice that I am the only person alive in this world that gives a damn, and that I alone love Mahg Callahan.

She puts the cigarette out on the floor, putting another black stain what might have once been a decent looking white carpet. She treats this house with as much respect as it has treated her. She figures it promised her a safe haven; once she entered these walls she shouldn't see pictures of her father, long deceased, and hear her mothers drunken cries from the back room; "Mehg, will you get me some water?", "Mehg, will you vacuum the downstairs?", "Mehg, I'll never love you how you want me to." No, this house has never been fair to her, and it is the house that will pay for this breach of trust.

We wander out into the livingroom and she has made the decision to go see Mark. She needs to be alone with him and talk things through. Mehg is the type to never leave buisness unfinished because it will make her crazy until the day she dies. I'm the designated driver in this situation. She had her liscence revoked by the police man who caught her driving after a particularly drunken party. That makes me her permanent chaperone, or at least until she gets a fake i.d. or next year rolls around. Either way, at least I feel useful for now.

My car is small and red. I couldn't care less about the brand or origin, just that it runs. Mehg says that knowing something's history only ruins it for a person and it's better to remain ignorant. I guess she's right, mostly, but if I had not known her for such a long time I'm not sure I would be able to withstand her drama. I stay because it doesn't bother me to help, it only bothers me when she's hurting herself. Those are the moments I find most unbearable.

"Why are you doing this?" I ask as we climb in. It was basically a rhetorical question. I knew she had no answer for me. Admitting she needed someone to care for her would be like admitting our dependance on oxygen. Doing that would cause disastrous reprecussions on the economy, with the loss of everything that once polluted the precious air and the regrowth of trees we had cut down for food and animal pastures. It was all so pointless and stupid to be driving over here to see the one person who can make her feel like shit without even trying. She may very well emerge from that house now appearing from around the corner with a broken heart and another craving for a different drug. Either way, I'll come back for her and I'll take her home and I'll make sure she is at least as happy as she can be before I go back to my home.

Chapter 2

The day does not end as uneventfully as I might have hoped. Mark had gotten fed up with Mehg's partying and he was tired of worrying about who she was cheating on him with. He accused her, even, of having an affair with me. He doesn't know how out of the question this is.

Mehg is crying again. She's sitting with a silent tear rolling down her cheek with a look of reminisence on her face. House after house passes by on this suburban road but her expression stays the same. She's off somewhere else. Someday I want to find where that is so I can rescue her from her demons. She needs a hero.

I stop the car at her house and look at her. It's all I can take to see so much pain on that already tortured girls face. She has already lost a family, why take away so much more? If only she could see my concern, my arm extended to take her into my embrace. If only, if only...

She looks at me and takes me up on my offer. She leans into me and lets her wet eyes hit my t-shirt. It should be uncomfortable because we are in a car but it feels so good just to hold her. I put my other hand up to touch her hair and it's all I can do to restrain myself from kissing this beautiful woman in my arms.

Suddenly she feels awkward, probably feeling the impulse to rid herself of male affection. All men ever do is hurt you, she's thinking, and it's a wonder she's not a lesbian. She says goodbye to me and promises to call me tomarrow. The footsteps she takes towards the door are broken and you can tell she is freezing from the wind. She never wears a coat, she never wants to be outside anymore. She thinks it would be a waste of money.

When I'm sure she's made it inside I pull out of the driveway and head home, still half feeling the ecstacy of what just went on and then also feeling terrible for seeing her in such pain and only thinking of myself. I wanted to apologize but that would be voicing my feelings towards her and that could never happen. I need my best friend, and telling her the way I feel about her could only mean losing her. Without her, I'm no one.

My residence is a short building with brick walls exactly identical to every other house around it and even further on down each side of our street. In fact, the only way I can be sure it's my home is that my mother put a life-sized cow sculpture in our garden. She thought it was funny, a kind of play on how we've moved to the countryside from the great city of New York and we've turned ourselves into humble folk. Mehg had always found it to be a nice addition. Standing out is what she lives for. I, for one, hate that cow, and I don't understand why no one just wants to fit in anymore. Everyone has to make their own little identities apart from the rest of society but I just like making good grades and watching movies with my best friend Everything else seems so unimportant. Nobody will ever march up to you in thirty years and ask you who you were in highschool, what outfit you were wearing March 30th of 2005. It's stupid be so self-absorbed.

I walk in and am greeted by my little sister. She's 3 and paints me pictures. Today she happens to be munching on a fist full of cheerios and smiling at some creepy-looking kids show on the television. She squeals happily that I am home and runs over. She hugs the bottom of my jeans and I lean down to say, "Hey, there, Nora!" I sit on the floor and listen to her talk about her cheerios until my mother walks in from the kitchen. "Erik! You're home!" she says, obviously worn from today's work. "Your father won't be home for at least another hour so you have to help me in the kitchen, okay? I'll give you a bit to clean up but-"

"Okay, Mom."

I tell Nora that something incredible is happening on t.v. and then make my escape. In my room I feel like I'm surrounded by things that aren't mine. There's a generic bedspread with matching generic sheets. Everything in my room came straight from the local everything-store and hasn't been altered one bit. I liked my room that way, but it came with an eerie feel of owning nothing whatsoever in a space that has been yours for years. I see a sock on the floor that has probably been here for weeks but I just hadn't taken the time to notice it. It was Mehg's. I'm suddenly sent into a whirlwind of memories about how that sock must have gotten there, that night she came over drunk and told me she had gotten caught driving by the cops. She had told me how angry her mother was that she, herself, had to pull out of her drunken stupor and get her daghter freed from jail. Her mother had been so mad that night, not wanting to believe her daughter was the way she was. Every one in that house is in a state of denial. Meghs mom hit her across the face and told her to get out. Here was the only place to go. Megh had walked through what had then been autumn weather to find me half-asleep on my bed. She had cried that night, too, but I hadn't gotten as close to her as I had today.

Today! Oh, I can't describe that swelling feeling in my stomach any better than just that. I want to scream. I want to smile and laugh and throw myself around. But I remain focused and only allow myself a slight grin as I change my clothes and head back out to the kitchen.

She called me the next day, just as she promised. Mehg seemed to have gotten over the pain of being dumped unusually quickly. She was probably just faking her happiness but I didn't mind. Anything to see her smile.

"Rekk! There's a party tonight. We should go."

It seemed like a fair enough plan. I was mildly suprised that Mehg would think of going to a party where she may very well see Mark the day after they had broken up and equally as confused about why she kept bringing straight-edge old me to crazy highschool parties such as this one. I wasn't cool enough to drink or smoke or snort or pop pills just to make me want to dance or something. I served as the sober one who made sure Mehg didn't do anything too drastically stupid and made sure she got home safely. You'd think this would annoy me terribly, but I like playing the role of protector.

"Sounds great. What time?"

"It starts at about 8, but we can go later if you can't get out."

"Oh, no, that will be fine. I'll pick you up right about then, alright?"

I could hear her smile through the phone.

"Awesome."


Chapter 3

It is 8 o'clock sharp that I threw on my jacket, yelled to my mom I was going to a movie, and am on my way out to do exactly what my mom would never guess I am doing. Mehg hops into the car and we drive a few miles before we manage to reach the huge, booming country-side mansion owned by some notorious guy a grade above us who had been left alone for the weekend and aquired enough of a following to actually have a party.

I step inside this massive house and realize that there is more space in this one room than both mine and Mehg's houses combined. People are passed out on the couches or making out in the more secluded corners. Towards the middle there are thrashing crowds of dansers, some screaming lyrics along with the song blasting from above their heads. Another party, nothing special.

Mehg stops her gaze in one shadow of the room. She looks cold. When she gets like that I become rather distraught because I know the next move is a lot of intoxication. She's not the type to confront. She just watches Mark slowly move his hand up the leg of a brunette with tan skin. She does not let her hand tremble and spill her beer. She just waits and stares, thinking only of every time he touched her those same ways just a few days before, and knowing that he was not thinking about her.

In this moment of our silence, standing next to the tables, me watching her, her watching him, that I see the repetitivity in this stance. It is in this moment that I decide to drink. I cannot say exactly why I chose to do this and I can't say that it exactly matters, but I will go on to blame it on that reccuring pose.