Two weeks had passed since the first meeting, and the address stayed in Thomas's empty pencil tin, like a martyr's relic bones. He had yet to open it up, but that dull Saturday morning didn't include any other plans. Address crumpled in Thomas's fist, he pondered throwing it out and forgetting, but curiosity overtook him. Had it been a much earlier time, with less crazies and less suspicion, he would have probably gone over without qualms. But what if the stranger had sinister intentions? A kid getting beat up and laughing over the blows was enough excitement for a whole month, and it wasn't even the end of May yet.
He flattened the sheet of paper, the written letters surprisingly small, almost as though they did not want to be seen. Oh, he knew of this apartment complex. The 40 bus passed by it, which he usually took to buy art supplies in a shop in White Plains. All this time, Felix had lived there.
It was then that Thomas came to a realization that Felix had not even asked for his name. That was wild; if he had not been too curious before, he certainly was now. Against better judgment, he took the bus, and carried a pocket knife, a useless precaution if the kid had a gun, which was unlikely anyway. In the rare possibility that this would be a threat to his life, martial art classes and all, it was better than staying at home and being glared at by his Aunt Rose.
The bus ride took twenty minutes, and he arrived at one in the afternoon. Third floor, number 8. Thomas rang the bell, and was greeted by Felix, in sweatpants and a white shirt, who looked pleased with himself in a subdued sort of way.
“Hey! Come in. Looks like you decided to show up.”
“Um, yeah. My name is Thomas, by the way.”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot to ask you that. Thanks for telling me, I must look really weird now.”
“It's fine.”
“You know my name, right?”
“Yeah, it was on your name tag.”
“Alright, cool.”
The apartment living room was impeccably clean, if sparse. Not a spot of dust on the coffee table or the little book shelf. They did not have a television- who watches actual TV anymore- and had a razor thin laptop at the corner, black and sleek. The walls were devoid of any decoration, other than one photograph of a younger, perhaps six or seven-year old Felix that was almost easy to miss, hung by the door.
The table had a plate of orange vitamin apples, the skin a bright tangerine. It was sliced up neatly into wedges, accompanied a cup of peanut butter. Felix took the plate and offered it to him after getting one for himself.
“My mom keeps buying these. She says it's better to get vitamins from actual food, which is why the vitamin water stuff doesn't sell as well anymore.”
Thomas looked at it questioningly, but thought it better to be polite, taking a piece. He always considered the flavor to be an overpowering mixture of what tasted like orange artificial sweetener, and not like one would expect from a real apple. Dipping it in peanut butter, as Felix did, seemed even more unpalatable.
“Sit down,” Felix told him, all too eager. Thomas did so, and after finishing the cut apple, decided to put out his questions.
“So, Felix. Why'd you invite me here?”
“I was bored. Don't worry though, if you think I invited you here to hurt you or something, then you made a big mistake. Look at me. Do you honestly think I have the body to hurt anyone?”
A good point, but Thomas still had qualms.
“People don't randomly invite strangers into their houses though. It's not like it's the 1950's or biblical times.”
“Mostly I just wanted to see if you'd actually come. And you did, so now we're friends. I think.”
Thomas frowned. “It doesn't work that way.”
Felix had a look of contemplation, which held for a good ten seconds.
“If it didn't, you wouldn't have come here.”
Another good point. An irrational kind of anger was forming in Thomas, though he was normally not one to ever get angry.
“Alright, so we're friends now. Mind telling me your likes and dislikes? Dreams? Aspirations? Fears? The kind of stuff friends are supposed to know about each other.”
Smiling, the other boy shrugged, and began to speak. His voice was plain, slightly higher than average pitch, and had a peculiar kind of power.
“I like reading old blogs of people from years ago, old archived discussions on late nineties and early 2000’s. I like old music. I like sleeping. I like knowing people who I don’t know. I like watching people walk by, sitting in subways and buses. I like to see people happy and suffering. I like making fun of rich kids, and get beat up, because even though they’re ugly they’re beautiful too- everyone. Everything. I’m afraid of dying, but at the same time if I lose, I probably will go about doing it.”
Thomas held in his breath. There was no possible way to follow that up.
“...Lose? What do you mean, lose?”
“Life is beating me up. Worse than those private school boys. I know I’m not going to win. I give it till I’m twenty-four. If things don’t look up by then I’ll kill myself.”
“That- that... you shouldn’t do that. I’m sure you’ll have people who’ll miss you.”
No more smiles in the room.
“My mother gets a new boyfriend every week and pays no attention to me. She lives off what’s left of her inheritance, and when I was born that was her saving up more money. We have no close relatives within two states. I have no friends.”
“Except me.” It felt right to him.
Felix nodded solemnly.
“Except you.” Hesitation. “What about you? What are your dreams?”
“I don’t have any. I just sort of live.”
“I’ll see if I can change your mind.”
“I... I’ll see if I can change your mind about you killing yourself too.”
They both laughed.
“Good luck to us both then, Thomas.”
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