Saturday's Storyteller: OneWord - A Second Take, Expanded

by Belinda Roddie

NOTE: As part of a lesson I taught one of my students, I typed a second response to the OneWord prompt "Achiever," which was from September 23rd. After this, I proceeded to expand the story a bit more. While again, this is not your run-of-the-mill Storyteller, it is a chance for me to show off a slightly different pattern in my writing - as well as show how tempting it is to add even more to a completed OneWord blurb. Enjoy.

In order to be an achiever at anything, you must first learn to care. For Thomas Estrel, caring was not exactly a quality he necessarily shared with his peers. In fact, he was superb in the peculiar, yet understandable, art of apathy. Every day, when he went to school and went from school, you could find him with his flat gray cap lopsided on his head, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans, and an unlit cigarette drooping from his lower lip. Not because he was trying to be artistic, but because he typically forgot his lighter at home.

I had seen Thomas around campus since he was a freshman. His disinterest in school was palpable – everyone could smell it on him. It surprisingly had a bitter, yet rich, smell, though I wondered if that was because he drank coffee twice every morning. I knew this because he walked around campus aimlessly with a styrofoam cup in his fist more than half the time. We had never interacted. I couldn’t even remember if he attended class for the entire first two years of his high school “career.”

I first talked to Thomas on the evening of the first rival football game in his junior year, just as I was dropping off the star quarterback, who happened to be my brother, by the left corner of the field. My brother walked jauntily off, almost limping and making me question just how he could be an athlete to begin with, until his green and gold jersey melded with both the artificial turf of the field and the dry, drought-stricken grasses of the adjacent hills. I was about to put my truck in reverse and drive off when Thomas appeared right behind my bumper, his tall, bulky frame stark and jarring in the smeared glass of my rearview mirror. He did not seem to be drunk or high, just contemplative, right in the middle of the parking lot, in the path of my potential exit.

Before I managed to honk the horn or rev my already exhausted engine up to a growl to startle the boy, he was already walking toward the passenger side of my seat. I was eighteen years old, had just received my driver’s license, and was now mentally debating whether or not I was being carjacked. I clumsily yanked back the sleeve of my flannel shirt in an attempt to expose the slight muscle beneath, as if to intimidate the poor bastard like I was some sort of threat to him. When he tapped at my window, I most likely had the look of a frightened hare about to leap into the bushes.

Thomas stood still as I labored over the crank; my truck was too old to have automatic windows. Bit by bit, in loud protest, the dusty glass squeaked into the shelter of latex and fiberglass and alloy. He was wearing his gray cap, a red corduroy jacket, and jeans that pooled around the tips of his boots yet still rose high enough to cover his hips. A cigarette, unlit, dangled from the right side of his mouth.

When he didn’t speak first, I probed him: Was there anything I could do for him? He shook his head no, almost looking a bit embarrassed, as if the very sight of me offended him. I was about to pull my beanie over the shaggy crop of hair around my ears when he stopped me.

“No, don’t do that.” He shook his head again, then sighed. “You just looked like someone I know.”

“Who?”

He shrugged, a gesture I would become used to. It figured that a young man with a mastery of indifference would use the all-too common, perhaps even clichéd, lurch of his shoulders to show me the all-powerful sign of his “Meh” factor. Regardless, I was humored. I pried for more information.

“Do I look like a boy you know or a girl you know?"

Again, I was given a shrug as a retort. Behind him, a horn blared. Some suburban mom carting a linebacker was becoming peeved by the slowdown in the parking lot. I let my truck slip backward before spinning it into a lazy C toward a spare parking space – a rarity at game time, but a commonality an hour before. Thomas trotted after me.

“You play football?” he asked. I wondered if he was trying to make a joke. I laughed.

“No. My brother does.”

“Do you go to this school?”

“Graduated last year.”

“I’ve got one more year.” Thomas sighed again. Sighing and shrugging were his greatest skills in his toolbox. “Maybe I just recognize you for you. Being around. Whatever.”

“Were we in class together?”

His blank look said it all. I changed tactics. Idling my truck, I leaned back in my car seat and pulled my sleeve back down over my wrist. “I’m Rory. No one special. I got Cs in everything.”

“You going to college?”

“Does it look like I am?”

For the first time, Thomas gave me a slight smile. He was somewhat invested. I was impressed.

“No idea what you’re gonna do?”

I snorted. “I’m really good at scooping orange chicken into bowls, if that’s worth anything.”

Thomas had the epitome of a square face. Rather than his jawline curving and dipping into a point, it sprouted into two stark corners where unmaintained sideburns ran to meet the bend of his Adam’s apple. Besides having borderline mutton chops, his eyes looked small only because of the brows above them. To my curiosity, they were almost as gray as the hat on his head. They grew outward like clumps of steel wool collected after it had already done its deep cleaning of rust. And yet his darker skin seemed redder in some areas, as if iron oxide affected his own complexion. He looked like someone had blown brick dust into his face out of spite. He could have climbed out of a chimney and gotten a more consistent color just from the soot.