first draft - an ode

Johnny is a boy from down the street. Sometimes I see him through the window in my room. He struts down the sidewalk, in a way that makes me think he doesn't care. That is what people say anyway. I've heard talk. The brim of his leather cap leaves a dark pool over his face. Despite the darkness, I can still decipher the look he has. A sardonic grin, a bit askew as if the midst of cruel laughter, with his bunched up above the obscured eyes. The neighborhood girls who cross his path quickly pass him, even darting aside into the street to let him pass, yet as soon as they do they give each other a look and huddle together. Secrets pass between them. At night, when I am trying to sleep, sometimes I think I hear his motorbike in the distance. It is likw the animals at the zoo have been set free. It frightens me. I wonder where he is going. If only I could know. How easy it would be to slip outside.

I've seen him also at the cafe, sitting at the bar, slumped over. His leather boots perched on the handles of the stool, one foot fidgeting. I stare at it, the scuffed-up boots. Some boys my age cause a scene in the next booth over. Napkins and fries are flying. My mother mumbles at me about hooligans and boys like that. The boy at the bar looks like Johnny, at least I think it his him. If he only turned around, he'd notice me. I am like him, and he'd know it when he looked at me. His freedom reminds me of the smell of the gas pump at the gas station where my father fills up the car. He was there too, leaning against the Texaco sign, some insignia embroidered into his leather jacket.

The summer has been so long, and it is harder to sleep. Every night, I hear his motorbike crackle down the town's streets, perhaps farther, it seems to reverberate forever. There is a field a few blocks away, behind the bank, that I sometimes visit, but not past the fence. When I look out at the window, past the sidewalk and the apartments, I can see the field. In the morning, in the afternoon on the days when I come home from school during the school year, it is there. The messy colors of the horizon seem to sink into it. I dream of distant lands and wind and sidewalks, some sidewalks broken up. There is a curb across the street from it, before the shambled fence that I like to balance on. Teenage boys on their bicycles hurtle past, their loud voices shattering the air. Are they yelling at me? God, I hate them.

There was a dance one night, not long before school started again. I'll never forget that night. There was a horrible accident.