I hate the boys in our apartment building too. Once they came back from school, they used to ring the doorbell and ask me to play basketball with them. Every fucking day! I played once because my mom basically pushed me through the door to go pass a ball, bounce a ball, and try to get a ball through a stupid hoop. I was so convinced I was wasting my time that I never went out with those kids again, but they kept on ringing our doorbell for months and months! Can’t you just get it when someone doesn’t want to touch your stupid ball? In the end they got it, and I could enjoy a calm afternoon without anyone ringing the doorbell except for my parents, but that cannot be avoided. When that became the accepted practice, though, I sometime heard those boys talk about me, gathered under my window (we lived on the first floor).
“Maybe he’s got hemorrhoids, so he can’t move around too much, hahahahhaaha!”
I don’t have hemorrhoids! I wanted to shout, but I wasn’t exactly sure, so I asked my mom.
“Do I have hemorrhoids, mom?” I asked one evening at the dinner table. My dad wanted to laugh, but my mom had a very stern, worried face on, so my dad didn’t laugh. Maybe he thought they would differ too much if he laughed and she was shocked.
“Why, baby, would you think you had hemorrhoids?” she asked, her lips moving like painted lines on that edgy, stern face.
“I just wanted to know,” I said matter-of-factly.
“No, you do not have hemorrhoids, I am quite certain,” my mother concluded.
“Excellent,” I replied.
Now I really could tell the boys I didn’t have hemorrhoids, but I had to wait for the right moment. I had to wait for about a week until they gathered up again under my window apparently to tease me. But this time they were saying I was insane, or with a mental disorder, as a respectful person would say. Now I had one more question for my mom.
This went on for a while, but I couldn’t tell the boys anything because I always missed the right time. I thought about simply telling them “I don’t have hemorrhoids” or “I’m not insane” (again, I apologize to those with mental disorders for the discomfort this is causing, or to those with hemorrhoids), but I couldn’t just say something like this with the prospect of it being a lie.
Anyway, a new boy moved into our apartment building. I watched his parents drive a truck with all their furniture and unload it. It took them a full day to bring it all up to their flat and put it in order, I imagine. The boy was shorter than me, but his face said he was of the same age as I. He looked dreamy and not especially concerned with daily problems, so I couldn’t let him get sucked in those annoying boy’s group under my window. I had to approach first.
On that same evening when they moved in, I took a box of cookies from the kitchen cupboard.
“It is a little too late for cookies, don’t you think, darling?” my mom sang. Her voice became so high-pitched on “-ling” that my jaw tightened to protect my ears from disintegrating.
“I know that, mom. I will simply take them up to the new neighbors’ flat. They might want to eat them for breakfast.”
“This is such an amazing idea, darling! Would you like me to come with you?” I had to get out before my head had exploded from the scream-like pitch.
I took the elevator from the first floor, our floor, to the fifth, their floor. From today on they would occupy flat No 53, which required you to turn right after you left the elevator. You close the door of the elevator carefully because otherwise it slams and makes the whole building jump, turn right, make three or four steps and come to a halt in front of the Richards’ door. On that particular evening I rang the doorbell as shortly as I could. My feet were trembling, and my hands were trembling, and my entire torso was trembling. I had to succeed on this mission, I had to unite myself with this new, dreamy boy because otherwise we were both lost, or so I liked to think, because there was no reason to believe that he would also be lost if he didn’t join me. If I had been just an evening late, he could have blended with those typical, cruel assholes who, nevertheless, still made my spine send a chill across my whole body whenever I thought of them.
He didn’t choose those boys, as I know now, but back then when I stood in front of that stupid door, I didn't know. I listened to the footsteps drawing closer from within and wondered whose they might be. In a few second, the mother opened the door with the father behind her back and peering at me from above her shoulder. My heart had come up in my throat, so I looked down to retain some composure and extended both arms towards the newcomers. The box of brown cookies with pieces of milk chocolate, also brown, startled them just as much as my face pointing straight at the floor. The mother touched my head and my hair with a surprisingly warm hand. She said they couldn’t take the cookies, but I shoved them in her stomach, so she had to take them. I caught a glimpse of their boy as he approached down the hall behind his father to see what was going on: in case he missed something on this first day of living in the New Flat, he would never forgive himself. He looked at me, and a child’s eyes met another child’s eyes, which shouldn’t be anything special, only in our case it was. My victory depended on this stupid little boy who suspected nothing. The mother asked me to come inside, but I frantically refused by shaking my head in such a way that every single hair on it must have held on to its follicle with all it might. The three of them must have found me interesting, but my feet felt like gummi bears by now, so I retreated to my elevator.
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