"Just as we tend to assume the world is as we see it, we naively suppose that people are as we imagine them to be" -Carl Jung.



•••••••••

Jordan waits for me outside the school. The parking lot is filled, but my eyes trial towards the vacant parking space near mine. Shawn is not at school yet.

"Hey, Kale!" Shannon yells from across the lot.

"That girl," Jones appears from behind some car I don't see, "she just won't give you a break, man."

I know he is smiling in her direction. Shannon likes me. I love Shawn, Shawn hates her, Jones is obsessed with Shannon. It is like of missed communication and inevitable consequences.

"She's all man," I pat his shoulder.

I feel him smile.

The car door locks behind me and we are walking towards the school. There's been six times Shawn was not at school before me. My mind wonders towards the bad, the time when she nearly overdosed the night before. Her mother could not find her.

"...which means I lost, " Jordan says.

"Lost what?"

"Nothing."

"Have you seen Shawn?" I asked him before entering the double doors into Bridgeport.

"I am not your keeper," he exhaled before pulling the door of the school open. I want that to be a joke but everyone knows the story of that night. It had been a big party the night before, down Northpark, a neighborhood where she lives. Shawn found a line and followed it to the end. Stories crowded the school about her that she was nothing but troubled and was a drug addict. She is not a drug addict, I tell myself. She will be here soon.

I laugh because it is a light joke, this is not a joke, but I want to joke about it.