The Sorrow King Read Free

that. What was it?
    He ran a shaky hand through his sweaty black hair. He wanted a cigarette. He thought about the crumpled pack of Marlboro reds stashed in his desk. He needed one because he felt like there was a lot of junk he wanted to clear out of his head.
    He didn’t know why he had written in the notebook. He had never done that before other than really pathetic attempts at poetry that inevitably found their way into the trashcan. He didn’t know where the writings had come from. Why was he thinking about clouds? Maybe it was something they had gone over in science class earlier that day but he couldn’t remember Mr. Parker lecturing about it. He was pretty sure they weren’t covering weather at all.
    The second part . . . He recognized those names. The first three were kids from the high school, fellow students. That wasn’t, however, the only thing linking them. Over the course of the school year, they were the ones who, for whatever reasons, had committed suicide. This was earth shattering news in Gethsemane where there had maybe been one adolescent suicide in the past fifteen years.
    And that last name . . . That last name, he didn’t recognize that at all. If this Jeremy character was one of the suicides then surely he would recognize the name. For each of the other suicides, there had been memorials in the gymnasium and public funerals most of the school had attended.
    And ‘destroyed’? Why had he written that?
    Nearly eighteen and already fucking nuts , he thought, reaching into the desk drawer for the forbidden pack of smokes.
    Not in the house. That was his rule. He knew his dad wouldn’t punish him if he caught him smoking. Ever since the death of Steven’s mother he and his dad had been more like friends than father and son but his heart would definitely be broken if he knew Steven smoked and he didn’t think his dad could handle any more heartbreak in this lifetime.
    He grabbed the crinkly pack, pulled on a pair of tattered black Converse and a sweater that was wadded up on the floor, half-under his bed, and slipped out of the house.
    Slipped out of the house, thinking about the clouds.
    He stood there in the doorway, tugging his tattered moss green sweater down over his waist so the chilly air couldn’t snake across his skin. He thought maybe he would just stand there and smoke his cigarette but, looking up at the bloated moon in the cold depths of space, some magic was worked on him and he decided he would go for a stroll around the neighborhood.
    Green Heights was the middle-maybe-lower-middle class suburb of Gethsemane. A step up from the apartments sprinkling the outskirts of downtown. A long way from Shade Terrace, the suburb on the other side of Gethsemane. Here, in Green Heights, the cars were American or cheap Japanese, many of them purchased secondhand. If the family unit was intact then the chances were pretty good both parents worked. Most of them worked in retail, middle-management, restaurants, warehouses, or factories.
    He liked the little suburb. He liked walking through the neighborhood at night. It filled him with a sense of secret knowledge. The houses all sat quietly, most of the blinds drawn, some of the windows emitting the soft yellow glow of a night owl or the flickering image of a TV most likely left on for comfort more than entertainment.
    The chilly air smelled nice. March in Ohio, winter teetering madly on the brink of spring, creating some kind of wild and schizophrenic season that could bring seventy degree balm one day and snow the next. Tonight it was somewhere in between. Just cold enough to be slightly uncomfortable. Just enough warmth in the breeze to remind him that summer wasn’t far away. People had already begun cutting their lawns and that smell was pervasive, along with the clean scent of laundry being dried and blown out of a vent.
    He walked slowly along, looking up at the sky. The clouds were milky, swirling around the moon, formless and