When I was born it was a difficult birth for my mother. Not so much the C-Section but because my uncle had to go find my father at a local porn shop and tell him the she was in labor, a very rude interruption of his dirty movie.
     I was born with blue eyes and red hair.
     My dad in his infinite wisdom thought it might be cute to tell my very emotional mother a joke. As the doctor brought me in and placed me in her arms my dad looked down and said, “Man, what an ugly kid!”
     My mom was not amused.

     When I was 10 and my eyes and hair had made their change to dark brown, I saw an airport out the windows of our car. The bright lights of the runway illuminated our seats and cast wicked shadows across my brothers’ face, making him seem bigger and scarier than I already thought he was.
     He smiled our crooked smile and whispered in mock fear, “We’re gonna go see Aunt Tina, no!”
     What’s strange is that even now I still don’t remember ever going to visit that wicked witch. What I do remember is that on my birthday that year my father came into to town to visit and took the three of us to a nice restaurant. As we dined a troupe of waiters progressed from the kitchen singing happy birthday. I got super excited as they brought out a huge chocolate cake, but they kept walking and took the cake to another table.
     I did get my own cake later.

     In the spring when I was 17 I sat in a study hall in my prep school doodling a superhero on a note to my girlfriend. Back when I still drew my hair was bleached, my nails were black and my attitude of “Fuck the system,” didn’t go over to well with anyone in authority. Or so I liked to think. Seemed like the only people immune to my stylistic anarchy were Marcus and Ella.
     I was a regular rebel without a clue.
     It was a gorgeous green day and the other seniors and myself had relieved ourselves of our ties. The uniforms were a real killer once the weather got nice, luckily though seniors didn’t have to deal with the mandatory sweaters of the underclassmen and this particular study hall teacher didn’t give a rat’s ass if we were in dress code.
     The pencil broke just as I was beginning to shade in Purple Girls’ super hero tights. “Mal,” I asked the pretty girl in front of me, “You got a pencil I can use?”
     “Nope,” she replied shortly.
      Bitch
      I turned to the back left corner of the room, coincidentally the corner furthest from the teacher engrossed in her romance novel. I couldn’t believe it, Eddie and Vaz were huddled, crouching behind the book rack full of bibles. I didn’t get along with them for the past three years of high school but senior year we when all the discovered the joys of under aged drinking everyone seemed to mingle into one general genre.
      “Tell me you idiots aren’t playing craps,” I said knowing full well.
      “Shhh,” Vaz hissed at me.
      “Dude, shut up man, she ain’t even listening,” chastised Eddie.
      “Yes I am,” came from Mrs. M at her desk in the front, not ever once looking up from her book. “If I don’t see it, I can’t prove it.”
A general chuckle ran through the tiny class and the moron twins exchanged confused glances trying to decide if they were in trouble or not
      “I need to borrow a pencil,” I said getting back to my point. Eddie handed me a chewed up number two from his bag as he put the dice away. “Awesome.”
      When I finally got back Ella’s note I noticed something felt different. I couldn’t have explained it but I felt like I was moving on autopilot. I opened the folded paper, pressed the led to it and began to draw when a guitar chord rung out.
      Maybe in my head but it sounded as clear as day and as close as the next desk, whatever it was it was enough to snap me out of my stupor and look up, and there sitting atop the empty desk at my diagonal was a young man clad in white, feet on the chair, hands folded in front of him smiling a crooked smile while his watery brown eyes burned through me. My own eyes stung and I felt myself start to cry.
      But there wasn’t anyone there. There never was, nor was there a guitar chord ringing out. Because as I looked around the room everything was just as it had been. No one seemed perturbed or bothered since no one else had heard or seen anything.
In the hall way I waited by Ella’s locker and slipped the note through the opening before I realized that I hadn’t signed it.
       “What’s wrong?” she asked as soon as she saw me.
       “How did you know?”
       “I know.” She was so beautiful, she was the only person who could pull off the prep school uniform and still be hot. She was worried though and I guess I really hadn’t tried to figure out in my own mind what had happened. So I told her about the boy in white that no one else saw. She listened as we walked and held my hand in hers.
      “No P.D.A.’s god damn it!” Marcus called out as we passed him.
      “Marcus watch your mouth,” Mrs. M called back to him.
      “What? P.D.A.?”
       When we reached her class she gave me a kiss and said, “Maybe that was your muse.”
       "I thought that was you.”
       “Maybe it was your guardian angel.”
       “I thought that was you too.”
       “Go to class Wonder-Boy”
       “Love you Purple girl.”
       “You better.”
       She went into class and as the bell rang I raced up two flights of stairs to my next class, already forgetting the event that had transpired. It would be six years until I remembered it.

     Vaz died when I was twenty. His wake was a chaotic mess of emotion and confusion. In the three years since high school he had become closer to me than even Marcus. I remember how he kept me sane when Ella and I ended and how I would drive his drunken ass home from the keggers. All the little stuff that proves who our real friends are. It’s funny how things change from high school and on, I was mourning a kid who tormented me for the first few years of our friendship, while his team mates and drinking buddies were in short supply.
     I didn’t cry at my friend’s wake. It wasn’t real. I knew he was gone, but it wasn;t real so I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel anything and I didn’t cry.
     His brother was taking it very hard. Apparently he witnessed the whole accident, I saw him sitting there in a red chair staring into nothing. No one approached him. No one comforted him. No one told him it wasn’t his fault.
     Ella was there. I saw her hugging Vazs’ mom and I selfishly wished she were hugging and comforting me. I missed her, but this wasn’t the place. We didn’t speak for the duration.
     That night I arrived at home still thinking about Ella, the burning tightness in my chest was beginning to be too much for me, so I went to call the one person I knew could cheer me up and make me feel better.
     That’s when I started to cry.

     Ironically she helped me deal with him. Ella saved me, she was my guardian angel and helped me deal with Vaz. Then as time went on it wasn’t about Vaz anymore and it became about us again. I realized that I never stopped feeling for her and that here we were 5 years later and she was still here.
     When I was 23 I proposed.
     I wrote it in a note and left it on her desk at work. I forgot to sign it.

      That year I got in my car accident, on the parkway overlooking the town I was rear ended by a drunk driver, the car spun out and squealed as it hit the guardrail. I felt my chest burn and my head throb and my limbs ache.
     Then I felt nothing.
     I was watching the accident, I was behind my car seeing it being dissected by momentum and friction. Then I felt myself move, and my life began to flash before my eyes.
     I saw myself being born. The black doctor with huge hands that delivered me. My sobbing mother as she held me in her arms. The proud look in my fathers’ eyes. I saw my tenth birthday. My brother playing with me and my new toys, my parents fighting. The damn chocolate cake I got by default.  
     Then I saw myself at seventeen, a punked out kid searching for an identity. I saw this one clearer than the others, I felt myself move through the classroom past Mrs. M, past Mal and her pencils.
I sat down on a desk, feet on the chair and watched myself joking with Eddie… and Vaz. I saw the note folded on the desk, a bad cartoon girl in a cape drawn on it. I knew I was there on the desk but I didn’t have the courage to look down at my own body and see, cause I knew my cloths would be white.
      I watched myself sit down and slowly start to draw. Then what I was waiting for happened, Eddie turned on his CD player and frantically tried to lower the volume but not before a single guitar chord chimed out through his head set.
      I saw myself hear it, I saw myself look up see me. I smiled through watery eyes, and I watched as my brown eyes burned and began to cry.