Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul II

by Jack Canfield

  So I kept my feelings as quiet as a cat hiding from a pack of dogs. But every time I saw him at my friend Tina's house, my heart beat hard and I could barely breathe. When I saw him walking up the street alone, I'd rush over to him and glow in his warmth. He'd wave, smile a weak hello and ask me how I was doing.

  He was an artist and a good one, and the day he gave me a pen drawing of a seagull soaring through the sky, I was in my glory. I saw it as a symbol, a sign perhaps, of affection shown by an older boy who felt it wise to keep

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  his love for me inside. Of course, it was more likely that he just felt sorry for such a gangly kid.

  It didn't matter. I cherished his artwork and truly believed that he would be a great artist someday. If only I had such talent, I'd moan. He'd always tell me that I probably did have a lot of talent. I just hadn't found it yet.

  Somewhere as we were growing older and suffering the pangs of adolescence, Mike lost his ground. I'm not sure if he knew where to put his feet anymore. His family life was a disaster: a mentally ill mother, a father with a wicked second wife (at least that's how the children saw her) and a new baby who took all the interest away from three other kids.

  Whenever I walked by his home, there was always a manoften a different manparked in a car across the street from Mike's house. It happened so often that I began to wonder what was going on. I began to ask questions of my friends. I learned that my sweet, reserved Mike had turned into a high school drug dealer. Not the small kind of drug dealer. He was a big fish and according to my friends, he was in trouble. Someone was closing in on himthe police or the creeps who got him involved in the first place.

  I knew that a lot of kids dabbled in drugsmostly marijuana. But no one, and I mean no one, took the risk of dealing. The odds of getting hurt or busted were far too great in this middle-class neighborhood. I often wondered what led Mike there. Did he hate his parents? Did he feel lost? Did he want payback time for his dad remarrying and leaving his mom? Who knows what went on in his brain. I just wished he had talked to me because I really cared about him. The problem was that he didn't care. And I was too afraid to go to Mike and confront him about whether he was selling drugs.

  When the knock on the door came, I looked out the

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  balcony of my house and saw one of my neighbors standing there. ''I thought you and your family should know I found Mike in the canyon this morning. My sons and I were walking there and I saw Mike bowing as though he were praying. It didn't look too good."

  Our neighbor had held his young boys back as he investigated. Mike was dead. He had hung himself from a tree, and had died in a kneeling position on the ground, his head slumped forward. The news pounded my face as if a block of cement had struck. I thought I would pass out, but instead, I was sobbing. Within the hour, I raced up to Mike's to see how Tina was.

  She was sitting on her bed, just staring out at empty space. I would learn later that she was in shock. In a dull voice, she explained that she and her older brother, Gary, had known that Mike was dealing drugs. After Mike's body was discovered, Gary went into Mike's room and cleaned out Mike's top drawer before the police came. There, tucked underneath a few shirts, was every drug imaginable: LSD, cocaine, pot and an abundance of colorful pills. Soon after, Tina ran away. It took us hours to find her.

  My parents tried to explain why Mike died. But they couldn't. They didn't even know he was a dealer. They didn't know the ugly things we kids faced going to school every day. It was a trying time not only because Mike died, but because I was shocked to peel away the layers and find a Mike I had never known. Or maybe he was that kind, sweet boy who let his difficult life suck him into a world of deceit, fast bucks and danger.

  To this day, I always wonder if he really killed himself or if some other drug dealers helped him along the way. It was just too odd that he had supposedly hung himself from a thin tree limb but was kneeling, his weight supported by the earth.

  I will never know the answer. But I do know this: He

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  was a good artist. I kept that drawing he gave me for years after, always looking at it with wonder and admiration, wishing I could sketch that way.

  I also know that along the way Mike lost his ground, but he gave me a lot to think about, and what I thought about gave me strength. My family moved to the East Coast my first year of high school. My new friends were just beginning to experiment with drugs, and there was tremendous peer pressure for me to go along.

  But by now, I felt old and weary when it came to drugs. Been there, done that, seen what they can do. I decided I wanted the chance to know what I was going to be in the future. Mike had given me some firm ground to stand on.

  Diana Chapman

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  Love and Belonging

  Walking down the steps of the psychology building, I spot my buddy Walter and his girlfriend, Anna. Walt and I have known each other almost all our lives. We grew up next door to each other, and fought and played our way through elementary school, adolescence, junior high and high school. Our parents had been best friends, and life even as recently as a year ago seemed so simple, so secure.

  But now, while I'm struggling with my parents' divorce, Walter's world is intacthis parents are still together and living in the same house where he grew up. My mom is alone now in our house, while Dad is living the life of a newlywed with his second wife, in an apartment across town. I feel my stomach churn as I think of that, and mild irritation as Walter puts his arm around Anna.

  "Hey, Jesse," he says as he sees me. I notice a sudden, self-conscious grin wash over his face. "How was the exam?"

  "Oh, okay, I guess." I wish Anna would disappear. Walter's apparent happiness irritates me, and I suddenly feel very tired. "What are you up to?" I don't care if I seem rude in ignoring Anna.

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  "Well," Walter begins, and his grip around Anna's shoulder tightens, "we're on our way to check out some CDs at that new sound shop down the street. Want to come along?"

  "Nah, I think I'll take a nap before my next class."

  Anna speaks up. "How are you doing these days, Jesse?" I can see the sympathy in her eyes, and I hate her.

  "I'm finejust great. Life couldn't be better."

  "Well . . . " she struggles with what to say next. I find myself enjoying her obvious discomfort. "Sorry you can't go with us." But I hear relief in her voice even as she says it. Walter takes Anna's hand, and together they cross the street.

  Why should they seem so happy and look so secure? They don't have a clue as to what's going on in the real world.

  I turn and walk down the sidewalk and across the Commons. Maybe it's true, what my Coach Carter said, that I have my antennae out these days. It seems as if every couple reminds me of the failure in my family.

  "How can this have happened to my family, Carter? Why didn't I realize what was happening? Maybe I could have done something!"

  Just then Carter picked up a crystal paperweight from his desk and tossed it to me. I caught it purely from reflex.

  "Why did you do that?" I asked, half mad-half serious.

  Looking around the room, he said, "You knew you had to be careful with that paperweight, didn't you, Jesse?"

  "Sure. It might break." I put it back on his desk.

  "People take care of things that seem obviously fragile. Think about it. When you buy a house, you don't expect it to maintain itself. Or a car; you make sure you do things like change the oil every few thousand miles and buy tires when they are worn.

  "With so many things in life, Jesse, you expect to have to care for them, keep a close eye on them, nurture them.

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  We're more careful with an insignificant paperweight than we are with our closest relationships."

  "You're telling me that my mom and dad were careless with their marriage?" I heard my voice rise unnaturally, my fingers clenched in my palms.

  "Not necessarily careless, Je
sse. Perhaps they just expected it to flourish on its own. But marriage, like anything else, won't flourish in an environment of neglect. No one should take a good relationship for granted."

  "But what do I do? You're telling me to accept all thisMom and Dad splitting up; Dad marrying someone I don't even know. She can't take Mom's place. No way!"

  "I'm suggesting that you try to accept it," Carter said gently, "because for you, that's all you can do. You can't change your parents, and you can't change what happened. You don't have to love your stepmother as you do your mother, and probably no one expects you to. But to get beyond this and to be able to handle your parents' new, more complex relationshipsand your future relationships with womenthen you do need to learn to accept what has happened."

  "Well, I just don't see how you can ask me to do that. I can't stand seeing them apart!"

  As I stood up to leave his study he said, "I know you're feeling pretty alone right now. But believe me, you'd be surprised at how many young people have sat in this office and asked me why divorce had to happen in their family. Maybe it will help if you remember that there are a lot of people who are hurting just like you. And rememberthis divorce is not your fault. Don't ever forget that."

  Walking down the street, I see a city bus slow down and then stop at the corner. On impulse, I get on.

  I pay the driver and begin to look for a seat.

  An elderly couple is seated at the back of the bus. I sit beside them.

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  We ride in silence toward town. I glance over at the couple and notice that they are holding hands. The wedding ring on the old woman's finger is a dull gold, and there is a tiny diamond in the center of the band.

  I watch as the old man rests his left hand on top of hers, and I see that his wedding ring matches hers. His, too, is scratched and dull with age.

  As they sit in companionable silence, I notice the resemblance of their features. Both wear glasses, and both have short, pure white, wiry hair. They even wear the same style of shirtsimple white cotton, short-sleeved.

  Occasionally the woman points at something as we pass by, and the man nods in agreement. I am mystified, and yet I feel a sense of peace sitting next to them.

  Before too long we reach their stop. A row of neat, white frame houses lines the quiet side street.

  The old man gets up slowly and pulls his walking stick from the seat next to him. He waits patiently for his wife to get up before he starts to walk to the front of the bus. The woman rises just as slowly and pulls a blue cardigan over her thin arms. He takes her hand, and as they turn to walk to the front of the bus, I catch his eye. I can't let them leave without asking, "How long have you two been married?"

  He looks inquisitively at her. She smiles and gently shrugs her shoulders. It doesn't matter. It hasn't mattered for some time.

  Finally he says in a raspy voice, "I don't know exactlymany years." Then he adds, "Most of our lives."

  They walk down the aisle of the bus and are gone.

  I lean back in my seat. It takes me a few moments to realize that the cold, hard knot in my stomach doesn't seem so tight now. And the face reflected back at me from the glass of the bus window looks a little less tense.

  Watching the colors of the trees slide by, my mind wanders back to the old couple and finally comes to rest on

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  my parents. The realization quietly dawns on me that I have been looking for answers when maybe I don't have to know at all. I don't have to hurt for them and me, too. I don't have to have all the answers about love and life and why things work out the way they do sometimes. Maybe no one has the answers.

  "Hey, buddy," the bus driver says to me. I look up and realize I'm alone on the bus. We're downtown at the square. "This is the end of the line. You can get off here or go back."

  I think for a minute. "Do you go by that new sound shop close to campus?"

  "Yeah, sure."

  "Well, drop me off there," I say. "There's someone there. A friend. And I need to talk to him."

  T. J. Lacey

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  What I Wish I'd Known Sooner

  For the past year or two, I have devoted a section of my home page on the Internet to a list entitled "What I Wish I'd Known Sooner." Since I am seventeen, there are a lot of stupid things I do that make me wish I had already known not to do them! Anyone can add to this listI have received additions from all over the world, by people of all ages. I often add to it myself (after the fact)!

  Some are lighthearted, some are serious, all are very true. Here are a few of the gems:

  Don't drink grape juice while wearing a white shirt and driving to school.

  Don't let your life wait for other people.

  Dropping a cellular phone into a bathtub of water kinda kills the phone.

  Your mother will find out if you dye your hair purple.

  You haven't really lived until you've gotten a 48 on an Advanced Placement U.S. History test.

  Don't ever fall in love with someone who is more than one thousand miles away from you. It usually doesn't work.

  Milk crates make boring pets.

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  If it hurts, DON'T DO IT AGAIN!

  That which does not kill you will ultimately make you stronger.

  Speaking in public gets easier with practice.

  Don't sprint around a pool if you're trying to impersonate Jim from Huck Finn.

  Ten years from now most of what we freak out about won't make any difference.

  All that's gold doesn't glisten.

  Zits always pop up when you really can't afford for them to pop up.

  Always stay after class because that's where connections are made.

  When in doubt, duck. When certain, don't bother, 'cause you're already screwed.

  While driving a car through a gate, always, ALWAYS make sure the gate is open! The consequences might be fatal to your car.

  If you're not living (I mean really living), you're dead already.

  Never pierce your belly button in the dark.

  Just because someone flirts with you incessantly doesn't necessarily mean he or she likes you.

  If your calculus teacher tells you to quit talking after a test or he'll give you a zero for your test grade, he means it. Really.

  Sometimes smart people can do very, very stupid things.

  Being nice to people will get you far.

  The one person you can truly love is often right in front of you.

  Never, ever, EVER let a member of the opposite sex make you compromise your standards. Never.

  Nothing is ever too good to be true (said by Michael Faraday).

  If you start to like a girl, her roommate will immediately start liking you.

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  Parents aren't around forever, and you need to treasure them while they are.

  Don't take the SAT twice if you already have a good score in the first place.