Soon

Zachary stood next to me with his right hand firmly held, gripped with his hands stiffly hanged on a long, metal handlebar inside the train. I would constantly catch him side-eyeing at me with "that" look: frowned and seemingly filled with discomfort. A very awkward atmosphere surrounded the already thickened air around us and he might have thought that I had never noticed a thing.

He must've also thought that I had no qualms with the way he always looked at me, as well. But I did. I surely did. I felt, even if the train's overly powerful puffs of cold air that had been flooring the spaces inside the train, that there's a raging fire he had been mustering and being kept under control. A suppressed anger, a volcano that's about to erupt. And he would still cope by making a blank slate of a face, an expressionless canvass.

And it's a good thing that fewer people were inside during this time of the day. A little bit of nudge and he might've already exploded. It was as if walking on melting, thin ice where one wrong move should happen and everything would start cracking and falling apart.

"What a disaster," I thought.

It's written all over your eyes, Zachary. You may lack words for your voices but I know how many of them have been already running inside your creative head, waiting to be released and waiting to be devoured by the world.

Moments in and I didn't realize how I managed to persuade a young guy like Zachary, the uptight classroom representative. Coming with me isn't what I would call plain sailing or a victory in that matter. I wouldn't even mind considering it as sheer of good luck on my side. It's how I managed to have him decide on his own that coming with me to a nearby bookstore and helping him with the project was what made the whole process cumbersome.

It took a lot of being the annoying brat that I was, a few manipulative tactics using his almost failing grades, and a smeared elbow grease. He was an immovable object, but I was an unstoppable force.

"Just hang on a bit more, Zachary. We'll get there soon." I said. It was a slip of the tongue to at least make him feel at ease while he was around my presence.

He shot a direct look at me, gazes all piercing. The ash-darkened color of his thinned hair flowed from the swing. His cheeks were all pale from the cold but the vague redness was seemingly noticeable. The intense grip of his right hand hardened as if the metal handle were my neck, almost breaking from the pure pressure. I could feel it ran across my hand that had also held the railings, the intensity of his grip, twitching and turning as if the metal handle really was my neck.

"Just... making sure that you're okay with going along with me." I smiled at him with a blur. I felt the cold of my sweats slowly dropping down the side of my face.

He let out a defeated, non-defensive sigh. "As if I had a choice." He really did never had a choice, judging his performance in arts and crafts. The pierced gaze he has diminished on his every word. It was as if he was conceding defeat from a battle, but never in a war.

"At least it's nearby, and it's my favorite of all places," I said. I side-eyed him from a distance, kept the length between us as far as possible. He nudged and rearranged his thick glasses perched across the top of his freckled nose.

"I wonder why?" He said the sarcastic tones in his voice were seemingly noticeable. "I thought that students such as you liked hanging out in dark back-alleyways, vandalized corridors, or empty room-for-rent shabby homes."

"Is that really how you perceive someone like me?" He stopped a moment after I spoke out those words. The soothing, soft timbre might've helped a little. He was seemingly taken aback. I couldn't even blame him for his reactions since it was also the first time for me, to let out a statement that was seemingly suppressed under my psyche.

Words almost escaped from his mouth. They were broken, unfinished. They were as if glued behind his tongue, controlled by an unforeseen force to be never let out. The frowned upon look around his face disappeared and the moped feelings discontinued come what may.

The silence was deafening. "I'm sorry," he then said. Those words broke the chilling ice. He looked outside the windows of the train, followed the silhouettes of the buildings that came. "It was off-character for me to have you judged, let alone be judged by someone like me."

His piercing gazes softened. The grip of his hand untightened and it felt as if I could breathe again. The air around us settled for a peaceful resolute. But the fight isn't over, let alone the war, as his signature blank visage predominantly showed throughout the rest of the trip.

Not that his words hurt me or whatever, but it really was an offbeat from our usual squabbles. It was as if the volcano he had been keeping under watch exploded and was quickly controlled.

"It really didn't matter," I said. I almost reached for his shoulder, tapped it. I almost even gave a hug, which was also off-character for someone like me. Almost nudged him that his words were merely the assurance that they weren't below the belt. "We get those things all the time, those preconceived notions. And we lived to their expectations since we realized we could never change the way other people think about us even if we tried our hardest."

Zachary seemed stunned. He grew quiet with every passing minute, scratched the back of his head every now and then. He would side-eye me with a different look, a look that's unlike the ones I've always seen from him. His ash-darkened hair slightly covered his expressions but I saw how the paled colors of his cheeks went mild beet-red.

"Still, I'm sorry fo-"

"Those things you said were nothing but slaps on the wrists." I tried to keep him assured that there was nothing wrong with what he had said. He was losing some composure, apparently. And I didn't really want him to have himself embarrassed in front of me. "Besides, I should be the one that had been dishing out apologies."

"What for?" He said. The sound of his voice softened as if they were whispers.

"For the things I've put you through."

"That doesn't really matter to me." He said while the straight look of his face outside the train shifted to mine. "I get that a lot even from my old school that's why I may have understood what you and the others are going through." He drew a smile, one filled with solemnity. They weren't entirely happy, they weren't entirely sad. It was a non-descriptive curve, an impossibly answered arch. It was something that etched itself inside my head.

"I guess I have to apologize for reading your notebook, as well, without any of your consen-"

And with a sudden snap of a finger, his smile disappeared. It turned into a distraught, slightly petrified manner. His eyes widened while the darkened color flickered and gleamed. The redness of his cheeks turned into the color of fresh flowers of rose.

"You did what?" He said with a voice that almost screamed and squeaked. The grip of his hand tightened, but not as suffocating as before; not as something that was held around my neck. I felt that something had changed with the atmosphere, and something between us change, something I still couldn't put a finger on.

He calmed down sooner than I thought, with the fingers of his left arm slowly massaging the curves of his forehead.

"Soon..." He said. The rumbled sound of his voice gritted his teeth. I smiled, controlling my laughter from coming out, and tried to hide it from him using my free arm's palm. "So that's why your sudden use of vocabulary got bigger. We'll talk about it, soon." He continued.

"Yeah, yeah," I said. I looked outside the silhouettes of the buildings disappearing away from the movement of the train. The trees were empty with leaves, and the fall of snow will follow soon. "Don't worry, Zachary, we'll get there soon."