Chapter 5

It had been a month since classes have resumed from summer break following graduation last March. Larry and I had been hanging out in the library almost every day during breaks. I exhausted all the ways to get rid of him so I just let him be. His machine gun of a mouth was a daily struggle though. Maybe it was the two people living inside of him that made him sort of like a talking machine that never ran out of stories to tell. His stories were often met with cold reception from me but that did not matter to him. He could talk for hours on end mindless of whether I was paying attention or not. That's the thing about Larry. He's so natural, perhaps that's one of the reasons why people were drawn to him. We tend to get drawn to people by the parts of them we aspire to be. Larry's an open door, giving access to everyone who wanted to go inside without prejudice. A very dangerous characteristic. We're totally opposite in that regard. I could not possibly leave the door open for everyone. If I did, my walls would be crumbling down and I would lose my shit altogether. Keeping a safe distance from the world was my way.

A teacher's meeting was called earlier on so we stayed in the library for the rest of the morning. I buried my face in the pages of the book I was reading. He was busy tinkering on his Polaroid camera. Assembling and disassembling. He requested for me to read out loud so he would know what I was reading. Rejected. He asked to borrow my Walkman. Couldn't. We compromised and shared the headphones instead.