A Vacant Green

It’s strange how life can be intertwined, twisted and curled as if circling in on itself, like an infinity symbol. I had no idea at the time how much the boy in the forest was going to mean to me. How much he already meant to me. A strange, fated significance. He was my best friend. My only friend. But he was much more than that.

I lived next to the woods with my father, in a small house on the outskirts of town, imbedded between the two, neither here nor there, like an existence in a mystical place of limbo. And that’s what it felt like. I didn’t have any friends in school because of it. My father had grown up in the same house with his father, a heritage of sorts passed down through the generations. A fated infinity symbol I was afraid I’d be a part of forever. My father’s only rule was to stay within sight of the house. A law I dared not break, least of all for the fear of being lost. Being lost was not so frightening to a young boy, until he’d found himself so. But with the soul of a curious child residing within me, I found myself intrigued by the depths of the land surrounding my home.

It was almost the moment the house disappeared from view that the woods transformed into a forest, the brown morphing into green, like some sort of portal into an opposing world. Never would I have dreamed that there’d be a body of water out here, but as I pulled back a giant Anthurium leaf, there it was. A still pond, unmoving, yet crystal clear like you’d expect only of moving, flowing water. The surface shimmered and sparkled, pearls of light glimmering off it from the rays pouring down through the canopy of greenery above. That was the first time I saw him. Sitting over on a small grass landing by himself, staring at the water, as if the water was reflecting his thoughts.

“Umm, excuse me. Hi there.” I wasn’t usually so forward, but seeing a boy here in the same miraculous place as me broke down the barriers of my meeker self. He turned around, surprised.

"Do you live around here?” I asked as I approached.

“Sure, I live just outside the woods.”

He spoke oddly, reminding me of the way people sounded in my dads old movies. I couldn’t believe there was another boy like me living on the outskirts. Living in limbo.

“So do I,” I said excitedly, “I live in a house with my dad just back there.”

He smiled. “We’re the same then.” He gestured for me to join him, so I did. He looked like a small lumberjack, dressed in overalls and an old hat.

“How’d you find out about this place?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I’m not sure. I just happened across it. Usually my dad would never let me travel this far into the woods. But he’s busy now, so I think I’m okay.”

I peered over my shoulder instinctively, half expecting to find my dad walking towards me, his green eyes fuming with the rage of disobedience, his thick, tattered boots smouldering the leaves beneath them like hot coals. But he wasn’t there. He was with his clocks. And I was safe.

“This is pretty far in. I’d be worried too if I were your father.” The side of the boys face rose up into a half grin. “But I can help you out. I know how to get out of here. It’s really easy. You just follow the brown leaves.”

“The brown leaves?”

“Yeah. They’re scattered all over the ground just past that spot you came through. If you keep following them, they’ll multiply as you get closer to the woods, and eventually the forest will become the woods again. One changes into the other.”

He seemed proud of this knowledge. I smiled.

“Thanks, but what are you doing here by yourself? Don’t you have any friends with you?”

The boys proud demeanour shifted.

“I don’t have any friends. I come here to get away from my dad. He doesn’t know this place exists.”

He turned back to gaze at me. His eyes were like giant marbles, as green as the forest around us and I thought, if I plucked them out and dropped them right here on the grass next to us, I’d never be able to find them again. They’d vanish completely into the colours of the earth. He looked down at my wrist.

“What is that?” A quizzical expression appeared on his face. I held my wrist up, the digital watch my dad had given me was wrapped around it. It was small and black, the numbers on the inside glowing in lines of fluorescent green light.

“This? It’s a watch. My dad gave it to me.”

“Well I’ll be, I’ve never seen a watch like this before. How's it glowing like that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Something on the inside I’d bet.”

“Woah, your dad must be some guy. Not like my dad.” He dropped my wrist and stared back out at the water. I wanted to tell him he was wrong, but I kept it to myself.

“Well, I’ve got to get home now. It’s best if my dad doesn’t come looking for me.” He stood up abruptly, dusting the grass from his backside. The half grin reappeared on his face. It was warm and kind, and I immediately trusted it. “Will you come back?”

I nodded.

The smile broke his lips apart and white teeth appeared behind them. Then he ran into the green aura that surrounded us and disappeared. I looked at my watch again. With the warm presence of the boy now gone, nerves swam back into my stomach. I knew I’d better get home quick, so I began to run, following the brown leaves like the boy had said, until the green morphed back into the brown.

Trekking to the pool in the forest became an every day ritual over the following months. It was only a matter of time before my father realised I was disobeying him. One Saturday, I saw him walking towards me as I was emerging from the woods. His face was red with rage, the small scar that ran above his left eyebrow was pulsing like a volcanic vein, waiting to erupt, the vacant green light in his eyes weathered and dull like an unwatered garden bed, the plants left to die. I always wondered who’d killed them. Those forests in his eyes.

My dad wasn’t a bad man all the time. I knew he loved me. But I couldn’t help hating him. Even I could see the remnants of a damaged soul deep within him. He tried to hide it, but I could see it in his eyes. Feel it in the way he loved. He never told me how he got that big scar above his eye. Every time I’d ask he’d always answer with, “just an accident.” Eventually, I stopped asking.

A week later, when I went back to the forest pool, the boy was there, sitting on the grass landing, watching his thoughts swim around in the glowing green shimmers that danced across the still, calm water. As soon as he heard me his head turned with a jolt and his contagious half grin appeared, bringing its warmth with it. We sat down on the grass and stared back out at the water.

“Do you think I’m a good person?”

I looked at him. He continued. “I guess sometimes I just look at my father and pray that I’ll never be like him. When I look in the mirror, sometimes all I see is him. His nose. His mouth. His eyes. And I wonder, is the inside just the same as the outside? A predetermined genetic mirror?”

I thought about it for a moment. “I don’t really know about that stuff, but I do know that you’re a good person. I’m certain of it.”

He smiled. “Do you think you can be a good person forever? Do you think things inside you can change, like your watch? Who would have ever thought a watch could produce light. One minute a set of ticking hands, the next, lines of green light, showing the same end, like woods becoming a forest.”

I watched him as he took my wrist in his hand and examined my watch. He seemed to love it so much I almost wanted to give it to him as a gift. If it hadn’t been one of the only things my father had given me, I would have. His eyes moved to my forearm.

“That’s a big bruise. How’d you get that.”

I instantly retracted my arm and hid it behind my back. “Just an accident.”

The next Saturday morning, I woke up and realised the watch my dad had given me was missing. But I was certain I’d had it on when I’d come home the previous day. It were as though it’d vanished into thin air, my ability to tell time suddenly broken. I headed to the forest pool without it, deciding I’d look for it later. The boy was already there, waiting for me. Though there was something different about him. He wasn’t sitting calmly on the grass. This time he was standing, staring into the green spotlight above. As soon as he heard me coming, he turned, an indecipherable look on his face. It was a mixture of sadness, sorrow, fear and concern all wrapped into a tight little bundle in his eyes.

I moved closer and noticed a fresh wound on the left side of his forehead. It looked tended to, but swollen and sore, as though something had fallen on him.

“What happened to your head?”

He didn’t answer the question, as if it was irrelevant.

“He knows. My dad. He found out about this place.”

I looked at him, unable to understand what he was trying to tell me. He looked into my eyes. “I can’t come back here anymore.”

Fear began to rise in my chest. “But…you’re my friend.”

“I’m sorry.”

I grabbed his hands in mine and began to cry. The vibrant green light in his eyes had dulled, a vacancy growing inside them. Something began to happen in that moment. An image began to form as I stared into the boys face. His nose. His mouth. His eyes. The scar forming on his forehead. They all began to take on a familiar picture.

He looked over his shoulder anxiously.

“I have to go. I’m sorry. I want you to know that this isn’t your fault. Any of it. It’s their fault. Maybe humans are just like objects. And I do believe that we can change, from the inside, like a watch that can grow to produce light. Like woods that transform into a forest.”

Then he turned and ran for the edge of the forest, pausing on the precipice, the border of their world and ours. I stared across the distance and watched as a tear rolled down the boys cheek and landed on the vibrant green floor that once reflected his eyes.

“You’ll always be my best friend. Don’t ever forget about me. No matter what.”

And then he vanished like a wisp of glittery dust into the surrounding green. I looked at my wrist, to the vacant spot my watch once held. The only compass of knowing where I was, gone. Broken, as if I were floating in a timeless world.

I never saw the boy again. The next day I tried to go back to our hidden pool, but I could no longer find where the woods turned into the forest. As if it never existed. Like a disconnected radio station. But I never forgot about my best friend. How he loved me. And how I loved him.