Submitted by F5iver on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 11:03pm

_Weed Pretty_. That’s what Steve Foley had called me behind the Rite-Aid, while the August sky added its 9 PM blush to my already embarrassed face. He shook the soda can, spraying the rest of his Coke onto the asphalt of the back parking lot. I looked down at my worn sneakers and made an arc in the pebbly sand. He threw the empty into the bushes and laughed. “You know,” he continued, “weeds can be okay, but they’re still weeds. Not like real flowers. That’s you. Pretty like a weed.” I couldn’t bring myself to look into his eyes. His beautiful, brown long-lashed 15-year–old eyes that made me weak and brainless just to think about them.

“So I’m a weed, then?”

Steve patted my shoulder and took off down the path toward his road. “Later, kid,” he said to me as he disappeared into the gloom.

---------vvvvvv------------ Dave K -----vvvvvv-----------

Not a real flower, not a real human either. Steve would learn that once I got him aboard the ship.

I walked back to the house. Steve would show up around midnight. I had told him that my parents were out of town for the night. "Pretty as a weed", that phrase stuck in my mind. I checked the translator and it defined _weed_ as a plant growing where it wasn't wanted. How could such a thing be pretty? Steve better hope we didn't clasify humans as a _weed_.

---------vvvvvv------------ CM -----vvvvvv-----------

Some days I just don't know what I write in my journal. The ship is what my dad calls the house. It's suppose to be some kind of joke, but I don't get it. Maybe I need two PHDs like him and it'll make sense.

If that's possible. My life makes as much sense as Jell-O. All I do is jiggle from one catastrophe to the nest hoping nothing swallows me. Steve Foley is just another disaster in the making.

Why? Why! Why did Steve Foley make my brain shrink like an ice cube left on the sidewalk. "Weed Pretty". What did that even mean. I think I should be revolted by the idea, but I'm not. How wrong is that?

Those damn eyes. If every 15 year old had his eyes, all I'd do every day is stare into peoples' eyes. God, I'm such a freak. He sits next to me in geometry, and I stare at his eyes every day. Not directly. Ms. Knumpkin would stab me with a protractor if I did that. No, I stare indirectly, out of the corner of my eye, like the perverted peeping-eye-tom I am. God. I should try not to stare at all tomorrow.

---------vvvvvv------------ acmfox -----------vvvvvv-----------

But of course I have to stare. I've heard that there's a saying here that the eyes are the windows to one's soul. Dad and I don't believe that--we know better. Over sta-rations on the ship we talk about things like that--quaint local customs and sayings that define a place and a race. We look for those things, the things that set time and space apart, the distinguishing factors. Then we feast. We consume the discrepancies; we subsume uniqueness. There are so many unique things about this time, this space, this culture. The banquet set before us is very nearly too great. So many choices! The feast could consume us if we are not careful.

So, I go for the eyes first. When I am done with Steve, those eyes will be blank, dull, lifeless. His existence will no longer seem bright and colorful and quirky, he will be gray and boring and the same as every other fifteen year old boy in the world. Identical. And I will no longer seem like a weed, something that stands like an anomaly in a perfect green lawn, I will become invisible, and I will be able to carry on.