The Boy Who Makes Jokes

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Ren found me in the library on Monday.

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He sat down across from me and pulled out a notebook and started drawing something in the margins and did not say anything for ten minutes.

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"What are you doing," I asked.

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"Pretending to study."

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"Why."

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"Because if I go home, my parents will ask me what I did today and I don't have an answer."

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I did not say anything.

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He kept drawing. He was good. The lines were quick and confident and he did not seem to need to think about them. He drew a tree and a bird and a boy sitting on a bench and a house with a window and a moon.

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"You're good," I said.

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"At what."

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"Drawing."

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"Thanks."

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He did not look up. He kept drawing. He drew a bird with one wing and a house with no door and a girl with her back turned.

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"Are you going to join a club," he asked.

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"I don't know."

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"You should join something."

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"That's what Yuki said."

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"Yuki says that to everyone."

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"She said it like it was a fact."

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"That's because she believes it. She thinks everything is a fact. She thinks if she says something with enough confidence, it becomes true."

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I thought about that for a moment.

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"Is she always like that," I asked.

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"Yeah."

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"Why."

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Ren stopped drawing.

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"Because if she stops, she'll have to think about why she's running."

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He looked up and met my eyes for a moment. Then he smiled and went back to drawing.

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"Forget I said that," he said. "I'm just tired."

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I did not forget.

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I remembered everything.

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───

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On Wednesday, Ren found me again.

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He sat down in the same seat and pulled out the same notebook and started drawing the same kind of things. He did not say anything for a while. Then he asked, without looking up:

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"Do you ever feel like you're wasting your life?"

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I thought about it.

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"No," I said.

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"Why not."

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"Because I'm not doing anything with it."

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He stopped drawing.

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"That doesn't make sense."

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"It makes perfect sense. You can't waste something you're not using."

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He looked at me for a long time.

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"That's either the smartest thing I've ever heard or the saddest."

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"Probably both."

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He laughed. It was a real laugh, not the performance he used in class. Then he went back to drawing and I went back to reading and we sat in silence for the rest of the afternoon.

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───

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On Friday, he showed me one of his drawings.

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It was a picture of a boy standing on the edge of a cliff. The boy was looking out at the ocean. There was no one else in the drawing. There was no boat, no house, no sign of life.

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"That's good," I said.

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"It's not finished."

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"What's missing."

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"I don't know."

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He closed the notebook.

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"I never finish anything," he said. "I start something and I get to the good part and then I stop. Because if I finish it, someone might see it. And if someone sees it, they might not like it."

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"Would that be so bad."

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He looked at me.

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"Yeah," he said. "It would." 159Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfv5NMXOci1

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