I walked to Marathon because we were out of Coke.

Coke was something I needed to do my homework. It was the caffeine, I think. It stopped me from getting too bored and passing out in the middle of an assignment. I especially needed some right then because I had about fifty projects due the next day.

This being the case, my only choice was to grab two dollars, back out the door, and begin walking downtown. I made my way listlessly down the street, my hip popping with every step. Looking around, it was almost dusk. I picked up my pace.

When I got to Marathon, the parking lot was empty. I walked quickly across, and yanked open the door to the store. The bells clattered overhead.

There was a white guy, maybe twenty-five years old, behind the counter. He wore dark clothes and sort of a dull expression. He looked a little stupid.

Twenty-five, I thought, was too old to look stupid.

I walked to the back of the store, and got a Coke- a diet Coke, if you want the truth- and walked back to the front. I handed the man the money and he responded by blowing three perfect smoke rings at me.

I crinkled my nose. I felt vaguely disrespected, but not disrespected enough to not find the smoke rings pretty.

As I left the store, it occurred to me that I didn’t particularly want to go home right then.

Instead, I took my Coke and walked to the back of the building.

I found the roughest slab of ground, where the cement was most densely covered with cigarette butts, and sat down.

I looked around. To the left was an old brick building with thick, gray windows and a wooden roof. On the wall, above the door was plastered an old Budweiser sign that look like it’d been put up maybe sixty years ago.

The water tower loomed to my right. It was lit like a beacon in the dusk, and printed in ugly but satisfying block letters were the words “Home Sweet Homewood”.

I scraped up a handful of gravel and threw it at the tower. However, as the tower was over three hundred feet away, I fell short.

I twisted off the top of the Coke and took a sip. God, it was disgusting. God, why did I buy this. I took another sip.

The wind blew hard. I shivered, set the Coke down on the pavement beside me, and jammed my fists in my pockets. That’s when I felt it. In my left pocket was a folded sheet of looseleaf paper.

I took it out and opened it up. It was a page of almost incomprehensible notes, riddled with even less comprehensible drawings. Scanning through it, I identified it as English. Vocabulary, to be specific. I read the top term.

Rhetorical Question: a question with an implied answer, whose purpose is to make a point rather than to get an answer.

The example, written beneath it, was a quote by Frederick Douglass. It was something he had said when discussing the indecency of slavery. It read, “Will not a righteous God visit for these things?”

That sentence. Now that was interesting. I got stuck on it.

It reminded me of how God came down to help when the Nazis first invaded Poland. And how again, he lent a hand when the Titanic began to sink. And how again, when George Zimmerman pulled out a gun to shoot Trayvon Martin, God intervened.

I sipped my drink and lowered the paper.

The flag waved indecisively. As if it didn’t know whether the thing to do was to ripple with the wind or cling limply to the pole.

Staring at that flag, I felt the mild inclination to set myself on fire.

Don’t get me wrong. I liked flags in general. They were pretty things, as a rule, and truly a fun idea. Flying a flag was like wearing a Bears jersey. It’s just a quiet little shoutout saying, “Check it, boy! I’m from Chicago, and I like to watch big dudes tackle each other!”

See? Just class A silliness, with a dash of  patriotism on the side. Completely harmless. Having a flag at your house, or even at school, by itself, was just like that.

But why the daily mantra about it?

Daily mantra simply being a rather stupid way to refer to the pledge of allegiance.

Why was patriotism anything to be concerned with? The Cold War was over. Why did we have to spend two minutes every morning saying the pledge? Did it have anything to do with the war on immigrants?

But you know what bothers me worse than the pledge? I was working myself progressively deeper into a snit.

What bothers me worse than the pledge is the little quote the school says after it.  Something snappy and inspirational, like, “You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take,” or, “you are the maker of your own destiny.”

Now, the one about taking shots- I’m fine with that one. There’s nothing wrong with that. But the second one, the one about destiny- that just killed me. Really, it did.

I mean- I get why they say it. They say it so the kids won’t get discouraged, and so that they’ll try their hardest in school. If you think what you get out of life is based on what you put into it you’re gonna work a hell of a lot harder than someone who believes it’s all about luck and chance.

Except it is about luck, and it is about chance. Not entirely of course. But how many people did everything within their power to succeed- tried their absolute hardest- and still didn’t manage it?

A lot. They’re hard to count because you don’t hear about them. You don’t hear about the people who don’t succeed. It’s depressing and uninteresting. You only get the stories about the weird ass flukes who manage to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

I thought about the quote they had said that morning. “Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”

I thought about that.

Being kind? That was important. Undoubtedly so.

But what about the rest. Was that true? Was everyone always fighting some battle?

Was I?

I racked my brain.

I had a little depression. Did that count? A little depression, a little sadness, a little atheism to worry about. Is that the battle the quote was talking about?

I picked up one of the old, used cigarettes lying on the ground- which, in retrospect was a pretty disgusting thing to do- and examined it.

I slipped it in between my middle and forefinger and started pretending I’d been smoking it.

I laughed. If I started smoking, then I’d really have myself a battle. A battle against cancer. Cancer and a pair of slimy black lungs. I’d have to get chemo, and lose all my long, golden-brown hair that I was so irrationally proud of.

I continued staring at the cigarette. It was making me feel faintly discontented. I tried to figure out why. Then it hit me.

The cigarette reminded me of the Outsiders.

The Outsiders. Oh almighty great lord Jesus Christos of Nazareth, I had a lot to say about that book.

Here’s why the cigarette reminded me of it- in the Outsiders, written by S.E. Hinton, everyone was always smoking. All the time. The main character Ponyboy had been a smoker since something like age ten.

Now here’s why being reminded of the Outsiders made me feel discontented. I recalled a conversation I’d had with my dad about the Outsiders around a year prior.

“Jesus Christ,” he had said, “She must have been brilliant. To have written something like that at only sixteen!”

Item: I was then and still am sixteen.

I’d turned toward him. “Really? Was it better than The Stupid Assassin Who Couldn’t Drive Very Well?”

This was the name of a short story I had recently written.

“Apples and oranges.” my dad had said.

And if this expression isn’t as popular as I think it is, it means that the two things aren’t in the same category, and therefore cannot be compared.

Dissatisfied with this response, I marched out. Then, because I was a brat, I think I slammed the door behind me.

From that moment on, there was nothing to do but become a better writer than S.E. Hinton. That sixteen year old girl, now sixty-nine, was my unwitting rival.

Now, a year later, I was still thinking about it. Why was the Outsiders so good? What was the appeal?

Then it occurred to me. She was an apologist. People liked those. Her entire book led up to the epiphany that life was rough all over. Whether you were rich or poor, young or old, guy or girl. Whatever. This was contrary to many people’s belief that some people had it bad, and some people had smooth sailing.

But just because she was an apologist didn’t mean she was right. Were things rough all over?

Again, I applied it to myself.

I was sitting in a dingy, trash filled parking lot, behind a gas station holding someone else’s cigarette. Was that rough? It felt a little rough. Was I trying to feel that way?

I started to think again about Trayvon Martin. He was seventeen. Just one year older than me and S.E. He had gone to a convenience store one day to buy some skittles and some iced tea. He was walking back home when some guy decided he was going to try and beat the shit out of him. When that didn’t work, the man pulled out a gun and shot Trayvon instead.

Well, whatever. It was Trayvon’s own fault anyway. He didn’t do a good enough job making his destiny. Maybe his school didn’t read him that announcement.

It was about at that point when I realized that I didn’t want to be sitting at that gas station anymore. It was dark, and I still had things to do. I picked up my Coke, stood up, and started walking home. I whistled, and kicked up loose hunks of pavement as I went. Less than ten minutes later, I arrived home.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t been shot.