| Lighthouse | William Beckett, 001

There's this girl somewhere between the Pacific and the Atlantic that has golden locks of hair and eyes as soft as a dolphin's, if you've ever seen one. Her skin is just light enough to radiate and literally make mine feel warmer. She doesn't walk, she floats. Her lips don't smile, they dance. And I must be sounding entirely too cheesy and romantic for a male of this day and age, but it's true. She's there.

But...there's this boy...somewhere between Desperate and Hopeless, where he sits and dreams of her as these creatures surround him day by day. But he'd rather be nowhere else. He'd rather her find him. He'd rather wait than search, because searching is hoping and according to my...his friends, all his hopes have been dashed. Crossed out. And apparently it's no use pretending they exist at all.

You see, this boy came to this school searching for these things, these things that he thought could save him. And so far, he's only dug himself deeper into what's killing him.

"It's dark here," he thinks as he looks out a window. He pushes his hair out of his face, revealing a dozen nights of doing exactly this. Sometimes he wonders if he should have come here at all, if he should have left his family, his city, his life, all back where the sun actually shined. Chicago sure as hell was windy, but he'd much rather be blown back there than in the stationary downfall of rain.

Okay, so maybe I should drop the act. My name's William Beckett and all of the above is true. As soon as I drove up to this school and walked through its doors, I felt as if I'd walked into a storybook or a movie or even another world. It seems strange now to think of Chicago. It feels as if now that I'm here, I'm not allowed to leave. Something is keeping me here, staring out these windows.

My roommate's name is Gabe. I don't think I've exchanged more than a greeting like "I'm William. Chicago. Yeah, I guess." with him, but it's quite alright. He gives me my space, so I give him his. I'm almost always in here, and he almost never is. His side of the room is plastered with posters of people and names that I've never heard, or boxes full of records and tapes that he has yet to put away. I'm not sure he ever will; the boxes seem to have no bottom. The glow from the lamp shines directly into one box, and I can read that most of them are beatbox or indie rock artists. Now Chicago has a pretty big music scene but I never seemed to enter it. I had two passions back in Chicago: the first being acting, and the second being... well, I'll get to that later.

My side of the room is rather blan. The only items that really stand out are like a picture of my sister and I on my nightstand, or my collection of movies, about the same size of Gabe's music collection. They come to good use on more rainy days like this one, where I can put in the same movie in the TV for the thousandth time and put myself to sleep.

Next to my small TV is Gabe's tall mirror. It's bordered with pictures of his family, his friends, and himself, as well as a few tape-able items that apparently mean a lot to him - such as a note that begins with "Gabe, the light of my life..." and an almost baby-blue hospital bracelet. I can't help but become curious, so I pick myself up off the box I'd been sitting on, and I find myself looking at the mirror. But instead of the blue bracelet, my attention is turned to the brown eyes looking back at me.

They're so damn cold.

I wonder if people see them the way I do: full of malice...and a sadness, some kind of longing. It's always been there, and I can't get rid of it. I'd laugh all day to try to create early laugh lines to fix them. I've tried parting my hair a different way, glasses, eyeliner, everything. Even when I truly do smile, somehow it doesn't reach my eyes.

And in my peripheral vision, I feel jealous of Gabe Saporta. He's smiling or making a silly face in every one of these pictures and his smile, it reaches his eyes. One photo stands out to me, and it's of Gabe with his arm around a beautiful girl; she's a raven-haired beauty with eyes just as dark, but her smile probably glows for miles.

It's so funny, the math between the eyes and the smile.

And that girl out there, the one between the Pacific and the Atlantic, she has the perfect formula. And she'll teach it to me, and we'll laugh all night.

In the mirror, behind my unwashed brown hair, a light passes by. My eyes stare, fixated on its previous spot, and it comes around again a few seconds later. It's a golden-white glow from the lighthouse, the one that pours directly into my bedroom each night. My luck, eh? The lighthouse is a short walk down the hill from the school, and it overlooks the ocean, rising and crashing at a pitch black color at this time of night, only sparkling every once in a while when the moon, or the lighthouse, happens to pass.

I crawl into my bed with no intention of falling asleep, but my thoughts drift back to her anyway. She's out there somewhere, complicated and compelling, smiling and sad.

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Thanks for reading :) I'm hoping to make it really interesting. I've got a lot in mind.
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