Life

	In Dayton, California, there stood a gray house on Life
Street.  It was a small house hidden to the passerby by
surrounding trees.  Flowerless rose bushes lined the front
yard’s garden, looking dead and gloomy, as if to tell
people that the inside of the home looked just the same.
	Behind the gray walls of this house were two rooms, one of
which belonged to a young man named Keiran.  His room was
small, with only a messy bed, small closet, and desk that
was piled monstrously high with papers.  Of the only two
windows on the whole house, his room had one, but that
window was constantly covered by a towel.  The trees
weren’t enough on their own to block out the sun; Keiran
preferred no sunlight came in if he was in his bedroom,
where most of his time was spent.
	More than anything else in the world, he loved to write. 
Though the desk was never clear of his thoughts, dreams,
and desires, Keiran always managed to make room for more
compositions about those topics on top of all the others. 
In fact, he had never thrown a single one of his
compositions away.  He had no friends (he had never
attempted to make any) and barely a mother to intrude on
his personal space, so Keiran didn’t care to hide his
writing.  Nobody else ever went to his room or stayed there
except him.
	In school, Keiran took only one class, having already
obtained his other high school credits.  For sixty minutes
a day, five days a week, he came to the small classroom in
the downstairs area of Le Day Highschool.  That single
class Keiran took was creative writing.  Most days he
simply sat at his desk, scribbling away, paying no
attention to the lesson, and never once looking up.  There
wasn’t much to look at anyway.  The walls were gray like
his house, and possessed no sort of decoration.  To the
right of him sat a bright-haired (dyed red) girl named
Eleanor.  The only time they ever spoke was on the first
day of school.
	“Are your credits forcing you to take this class too?”
she
asked.
	“No, I like to write,” Keiran answered in an annoyed
tone.
	Since he was so blunt with her, a sour look on her
beautiful face told both of them that the conversation was
over.  Even if he was rude to her, Keiran already knew
there was something more to this girl.  He liked Eleanor,
but why, he didn’t know.
	As time went on, Keiran kept completely to himself and
forgot about Eleanor unless he wasn’t writing, which was
not often.  His mind had little room for another person, or
loving thoughts.  “No,” he thought to himself each time
her
warm appearance touched his cold thoughts, “I have to
focus
on writing, and other more important things.”
	On a windy Saturday afternoon, Keiran could be found lying
on his back on the floor of his bedroom, staring at the
ceiling, searching for the perfect words to complete the
last sentence in his latest composition for school.  No
sooner had the perfect string of words entered his mind,
did they flee as a knock came at the front door. 
Surprised, he shuffled clumsily out of his room to answer
this unexpected visitor.  When he opened the door, who
should he see standing before him but Eleanor.
	Right away, she started talking to him enthusiastically.
	“Last week, I noticed which house you always walk home
to,
as well as how all of your papers in creative writing class
come back with “A”’s on them . . .   So here I am,
about to
ask you for help on my own paper, which as you know, is due
at the end of this week.  I bet you’ve already finished,
haven’t you?”
	She said everything to him in a rushed breath, so before
he could even comprehend what she’d said, he guided her
through the front door, with a look of absolute shock on
his face as he processed her plea.  How could anyone
possibly want his help?  A request for anything from Keiran
was so unfamiliar to him.
	“Do you ever speak?” she asked in a girlish tone as
she
took of her sweater coat.
	“From time to time,” he answered, laughing in a cocky
tone.
	With hardly and contemplation, he knew to escort her to
his lair, except this time, he wondered what she would
think of him.  Ever so slightly, he cared what she was
going to think of him.
	Eleanor said politely, “If you could just read my paper
and tell me what is missing, I can be on my way shortly.  I
can see you’re about done with yours, and I don’t want
to
interrupt.”
	“Oh no, you’re not in the way at all.  I was just
finishing, hoping the right words would come to me for the
ending, but then the doorbell rang,” he answered, staring
thoughtlessly into her amazing brown eyes.  Quickly, he
looked down.  Next, he took the paper from her and began to
read it.
	As he was reading description and thoughts of the main
character, Keiran almost felt sorry for this person in
Eleanor’s story.  Somehow, he knew exactly how it felt to
act the same way, shut things out, and live life as a
never-changing person.  Realizing how much he could relate
to this character, Keiran felt sick with himself.  The more
he thought about this, the worse he felt, and the more he
thought about it, which brought him to a point where he
could hardly pay attention to the words he was reading.  
If Keiran really was this dark, lonely, and boring
character, he would want to change.  He asked himself,
“Do
I really want to be any different?”  However, the thought
of changing lasted only a minute before Keiran remembered
he had no motivation to live life to the fullest, the way
he wrote about it in his compositions.  For the time being,
he could not ponder this anymore.  He stopped reading the
same two sentences over and over, so he didn’t waste
another moment of his own time.
	When Keiran finally finished, all he had to offer Eleanor
was an honest opinion.
	“Your character is too locked up in a world that
doesn’t
exist.  What I feel this story needs is a change in the
main character.  When you really think about it, the sole
purpose of a character is to make a story create a feeling
inside the reader.  You want to infuse something genuine in
all characters, so the reader is left with a feeling
they’ll
never forget,” he told her.  Then he asked, beginning to
feel more strange inside over the story,  “What was it
that
inspired you to write this piece the way you did in the
first place?”
	Slowly taking her paper from him, as well as his cold
right hand in her own right hand, Eleanor answered him,
“You, Keiran.”  She let her eyes lock into a stare with
his
and said, “You were my inspiration for this story,
because
every day I see you come into a classroom to write, always
seeming emotionless, and then you walk home alone to a dark
house.  And now that I have seen your bedroom, I know that
you also come to a dark, lonely room where all you have is
yourself to think to in seclusion.  There isn’t even any
natural light in here!  Don’t you ever want to take a
walk,
or see another special face?  The fact that you don’t
seem
to want anything except nothing gave me an idea . . .   And
now here I am presenting it to you, hoping that maybe my
story did exactly what you told me it should.”
	Slowly letting go of her hand, he stood up. 
Automatically, he reached up over to his bedroom window,
and pulled the towel from it’s hanging place in front of
it.  Though little sun light was beating down from the sky
that afternoon, Keiran’s room lit up beautifully.  In the
same second, as the light touched his pale skin and
normally dark face, a wave of emotion crashed over his
heart, leaving an unfamiliar warm sensation in his body.
	He looked back into Eleanor’s eyes.  “Do you want to
go
for a walk with me right now?” burst from his lips.
	“Yes, I’d love to go on a walk with you,” she said,
blushing.
	Instinctively, the couple walked toward the front door and
put their coats on, forgetting about how to make papers
worth a good grade in creative writing class.
	Eleanor and Keiran walked soundlessly away from his dark
room, and from that gray house.  Keiran found himself
smiling when he looked at Eleanor, seeing her radiant red
hair shining beneath the sun’s rays.  After another
moment,
he glanced down to see his hand, still clasped tightly
around this wonderful girl’s right hand, and he smiled
even
wider to himself, as together, they walked down the street
called Life.