A Boy, a Blizzard, and a Bicycle

It should’ve occurred to him before he left that going out in the blizzard was a bad idea, but the reality of the situation didn’t sink in until the chain fell off of his bicycle and he was left pulling it through the drifting snow. This was the second time he had gone out into the blizzard. The first time he had been drunk, drunk and sick, but the sickness did not hit him until he reached his car which twenty yards from the house. He threw up near the bumper, the snow covering the evidence and then trudged back inside only to throw up some more. That was distinctly better than his current situation.
He needed his cell phone because his mother might be worried about him, stranded in his house in the blizzard. Of course, as his pink fingers became layered in oil as he tried to put the chain back on, he realized that his mother would have preferred worrying over this. He didn’t even have the excuse of intoxication anymore.
The situation was not entirely bad though, the knowledge that there were people waiting with his cell phone on one end of the voyage and people waiting at his house at the other end. It was certainly preferable to many of the weekends he had that fall and winter of waiting alone in his room, listening to the same CDs on repeat.
His face hurt and his brain was starting to ache from the cold. His fingers felt worst of all; numb where they gripped the handles of the bicycle. He longed for a car to drive by and pick him up, but the roads were impossible to get through and he knew he had to keep going, even though he frequently had the illogical thought of stopping.
He liked someone or several someones, in the manner that anyone would be better than no one. No, anyone was too loose of a term. He wanted something abstract that manifested itself in several people, but yet was unobtainable. This wasn’t however, the reason for his unhappiness. He thought it might be his English class, something equally as baffling as his female wants. He liked to read, at least some books, but he was continually plagued by the feeling of apathy whenever he got assigned one and more specifically when he had to write about one. He hadn’t turned in his midterm. Finals were the following week and his midterm had been due a month ago. It was done, done late, but done. He couldn’t bring himself to turn it in or even go to class.
The snowdrifts were becoming almost impassible; he could hardly dredge his legs through them, never mind his bike. Again he considered stopping. He could make snow angels, a smile on his face until he slept, but no he had people waiting for him.
The people made him feel so conflicted and a small part of him almost craved the loneliness that had become intrinsic in his daily life.
The night before drunk, things had more clarity, happy clarity. There was someone, for awhile, while they slept. Because it seemed right, drinking cheap vodka, with everyone declaring their platonic or not-so-platonic love for one another (the kind of love that only happens when the lights go out).
He could see the building now, barely visible through the snow. Its approach seemed anticlimactic, as if he should’ve reached some resolution, but he hadn’t. Most of the windows were lit and he was glad to be going inside, at least he thought he was glad. He dropped his bicycle a few feet from the door, battling the wind for a few more steps before he went in. It seemed better when he was outside though; as a boy with a bicycle in a blizzard.