Chad Darkwallow's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The morning of the contest, Chad lay in his car-shaped bed and stared at the ceiling. Last year's laughter still followed him everywhere. He had cried on that stage. Kids still whispered when he passed. Tonight he had to win $513 for the band, but the whispers would break him before he finished his first line. He knew it. He could feel the shame waiting. He rolled out of bed and stood in front of his mirror. Short. Broad. A face that looked built for high-fives, not heartbreak. Hands made for throwing game winning touchdown passes. Hands that wiped tears away from the faces of pretty girls, not his own eyes. His body lied about his insides. Behind him hung the black velvet poster of Jesus and Elvis playing guitars together. Two men who felt everything out loud. Two men who fought silence everywhere they went time and time again shattering it with the sound of super awesomeness. Chad wished he could be that brave, that awesome, that super. He walked downstairs. The empty trophy case sat in the hall. A little sign under it read like a prayer for sleep, a wish to escape tomorrow. His mother had bought it years ago, sure he would fill it. It stayed empty. Chad stared at the glass and hated the boy it reflected. Then something hit him. An idea so Emo that it had to be either a The Cure lyric or the truth. The whispers where of his own. They scared him because he chose to fear them they only worked against him because he ran from them. He kept trying to hide the crying, to look tough, to prove the frat-bro face was real. That was the lie that beat him last year. The lie that stopped the words. It was the silence which defeated him. silence that won not because of the words he wrote but because they remained imprisoned on the tear soaked page never said and unheard. So he made a plan. Not a safe one. He grabbed a pen and rewrote his poem. He put the crying in. He wrote about the boy in the empty case. He wrote about waking up in the wrong skin, big feelings crammed in a small body. He wrote the exact thing everyone whispered about. He decided to say it first, before they could. That night, Chad climbed the stairs to the stage. The whispers started at once. Someone snorted. Someone said his name from last year. Which of course was Chad. Chad gripped the microphone. His hands shook. He looked straight at the crowd. "Last year I cried up here," he said. "You laughed. I'm going to cry again. Watch." The room went silent. He read his poem. His voice cracked. Real tears came, and he let them. He did not hide his face. He did not run. He said every soft, dark thing he felt, out loud, in front of all of them. When he finished, no one laughed. A few people clapped. Then more. The whispers were gone. He had taken the weapon out of their hands by using it himself. Chad walked off the stage changed. The shame that trailed him for a year was gone. He had faced the whispers and beaten them. But he had not won. The judges called another name for the top prize. Chad placed second. No $513. No trophy for the empty case. He stood at the back of the room, dry-eyed now, and understood the new problem. He had freed himself from the whispers. He had not saved the band. And Fancy Penny Raccoon was waiting outside.