A Feeling of Teenage Degeneration    by Matthew McGraw

    Everyday they ran home and sat down. All of them sat on or near the same couch everyday after
school. It was almost like a ritual. Near the end of the day the anticipation was high. They couldn’t focus. They
could only think about what would happen when they got home. All their work in the after noon was forfeit. They only cared about getting home. All six of them ran home together right as the bell rang. They didn’t listen to the teacher as he was yelling at them as they dashed out of the classroom with nothing on their minds but the many glorious things that awaited them when they got home.
    It actually wasn’t everyone’s home. It was just Ben’s. His house was the safe haven after school got out. His parents had divorced and his mom had to "work" late at the department store. She worked with a guy named Jules. He was her floor manager. Ben thought it was stupid because there were only two of them there. Why couldn’t they just be equals to one another? That was the way the coin fell he guessed. Everyone just lived in a world where someone was always better than somebody else.
    Not in their world. Everyone was the same. They all sat around the TV and watched it religiously everyday. It was their show, their life in living color except they weren’t living it for themselves. They held their breath when relationships between the people were on the rocks. They cheered when the characters embraced one another. They were cheering for themselves. Why did they watch it?
    Ben’s house was where they watched it. Everyone went home after the credits rolled down the color screen. It was always Tom who went home first. He lived in a place where not even homeless people would dare to go near. His dad was, well his dad. By dad in Tom’s dictionary a picture of plastic bag and a metallic pipe came to mind. His dad was nice. Never confrontational, but he was poor as hell. He lost his job because he had found some way to screw up being a check out person at a gas station. He said it was because he had used things to hide things. He was always cryptic like that. It was the only side effect besides the laziness and the bloodshot eyes.
    Lisa left after that. She had to get back to her job. She helped her mom out around the house. They cleaned up after her brother. She hated him. Drunk always was the only way she could classify the way he was. He messed up everything. Her mom loved him because he helped her out. He "found" money. Lisa knew how but she wouldn’t tell her mother. It would break her heart if she found out that the money really should be red than green. He always hid the gun when he got back. Lisa would hide it for him if he passed out.
    The other three left at various times facing the same things; their parents beating one another. Drugs all over the counter or siblings passed out and in one case dead. They didn’t know why they watched the show. They didn’t know why it made them laugh or cry. All they knew was that it was their lives in living color being lived by someone else. They wished. The lives they really led were far from what they were. They really lived every afternoon at Ben’s house. It was where they came alive, where the drugs went away, where their parents were healed up. It was where they knew that they were happy. So cinematic in nature, no one died. Everyone was just what they were meant to be…At Ben’s.

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