I Can't Wait To Hear What You Have To Say This Time

 

One of my favorite things about Anne was she let me tag along with her, no questions asked. That was rare these days. In general, most people seemed to only want to look after themselves, but even if they were game for a little company, I wasn’t the type of company they were looking for. Not Anne though. Sure, she thought I was on drugs. She never came out and said it, but she called me Druggie Dave, so I had my suspicions. I’ll admit, the rhyme was kinda cute, except my name wasn’t even Dave. I could see how someone might make that mistake though. Not that my name was Dave, but that I was on drugs. The truth was exactly the opposite. It was the lack of drugs that caused me to act this way.

When I was a kid, my mom thought I had an overactive imagination, but when I failed to grow out of my imaginary friends, my mom decided I needed help. It turns out I have a dash of schizophrenia. Not enough to make me dangerous, just enough to occasionally have solo-conversations on street corners. A little bit of medication went a long way, though, and as long as I took my daily pill, I was a-okay.

Like everyone else, I raided every drug store I came upon, you know, after the world ended, but of course the drugs were all gone. Fucking idiots using them to get high, oblivious to the needs of people like me. So now I talk to myself, so what? At least the voices kept me company when no one else would. But then one day Anne showed up, an angle rising out of the winter muck. We made a good team, and for a little more than a year we were inseparable, wandering from little town to little town in the Central Valley. I never asked her why, it didn’t matter to me, being with her was all I wanted.

Sure, in the beginning I thought maybe, just maybe, we could become more than friends, but that ended about the 5,000^th time she called me Druggie Dave. Oh well, a friend who calls you names is better then no friend at all. Or at least that’s how I used to think.

We’d spent the winter in Bakersfield. It was a lovely, small, close-knit community now. Much nicer than it had been before the world ended. All winter long I had asked myself what I would do when Anne decided to move on. The people of Bako had just been starting to warm up to me, and I liked it here.

I think I followed her out of habit. Like a dog I was loyal, even though she kept kicking me. So as the winter warmed to spring I found myself following her along the trail, back up the Central Valley again. It wasn’t long before I realized I’d made a mistake. I tried to tough it out, but I just couldn’t take it anymore. The name calling, the looking down on me, but it wasn’t until we were just outside of Kings City that I finally decided enough was enough. She was singing, a song from the Wizard of Oz, and it made me laugh. She turned to look at me, and the expression on her face, like I was a child.

I screamed, something weird from my schizophrenic brain about the police, and I turned and ran back from where we’d come, trying to get as much distance between us as possible before I could second guess my decision. I just hoped the people in Bako would accept me back.