I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

“You know Sam, I never understood you,” he says. He looks back at
me over his shoulder, blank and impenetrable. “I mean, I should’ve
known. You were strange from the beginning. You never had parents
or family come around. I’ve never even seen you leave the hospital
for more than an hour.” He walks back to me, slower, but harder, the
water cast aside in ripples.
“Neo, don’t be cruel,” Sony says, but he ignores her.
“You don’t even have a personality,” he bites. “You’re as stupid as a
rock and as barren as a wall.”
“Neo!” C yells at him, but Neo doesn’t look away from me.
He stares me down like I disgust him. “All there is to you is this
insatiable curiosity that always gets you in trouble and some
cowardice to go with it.”
He’s so close he may as well be spitting in my face. Brutality blooms
in his words. He’s right. I know he’s right. I shut my eyes and bury
myself in the cocoon of my elbows.
But then I hear Neo’s shoes skid against the concrete. His knees
touch the ground. His hands reach from my jaw into my hair, forcing
me to look at him.
“And you’re the most caring person I’ve ever met.”
At a glance, Neo seems the type not to care because it is easy, but if
you read him long enough, you eventually find those poems italicized
in his heart.
For all the harshness he spouts, there is a line soft and resounding
at the end.
“You already saved me, you idiot,” he says. “You saved all of us.”
I stare with a loose jaw and wide eyes.