The fierce headache that only anticipation could conjure threatens to concuss me as I await the arrival of my fellow delinquent partner.
       Knock knock knock.
     “It’s about time,” I snap after angrily swinging the door open.
     “Not exactly easy to run with a robot attached to your ankle,” said Dig defensively, raising his right pant leg to reveal an ankle monitor.
     “Well my mom comes home in an hour and I don’t think she’d be very pleased to see a-
      “Criminal?” he cut off, clearly offended.
     I’m not certain what word I would have used to finish my sentence with, but I’m sure it would have been at least a bit insulting, and he is a criminal, so I don’t defend myself. Instead I simply slide a lock of hair behind my ear as I fill a seat on the couch and pat the empty space next to me.
     He declines the invitation and sits on the floor.
     The awkwardness began to occupy the room like a presence.
     “So”, I finally say. “Why do you call yourself Dig?”
     “Because pit holes excite me,” he replies blankly.
        Fortunately, I anticipated having to be the mature partner and simply clench my teeth as I prepare to ask the next question. “What did you have against Dean Thomas?”
     “Why do you care?” he immediately shouted.
     I stared at him through narrow and irritated eyes, the same way my mom used to look at me to show her disapproval in my behavior. However it did not appear to give him the uneasy feeling it would give me. Instead his fierce and steady gaze made me uncomfortable. My mouth opens as I attempt to search for a less hasty question, but my words doesn’t expelled before his.
     “What’s your crime, delinquent? What stupid decision did you make?”
     Though my lips stay separated, I struggled to find a defense for his attacks so I finally vacate my seat and swing the door open even harder than before, “OUT!”
     “Fine by me,” he muttered as he whooshes through the door, leaving behind his faint scent of cigar smoke.
     I could not remember the last time I had barked at someone like that. I had lost control. Whenever my past “delinquent” behavior was brought up it irritated some type of emotion to the point of eruption, and unfortunately for Dig, this time it was anger. But anger served well, because soon after his exit, my mom’s car pulls into the driveway. Mother had one simple house rule: no boys. This likely meant no boy-friends, but I am quick to doubt that boy-criminals qualifies as an exception.
     Later that week Mrs. Marx attempted to spike the motivation of the students by adding that an A on the project granted them an A for the entire quarter. Which meant only having the skin on my arms vibrate seven times a day.                Delinquent classes hadn’t helped me at all. Trust fall exercises turned into human pinball and meditation techniques turned into a ‘who can grunt the loudest contests.’ I craved exemption from the class more than anything, which is why I made sure to arrive at the after school delinquent awareness program before any of my peers to speak with the instructor.
     “I can’t do it,” I said in the most straightforward tone I could muster out my mouth.
     “Well then I’ll see you next semester,” she countered, putting my effort to shame.
     “I tried! I even went out of my way to invite him into my home and I got nothing. He won’t even talk to me without sounding sardonic. I need a new partner.”
     “Have you tried relating to him? After all, you are a fellow delinquent.”  
      I gave her a subconscious wince. It bothered me how much I had been compared criminals in just a few days. But I simply swallowed the remark as diverting the conversation to my past was the last thing I wanted. However, my stomach was apparently filled with the insulting ingestions and on the brink of regurgitation, “you want me to try to relate to a damn killer?”
     “I want you to try to relate to a fellow victim,” she replied in a candid tone.
     “Projects are due tomorrow!” Ms. Marx screamed after a plethora of unsuccessful bonding activities.
     I patiently waited for Dig to finish a lengthy conversation before I walked over to him. I stood on my toe tips and tapped his left shoulder.
     “What?” he answered bitterly.
     “Projects are due tomorrow.”
     The blank expression he so often wore was impossible to read, so I continued, “look, if we want to get out of this class we’re going to have to ace this project.”   
     Thankfully, this sparks something inside of him big enough to produce a reaction, “Come over after dusk.”
     Before I could even conjure a look of disapproval, he plants a piece of scrap into my hand that prints a sloppy written address: 430 Humanity St.
     I winced as the guesses of where he might be planning to meet pervaded my mind. “This won’t be necessary, my house should be fine,” I say, looking up only to see my partner vacating me once again.       

     I attempt to cluster my mind with cheerful thoughts (such as the fact that an A on this onerous project relieves me of my delinquent duties) to fight off the firm fear sheltered inside my body. I had never been in this part of town before. The small print on my paper strip was overwhelmed under the night sky, cancelling my vague sense of direction.
     Suddenly my already abnormal heart rate increases as my footsteps get out echoed by another’s.
     “Hey!” a voice shouts from behind me, somehow freezing my joints. I felt a hand on my shoulder swing me around. “Stay away from this place! Didn’t you read my directions?”
     I made out the outline of those sharp cheek bones in the night to match it to Digs. I wanted to tell him to stop shouting at me, and that his so called directions were not very informative. But the slowing down of my heart beat revealed that I was relieved to see him.
     “It can get dangerous out here,” he continued to yell. “Come with me.”
     It was weird to see Dig shed from his reserved persona. I could almost hear a sense of worry in his voice…for me. To my fortune he walked speedily, and I stayed stride for stride at his heels until he announced our arrival.
     “What is this place?” I ask.
     “My home,” he whispered self-consciously.
     We climbed on the top of a garbage pin and crawled through a shattered window into a tattered room perhaps even duller than the world outside. It resembled more of a shack than a home. A long mattress lie in the corner of the room, along with a tall shelve and a pile of dirty clothes. In the center was a short lamp with a missing shade.
     “You live alone?”
     He nodded.
     I walked around the room for a while but knelt on the hard wooden floor after realizing it was my only option for a seat other than the mattress he currently occupied. We were now on opposite ends of the room, separated by darkness and the lamp that pierced into it. Watching Dig play with the flickering light warmed my body.
     “Don’t feel sorry for me,” he said without looking up at me. “I only lost what I don’t deserve.”
     I didn’t know what he meant by this, but assumed if he wanted to share he would.
     “Ask away,” he said after giving up on the now heavily flickering light bulb.
     I purposely drop my pen and paper, “forget the questions. I want to hear from you,” I say, hoping to come off as friendly and not pushy. He roamed his eyes around the room in search for where to begin.
     “My name is Alex, and I’m a murderer-
     “No you’re not,” I said firmly. His eyes immediately locked onto mine, but this time I refuse to be intimidated. Finally darting away his gaze, he released what sounded like a long awaited exhalation. Then he reunited his green eyes to my hazel eyes somewhere in between what was a warm look and a hard stare.
     “Three months ago I stood just a bit further down that ally I found you walking through, two guys accompanying me. Rick, the leader-
     “Leader?”
     “Of the gang,” he added. And continued after my nod of understanding. Both my parents died in a plane crash earlier that year, and my boys were the only ones that didn’t judge me, or sobbed at me, or gave me that look you’re giving me right now. Like I’m some lost puppy.”
     I scratched my head as I tried to rid of the image of a frozen young boy running into the names of his parents on the fatal crashes death list.
     “I’m sorry,” I said, both for his loss and my look of sympathy, then waited for him to resume.
     “I was asked to bring a shovel that night. Rick wouldn’t say why. Then he told me to make a whole behind the fence, and not to stop until he said so. ‘Because that is your role,’ he would answer when my suspicion would get the best of me. Gosh, I must have dug six feet.”
     “Dig!” I said instinctively.
     He nodded, “yea. Next thing I know, we’re running from several cops and canines. The sirens nearly shattered my eardrums; I had no idea what was going on.”
     The flickering light bulb permitted me sight of Dig’s face to see a teardrop in motion. Flick: right under his left eye… flick: now resting halfway across his cheek… flick: now drooped under his chin… flick: gone. Just like his parents, one moment there, the next, nowhere.
     “Oh my gosh. You are innocent.”
     “I don’t feel that way,” he said reproachfully.
     “But you are. Where’s Rick now?”
     “Rick’s locked up. He had a background smeared in blood and violence. Dave, ‘the lookout’ got deported back to Jamaica, and I was placed in a delinquent awareness class at a local school along with one hundred hours of community service.”
     “At least that criminal got what he deserved,” I said in hope to sprinkle a little light in the dark setting.
     “Criminal or not, he provided me with food, protection, and shelter,” he said, scanning the room with his hands. “Well, sort of.”
     We both chuckled.
     “So what’s your story?” Dig asked wonderingly.
     My laughter ceased immediately. “Selling,” I said, in somehow more of a question than an answer.
     “Your real story,” he replied.
     I gulped. But I felt like I had owed it to him, for my honesty to embrace his. As soon as I separate my lips to speak, I’m forced to taste a salty teardrop. I ignored his nonverbal request of no longer needing to share and waited for my mind to recollect the agonizing memory I had intentionally buried.
     “Just earlier this year…I was a mother.”
     “Was?”
     I gave a weak nod.
     “I only thought it would affect me. But it caused my parents to divorce, my boyfriend to move away, and my mother to look at me through different lenses. Not as a daughter, but as the source of everything wrong with her life.”
     The tears that flooded my eyes blurred my vision. Only when Dig wrapped his arm around my shoulder did I realize he had moved.
     “I think you would have made a great mother,” he said.
     But I immediately shake my head in disagreement. “I made a private decision to eliminate all the bad things happening from existence. But it only made the people around me more outraged and separated. I missed so much school my grades began to drop drastically. When the school district found the reason, they put me in the delinquent awareness class as my rehabilitation I guess; to help me get my life back.”
     “I’m sorry. I don’t think you deserve to be labeled a delinquent,” he said soothingly. It was the first thing we had ever agreed on.
     Our gazes later reattach. The greens of his iris are blurry. Maybe from the heavy fluid in mine, or maybe from the heavy fluid in his.
     “I don’t want to just leave you here,” I whispered. “All alone and trapped.”
     He laughed. “Didn’t I tell you not to feel sorry for me? We have both relied on others for happiness. I don’t have anybody to let me down anymore. That may be trapped in someone else’s world, but in mine it’s freedom.”
     I couldn’t possibly be listening to the same guy that I kicked out of my house due to frustration just a few days ago.  But I was, because even in a dark and gloomy room, he found a way to be a highlight in it.
     Our conversations continued, moving and morphing to topics of all sorts. I had forgotten how much emotion a single person could cause to emerge out of another. The safe, fuzzy feeling of companionship.

  It was clear to see during class the next afternoon that not of all the pairs made progress as the class was half empty; some could not even come to an agreement of extemporizing the darn thing. Perhaps due to their ignorance of the fact that an A gets them out of the class. (Alex and I possessed that truth so an A was inevitable). Or maybe because they lacked the care and understanding of their partner. I felt bad for those people.
     After the first group refused to share their experiences (likely because they hadn’t given any effort to make any), and the second group was not present, my name was called. My anticipated nerves were put to rest as soon as I took a seat on the stool at the front of the classroom. The eyes of most of the delinquents were either shut or wandering. However, Mrs. Marx and Alex’s eyes were fixated on mine, which is all that mattered to me.
     “Hello,” I began reading off my notebook. “My name is Alex Pess, and I am known as many things. What I’ve recently chosen to accept myself as is a victim. See a victim is defined as one who has been harmed, whether physically or emotionally. Now I may not come off as one, or have been portrayed as one even by myself. But the only person who can label a lives worth or meaning is the one who has lived it. In one day, mine was paused, then forwarded to where I was on my own. Except it wasn’t like I was going to college or anything, I was really on my own. There was no straight and narrow path for me to walk on, instead I had to take heavy footsteps on a broken track. I was unprepared and guided only by instinct. As a result, I responded to things naively. But what do you expect when you throw someone who can’t swim into the Pacific? By the way, the ocean is takes that name because of its peaceful waters. The Dead Sea receives its name because of its merciless denial of life. It may be their title, it may be their distinctive role, but it is not their purpose. Well, its purpose is to provide the rulers of the earth with minerals, livable weather conditions, and food. Dig may have been my role, but my purpose is so much more.”
     I took a deep breath and looked up, nobody clapped. But I was not after approval, I wanted an A, and I wanted Alex to understand himself the way I did.
     “You’re on track Miss. Katelyn,” Mrs. Marx said. “Dig, your next.”
     “My name is Alex,” he said matter-of-factly,” as we traded seats.
     He had apparently declined my advice to read off his sheet. He cleared his throat and began speaking with only the aid of his mind, and his heart.
     “My name is Katelyn White, and I don’t care what anybody says…I am not a delinquent. Most delinquents, including my good friend Alex, become delinquents because they’ve given up. They’re tough when they want to be, but when the tougher problems come, they deflate. What I’m saying is, what separates me from them is that I don’t give up. I rather choose the harder right than the easier wrong. And if I have to be paired with jerks along the way, I’ll find the ruby glow deep inside of them, and together we’ll find the way out.”
     He may have said more words, or those may have been the end of them. Somehow every sound muffled down and every sight fizzled up. I’m not even sure of our grade, but it had to be an A right? The program lied, I did not get my old life back, but I’m not so sure I wanted it back anyway. Now I get to go home after the seventh bell, and Alex doesn’t have to drive over here against his will. Neither of us did anything wrong, which made since that we are the only ones who get to leave. Perhaps we were both sent not for punishment, but to rejuvenate each other. To attach the puzzle piece we had both lost in each other. There was no reason for us to continue speaking, the fact that the other could smile again was of enough satisfaction. Alex was wrong, I am a delinquent. But it's okay because I was right, he was a victim. And that is what makes us the correct mismatch.