Chapter 8 Aspen
Aspen
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” - Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
I messed up. I opened Noel Gamble’s essay at work and read it in my office.
I just couldn’t help myself. The way he’d confronted me to get it back, to keep me from seeing what he’d written, had gotten me curious and left me a little too shaken. For the briefest moment, I had thought he was going to wrestle me down in order to retrieve it. He’d looked desperate enough.
Then his face had cleared, and he’d seemed so shocked and appalled by his actions, I’d been worried he was going to burst into tears. What was worse, if he had, I would’ve done something equally horrifying, like hug him. Or give him his paper back.
Thank God I’d done neither.
Because once I started reading his essay, I couldn’t stop. It was like witnessing a fatal car accident, watching his awful life unfold, one tear-jerking sentence at a time.
My chest ached as I finished the last line of the essay.
Damn it. Noel Gamble wasn’t supposed to be like this.
He wasn’t supposed to have such a tough childhood, or possess redeemable qualities, or make me feel any kind of compassion for him.
He wasn’t supposed to reach into my soul and get a handhold of my heart or squeeze these feelings out of me, exactly as he’d just done.
No one should be able to do that in eight double-spaced pages. But he had.
My cheeks were still wet from the tears that had fallen. From reading his stupid, amazing, well-written paper.
It’s possible he could’ve lied. He could’ve made everything up just to get the work done. But from the way he’d reacted after class earlier, I knew he hadn’t. These were his true thoughts. His true feelings. His true actions.
He’d broken rules, done things I normally would’ve been appalled about, but he’d done it for the noblest, sweetest, most amazing reason. His desperate love for his siblings had given him the determination to get where he was today.
I shivered, hugging his essay to my chest as the last of my tears dried on my face. If only someone had loved me the way he loved his brothers and sister.
Well, one thing was certain. Noel Gamble had achieved the impossible; he’d managed to completely revise my point of view of him.
Oh, hell.