It was a hot summer day in Nobak, a rural town a hundred miles north of Charlesville, the biggest city in southern Virginia. The young Bobby had been in the barn for hours, working on wood: cutting, sanding, assembling, painting, to redo the family house’s porch. He liked it. While he focused on doing the right movement, pressing with the right intensity, his mind would quiet down, stopped racing. When he got exhausted, he’d sit, bare back, against the wooden wall of the barn, and have a cold can of spring water. That was his treat. Refreshed, he’d appreciate the work accomplished, read a bit of poetry from an old dusty book he had found in the barn: “Happy the man, and happy he alone, He who can call today his own, He who secure within can say: ” or let his mind go completely blank.

Bobby had never been good with words. They always came out wrong. So he had learned to stay silent, not because he was shy, or had nothing to say, but because the discomfort from confused sentences was greater than the one that came from not saying what he was thinking about. His twin brother, Nick, often slapped him in the back and said that him being so silent gave him an aura to girls. Bobby didn’t feel right about Nick doing that, as if it was just another way for his brother to be superior to him. Better grades, better look, better with people. And aura or not, Nick was the one who charmed girls. He had a way of talking, fast-paced, quick-witted, with rhythm, ups and downs in his voice, that captivated. You’d always see him getting laughs out of girls he was talking to.

Though the two eighteen-years-old had very close features, their looks were so distinctive, that it was impossible to mistake one with the other. Nick wore large white shirts, tightly tucked in a pair of chino, and ankle high black leather boots. He prided himself on dressing as the gentleman he wanted to be. He had slick combed back hair, with only a hair strand curled down to the left side of his forehead. Wherever he was walking to in the hallways of Lincoln Highschool, the tapping sound of his boot heels preceded him. You knew a young man sure of himself was coming your way. Bobby wore oversized tee-shirts, often stained, large beige cargo pants, and shoes that he’d wear out till one of the soles came off from the upper part of the shoe. He had wavy light brown hair that fell a bit below the upper neck. Here and there, in his dense thick hair, there were specks of gold, strands of hair brightened up by the sun from all the time he spent in nature.

If Bobby had trouble articulating what he thought about, it was never more so the case that when he was asked what he wanted to do with his life.
When the family had guests come over, or was invited for dinner parties, their mother would often say that Nick, already set to study pre-law at Cornell for months, should become a politician, that he had all the brain, charm and wit for that, and that he’d make crowds swoon just as girls swooned over him. In a toned down voice, she’d then add that Bobby had a good heart and was very good at manual labor, as if she needed to even things out after singing too much the praise of one son over the other.
That was what Bobby was to his mother, the other son.
Heads turned to him, a guest would ask him what his plans for the future were. The young man, embarrassed, would mumble undistinctive words, head down to his plate, a couple of I don’t knows. His parents would look at each other. The worry they had expressed many times for their son during late-night conversations, found itself once again confirmed by their son’s inability to articulate any clear sentence for what he wanted to do with his life. The boy only was confronted to kindhearted inquiries. Why would he not say what he wanted to do? used to tell herself his mum. She would then glance at whoever was asking the question. A way to say that the inquiry would find no answer, and that insisting would just create further embarrassment.
What set apart the two twin brothers, first from their looks, now appeared clear to everyone at the table.
The only thing that reassured Bobby when he compared himself to Nick was, whenever they fought, he won. Not that he was stronger than him, but he’d hit harder, with more rage. All of the confused energy he felt inside of him finally had a clear way out.

Even though the senior year of high school had ended for a week now, Bobby still didn’t know what he’d do when September comes. His aspirations were unclear, and the path that led to them even more so. Sometimes, he caught glimpses of what he’d want to do, and become. But it seemed so far from where he was, and from who he was, that he’d rule them out before he had talked about them to anyone. Merely thinking about the future made him anxious. A big blank space he didn’t know how to fill. So he got back up, and took a new piece of wood to work on.
He kept on living like this for another week, working as much as he could from early morning till dusk, exhausting himself to not think about his situation, almost in denial to what the future would hold, and not hold for him.
But that was until she came into his life.