THE LOST WORLD

John doesn't speak, his mother explained for the umpteenth time to someone's father at the playground. No, John doesn't play tag. He doesn't understand the rules. John draws in the sand, and don't bother John. Let him build sandcastles and draw.

But he started speaking in fragmented sentences at eight, or more often in phrases. Not because he couldn't before. He didn't know he should, and often it was easier to remain silent or speak little, but devote more time to what was happening beyond the familiar boundaries of this world. The grains of sand formed their patterns, striking with harmony and complexity. The pattern created on paper with a pencil and sometimes paints was only better than this. The paints seemed hostile to John from the very beginning, but he was drawn to them by the irresistible force of their bright, unpredictable play. Sometimes John managed to give the sheet, dampened with paper, the right color, but it happened rarely.

More often than not, the colors were not right. If the color came out as it should, John, with trembling hands, transferred it to his main work: a detailed field with a river, misty fir tops in the distance, and a mountain range stretching across the horizon. From behind the mountains, step by step, a traveler with a knapsack full of pictures and all sorts of provisions was slowly walking. The traveler had a kind, but unexpressive face and warm brown eyes. He was eight, just like John, but he was much bigger than John and anyone else his age. The traveler had as many souls as there were pictures in his shoulder bag, and he collected them all into his own, unique, beautiful as dawn and fresh as morning dew.

John knew that when the traveler reached the clearing, he would find a Friend like himself. He sometimes read in books about what it was like, but he could never experience the feeling of friendship to the fullest. There was a solid invisible wall between him and the other children. Sometimes John felt like there was no barrier, and he tried to approach his comrades, but he repeatedly hit his head against the glass of questions, taunts, and incomprehension. They threw his things away to see if he would scream this time. They tore his colorful sheets into pieces, explaining that it was useless scribbling, and asked why John was such a sissy. He understood what could be done to stop it, but then he would have to engage in endless pretense and deprive himself of the strength so necessary to finish the main work. The traveler could get lost, drown in a swamp, or lose his things without John's help, and John couldn't leave his Friend in trouble.

Every night by the light of a flashlight, he peered at the sheet, trembling under the blanket with fear and excitement. The silhouette didn't appear, but the shadows of the grass changed. The reeds on the riverbank swayed. If John was patient enough, he could smell the scents coming from the water and hear the splash of fish. On particularly lucky days, burning stars full of hope would fall from the paper sheet onto him - tiny prickly dots, once marked with a compass.

On bad days, the drawing remained motionless. This usually happened when John's mother cried. She locked herself in the kitchen and whispered words like, "Why can't he just be like other kids?" "Mrs. Blackfrost said he would get better, but he doesn't even try," "...he has no friends at school." Sometimes she would start sobbing, thinking John couldn't hear, but his hearing was always too sharp, and he inadvertently caught every last word. His mother would come out of the kitchen smelling different, like medicine and alcohol. She would come into his room to turn off the nightlight. If John didn't manage to pretend to be asleep and inadvertently wrinkled his nose at the smell, his mother would explain that it was insomnia medicine. John would nod. She would stroke his head and sing his favorite lullaby a second time. He would pretend he was already asleep. When John's mother went to her room, John would press the coveted button on his flashlight and, with a sense of foreboding, shine the magic beam onto the paper. Everything was still. He was tormented by vague anxiety, and why, he didn't fully understand. It was clear that his mother wanted a different son, someone instead of John, but John was powerless to help her with that. He would like to, very much, but he knew: only by completely destroying himself would he become the one she needed. Obedient emptiness could become cheerful, active, and popular among classmates. It could heed any demands and become anyone. But John couldn't do that.

There were also good days. A few weeks ago, John realized that the traveler had crossed the first forest and was making his way through the wilderness territories. He almost lost sleep on those days and devoted more time to searching for colors than anything else. Twice he skipped school to be alone on the swings in the steppe and add new details. Everything was going smoothly. He added red berries to the bush and ripples on the water. He added a path hidden in the grass so the traveler could approach the river and drink when the time came. On the far bank, John drew pitcher plants and made some of them have convenient large leaves that could easily become cups in skilled hands.

The traveler appeared at dusk when John was sitting on the swings, as usual, pondering the details of his world. A fine drizzle was falling, and he tucked the drawing under the shelter of his hood so it wouldn't smudge. Just a light evening rain. If it were otherwise, his mother would have given him an umbrella and told him to come home earlier, or else John would get his feet wet. They would go over the rules of how to behave so as not to be scared of thunder.

So John was calm and sure: he had at least another hour on these swings under the gray and porous sky.

A silhouette emerged from the forest. It was blurred, and it had been through a lot: the traveler's hands were covered in dried blood from animal bites, his face was smeared with dirt, but he was alive, and the knapsack on his shoulders, full of pictures, was intact. John didn't ask, but he knew that the traveler had delivered them all to their destination. He came to him, his Friend, despite swamps, mud, wolves, and deep fissures in the rocks.

The silhouette slowly raised a hand and waved to John. He was broken but alive. Tall and unexpressive, but better than the others, expressive but disorderly, loud and cheeky.

"Hello," said the traveler.

John suddenly felt his face contorting into a previously unknown grimace. He was happy and filled with pain at the same time. It was as if you hadn't seen the sun for many years and one day emerged from a stone bag. So that at that moment a golden beam ran through the grass - straight to your feet. As if everything before was a path, and this moment became a point of truth on the gray and endless, devoid of any interest, road.

"I made a mistake with one of the colors," John realized. The traveler was already by the river when thunder roared. John screamed, covering his ears. He wasn't prepared for this. Thunder roared again, and John pressed the drawing to his chest, as if trying to hide his Friend near his heart. The sky split in half, and streams of water poured down. Home was too far away. The first drops touched the paper, and the traveler's face took on a frightened expression. His mouth dripped a little.

"Hell... fr..." - he said again, trying to smile with a blurry mouth. With each passing second, it got worse and worse. There was no shelter, no trees. A large open space amidst bushes, with swings in the center. It was too far to the shelter! John had always been afraid of thunder, he could have run home faster than the wind and saved himself, but he wouldn't have saved his Friend. If he could overcome swamps and wild animals for him, maybe John could weather some rain. John tucked the sheet into his pocket and fell face down into the sand. Water pounded his back, but it was dry underneath.

He remembered his Friend's smile and smiled, trembling. He was still smiling when his terrified mother found him, returning from work and discovering her son wasn't home while a storm raged outside.

He smiled as he was rubbed with alcohol and given strong raspberry tea. John's mother asked questions, trying to figure out what good thing had happened that made John smile. Her voice was slightly irritated, which she didn't even try to hide, thinking John wouldn't notice. John noticed, but it wasn't that important. He thought about his Friend and the world hidden, saved under his shirt.

John's mother asked him to take off his shirt, and he reluctantly complied. When he removed the drawing from his chest to put it on the table, the smile disappeared. All the colors were smudged. The world was consumed by chaos. The traveler wouldn't have survived, even if he were very strong, boldly impressed into the canvas of grass, and he merged forever with the other colors, now turned into brown, gray, and dirty green. John doesn't remember what happened next. New questions or something else.

He only remembers that smile of the traveler and his first words, which became the last. He remembered it as proof that he, too, could be loved, and he had real, not fictional, friends.

The next morning, John didn't go to school because he had caught a cold. Nor the morning after that. Recovering and returning to classes, he tried to get along with his classmates by copying their behavior. It felt like faking his personality, but John didn't care: he had nothing valuable left to love and devote himself to work with all his soul, as he had done before. He could study silly ball games and pretend to enjoy them, talk about football and "Ninja Turtles" cards, and after classes patiently endure the pokes of a backpack in the side and respond to them in kind. His mother no longer cried and told the voice on the phone that John was making progress and was almost normal now. Maybe it would get even better; he just needed time. Now he's trying, really, no longer drawing, but doing well in his studies, and sometimes other kids come to our house.

John is thirty now, and he works as a product analyst in a good company. John the product analyst, but not just John, now has friends, and sometimes it's not so boring with them. He still rarely smiles, but everyone has gotten used to it and considers John simply a serious person. There are many adults like him.

A couple of times a year, John dreams of the traveler, and he wakes up with a wet pillow, but he doesn't understand why. In his dream, his world is just as alive and flourishing, and his Friend carries paintings to the other end of the earth: art he will never share with his waiting friend on the other side of the sheet. But John knows what was drawn there. John saw everything the traveler saw, but forgets upon awakening.

It doesn't matter. The main thing is that he heard those cherished words - even if only once.