The Boy Who Knew Me When (From Boys to men Trilogy) (6 page)

 
Reclaiming the blind position on his chest I continued. “Dad didn’t tell us about him at first but his doctors urged him to be honest with his family. His doctor thought that because some of his behaviors were frightening to us it might help us to understand what was going on with him. Nobody ever actually told me personally, I was just a child, but they never noticed that I was always there in the background listening.”

“We had thought he was getting better, we never imagined that he was hiding the truth from us, we didn’t even know something like that could even be hid. But one day the truth came crashing down around him.”

“I was asleep when I heard her scream. She was begging him to stop, pleading with him to put the gun away. But he wasn’t himself anymore, he kept rambling that Nicolai needed us
‘That son of a bitch is going to take him from us again! He is all alone, we have to help him!’
and the next thing I knew I was listening to the sound of gunfire. Immediately I pulled my hand to my mouth to stifle the screams trying to escape from it and ran into the upstairs bathroom. I heard his footsteps in the hall and he began calling my name telling me that everything was going to be OK.”

“Over and over “It’s time to come out princess, come to daddy baby” he would say. I was terrified so I opened the window and stepped out onto the roof.  I forgot to close the window behind me and after listening to dad break through the door he followed me out.

“It’s OK princess, everything is going to be OK.”

 
“I still don’t remember much after I escaped the bathroom, I must have stepped on a tree branch or something but I fell. The last thing I knew I was in the hospital with two broken arms, scratches from head to toe and a concussion. The doctors said I was lucky to be alive, that I was saved by a holly bush.”

 
We sat in silence for a very long time before Ford got up the courage to ask where my dad was. I filled him in that my dad had been declared mentally incompetent to stand trial and was sent to serve a long sentence in the Texas state hospital.

“But my aunt pulled some strings and was able to get him into a private facility on the coast.”

  It was already starting to get dark outside when Ford scooped me into his arms and lifted me off of the couch.

“Which room is yours?” he asked.

  I pointed him in the right direction and he carried me inside gently laying me on the bed. I was an emotional wreck and in need of his closeness, it surprised me when, as if reading my thoughts, he laid down next to me pulling my head onto his chest wrapping his arms around me. He stroked my hair until he fell asleep, something I barely noticed as I drifted off into dreamland as well. I woke up at midnight to find him no longer lying next to me. Instead was a note that read:

“I have an early plane to catch at 5 am so I had to cut out. I’m heading home for the weekend to take care of some family issues. Don’t hate me for not waking you but I decided it best to let beauty sleep. Call me, don‘t text, I need to hear your voice. Number is in your phone.”

Truly Yours,

Julian “Ford”

  I was hurt that he left without saying goodbye, not angry at him but hurt because I awakened desperate to feel his arms around me. But the sight of the name I used to know, written in his handwriting, warmed my heart and took me back to a time when life was joyful and full of hope.

  Julian and Nicolai, or Nick as Julian had called him, met in kindergarten. Their friendship was hardly at first sight. Nicolai tried to “borrow” Julian’s Transformers eraser and in the end Nicolai ended up with his first shiner, Julian walking away with a bloody nose. I was just a baby at the time so this story is purely secondhand but from what I remember the fight was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. It’s funny how boys find that sort of thing a bonding experience.

  Both of our parents
ended up bonding as well, becoming great friends. We spent summers together, holidays, had many backyard BBQ’s, our dads went on fishing trips and I was basically on the road to growing up before their eyes. I don’t remember a time as a child where Mr. and Mrs. Ackles and their son Julian were not a part of our lives. Even when we were not all together as a family Julian was over to play or my mom and Mrs. Ackles were getting smashed on Pinot Grigio sharing mommy war stories and recipes in the kitchen.

 
Julian and Nicolai had many more moments of not getting along, they were more like brothers than they were friends, just as brothers and sister fought, so did they. Once they hit Jr. High however the arguments and fights slowed because they became more interested in girls and football.

 
I loved Julian even then; he was a lot nicer to me than Nicolai who seemed to get a kick out of tearing the heads off of my Barbie dolls. He would talk to me like I was a normal person and not just some annoying little kid. When Nicolai would get called away by mom to set the table or take out the trash he would sit down and play with me. Most of the time we would color but on occasion we had tea parties and played with my Barbie dolls. You would think he would want to be Ken but that wasn’t the case, nope, Julian preferred Skipper.

“I want to be the awesome one, how could anyone not be awesome with a name like Skipper? Skipper just bleeds happy.” But then Nicolai would come in, make fun of Julian for playing with babies and dolls, pull Skipper’s head off and tell me to scram. It did not even matter if I was in my own room, I scrammed.

  Don’t get me wrong, besides his annoying faults Nicolai was an awesome brother, he just suffered from what I like to call “big boy syndrome”. Meaning when a friend was over he insisted on becoming alpha male and asserting dominance over the weaker party. It didn’t matter if that weaker party was his baby sister as long as he got to show off in front of his friends.

 
But if any of his friends made fun of me or followed suit in ripping the heads off of my dolls they ended up never coming back: Nicolai would ball his fist up tight and punch them dead in the jaw every time. He would still hang out with these boys at the play ground, parties and school but they were never asked to come over again. When my mom would ask about these so-called friends Nicolai would inform her that he did not want them in his house because only he got to pick on his baby sister “It’ll make her strong mom! One day she’ll need to be strong because boys are dumb. It’s my job as her big brother to show her how dumb...” he would argue. His words about how dumb boys could be stuck with me to this very day.

 
Sometimes I wonder if things would have ended up the same way had Julian stayed with his cousins in Montgomery instead of going back to Puerto Rico. My dad loved Julian like his own son and when he never came back I know he felt as if he had lost two children that day. Not only that but he lost one of his closest friends when Howard was killed. My dad had nobody but my mother to hold him together and she had her own pain to contend with, her loss was equal to his, both of them losing close friends and a son in a single day.

 
My mother was the more interesting of the two, always smiling as if nothing happened. But no matter how many fake smiles she plastered on her face I knew she was dying inside. I felt it with each middle of the night hug, and every second that my own pain went unnoticed. I never got to mourn Nicolai’s passing and I never got to miss Julian. My heart was completely broken, the world as I knew it was gone and nobody seemed to care about anyone but themselves. Thus began my never ending struggle with putting my head up my own ass because it seemed for a long time I was the only one I could lean on. After a while I had no idea how to put faith in anyone, Brea being the only person I would let in.

 
When my father murdered my mother, Brea became my rock, my sunlight on a cloudy day. My aunt did her best to comfort me but she was never exactly the motherly type. Brea was honestly the best thing that ever happened to me. When she came along I finally had someone I could call my own and even though we were only children she listened and comforted me in ways nobody had before.

“Do you have brother or sister?” she asked on the school playground the first day we met.

“My brother is dead,” I said innocently.

 
Brea looked up from the fort where she had been twirling the fake stirring wheel, and matter of factually blurted out “That sucks!”

 
After a second she thoughtfully put her arm around my shoulder and said “Well, you got a sister now K, cause I ain’t got no brother or sister either, and everybody needs a brother or a sister don’t ya think?.”

 
And from that moment on she was the best sister a girl could have. She offered me a shoulder to cry on, she cheered me up when I was sad and she made me chocolate chip cookies on Nicolai’s birthday and the anniversary of his death every year.

“I tried to tell my mama chocolate chip cookies had magic healing powers but she wouldn’t listen me none. I think once you get to be all big and stuff you can’t see magic no more. When I get big I am always gunna see magic cause I’m never gunna grow up. Growing up is stupid!”

  When my mother passed away she did nothing to commemorate either day. Not because she didn’t want to, she wanted to do anything that included chocolate chip cookies, but because she knew it would simply be too much for me to handle.

 
To this day she still lived by the motto that chocolate chip cookies were magic and baked them at least once a week but she loved being a grown up. Ever since she met Mark Jones a few months into our second semester of ninth grade she discovered the beauty of kissing which was a good enough reason to no longer be seen as a little kid.

“That boy has lips like strawberries; I like strawberries...A LOT!”

  I myself had tasted Brandon’s strawberries for months so I knew all too well how awesome it could be wearing big girl panties. 

  I had tried to call Ford early that morning without realizing the time and when he didn’t answer I determined that he was most likely still in the air so I tried to call him again after lunch and got his voice mail. I left a message letting him know how cold my bed had been without him in it and that I could not wait until I saw him again.

 
I know I probably sounded pathetic, everything seemed to be moving so fast and unreal but from the moment we met, even before I realized who he was there was a connection between us. I was never one to believe in love at first sight and I am not saying that is what these feelings are but if ever there was a time to believe it was now.

 
For the first time in my life I truly wanted something other than my brother to have never been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everyone in my life who had known me when I still had joy in my heart was gone, it felt good to know there was someone out there who remembered that there was a time I was lively and carefree.

 
Not Brea, Brandon or even Aunt Tilly ever knew me as anything other than a fragile piece of glass. Between the three of them I often felt as if they were handling me with such care because they feared me so delicate that I might shatter into a million tiny pieces. There was a time that this might have been true, but not anymore, they simply did not understand. Ford knew my pain, he knew how much I could handle and not handle because he had been through most everything I had and understood what it takes to make a person the way they are. To make
us
like
we
were, though he seems to have handled things much better than I had.

 
A few minutes after I left the message on his voice mail he called me back. “I miss you sweetheart. Sorry I just left you like that. I regretted it the second I climbed into my truck.” I beamed, happy to hear his voice, even more happy to hear the regret which showed me how much he cared.

“Well, don’t let it happen again, mister!” I teased and he laughed. “Seriously, I woke up wanting you like I have never wanted anything in my entire life. It royally sucked to find a note in your place. Are you in San Juan with your grandmother?”

“Yeah, she’s not been feeling too well and ended up in the hospital for a few days. I had to come out and help find someone to take care of her when I’m not around. I had a friend that was supposed to do it for me but that didn’t work out as planned.”

 
It was nice to hear that he was still the same Julian that I remembered. Loving and caring, always considering the well-being of the people he cared about. I was hoping to spend the rest of the weekend before classes started getting to know him better.

“When are you supposed to be back?” Suddenly I felt like a needy, nosy girlfriend. Considering the fact that I was not his girlfriend made me feel like an idiot and I immediately wanted to retract the question.

“Sunday evening but I am going to be pretty tired when I get back. I was hoping we could meet up Monday after classes were over. Do you have your schedule yet?” I nodded even though he couldn’t exactly see me.

“I think my last class ends at three on Monday,” I said. “Want to have dinner?” Please say yes, I hoped.

“Sounds like a plan sweetheart. I’ll be thinking about you the whole time I am gone, that is a promise.”

 
I beamed as we both agreed to meeting at six for dinner giving us both enough time for what was sure to be a much needed nap and a shower after a long first day of classes.

  When I finally managed to leave my bedroom that Saturday afternoon I found Brea on the couch crying sitting in the middle of half a box of used Kleenex.

“Brea, what is wrong sweetie?”

  She sniffled a few times before breaking out into a hysterical tear filled rant.

“He broke up with me, that stupid big long arm son of a bitch actually broke up with
ME
. Nobody has ever broken up with me.” she paused to bury her nose into a tissue.

“Um, I’m so sorry Brea. I didn’t know you cared about him so much.”

  She wailed out a cry, blubbering she continued “I didn’t think I did, I mean, I don’t Jem, I just...he was...he was nice to me. Or so I thought he was. Turns out he was screwing Rebecca Warner, remember her?” I could not say I had a clue who she was talking about.

“You know, Jemma!” she shouted hysterically. “That fugly, flat-chested cow that works at Coffee Bean, the one that always forgets the fucking whipped cream. Who the fuck forgets the whipped cream on a gawd damn iced blended mocha? That’s the best fucking part!”

  I could tell by her overabundance of the word “fuck,” that (typical Brea) she was quickly turning from upset to royally pissed off. I opened my mouth to try and calm her down and also reassure her that I knew who Rebecca was. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a word in before she jumped up off the couch knocking the used tissues that had been blanketing her lap into the floor.

“FUUUUCK!” she screamed. “Gawd damn fucking boys! I am so sick of fucking boys. I came to college hoping to find a
MAN
and instead I end up with a prepubescent moron who just so happens to have a big dick.” she paused and then sat back down on the couch where I joined her.

“Damn it, Jem, he really knew how to use that thing.” she calmly exclaimed blowing a stray hair off of her nose. Thank goodness she was starting to calm down. I had never seen Brea lose it over a guy before.

“So, what exactly are you pissed about if you didn’t actually like him?” I asked curiously watching as her eyes doubled in size looking at me as if I were a moron.

“Are you even listening to me? Besides the fact that I have to find myself a new toy he had the nerve to cheat on me with the likes of Rebecca. REBECCA, she is a step completely in the wrong fucking direction. She’s the girl that gets cheated on, not me!”

  Wow, I knew Brea could be shallow but I have never actually heard her say anything so deplorable and self-centered out loud.

“So, it would have been fine if he cheated on you with Miranda Kerr? Were you guys even exclusive?”

  For a second I honestly thought Brea was going to hit me. She gave me a glare so heated that I had to peel my eyes from her to the ground for fear I would spontaneously combust.

“UGH! YES!” She screamed again. “Because at least then it would make a little bit of fucking sense. You just don’t dump a nine for a three! And to top that off, I am not even a stupid nine so that makes it even worse. It is not as if he can argue that he got sick of me because I was some ditsy moron with big tits.”

Sadly, now I got it.

“I’m sorry you’re upset but really Brea, are you listening to yourself right now? Firstly, how exactly do you gather this girl is a skank from the fact that she forgets your whipped cream? It isn’t like you to judge people on a basis of absolutely nothing; she seems nice enough albeit a bit flighty. Maybe she doesn’t even know about you? And second, you said it, you are a nine, well, actually I would say you are more like a ten. Unlike Rebecca you can snap your fingers and take your pick of men. Throw her the idiot bone, get over it and snap because I know you and I know you don’t really give a shit.”