Home.
We're Still Alive.
The first time I saw you, you were only nine years old, and I was six. We met under the light of the cherry blossom trees, the ones forming the wall between our gardens. It was after tea, and the light was softening just a little. My teddy and I were having our supper upon the debris of leaves underneath the biggest one. No one could see us from the street, but there was a little hole between one of the shrubs and Teddy and I were able to see through them. You walked by, and you had a cat following you- Whiskers. I thought that you must have been the coolest person in the whole entire world, to have a cat following you.
Your hair was like a pixie’s, and I remember ruffling it up constantly, bruising your manly ego. You were always really nice to me and Teddy. When we called you, you and Whiskers would come over, and you taught me how to make an obstacle course in the big oak tree. The first time I raced you, you won. And the second time, and the third. But you taught me how to run as fast as I could through the knee-high grass, the little fronds of ferns tickling my bare feet. Whiskers chased along beside us, too, and sometimes she even let Teddy ride on her back.
The first time you caught me crying, I was ashamed. I expected you to yell and get angry at me, just like everyone else did. But instead, you picked up Teddy from where he lay at the foot of the tree, and scaled the branches until you were beside me. I probably ruined that soft green sweater you were wearing that day after you put your arm around me. Life seemed easier after that, because you knew where I went when I wanted to be alone.
You never did leave me alone though. It became more and more excruciatingly annoying as I grew older, but I was always grateful later, not that I’d admit it. It was your blue eyes who watched the stars up high beside me in our tree while I tried to calm myself down, and it was your strong tan hands rubbing the circles around my back. We laughed about it later, raking golden leaves into piles before we jumped into them, satisfying crackles and crunches filling our ears and the soft sweet smell wafting into our nostrils.
The first time you met my dad was the first time I saw you cry. You thought it was strange that you knew me so well but had never met my dad. I had met yours, multiple times. I must have been only nine, but I remember the way my dad cursed you and slapped you across the face as if you were a punching bag at his second home, the gym. You scurried back across the floor like an ant being chased by a fly, and when he came after you, you fled straight out of the house. Watching from the door to the hallway, I didn’t blame you. I clambered out of the window and raced after you before he could come for me, too.
You told your parents that night that you were going to sleep in your garden in the tent, but I don’t think you ever told them that Whiskers wasn’t your only company. I helped you to set it up on the border of the mini forest of woods that separated our houses. When I yawned and glanced back at my house, you told me you had an extra sleeping bag, and invited me to join you. The tent was too stuffy, though; we both felt enclosed by the plastic blue ceiling, so we took our sleeping bags and made our way past three trees to the middle of our woods. We spread them out and curled up there in the soft leaves. Whiskers slept on my feet, and that was probably the best thing that had ever happened to me.
The first time we wished on a star together was that night. You put your arm under my head since I didn’t have a pillow, and pointed it out to me. You never told me what you wished for, though. I wished that we could stay here forever and never have to go back to my family. The wind rustled gently through the leaves, and although it must have been past nine, the moon cast enough light over us that we could make out every one of the dancing leaves. I counted over a hundred stars in the sky, and pointed out every little configuration there.
You fell asleep sometime after one hundred and three, but I lay there a while longer. I rolled onto my side to watch you, to watch the tiny smackering of freckles that lay across your nose, your stubborn rounded chin, to measure the length of your eyelashes against the nail of my pinky finger. In the time I lay there, I could have sworn that I felt Earth moving, the stars swirling in place around us. When a cloud blew across the moon and the leaves of the trees above hid the brightest star, I took it as a sign for me to sleep. I curled into the crook of your arm and, with the purring cat next to Teddy at my feet, feel into the best sleep of my entire life.
The first time that things were weird between us was when I was eleven and you started talking about this girl at your school. I had watched with envy every day as you ran off to school with your satchel and lunch, while I had to stay home and read myself books just to keep up with you. My dad never was one for home schooling, but he did give me ample money to purchase books. You never talked much about your friends, ‘though I had met a lot of them at your birthday parties and play dates. But I could see the way you talked about this girl was different. You talked about her as if she were an angel or something, and I just couldn’t comprehend why you thought she was so special. It was always about her for a while, and I was hurt.
You stopped speaking to me so much. And then one day, you didn’t meet me out in the bush on Friday night. I knew you were busy with what you called homework and all... I knew we had never strictly promised to come every Friday, but that was just the way it had always been, for the past two years. We had those sleepovers underneath our tree. I sat at the trunk of the tree until the sun had set and the moon had rose. When I heard Whiskers mewling and saw her bright green eyes making her way towards me, I knew you had forgotten about me. Trying to stay strong, us two and Teddy slept curled up there, even without your warm sleeping bags.
The first time you got angry with me was the next morning when you came running out. You called me stupid for staying there all night, and you said you had been busy, busy talking on the phone with that girl. When I told you that Whiskers had remembered me out here in the cold, you slapped me. I don’t think you meant to. That was the ultimate horror- you, you who had always been my shelter when my dad was hitting me to hurt me in such a way. I scooped up Teddy and clambered through the trees as quickly as possible despite the sneezy feeling taking over me from the night alone in the cold.
You didn’t follow me when I ran down the street, and you didn’t see me when I had the most luck I’d ever had in my life- I found a crumpled up twenty dollar bill lying on the ground next to the gutter. Although I’d barely been off two blocks that made up the way to the book store, I’d looked at maps and I knew where I could go- to a bus shelter. There, I took a bus for three hours until the bus conductor told me that I had to get off.
The first time I cried in front of someone other than you was when he took me gently by the arm and led me off and down the steps to where there was a police station, just as if it had been put there in wait of me. It only took a day for the police to associate me with the new missing-child report, but they examined me and all the bruises and welts on my body and decided my dad wasn’t fit for fatherhood anymore.
You weren’t factored into their plans for my life. They sent me away to live with my great-aunt, a good four hours drive away from our homes. But I think one day we’ll see each other again, won’t we? We’ll have another day there underneath the stars and I’ll get to stroke Whiskers. I’m thirteen now, and I’m prettier than that girl, I swear. If I can only find you, it’ll be okay, right? I miss you, you know. I forgive you. I overreacted; it’s all okay if you’ll just find me, if auntie’ll just let me send you one letter, if she’ll just let me call you for one minute...
The first time I truly met pain was when I saw in the newspaper that dad needed revenge for losing me and had taken that revenge out on you.