Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2012 10:20:12 -0400 (EDT) From: Erik Pruett Subject: Please Don't Go - 1 - Young Friends The regular warnings apply. Don't read if it offends you or it's illegal to do so. This is an autobiography, as best I can remember it, even if I sometimes don't want to. I warn you that I'm not a writer, just a high school senior with a B+ average in English, so you shouldn't expect miracles. This story is about me, and the most important person in my world, and I'm mostly writing it to put me back into myself. That being said, if you enjoy it, I would love your feedback. The email is erik.pruett@aol.com if you decide you want to send me something. Hope you enjoy, hope to hear from you. :] P.S. This story is probably going to make random jumps forward in time, so to avoid any confusion I include the name of the narrator as well as said narrator's age at the time. I hope it helps! If not... you'll just have to bear with it, I guess. P.P.S. My name is Sasha. I like strawberries and overusing emoticons... :3 --- SASHA - Age 12 Before the week of my eleventh birthday, I could honestly say that my life was pretty much perfect. I mean, I didn't live in a mansion or take expensive vacations to Spain or get whatever I asked for at the snap of a finger, but that stuff really isn't ever that important. I lived in Hawaii, barely five minutes from the beach. I had more good friends than I could count on two hands. And I had a beautiful mother and an amazing father who loved each other almost as much as they loved me. But you know what they say, about good things and how they've got to end. It was a dark and stormy night, just how the cliche goes, twelve days prior to my eleventh birthday. I was sitting on the couch, playing Super Smash Brothers Melee with my father the way we always used to. We'd been doing it for hours, the two of us waiting for Mom to come home with dinner from the market; every time he started getting bored, I'd let him win. When I heard the knock on the door, I sprung from the floor, ran to answer it. MY face was plastered with the grin I always wore for her, except that it wasn't my mother, wasn't anyone I knew. It was a man with a badge. A few hours later, Dad and I were saying our farewells to my comatose mother. Four days after that, we were laying her to rest. There was no birthday party that year. For almost a year thereafter, Dad and I tried picking up the pieces and making something from the ashes of the life we'd both lost. I forced myself to stop crying when he was around, and I'm sure he did the same for me. We'd go to the park to play some soccer. We'd go out to the movies, maybe get ice cream afterwards. I never had to go to school. But in the space between us, where once there'd been affection and familiarity, only silence remained. No matter what we did, what we tried, we couldn't fill the void. Before long, maybe a month or two, Dad found his own personal solution to the problem in the form of alcohol, the harder the better. At first, I didn't care. He'd be at the bar all day, long into the evening, and it meant that I got a reprive from having to go through the motions of our hollow attempts at normalcy. But then things started to change. I blame my face. Mom used to say that I should've been born a girl. I've always had full lips, pink like cherry candy, a tiny nose, and huge eyes the same color as the ocean in the summer. Picture that all framed by a long golden-blonde mane, long enough to grace my shoulders. Never been too tall or too short, but always thin thin thin. I guess to my father, I looked like an eleven year old mirror of her. That was the year I learned to hate my face. Dad would come home from a night drowning bottles of who knows what at the bar, stumble in angry and gin-seduced. I think he really did try to love me, but how can you love a constant reminder of the worst pain you've ever felt? Life after that got worse and worse, but when the principal called him after a teacher reported the unusual frequency with which I was always running into things or falling from trees, Dad decided maybe Hawaii wasn't the place for us anymore. And we left not two weeks later. We traded the perpetual summer of Hawaii for the oppressive heat of Austin, Texas. We got there in mid-August, just in time to enroll in the nearest public school and meet all the friendly neighbors we'd never talk to after that first week there. Even though I should've known better, I held on to the hope that maybe leaving Hawaii behind would be the first step to a new life, that maybe a new home was all Dad needed to finally escape the shadow my mother's tombstone had cast over his life. But things never go so well. --- The alarm screeches through the darkness of the room, rouses me from a restless sleep. I wake up in the dark stagnant heat of the morning, for a second I don't even remember that it's a school day, and I consider just slapping the thing off the nightstand and returning to sleep. Before I get the chance, Dad comes crashing into the room. "I swear to God, if you're gonna' have an alarm clock, wake the hell up when it goes off!", he shouts, grabs it from the table and tosses it out the door into the hallway. "I'm sorry Dad", I mumble timidly, not making eye contact. I try my best no to tremble, but at twelve years old nobody is that brave. Without another word, he storms out. For a minute I just sit there on my bed, waves of blonde cascading haphazard across my face and down my neck, and I force myself to take slow, steady breathes, arms wrapped around my waist. It's the only thing that can calm me down when Dad gets mad. I hate myself for the involuntary shaking, but stopping it isn't easy. "Just breathe, Sash. In, out. Just breathe", I whisper to myself, and slowly I pull myself together. Calm, recollected, I realize the bus will be here in moments. Immediately I rip off the giant sweat shirt I always wear to bed, the one I borrowed from Dad years ago, and that still fits me like a blanket. I pull a blue v-neck from my closet, pull it over my head and onto my lithe physique, then I slip out of my shorts and fish a small pair of white boxer briefs and ankle socks from my drawer. I slide a slim pair of dark jeans up my skinny legs, shove my feet into a black pair of Vans, grab my bookbag and shoot out the door without even bothering to tame my messy golden mane. I make it to the bus stop on time, barely. Typically, I skip breakfast. I'm always waking up to late to have it at home, though there really isn't anything to eat in the morning anyway. At school I've never enjoyed the cafeteria and its associated stresses, so I usually just end up going to first period early. Today is no exception. First period is gym. As rail-thin as I am, I've always been decently athletic. Without even warming up I'd made the school's soccer team, and I'm one of the best players. If that weren't exercise enough, the frequency with which I miss the bus is such that more often then not I end up having to run to school in the morning. Nothing makes for a better start to the day then showing up to class drenched in sweat. Before anyone else arrives I slip into the back of the locker room, change into my PT shorts and tee as quickly as possible. I hate changing when everyone is around. It's not that I'm shy, which is an extraordinary understatement. It's not that I'm queer, which is an absolute secret. Mostly, it comes down to my body. I gaze at my reflection in the mirror once I've stripped to my underwear. My hipbones stick out sharply, my tiny shoulders and super slim torso look more like a girl's than a teen boy's. My collarbones protrude. I'm not anorexic, and I thank God everyday for giving me a deep tan and a hairless body, but I don't look like I should. I shake my head and turn from the mirror, get dressed in PT clothes and take a seat on the bleachers. My head drops into my arms; class won't start for another twenty minutes. One by one, the other boys start meandering into the gym. Most start lazily shooting hoops or playing Four Square to pass the time. After sitting there for ten minutes, I feel someone mess up my hair. I'm smiling before I even look up. "Hey Jaime", I say, beaming. He smiles back, and I nearly faint. "What's up, Sash?", he replies. We bump fists. If Jaime had been around in Ancient Greece, today the country would be full of nothing but sculptures of him. He's a work of art, with shaggy brown hair the color of dark chocolate, strong facial features and deep green eyes you could mistake for emeralds, the way they sparkle. He's taller than most, with a light tan and a lean athletic built, the kind of kid who could be the most popular kid in school just by his looks, but he's not. He's popular because of his personality; happy-go-lucky and utterly devoid of malice. He's beautiful, my best and only real friend. And since the day we met, I've been hopelessly, hopelessly in love with him. "You ready for the weekend? Turns out Bobby's parents are letting him throw that party after all. It sounds like it'll be awesome", he chimes. I have to will myself not to stare too long into his face. "Yeah man, it sounds cool, can't wait", I reply, nibbling my bottom lip. I don't really like parties, haven't cared for big social gatherings at all since Mom's funeral. Something about them makes me anxious. But I'd go to Hades without hesitating if it was Jaime who invited me. He opens his mouth to say something, but before he can, the PT teacher Mr. Bretz blows his whistle. The two of us jump down from the bleachers, him landing a bit more gracefully than me. I stumble a bit when I hit the floor, and Jaime extends his hand to keep me from falling over. His fingers wrap around my wrist, just for a moment. I feel warm. "Let's go Sash", he says with a smile, as he jogs over to line up with everybody else. And despite the fact that my cheeks are blushing cherry red, I smile back, because whenever he looks at me that way, even just for a second, I feel lighter.