The Boy Who Knew Me When(3)

“I am heading over to wish him luck.” She paused. “Did you know, I liked him, I mean like liked him?”

I raised my eye brows at her and shook my head not really understanding or knowing what to say.

“Well, I did, in fact I have had a crush on him since the moment I laid eyes on him, which was before you I might add. I never told you because when you ran up to me the day you two met with that smile on your face and those perfectly pinked cheeks I decided not to say anything. I had waited so long to see you happy like that; you actually had a gleam in your eyes. If he was the one to give you your color back then I wanted you to have him.”

Tears began to well up in my eyes as she turned her head to the floor.

“Had I known, you were going to treat him like you did, that you were just going to throw him away, I would have moved Heaven and Earth to see to it you never got to him. Anyway, I thought you should know that. I am so disappointed in you Jem.”

And with that she was gone. Even though she was trying her damnedest to fight them I could see the tears in her eyes. I could also see the pain that I caused my best friend, the person who had gotten me through the most trying times in my life. I could also see something I had never seen in her before. I could see that unlike me, Brea was in love Brandon. She loved me enough to sacrifice her own happiness just to see me smile. How could I have missed it?

Were there any signs that she had feelings for him? I couldn’t remember a time she had shown those kind of emotions toward anyone. She always gave the two of us our space; she encouraged our relationship, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness.

Was that it? Proof that she had been harboring unrequited feelings for the love of my high school life? Perhaps to fight off her own emotions she had to see to it that we worked. All I know is that in failing Brandon, I seem to have failed her as well.

After cursing myself for being so stupid, I finished packing the last few items in the room I had called my own since I was eleven. The lavender walls seemed so bare; remnants of the photos that had hung on them hours ago were seared into the paint. I felt a sense of nostalgia realizing that once I walked out the front door I would be nothing but a memory to this life and starting over would be my only option. There was no coming back.

After the heated conversation I had with Brea only hours before I wasn’t quite sure what kind of beginning was in store for me. We have never had an argument before, much less a conversation with such shocking confessions. We were soul sisters, we spoke, we shared, we joked, we hugged, we teased, we comforted but we never fought. I did not know how to get her to forgive me for being such a horrible friend.

I had told her for years that I was not worthy of such an awesome friendship but she would blow me off and dismiss me as being ‘ridiculously self-conscious and clueless’. If it were not for Brea I am not sure I would have ever made it through middle school, little alone all of the madness of high school. I have horrible self esteem and am insanely hard on myself, I know that. Because of her I started believing that I had a few redeeming qualities making me worthy of existing in a world full of chaos.

Brea and I met in fifth grade, the year that my life drastically changed. My dad was going through a lot of health issues so he and my mother decided to move closer to Austin so that he could get the best help possible. My aunt, my father’s sister, who at that time was on the City council pulled some strings with a friend and found us a little house in the country.

We had all hoped country living would help my father in his venture to become of stable mind again but it failed miserably. After months of therapy and anti-psychotic medication my father’s mental abilities took a turn for the worse and my mother had him temporarily committed to the state hospital for treatment of schizophrenia with sociopathic tendencies, an illness he had been diagnosed with two years earlier.

My dad had been pretty normal up until the few months preceding my eight birthday. He was like most other dads, he worked hard, came home tired but still managed to fit in time for me and my brother Nicolai. The thing I loved the most about my dad was that he loved to sing and had a voice that could easily rival any operatic voice of today. He sang when he mowed the lawn, at church, in the shower and pretty much any other chance he had. The best part was when he sang us to sleep at night, always the same tune, Pie Jesu’. I was convinced that his voice was the fire that lit up every star in the night sky, it was truly magical. But that all changed the night Nicolai was taken from us.

Nicolai was twelve when he died; he had gone out of town for the weekend with his friend Julian and Julian’s parents. It was supposed to be a fun trip, Six Flags, water parks and sight-seeing. Howard and Victoria, Julian’s dad and mom, had taken the boys to Cowboy Billy’s for dinner, when the world came crashing down around them.