Loving a Bully

Remember You

The dark-skinned woman was back inside the bedroom.

I heard her cluck her tongue and knew that she had seen the untouched food on the table. Then I heard footfalls behind me that stopped by my bed.

“Are you asleep, dear?” she whispered.

I pretended to be asleep.

“She’s asleep,” she was still whispering.

“She hasn’t eaten?” a deep familiar voice said. It wasn’t Christopher. But that didn’t make me less tense as I listened with my eyes closed.

“Do you see that bowl, dear? Do you think she has eaten?”

“No need to be smart with me, Martha.”

A soft chuckle, then, “I apologize.”

I waited for them to leave. But then I heard a long sigh followed by the woman saying, “This wasn’t smart.”

“How smart would you be if you find the person cared for, the person you wanted to protect with all your life with their ribs bruised, their cheeks nearly ripped open, their eyes blackened, their nose bloodied and their lip split?”

I pressed my lips together.

His question brought silence.

“That’s what I thought,” he finished when the woman didn’t speak. “Let’s go and let her rest.”

“Alright,” she said. “I’ll come back later to check on her.”

“You do that.”

I heard footfalls again, the door opened and closed. My eyes opened. I was alone. With the tears welling in my eyes.

God damn it.

I rolled to my back and brought the heels of my palms to my eyes.

What on earth was going on? Why did Christopher bring me here? Why did he have to save me? And why did I have to see him again?

I could still remember the first day I met Christopher.

It was really a coincidence.

A stroke of bad luck.

I had been twelve. Two years had passed since my mother’s death. Back then, my father hadn’t shown interest in me yet other than punishing me with isolation and so I was left to my own devices.

I had headed out alone from the house for the first time in all of my twelve years. I’d been trying to get to the meadow. The meadow with the yellow flowers where my mother and I used to play.

And that was how I found him.

He was sitting on the grass just between the spruce trees in a small meadow in the forest. I thought I had imagined him when I spotted him. Short, thin and with brown hair and eyes, he had looked like a tiny woodland creature to me.

“What are you doing?” I asked as I approached him.

At the sound of my voice, his whole body jerked. Lifting his gaze, he pulled in breath sharply when he saw me.

“What’s that in your hand?” I asked him again.

Immediately, he crumpled the flower bracelet that he was making in his fist. Then he got up and started running through the trees.

“Wait!” I shouted, following after him. “Please wait!”

He didn’t wait. And I became afraid that he’d disappear and leave me alone, lost in the woods.

“Wait!”

He didn’t stop.

Desperate to reach him, I ran faster. And didn’t look where I was going.

My foot caught on a tree root and I stumbled, pitching forward. I flung out both of my hands to grab for anything but grabbing nothing. And so I fell stomach first on the ground.

“Ouch!” I cried out more in surprise than in pain. Because fortunately, I had landed on a soft patch of grass.

When I shouted, he had slowed to a stop, nearly tripping over his shoes, and turned around. He was breathing harshly and his face was a mixture of fear and worry. I was afraid fear would won out, fear of me so I tried to appeal to him.

“I’m lost!” I shouted, trying to hold in a sob. “I’m lost! Don’t go. Don’t leave me alone. Please.”

The pleading in my tone made him hesitate. But he didn’t want to stay. He turned his head back around and looked like he was about to leave me again. He couldn’t leave me alone.

“Don’t leave!” I shouted again when he took a step away from me. “Please!”

Biting his lip, he glanced at me. I slowly sat up, wincing at the pain that shot from my ankle up my leg, never removing my gaze from him, watching him carefully.

Then it hit me.

Brown hair. Brown eyes. The aristocratic tilt of his small jaw. And shoes and clothes that looked expensive.

I knew who this boy was. I’d heard stories about him. Him and his family.

And what was left of it.

“Are you...” my brows furrowed together, “Are you Christopher Lawrence?”

Surprise made several moments pass by before he could answer me with a small nod. And when he did, I smiled in relief. The Lawrence house was near where I lived. I knew because I always saw it from the window of my bedroom.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked, pointing at herself.

He shook his head.

“I’m April Locke. I live just over...” Unsure, I looked around me, “somewhere near you,” I ended lamely. “We’re next-door neighbors. Did you know?”

He shook his head again.

“I got lost,” I admitted pitifully. “I was looking for a place in the woods. It’s a... a meadow filled with small, yellow flowers?” my face scrunched up, trying to remember exactly where it was. Giving up, I sighed, “I just don’t know where it is.”

He suddenly started walking towards me.

I blinked up at him but he spared me no glance and looked straight over my shoulder. I opened my mouth to speak but he passed me by. I hurriedly got off the ground, ignoring the pain on my ankle, and followed him quick. He didn’t seem like he was trying to bolt to the other direction but I wasn’t going to let him disappear. He was my only hope to get home

“Where are you going?” I asked, limping behind him.

He kept quiet and just kept walking.

“You don’t go to school, do you?”

A tree had fallen over and he pointed at it, making sure I saw it under the dwindling light.

“I go to East Private School,” I kept on talking. “And I think I we’re the same age. You’re twelve right? I’m twelve too. I’m one of the tallest girls in our grade so I might not look like it. You just have to drink a lot of milk so don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll catch up.”

I thought I heard him sigh but I wasn’t sure.

“Hey, do you know your way around the forest?”

He started to quicken his footsteps. Was he trying to get rid of me? The thought made me smile especially when he’d been so slow to walk so that I wouldn’t be too far behind him.

“You were making flower bracelets right?” I tried again. “I knew how to make them too... I think? It’s been awhile since I last made one though. My mother taught me. Did your mother teach you too?”

Suddenly he stopped walking and looked at me. And seeing his face, his angry expression, the smile on my face faltered. I realized, looking at him, now that we were closer and neither one was sitting that he was indeed a short boy. I was a good head taller than him. And he must have noticed it because he began to look even angrier.

He pointed at the distance. At break in the forest. At the fence wall surrounding a large house. And seeing that, I blinked several times before returning my gaze to him.

“You do know me,” I exclaimed happily with a clap of my hands.

Turning abruptly, he began to walk past me to go home. But I latched on his arm, jerking him back.

I didn’t let go when she asked him, “You know your way around right? Can you take me to the meadow with the yellow flowers? Please? Pretty please?”

Christopher looked at me and tried to get my hands off him. But I wasn’t letting go until he said yes. I needed to see that meadow again. opened his mouth like he was about to say something. But nothing came out and he pursed his lips before he tried again. Still, nothing.

Realization dawned on me.

“Are you...” I hesitated before saying, “You can’t talk?”

He looked away from me, his pale cheeks flushing.

And when he felt me loosen my hold, he instantly pulled his arm away and started running without looking back.

**********

I should have just let him alone.

Removing my palms from my wet eyes, I stared at the ceiling.

When he ran away, I shouldn’t have tried to hold him back.

I thought about how much energy it would take for me to understand what on earth was going on. Or why he searched for me for eight freaking years when he could just let go. When he could just forget me.

Then to my dismay, I realized, just before I fell asleep for real this time, that I didn’t want to stay here and find out.