Chapter
11:
I’m Everything You Wanted Me to Be
Alex stayed close
to me his first day back. His appearance
was severely different, and for him, that actually meant severely normal. He wore plain blue jeans and his shirt was void
of any catch phrase, and even though it must have hurt like nothing I could
imagine, Alex wore his backpack everywhere.
He always made sure his back was covered. It was like a security thing. Needless to say, ever since everything went
down in Acting II a couple weeks ago, Alex had changed.
I don’t only mean
with appearance either. He acted
different toward me. He started acting
different toward Denise-he was almost cold to her. Like, I heard him ask her if she’d go out and
get him some different clothes and she questioned him, he got real angry with
her. I shivered at the memory of the
argument. Neither of them seemed to
remember I was in the room.
“Alex, I’ll go get you a couple of new
things, but I just can’t afford a whole new wardrobe for you right now. Why the sudden need for change? You’ve always enjoyed your own sense of
style. You haven’t worn plain anything
since you started dressing yourself.”
Denise was clearly confused and I felt bad for both her and Alex. If she’d had any clue at all that his sudden
need for a new wardrobe had anything to do with being held at gunpoint, she
would have never pressed him.
My stomach dropped in anticipation as
I saw Alex narrow his eyes. “Why do you
think, Mom? God! YOU’RE the one who let me dress however the
hell I wanted! Why?! None of the other kids’ moms let them go to
kindergarten in their Halloween costume for a week straight! None of the other kids’ moms let them dye
their hair another color every time they got bored. None of the other kids’ moms would have put
up with it! Why the hell did you?” I could see anger and hurt in Alex’s
eyes. I had never once heard him speak
disrespectfully to Denise. Sure, he got
upset when he was younger when she wouldn’t let him go play ‘cause he had stuff
to do, but I had never seen anything like this, and I wasn’t sure I should be
there now.
“Alex, I let you do those things
because you have the freedom to choose.
I’m your mother, not your master.
Don’t you understand? I let you
do what you want with your appearance because it’s YOURS. Your style never hurt anyone.”
“No!”
Alex exclaimed. “You’re
wrong! You d-d-don’t have a clue! The way I dressed DID hurt someone! It hurt ME!
Some asshole shot me and then held a gun to my head and told me he hated
me because of my ‘style!’ He wanted to
kill me because he said I was arrogant, and I outdid him on everything!” Alex held his stomach as tears fell down his
face.
“God, Howie,” my head jerked up as I
heard my name. “Why did you let me make
a fool of myself every day? I never saw
how it looked from y’all’s point of view, ‘cause I was so caught up in
myself! Why didn’t anyone tell
me?!” Alex was sobbing now, cursing the
pain that came with it.
I knew he wasn’t really seeking
answers then as he was trying to come to terms with everything. I looked up and noticed Denise had gone pale
and covered her mouth with her hand.
Wordlessly, she approached her son and gently embraced him, despite his
weak efforts trying to shrug her off.
She didn’t get upset with him for the way he had talked to her or
anything like that. She just held him
and let him cry. I left then, but I
didn’t see Denise come out until at least an hour later—her eyes were red as
well.
I jumped as Alex
touched my arm. His face had lost a little
color and his eyes were darting around.
It was then that I noticed we were at the door of Acting II.
“Hey,” I said,
trying to stay calm for him.
“Everything’s gonna be cool, okay?
He’s not in there anymore.” Right
then I hated that his doctors had let him come back to school after resting at
home only a few days. Sure, they
suggested he be home a bit longer but I would have insisted that he stay put
until he really was better before he came back to face this.
“I know,” he said,
not looking at me. Eye contact was down
to minimal now. Alex rarely looked
anyone in the face, and he didn’t wear shades to hide his eyes.
“Listen,” I said
an idea coming to me, “You stay out here and I’m gonna find Brian. Then all of us can go in together,
okay.” Alex shrugged, as if it didn’t
make any difference to him how many of us were with him—he was still scared out
of his mind.
I saw Brian in
class already—he was always one of the first now that he didn’t have Alex to goof
around with beforehand—and went over to him.
“Hey, Rok,” I greeted. He smiled,
but it was a little tight at the edges, as it had been ever since Alex hadn’t
been in class. “Jay’s outside,” I said,
and his face lit up. “I thought maybe if
you and me came with him in here it would make it a little easier for him.”
Without another
word, Brian was on his feet and outside the door. I could tell he was resisting the urge to
jump on him, like he always used to do.
Instead, though, Bri was real gentle and gave Alex a hug. (I suppose Brian knows a thing or two about
how to handle people who were fresh from the hospital.) Nick sure didn’t. I had to practically pry the kid off this
morning when Alex and I ran into him before classes.
Brian didn’t even
blink when he saw the changes Alex had made, and not to mention the ones he
couldn’t help. Alex had lost a lot of
weight in the hospital, because he couldn’t keep food down for a while at
first—the surgery messed with him that way.
He was skinny to begin with and along with buying Alex clothes in a new
style, Denise also had to look for stuff in a smaller size.
“How ya doin’,
Jay?” Brian asked.
“All right, I
guess.”
“Not too thrilled
about goin’ in there, I take it?”
“No.”
“Well, I don’t
want ya to think that I’m rollin’ off with the clichés this mornin’, but I
wanna tell ya somethin’ okay?” Brian’s eyebrows rose, as he tried to find eye
contact.
Alex nodded at the
floor.
Brian nodded,
though Alex never saw it, and started to speak.
“Y’know, I’ve never said this to anyone, but I think I need to now. The thing is, I know y’all know about my
heart and all. But I’ve never mentioned
to anyone how scared I was after they turned me loose from the hospital after
the infection. I mean, sure my folks knew
I didn’t like hospitals, I’d just spent two months in one, but nobody knew I
was scared of my Big Wheel.”
I coughed, trying
to hide my laughter. Brian smiled
slightly. “’S all right. I know it’s silly,” he admitted before
turning back to Alex.
“See, Jay, what
happened was I had ridden my Big Wheel, and I hit the curb and skinned my knee
. . .that’s where the infection started.
A couple weeks after that, I fell and hit my head on some concrete. All during the two weeks before that this
infection had set in. I was only five,
but I heard the diagnosis plenty from my doctors and my mom and dad who were
calling people and explaining why I was in the hospital. Because I was so young, I thought that my
infection had come because I was riding my Big Wheel. And every time my brother Harold wanted me to
ride bikes with him I wouldn’t go, ‘cause I thought I would get another
infection and have to go back to the hospital.
I didn’t know I’d been sick enough to die at that point, but that didn’t
matter. What mattered was, I wasn’t ever
gonna ride my Big Wheel again.”
I stared at
Brian. I had never known any of this
about his childhood—I had actually kind of assumed that the infection was
related somehow to his heart problem, but I was wrong. I glanced at Alex, who I saw was actually
peeking at Brian a little.
“Anyway, moms know
everything when you’re five. And mine
figured out pretty quick that I wasn’t too thrilled about riding bikes anymore
with Harold, even though I was real active and played a lot of basketball now
that I was able. See, I used to LOVE it
every time my big brother let me do things with him. It was the coolest thing to me and my mom
knew that. So she sat me down and asked
me why I didn’t want to ride with Harold.
I told her I did want to, but I was scared that another infection would
be there and get on me. To me, my fear
was totally realistic. I was convinced
that little staph men were waiting at my Big Wheel for me.”
I saw Alex flush
in embarrassment at the last comment, as if Brian might be making fun of
him. Brian noticed and reached out to
squeeze his arm. “The point is, Alex,
that my mom told me that my fear was okay.
She said that if I did want to ride again, she would go out with me and
make sure everything was okay. And she
kept doing that for as long as it took me to realize that nothing was going to
happen.
“Alex, it’s okay
to feel scared. I was scared too, Howie
and I both were. But we were there for
each other, and we’re gonna be here for you.
We’ll walk with you in there, to let you know that nothing can hurt you
anymore. Not because we have to, but
because we love you. You gotta have
faith, man. You and I are alive. I thank God for that every day. Let’s show Him that thanks, and trust Him to
take care of us. Howie and I will be
right with you, okay?” Hesitantly, Alex
nodded. Brian and I got on either side
of him.
“Thank you,” Alex
whispered.
***
