Chapter 5

Years passed. I became a loner. My old friends got the message and left me alone. I was quiet and polite. People would say I was shy. Truth was I just didn’t care. I became an observer rather than an actor. I stood away from most of the typical high-school groups. I didn’t fit in any of them.

My dad asked me how I was doing and feeling every day, even when I didn’t show any signs. I kept getting good grades and hanging out with boys my age when I had to.

“Are you okay, son?”

“Yeah, I am Dad.”

None of us was much of a talker. He never pushed me to talk about my feelings, but he let me know he was there for me if I needed him.

I remember how embarrassed I felt the first Parents’ Night when only Dad came with me. I’m pretty sure Dad felt the same way.

One of the teachings my parent’s divorce had taught me was that ‘happily ever after’ didn’t really exist. I became the cynic in the back of the cinema who couldn’t buy into the idea of the couple riding off into the sunset. I found it hard to trust people, especially girls.

Well, all girls except for one.

My crying and brooding place was a big weeping willow back by the creek. It had a big fork up among the branches where I could sit and view the farms and the forests all around, completely hidden from everyone. It seemed fitting to have a secret crying place in a weeping willow.

I would sit there brooding and listening to the wind rustling in the leaves.

“Red?” a female voice asked from below. “Red, is that you?”

I looked down at a skinny girl dressed in raggedy clothes. It was Katherine. We weren’t exactly friends, but we’d known each other since Junior-High.

“Kat?”

She looked as if she was in pain.

“You look like you were crying,” she said.

It had been my birthday. It was one of those days in the year when the anger and frustration became so unbearable that I stayed away from everyone. My eyes were probably red and puffy. It was obvious that I’d been crying, like it was that she was in sad too.

“Yeah, well, it sucks to be me,” I said with a shrug.

She climbed the tree and sat at my side. She gently raised her sleeves to reveal massive bruising on the inside of her arms. She lowered the sleeves back again.

“What happened to you?” I asked, swallowing hard.

“It sucks to be me too.” She said.

When you suffer you easily recognize the suffering of someone else. And the shared pain created a bond between us.

“Do you come here to cry?” she asked.

I just shrugged.

“I cry here too.” She admitted.

“Sometimes, I wish my parents wouldn’t have divorced” I said. “I didn’t think my mother would ever leave Dad for another man. Dad was never the same after that. He never recovered. His pride took a serious hit.”

She nodded.

“I wish my father was dead,” she said in a barely audible whisper. “It doesn’t take much for him get drunk and lose control.”

In a small town like ours there were no secrets. I made a few discreet enquiries and discovered that Kat’s father was a gambler and a drinker who was always angry and abusive. At times, if he had lost money in a poker game, he used to get drunk and beat the shit out of Kat’s mother. Kat had gotten her bruises trying to prevent her father from hitting her mother.