Welcome Noah, We Missed You

It seemed that when I did finally fall asleep I was no sooner awoken. “I called Sawyer’s father,” my mother said from the doorway of my room. I was staring up at her with dream-fogged eyes. She had her coat on, and a scarf wrapped around her neck. She sighed and came to sit down at the end of my bed. I turned onto my back to face her. “Noah, I’m happy you have a new friend.” I mentally corrected: first friend. “I am, but you can’t run off with Sawyer in the middle of the night like that! You scared me and your father half to death!”

“Not being with Sawyer scares me, mom,” I responded so simply, so easily because it was the most honest thing I could have said in that moment.

She looked like she had more to say but she stood instead. “I want you home for dinner, okay? I told Ingrid to have dinner ready for six; that is when your father and I will be home.” I nodded my head though I wanted to comment on Ingrid being here. She wasn’t exactly a maid, but she often cooked dinner and picked up around the house. But her main job was to make sure I didn’t leave the bathtub running with me laying in it.

I went back to sleep. Ingrid woke me at one with a cup of tea and some toast. She asked me about you. She said, “Your mom said you spent the whole night out with a girl. Who is she?” Ingrid was someone I didn’t trust, but someone I had known for a very long time. She was the only person outside my doctors and family who knew about my accident. Ingrid was twenty-three, just out of college, and still looking for a stable job. My parents employed her as my babysitter because they were desperate to find someone who would a fifteen-year-old boy and she accepted because she was desperate for an income.

Beside that, Ingrid was really nice. We were almost friends. If my parents weren’t paying her, we would have been definite friends. Except, it was hard to tell if she talked to me because she was being paid to or not. My dad thought I didn’t like girls; it didn’t help that I refuted the idea that Ingrid was pretty. It wasn’t that she was ugly; she was just unattractive to me. She had everything I imagine another person would find attractive. She wasn’t a model. I liked to think of her figure as ‘full’; my dad tried to sell it as curvaceous. I’d observed a lot of women in town though and decided Ingrid was just ‘full’. She was gifted in the chest and in the thighs but nowhere else. Her stomach was as flat as her backside.

It wasn’t a bad figure to have. We went to the movies once; she didn’t notice it but she caught a lot of male attention. Despite being full, in every sense of the word, she didn’t appeal to me. Maybe it was because I didn’t waste time going after things I knew I couldn’t have. Maybe it was the look she gave me when I came downstairs after being in my room for a long stretch of time. My dad thought I didn’t like girls but he didn’t necessarily think I liked boys. I think he found me to be sick in a different sense of the word; sick like I found nobody to fill my void. Like having no friends had been a social choice.

“Just a girl,” I answered as I drank my tea, enjoying its scorch. I decided, then, not to think about things because it made my wrists ache and my limbs feel heavy. I wanted to stretch them out but I was holding a cup of tea, and I didn’t want to spill it on my bed because my sheets smelled like Downey and I preferred it that way.

Ingrid laughed. The sound filled my room. Even that was full. “What’s her name?”

“Sawyer,” I responded as I took another sip of my tea.

Ingrid pushed the plate of toast towards me on the bed. She was seated at the end, where my mother had sat earlier. “Eat your toast.”

“I’m not all that hungry. Besides, I’ll probably get something to eat with Sawyer.” I pushed the plate back towards Ingrid, and climbed out of bed, saying, “You eat it.” I set my mug down on my nightstand and then proceeded to open my closet door. I picked out a pair of dark jeans, and took my converses out.

“It’s cold out today,” Ingrid said to me, pointing past me back to my closet. “You’re going to want a sweater.” I nodded my head and went back into my closet to grab a sweatshirt. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.” She left with my plate and mug, and I left to go take a shower. When I returned, I had a text message waiting for me from you.

Pick me up at 2:15, yes?

I typed back, yes. A drop of water fell from my hair onto the screen, and it looked like I was crying. The funny thing was I might have been. You responded quickly, Bring your bike. So I bought my bike with me, and left it with the kickstand up in the walkway before heading towards the front door. I rang the doorbell, and waited, feeling like I may explode with excitement, and float away with happiness. The combination seemed the only way to describe what you did to me – what you still do to me.

Your brother Michael answered the door as if he was expecting someone. Which he might have been, but it wasn’t me. “Hi, I’m here for Sawyer,” I said quickly because your brother was extremely intimidating, even though your older brother Liam was even more intimidating.

“What do you want with Sawyer?”

“I-uh, we-uh, well-uh—.”

“T-t-t-today junior,” he snapped with a laugh. I felt my face flame up, and wasn’t sure what to say as a response so I turned around instead, ready to take off towards my bike but your voice stopped me.

“Michael, cut the crap. Noah wait!”

“I was just joking with him,” her brother said in defense as I turned around, feeling particularly embarrassed but not that it visibly showed. I’d been teased a lot in my lifetime, I’d become pretty used to it.

“It wasn’t funny though. Dad knows I’m going out, don’t wait up for me,” you said before bounding down the stairs towards me. “I have to grab my bike around back, follow?”

I hit the kickstand with my foot, and Michael called out to you, “No way are you going off alone some boy. Get back in the house.”

“Mind your business, Michael!” you cried back as you tugged my sleeve and pulled me towards the back. “Noah’s not just some boy.”

But you were the girl, Sawyer, you really were.