Amelia

“When I was 7, my mom got in a car crash, leaving her paralyzed from the neck down. She didn’t die…but sometimes I like to think she would have been better off if she had. She had a really hard year after that, barely able to fight it. And one day…she didn’t.”

It had been awhile since I had said the words out loud. I don’t just talk about these things. But Callan played the whole, ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours first’ card. I sort of felt okay.

“She was my whole life, ya know? I looked to her for everything, and she taught me how to be the person I am right now.”

“But your dad didn’t turn out,” he said, simply. It wasn’t a question. He knew.

I shrugged my shoulders as best as I could while lying down. “Yeah. I guess. We had never really gotten along well, but at least it was better than it is now. We went to amusement parks together; he always took me to get donuts every Sunday morning. We had a normal relationship before the fighting started. He thought that he should just give up trying for my mother the day she came home from the hospital. He was vulnerable and scared, but I understood. I just don’t understand how a third grader could have more courage than a grown man.”

I took a pause to gain enough courage to go on with my story. Callan’s hand dragged across the damp ground and gripped my hand firmly, without even giving me a glance for permission. I simply let it happen.

“We would fight constantly. Every time we saw each other. We couldn’t get along once, and I knew my mom thought it was her fault that we were arguing, but it was bound to happen at some point. We’d bicker about the most pointless things. It’s kind of funny thinking about it right now. But the day after she died, after we got home from her funeral, was the first day he had hit me. Granted, I deserved it, telling him to be a man and do what Mom would want him to do: live. But he had forgotten how to do that, and I was stuck with a bruised cheek and tears streaming down my face, because I knew what my life was going to become and I couldn’t really help it.”

Callan scooted closer to me and lifted my head up off the ground, giving him space to wrap his arm around my shoulders. I took this as the chance to lay my head on his shoulder and slowly let the tears fall. I didn’t even have to tell him that all of this happened on this day, eight years ago.
“No offense…but I think I have it worse,” he stated.

I stared up at him blankly, and I couldn’t even fathom how anything could be worse than what I have to go through every day. “How so?”

“Long story short, I’m adopted. If I thought that my biological parents hated me, then I don’t even want to know what my foster parents feel for me. I go days without eating, they will barely allow me to walk out of the house. I’m home schooled, if that’s what you even call it. I practically just sit on my ass all day, hoping they’ll teach me something, because I want to go to school. I want to be smart, and I’m not. The first time they saw my scars, they laughed and urged me to do it again. They like to see me in pain. Torture is what it is. I’ve tried running away from home countless times, but the police always take me back, and I’m put into the records as a ‘unfit child’. I have a lawyer, but they don’t believe me.”

I couldn’t understand how he wasn’t crying at this point. So I took it in me to cry for him and for me and for everybody who has ever had to gone through something this painful. A child is supposed to be loved. If they aren’t, they are unstable, and who knows what they’re life will be like when they grow older and have children of their own?

As if reading my thoughts, Callan continued, “If I have children, meaning, if I make it that far in life without cracking, I will never do this to them. I look at my body, the scars, the burn marks, and I feel disgusted. I’d never want my own kin to go through something like that. People need love in their lives to become a person. If they don’t have love, then they are corrupt and emotionless and they walk around as a ghost with no personality or feelings.”

I slowly nodded my head, understanding and hanging on to his every word. I couldn’t understand how two people could be so complete and perfect for each other. We are one person at this moment, lying under the stars on a hill, waiting for something complete to happen.

I took his arm and ran my fingers caressingly over the many scars and bruises. He was beautiful, and strong, and I knew we were meant to be together. Not as in dating but just together, in the most literal sense of phrase. We need to be by each other’s sides to protect each other from society and the world.

We stayed like that for a while, probably a lifetime, before I spoke up. “My mom was my favorite person in the world….until now.”

Callan turned his head to look at me, those bright green eyes sparkling. He ran his hand over my cheek, wiping away all the tears before cupping my chin and placing a kiss on my forehead, my nose, my cheeks. “If it’s okay, can I kiss you right now? I’ve wanted to, ever since I saw you last night.”

I couldn’t smile but if I could, I probably might have at that moment. I nodded my head and closed my eyes, waiting for the abrupt motion of his lips caressing mine. And when it finally happened, I never wanted it to end. His touch made me feel safe, his lips, my hero.

Our mouths didn’t move. We just stayed there, touching, until my phone decided to ruin the moment.

It took everything in me not to groan when Callan pulled away.

“Ya,” I said into the phone, my enemy by this point.

“Amelia? It’s Kristen,” Jenna’s mom said into my ear. I thought this was completely odd, my best friend’s mom calling me. She despised me and the way I ‘morphed’ her daughter into this ‘hooligan’.

But I knew it was serious by the time she started crying her eyes out.