BH: I believe this is what you could call extreme need to empty one's brain once in a while... I won't be surprised if a lot of people don't get this, but this is, somewhat, based in reality. My best friend and I aren't really allowed to be close anymore, but we still manage to be and we started talking outside the band room before a show yesterday night about back then and how much everything's changed. He mentioned how he used to get really freaked out by my old house and used to see things in it, and this was born from that conversation. Me and Sean have been best friends our whole lives and nobody can figure out why (it's kinda funny.) But I wish we could act like we did when we were kids, and really, the band is my family, and I love them more than anything. The problem is, they're a little too much like a real family, more than anything because they treat my best friend like the family first-born, the prodigy who everyone has to adore, and I'm practically not allowed to hang out with him.
I Wish
" I wish you strength
When times are hard
Oh I wish with all my heart you find what
you're looking for
I wish you joy
I wish you peace
And that every star you see's within your reach
And I wish you still loved me"
"What are you doing out here?" Translation: "Are you okay?"
'I wish you would say what you meant once in a while.'
We've been best friends since kindergarten, an unlikely pair if there ever was one. He's popular and outspoken, a flirt with every girl chasing after him, a natural at music. Then, there's me, quiet, out-of-the way, laid-back to the point of being lazy, still trying to get the hang of embouchures but good enough to scare someone if I tried. We've both got our secrets, he's amazingly intuitive and sensitive, though I'm the only one who's seen it, and just the same, I'm stronger and wilder and louder than anyone he's ever met, ready to pick a fight at a moment's notice if you try to hurt someone I love, but he's the only one I'll show that side to. I wish we could be ourselves a little more often.
But, most of the time, we're both too busy with our own lives to even hang out together anymore. He's got his friends, I've got mine. Sometimes I hang out with them, but he'll never come near mine. The few moments it's just us two, maybe on the way home from a game or a practice or a rare minute at work when we're doing chores, we don't wear our masks and put on airs, we're just us, relaxed and comfortable and not really worried about anything. Maybe we'll pick on each other; maybe we'll talk about plans and our future, or maybe the next band show. I'm a little louder than normal, a little more prone to acting first and thinking later and he's a little more sedated. I wish we could do that around other people.
And we both know, better than anyone, exactly what every little twitch and look means. So when he spots me sitting outside the band room before school and staring blankly at a book that normally has 110 of my attention, I shouldn't be surprised that he'd say something. Sometimes I wish he didn't.
"Too noisy, too many people," steady, calm, serious, dark eyes and grim smile, yeah, that's me. I know better than to hope he'll sit next to me like he used to, not with all the people around. We've both got parts to play. I wish we didn't.
"What's up?" Translation: "You've got a question, so ask already."
My hands are cold, twitchy. There are probably shadows under my eyes again. I look up at him, trying not to look as tired as I feel, "Did you ever see anything... I dunno... weird at my old house?"
He snorts, smiles, "Well, we all did, didn't we? Your house was damn creepy."
"Gimme a straight answer, bro, as hard as doing anything straight is for you," another one of our inside jokes. I'll accuse the boy of being gay until the day I die, even if I know he isn't.
He sighs and walks over to the lean against the wall next to me, "Yeah, I saw 'em, didn't know that anyone else could, though. The shadow-woman slipping around the corner, the dark things just out of sight, I don't think a night went by when I didn't see 'em." He looks down at me, an 'I'm-not-worried' look on his face. It's the same fake, artificial look he wore when I was in the hospital for the first time. "I saw the thing leaning over you at night, too, the shadow with its hand wrapped around your neck. I could never move, just sit there and watch. That's why you've always got something covering your neck."
A scarf in the winter, a bandanna or a thick choker necklace in the summer, all of them presents from him. He made my favorite scarf, the one I'm wearing now, black and gold, hand-sewn and long enough to reach my ankles. He adds a little more every year, and there's a stripe of gold at the top of every addition. I wish he'd let me tell other people that.
I tug absently at it, pulling it down to show him the pale skin underneath, "I haven't had a bruise there since I moved, but I don't feel right without it anymore."
"Remember the Ouija board when we were ten?" Your tenth birthday, but you don't do birthdays anymore, don't think about them. I wish you did.
"'Nothing lasts forever'," I quoted expertly, "That's the last time you were allowed to spend the night at my house." We'd been walking through a toy store, looking for a present for him. A Ouija board had spelled out 'Nothing lasts forever' when we walked by it talking about what we were going to do that night. I wish I'd known what it meant.
"Weird stuff always happens around you," as if on cue, the bell rings, telling us to get to class. A few stragglers run into the band room, giving us sideways looks as they do so. When the last person is gone, he slide down the wall and sits cross-legged, just like me. Just like he used to, just like I wish he would more. "What's going on, sis?"
"I saw my dad last night," I try to ignore the knot forming in my throat, try not to see the flashing red lights and hear the screeching tires and the explosion and the unbearable weight on top of me. I pull my legs up to my chest and try not to see the way his face goes pale. "He didn't say anything, he never does." I wish he would.
"It's almost your birthday," he mutters. Translation: "Things always happen on your birthday."
"There's a show on my birthday, too," the premier of the concert season.
He does something then that really stuns me. He puts his arm around my shoulders and pulls me a little closer to him, "How many shows have we done where you've attracted something nasty in the concert hall or the stadium? Remember when I got pushed off the stage last year?" I wish you wouldn't remind me.
"It's getting worse."
"Let it. We'll take whatever gets thrown at us, just like always. Got it?"
I roll up my sleeve to show him the scratches on my arm, "Stupid, stubborn bastard."
The door opens and a familiar bespectacled face pokes out the door, his girlfriend, one of our childhood best friends, "There you two are. Come on, we've been looking all over for you two."
I expect him to jump, to move his arm or try to hide it, instead he just looks up at her, "We'll be there in a minute, Cat."
She gives us a quizzical look, "He just announced that he wants you two to do a duet for the concert season, any song you want."
He nods, "Okay. We'll be there in a minute." She stares for a few seconds longer, than returns to the band room, leaving us alone. He pulls me close and sets his head on top of mine, "Those guys in there are our family now, remember? We'll stick it out, just like always." He kisses the top of my head, just like Dad used to, "And if I have to camp out in your closet so the ghosts leave you alone, I swear to God I will. I'm the only one allowed to pick on you."
He gets up, pulls me to my feet and into a hug, "You look just like your dad, you know that?" I wish I could stop crying.
We walk back into the band room, just a few feet apart, and he feeds the Band Director some stupid story about helping me with my embouchures again, even pulling a spare mouthpiece out of his pocket as proof. I wish he didn't have to. We go back to our seats, him at the front and me in the back, just like always, and I look up. There's a boy, thirteen years old sitting in the seat next to me. If it weren't for the bullet hole above his right eye, I'd swear he's alive. I wish he was.
Later, we'll win championships. Later, we'll get into trouble. Later, there'll be fights and fears, hopes and tears and a million other things. Later, his girlfriend will get mad at us and dump him, then they'll get back together, and eventually they'll get married. Later, I'll get hurt. Later, I'll get thrown off a motorcycle, and this time Dad won't be there to catch me, but I'll make it and no one will be able to understand why.
Except him, because he saw what no one else could.
He'll become a music teacher, the best in country. I'll become a fighter pilot, a war hero.
But right now, we're kids and we're not allowed to be best friends, but we are always, even if no one knows it. Right now, he's a first chair baritone sax player who can play anything you hand him and I'm on my way into the drumline because I can't do an embouchure to save my life.
He's my best friend, the one person in the world who knows everything I've seen and felt and still looks at me like with the same eyes he has since we were little. He doesn't sleep in my room anymore and I can't remember the last time it was just us two. I watch him put his arm around his girlfriend, smile for her, laugh for her. I wish...
Am I jealous? Yes, of course. I wish we were kids again. I wish we didn't have to compete for grades and I wish his girlfriend was still my friend and I wish middle school hadn't split us apart the way it did. I wish he was allowed to joke and laugh with me like we used to. I wish he really could sleep over at my house still, because nothing bad ever happened when he was there.
I wish Dad hadn't died. I wish the only time I could see him wasn't at night when I'm terrified to go to sleep because I know the shadows in the room really will try to hurt me.
But, more than anything, I wish...
I wish I could run to him and tell him everything.
I wish that I could call him my brother again.
I wish this family, the dozens of people around us, the family that claimed us, that we claimed, that sees you as its star and me as its black sheep, wouldn't be so much like a real family.
Dedicated to my brother, best friend, and the boy I'll forever run to when things go wrong.