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Chapter 21; Lessons Learned

Gas station attendants in Kentucky are used to seeing pretty much anything you can think of...

Darron Bishop had personally seen seventeen cars with deer smashed through windshields pull up outside and ask to use the phone... He'd seen innumerable hunters come in sporting accidental self-inflicted gunshot wounds. He'd seen seven high speed chases shoot past the store, two robberies, nineteen car fires and two drunken teenagers getting-IT-on in the parking lot outside.

So, when a man with blue hair walked in dragging a young man with blood all over him, Darron wasn't surprised.

Very little surprised him in fact.

The boy was blubbering, blood matting his right eye closed and dripping from his nose and forehead. His whole right arm, from the elbow down was nothing but one large gory scrape, and the kid was limping as if, perhaps, his leg was in the same condition.

The man with blue hair, was greenish pale, his eyes mournful as he helped the kid inside.

"It's OK, you're OK!" He was saying, over and over in a calm kind of panicked voice.

And the kid was sobbing in a high pitched prepubescent voice, "Y-you p-p-prom-promised to catch me!"

"I'm sorry... I'm so so sorry..."

And then it would start over again.

"What happened?" Darron asked, in a rather unemotional tone.

And the guy with blue hair chuckled dryly, "Botched flying lesson."

Darron didn't even blink. "Oh... Well, Okay then."

Bernard kicked open the bathroom door and pulled Aaron inside, heading directly to the sinks and turning the water on full blast.

He knew it had to look worse than it actually was... Something told him that despite the amount of blood, it really wasn't THAT bad... But, he still felt horrible for not catching him... He'd broken the first promise he'd ever made to him...

Sweat broke out on Aaron's forehead and for a few minutes his sobs were reduced to wracking coughs, and then he stood there shivering, and watching through his left eye, breathing through gross clogged nostrils.

With most of the blood cleared away Bernard could identify that most of it was just cuts and scrapes... There were pieces of gravel still stuck in there that he'd have to get out... That would be an adventure, but nothing looked broken.

He wet a handful of paper towels and padded Aaron's arm with them, then wet a few more and cleared the blood from his face.

"There... You're fine... Just scrapes. Why are you cryin' over a few scrapes?"

"You p-promised to c-catch me..."

Bernard sighed and stared into Aaron's face with a hurt, regretful kind of expression. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch you, Aaron... I'm sorry... You flew right over my head!"

Aaron was quiet, he blinked, "Don't make me do it again."

"But you did it! You flew almost forty feet! You've got to tr-"

"Please..."

And he couldn't... It wasn't the argument, or its rationality, because Bernard could have just as easily used that annoying bicycle analogy. 'If you fall off, just get right back on'... But he couldn't...

It was Aaron's tone... And the look in his eye that reminded him so much of Kitty.

He couldn't anymore make Aaron try again than he could have denied Kitty anything she asked of him.

He couldn't even hold his son's gaze at that moment without feeling guilty... He lowered his eyes to the sink, and the smears of blood in it.

How could I have done this to him? He didn't deserve this...

"I won't make you do it again... I swear."

Aaron snuffed pathetically and glanced at his reflection in the mirror, "I'm sorry..."

Bernard started, "What? Why are you sorry? You've not done anything to be sorry for."

Aaron turned his head and stared at him, "I'm sorry I look like her... You get so sad every time you look at me..."

He was speechless, utterly speechless... For all of ten seconds, "Where'd you get that idea?"

Aaron looked at his father's hand, where the fingers curled gently around his elbow under the spigot... "I see it in my head every time you touch me... You think 'bout her when you see me and you get so sad..."

This startled him and instantly he released Aaron's arm, as if afraid he'd somehow poisoned his son.

Aaron flinched and snuffed again, "Is alright... It happens every time someone touches me..."

Bernard's mind raced and he wondered what the hell those freaks at that place had done to his son when he realized... Kitty had been able to do some pretty weird things... One of which had been she could tell when someone was lying by touching them... Was this like that?

"You can tell what I'm feeling when I touch you?"

Aaron shook his head, "It's different with every person... Sometimes I can see what they're thinking... Others I can just tell if they're lyin' or not... But, with you... With you, I can see your memories."

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