Parker
Daddy says that I have to be nice to Lance. He said that he is sad that his parents got killed like my Mommy did and he only had us for a family now. Since we were stuck on the bus and most of the grown ups were sleeping and Sweets was just sitting by himself I got up and walked to the back of the bus and plopped on the seat next to him.
"You wanna play Go Fish with me?" I asked him. If I was bored and was suppose to be nice to him I might as well do something fun. It was kinda fun with him to spend the day at Disneyland with him anyway.
"Sure Parker." He said getting up. "Lets play in the back so there is more room." He said and I followed him to the bunk room where we sat down on the floor between the beds and started playing.
A little bit into the game I asked him, "Lance are you scared cuz your Mommy and Daddy got killed?"
"Yeah Parker I am." He said putting down a couple cards, "Are you scared that your Mom was killed?" He asked me.
"Sometimes I'm scared but Dr Bones knows what it is like to have a Mommy killed so I can talk to her and she makes me less scared. And I have my Daddy and Uncle Jared and all the rest of you guys who keep me busy so I don't think about missing Mommy all the time." I told him.
"Are you afraid of forgetting your Mom Parker?" He asked me putting down his cards. I guess that is the end of our game.
"Sometimes but Daddy says that I can still talk to her and that I have to talk to her through God now is the only difference. And Dr Bones says that half of my jeans are from my Mommy and the other half are from my daddy and so you cant really forget about them if they are part of you...but I don't really understand what my pants have to do with Mommy and Daddy cuz Grandma got me my jeans for my birthday." I told him trying to make him feel better.
"She means genes not jeans…like you have blonde hair because your mom had blond hair and you have dark brown eyes because your dad has dark brown eyes." He explained smiling.
"What were your parents like?" I asked him.
"Well I didn't really know my real parents, but my adoptive parents, the ones that were killed they were fun. They were in the circus and so when I was a kid we traveled all over the world and met a lot of cool people but I never really had friends that were my own age. I had my parents and the other people in the circus."
"So you didn't go to real school and didn't have grandparents or anything like that?" I asked him. Dad did say he was a weird kid but I didn't know that meant he grew up at a circus everyday…that is actually pretty cool.
"I didn't go to public school at all but my parents always thought education was important so whenever we were on the road I had to be reading and learning and every couple months I had to take a bunch of tests that passed me to different grades and so I graduated high school when I was sixteen."
"So your Mom and Dad were your teachers?" I asked him.
"Ya." He said pulling his knees up to his chest and looking down at his shoes. I felt bad cuz I made him think about his parents and so it made him sad.
"You miss them a lot huh?"
"More than I ever thought I would." He said as he put his head down on his knees. I thought he was crying but wasn't sure cuz I couldn't see his face anymore.
"I miss my Mommy a lot too." I told him as I crawled to the side of the bunk room he was sitting and leaned against his shoulder. I had seen Bones do it with Daddy when he was sad and thought it might make him feel better.
"Lance will you be like my big brother? I asked him after a couple minutes.
He looked at me funny for a few seconds and then smiled, "Ya Parker I would like that." He told me.
"That means that Daddy and Dr Bones will be like your parents." I explained to him. "It means you will have to ask their permission to do things but it also means that when you get sad or scared you can always talk to them and they will try to make it all better."
"They already do that Buddy." He told me, "But it is more like they are an older brother and sister to me than a mommy and daddy. They aren't quite old enough to be my parents."
"But Daddy always says that you are like twelve. Jared is Daddy's younger brother and he is thirty-two and Daddy is thirty-seven…I think anyway and so if you are twelve then they are old enough to be your parent cuz you would only be six years older than I am and Mommy always told me that she was too old to have more kids so that means that I could only have older brothers and sisters but she said that isn't possible."
"Parker your Dad exaggerates. I am twenty-two."
"So that means that you are…"
"Sixteen years older than you."
"And that means you are…"
"Fifteen years younger than your Dad."
"Fifteen isn't old enough to be a Daddy. Can a brother be sixteen years older and still be okay though?"
"For us Parker it works." He told me.
"Can we play the game again then?" I asked him.
"Yeah Buddy we can play." He told me dealing new cards.
I looked to the front of the bus and saw Angela with tears in her eyes watching us. Grownups are so weird sometimes. Jack was sleeping, I couldn't see Cam or Uncle Jared and Daddy and Dr Bones were leaning heads with each other so I didn't know what they were doing but Angela was obviously spying on us.
"Lance why is Angela crying?" I whispered to him.
He looked over at her and she turned around so she wasn't looking at us anymore. "She is sad for us because our families got killed."
"I don't want people to feel sorry for me." I told him putting my cards down again.
"That is the worst part. To know that people feel sorry for me and have pity on me because my parents died. Everyone acts different like they want to fix me."
"I don't know what it means to have pity on you." I told him.
"It means that they are sad because they want to fix you and are sad that they cant."
"Oh. I hate that too." I told him still not quite sure what he was talking about. "Do you think that everyone treats me different now?" I asked.
"Well, Brennan knows what it is like so she treats us the same. Your Dad hasn't been teasing me as much."
"That means that they have pity on you?"
"It is just different now I guess.
"Will it ever be normal?"
"Not the normal that we knew as normal before but it will eventually be a new normal." He told me as the bus stopped, we were back at the motel.
"Is it okay to be scared Lance?" I asked him.
"Ya Buddy. All of us are scared sometimes." He told me picking me up piggy back style and carrying me off the bus.
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