Author's Note: Oh! Two reviews. Oh geez, if this is supposed to be a happy story well then I'm screwed xD. But seriously, though. Calvin did some bad things in first grade. If he was that reckless then, how bad would be in fourth grade? That's how I'm thinking of it, anyway. Thank you!
Wishes Don't Come True
Prologue
Part Two
I couldn't believe my eyes.
Why was my mother walking into the kitchen with Calvin's toy tiger in her hands? I suppose Calvin's mother thought that a woman with a child the same age as her son would understand.
God, fuck that, she knew that I was nothing like Calvin. I was the normal one, the logical one. The only one who would listen to Calvin long enough for him to become insulting. The only that would insult Calvin back. Okay, maybe I was a little bit like Calvin.
Anyway, when my mother came into the room, I immediately eyed the burnt toy in her arms. "Mommy, why do you have Calvin's toy? Why is he all burned up?"
My mom looked at me. I think when she explained to me in fifth grade that she decided to help people on a larger scale when she saw that documentary on Africa, I believed her. But now I'm not so sure. I think maybe when she saw what a mess people that are healthy and sane can become, she decided it's easier to help people whose problems are straight-forward.
Calvin's parents were normal parents. I mean, maybe his dad was a little eccentric, taking his family everyone summer on a trip that none but him seemed to end up enjoying. His mom was a little high-strung at times, but with a son like Calvin, I'm not surprised. All and all, I have no idea how they ended up with a son like him.
Maybe he was an undiscovered genius, like he said. Maybe he was misunderstood. Maybe he was totally off his rocker. I don't know.
But his eyes when he got into his family's car that morning were as child-like and innocent as any child's eyes I had ever seen before that moment, or have since. For a second he was just like me, and I felt his pain. Suddenly it was my best friend who'd died. My arms that were scarred.
I was never the same again. I mean, I wasn't exactly 'normal' to begin with. Sure, I was more normal than Calvin had ever been, but my friends were few. I would enjoy the company of a book or my stuffed animals over the company of girl friends who would flop around, teasing me and torturing me in ways that only little girls can.
As soon as Calvin and the car he was in were out of the sight, I rushed inside, searching desperately for Hobbes.
I kept hearing a prayer in my head. If you let me go on, I'll never tease him again. I'll never betray him! I'll renounce smoochies!
As the words grew stronger, the more frantically I searched. But I could not find Hobbes. He was not in my room, nor in any of the garbage cans. Where was he?
There is no God.
Those were the last words I ever heard Hobbes say. I think why I'm an atheist. It makes it real, somehow, hearing it so sadly from a stuffed animal at the end of its life. My mother said she threw him out, just to spare Calvin and his family the drama.
At six, I saw my mother as a murderer. Our mother-daughter relationship never did get much better.
I read as much as I could. With so much time on my hands, that was a shit-load of books. I read all kinds, romance, fantasy, horror, mystery, comics. Then in eighth grade I just got sick of it all.
Feeling like I had nothing to lose was the worst feeling in my life. It's sad, now that I look back on it, that what started my on my way to salvation began by me asking Greg Clark for a cigarette.
It got worse before it got better. I did it all, just to please my new friends. I dressed in black. I stole shit, I smoked shit, and I turned other people's things into shit. I fucked guys, and in doing so I fucked the future my mother and father had always wanted for me.
I thought they were the best days of my life. How the tables turn. I see them now as the lowest I ever got. I lost my dignity then. I lost my family's respect and I lost a whole lot of brain cells. After getting brought home by the cops for shoplifting, having my mother find smack in my room, and coming home drunk, my parents lost it. They were having nothing more to do with me.
My father decided to join my mother on her trips around the world, helping out as a doctor in third world countries. And there was no way they were taking me with them. So I was stuck at St. Brigid's School for Girls.
I packed up the books I'd stopped reading months ago, the music my new friends had introduced me to, the notebooks full of depressing, and shitty poetry, and Mr. Bun. Then I was gone. My parents were sad to see me go, I know this. I knew it then, too. It just felt better to feel that they were doing this to hurt me, that they didn't love me.
They loved me. But sometimes even loving parents need a break.