AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“How are you feeling?” I ask her.
“I feel good being with you.” She lays her hand on my chest. “But this has been the weirdest month ever.”
“True,” I agree.
“I can’t help feeling guilty,” Klein says. After a pause she continues. “I feel guilty that it happened. Guilty I survived. I know it’s stupid, but guilt is such a weird thing, isn’t it?”
I think about what she’s saying.
Then Klein continues.
“It’s a weird feeling. ‘Survivor’s guilt.’ Is it the guilt of not being the victim? Or is it the guilt of not being able to protect everyone else?”
Klein sighs. She traces her finger up and down my stomach.
“My sister and I were in high school at the same time,” she says. “I was a senior when she was a freshman. I thought everything was fine. My sister had always been kind of hard to read.”
“M-hm,” I agree quietly, thinking of how my younger brother Dario is.
“Her demeanor changed when she started high school. It darkened a bit. She wasn’t the cheerful kid she used to be anymore. But I thought maybe it was a phase. Maybe it was, I don’t know. But things were normal between us at home, so I didn’t think anything of it.
It wasn’t until a few years later, that I found out she was being bullied hard. Right from the start of high school. A group of three sophomore girls made her their personal punching bag. Girls can be the worst bullies.
For three years they tormented her until they graduated. By that time, they’d done enough damage.
Shehatedhigh school. I wouldn’t say I loved it, but her experience was so much worse.
And I didn’t know. We were in the same school for a whole year, and I never noticed. I never asked. If I had known, I could have put a stop to it. I could have been there for her.”
Klein sighs.
“She’s doing pretty well now. She’s an artist. Lives her own life. Nobody could bully her now. She’s tough as fuck.”
Klein laughs a little.
“Damien reminded me a little bit of her. It’s a good thing high school isn’t everything in our life. I still think about it. I could have spared her from those years of misery.”
Klein turns her head to look at me. “Guilt is such a strange and powerful force,” she says. “Do you know what I mean?”
My face feels cold and pale. I wonder if Klein can see it in the darkness of my room. I don’t know why I’m going to tell her this. But I know I’m going to tell her.
“Come here,” I say, sitting up and getting out of bed.
Klein follows me tentatively out onto the balcony. She stands next to me, also naked, looking over the rail of this balcony.
“You see that church down there?” I point out the Church of the Holy Trinity across the street below us.
“When I was 12, my mother and I were walking down this street, right there,” I point to the sidewalk next to the church. “She had to run some errands and brought me with her. I was complaining that I needed a new baseball glove. I had just started playing baseball on the Junior High team. My father was never much into baseball. He was never really into sports.
All the other kids on the baseball team had gloves they had inherited from their dads or their older brothers. They were nice gloves. Like grownups wore. And broken in. My dad didn’t have a glove to give me.
So, my mom bought me one. But she grew up in France. She didn’t really know anything about baseball. She tried her best, but she bought me this baseball glove for little kids. It was this fake plastic leather. And it was small, couldn’t hold a softball in it.
At our first baseball practice, we were running back from batting practice. We were running to the benches to get our gloves and go practice fielding. And Josh Hirshberg finds my glove on the bench. His brother was a high school baseball star, and his father coached the high school team. Josh picks up the glove and says ‘What the hell is this?’ and just throws it into the woods.
The other kids were laughing. I didn’t say anything. I knew they were right. I just went out to the woods and found my glove and went back to practice and tried not to be noticed.
So, when I was with my mom, I was complaining about wanting to go and buy a new glove. I already felt bad that I didn’t like the one that she had bought me. But I was 12. I didn’t know how to explain it. I couldn’t tell her that I was very thankful for her attempt at buying me a glove, but that I needed an adult sized one.”
