Always

I'm not sure if it was wrong to ask for so much from someone so young. I was young too I suppose, but in most ways I was much older. His mother made him lunches and helped him with his homework. I wasn't even enrolled in school. No one ever came looking for me. My mother taught me how to read and how to count. After that, I was on my own. I spent most days hiding in the library reading everything. I didn't feel like I was missing out. It was the night after my thirteenth birthday that my mother started telling me to run away. Not every night, just when my father would bring his friends home. She was protecting me from something I didn't understand. Kevin's father taught him how to throw punches to protect himself. I had never spent anytime with someone my own age when he found me in the tree house. I rarely had any human contact at all. This boy seemed afraid of me, but I was never scared of him. He had a nice voice and a funny way of raising his eyebrows when he spoke. He didn't ask questions, I liked that. He brought me his sleeping bag and introduced me to Patsy Cline. He played a song that went,

"Days may not be fair, always.
That's when I'll be there, always.
Not for just an hour,
Not for just a day,
Not for just a year.
But always."

I remember crying a little. I was overwhelmed by how much I wanted him to hold my hand, I wanted his always. I didn't know then what always meant. I stayed there a few nights a week for five years. I never told him about the ugly things that happened to me if I didn't jump out of my window fast enough. I never wanted him to see the scars. I left him poems. I wanted him to have beauty, to know that I had beauty in me, it was just hidden by black eyes and tears. The night he told me he was going away to college, I felt like I was drowning. He was supposed to be my always. Who would do his homework when he got too busy? Who would hold my hand until I fell asleep? I kissed him. I kissed him for keeping his promise of never telling anyone I was there, for teaching me out of his school books, for bringing me food late at night and giving me music to hold on to. He was gone for four years. I got a job at a mom and pop record store that pretended not to notice that I spent more than a few nights in the stock room. I thought about him all the time. When I managed to save enough money for a car, I decided to go find him. The owners of the store were retiring when I left, they let me take as many records as I could fit into the trunk of my car, and gave me a few hundred dollars. I loved them, they didn't ask questions. I loaded up and went to his parent's house. They opened the door and I told them my name was Ivy, and that I went to high school with their son Kevin, and could they please give me his forwarding address for reunion information. They gave me the address and told me he was graduating in a few days. They said it with so much pride. I tried to picture my parents being proud of me. I couldn't. I drove for two days without stopping for anything but gas. I got to the apartment and there was a party going on. I was scared that he would be different, that his hands would be changed, that he wouldn't remember always. He opened the door and I jumped on him. I made him promise that we would be together always. He told me he would never leave me again.

My always and his never. At the time we didn't notice we had said two different words.