Mr. Hawkin

Chapter 2

More days have passed, and I find myself making more and more excuses to be around Mr.Hawkin. He made me feel oddly safe, and at ease. He never, in my mind, crossed a line with me, but was definitely not uptight and professional. His demeanor when spending time with me offered a safe, and comforting form of closeness. He never let me learn too much about him, but seemed interested in learning about me. This connection being set to the backdrop of a family breakdown was exactly what I needed at the time.

My family situation was very far from ideal. I had a typical family, on paper. Two parents, an older brother, and a small menagerie of pets that were well loved and taken care of. During the summer before I met Mr.Hawkin, everything changed. My brother had run away (we still haven't seen him). He didn't tell any of us where he was going. The only thing any of us could point to was the small bag of cocaine we found in his room. The discovery that my golden child older brother who had never been in any ounce of trouble was assumedly using a hard drug that turns people into monstrous addicts sent my un-prepared mother into a dangerously fast downward spiral that put her in a state of insatiable depression. My father reacted in the opposite direction, vowing to take action against my brother once they had found him, and "making sure he got his''. I was stuck in the middle. Nothing filled my brain during this time but the thought of him overdosing, or worse the thought of what he had to do to gather this drug. He had no job, which had my mind running wild with nothing but the horrific possibilities of what "favors' ' he would have had to do to sustain this habit. My mom, in a hazy state, on pills and booze that didn't help her in the slightest, was constantly attempting to butt heads with my overly vengeful dad. Fight's were had, things were said. Nothing about their marriage seemed remotely fixable, or more realistically worth fixing. My days and nights were met with a cacophony of nasty insults, and hard to ignore fits or rage against one another. My brother is still missing, and the fights haven't subsided between mom and dad. The only difference from when I was met with such closeness from Mr.Hawkin and the summer was that when I met Mr.Hawkin, my dad had moved from living in the house, to taking solace in the garage.

It was after school, talking with Mr.Hawkin that something that changed the course of our connection forever had happened.

"Look, it's getting kinda late, I really have to go Sam, but I know you want to continue this conversation, and so do I. Here."

He extended out his hand, gripping his beaten up cell phone that was opened to a page that prompted me to enter my phone number. Holy shit. The man who I have been longingly infatuated with for weeks now has finally taken a leap of faith, and trust that I was only dreaming of. I put down my number, and gleefully returned his phone to him.

"Now, I can't promise that I'll always answer on time, but I can promise that I will do my best to at least answer, because you're important to me"

I thought my ears had deceived me. I was under the impression that I was just taking advantage of a good teacher in my own time of struggle. What in my brain had been a one sided act of connection, was mutual. I couldn't believe it.

It was after this that me and Mr.Hawkin began texting back and forth on a daily basis. I would routinely text him updates about my day, as he would do the same about his day. During class, I had moved my seat to be closer to his desk, not to talk, but to exchange those knowing glances that me and him both possessed to make time go by, so we could both acknowledge that what me and him shared was starkly different than any other connection he had with students previous.