Under Lock and Key

15: Bleak November

Chapter Fifteen: 

Kelly Rossi, November 12th, 1946, Modoc County

7:45 pm

Six months. A year and six more months to go.

That was a long time.

A long time to lay here on this bed every night.

Five hundred and forty eight nights.

Then what?

I'll be eighteen when I leave.

Eighty when I die. Maybe.

Twenty two thousand six hundred and thirty five days.

To go.

Until I get to see him again.

Herman came up to my bed, stood there silently. As always.

Tapped my cheek.

I turned over, away from him, towards Little Bobby's empty bed.

"Herman, come here."

Lee.

Lee would save the little guy.

Because I wouldn't.

I couldn't.

I couldn't seem to do anything right. At breakfast, I ate only a little. Everything made me nauseous. In Morality, I looked out the window and didn't talk. In school, I did my work. I always did. School is important. Ray never stopped saying it. So for him, I did it. I sleepwalked through the rest of the day, interacting as little as I could with anyone here. I ran in Physical Education, but it didn't give me the glow of satisfaction it normally did. I ate dinner and took my shower. The water on my face felt nice, but when I turned it off, the weight on my chest resumed. I'd do my homework, alone, and then lay in my bed, not helping with Lee's little school, feeling horribly guilty, but just couldn't do it.

It was like when he first died. The feeling of nothingness. This time it was my fault. I almost lost him again, by living another life, being happy, with friends, with Lee, without him. Like I'd killed him myself.

I couldn't stop thinking about Ray. About the Kinoshitas. About my past.

When I was happy. If my thoughts veered away from him, or them, or that time, if I heard Lee talking to Donny, or Joey wisecracking at Mr. Townsend, or Henry's outrageous stories, I blocked it out, shut it down, closed it off. Thinking about Ray. His eyebrows. His lips. They way he played ball. The way he laughed. The way he ...

He was gone, but I could keep him alive this way.

He died two years and twelve days ago. Seven hundred and forty two days.

I've been here six months. One hundred and eight days.

When I got here, almost immediately I'd become a big brother. To two very very unusual kids. I was thrown out of myself, out of the introspection and sadness and anger I felt almost every day since he'd died. Thrown out of the devil may care, life's nothing but a movie that I was watching  attitude I'd come up with on the long drive here.

I'd made friends with Joey, with Glen, with Wes. I'd feared Little Bobby. And feared for him. I respected Mr. Campbell and Mr. Cooper and Mr. Townsend. I'd learned new things, how to cook, how to work on cars. I'd listened to Lewis, as he read Peter Pan and The Wizard of Oz, and now Alice in Wonderland. Stories of people uprooted from their normal lives. I hated Davey.

I'd almost fallen in love with Lee.

I don't want to think about him.

But I can't escape him.