Writings

Golden Boy

i was in tenth grade the day I officially met him. it was his laughter that captured my attention. he was surrounded by a group of boys, and girls were standing off to the side, twirling their hair and batting their lashes at him. he was the golden boy. ethan alexander.

growing up in California, Maine, it was my brother and I. we didn't have parents, since they died in a car wreck before me and carter were born.

they were our intended parents anyway. the ones who would've adopted us. our birth mother was a prostitute and our father... well, she didn't know who he was because on our birth certificates, that section is blank.

Carter and I were bounced from foster home to foster home, often ending up in abusive situations and just not-good people.

it was great having a twin. someone you could talk to about anything, and you and him were so similar that it would often freak people out.

sometimes, we'd stay up at night and make animal hands on the wall and bounce them off with flashlights. other nights we'd sleep in the same bed and try to imagine a different life, one where our birth mother and father were happily married and we were all together in a great big house.

but everything changed on our fourteenth birthday. sheriff marshall came to the house of our foster parents and told Julie that Mike was going too fast in the rain. neither Mike nor Carter had their seat belts on. they were arguing. about what, I don't know and will never know.

the next weekend, I watched my brother's body being burnt alive at the crematorium. Julie said she couldn't afford a proper funeral and burial at the cemetery. besides, she said, my brother was already dead. he wouldn't feel the pain.

after that, Julie split town and I wound up in the foster care system again, bouncing from family to family, with my little black garbage bag tied around my back.

it contained a folder with Carter and I's birth certificates, his death certificates, and school drawings.

I also had a few Jane Austen books and the Smurfs movie.

the only clothes I had were the long sleeve green striped shirt and black jeans and holey white sneakers I wore on my body. I didn't carry a toothbrush, paste, or a hairbrush. they were too expensive to just give to the dropped-off kids, anyway, social services said.

I couldn't wait to be eighteen and get out. then I could buy what I needed to be presentable to society.

ethan alexander and my brother were best friends from kindergarten through tenth grade. he would play with him on the school playground, and i would find Ethan staring at me.

he was handsome. my celebrity crush was Theo James, from the divergent series. I was able to see the first movie when Carter and I snuck into the theaters to see it when it came out. I fell in love with the actor, and Ethan looked just like him, only a younger version.

he had sea-green eyes and black tousled hair, and a sharp jawline with a gorgeous pearly white smile.

he was everything girls wanted in a guy for a high school boyfriend. At some point he was what I wanted in a high school boyfriend.

We dated for a year. we loved each other, and I knew he'd be my husband one day. we often talked about kids and how many we'd have.

I was pregnant, though I didn't know it at the time, with Ethan's baby. I know, a basket case. Kid grows up in foster care, and ends up like her birth mother. minus the whole prostitution thing.

I was so excited to see Ethan. He'd be excited to see me too. We hadn't seen each other since a few weeks ago.

But that all changed on my sixteenth birthday. the math team, who I wasn't even associated with or friends with, were hosting a party for their AMC win.

I snuck away from my new foster family's house and went to the party at an abandoned train station. I'm sure it was illegal just to step foot on the property.

people handed me drinks. tonight was the anniversary of my brother's death, and the second year in a row I have had to celebrate our birthday alone.

I wanted to let loose. I wanted to feel freedom, love. I wanted friendship. If only just for a night.

after about three drinks in red solo cups, I was dizzy and my vision was blurry. everyone had two heads. the music was blaring.

"Sadie, you've been drugged! Come with me and I'll get you out of here." I heard a voice saying.

I looked up and could've sworn I had seen Ethan standing in front of me, worry written across his face.

"no one would ever d-drug meeeee!" I slurred. I lost my balance and fell into him; he started to take me away and outside but I ran off.

looking back, I shouldn't have done that. I should've stayed with him. he was trying to protect me.

that night, I was assaulted by a guy on the math team. he had paid people to drug the drinks I was handed. people exchanged my consent and my choices for money. just for worthless pieces of paper.

if it weren't for those careless people and that no good teenage boy, I wouldn't have had to have tests done on me and stitches down there for the damage he did to me. I wouldn't have had to cover up bruises with makeup because of what that boy did.

And my daughter? she wouldn't have been taken from me if I hadn't of been a minor.

if it weren't for the drunk teenage driver that hit Ethan and then ran off, my baby would have a father. her story would've been different from mine.

she was fatherless, just like me.

Ethan was only trying to protect me. but he stood in the road to watch me run away too long.

the golden boy was killed in a hit and run.

I'm eighteen now. I've aged out of foster care and was able to buy my own place for myself. I was able to adopt my baby girl and I try to make up for the years I lost with her by taking her places.

today, it's to the cemetery. Julie gave me my brother's urn a month after I had my baby. she said it was the least she could do. she also said for me to take time to heal. she don't want to be my mother, she said, but she cared enough about me to not see me fall to ruin.

"come on, Lilith. come on, baby," I say as Lilith toddles over to me and grabs my hand.

we walk over to Ethan's headstone and sit beside it. I place the urn beside the headstone. it's kind of like my brother is here with us. in a way.

"hi, golden boy," I say. tears are rolling down my cheeks and I brush them away. the wind starts to blow and Lilith babbles incoherently at me.

"Mama," she cries. I pick up my crying toddler.

"what's the matter, baby?" I shush her and she lays her head on me. "Mama's here, Lily. I won't leave you."

"happy birthday to you," I whisper. I'm talking to a headstone. of course, he can't answer back.

in the distance, a woman and a man, both middle aged, walk up to the burial plot.

"Ethan was our son, and he still is," the man smiles.

I nod and start to leave when his mother stops me. "Oh, won't you stay with us? it's so quiet out here. we never have friends visit our son with us."

"he was trying to protect me, I thought you should know. that night, when he was hit. he was trying to avoid me being..." I look over to my baby girl in my lap. she grins up at me and I look at her eyes. they're sea-green.

"can I hold her?" the woman asks.

Ethan would've loved to see his parents meeting their granddaughter.

"yeah, of course," I say, and she picks up Lilith. she starts to cry. "oh Charles, she looks just like Ethan."

as the afternoon turns to night, my daughter meets her grandparents for the first time.

and in the wind, Ethan tells me he loves me.

I'll always love you too, Golden Boy.