Edge of the Ravine

9

Chapter Nine

      Alec changed everything. All that was in my life completely shifted, allowing Alec to take up most of it. My dismal school days were passed with sly notes passed between us in the halls. Secrets and smiles were shared between us two during lunch. And after school, Alec joined me on my walk to the train tracks, just so we could draw out our time together.

      Amelia no longer spoke to me as she once did. From the day that I stood up to her, she had not punished me for silly infractions. The north woods no longer marked my final boundary line; Alec's road took that place, instead. And in the following years, a path was so deeply etched in the woods that, to this day, it has yet to vanish.

     In two short years, my friendship with Alec became the most important thing in my life. With him, I had grown from a lost and frightened child into a young man of thoughts and ideas of my own. Through him, I gained a confidence I did not know I could ever possess. And together, we were quick to spurn the attentions of others. Already our time was too limited; to allow others to intrude on it was anathema and would not be tolerated.

      It never changed, however, that we were so entirely opposite from one another. Though Amelia no longer ordered me about as she once did, that did not mean I did not perform my assigned chores with alacrity and the right amount of effort. Alec, however, often forgot he had chores to begin with, and yet still received a weekly allowance for things left undone. (Though I could not often complain, since his father saw fit to apportion me an allowance of my own for all of his chores I completed.)

      Nor were our levels of empathy quite level. I was always the compassionate one. The one who desired to only good and to treat all those around me with the same kindness and respect I desired from them in return.

      Alec, on the other hand, was an emotional tornado in the lives of those he touched. Whirling through with only his selfish desires in mind, it mattered not who got in his way nor what damage he left in his wake. More than one broken heart could be laid at his feet in the past two years. And yet, no matter his whirlwind personality, he was that much more important to me for how different we were.

      Of course, I don't believe anyone was quite prepared for the marked show of our differences our first day of our junior year. The one picture found of us in the school yearbook all year long was taken shortly after school, not that Alec's attired allowed for him to attend much of our first day.

      As Amelia could have wished, I was dressed properly in formal pants and a matching jacket over a white buttoned up shirt. My black combat boots were the only thing similar at all to Alec's much more provocative garments. (As well they should since they were a pair he had gifted me.) And yet, not once did he feel an ounce of remorse for his actions. Alec was simply shameless.

      Maybe that was why I loved him as I did. Because he was the light to my dark. The happiness to my sorrow. A burst of bold color in my dreary gray world. Simply being Alec is what made me love him. Almost more than I should. And more than I would dare to admit.