365 Days

April 11th 2016

April 11th 2016...

He was happy. He was okay. He was living the life he always thought he'd live. And keep living.

Tom Jacobs was never fully okay. Sometimes, he'd be better than others. But mostly, I knew, regardless of how he behaved, which was almost always differently everyday, he was hurting.

I'd been completely committed to dating Jess on April 11th 2016. I also had no idea he was about to abandon me in six days either.

Both Jess and I were always consciously aware of Tom and Grace. How something was always going on with one of them. Almost always.

Almost since this school year began, Jess and I began talking more about what we called 'The Grace Problem.' At this point, Barb was probably right. We had been treating her like a problem to solve. When she said this, she only said and applied it to Jess. Once the summer has passed, I began treating her the same way. All her friends are a year older than her, so she knows next year, we'll all be moving to Lark Creek High while she's stuck, alone, at Lark Creek Elementary. Jess used to invite her to walk with him whenever he'd jog by their house. He'd always be the one to pick her up, to help her and assure her, we were all still here for her.

When we first took them to hike the eight miles to Mr. Boone's cabin, Jess especially was worried about Tom, simply because he was prone to panic attacks. And when we got to the edgy places, the short-ended spots where if one of us fell off the ridge, there'd be no point in trying to help or we'd all go down, Jess knew it the most. That Grace wasn't the one to be worried about this time.

We'd always been sensitive to Tom and Grace, knowing how easily impacted they were. And when their mom died of a brain tumor in May 2016, we knew no matter how carefully we'd always been with them, we'd have to be much more careful now. And so we were.

When Jess left not only me, but Tom, Grace, Barb and the whole group, it shocked me how greatly affected everyone else was, that I wasn't keeping all the hurt for myself.

We'd all changed greatly. Like we were unrecognizable. I had no idea how big an impact one person could have on an entire group of people, friends and family.

This is what it felt like when someone passed away.

When Tom met Kaylee back in August or September, their common interest of horror cartoons bonded them together. And since then, they carried something for as long as they knew each other, even though the actual outcome was a mess.

Tom didn't change for her. He was still the grubby mess Jess's absence made of him. And so he treated her like dirt. Real stick-in-the-mud kind of dirt. And when she left him in December, he didn't care. Rather he was glad she was gone. It blew us all away.

Months later he found himself thinking and thinking of her, over and over again. And suddenly he was regretting all his mistakes. He regretted hurting her and repeatedly asked himself why he was so darn stupid.

And when Kaylee and her friends came back, he remembered just exactly how hard it really was to love somebody.

And it was hard. Right off the hop he found himself feeling the same way he had in October; that she didn't care. He could feel it, sense it in the way she spoke to him, that she'd never care as much as he did. It was the same way Jess had spoken to me all last year.

Last night, something ridicule happened and Tom came back into my room in a matter of minutes after he'd left. This time, with tears filling his eyes. He didn't make a sound, or even moved again once he got comfortable beside me. He just cried silently, tears rushing down his face without a sound. After, he got on his phone, sat for a few minutes and left for home at 11:03pm.

He didn't show up to school the next day, today. Nor did Grace ever see him come home last night. He didn't. He left my house and didn't go back to his.

Grace says abduction. There's no other option. The last time she'd seen him he was exited to be going to hangout with me, Maddie, Bridgette, Keekee and mostly Kaylee. Which didn't end well. So she'd never expected what Barb and I concluded; he ran away.

"I'd run away too if someone did that to me" Barbara said, multiple times. And she was right. I'd never done to anyone what she'd done to him last night. And he was gone longer than second before he returned. I know how he gets. When something tragic is happening, he panics. If he doesn't go into full panic attack mode, he'll internally panic, unable to move or get out of the situation that's causing it, he'll just sit and let it destroy him.

And then he was gone. I should've known. I should've thought that my best friend, who'd once attempted suicide because of the girl who'd just hurt him again, he wouldn't go home. He'd run away, hurt himself, or someone else. And maybe he'd never come back. Too embarrassed to show his face. Too embarrassed to return. To look at her or any of us. Because even though I had fifty million chances to reject Jess like that, I never did. If Jess had gone a year without facing that, it must mean ugly business.

It's been twenty four hours and an amber alert has been released. They're now filing missing persons reports and all that good crap. Now it's not just a 'maybe he needs space' thing. It's a 'this is serious' thing. A possible victim, crime-related case. And all because it's been twenty four hours.