Hometown Heroes

Starly Night Highschool, Baltimore, Maryland - the one place I had dreaded to step a foot on since I was eight-years-old, yet the one I know I couldn't escape, now, eight years later.

Well, you wonder why, at the age of eight, I already hated my highschool - never once having had any classes there, since, hello! eight years old, time for primary school, not highschool - but that's something rather easy to understand, no matter how hard it is to explain.

When I was six, my older brother, Tom, was beggining highschool - just like I am, today -. We were close to each other, despite our ten years age gap; he played with me all the time, took me to the park and pushed me on the swings, bought me my first guitar and taught me how to play it... As you can imagine, having him go to a highschool twenty minutes away from home, but in which you could only come home on weekends, and only if you wanted, was harsh, on a child like I was; I started to throw temper tantrums all the time, until my parents decided that I could go to my brother's school every morning, just to have breakfast with him, since it was allowed.

From the day that my parents decided that, to the day of my brother's eighteenth birthday, I was a happy child - before going to my own school, every morning, I'd go to Baltimore's highchool and have breakfast with my beloved older brother, happily, chilling in between him and his friends, who had become some sort of my older brothers as well.

On his eighteenth birthday, I skipped down the highschool's corridors excitedly, Tom's gift - a brand new phone that my parents had bought, but that I had wrapped (badly, if you really want to know... I was just a child!) - hanging on my hands, and my parents couldn't keep up with my happiness; they stood fairly behind, meaning that I was the first to find my brother on that dreadful morning.

"Happy birthday!" I had yelled, as I opened the door to Tom's room.

What I found, though, cut my enthusiasm to the core - my older brother lied on his bed, blood still leaking from an open wound on his chest, where his heart should be, with his eyes open wide and scared, face pale as the walls around us.

"Mommy! Daddy!" I screamed, terrified, and instantly heard my parents rush to meet me.

"Oh God!" My mother exclaimed, when she stopped behind me; then, I heard a sob escape her throat as she put her hands on my shoulders and turned me around, embracing me instantly.

No longer than a second later, there were people flooding my brother's once quiet room: teachers, students, other parents... I can't name them, but I remember perfectly each face, since I was looking at all of the people who entered the room from under my mother's protective arms.

After that day, life was never the same - I became a quiet child - as opposed to the over-excited loud brat I used to be, before -, keeping to myself; simultaneously, my parents started drifting apart, eventually divorcing when I was twelve.

After their divorce, I had a new routine - one week in each one's house, still refusing to talk to any of them - or anyone, really - about anything. My muteness extended itself to school, even, where I stopped making friends or participating in classes; I was forced to go to a therapist, but, even there, I wouldn't talk.

Which brings us back to this very day, as my mother drops me off on my home - Starly Night Highschool.

"Okay, honey" she said, her voice trembling as we got my stuff out of the car's trunk, "if you ever want me or your father to come over, or if you ever want to go home on the weekends, just... email us or something" she continued, closing the compartiment after everything was out. "We'll be more than pleased to have you, sweetheart... And speaking on my behalf, I'll miss you like crazy" she told me, opening her arms so she could hug me, which I let her do, wrapping my own limbs around her torso, tightly. "I love you, Alex, and I'm at a distance of a clink, okay?" She asked, kissing the top of my head and separating her body from mine, just as I nodded at her teary eyes. "Have fun in there!" She finally said, kissing my forehead before I took my bags and walked away.