Nowhere Boy

Chapter 1: Remembering

     As a kid, I never imagined that my life would turn out the way it did. Last night my cousin John was shot by some man named Mark David Chapman. I was with him when he was shot, and let me tell you this; something like that, what I saw happen, is something that no one can ever forget.

     I have to live the rest of my life with that scene stuck in my head. John was only forty. He had two children and a wife. Do you know how it feels to have to watch a widow cry over her dead husband? It feels awful. It feels as if your heart is being ripped out of your chest and there is nothing that can put it back.

     I wish so much that I could have taken the bullet instead of John. He was a good man. Maybe not always, but he tried. Oh God knows how hard he tried. But that didn't stop that young man from shooting him.

     I spoke to John's oldest son, Julian on the phone earlier this morning. He says he's alright and I don't doubt it, but I know that he misses his father. They were never very close; when Julian was born, John was young and wasn't ready to settle down yet. Julian also told me that Cynthia, his mom and John's first wife, was coping. You see, Cynthia loved John still, but John loved his recent widow, Yoko Ono.

     I got along well with Yoko; she made my cousin happy and she was always a kind soul. She still is. She and John had a son, Sean. Poor Sean is only five. He understands that his father is gone, but he doesn't know why. None of us do, really.

     I was due to travel back to England in a few days, but I decided to delay my departure. Yoko and Sean needed me and I needed to stay for the funeral. I'm having Mom flown to New York for the funeral, along with a few other family members.

     My mom is John's aunt, Mimi. That's why I'm so close to him; we grew up in the same house. We're more like siblings than cousins, and we were often mistaken as such. But we didn't mind; we were family all the same.

     Yoko told me to go through some of John's things when I was ready. I knew I'd never be ready, so that is where I am at the present moment. I am sitting on the floor of my small room in John and Yoko's apartment. They always let me stay here when I visited.

     I had boxes and boxes of things around me. There were pictures, books, toys, etc. You name it, it was in there. When I reached into one of the boxes, I pulled out a familiar book. It was my journal from when I was younger. I had written in if from the time I was around ten until I was about twenty-seven or twenty-eight. I wrote about The Quarrymen, The Beatles, Hamburg, Julia's death; all of it. I documented nearly every day I spent with those boys. I stopped around the time that The Beatles started to get distant; all I ever wrote about was them, so why should I have continued writing when all they did was argue?

     I had given the journal to John after The Beatles' official break up in 1970. He seemed to be cutting himself off from everything, so I gave him a little reminder of everything we went through. I remember writing a little note and sticking it on the last page for him to see. I wonder if it's still there. The journal was locked though, so I needed to find the key first.

     After digging through the box a little more, I found the key to the journal in a small heart shaped wooden box. I remembered making it for him when I was about twelve; Dad had taught me how to make it. John thought it was ridiculous to have made it a heart shape because "boys don't have heart shaped things" but I knew he loved it. I told him to keep only his most precious possessions in it, so they would always be close to his heart.

     In the box, I also found a few letters from Aunt Julia, his mom. John had been heartbroken when she had gotten killed, so he always cherished her possessions.

     I removed the key from the box and unlocked the journal. Flipping through the pages, I smelled the familiar smell of home; Mom and Dad's house, not the one that I live in, not John and Yoko's apartment, but home. I went to the back and to my surprise, the note was still there. The black ink looked faded, letting me know that John had read the book. More than once, it seemed. In my neat hand was written a small message:

John,

You can't get rid of me that easily.

Love always,

Alice

     I laughed as I read it. I had put it in there as a joke because, no matter how much he cared for me, he had always tried to distance himself from me in school and such. Don't get me wrong; if I was hurt, whether it be from falling or form being teased, John was there. Boy, I would've hated to be on the receiving end of John's anger. I had seen it before, but when someone gave me a hard time, I swear he turned into a bomb that was seconds away from exploding. And that was before he even looked at the person who had messed with me.

     I turned back to the first page and laughed as I read the first entry. I had been angry because John had hidden my doll from me, or so I thought. I had written a full two pages complaining about John, but the day after I wrote it, I found my doll under my bed; it had fell off while I was sleeping one night and had gotten kicked under by mistake. My next entry was a page and a half of me trying to figure out how to apologize to John. All I ended up doing is hugging him and telling him I was sorry, but he accepted it and didn't ask for any more than that.

     I flipped through until I was at the entries that I had written in 1957. That was the year that it all began. One of the entries stuck out and I began to read it, feeling as though I was being pulled back to my youth.