Our Own World

Chapter Fourteen - Thank You For Saving My Life

Ben and I talked again over the phone. We've been getting along quite well lately. We've had a lot of heart-to-heart conversations lately. He's so sweet.

"Do you want me to buy you a coffee?" Ben asked me. We were at a Tim Horton's, in the cafeteria of the hospital.

"I have my own money I can get something." I smiled.

"No it's fine, what would you like?" He asked.

"I'll have a French Vanilla. Thank you Ben," I decided not to argue with him. I sat down at our table while he ordered us our coffees. Ben said he wanted to talk to me more about God. And I was glad to go out with him today.

"Here you are," he smiled placing my coffee on the table. "And here are some Timbits."

"Thank you." I smiled widely. "So you want to talk about God?" I asked.

"Yes, I want to know more about him." He smiled, showing his braces. He looked good with braces actually. And he was kind of hot. So if you can imagine a hot guy with braces but not the geeky kind of braces, you could maybe begin to imagine Ben.

I pulled out my bible and asked him if he had ever seen one of these.

"Only a couple times in religion and I sometimes go to my grandma's church and they use them. I don't really know what they're for though." He said, embarrassed.

"They're for reading what God has written for us. There are rules and teachings in here that help us with troubles in our lives. I usually read it to help me cope with the situation with Ace. He's my best friend and when I found out he had cancer, I didn't know where to go. I turned to a few things before God like music, books, and parties. But none of them helped me like God and His word did. They have comforted me through the worst situations in life."

"Would God help me through my parent's deaths?"

"What?" I asked shocked. Ben's parents are dead?

"My parents died last year in a boating accident. I lost all hope and I didn't go to school for most of the year. That's why I'm still in grade twelve. They made me redo the twelfth grade. It still hurts thinking about my parents." He spoke softly. "I never got the say goodbye to them." By now I was almost crying for Ben.

"I'm the same, Ace and I had to stay back a year because we both missed too much school, we were both in the first grade, we missed too much school because of his dad being in the hospital. Do you want to continue this conversation up in my room?" I asked. I didn't want to cry anymore in the middle of the cafeteria.

"Yes please."

We headed upstairs to my hospital room to talk more.

"So back to your parents, do you still want to talk?"

"Sure. So after my parents died, I honestly didn't have a clue of anything. My sister and brother who are twins were five years old and I was only seventeen. It was hard on us as a family and hard for my siblings to really comprehend that their parents were gone. My grandma has full custody over us until I turn eighteen and then I can do whatever I want.

"My grandma got mad at me because she was doing everything she could to help me but I wasn't taking the advice and instead I would go out to parties and drink and a couple times I brought girls home and my siblings would be watching a movie with my grandma while I was having a one-night-stand with some girl from a party. Eventually, she got fed up with me and kicked me out of the main floor and made me take the basement apartment. I still kept up with my terrible ways of drinking. I even tried some drugs." He sighed, placing his face in his hands.