A Real Friend - Chapter 1

Alone...

That’s exactly where Nicole was at this moment. She sat numbly on her bed, staring blankly at the light blue stucco wall that was in her immediate field of vision. A bystander would have assumed that she was deep in thought. It could have passed for that except for the emptiness that was reflected in her dark brown eyes.

Her long auburn hair was pulled back in a loose bun and she was still wearing the plain black dress that her mother had laid out for her that morning. She had almost forgotten that she was wearing it, but never in a million years would she forget why. Today had been the most emotional day in her entire 17 years, even though she had yet to shed a tear. She vaguely remembered random statements from people who meant well. “The pain will get easier as time passes” or “He is in a much better place now.” All the normal niceties that people absentmindedly repeat over and over again at a loved one’s funeral because they really had no idea what to say that would actually make you feel any better. She had heard people say them before, only today they were saying them to her and her family. What she really wanted to say to them was to keep their words of sympathy and compassion to themselves, but the only responses she could muster were nodding and then looking away. When almost everyone had left, she sneaked off to her room. Her emotions were just begging for the day to be over and now that it almost was, here she sat, alone.

Alone with her thoughts, alone with her grief, completely and utterly alone in every sense of the word. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt this way. There was absolutely no one that she was close enough to that she could or more importantly, wanted to talk to. Her parents were in the same numb state that she was currently in, but they had each other to cling to and console. She knew it was silly, but she would have felt like she was intruding if she had turned to them. Talking to her older brother Michael seemed like such a wasted use of her limited energy. He was so wrapped up in himself that she wasn’t even sure he knew how to grieve, much less help someone else cope with the process. She knew Michael had a soul and some compassion for someone other than himself buried beneath that tough front of his, but so far he had done little to reveal it to anyone, especially her.

Nicole’s friends weren’t an option for emotional support. It wasn’t that they didn’t care, or wouldn’t try to help. It was just that serious conversations were not their forte. They were more concerned about the latest fashion, who was currently dating whom and the most popular new music phenoms that currently graced the airwaves. Certainly they would listen and try to comfort her, but she sensed that they would be much more helpful in a social disaster. She knew that she probably wasn’t giving them enough credit, but the truth was that she couldn’t bring herself to turn to anyone else right now.

No, the only person that Nicole would feel comfortable confiding in was the one that she had lost. Her grandfather, Lang-Laney (a family name for grandfathers on her mother’s side) had been her strength and support for as long as she could remember. She could tell him anything and he would listen intently and only interject his opinion when it was absolutely necessary. If she had to choose anyone in the world to talk to right now, it would have been him, but that was impossible. He was gone.

She knew in her heart it was wrong to be angry, especially with her grandfather, but that seemed to be where her emotions were headed. She wasn’t sure what the official “steps of grief” were, but she was pretty sure she remembered hearing somewhere that anger was one of them. How could she be mad at him though? He had been so sick near the end, it wouldn’t be fair. Maybe it wasn’t him that she was mad at, maybe it was fate, or the “powers that be”, whoever they were. No, she couldn’t allow herself to be mad at her grandfather. She had loved him too much for that, and none of this was his fault. He had lived a full and happy life and at the age of 89 had outlived all of her other grandparents.

Nicole had never been as close to any of them as she had been to Lang-Laney. He had been the nearest to her both logistically and emotionally, so it was only natural for her to be close to him. Their personalities just seemed to fit, like he was the older version of herself. She had been told before that she seemed to have an “old soul”. More than once her mother had jokingly told her that she had reached the maturity level of a 30 year old by the time she was 13. Maybe that was why she related so well to people that were older than her peers.

Today though she didn’t feel mature, she felt much younger than her 17 years. It was taking every ounce of strength that she had not let the grief take over, when all she really wanted to do was curl in a ball on her bed and cry like a baby. In the back of her mind she kept holding on to the fact that she had to be strong and she had to get beyond this. Alone or not, he wouldn’t have wanted her to grieve this way. She had to remember the good times. She didn’t want to dwell on the pain that she was feeling right now, but she wasn’t sure how to keep it from overwhelming her. The pressure in her chest wasn’t making it any easier, she felt like she could explode at any moment.

She slowly slid her legs around to the edge of her bed and slipped herself down to the floor. Almost mechanically she walked to her closet and pulled out her favorite sweats and a loose fitting t-shirt from the drawers that were hidden behind her sliding closet door. The dress had to go and the sooner the better. The only reason she had worn it in the first place was because her mother had insisted. Nicole was definitely not a “girlie-girl”, dresses were limited in her wardrobe, reserved for extremely formal occasions or when the situation absolutely called for them. Right now the situation called for comfort and familiarity. As she slid the dress off her shoulders she let it drop to the floor. She thought about kicking it across the room, or balling it up and stuffing it into the far corner of her closet, but decided that it wasn’t worth the wrath of her mother, who would inevitably find it there. She stubbornly decided to pick it up and slip it on a hanger. The corners of her mouth turned up into the closest thing to a smile she had attempted all day. She was thinking about her mother’s reaction to the simple act she had just completed. Even though she knew her mother would be upset by finding the dress in the corner of her closet, she also knew that she wouldn’t have been surprised to find it there.

As she started to turn away and slide the doors closed, the chest in the back corner of her closet caught her eye. She didn’t have to sift through the battered container to know what was inside, the contents were permanently ingrained in her psyche. She shrugged and decided to reach for the leather handle and pull it out of its hiding place anyway. It was full of her most cherished memories and possessions that she began collecting when she was barely out of preschool. Most of the contents would seem silly to anyone else, but to her they were priceless treasures. Slowly she lifted the lid. She really should get a much nicer container for these irreplaceable trinkets, but it didn’t matter what kind of box they were in, the tattered receptacle held as much meaning to her as the items that it contained.

Ironically, the first thing pulled from her “treasure chest” was a fairly recent photo of her Lang-Laney. She slowly caressed his face on the picture that she had taken with the camera he had given her for Christmas this past year. She could almost see the sparkle in his blue-gray eyes as he looked back at her from the shiny photo paper. Tears burned the corners of her eyes for the first time today and she instinctively knew that once they started the waterworks may never stop. Maybe this trip down memory lane wasn’t such a great idea after all. There was no point in trying to hold back, so she just let go. The quiet tears turned to racking sobs as she let herself fall back onto her bed and buried her face in her pillow. Her body rocked with the current of pain that she felt. She hoped that she would cry herself to sleep, but sleep didn’t come.

As the pain began to subside to the point that it was almost bearable, she slowly rolled over and stared at her ceiling. She noticed that the photo was still in her hand and realized that she should put it back before something happened to it. She slipped off her bed, but instead of just putting the photo back, she began slowly rifling through the chest once again. Maybe she was a glutton for punishment, but she was suddenly drawn to the contents. She could have probably entwined each item into a web of memories around her grandfather, but that wasn’t her goal. She wasn’t normally self destructive, right now she reasoned with herself that she was hunting for a diversion from her grief, not a launching pad.

Her fingers searched through the treasures almost cautiously, as if she might be afraid of what she may find. She couldn’t honestly remember the last time she had looked through her chest. In recent months the only time that the lid had even been lifted was when there were items to be added. She seldom took time for close inspection, but tonight time was not an issue. She almost began to enjoy this trip through her childhood memories. The diversion was working better than planned. Heavy sighs began to replace the sobs from earlier, filling her lungs with cool oxygen, the deep breaths began to relax her slowly.

The closer to the bottom that she got, the harder she had to think about the significance of each item. Of course they were all familiar, but some of them had been placed there so many years ago that the exact reason they had become cherished was beginning to get a little foggy. Another good reason to do a mental inventory of everything contained in the chest. Photos were easy, no explanation necessary. She glanced at each one and placed them neatly in stacks according to the time frame that they represented. She promised herself that she would put them in albums at a later date to protect them from becoming ragged. School papers and notes from friends were easy too. She laid them aside in their prospective stacks and decided to be more careful in the future when placing items in here and make organizing a top priority before anything else was added.

As she fingered through the rest of the collected memories she let her mind take her back to the place or event that they were from. That was, after all, why she had saved them. Each item was kept in this place of honor so they could be brought out from time to time and have life breathed into them. Nicole’s life.

She smiled as she gingerly picked up her baby blanket. The blue satin edge still brought her comfort. She pulled it to her face so she could breathe in its softness. She obviously couldn’t remember being swaddled as an infant, but since she hadn’t actually given it up until she was 4 or 5 it wasn’t hard to remember why the tattered fleece with the smooth, frayed edge had soothed her as a young child.

Nicole placed the blanket in her lap as she sat cross-legged on the floor. She leaned over to peer down into the very bottom. She had covered the rough cedar-like board with shelf paper several years ago to provide a little bit of protection for some of her more delicate trinkets. The paper was normally hidden under all the clutter, but some of its bright colored flowers were slowly becoming visible as she continued to pull random items out for closer inspection. She squinted her dark brown eyes to focus on something in the far corner. The flowered design was strangely distorted and her curiosity suddenly peaked.

She pulled herself up on her knees so she could extend her reach. The distortion was the only indication that there was an object there at all. She almost thought that her eyes were playing tricks on her until she actually brushed it with her fingertips and confirmed that it was three dimensional. As she grasped the smooth clear stone out of its hiding place she was almost expecting it to be cold to the touch because it so closely resembled a chunk of ice. As she slowly rotated it between her fingers she was trying to jog her memory into some sort of recognition, but she had no idea where to begin. She rubbed her fingers along every facet of the stone, the sharp pointy edges in contrast to the smooth sides, but nothing registered. It was almost as if this was the first time she had held this curious stone, but she knew that was impossible. How would it have found its way into her chest of treasures if she had never seen it before?

Nicole slowly shrugged and decided to start a new pile on her now cluttered floor. This one would be for items that didn’t fit into a specific category, things that she would have to come back to. As she started to drop the stone, she suddenly felt a spark of recognition. She brought it closer so she could examine it once more. The gasp that escaped from her chest almost startled her. There was such a strong connection between the stone in her hand and the memories that were starting to flood into her consciousness that she almost let it drop to the floor, but she didn’t... she couldn’t. The memories that were almost crushing her with their intensity were from her early childhood. Among them were images of someone that no one else had ever seen, or even believed in, but he was the first real friend that she had ever had. She almost laughed out loud as that thought occurred to her. After all, calling him her first real friend was a bit of a stretch, especially since the only place that Thomas had ever lived or even existed was in Nicole’s imagination.

ID: 1574079   (Rated: 13+) A Real Friend - Chapter 2  This is a continuation of "A Real Friend". Chapter 2 is from Thomas' perspective. by creativedeeds