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Chapter 2 - Friendship.

 

At nine Brian had a growth spurt. He still had a ragged haircut, his clothes were old and often torn, and he was almost painfully skinny. But at least he was now taller than all the other kids in his class and he started to stand up for himself more when the others would pick on him. After the third playground scuffle, though, the Vice Principal called Brian's parents who were asked to come to school to talk about their son’s disciplinary problems.

 

Ms. Tursi, the Vice Principal at Franklin Elementary, had been a school administrator in the Pittsburgh Public School system for more than fifteen years. She had seen too many children like Brian come through her office during those years. She'd seen the same signs before: Brian was often absent from or late to school, many times he had 'forgotten' his lunch or lunch money, usually he was dressed inadequately for the frigid cold Pittsburgh winter weather, and he frequently failed to turn in homework assignments even though his test scores proved he was extremely intelligent. There was also the telling problem with his overly aggressive attitude towards some of the other students and even a few staff members. Although she didn’t have enough concrete proof to do anything about it, these were all warning signs of abuse.

 

Ms. Tursi was determined to confront Brian's parents about these issues so she specifically requested that both Jack and Joan Kinney be present at the meeting. She told Brian, who was still sitting in the school office as punishment after his last schoolyard tussle, about the meeting she had set up with his parents, and that he should stay after school until they got there to pick him up. Brian involuntarily groaned aloud at the announcement. He liked the Vice Principal and knew Ms. Tursi probably meant well, but he also knew that his real punishment would come after the meeting when his father took him home. Brian dreaded the 'talking to' his father would give him - mostly because his father usually talked with his fists.

 

Several hours later, after all the other students and even most of the teachers had left, Mr. and Mrs. Kinney finally showed up and were escorted by the school secretary into the Vice Principal's office. Brian didn't even look up at them as they strode through the office. He stayed seated on the small plastic chair in the outer office where he'd been waiting all afternoon. He could hear the adults talking in the closed room nearby, but couldn't make out exactly what was being discussed.

 

After another twenty minutes, the door to the office reopened and the three adults shuffled out. Mother was looking down at her purse as she walked, avoiding all eye contact. Ms. Tursi was shifting her eyes between the departing parents and Brian, with a sad, almost apologetic, look in her eyes. Clearly she hadn’t gotten anywhere with the recalcitrant parents. Father was scowling at him with that 'You're-So-Gonna-Get-It-When-We-Get-Home-Boy' look on his haggard old face. Brian just sat there - too terrified to move - trying to scramble for some way to get out of going home tonight.

 

"Thank you for coming down to talk with me about this," Ms. Tursi was now saying as she reluctantly shook hands goodbye with Jack and Joan. "If I don't see definite improvement regarding these concerns in the next few weeks, I will pursue matters further.

 

Two hours later, Brian was finally allowed to crawl away from his father’s ‘lecture’ about how he was stupid, useless and always causing trouble, and the boy managed to make his way back into his room. He knew it wouldn’t help anything to cry, but he couldn’t quite stop the silent tears leaking out from behind his tightly closed lids and dripping down his cheeks. He pulled the tattered old blanket off his bed and retreated with it to the back of his closet, sliding the door closed behind him to give himself the semblance of security.

 

“Hey, Buddy,” a kind tenor voice intoned and when Brian opened his eyes again, he found he was no longer alone in his hiding place.

 

Even though it was dark in the back of the small space with only a small crack of light filtering in from below the door, Brian could still somehow see his friend’s beautiful face. Justin gave off a radiance of some kind that you couldn’t really see but could sense nonetheless. It was enough to bring a certain amount of illumination to the scene.

 

“Let me take a look at that eye,” Justin said with evident concern, his gentle fingers reaching around Brian’s chin and trying to get him to tilt his face so that the older boy could look at the black eye that was rapidly swelling shut. “Brian, let me see.”

 

“Leave me alone!” the boy snapped in an insistent but hushed voice. “I’m fine.”

 

The compassionate blond simply shrugged at this surly response, caressed the soft cheek a moment more and then conceded. Instead, he wrapped his right arm around the small boy’s shoulders and pulled the smaller frame closer towards him. Brian flinched slightly at first when Justin’s motion pulled at a bruised rib but then he relaxed into the familiar and comforting embrace. Justin’s reassuring presence helped him get his tears under control and, except for the occasional shuddering breath, Brian was now quiet.

 

“Do you want to talk about why you’re getting into all these fights at school,” Justin asked a few minutes later, his question undemanding but with a tone that clearly indicated he was open to listening if the boy needed to talk.

 

Brian didn’t say anything for a long, long time after that. He didn’t know if he wanted to tell Justin about this. His friend never pushed him to talk. After a bit, though, Brian couldn’t help voicing the matter that had been causing him so much concern.

 

“Sam and Chris said that I was a liar and that you don’t really exist,” Brian finally whispered, still a little hesitant. “They said I was just a stupid little kid with an imaginary friend and . . . they laughed at me. So I hit them.”

 

“Oh, Brian,” Justin sighed and huffed a little amused snort as he turned and left a tender kiss in the soft brunet mop of the boy in his arms. “Those unimaginative dolts aren’t worth getting into trouble over. You and I know the truth. If they’re too stupid and closed-minded to believe then who cares about them. You don’t have to tell them about me.”

 

“But, Justin . . . We were going to play ‘knights’ at recess and I told Sam I wanted to be a Saracen and he said there wasn’t any such thing and then I told him that, yes, there were, and he said there weren’t and I told him that you had told me all sorts of stories about the Saracens and the Crusades and then Sam and Chris said I was a liar, but I told them that you knew lots of really cool stuff and wouldn’t lie to me and they said that I was just a stupid kid and I was making up you and all these stories and that if I didn’t play right I couldn’t play knights with them and they were just being so stupid so I had to hit them,” Brian tried to explain, his words coming out in a jumbled stream, seemingly without a breath in between, in the manner of all third grade boys.

 

“That just proves that those two aren’t very bright. Of course the Saracens were real. ‘Saracen’ is just what the Medieval story tellers called the Muslims back at the time of the Crusades. The Saracens were all very terrible fighters and they often took the Christian pilgrims hostage and tortured them just for fun. Did I ever tell you the story of Hakem the Mad Sultan of Jerusalem and how he threatened to kill all the Christian pilgrims in the holy city because of a dead dog found in one of their mosques . . .” and Justin launched into another of his stories in order to distract Brian from all his troubles for a few more hours.

 

~~*~~*~~*~~

 

Brian didn’t return to school for the rest of that week. When Brian did show up the next Monday, Ms. Tursi called him into the office and asked him why he hadn’t been in school. He told her he had been sick. When the kind-hearted woman mentioned that his left eye looked sore and swollen, Brian said he’d knocked his head against a door. No matter how many times Ms. Tursi asked or how she tried to pry, Brian refused to tell her anything about what had happened after last week’s meeting. Brian had already been told by his father that if he knew what was good for him he would keep his mouth shut and stay out of trouble in the future. Brian would do anything to avoid another ‘lecture’ so he did what his father told him.

 

Brian also stopped talking to people about his friend, Justin.

 

Brian started to become more and more withdrawn. Ms. Tursi was worried about the poor boy and tried repeatedly to talk to him but Brian would just sit in her office, completely silent, and refuse to answer any of her questions. Just about the time she’d had enough and was preparing to report the family to social services, Jack lost his job and they were evicted from the house they’d been renting. The family had to move to another home in another school district. Brian’s case fell through the cracks.

 

~~*~~*~~*~~

 

By the time Brian Kinney started fourth grade, he’d become what his teachers described as a ‘loner’. His natural ebullience and outgoing nature were simply gone. Instead of playing with the other children at recess, he would sit off by himself and read. It was easier to not bother trying to make friends. He never got into trouble at school anymore - if any of the other boys tried to start anything he would just stand and stare at them until they backed down. Luckily he was big for his age and nobody was willing to test whether or not he was serious. The rest of the kids whispered about him behind his back, making up stories about how Brian was crazy and had been forced to leave his last school for beating up three kids. Brian didn’t bother to correct their misconceptions.

 

Things at the Kinney household were bad. Jack had finally found a new job after about four months of unemployment. He’d spent most of the summer drinking his cares away, trying to forget about his money problems and taking out his temper on his family, especially his bratty and annoying son, Brian. When Jack finally got the call from the Union that he was needed on a new job site, Brian felt so relieved that he wanted to dance and jump around and sing. If nothing else it would mean that father wasn’t around the house quite so much.

 

Unfortunately, Brian hadn't counted on the celebratory drinking binge father would go on that last weekend before he started his new job. Jack poured himself his first scotch as soon as he hung up the phone. By mid afternoon the man was sloshed and only barely managed to stumble out of the house on his own two feet, off to find more booze. Mother also decided to celebrate a bit and disappeared into her room with the gin bottle and her bible around four in the afternoon. Claire and Brian had to fend for themselves for dinner, although they were pretty used to that already. They made themselves a triple helping of macaroni and cheese and had their own mini-celebration.

 

Right after dinner, Claire left to go stay the night at a friend's house, leaving Brian on his own. Brian looked at the mess they'd made in the kitchen but decided to put off cleaning up until later and instead watched the Dukes of Hazzard on television. It had been a long stressful week and Brian really hadn't been sleeping much lately - always too keyed into father's volatile moods to ever really relax - and before the program he was watching was even half finished, the tired boy fell asleep on the couch with the TV still blaring away.

 

The old beat up clock on the mantle said it was just shy of two am when Brian awoke to the sounds of his father tripping into the house, slamming the door shut behind him with a solid kick to the back of the door and haphazardly tossing his car keys onto the kitchen counter.

 

Brian stayed where he was, curled up on the couch, hoping without hope that somehow he could evade his father's notice. As he came through the door between the garage and the kitchen, though, Jack’s first sight was the messy kitchen with dirty plates and utensils still strewn about on the table and the pot the kids had cooked in sitting on the counter with hardening globs of sticky Mac & Cheese congealing on the bottom and spilling out all over the countertop. The second thing Jack noticed was the cacophonous chatter of the television still playing in the adjacent living room. Neither of these discoveries were likely to pacify the angry drunk.

 

“Joanie! Get the fuck out here. The goddamned house is a pig stye. Can’t you at least keep the fucking house cleaned? Joanie!” Brian cringed at the bellowing that was coming from just a few paces away from where he was hiding, knowing that mother was likely too drunk to wake up even with all that noise, and that Jack would soon come looking for someone else to take out his disapproval on.

 

“Fucking useless bitch,” Jack mumbled on when he got no response from his wife. “Can’t she do anything other than drink away my money and pray for my fucking soul . . ."

 

Brian could smell the sour odor of stale beer and vomit wafting off father before the man even made it into the living room. Predictably, the sloshed man made his way first to the liquor cabinet in the corner. When he discovered that he’d already drank everything in there - which happened to be the reason he’d left the house earlier, although he didn’t remember that now - he slammed the cabinet door closed, cracking the glass panel in the door in the process. Then Jack turned around, wobbling dangerously but unfortunately not falling, and looked straight at the couch where Brian had been trying to lie low.

 

“Well, well, well. . . . What the fuck are you doing still up, Sonny Boy? Thought you’d just stay up all night with every light in the goddamned house blazing away eating up electricity? Do you know how much I pay every fucking month for the damn electricity, Boy? No, you don’t. You don’t give a crap do you? You’re as useless as the rest of them, aren’t you? You just eat and crap and use up all the electricity and you can’t even clean the fuck up after yourself, can you . . . ,” the slurred abusive words poured out, seemingly without end, each one pummelling into the small boy, causing him to physically recoil until it looked like the child was trying to sink into the couch cushions in a futile attempt to escape.

 

“Quit sitting there and just staring at me with your mouth open like a fish, Boy. Get the fuck into the kitchen and get it cleaned up, damn it!” Jack thundered when he finally got bored with just enumerating his son’s failings.

 

The raging man managed the two steps over to the couch quite adroitly considering his drunken condition and his left hand locked onto Brian’s arm with a vice-like, bruising grip. He tugged the boy off the couch, not bothering to let him get his feet under him but just dragging the slight body along by the arm. In the doorway of the kitchen, Jack threw the small body towards the dirty table. Brian sailed through the air and landed hard against the small wooden table, knocking the whole thing over and causing the plates and glasses to clatter brokenly onto the stained linoleum floor.

 

The upturned table and broken plates seemed to cause the already angry older man to become completely enraged. Jack roared an indecipherable curse at the cowering youth who was still lying stunned amidst the rubble on the kitchen floor. Before Brian could react in any way, Jack was coming at him with his fists flying. All Brian could do was hold up his arms in an ineffective attempt to protect his face.

 

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

 

Brian sensed someone playing with the shaggy hair at the nape of his neck. The touch was light but tickled just enough that it was waking him up. He blinked his eyes open and looked around him, a little surprised that he wasn't in his bedroom for some reason. Turning his head slightly, he smiled to see that the hand which had teased him awake belonged to Justin.

 

"Hey, Buddy," Justin said, intoning his standard greeting.

 

"Hey, Justin," Brian answered as he wriggled to try to sit up so that he could look around more. "Wh-what happened? Where am I?"

 

"Hospital," Justin answered while trying to still the squirming boy. "You need to stay still, Buddy," he explained as he pointed with his chin towards Brian's right arm, which the boy now noticed was encumbered with a heavy white plaster cast and immobilized in a sling strapped around his chest and shoulders.

 

It seemed like, as soon as he saw the cast, he all of a sudden felt the pain radiating out from the site of the injury. Along with the pain also came the memories of the run in with father the night before. Brian screwed his face up in anguish - both physical and emotional - but he carefully blinked back the tears that were threatening to fall and clamped his lips shut tight to prevent any sobbing from escaping. Justin simply sat there on the edge of Brian's bed, his fingers continuing to play in the soft auburn hair as he petted the boy and tried to comfort him.

 

When the boy had eventually mastered his emotions, he tried to shrug off Justin's caresses. The older boy just squeezed Brian's shoulder a little more tightly. Brian turned his head away and tried to ignore the continued petting, but Justin simply moved closer and began to tenderly stroke the boy's bruised cheek.

 

"Stop!" Brian ordered, turning so he could back up his order with an angry look. "I'm fine. Just leave me alone, okay."

 

"Brian . . ." Justin started to protest, again reaching out to touch the distressed child.

 

"I SAID to stop, Justin," Brian yelled. "I'm not a baby anymore. I don't need you here pawing at me all the time. It never does any good, anyway. . ."

 

"I'm so sorry, Brian," Justin started to apologize, his voice hushed and cracking as if he too was having trouble holding back strong emotions.

 

"Yeah, you're sorry. Fat lot of good that does," Brian exclaimed bitterly. "If you were really sorry, you wouldn't let him do this to me. You would stop him. Saying you're sorry afterwards and petting me and telling me pretty stories doesn't really help, you know!"

 

"If I could stop all this, Brian, I would," Justin murmured back - regret, sympathy and frustration all clearly evident in his tone. "I don't have that power. I'd do anything for you, Brian. I would. I don't know how to stop him, though. I don't know how to help you other than just being here when you need me. I wish it were enough."

 

"Well, it's NOT enough!" Brian yelled back, his voice now so loud that it attracted the attention of a nurse who immediately bustled into the room to find out what was the matter.

 

Justin moved away from the bed, watching as the nurse spoke to her patient, brought him some childrens' aspirin to dull the pain from his arm, and then left. Brian ignored the crushed and despondent look on his friend's pale face. He tried to pretend that Justin wasn't there. He grabbed the remote control for the television mounted in the corner, switched on the box and refused to even look in Justin's direction.

 

Justin was very troubled by Brian's reactions. He wanted to help his boy. He could sense how hurt and lonely Brian was right now, but instead of accepting help, the youth was using his anger at his father to hold his friend at bay. Brian couldn't take out his frustration and anger on the person who was really responsible for all his pain - Jack. Instead he lashed out at the only other person around, even though he innately knew that his actions would hurt Justin nearly as badly as he himself was hurting.

 

All Justin could do was to stay near, watching over Brian as best he could and hope that someday he would be able to do more.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~


 

Chapter End Notes:

Pretty heavy angst here, folks. I'm afraid its gonna get even worse before it starts to get better. Better run out now and buy yourselves those extra large boxes of tissues with the lotion added so that you can avoid getting chapped noses from all the sniffling you'll be doing as you read this story. TAG

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