The Living Will

Chapter 6 - The End and The Beginning

The following section is told from Melanie's point of view.

I guess a good point to start is way back before we even moved. I never told you, but I never saw my dad a whole lot growing up. But when I did, it was never good. I just remember that he'd hit my mom a lot, slap her, yell, throw stuff at her. One of my earliest memories was them arguing about something, and he grabbed a knife from the kitchen and threatened to slit her neck if she didn't shut up. My mom always protected me from him, but you know...shit happens.

My mom went to the police, but due to a 'lack of evidence' they weren't able to charge him with anything meaningful. Like, what more fucking evidence do you need, everything in our house was a broken mess and my mom was all beat up. That's probably why I was so quiet and 'to myself' when I was little. Seeing that kind of stuff...it really leaves an impression on you. It felt like it was my fault, like it was something that I did, that made him do all that. I was afraid of what other people might do to me, too.

They were able to charge him with breaking and entering, and since he was on parole, he ended up in jail again. But it was only for a few months, and my mom was afraid he was gonna kill us someday. She didn't want to keep living in fear, so she made that decision to move to San Jose. She didn't tell me exactly when it would be, but she told me that it could be any day and to be ready. We'd have to leave behind everything. And it was the hardest thing for me. You were my closest friend, we hung out almost everyday. And that day when we last saw each other, I just couldn't handle it. I hated that I had to say bye to you. Because I knew I couldn't, because then I'd be accepting it, and I didn't want to accept that reality. So even though it's been so long, and it probably doesn't mean a whole lot to hear it now, I'm sorry I didn't say goodbye to you.

At first we stayed with my aunt at her house, but that was only for a few weeks while my mom looked for a new place. Staying with her was cool, but she also had 3 kids of her own that were way older than me. Eventually she was able to move us into a 1 bedroom apartment in a neighborhood called Mayfair. She gave me the bedroom and she took the living room. Kinda like you did when I came over to your apartment, Robbie. But yeah, those first few months in San Jose were rough. I felt so homesick of everything, our old house, our old school, and you. It seemed like no matter where I looked, I kept getting reminded of you. As a matter of fact, take a look at this pic I took of what this street near our apartment was called.

(Melanie looks through her stack of photos, and pulls out an image of a green residential street sign with a blue sky behind it. It reads 'Robin Ave' in white letters.)

And yeah, then there was that whole car accident I told you about. My mom and I were driving back from the grocery store. This car just came out of fucking nowhere and bam, hit our car on the passenger side. They were never able to find who did it, since they booked it out of there on foot as soon as it happened, and that kind of shit was just common up there. But we made it out okay, just a couple of scrapes and bruises. We still had to be taken to the hospital though, just in case there was something wrong. And the doctors x-rayed us, took some blood samples, that one test where they hook you up to machine and measure your heart going 'ba-boom, ba-boom', and they told us everything looked fine. But I was bummed out, because I lost my fucking tattoo stickers.

So we kept on going, living our new lives. It was hard to talk and meet new people again, but I kept thinking about you. I wanted to be like you, who wasn't afraid of anything, who would run toward the sound of thunder instead of run away. So, over time, I opened up. The years went on, I got older. I had a ton of friends. Puberty was really generous with me too, so that definitely helped my self-esteem.