What He Wouldn't Give (Unedited Version)

Chapter Nine: Where's Sherlock John...

Where's Sherlock John...

Picking up a raglan he threw on his jeans and sighed. The clock read something in the hour of six in the morning. He needed more sleep than he was getting currently. Some time had passed since the last encounter with Luke. The days just began to blur together. Eli withdrew from the band in that time, the band soon fell apart after he left. Jackson began to hang out with his girlfriend more often than showing up to band practice, Noah was helping Lia through the rough time in her life and Eli was dealing with his shit. Jeremy understood and soon joined a new band and helped them slowly become more popular since they were joining this Battle of the Bands in the next state over.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, hands holding his head up he sighed again and looked over at his bag. He was deciding if he should even go to school anymore or just drop out. It seemed like nothing was ever going to work out for him, he went because as far as everyone else knew everything in his life was fine, and besides him apparently being a major klutz. Slowly standing up and stretching throwing his head to the side to shake the water out of his hair he took a deep breath and slowly cranked the doorknob to the right until he could pull the door open by making minimal sounds as possible.

Descending down the stairs took everything out of him when he just wanted to lay in bed all day and do absolutely nothing besides sleep and avoid the world; in a sense escape reality he lived in. Once downstairs he looked in the cupboards and saw the nonexistent food and decided to walk to school without eating anything. Half way on his walk a thought that never once crossed his mind since that one unfortunate date almost a year and half ago struck him. Turning into the graveyard he stood at the gates wondering if he should visit her.

"Hey kid what are you doing here?" A stout old man shouted from the building next to the gates.

"Um..." He began frozen with unknown fear.

The elder noticed this and asked Eli a question next instead of yelling again as he observed the way the kid responded when he yelled.

"Who you visiting kid?"

Stuttering Eli managed to say one word, "Mom."

The man opened the gates and motioned Eli to come over and Eli began to walk over cautiously. Did he trust the man or should he just walk away and come back a different time? He reached the building before he was ready and the grave yard man asked him who his mother was. When Eli said her name a look of pity struck the man's face and it pissed Eli off. He didn't need pity from this stranger.

"She was a lovely girl and I know a lot of people have probably given you pity and sorrow, but I want to tell you that your mother was someone special and you were lucky to have her for a mother and hope you have been managed well since she left us."

As the two walked in the cemetery to where her grave plot was since Eli couldn't remember the old man told him stories of Stacy. From days she was at his house and saving frogs in his pond to the day where she broke her leg from falling out of a tree. He chuckled from that because he remembered when his mom told him that story when he was eight and did the same thing.

"Well I'll leave you alone if you need anything I'll off in the distance a little you should be able to see me. Tell her I said hi and you're the first one I've seen visit her grave besides someone else and let's just say he wasn't Luke."

'My dad,' Eli thought. "Do you know the other man?"

"I don't know him personally, but I'd say a lot of people know the man and you look just like him and Stacy."

Eli told himself that he had to come more often to find out who the man was. Looking at the tombstone he felt the flashbacks coming. The stiff picture of his mom in the coffin dressed in her favorite dress. A flower headband in her hair, of course not real flowers, but it made her seem younger than she was. He sunk to his knees inevitable tears tried to shed and spill. Eli did his best not to cry.