The summer between second and third grade was a dark period in my young life. It was also the summer I met an angel.
I’ve always believed I was a miracle of birth, an unexplainable phenomenon – that is, if my mother wasn’t pulling my leg about everything. I soon began to realize my being born dead was merely a footnote in a life plagued by misery before it even began. Yet at the age of seven, I thought my life was normal, the same as everyone else’s. Then everything changed.
First came the car accident. My father grabbed my little brother and ran, never looking back, leaving me and my unconscious mother. I wondered if he gave us a second thought as I watched his back going down the street.
Not long after that I got into a mysterious fight with two brothers – who were my best friends. I later found out my father paid my friends to jump me.
Like an unstoppable tsunami, those events damaged my soul. The reality I thought I knew was forever shattered. I was stripped of my illusions. I could trust no one, not even my own parents.
Then I met an angel, a force of nature. My father drank and gambled a lot. He often took me to strangers’ homes where I would find myself sitting on unfamiliar porches for hours. Wary. Until other kids would try to make me leave. I had so many fights, I lost count. I sometimes found myself wondering if I was what the adults were really gambling on. That’s why I was expecting trouble when the door to the upstairs apartment opened. The Knox family lived there. That summer Neal Knox, who was older than me, became my nemesis.
I was surprised when the person who exited wasn’t Neal or his mother but a girl my age. Her hazel eyes drank in the environment, and she stared at me as if she knew my thoughts. “Do you want some candy?” Without waiting for my reply, she sat down and divided the bag.
Then she smiled, revealing a deep set of dimples, before saying absentmindedly, “Oh, my name is Tiffany.”
As we talked, I learned she and her mother were visiting. Neal was her cousin. We soon decided to go play with the other kids from the area. Being kids, someone eventually dared everybody to go into an abandoned house down the street. Everyone believed the place was haunted. I had to go. I wanted to prove I wasn’t afraid. So, what the house was a condemned, burned out husk. So what we’d all get into big trouble if we got caught. So what if everybody believed the house was haunted. I needed to do it!
We made it to the second floor. How, I don’t know, because all of us were afraid. We were bunched together like sheep surrounded by hungry wolves. Then someone screamed they’d seen a ghost. Neal and many others ran. I ran too, only my feet carried me further into the empty, soot-covered room in search of the ghost. I noticed immediately I wasn’t alone. Without doubt or hesitation Tiffany had come with me. From that moment onward, we were inseparable.
We did everything together. We played tag. We raced. We tumbled. We even climbed trees till our hands hurt. The field house at the park and our neighborhood community center offered lots of programs and we joined. Swimming. Gymnastics. Basketball. Little league baseball. After I turned eight, we began martial arts classes. Tiffany continuously supported and practiced with me. Her belief in me enabled me to believe in myself.
When the new school year began, Tiffany was in my class. The school we went to was only a block and a half from where I lived, but I’d walk three blocks in the wrong direction just to walk with Tiffany.
One day during our lunch break, Tiffany and I were racing the half block to the neighborhood store. We ran to the crossing guard to get to the store before it got crowded. I got there first. That had begun to happen a lot.
I was standing and looking to see how long we’d have to wait when a blur suddenly passed me. I watched as car hit whoever had been standing there. I saw their body as it went under the car. I was in shock being so close to something like that. I couldn’t move, and I watched the small mangled body as it got twisted around the tire’s axle. People appeared from everywhere trying to save whoever was hit. The drunk driver tried to drive away but the crowd pulled her out through the car’s window.
A small unmoving body was pulled from under the car. In my catatonic state I could barely breathe, much less think clearly. As I watched, they pulled Tiffany’s body out. But how? She was supposed to be standing next to me…
I’ve mourned Tiffany my entire life. In the eight months and thirteen days I knew her, she showed me with her every action how much she believed in me every day. She believed in me before I believed in myself. I carry her memory with me always. Whenever I find myself at my lowest, Tiffany reminds me to believe in myself. I know she would.
ABOUT THE WRITER. The author writes under the pen name Resolute. This is the first time we have had the opportunity to share his writing, and he is also the third place winner in our most recent writing contest. As time goes by, the level of talent that we share here just gets higher and higher. I’m anxious to see more from this writer in the future.
