Dedication: This story is dedicated to Brittaney - I may have failed you, but I will never forget you, and I will never make the same mistake again. I'm so sorry.

How I’ve Failed You

James walks down the railroad tracks, his back to the setting sun, and he carries a baseball in one hand and a fast-melting cherry popsicle in the other. Dry June heat beats down on the backs of his legs and upon the nape of his neck, and he can smell briquettes and hotdogs in the air despite the darkening hour. He knows that his mother will scold him for playing in the high school baseball field where they have real playing dirt that gets all over his clothes, but James doesn’t let that worry him now. He had fun playing baseball with his friends.

“Hey, Jimmy!” comes a familiar shout, and out of the woods that surround the tracks on either side emerges Greg House. He’s about a foot taller and three years older than James, wearing a wife-beater and jean shorts, and his skin is as dark as James’s from playing under the North Carolina sun. “What’s happening, short stack?”

James cringes at both nicknames. “Shut up, Greg,” he hollers back, but doesn’t mind when Greg hikes up to join him on the railroad tracks. “Who likes you anyways?”

“Aw, you’re always so sweet, Jimmy,” Greg says with a grin. His long legs adjust so that they’re walking to James’s rather slow, twelve-year-old pace. “Your mom’s gonna be pissed when she sees your pants. Those are some big-ass grass stains.”

The forbidden swear words reach James’s ears and make his stomach lurch with a surge of excited admiration that Greg is breaking the rules. Feeling daring in the company of the older boy, he shakes his head and snorts. “I get ‘em all the time. No big deal.” He licks the popsicle, which is nearly finished. Some of the juice dribbles down his dirty hand, and James uses his tongue to catch it. A moment later he realizes how stupid he looks, licking his hand frantically, and stops.

Greg snorts at him and nods. “Yeah, that’s our Bad Boy Jimmy all right.”

“Y’know my name’s James, right?” James says in a somewhat irritated tone, knowing that he’ll be laughed at and unsure of why he keeps bringing this up. He sucks at his popsicle.

“I like Jimmy,” Greg says with a wicked grin. “No one else calls you Jimmy—it makes you mine.”

James shivers as he feels the creeping of uneasiness. He doesn’t like the idea of being owned, belonging entirely to someone else, but he doesn’t say this. Instead, he squints up into his friend’s face and notices the still-fading bruise on Greg’s jaw. Feeling spontaneously daring, he decides to bring it up.

“Harold Redding must’ve socked you real hard, Greg,” he says innocently, kicking one of the rocks that line the tracks and licking the cherry popsicle once more, as if he wasn’t waiting to hear Greg’s answer with eagerness.

“What?” Greg says, looking completely blank.

James almost smiles as he realizes that he’s trapped his friend. “The bruise on your jaw,” he says calmly. “You told me yesterday that Harold Redding ’n you got into a fight.”

“Oh! Oh—that—yeah. Yeah, it was from Redding,” Greg says quickly, obviously scrambling to cover for his slip. “Sorry. Forgot about it.”

James sighs and stops walking. Greg stops a moment later, looking down at him curiously.

“Do you have to lie?” James asks him, and watches as Greg attempts to look confused. “Everyone knows, Greg. Everyone. We all know that you didn’t run into the door and that you aren’t getting into fights with Harold Redding every other day. It’s your fa—”

“Shut up,” Greg hisses, and for one moment James swears that Greg might punch him. “You shut up. How dare you—you—you have no idea what you’re talking about!”

“Okay,” James says. He turns away from Greg and continues walking, knowing how to handle his friend without understanding it at his young age. The only thing he knows is that to get Greg to talk, you had to let him bring it up, and that’s what he’ll do.

Greg hurries to catch up with him and they walk in silence for a long time, James taking occasional slurps from his popsicle. The sun is nearly set, casting purplish shadows across everything and making their own shadows stretch as long as tennis courts. James kicks a few more rocks and chews on the exposed, juice-soaked popsicle stick. Patiently. He can almost hear Greg’s thoughts, feel the emotions that are whirling about inside of him, and he says nothing. Frogs begin to croak and crickets begin to chirp, and the smell of cookouts fades a long time before James notices its absence. They are coming up to the creek where James has to get off that tracks to turn onto his street.

Greg sighs. “Someone called Child Services,” he says darkly, as if challenging James to laugh.

James doesn’t.

“They talked to me at school. They said that if I want, I could go live with another family. Anywhere I want—and Dad wouldn’t be allowed to see me,” Greg says, his tone now more quietly ashamed than menacing. He sounds reluctant, even as the words come out of his mouth, as if he still isn’t sure whether to say this.

“What are you going to do?” James asks carefully.

Greg doesn’t respond. He kicks a stone that hits a tree off to the side with a sharp crack and makes James flinch. They are approaching the creek now. He can hear the running water, the increasingly loud sound of the frogs croaking as the sun sets.

“If I leave,” Greg says at last, “he’ll be angry. He’ll be embarrassed in front of all his war buddies, and Dad doesn’t like being embarrassed.”

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t be there,” James reminds him, his voice too eager. “He couldn’t hurt you anymore.”

“He could hurt my mother, you nitwit!” Greg suddenly shouts, whirling on James and grabbing his shoulders. James drops the popsicle stick to the ground in fear, staring up into his friend’s blazing eyes. “He hasn’t hurt her yet because I’m there! But the moment I leave, all the shame—he’ll blame her! He’ll blame her, just like he blames me now, and I won’t be there to protect her!”

He releases James with a push, and James stumbles backwards and nearly trips over one of the railroad beams. Both are breathing hard as they stare at each other in the sudden silence, eyes locking as they realize that things are beyond simple playground issues.

“She’s your mother,” James says in a trembling voice. “Don’t you think that she wants what’s best for you? Don’t you think that she would rather it be her than you?”

“So what?” Greg asks, his voice rough. “I don’t give a fuck what she wants—I’m not leaving her.”

James stares at him in shock. It’s the first time that he’s ever heard anyone say ‘fuck’, and somehow he just knows that this word is very bad and shouldn’t be used. Except for Greg—Greg can use it because he’s fifteen and he’s tough. For the first time, James wonders if maybe he’s overstepping his bounds. What does a twelve-year-old know that a fifteen-year-old doesn’t?

“I—I have to go,” he says in a small voice. And then James leaves him standing there, walks away from the tracks and down to the creek with his heart pounding against his chest, each footfall seeming to echo the words: try again, try again, try again, try again…

But he does not. James tells himself that Greg is right, that it’s really nothing but a few punches. He doesn’t allow his mind to linger over the days when he sees Greg so hungry, so clearly starved for food, because he’s sure that it’s just Greg being stubborn. He never brings up that evening again, never mentions the confession that Greg made that night, and Greg never asks him any questions about it. A year later, Greg’s father is transferred to a base in France and James says goodbye, knowing that he will never see Greg, knowing that he’d had the chance to save Greg, but had wasted it. And now Greg is at his father’s mercy.

---

It was late evening. Wilson was sitting on House’s couch, watching a movie and attempting to stay awake for the ending, but he wasn’t betting on making it. He’d had a long day and the movie was, quite frankly, terrible. It was a comedy called Mystery Men, one that House had picked out from the local Blockbuster, but either one had yet to laugh at it. House was lazily sipping a beer—Wilson had declined—and a bowl of chips lay between them. Or at least, it had, until House had proclaimed that Wilson wasn’t sharing properly and would therefore be delegated chips whenever House deemed it the right time.

He was dozing off as flashes of the movie flickered before his eyes, the timeline skewered as he came in and out of consciousness. It didn’t make any sense, but then, his brain was too tired to care about making sense. The only thing he knew that he was comfy and warm…

And then suddenly, there were credits rolling on the screen. Wilson saw House flick the television off, and he wondered what would be next. Sleep? Or would House kick him out and demand a night of solitude? He doubted that he would be able to drive well in his current state, so he was praying for the former.

“Well, Wilson,” House said, swinging his leg up onto the coffee table. “I think I’ve figured it out.”

“What?” Wilson asked, his tired mind struggling to keep up with House.

“It was you,” House said plainly.

“It was me?” Wilson asked, wondering if his friend had been drinking something besides beer. “What did I do?”

“Don’t you remember, Wilson?” House asked with a slight grin. “Thirty-some years ago, back in North Carolina?”

Wilson suddenly felt cold, despite the fact that he was wearing a sweatshirt. His stomach felt slightly queasy and his head was light as he realized what House had figured out. What he’d been working out for the last thirty years.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” House asked, but it was more of a statement. “You called Child Services.”

There was a ringing silence in the apartment as Wilson refused to look at House. He felt like a trapped animal. No matter what he did, what he said, there was nothing that he could do to avoid it any longer. Consequences were thrown before his face, and Wilson wondered what would happen. What this would mean. He had been so afraid, so ashamed of it—he hadn’t ever told anyone about it.

“Yes,” Wilson said finally. “I did.”

House looked at him for a long time, his blue eyes piercing and critical, and Wilson shuts his eyes and looks away. He couldn’t bear to know what thoughts were running through House’s mind, whether he was angry or sad or disappointed. He’d always wanted to know, and yet, he didn’t now that the moment had come. He didn’t want to think about how he left Greg to his father’s clutches, how he was too weak to even pick up the damned phone, how he was too… too afraid to save his friend. Everything that had happened to House, Wilson could have prevented. But he hadn’t.

“Okay,” House said simply.

Wilson stared at him, wondering how he could be so forgiving. He’d never forgiven himself. He didn’t understand how years of pain and suffering could just be forgotten in the blink of an eye, how House could just write it off as if it didn’t matter.

“House—”

“Jimmy,” House said, cutting him off. Wilson winced at the childhood nickname, and the memories that it brought to mind. “What happened to me—it wasn’t your fault. I was being a stubborn jackass, and if I could go back and do it all over again, I’d do the same thing. So shut up and forget about it.”

Opening his mouth to speak, Wilson found that there were no words left for him to say. He had been forgiven.