Keep You

By Hannah Kraft

X:X:X:X:X

I sat there in that room as everyone smoked blissful greens and laughed their minds away about things that weren’t even funny.

The smoke and burning marijuana surrounded my body and stuck to my clothes as it suffocated the crammed space.

I thought about my Grandfather, my Grandmother. What would they say if they saw me now?

Surely I wasn’t smoking…I didn’t have a joint in my mouth like some people did in the room, passing it to their partner. I wasn’t openly tongue kissing the drunken girl next to me, getting high off of her own intoxicated saliva. Her own cannabis saturated breath.

My foster brothers, Jacob and Derek, were nowhere in the hazy room. And after living with them for a short while, I could already tell they didn’t like me.

Derek was probably getting high off his rocker on a hit of acid somewhere else in the carousing house, while Jacob probably took pleasure out of any girl that was willing to give herself to him for one night.

They said I should go and have a good time. That I was too much of a pussy and goody two shoes for what it was worth. And that I should even try to score with a couple hot girls from our school.

But I sat here, in this crowded room, pondering my thoughts of a time when my Grandparents were alive. On Saturday nights, Grandpa and I would play cards or even take Abner for a walk through out the neighborhood, talking about school and everything that a teenage boy had to deal with growing up.

I would help my Grandmother with laundry and chores as she called me everything but my name, and kissed me on the forehead when we were done.

I took a deep breath in the cloudy room, the distinctive smell scratching my throat as it went down to my lungs and the girl next to me turned my way.

I looked over at her curiously as she held the burning stick up in her hand, a smile upon her lips but a long gone look in her eyes. She pressed it towards me acceptingly, but I hesitated.

I could have taken it, been satisfied in what it would do to my mind, but I rejected the joint, stood up from the tattered couch and walked out of the misty room.

I coughed as I closed the door and was lead into a large crowd of people. Most of them danced and jumped to the unmelodic rap music. Others chatted while they drank alcohol out of plastic red cups. And a few delighted in each other publically as they groped delicate body parts.

I walked throughout the swarm, gently pushing through people as I made my way towards the door. It was all overwhelming. Every room in the house was intended to be a trip for the mind, a pleasurable sensation for the body. It was fun in the twisted sort of sense, and I needed air from the claustrophobia. I needed space to think.

I coughed again from the remaining second hand smoke in my lungs as I opened the front door and closed it quickly. Breathing in the clean crisp air from outside.

I didn’t even look around at the few people that stood outside. God knew they were probably only mimicking an act of what was inside, and I slumped down upon the stoop.

My head fell into my hands and I wanted to let out a few tears, but I held them back.

I missed them dearly. My grandparents, my parents, the boarders that moved away. My old classmates from Hillwood High. I hadn’t seen any of them since Steve and Mary Johnson had fostered me into their home six months ago.

I started a new school, tried to make new friends. And I had, but it just wasn’t the same.

I missed Gerald, Sid, Stinky, Harold…but still, everyone that I met at my new school just couldn’t compare. They didn’t sit in old tree houses and hang out. They didn’t play football and baseball in vacant lots and they didn’t spend time with their grandparents daily.

I sucked in my gut and wiped my runny nose. I didn’t dare cry in the Johnson house hold. Jacob and Derek would have given me hell for it. But even now, as hard as it was, I didn’t want to think of my past as a sad memory, but of ones that were happy and pleasant. It was the best fourteen years of my life. And I was only saddened that I didn’t appreciate them more when I had the chance.

“Holy shit…”

The voice sounded shocked and I hastily wiped my watered eyes and turned my head to the source.

My heart stopped in awe when I saw her.

She sat upon the railing of the stoop, wearing a large pink hoodie that went down to the middle of her thighs and jeans that were the darkest of blues.

She still wore those pigtails, only they weren’t childish like they were in the beginning of the ninth grade, they were lower, and their life seemed weaker. Her bow was nowhere to be found.

She still had that unibrow, still had that same Helga look, and most of all she still had that golden hair, much like mine.

Helga stared at me completely shocked, her face looked pale, and she held a dying cigarette in her left hand between two fingers.

“Helga?” I asked hopefully. Even seeing Helga Pataki, the girl that I had never gotten along with my entire life, was a blessing in my lonely world.

She didn’t respond at first, letting the remains of the cigarette burn up to her fingers and she flicked it down to the ground next to the stoop.

It was dark and quiet out, the lamp post outside of the house being our only light and she hesitantly got off of the railing.

“Arn…Arnold?”

I nodded, knowing that she must have seen all of what just happened. She probably thought I was even more pathetic than in elementary, but I was a little surprised when she sat down next to me on the stoop and looked into my pinkish eyes.

“What are you doing here?” she asked right away.

I blinked slightly. “My foster brothers dragged me here…” I said emotionlessly. I didn’t hate people, I just disliked them, and those two were currently at the top of the list. “What are you doing here?” I asked inquisitively. I truly wanted to know.

She opened her mouth to speak but hesitated. “I…wanted some cigarettes…maybe a little alcohol…”

I didn’t say anything as I looked at her. She had dark rings under her eyes, her hair was lifeless, and her form looked weak under that thick jacket. I could have told her that this was no place for her to be, but I felt feeble as well, and I’m sure she noticed the slight rings under my eyes.

“You know…no one’s forgotten about you…back in Hillwood. We all miss you a lot.”

I swallowed roughly. Again I was reminded about the beautiful neighborhood of Hillwood. Again I was reminded that I now lived with people that didn’t love me, but merely took care of me.

Every night, every day the feeling felt horrible. I usually laid in my bed for several hours before finally falling to sleep from exhaustion. And in school I took frequent bathroom breaks to close myself inside a stall until the feeling faded and I got distracted. Steve and Mary were nice people, and they meant well, but I didn’t want them. I wanted my Grandfather, my Grandmother. I wanted Hillwood. I wanted my childhood.

I looked to her and my eyes felt heavy. “So why are you out here when all the smoking and alcohol is in there?” I gestured to the door.

She shook her head. “I needed some air…I needed to think.”

“About what?” I pried on. It felt as if in the past six months I was actually talking to someone human. A person that actually deep down, had some life to her. Someone from my past life, and truthfully, I wanted to thrive on whatever she said.

Helga blinked for a second and her brows squished together slightly as she looked down at her feet. “I’ve um…been going through…a lot of shit lately…”

I nodded as I didn’t look away from her. “I know what that feels like.”

She looked back at me and I found a light glimmer of water in her blue eyes. “Arnold…I’m…terribly sorry about your Grandparents…you don’t deserve to go through what you’re going through now.”

I merely shook my head. “No…I mean…I’m sure there’s worse things…I just…I just feel alone, you know? Like everyone that I loved has left me.” Alone was an understatement. Sometimes it really did feel as if I was completely alone on this planet. As if there was no one else. The feeling distorted every organ I was born with, and left me weak.

Helga continued to stare at me and it was her turn to shake her head. “I won’t leave you.” Her voice was deep.

My eyes turned curious. “What?”

She didn’t say anything after that, just stared at me as I stared at her. I felt something cold wrap around my hand and as I looked down, I saw her slender fingers intertwining with mine.

I looked back up at her and she breathed dimly. With Helga’s life, usually things weren’t right, but I could tell, something just felt wrong.

She blinked softly. “If you want me to…I won’t leave you…”

I wavered before responding. Looking into her large blue eyes. “Helga…what’s going on?” and as I looked down at our hands again, I could see faint lines across her pale wrists.

She bit her lip before responding and a tear escaped from her eye. She breathed desperately. “Arnold…I…live a life that’s not worth living…my home life…I feel so alone…I feel so worthless…nothing’s ever changed, and it’s just gotten worse over the years…”

I continued to stare at her and I placed my other hand atop of hers. It was cold and I tried warming it with my pulse.

“Before…Before you stepped outside tonight…I looked up at the sky…and told God…If I was supposed to continue living on this earth…then tell me now…not tomorrow…not the next day, but now…” she covered her mouth and more tears pooled from her eyes. “And then you walked out of the house.”

I breathed heavily as I stared at her.

She shook her head and blinked as drops of saline filled water ran down her whitish cheeks. “I never thought…I would tell you like this…but Arnold…” her lips quivered but she said it, and I heard it. “I love you…I have for a very long time…even when I told you as a kid that I hated you…I loved you…and I thought…whether or not tonight was going to be the night I die…that I would want to see your face at least one more time…and tell you that.”

I didn’t know what to say…she was honest, I knew it by the expression in her eyes. And what was love anyways? Was it an emotion? An action? A pleasure? I didn’t know for sure, but one thing I did know, was that I didn’t feel alone anymore, and the feeling felt wonderful.

I looked at Helga. She looked practically the same, save for the slight maturity in her lips, the dark rings under her eyes, and the woman in her face.

“You’ve loved me? All this time…?” I asked hesitantly within my own thoughts and she nodded.

“I truly do, Arnold. And…you don’t know what it’s like…with you gone..It’s been absolutely horrifying. I-“

She was cut off as I brought my mouth forcefully to hers and closed my eyes tightly. Helga was the only reality of a past I once had, she was the only thing of Hillwood I could touch, smell, see, hear and now taste. And she was real.

I brought my hand under her jaw to lightly pull it towards mine and I expected her to push me away with a slap across the face like the old Helga that said she hated me, but she didn’t. Maybe she really did love me as she placed her chilled fingers upon my cheeks and drew me inside her mouth. As she hummed her breath into my lungs in what seemed like a lullaby, and as she unguardedly moved her form closer.

Her tongue lashed vividly against mine as I tasted her nicotine coated breath. It was different, and it felt warm, but I didn’t care as I intentionally felt the strands of her lightly oiled hair. The rough and weak blotches of skin on her cheek, and the chapped layer of her lips wetly smothering mine.

As she angled her head more to desperately get a deeper taste, I could tell that she wanted this for a long time. And even as I searched my own thoughts and own emotions, I knew I wanted it too. I didn’t want to go back to that cold lonely room and stare at the blank ceiling until my eye lids just closed from fatigue. I didn’t want to just suck in the sadness I felt, and I didn’t want to be perfect anymore.

She was a memory of a beautiful time filled with euphoria. And I didn’t want her to go away with all the others in a hole of the past. I wanted to keep her.

We devoured each other’s mouths, and I’m sure to everyone else, we were just two teenagers making out, but it was so much more than that.

I pondered as one of her hands fell upon my chest, and the other went into my hair, if I could have wished to see anyone of my classmates again, if I could have wished to see anything of my past again, it would have been Helga.

I breathed into her mouth as I broke away slightly and whispered, not feeling alone for the first time since my Grandparents died. “If you want me to…I won’t leave you…”