Talking to the Moon

I went to visit my father over the break. I haven’t seen him since the summer but things between us are starting to get better.

Sort of…

The person I was really looking forward to seeing though is my old best friend Jimmy Wilder. We used to be so close when we were kids. We were in the same first grade class and I remember the teacher always scolding Jimmy for being too noisy or too obnoxious or too….Well, like Jimmy is. She would always ask me the same old question every single day, “Violet, how can someone as sweet as you stand to be around someone as annoying as Jimmy?” And every single day I would answer it the same way, “because I love him”.

I was thinking about this when Jimmy and I were walking through a corn field together late one night. It was a gorgeous night, it was as if all the stars in the universe had gathered above us to bring us light and the moon was full and golden and looked closer then I had ever seen it before. The wind was making me want to swayalong with it, like I was dancing to the whispers of forever it held within it’s grasp. Even the crickets chirping seemed to be singing a soft, luxurious melody just for the two of us.

I thought the night was going to be just perfect, but I should’ve known better; there’s no such thing as perfect.

“Violet, let me ask you something”, Jimmy asked, our hands swinging together.

I shrugged, “sure”.

He stopped walking, reaching a hand up and running it through my hair, “Why do you hate your father so much?”

I felt my breath catch, I had never told Jimmy about what happened to me, how it tore my father and I apart, how it made me into this other person that I didn’t recognize, how it had kept me from coming back to see him for eight years. He didn’t know any of that, he shouldn’t know any of that, I wanted Jimmy to still think I was the girl he tried to kiss on the bridge when we were six, the same girl he had spent every waking moment with when we were young, the one who stood up for him in first grade.

But he knew I wasn’t that person, that I hadn’t been that person for years. Jimmy could see right through me, and that scared me more then anything about him.

I scofed, “What are you talking about, I don’t hate him”.

Jimmy knew I was lying straight through my teeth, “Well I think you do, and I think your being too harsh on him. He’s a good guy Vi, if you would just give him a chance to show you-”

I felt anger burning like acid in my throat, “he had the chance to show me when I was eight years old! He could’ve stayed and supported me, helped me, but he chose not too! He left me, not the other way around!”

Jimmy just stared at me like I had slapped him across the face, and in a way I felt like I had.

“Whatever happened to you when you were younger is none of my business, I just thought that the girl I once knew was still inside you somewhere, the kind who thought her father was the greatest guy on the planet and wanted to be just like him, the girl who was as forgiving as God himself. I can see she’s not now, too bad, I liked her”.

Jimmy walked off the field, hands stuck on his pockets.

I watched him go, I watched him walk away from me and I did nothing to stop him, I wanted too so badly that it literally hurt to stand there with all these words and emotions stuck inside me and not be able to let them out. he as right, he was right about everything, she was completely gone, and I couldn’t bring her back, but I wasn’t going to try, there was no use in it. No use in bringing up the past when the past no longer exists.

I stared up into the stars, letting my tears fall down and make tracks along my cheeks. He left me, but I wasn’t alone that night, I was still content talking to the  moon.