“Oh, you got one! Let me see!”
I held my hands out slowly and Bray looked inside the tiny opening between my thumb and index finger. Every few seconds my hand would light up with a dull glow and then fade again.
“So pretty,” she said, wide-eyed.
“Just like you,” I said, though I had no idea what made me say that. Out loud, anyway.
Bray just smiled at me and looked back down into my hand.
“OK, let it go,” she said. “I don’t want it to die.”
I opened my hands and held them up, but the firefly just stayed there crawling across the ball of my thumb. I leaned in to blow on it and its tiny black wings finally sprang to life and it flew away into the darkness.
Bray and I spent the whole night in the field chasing the fireflies and laying on the grass, staring up at the stars. She told me all about her sister, Rian, and how she was a snob and was always mean to Bray. I told her about my parents because I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. She said I was lucky. We talked forever, it seemed. We may have been young, but we connected deeply on that night. I knew we would be great friends, even better friends than Mitchell and I had been and I had known him since first grade and he tried to con me out of my peach cup at lunch.
And before the night was over, we made a pact with each other that would later prove to live through some very troubled times
“Promise we’ll always be best friends,” Bray said, lying next to me. “No matter what. Even if you grow up ugly and I grow up mean, you’ll always be my best friend, Elias.”
I laughed. “You’re already mean!”
She elbowed me.
“And you’re already ugly,” she said with a blush in her cheeks.
“OK, I promise,” I gave in, though really I needed no convincing.
We gazed back up at the stars; her fingers were interlaced and her hands rested on her belly.
I had no idea what I was getting into Brayelle Bates. I didn’t know about such things when I was nine. I didn’t know. But I would never regret a moment with her. Never.
* * *
Bray and I were found early the following morning, fast asleep in the grass. We were awoken by three cops, Mr. Parson who owned the land and my frantic mother who thought I had been kidnapped from my room, stuffed in a suitcase and thrown on the side of a highway somewhere.
“Elias! Oh dear God, I thought you were gone!” She scooped me into her arms and squeezed me so tight I thought my eyeballs were going to burst out of the sockets. She pulled away, kissed me on the forehead, embarrassing the crap out of me, and then squeezed me again.
Bray’s mom and dad were there, too.
“Have you been out here all night with him?” Bray’s dad asked with a sharp edge in his voice.
My mom immediately went into defensive mode. She stood up the rest of the way with me and wrapped one arm around the front of me, pressing my back against her chest.
“That daughter of yours,” my mom said and already I was flinching before she finished, “she has a mouth on her. My son would never have snuck out unless he was influenced.”
Oh geez…
I sighed and threw my head back against her.
“Mom, I—”
“Are you blaming this on my daughter?” Bray’s mother said, stepping up front and center.
“As a matter of fact, I am,” my mom said boldly.
Bray started to shrink behind her dad and I felt worse about her being blamed, every second that passed
Before this got too out of hand, I broke away from my mom’s arms.
“Dammit, Mom!”
Her eyes grew wide and fierce and I stopped mid-sentence.
“Watch your mouth, Elias!” Then she looked at Bray’s mom again and added, “See, Elias never uses language like that.”
“Stop it! Please! I made my own decision to sneak out! I know right from wrong! I chose to do wrong and only I can be blamed for that, so leave Bray out of it!”
I hated shouting. I hated it that I had to put my mom in her place like that in front of her ’enemy’, but I spoke what I felt in my heart and that’s something my mom always taught me to do. Take up for the bullied, Elias. Never stand back and watch someone take advantage of someone else, Elias. Always do and say what you know in your heart to be right, no matter what, Elias.
I hoped she would remember those things when we went home.
My mom sighed deeply and I watched the anger deflate with her breath.
“I apologize,” she said to Bray’s parents. “Really, I am sorry. I was just so scared something had happened to him.”
Bray’s mom nodded, accepting my mom’s apology. “I understand. I’m sorry, too. I’m just glad they’re safe.”
Bray’s dad said nothing. I got the feeling he wasn’t as forgiving as her mom had been.
I was grounded for the rest of the summer for that stunt I pulled. And yes, I met the fly swatter that day to which I vowed never to sneak out of the house again. But whenever it came to Bray, from that time up until we graduated high school, I did sneak out. A lot. But I never got caught again after that first time.
I know you must be wondering why after so many years of being best friends, attending the same school, working together at the local Dairy Queen, even often sharing a bed, why we never became something more to each other.
Well, the truth is that we did.
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The Edge of Always teon-2 Page 31
