6We both knew each other from sports we had played together, sports that weren't segregated by gender until we were in middle school. That's how I knew him. He was three years younger than I was, but we were still friends. He had defiantly told the kids my age that he thought I was cool and that it was awesome that I played baseball when they had made fun of me for it, and I had gotten some girls his age to stop bothering him about the
fact that he was a bit small. And so we became an odd pair of friends.
Years passed by, but we were still friends. Even my going to middle school didn't break our friendship, although it shattered those of some of my friends. The people I hung out with middle school weren't the ones from elementary school, but he still was my friend. Some of the people I knew thought it was odd, but neither of us ever cared.
I went to high school when he went to middle school. I wished he was in high school, too, and knew that I'd have to wait for my senior year for that to happen. I hated that middle school was so short because of that, although I never said so to anyone. I just acted like I was thrilled to be going to the high school now, since most people would've thought it was really strange that I wanted middle school to last another year so that he and I could be at the same school again.
People talked. Yes, people talked. But they always do. They thought that we were more than friends. But we were just friends. I had a few boyfriends, anyway, and none of them were him. Never mind the fact that the reason that those who dumped me did so was because they were jealous of him. They all thought I liked him better than them. And in the end, given that they were so petty, it was probably true.
There was a staircase up to this old house that no one had lived in for as long as we could remember just down the street from his house. We used to sit under there, and just talk. When we were there, it didn't matter how old we were. It didn't matter that, at twelve, he was too young for me, and that at fifteen, I was too old for him. We were both just kids when we sat there, just kids talking about anything there was to speak of. And that's exactly how I liked it.
And before I knew it he was a freshman and I was a senior. He was fourteen and I was seventeen. We saw each other in school again. We had lunch together, and also gym. Our schedules had just worked out nicely that way, in a rare show of goodness in the school scheduling system. People thought we were dating, but we never were. No, w never were. Even if we both knew very well that there was probably something between us that made us closer than friends, it never went beyond cheerful flirting. And even then we were more friends than anything else.
But his hormones were budding and I was on the edge of adulthood. One day we sat beneath the stairs, and he kissed me. He liked me a lot. And I liked him too. But it had never been so painfully obvious. We had both always held back, but he was tired of that. I wasn't because I knew the consequences of being my age and going around with someone his age. It wasn't a matter of social opinion, it was more a matter of what was lawful and what wasn't. That and the fact that I would be gone to college soon enough.
So it became our little secret. People still talked as they always had, but the truth had changed. They were no longer telling outright lies, but at the same time no one's opinion changed on the matter. Those who thought we were more than friends still thought so, and those that didn't still didn't.
But he was fourteen. He was a freshman. And I was nearly an adult. And when his mother found out, she was furious. It didn't matter that we had always been friends, she only saw me as the one who seduced her son. I never did so, but even if I hadn't it didn't matter to her. She wanted me to never go near him again. No more dinners at his house, no more sitting up watching bad sci-fi movies at my house, no more being seen together in public by people who would tell. Just lunch at school, gym, and conversations under the stairs once in a while.
The school year ended. And I had a job, and he had none. He screwed around with his friends all the time. But he always came to where I worked when he could. And no one could say anything because he always bought something, so he always had a legitimate reason for being there, not being there just because I was there. And we could sit on the beach or in the yard of the abandoned house at night, and talk away the night as the stars blanketed the sky overhead. We had abandoned the stairs as the house itself had been abandoned ages before.
I knew that people saw us, but no one said anything to his mother. Maybe they realized the relationship wasn't as poisonous as his mother had thought.
And then came college. I was going away. He was being left behind. He didn't see that we'd end up going separate ways, he had too much faith in the two of us. But I knew, I was too old not to know. But he would always be my friend. I didn't say this to him, though, because I didn't think it needed to be said. It would just happen gradually, and it would be okay.
I went to his house on the morning I was leaving. He came to the door, and I gave him my dorm's address. I kissed him good-bye, and the secretive part of our relationship was abandoned, just like the stairs, just like the house. I was eighteen years old. Too old for him, too old in that place, too old because of the law.
His mother had me arrested. The charge was pedophilia. And what can I do? Because all the charges are true.