(Author’s note)
This started out as a story called “Beyond Belief: 2” and was a separate entity in of itself and was not a sequel to anything....”BB” was kind of anthology work of sorts...”To Be a Different Someone” would be considered a part of that series in it’s proto form before I left it alone for awhile.
Anyway, this story is a continuation of “Unwritten Rules” and like Star Wars, it ruins a few things but also, this is from the prospective of Rebekah, who may (or may not have) been present at the key moments she speaks of.
“For the Memory of Rob”
I can look back through my yearbooks on the internet now. Amazingly enough, I don’t mind viewing the pictures of myself. I can go as far as to say that I like my freshman portrait and I don’t know too many people who can say that. However, as I look through them, it saddens me that the yearbooks are incomplete. More to the point, the book for my sophomore year, is missing someone. This person never got a picture, anywhere, in the yearbook…not even a memorial page.
Not even a blurb.
I’m writing this down for him,
This is for the memory of Rob.
1st Memory: Yesterdays
Rob Treadwell. It's amazing what a name can do to you, what you can remember.
His name shatters my mind. I stand, sometimes, beside the stone carved with that name and I can't help but ask why he had to die like that?
I still feel like I pulled the trigger.
Survivor’s guilt? I don’t know. There was never a time where I felt my life was in danger when we were together. There were bitter feelings when we broke up, but never did I think he’d do something to me.
Maybe he should have.
Not like that. He never would have hit me, much less say anything to hurt me psychologically.
I was a freshman when I met him. He was a junior at the time. Interestingly enough, he reminded me of a guy I knew two years earlier, someone who, like Rob, thought the world of me, but our parents stepped in and put a stop to everything it broke his heart and I never got to speak to him again after he graduated; I was in seventh grade at the time and he was a junior. We moved on. There were times that I wanted to go up to the the high school and talk to him but I decided against it, since my dad had nearly verbally pummeled him I didn’t want to bring up any memories. His name was Eric.
I was very hesitant to talk to Rob the first day I met him because of how close he was to Eric. Both were soft-spoken, maybe a bit unsure of things. Rob wasn’t on the student council but he was president of the Drama Club and sang tenor in my Chorus class, so I was able to see how he was…and, yes, I did what everyone says not to do: I compared him to Eric.
How could I not?
However, I didn’t first meet him in a classroom but in the hall when I dropped my backpack and everything spilled out. He immediately dived to the floor to pick up my stuff before everyone else trampled all over them, it was like he was used to helping defenseless freshman.
“I’ve been there,” he replied as he handed my backpack back to me.
“Thank you.”
“De nada,” he said with a slight now and walked on down the hallway.
Our school, Reardan-Edwall High School, was small. It had one long central hallway and another one that formed a “T” and led to the gym and the choir loft. Rob walked in the direction of the gym as I looked at the broken zipper on my backpack and saw it was broken.
“Saw your spill, Beka.”
“Yeah, thanks for helping,” I replied to Renee, my best friend—or worst enemy, take your pick—since fifth grade. She was the one who got me to actually follow my heart two years earlier and was the one who slapped my sister’s boyfriend at a football game. She was never afraid to get involved in things that didn’t concern her if she felt the reason was, just, valued, and if she thought the guy was good-looking.
“You had plenty of help. He was cute.”
““Not doing that, Renee. It’s like our first day of ninth grade,” I said as I fished inside my backpack for my poetry notebook: a small, blue-colored book that I had received two years earlier.
“Yep, and you already have an upper class man getting hot for you.”
“Enough, Renee…I-Crap!”
“What?”
“My book’s gone.”
“Algebra?”
“Poems.”
I dropped my backpack and ran back to the earlier location to see absolutely nothing on the floor. Renee stepped up behind me.
“Thanks for grabbing my crap, Renee, while I try to look for my holy grail diary.”
“Thank you,” I replied as I got down on my knees and looked down the hallway. Nothing. “I can’t believe this.”
“Anything in there that’s embarrassing?”
“Not really, maybe a terrible poem or two but that’s not the reason.”
“Because Eric gave it to you?” Renee asked as she held my bag out. I stood up and took it from her.
“Yes, and because of that, it has personal value.”
“Okay, so, we report it to the office.”
I nodded to that. It was unique enough with a stained wood cover that if someone kept it, I could possibly notice and if it was turned in, then I could describe it to the office down to what’s the fourth letter in the third word on page sixty-two; which would have been the “e” from “love” on something that I wrote that Eric had written a response to: “What is Love?”
The bell for first period then chimed.
“And with that, Miss Bettencourt, we are late for our first class of high school.”
“I can mark that off my list of firsts,” I replied as I tried to keep my day on a positive note.
