Way back when..
As foggy as the day he died is due to grief, I can remember the day I met Kevin as clear as if it were just a few minutes ago. (I’d say “yesterday” but I can’t remember breakfast today, so we’ll go with a few minutes – right? right!) It was in high school, and I was best friends, almost the girlfriend of his older brother at the time.
What? It was a really small town back then! Specially when you factor in the fact I also dated their best friend, who later was married to my sister for a while. heh!
Anyway, it was my Senior year, so I was 17, almost 18. I’d only been going to the public high school since the year before, having been raised in little Christian schools all the way through my sophomore year. I learned quickly that all the cliques had been formed in kindergarten, and I just didn’t belong to any of them. I wasn’t a jock, a cheerleader, a preppy, a goth, a metalhead – I was simply the quiet girl who sat in the back of the class trying not to be noticed. Then I discovered that if you hung out with the stoners, they’d absolutely accept you as one of their own. You didn’t even have to smoke! As long as you didn’t care if they did, and didn’t rat them out, you were in.
That’s how I met Bubba and Kevin’s brother, Cory, and was integrated into the Stoners, much to my mother’s chagrin.
While I don’t remember the exact day, I remember everything else. I was headed to my locker before first house, only to find Cory – the tall, lanky, dorky clown (literally) leaning against the one next to mine, with a shorter, buzz cut kid who looked to be about 12 – too young for high school. He was all of 150 pounds of flesh stretched over his 5’10” height. He was a skinny little shit, wearing a little smirk like he knew everything, and was smarter than the rest, no matter who ‘the rest’ might be. I don’t remember what I was wearing, but he had on a pair of dark wash jeans, construction boots, a light t-shirt, under a black Carhart jacket. And his hair was buzzed short – shorter then military short. Like buzz cut so you don’t have to cut it for 6 weeks, then break out the clippers again, short.
After the hello’s with Cory, I looked at him with a clear “Who the hell is that?” arched brow. He smacked Kevin on the back of the head, told him to say hello, and followed it with “This is my fucked up little brother, Kevin.”
I rolled my eyes, said hi, grabbed my books and left. Little did I know that in just four years, that fucked up little brother and I would be together…
