Chapter Eight #2
pull out the item I know I'll find stuffed in the right hand corner
of my Cam box. I saw it the second time I opened the box, but
couldn't bring myself to take it out.
The Vermont Teddy Bear I
bought Cam for his sixteenth birthday.
We rarely got each other
serious gifts, or anything of any real value. It was either
something silly or sentimental, and this gift was no
different.
Cam started dating Missy
Potter the year before, though she took him a lot more seriously
than he did her. She bought him a football-themed teddy bear for
Christmas, complete with a varsity jacket with Cam's jersey number.
He broke things off with her the next day. Well actually, that's
not true. He continued to hook up with her at his leisure for
years, but not until after he'd made it clear they were not a
couple, and if she was looking for a boyfriend she should look
somewhere else.
I remember feeling bad for
her, but mostly I felt guilty over the fact that Cam and I made
endless fun of her over that stupid gift. Cam may have played
football, and been great at it, but that's only because he was
great at everything he did. That wasn't who he was, and if someone
was going to give him a themed teddy bear, getting one with a
stuffed pigskin sewed to its paw just shows how little they really
knew him.
So for his sixteenth
birthday I decided to rectify it. I brush my fingers over the soft
synthetic fur, over the faux leather jacket. I smile down at the
cheap plastic of the lens-less glasses, the pencil, and the
material of the open book. I trace the embroidery.
Writer Cam we usually only have lunch together at the diner a few
times a week. Other days the boys go for pizza, or we go for frozen
yogurt or something equally girly. If yesterday didn't happen, I
wouldn't give it a second thought. But I know Sam's avoiding me,
and I can't blame him for it either.
I don't see him again for
the rest of the day, not even in the main hall where we usually
pass each other after seventh period, and when I watch the
taillights of his Escalade as he pulls out of the lot at the end of
the day, I feel a strange wave of grief and acceptance. Because I
don't know if Sam is acting this way to punish me or simply out of
self-preservation, but I realize it's not something that will be
resolved anytime soon. There's no quick fix for our issues, only
time and understanding, and I've no choice but to give him
both.
But my resolve to give him
time doesn't mitigate the pain, and the perpetual ache in my chest
feeds off of Sam's ice-cold shoulder, evolving into something
almost crippling. I know that whatever my sentence is, be it
temporary or indefinite, it will not be easy to bear.