Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
Eric
? I’m Just A Kid – Simple Plan ?
When the bus finally pulled up to the end of my driveway, I bolted. I didn’t even wait for my brother and sister. I couldn’t be on that bus with the whispers and the laughs and the pointing for another second.
Andrea Smith, my best friend since kindergarten and the girl I’ve had a crush on for the last two years, had kissed me at recess.
My first kiss, and it was with my crush.
I spent the rest of the afternoon with the biggest smile on my face, unable to remember a day when I’d been this happy.
Not even when I got a PlayStation for Christmas the year before.
And then, as we were all filing into the hallway at the end of the day, Tommy Morgan put his arm around her and told me that she had kissed me on a dare. She was with him. She didn’t like me.
Of course she didn’t like me.
I was an idiot.
I threw the front door open and ran straight upstairs, not stopping to say hello to my mom who was always waiting for us in the kitchen with a snack, ready to hear about our day. I walked into my bedroom and collapsed onto my bed, face buried in my pillow, backpack still on my back.
I was thankful I didn’t grow up with a father who shamed me for crying when I was sad. “Men have emotions, too, and emotions are meant to be felt,” he’d said.
And man, was I feeling the emotions today.
I didn’t expect it to hurt this much. I always thought adults were being dramatic when they talked about heartbreak, that it was just some cheesy thing you said in movies or in songs. But now that it was happening to me, I realized it wasn’t something you can just shake off. It’s very, very real.
I didn’t even know why it hurt so much. It’s not like we were together, but I still felt like she ripped something out of me.
Andrea and I had been friends since we met, and even though I’d had a small crush on her for years, I’d started to like her a lot more this year.
I didn’t know when it happened exactly—it just kind of snuck up on me.
I’d find myself thinking about her all the time, even when I was supposed to be doing homework or playing video games with my friends.
We’d talk a lot during school, laugh together, and sometimes I’d catch her looking at me the way I looked at her, and I’d think maybe, just maybe, she felt the same way. I never said anything, because I didn’t want to mess things up. I didn’t want to make it awkward if she didn’t feel the same.
A soft knock on my door told me that either my mom already sensed something was wrong, or one of my siblings ratted me out.
“Eric?” She called from the other side of the door. “Are you alright?”
I groaned in response, not bothering to remove my face from my pillow.
“I’m coming in, okay?” When I didn’t protest, I heard the knob turn and the door click open. The mattress shifted under her weight as she sat on the bed beside me. “Bad day?” she asked.
I made another non-committal noise into my pillow.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, rubbing my back in soothing circles, like she had been doing since I was a baby.
“I might have something to turn that frown upside down.” I turned my head enough to peek at her with one eye, intrigued, and she chuckled.
“Whenever you feel up to it, come downstairs.”
It took me a while to snap myself out of my depressive spiral, but eventually, I got up off my bed, removed my backpack, and met my mom downstairs in the kitchen. She was standing at the island, peeling potatoes for dinner.
She looked up at me and smiled.
“Can you go downstairs and see if your dad needs help?” she asked.
“He’s home already?” I asked. She nodded. “What’s he doing?”
“I can’t remember. He said he didn’t need help, but based on how long he’s been down there, I have a feeling he might.”
I turned around, opened the door to the basement, and stopped dead as I rounded the corner at the bottom of the steps. Blinking several times, my mouth dropped open, unable to believe what I was seeing in front of me—a brand new, black, six-piece DW drum kit.
I wasn’t na?ve. I knew drums weren’t cheap.
My mom had been a nurse, but stayed home after my siblings and I were born, and my dad worked at a small company in town as an accountant.
With my brother playing every sport known to man and my sister in dance, we weren’t exactly rolling in money.
I didn’t even want to think about how long they’d been saving up for this.
I felt my mom’s presence behind me, and I swallowed the tightness in my throat.
“You…you guys got me a drum kit?” I finally managed to stammer, my voice breaking from excitement. I didn’t even try to hide the tears that filled my eyes.
“Mr. Joe said it was time,” she said, shrugging. I made a mental note to hug the man who I’d been taking lessons from for the last year and a half the next time I saw him.
I scrambled to sit in the throne, and as soon as I did, it felt like I was finally home. I’d been playing on a practice pad after my lessons for eighteen months, and I had to pinch myself before I really believed that I was finally sitting behind a full kit. My kit.
I spent the next few hours locked in the basement, pounding out simple patterns, my heart racing with joy every time the drumheads vibrated under my sticks.
I didn’t care about the noise, or how many times my siblings came down to tell me I was annoying or beg me to stop.
I didn’t care about anything except the fact that I was playing—that I was living the dream I’d held onto for so long.
In that moment, through my pre-teen angst, I made a vow. I was going to be somebody someday. I was going to be so famous that Andrea Smith would look back on this day and wish she’d kissed me on purpose.