Percy

2006

In the empty hallway, a faint smell of cleaning supplies lingered in the air as I stared at the clock above the lockers, dreading my next and final class of the day. My day always ended with physical education or wellness, which I absolutely hated. The class was a convenient excuse for kids to torture me worse than they already did any other time of day.

My dad insisted on sending me to this all-boys Catholic school because he went here. This school sucked. I had no friends and kids were mean. They measured their self-worth with money and quantity of friends and girlfriends.

With my short and scrawny frame, people often assumed I was younger than my actual age. I wasn't an athlete and hated sports. I was a nerd and played the trumpet in the school's jazz band. Because I was so short, I had to stand on a step stool in the back row. My size and introverted personality made me an easy target, and I didn't do much to defend myself. Overall, I was different from most kids in the school.

Just when I thought the hallway was empty, the sound of hurried footsteps echoed and an older boy, likely a senior, sprinted towards me. I thought I was hallucinating. The boy was completely naked! He'd get expelled if Principal Deppe caught him. He stopped in front of me, out of breath. "Help me." His whisper echoed in the hall.

As I looked at him, a sense of déjà vu washed over me, as if I'd seen him somewhere in the past. What kind of help did he need, anyway? Stunned, I found myself speechless. The boy gave up on me and resumed running. If anyone saw him, he was in deep trouble so I ran after him, shoving him into the nearby janitor's closet. I felt a need to protect him.

He panted, smiling. "I know you," he said.

"From where?"

"It's a weird story. Am I in a high school?"

"Yes."

"What year is it?"

"Have you escaped from a mental hospital?"

"Not lately," he said. "What's the date?"

"May 12, 2006."

The older boy folded his arms across his bare chest. I started to think he wasn't a senior, but a young man in his early twenties or older. His nudity didn't bother him. If that was me, I'd be hiding before the mop and bucket. "2006...so... I'd say you're fourteen or fifteen?"

I was turning fifteen on June 16th.

"Fourteen. Why are you naked?"

I was at the age when I was discovering myself, with no support from my family, torn between liking girls and boys. I blamed my dad for me having crushes on boys. He shouldn't have sent me to an all-boys school. I liked the young man standing in front of me and quickly developed a crush on him.

"I need clothes," he said. "Do you have some I could borrow?"

"Yeah, but I doubt they'll fit." The young man wasn't very big, approximately five foot seven and a hundred and fifty pounds, medium frame. I was barely five three, but I often wore baggy clothes. From my backpack, I dug out my gym clothes—a t-shirt and basketball shorts, even though I didn't play basketball. They were more comfortable.

"Thanks, Percy," he said, slipping on the shorts. Besides my body, I'd never seen a naked boy. He was more like a man. I hoped to have a body like his some day.

"How do you know my name?" I asked.

"Listen, Percy. It sounds crazy, but we've met before... years ago. You were riding your bike with some friends. You fell off your bike and landed on your face. Your friends were a bunch of scaredy cats and ran off. You were crying and your mouth was bleeding like crazy because you knocked your two front teeth out. I helped you up and walked you home. It's a good thing they were baby teeth, huh? You got a nice smile now."

I remembered falling and crying. The blood freaked me out. After that day, I never rode a bike again. I was only seven years old, so my memory was fuzzy, but I did remember someone helping me. This guy sort of looked like him. Apart from him and my mother, no one else had any knowledge of that incident. The scaredy cats moved away years ago. I wondered if this guy was like an imaginary friend or maybe a guardian angel, if only I believed in angels. Still, I felt special, like I had magical powers.

"Are you a ghost?" I asked.

"I wish. You wouldn't happen to have any shoes in your bag, would you?"

"No. Sorry."

By now, I was already late for my most hated class, so I decided to skip it—again. I was on the verge of flunking phys ed. My dad would kill me if I flunked such a stupid class. "Are you hungry?" I asked him. "I got some stuff..." I sat cross-legged on the floor and searched my bag for the treats I stole from my dad's secret hiding spot. "I have starbursts and Reese's peanut butter cups—eww, they're a little smushed. I have a granola bar."

"I'll take the granola bar," he said, sitting across from me. Thanks."

I decided to eat the squished peanut butter cups. "What's your name?"

"Kevin," he answered.

"Why were you naked?"

"Clothes always stay behind. I like meeting you and everything, but I wish it would end. I'm so tired. Sometimes I see the same people, just at different times. It's so weird. I'll never understand it."

"What are you talking about?" I asked with a mouthful.

"I have an affliction. I go to sleep and I end up in another place and time. I know it's messed up. I don't expect you to understand. Thanks for not calling the police. Hey, do you know a place where I can crash for the night?"

I shook my head.

"I guess I could find a spot in the school. I can't stay here. I don't want the janitor to find me."

"I know a spot."

Kevin laughed as I opened my Nokia flip phone. "I've never seen one of those phones before," he said. "Weird."

"You're weird," I said, waiting for my mother to pick up. "Hi, Mom, I'm staying after school, okay? Pick me up at five."

When the bell rang, I walked Kevin out of the closet before the janitor came and discovered us. As kids rushed out of school, excited to go home, no one seemed to notice the boy with bare feet. I led Kevin into the empty music room. Mr. Donovan, the music teacher, was out sick.

"Are you sure this is safer?" Kevin asked.

"Yeah. The teacher's out sick."

We sat on the floor in the corner of the room behind the drum kit. "You don't have to stay with me," he said.

"I have nothing else to do. Wanna play a game?" I asked, taking out my Gameboy.

"Oh, wow, I've heard about these things," he said, taking the Gameboy from me. "How do you use it?"

"You've never seen a Gameboy? Where are you from, anyway?"

"You don't wanna know."

The Gameboy both intrigued and fascinated him. He was so weird, but so damn cute. My heart raced, and a swarm of butterflies danced in my stomach. As he played Tomb Raider, he caught me staring at him. I had nothing else to do, and I liked looking at him. I sat close to him, my body warm all over. His eyes shifted to my hand on his thigh. He stopped playing, gently nudging my hand away. "You're fourteen. I'm twenty-four. Wait a few years."

"Wait a few years for what?" I decided to play dumb, pretending I didn't know what he was talking about.

"It's okay," he said, placing the Gameboy to the side. "I like boys, too."

"I'm not gay." Kids called me gay all the time, like it was a bad thing or a bad word, and they didn't always use the word 'gay.' I'd never admit to being anything other than straight until years later.

"I didn't say you were, but it's okay if you are."

Ashamed, I looked down and away, on the verge of tears. It wasn't 'okay.' "It's okay," he said again, bringing his arm around me. I rested my head on his shoulder, comfortable with his arms around me. How could I forget such a moment?

But I forgot lots of things.

***

2024

I couldn't focus on anything, unable to decipher between reality and fantasy. I'd suppressed a lot of memories and spent many hours daydreaming. Everybody experiences and defines trauma differently. What might be traumatic for one person, may not be traumatic for the other.

In my world, I experienced a lot of trauma.

Falling off my bike and getting my two front teeth knocked out was traumatic. Being pushed around and called names incessantly throughout school was traumatic. I blocked out large periods of time. Kevin's ongoing appearances and disappearances were equally, if not more, traumatic.

Coming to terms with my sexuality had its own set of challenges. I suspected my trauma motivated me to become a clinical social worker.

For days after our session, Jude Prak consumed my every thought, leaving me restless and sleepless.

Jude Prak resembled Kevin.

But they couldn't be the same person. In 2024, Jude was almost twenty-five years old. That would have made him seven in 2006.

Our paths would cross again. Many times... to the point I considered him an imaginary friend. He was the only one who knew my real name. I hadn't even told Lyndsey. Jude was a stalker, obsessed with me. It would be dangerous for me to continue to see him as his therapist. He clearly had a lot of issues. I had a lot of issues, too, thinking this Jude was the same person I encountered over the years.

Even at eighteen and twenty-two, I thought my imaginary friend reappeared to help me cope with more difficult periods in my life. When he stuck around for three days in 2018, I began to see him in a new light. At twenty-six, I saw him as someone who had the potential to become more than just a friend. We'd come so close.

The last time he vanished, I blocked him out of my mind. No more.

It was my day to work in the law firm, and I wanted to be anywhere but here. After ending the call with Jude, I chucked my phone on my desk and rubbed my forehead with a tension headache brewing. The Searles family just arrived; Paula and her two brothers were trying to figure out how to place their mother in a nursing home without using her money. They should have done this five years ago before she first needed a nursing home. Now they came to me to fix everything. They were supposed to bring their mother or at least a notarized power of attorney, but they did neither.

I shouldn't have taken the call, but it was a local number, so I thought it might be important.

"Is everything okay?" Paula asked.

"Excuse me," I said, picking up my phone. Feeling sick to my stomach, I called the clinic. My hand shook as I waited for the receptionist to answer the phone.

"Hi Glenda, it's Percy. Cancel my appointment with Jude Prak on Tuesday," I said. "Assign him to another therapist. I can't see him for ethical reasons." I shoved my phone in my pocket, sitting there with my back to the family, fixated on Jude.

"Hey there, we took time off work to come here," the younger brother, Eddie, said, annoyed I was 'wasting their time.'

However, they were the ones wasting my time, and I didn't want to be there anymore. I stormed out of the office, ready for a mission.

"Dad, I'm leaving!" I announced, rushing past my dad's office. "The Searles are here!"

In my car, I called the clinic again. "Hi, Glenda. It's me again. Could you get me Jude's phone number and address?"

"Sure," she said and retrieved his information. The phone number matched the number from earlier. So how'd he get my personal cell number?

I needed answers, and Jude was the only one who had them. He lived in the sketchy part of the city, just a stone's throw away from the clinic. It was probably all he could afford. He alluded to his miserable salary several times.

Crime was rampant in this neighborhood, between the gangs and drugs, so I parked my car in a garage, avoiding off street parking. I braved the five-block walk to Jude's address, an old brick building across the street from the notorious drug infested homeless shelter. An aging man sat in front of the building wearing an Army baseball cap and holding a sign that said 'Homeless vet. Please help.' The man had been around for years. As I entered the building, I stepped over dirty, used needles. The stairwell smelled of urine and other things. I couldn't imagine living here.

I walked up the narrow stairwell and headed down the hall until I located Jude's apartment. Like any old building, the walls were thin. Voices echoed, phones rang, and doors banged.

Once I found Jude's apartment, I knocked quietly, careful not to bring attention to myself. No one answered the door. Growing more impatient, I called Jude on his phone. I could hear the phone ringing inside his apartment. The door finally opened, and Jude or Kevin stood there with his phone to his ear. In a hoodie, sweatpants, and a winter hat, he looked as though he was about to walk into a blizzard. It's not like he didn't have heat. Heat blasted from his apartment as I stood at his door. Black circles surrounded his eyes.

"Who the fuck are you?" I demanded.

"It's nice to see you, too," he said, placing his phone in the pocket of his hoodie. "Would you like to come in?" He stepped to the side, allowing me to enter his small apartment. His living room area was the size of my bedroom, which wasn't saying much. There wasn't much in the room, just a couch, coffee table, and TV. There were no dishes in the sink, the kitchen counter uncluttered. "Why'd you cancel our appointment?

"Yeah, it's unethical for me to see you as a client."

"But I need someone to talk to," he said. "You're the only person I could think of. You weren't that hard to find."

"Why didn't you just call me? You obviously have my number. And why did you wait until now?"

"It's not so simple, Percy," he said, limping toward the couch. "I need a therapist."

"I think you need something more than a therapist. What happened to your foot?"

"I broke my toe. Sit down if you want."

I wasn't sure if I wanted to sit. In fact, I didn't know what I wanted, besides answers.

But answers to what? The questions burned in my mind, but I was too embarrassed to ask them.

"Sit, Percy."

I sat on the opposite end of the couch, as far away from him as I could. "Who are you?"

"My name is Jude Prak. I was born on March 2nd, 1999." He picked up a wallet from the coffee table. He removed his driver's license and handed it to me. I examined it, confirming his identity.

"Hmm... you're an organ donor," I stated. "Five foot seven. Hazel eyes." I didn't remember his eyes as being hazel. "Your eyes look gray to me. I always knew you as Kevin. Jude's a way cooler name."

He shrugged. "Kevin's a common name. There aren't a lot of Judes out there. I wanted to be forgettable."

"You weren't forgettable to me."

"That's not true. I must have been forgettable because you didn't remember me the other day."

"Because I tried to forget you. How'd you find me?"

"It's easy to find anyone on social media. I looked on your Facebook page, and your profile said you were an intern at the community health center downtown, so I booked an appointment and—"

"Who gave you my number, anyway?"

"You did. I think you remember more than you're letting on," he said, looking hard at me. "It's the present, Percy, and we're together. Damn... my toe fucking hurts. I'm supposed to be working, but I just can't. I'm so fucked. Why'd you come here, Percy? What do you want?"

"You called me, remember? Lots of memories are coming back to me, and it's confusing as hell. Nothing makes sense. If you're born in 1999, that would have made you seven in 2006, but you didn't look seven. We met again a few years later and a few years after that, and then you'd just disappear. The last time... well... we really connected, and you disappeared again. I can't do this again. How come you just looked me up now? How long have you lived here? If we lived so close, don't you think I would have visited? Don't you think we could have—?" Jude covered my mouth with his hand.

"It's been years to you, but only weeks to me. I don't expect you to understand." He always said that to me.

"I want to understand."

He scooted closer to me as I struggled to make sense of my memories. "I'm real," he said. "And I have no one. I'm barely surviving. Just stay here with me for a little while." He yawned, resting his head on my shoulder. I brought my arm around him and held him close. This was so familiar. "I'm not delusional," he said.

"Maybe I'm the one who's delusional."

"Neither one of us are delusional. It's weird... I watched you grow up. I can't believe how much older you are."

"You make me sound like an old man."

"Don't go, Percy," he said. "Let the memories come back."

He leaned against me, his body growing heavy. I removed his winter hat and kissed the top of his head. As I ran my hand up and down his arm, he breathed heavy, comfortable in my arms. 

Words: 2975

Total Words: 7700