Even though we’d cut down a lot on visits and phone calls, due to me being a jealous mother fucker, Ennis still invited himself up for a weekend right before I had to move back into the athletes’ dorm, and I said yes, he could come. He wanted me to show him around and all, and I guess he knew things were fucked up between us and needed to get ( Read more... )

On New Year’s Eve, big surprise, I met the girl Ennis was kinda dating. Her name was Dawn and she was new in school that year. Her parents had just got a divorce and her mom had moved back to her parents’ house to help them out, since they were old, and also to get her shit together.

( LBJT.8 )

He can barely even walk now. They’ve got him on a couple of IV’s - fluid and an antibiotic - and getting around with all that shit is hard for anybody, but he’s so weak that it’s almost impossible. He still wants to take care of himself though, so once he gives up going back to sleep, he gets me to help him up and into the bathroom so he can clean ( Read more... )

Day’s breaking now. The sky’s turning pale on the horizon, and the hspital’s coming alive around us. A nurse just came in to check his vitals. It’ll be a while before breakfast comes. I wish they’d leave him alone, ‘cause he was asleep, and now he’s not, and he needs all the rest he can get. Hospitals aren’t great for getting rest.

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I had to report for practice the first week in August, so summer ended early for us that year. We didn’t talk about it, just let the days and weeks go by till it was late July and I only had a few days till I had to go. It wasn’t till Mrs. D. brought  it up that we even acknowledged it at all.

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Me and Ennis blundered through late winter and early spring, sneaking around between houses, trying not to draw attention to ourselves. It worked out well for us that his mom wasn’t able to do chores and shit, because that meant we could do laundry, including mine, and the grocery shopping, which usually included some stuff for me, plus extra food ( Read more... )

Ennis came out to the junkyard on Sunday after church with a note from my mom asking me to meet her that afternoon. For just a few seconds, I felt this huge wave of relief, like maybe she was gonna beg me to come home, kick him out and fix everything, but before it even got set right in my head, I knew it wasn’t gonna be that way. That wasn’t even ( Read more... )

Ennis left off with our story back where we went to get the Christmas trees. That was a good day, even though we didn’t get to fool around any and both of us were wanting to really bad. But my little brothers and Dr. D. were all excited about getting out of our houses - I think tree-hunting was as good of an excuse as any, but really, they just ( Read more... )

So yeah… that’s the last thing he wrote.

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Mom sent me and Dad off to church the next morning with instructions to bring home gossip and Kentucky Fried Chicken with extra mashed potatoes and gravy. Dad wasn’t real happy about leaving her alone, but she must’ve somehow convinced him that she was feeling ok, because he finally came out of their room, dressed in his boring church clothes, and ( Read more... )