Prompt: You’re a kid’s imaginary friend. He’s growing up. You’re fading away.
He was six when I was born. A figment of a child’s imagination. Brought to life by the loneliness of a boy who got only a speck of the love he truly deserved. I remember playing and holding hands as we’d jump across the meadows, free in way that was so innocent and full of life. I remember how he’d jump when he heard his father’s menacing voice, booming loudly in their sorry excuse of a house. I remember how we would lay in his bed, hiding beneath his sheets as the reeking smell of alcohol crept up the walls and to his very dreams.
I was his best friend, his only friend. Like any 10-year-old, hewould ramble consistently to me, with hardly any pauses, blabbering about everything he did and everything he planned to do. I listened closely, never having the heart to tell him that I was with him when he did everything he did and would be with him in everything he planned to do.
When he was eight when he tied his first shoelace; we celebrated with his stuffed toys and drank packet juice. He was nine when he had his first crush: Big Brenda. He told her he liked her and she called him a weirdo. He got over it eventually but only after we ate pizza and drank milkshake at Betty’s. Of course when he was ten he realized people weren’t supposed to have imaginary friends but I don’t think he minded. We still talked everyday.. just not in public anymore.
The day after his thirteenth birthday marked The Incident. A kid was getting bullied in school and all he did was watch. I told him, egged him even, to do something. Eventually he got mad enough and yelled at me to stop. Everybody looked. He ran away.
The following day the school recommended a shrink who said that teenagers weren’t supposed to have imaginary friends. To my surprise and to my great disappointment, he agreed. We didn’t talk much after that.
Throughout his teenage years I would be there only when I was needed. His first break-up. The first time his dad beat him senseless. The first time he got drunk at home and scared our neighbor. Not to his knowledge, I was there for every happy memory too. The first time he got into Junior Varsity Basketball and then Varsity. The first time his dad sobered up. The first he won cross-country and every time after that.
Our relationship strayed over the years but never broke, not even once. Well, maybe once. His second year of college I realized he didn’t need me anymore. He was a big boy now, he didn’t need littl’ old me. I doubt he even remembered me, but I did. I remembered him and I remembered us. However, deep down I know he never forgot me because that’s the only way I’m still alive, in his memories.
Claire Voyant 