I find myself on the deck out back. In the distance, I can see Levis as he practices aikido with his wakizashi. He’s in gym pants that are snug around his lean waist as the sun shines off his tanned skin. He moves smoothly. Fluidly. As if he’s liquid moving with the air.
Sighing, I drop into a chair and watch Levis move. I’ve watched him do this same thing for more than a decade. When we were kids, we were all hypnotized by him. It was magic when we were children. Complete and utter magic. He was like a ninja right out of a graphic novel. We were convinced that Levis led a secret life in which he was a superhero.
The memory makes me smile. I miss the simplicity of being a kid. Kid problems. Kid worries. Even though my best was never enough for my parents, I was still a kid and optimistic that someday, they’d be proud of me. Someday, I’d reach my potential.
In the meantime, I had my best friends. As long as I had them, I’d be happy.
Now my best friends were creating lives and moving away. Yes, I’m dramatic, since none of them are more than a couple miles away. They’re on the same family estate! Yet, it always feels like they’re days away. I can’t just walk down the hall and step into Oakley’s room, him lying on his bed with a book in hand, or find Briar downstairs playing video games.
Seeing Levis out back is almost nostalgic. This one little thing hasn’t changed. He’s still in the backyard, a lone figure in a sea of green grass, the sun glistening off the metal of his sword and blinding me.
“Hey.”
I jerk at the voice and twist to see Voss just stepping outside. He’s the one Van Doren who has kind of been a constant presence in my life since they moved in across the street from us in the Rolling Green Estates. One day, he showed up on ourcouch when Loren had to take a business trip, and he’s kind of been hanging around since.
At the time, I was pretty sure his presence had to do with Oakley. But Oakley isn’t here often, and he’s still always around.
The constancy of his being there is comforting. In a world that won’t stop shifting and changing around me, he’s been a beacon that’s always in view.
Except for when he left for New York for several months and came home with Lorissa carrying his child. That was an unexpected disruption in my already upturned existence that I still haven’t quite made the waves calm down from again yet.
“Hi,” I say and turn back to watching Levis.
I’m very aware of his footsteps as he gets closer. There are more than a dozen options for seating here. I usually play a mental game when someone joins me and guess where they’re going to sit. I interpret their distance from me as how they subconsciously feel about me that day.
Voss sits in the chair beside me. Usually, this means we’re friends today. Maybe there’s a warm undercurrent between us when he sits this close. But seeing him with Lorissa and Jalon as a little family, not more than ten minutes ago, has me doubting that warmth.
“How long has he been doing that?” Voss asks.
“You mean today or his whole life?”
“Both.”
“I think he was three when he began. His father is an Aikido master or whatever. Today?” I shrug. “Dunno. He was already going through the motions when I came out here.”
“That’s a lot of dedication. Twenty years?”
“More or less.”
“You think he continues because he enjoys it or because it’s expected of him?”
I tilt my head, studying Levis. “I think he enjoys it. I’ve never been under the impression that he was pressured into continuing with it, even as a child.”
“Aikido is a lot of discipline, no?”
“It is. It’s conditioning muscles and giving them all practical application when you don’t actually have an opponent. In a way, it’s about lifestyle. Peace and respect, discipline.”
“Have you ever tried it?”
“When we were little, sometimes we’d do some moves with him.” The memories make me smile again. “Mostly, we were just laughing at ourselves, but Levis was always so damn patient. Oakley was kind of uncoordinated, so there was a lot of laughter.”
Voss laughs quietly. “I can imagine Oakley uncoordinated.”
“It’s because he’s so thin. It’s like he doesn’t have enough weight on him to be fully balanced, right?” We used to joke with him about it. He said he had no center of gravity because he didn’t have enough mass to be a center.
We never said anything with the intention of hurting him. Nor would we have joked about it over the years if he’d beenself-conscious about his body image. Most of the joking was derived from him. I think the teasing made him feel better because it lifted some of the pressure about always being serious concerning his inability to gain weight or muscle mass.
Voss shakes his head. “I didn’t think of that. In my observation, he’s always a little flighty. Distracted. I’ve watched him walking in a straight line, but it’s like he has tunnel vision, and everything outside of the narrow path he’s watching doesn’t exist. He’s almost fallen on his face a few times because of it.”
