“I’m just not feeling…normal.” His face twisted up, but in a frustrated way.
“You look okay to me,” she said, wondering at his funny choice of words.
He gave a long, shuddering sigh. “Come here,” he requested, patting a spot on the mattress beside him.
Petula walked over and sat down.
He draped an arm over her shoulders.
“I can’t explain it to you, Pet, but there are things going on in my head that…overwhelm me sometimes,” he told her. His defeated posture gave proof to Petula that he was telling the truth. The way he kept looking around nervously, like someone who was expecting bad guys to jump out and get him, had her worried.
He continued. “Mom and Dad won’t listen. You know how they are. I want to go to the doctor, but they won’t bring me.”
Yeah. Their parents were anti-medicine in almost all ways. Anything that wasn’t what they considered a dire emergency, like having blood streaming from a gaping wound, wasn’t going to get treatment.
Petula herself had been sick with a really bad bug a few weeks earlier, and had felt like she was going to die, but they’d told her she’d be fine, and had left her to cope with her own symptoms the best she could.
She was used to their dismissal of ills, but this thing with Jefferson seemed…bigger than any flu.
Petula felt really bad he wasn’t going to get the medicine he might need to feel better.
“You could tell the school nurse,” she suggested.
Jefferson snorted. “I’ve tried that, and when she called Mom and Dad to give them her opinion, they fluffed it off. As much as the nurse hates having her hands tied, she can’t do anything without our parents’ permission.”
Petula patted Jefferson’s knee. “That’s okay. You know, from all the times we’ve been sick, that we always get better.”
“Not this time, Pet. Not this time.”
Jefferson looked so down-hearted, she put her arms around his middle and gave him a big hug before leaning over to scramble under her pillow.
She handed Bun-bun to him. Petula’s stuffed rabbit always made her feel better.
“Take Bun-bun, and hug him tight. He’ll make it all go away, and you’ll be fine. Then we’ll walk to the bus together, tomorrow.”
“Okay, Pet.” Jefferson looked sad, but took her offering, then kissed the top of her head. “I’ll…see you soon,” he told her.
“Yup. After school and the ballgame Stat’s taking me to,” she responded cheerfully, certain that Bun-bun would fix everything.
Getting to her feet, she waved goodbye and headed out the door.
A tear drippeddown Petula’s cheek.
When she and Stat had arrived back home, their world had drastically changed with police presence, strafing cruiser lights, and her own, deep sobs.
That was the last time she’d seen Jefferson until today.
Petula glanced down at the bed she sat on, now.
Tucked under the blankets beside her, was Bun-bun.
Jefferson had kept the stuffed animal all these years, and had gifted it back to her, tenderly and with so much love in his eyes…
Petula’s tears began in earnest.
Jefferson had been sincere. She was sure of it.
None of what had occurred in the past, should have happened.
