Sammy

[suprntrl2126]

The horrible secret that started it all, god I hated that secret. I sometimes wish I never would have known, but then again I'm glad I knew it. But there was a reason, and only for that reason was I glad I knew that secret that tore us apart. And that reason was Sammy Blake. I would do anything for him. He was like a younger brother to me. He was the only person I cared about. He was the only person that mattered to me; I would die for him and no one else.
We had been best friends since we were three. Our moms had been best friends, before Sammy's mom died. He lived with just his dad now, right next to our house.
My home life wasn’t the best, but it was way better then Sam had it. I felt so bad for him. I could hear him and his dad get into fights almost every night. I thought that it was horrible. My folks and I got into fights all the time, but not like they did. I just thought it wasn’t that bad, but little did I know then. I know better now.
Sammy was 15, a year younger than me when he told me what I didn’t want to hear. I still remember that day clear as crystal, mostly because it changed my life forever, it made me grow up, something I didn’t want to ever do.
I was in the field across from our houses when Sammy came up. "Hey Jake, what's up?" he asked brightly like he would every day. I never would have thought something was wrong, until I turned around to face him.
"God, Sam, what happened to your eye?" I asked shocked.
"It's nothing, just a black eye," he replied looking more of threw me instead of at me. Black eye didn’t even begin to cover it. Yeah he had a black eye, but he also had a bruise on is cheek, and a cuts under his chin.
"That’s not just a black eye Sammy, what happened man?" I asked.
"Damn it Jake, just drop it!" he screamed. I had never, ever heard Sammy cuss, never.
We never talked about it again until that night when I heard is dad yelling at him. I was still in the field, I just couldn’t understand why Sam was hiding something from me, he never did. He ran out of his house, with pure fear in is eyes. He ran over to me and just sat down and started crying. He never cried in front of people. "Hey man, what's up? Talk to me," I said.
"Jake, I'm in trouble, I got to get out of here, now!" he said with fear still in his eyes.
"Whoa, Sammy just calm down what happened?"
"The black eye, my dad gave it to me."
"What does that have to do with you being in trouble," I asked confused.
"My dad, he's been beating me man, ever since my mom died. He gets all drunk and just beats on me, yelling, hitting."
"God, that bastard," was all I could think of to say. I mean, my best friend, who is basically my brother, just tells me that, that would mess anyone up.
But deep down, I kind of always knew that was happening. Sam would show up at school and stuff with bruises and cuts over him, but he just said he got into fights. I would hear his dad throwing stuff at night, but I just blocked it out, not thinking anything of it, now I wish I had paid attention to it.
"Well this time, he went too far, he grabbed a bat," he says rolling up is sleeve and shows me a big bruise forming on his arm. "Man, he just kept hitting me and hitting me, then finally I got a hold of it and all my anger, it just came out of me, like a punch. I just started hitting and hitting him. Then I look down, and realize I've gone to far… Jake I killed him, I killed my own father…" he just stopped there. I got up and went into his house.
There was blood everywhere, splattering the walls, floor, TV, everything. I knew what I had to do, so I grabbed the bat and a towel wiping off all the prints.
I had to protect Sammy, no one else would. No one else cared enough to protect him. Even if he was in this situation and Sammy didn’t kill his dad, but someone else, I'd still be the one helping him. His dad wouldn’t help him, his dad didn’t care a hang about him, I was the only one that did, that would.
I had to help him escape. We lived in the 'bad' part of town, so if we killed someone you would be put in prison so fast your head would spin. Even if it was self defense, it didn’t matter to the law. We were considered 'trash' so anything we did was on purpose. They didn’t care if you had a knife and the person grabbed it from you and stabbed their self on accident; it would still be your fault, somehow.
I grabbed some off his cloths and shoved them in a bag. I slowly walked down the hallway to Mr. Blake's room and grabbed his stash of cash in his drawer, then walked back out to Sammy. I then noticed the blood that splattered his clothes.
"Here, change clothes, burn those and wait for me." I said handing him the bag and walked over to my house.
My folks were already asleep, so I had no problem there. I packed a bag, grabbed all the cash I could find lying around, then walked back out taking one last look at my house before going back to Sam. I didn’t care if my folks worried where I was, I didn’t care about them, the only thing that mattered to me was helping Sammy, protecting him. That’s all that seemed to be in my mind, like it was burned into my brain, permanently.
When I came back out Sammy was out in the field burning his clothes to a crisp. I could smell the smoke from my house, but we needed to burn them, he didn’t need any evidence put against him. Sammy just looked at me when I walked up to him. He was trying to understand why I was helping him. He just starred at me for what seemed like an hour then said, "Why are you helping me? I mean I appreciate it, don’t get me wrong. but I mean, no one in my whole life, has ever, or would ever help me like this."
"Well, because you need help. Like you said, if I don’t, no one else will." I just left it at that and started walking down the road toward town. Sammy followed me in silence, he didn’t need to ask where we were going, he trusted me.
We jumped on the train just as it started moving. They still had the law about stowaways. I lay back against the train wall while Sammy curled up to sleep. I put my jacket over him and started thinking of how I was gonna pull this off for the next three hours.
I was barley wake when I woke up Sammy to jump off, but as soon as my feet hit the wet ground I woke up completely.
The sun was just rising when we started heading down the dirt path. I had heard about this place from my dad. He had hid out here when he ran away after his parents kicked him out. There was supposed to be this little abandoned shack half a mile from this country store.
We bought a week worth of food and water from the store and kept walking. We reached the shack within twenty minutes. We went in and put the food and water in a corner and went to sleep.
I wasn’t sure what time it was when I woke up, I didn’t want to go out and check the sun's position incase someone was looking for us. I knew they would suspect us when we turned up missing right after Sammy's dad was murdered.
Over the next few days, I wasn’t sure what day it was or anything. We just would sit in that shack talking, sleeping, and eating. We found a well out by the tree in the backyard to wash off with, but other than that we never left that shack. Our days became like prisoners, we were bound to a shack, never able to really leave.
It got pretty boring until this kid came up. He looked about 14 or 15. His name was Aden. We started talking to him one day and he just kept coming back. He said he liked taking walks and noticed us one day out by the well and got curious. We couldn’t argue with that, we liked talking to the kid, he was very interesting.
He eventually told us why he kept coming back though. He said he needed to get away from his family. That they were constantly fighting, and he could stand it. So he would take walks when they fought.
He didn’t know what had happened to us or why we were there. All he knew is that we ran away, that’s all he needed to know.
It was about maybe the 7th day we had been there, I had stopped counting, and I really didn’t care anymore.
Aden came up and started talking to us again. "Hey guys, how's it going?" he asked.
"Oh you know, the usual," Sammy said.
"No kidding, you know some kid murdered his dad a couple of days ago," ha said casually. I looked over at Sammy and he was turning white and his fists were clinched.
"Really?" I asked.
"Yeah, well they can't prove it, but they're pretty sure it’s the kid, he went missing the night before they found the guy's body," Aden stopped and turned to Sammy, "Sammy you okay?"
"Only he can call me Sammy," he said and walked out to the back.
I had totally forgotten Sammy didn’t like to be called that, he preferred Sam, but he always let me call him that, and only me. He wouldn’t even let his own parents call him that.
"Did I say something wrong?" Aden asked.
"I don’t know, but you might wanna leave, I should go talk to him," I said politely.
"Yeah, yeah," he said. I guess he was catching on, he knew Sammy was the one who killed his father; I could see it in his eyes. I could usually see what people were thinking in their eyes.
I walked out to Sammy. He was sitting on the ground with his back against the tree.
"Hey man, what's going on, what was that all about?" I asked.
"Only you can call me Sammy, only you," he said.
"Okay, what's wrong though?"
"I can't keep this up, killing my dad, it's killing me man, it's killing me."
I could see the hurt in his eyes. I could see he was falling apart. He was suffering and I couldn't take that. I knew what I had to do.
"Wait here," I said getting up.