WARNING: Long Post

This is a short story I did for school...

Memories of Drake


Prologue:
April 3rd, 2008
Dear Journal,
It’s been exactly a year since Drake left. I know you’re a new journal, so I’ll give you some background info on Drake.
Drake is my now-sixteen-year-old brother. He’s the best brother in the whole world. You’ll understand that soon. Exactly a year ago today, he left home. Not for college. Not for the military. Not for a mission trip. Not for an internship. Not for a vacation. I don’t know why. No one does. One day, Drake just got up, went to school, and didn’t come home. I think he had been planning to run away for a while though. Drake plans things. I don’t know why the greatest brother in the whole world left. I loved him so much. I still do.
Drake really was a terrific brother. He helped me, he made me laugh, he protected me and, okay, yeah, he could be bossy and mean and he has threatened to kill me a few times (what brother hasn’t?), but he was the best.
I know where he is. I figured it out a couple of days after he left.
When I was seven and Drake was almost ten, we discovered this really cool little cave-like place on my uncle’s property. The entrance to the cave is really tiny and it looks just like a shallow gap between a bunch of rocks against a hill, but inside the gap, there’s a cave-ish place about as big as the inside of a van, and just as tall. I figured out that Drake was hiding there a couple of days after he left, like I said earlier. No one had even thought to look on my uncle’s property. I mean, what fifteen year old boy goes and runs away to his own family’s property? I think Drake figured that everyone would think that. He’s really smart.
Anyway, the day I figured out where Drake was hiding, I got off my school bus at the wrong stop on purpose, to be closer to my uncle’s house. (Lucky for me, my bus driver last year, Mrs. Wilson, had a trouble-making son who also rode my bus. Her son was always getting into trouble at school and always had a note to give Mrs. Wilson, and he usually did so on the bus. So, at least three out of the five school days, Mrs. Wilson was too preoccupied with yelling at her son to notice who got off the bus where. Like I said, lucky me.)
I hiked around my uncle’s property until I came to Drake’s and my secret cave. I poked my head inside and saw Drake staring back at me with enraged eyes. He was really mad that I had found him. He started yelling and I started yelling and we yelled for about five minutes straight. Then, I told Drake that I really missed him and asked him if he would come home. As you probably figured out from what I said at the beginning of this journal entry, he refused. I was about to start begging when he told me that if I didn’t leave, never come back, and never tell anyone where he was, he would pack up his stuff (all he had brought was money, a change of clothes and, of course, his iPod) and go to a place where I would never find him. I decided that it would be better for me at least to know where Drake was, so I promised not to tell and went home.
I don’t think you can quite understand, journal. Drake isn’t like that. I had never seen him act like that before in my whole life. I love him so much it’s not even funny. You can’t imagine how much I miss my brother. I can hardly hear his name without crying. Unless you’ve had the most wonderful older brother in the world and then had him leave you for no reason (apparently for forever), you can’t understand what I’m going through.
This is where you come in, journal. You see, I don’t want to forget Drake, but it’s killing me to remember him. The memories of him are tearing my heart apart. Here’s my plan: I’m going to write down all my memories of Drake in you, and then close you up and never open you ever again. Then, I will do my dead-level best to delete my brother from my memory. I have to forget him or I’ll be miserable for the rest of my life, but I don’t want to forget him. But I do. It’s very hard to explain, but you see, I figure that I’ll write down all my memories of Drake in you and then forget him so that I don’t have to be miserable, and yet somewhere I’ll still have my memories of Drake. Got it? Okay. Here we go…

~Jade Anastasia Henderson ~

About Drake Alexander Henderson:

-Name: Alexander Drake Henderson
- Age: 16
-Birthday: September 5, 1992
-Hair color: dark brown
-Eye color: brown
-Height: 5’ 11” (I think)
-Weight: no clue. He’s not really skinny or really fat though. He’s thin-ish, but strong. Make sense?
-Hobbies: video games, listening to music, skateboarding, basketball,
-Nick-names: Drake (That’s what we always call him even though it’s his middle name. He thinks Alexander sounds too much like Salamander and he likes the meaning of Drake. It means dragon.)
-Crush (before he ran away at least…): Crystal Martins
-Favorite food: pizza
-Favorite color: red
-Favorite book: Eragon
-Favorite movie: the Matrix, the Ocean’s movies
-Favorite sport: basketball
-Best friend: Caleb
-Family members: mom, Melissa; dad, Randy; little sister (me), Jade; dog, Lucky


Memory Number One: More Mud Pies, Mrs. Nesbit?

This memory took place when I was four.
Every summer, my family would rent a condo at the beach and we would stay there for a week. One day when we all went down on the beach, Drake and I were playing in a tide pool. I was happily making mud-pies and pretending to be a girl who lived all by herself on the beach and actually survived on mud pies and salt water. Drake came over and smashed all my mud-pies. The end.
I know what you’re thinking, journal: A: some brother he is, B: what a stupid story and C: is this whole freakin’ journal gonna be made up of dumb memories like this?? The answers are A: yeah, I know, right? B: nuh-uh! And anyway, I told you I was gonna write down all my memories and C: I was four! Not that many things made big impressions on me!


Memory Number Two: Bullying the Bully

This memory took place when I was five.
I was in kindergarten at this time and there was a really mean bully in my class named Chris. I really hated that kid. I’m not sure if this is even possible, but I think he was only in kindergarten still because he had gotten held back. Either that or he was just born absolutely gigantic.
Everyday, he would corner some little kid on the playground and demand for them to give him something or he would beat them up. For some reason, he liked to pick on me the best. (You’d think kindergarten teachers would watch big kids like him better.) One day, Chris had me pinned to the fence and all I had with me was my favorite little Polly Pocket doll. Of course, he made me give it to him, even though he didn’t want it. Then, he let me go. Five minutes later, I watched him decapitate the Polly by prying its beautiful blonde head off with a rock. I was in absolute tears when my grandmother came to pick me up.
That day, my grandmother was picking up me and Drake because my parents must have been doing something that day (I don’t remember what). I went to a different school than Drake for kindergarten for some reason, and Drake always got picked up before me (I guess my parents figured I’d want to have as much playground time as possible. Yeah, right.) My grandmother didn’t know what to do about my crying, so Drake tried to help. He finally got me to tell him that there was an evil bully at school who had killed my Polly. Now, Drake wouldn’t have had any sympathy if he had been the one to pry my doll’s brains out, but since someone else had done it, he was furious. He even at age seven, was very protective of me.
The next day when my mom picked me up, she got out to talk with the teachers, as usual, but this time Drake got out of the car, too. While my mom was busily jabbering with Mrs. Carter, my teacher, Drake came over to me and demanded that I show him who the bully was. I gladly pointed Chris out. Drake marched over to him and got him against the fence. Chris looked pretty afraid. Drake said to Chris,
“If you ever pick on my little sister again, I’ll bash your brains out.” Now, when I think about that now, it makes me laugh, but when you’re five, someone getting their brains bashed out sounds pretty plausible and equally terrifying. Chris just nodded at Drake and ran away. I never really had any more trouble with Chris after that.


Memory Number Three: Spiders and Sleepovers

This memory took place when I was six.
One Friday, I invited my best friend Lindsay over to spend the night. It the was first sleepover either of us had ever had. We were having lots of fun. We watched movies and ate popcorn and told “scary” stories about stupid stuff like monsters in our closets and other stuff that really didn’t scare us. I mean, when you’re six, you just can’t make up very good horror stories, even if the elements of the stories really do terrify you. Then, while we were trying to tell scary stories, eight-year old Drake comes waltzing in and offers to tell us a scary story. We said no. Drake accused us of being chicken. That works on most little siblings. It worked on me, too.
Five seconds later, Lindsay and I were in our sleeping bags and Drake was sitting on the floor with a flashlight. He turned on the flashlight and ominously pointed it upward with his face in the beam, you know, like you see in movies. That was enough to make my six-year-old heart speed up. Drake could make some pretty awful faces even without a flashlight to enhance them, so I was freaking out about what they would look like with the flashlight.
Drake began talking. He spun this wild tale about two little girls having a sleepover. They went to bed as usual, but were woken up by something tickling them on the face. They opened their eyes and saw that there were big spiders crawling all over them. Drake said the spiders were as big as your hand, brown, hairy, and had big fangs dripping with venom. They were murderously poison, he said. Then, he described, as only an older brother trying to horrify his little sister can, how the spiders bit the girls all over their bodies and they died horrible deaths. He described the way the girls looked down to the very last blood-covered welt.
Needless to say, Lindsay and I slept terribly because we dreamed all night about spiders. I’m chronically terrified of spiders to this day.


Memory Number Four: Lucky Lucky

This memory took place when I was seven.
The year I was seven, Drake and I started lobbying hard for a dog. Of course, we had wanted a dog for years, as all kids do, but we felt we were finally old enough to really convince Mom and Dad. Drake and I set about thinking of how to ask our parents for a dog. Like I said, I was pretty young and Drake wasn’t quite ten at the time, so we couldn’t really come up with very good arguments. Despite this extreme disadvantage, we put together a show. The show was supposed to demonstrate to Mom and Dad how much we needed a dog.
Drake told me to draw a bunch of pictures of us with a dog doing different things. I drew pictures of our family and a dog at the beach, going on bike rides, going to an amusement park, playing Frisbee in the backyard, and all the other stuff you see kids doing with their dogs on TV. With my many jump-ropes, Drake roped off a big section of the backyard to be a stage and brought out a bag of dog food for a visual aid. I didn’t think about asking where he got the dog food or why he had it.
Then, we called Mom and Dad out to the backyard. (It was a Saturday so they were home.) We made them sit in lawn chairs Drake held up my pictures one by one and explained what they were of and how much fun our family would have doing the things. I thought he made a very good presentation. When our show was over, Mom and Dad said the things we thought they probably would:
“You know, we really don’t have a fence to put a dog in.”
“Who would take care of this dog? Don’t tell me you two would. Your dad and I would end up doing all the work.”
“Dogs have to be fed and washed and walked, you know.”
“We’re not financially ready for a dog yet.”
“Maybe some day.”
I hung my head. I was disappointed, though not at all surprised. Then, I noticed that Drake had wandered into the woods. My parents were staring after him. Moments later, Drake emerged from the woods leading a mutt puppy on a rope. I squealed with joy. The dog was so cute! My parents, however, weren’t pleased at all. It turned out that Drake had had the dog tied up back in the woods for almost a week. He had fed it everyday and watered it and walked in around the woods. When my parents heard this, their faces began to change. Well, in the end, we got to keep Lucky (creative name, I know, but we were lucky….) but Drake was grounded for a week. I’m glad Drake did what he did—Lucky is an awesome dog!


Memory Number Five: Boy Toys

This memory took place when I was eight.
Usually, my mom goes to the grocery store on Saturdays, but on the day before Drake’s 11th birthday, she had to make an exception and go on a Wednesday because she had forgotten the most important thing for Drake’s party: the cake. Since my dad wasn’t home from work yet, my mom had to take Drake and me with her to the store. She was in a bad mood because of forgetting the cake, Drake was in a bad mood because he didn’t want to go to the grocery store, and I was in a bad mood because everyone else was.
When we arrived at the Super Wal-Mart (it was closer than the actual grocery store), we were all still in a mood. My mom was trying to be cheerful anyway, but Drake didn’t care if everyone knew how irritated he was. We walked through the store all the while listening to Drake complain about wanting to go look at transformers or video games. He was bored, and so he passed the time by bothering me. I was whining about him poking me and pulling on my hair. Finally, my mom got fed up with the two of us and told Drake to go look at the toys and take me with him. Drake was mad about having to take me, but at least he didn’t have to hang around at the bakery counter. We headed off with Mom calling after us to stay together and not to leave the toy department until she got there.
Drake and I found the toy department without any trouble (what kid has trouble finding the toys?). The problem was that Drake wanted to look at the stupid transformer aisle and I wanted to look at Polly Pockets. We were supposed to stay together, though, and I couldn’t make him come with me, so I had to stay and look at Bionicles.
After what seemed like forever and my mom still hadn’t come, I decided that it was my turn to choose where we looked. I demanded that we go to the Polly aisle. Drake refused and told me that I had to stay with him. I ignored him and went to the next aisle anyway. Only a few seconds later, I began to worry about getting in trouble for not staying together, so I reluctantly went back to the boy-toy aisle.
Drake wasn’t there.
I freaked out. I was breathing hard and on the verge of tears. I figured my mom had come and taken Drake with her, thinking that I had wandered off, and gone to look for me somewhere else or left the store entirely. I also figured that Drake wouldn’t tell her where I was just to get me in trouble. I ran away from the toy aisle to look for Mom and Drake. I looked in the kids’ clothes department, I looked in the frozen foods area, I looked in the art supplies section. They weren’t there. I had finally given up and was really starting to panic when Drake showed up beside me, looking angry.
“What are you doing?” he said. “Why did you leave the toys? I’ve been chasing you for like ten minutes calling you and you wouldn’t stop running away!” I hadn’t heard him calling in my panic, apparently. As we hurried back to the toys, I asked Drake where the heck he was when I came back to the transformer aisle. He sort of snickered at me and told me that he had hidden behind the end of the aisle to make me think he was gone. He hadn’t expected me to just take off, he said.
When we got back to the toys, my mom was just getting there. Unfortunately, she saw that we were coming from and area that was obviously not the toy area. She was pretty mad and Drake and I were grounded for a week.


Memory Number Six: Argh!

This memory took place when I was nine.
Drake and some of my friends and I used to play an imaginary game we called Pirates. It was sort of playing pirates, but Drake was the captain and my friend Lindsay and I were the slaves. You might think that Lindsay and I were slaves against our will, but we actually liked it.
The exact story of what was happening changed a little every time we played the game. The story we used the most was that Lindsay and I had been the rich daughters of some British guy who was sailing to America and Drake and his pirate crew had raided our boat and forced Lindsay and me to be the slave girls. Drake liked being the captain and he liked being allowed to boss us around without us yelling for Mom.
Our “ship” was the playground in the park near our house. Lindsay and I were “forced” to swing on the swings all day and night to pump fuel for the boat. (We had some pretty whacked ideas of how boats worked. When we found out how they really sailed, with the wind and everything, we decided that our pirate ship was a special kind of boat in a different world or something.) Occasionally, Lindsay and I would leap out of the swings and try to make a run for it. Drake would always catch us and drag us back. We liked it, but the game had a certain level of fear to it, too, because Lindsay and I always knew that Drake could actually hurt us. That kept Lindsay and me jumpy and made the game more fun.
What was a ship without a brig? The “prison” was the spot under the slides. On the playground, there were three slides that were connected at the sides so they made a big, slanted, roofed spot that was the prison. There were always lots of spider webs hanging down from the slides and beetles crawling all over the ground. Lindsay and I really were scared of the prison and we always refused to let Drake push us into it. But then Drake always told us that if we didn’t go into the prison he wouldn’t play Pirates anymore, so Lindsay and I always ended up curled up under the slides until we got sick of it and just came out no matter what Drake said. He always played with us the next time we asked anyway.
Playing Pirates is one of my favorite memories of Drake. We had so much fun together. But one day when Drake was thirteen, he just stopped playing with us. He never played Pirates with us again after that random day. I guess he just grew up really fast.


Memory Number Seven: Crystal Martins

This memory took place when I was ten.
When I was ten and Drake was thirteen (he’s two and a half years older than me, so that’s why in some of these memories it seems like he’s two years older and sometimes it seems like he’s three), Drake had a huge crush on this girl that went to our church. She was almost three whole years older than he was, and she already had a boyfriend. Drake knew all this and he was still crazy about her. I could never figure out why. I still don’t know. She wasn’t even nice. She was snobby and prissy and was always flinging her blonde hair around and rolled her eyes at people.
Drake took every opportunity to show off in front of the girl—usually by making stupid jokes about me and Lindsay. It was really funny to watch my brother try to impress the girl (her name was Crystal). He would bring his skateboard to church and attempt complicated stunts in front of her, do flips off the monkey bars, and just generally try to get her attention. I think he thought he was being subtle, but Lindsay and I noticed easily. After he really embarrassed us with a stupid one of his put-down jokes, Lindsay and I decided to really get him good.
As he was sitting at a table with Crystal and her boyfriend at a church lunch thing, Lindsay and I casually sat down with them. Drake gave us a get-out-of-here-right-now-or-else look, but we ignored it. For starters, whenever Drake said anything to Crystal, Lindsay and I giggled loudly and exchanged glances. Crystal kept looking at us strangely and then looking at Drake strangely. Crystal’s boyfriend was really getting suspicious of Drake. Drake gave me a really angry look, teeth gritted and everything. I glanced nervously at Lindsay. She looked at me with confused eyes. I guess she had nothing to worry about. She embarrasses Drake, she goes home to a safe house. I embarrass Drake, and I go home to a death sentence.
After a few more minutes of suggesting that Drake liked Crystal, it was time for the big finish on Lindsay’s and my act. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go through with it. Lindsay and I had one of those eye-conversations. I told her I didn’t want to do it. Lindsay said that she couldn’t do it. It just wouldn’t seem right for her to be making real fun of someone else’s brother. With a deep breath I leaned over towards Drake and whispered as loudly as I could,
“Have you asked her out yet?” I’m telling you, to this day I have never seen Drake look more shocked, horrified and furious. I didn’t wait to see how it all went down with Crystal’s boyfriend. I quickly grabbed my lunch plate and ran as fast as I could with Lindsay at my heels. I won’t say what happened later at home, but let’s just say it was not a happy afternoon for me.


Memory Number Eight: Shade-y Tricks

This memory took place when I was eleven.
When I was eleven, I was huge on fantasy stuff (I still am, it’s just that I really started to get into it around age eleven.). For my birthday, my family bought the movie Eragon. We watched it that night. I loved the movie, except for a part when this evil shade (a shade is sort of like a wizard) named Durza poisons this elf girl’s shoulder. Durza has these hideously long, burgundy fingernails, and he points his finger at the elf girl when she’s laying down. A drop of burgundy stuff (maybe it was supposed to be blood...) dripped from his fingernail and landed on the elf’s chest. The drop spread over the elf’s chest and made a big, black-red splotch of poison with spider-webby strings of blackish poison running out from the black-red splotch. It was hideous and horrifying and I hated that part.
That night, Drake came into my room and woke me up. I was pretty mad at him for waking me up, until my eyes adjusted enough to see the terrified look on his face. He looked really scared. When I asked him what was the matter, he pulled his shirt off to show me his chest. I screamed. There was a poisonous looking black splotch with rivers of reddish poison coming out from it. The minute I screamed, Drake doubled over laughing. He didn’t stop until my dad came upstairs to see what was going on. Drake turned around and showed my dad the splotch, laughing hysterically. Then, my dad starting laughing like crazy and my mom came upstairs. Pretty soon, she was howling, too. It turned out that Drake had just used magic markers to make the spot, all just to scare me. I was furious.
I thought Drake would get in trouble, but he didn’t really. I guess my parents thought I had over reacted and that Drake’s joke really had been funny. Now that I think about it, it kind of was.


Memory Number Nine: Saved by the Brother

This memory took place when I was twelve.
When I was twelve, there was this guy in the ninth grade who liked me. I was in the seventh grade and I thought it was really cool to have a ninth grader have a crush on me. All my friends were saying things like,
“You’re so lucky!”
“I can’t believe it! He’s so gonna ask you out!”
“I wish a ninth-grader would like me.”
I was pretty flattered, but I really hoped that the guy wouldn’t ask me out, because my parents wouldn’t let me go out with anyone until I was sixteen and it would be embarrassing to have to tell that to the guy and look like a baby.
One day after school when I was on my way out to the car, the guy showed up and asked me out. I was so upset that I couldn’t go out with him. I told him I couldn’t, but I didn’t say why because I didn’t want to seem like a little kid. He was totally disappointed and he asked me again. I told him that I really couldn’t, but he didn’t believe me or something because he followed me all the way down the hall asking me again and again and jumping in my way and getting really annoying. I started to get kind of scared. I ran the last few steps out of the school and to the car.
The next day, I figured he would be over it, but he wasn’t. he showed up everywhere it felt like, always asking me to go out with him. When he showed up at my locker, I finally told him that I couldn’t because of my parents’ rules, thinking that he would understand. He didn’t. He told me to go out with him behind my parents’ backs and meet him at the little ice cream store. I shook my head, but he demanded that I meet him. He cornered me against the lockers. Then I really started to really panic. Pretty much everyone was gone to their classes now, and the guy and I were the only ones in the hall. If he tried anything, no one would be there to see it or hear me.
I was beginning to think that there was no escape (dramatic, I know, journal, but I’m just telling it how I remember it J), when Drake showed up. He was glowering furiously at me. I was about to shout that I hadn’t done anything wrong and what the heck was his problem, when then I noticed that he wasn’t glaring at me, but the other ninth-grader (Drake was a ninth-grader, too). Drake asked the guy what he thought he was doing, and the guy kind of backed off. I took the opportunity to leap away from the guy. Drake pretty much just told the guy to stay away from me, and the guy seemed to comply because he walked away and he never came near me again. It turned out that Drake had kind of suspected what was going on between me and the ninth-grader and had been watching me all day just in case the guy tried anything. No matter what rotten stuff Drake has ever done to me, I’ll always be glad I had an older brother that day.



May 5th, 2008
Dear Journal,
Well, now you know my memories of the greatest brother in the world: Drake. I’m now going to try to delete him from my memory and be forever a happy person! J



May 6th, 2008
Dear Journal,
HOW CAN I DELETE THESES MEMORIES? I can’t do this! I love my brother too much to give up all my thoughts and memories of him. But I have to. I’ll go crazy if I don’t. I don’t want to forget, but it’s killing me to remember! What should I do, journal? What should I do??


May 7th, 2008
Dear Journal,
I still haven’t deleted the memories. I know I need to in order to be happy. I know I’ll never be happy as long as I hold onto these things. They’re just causing me to be miserable. I have to do this.


May 8th, 2008
Dear Journal,
Do I have to give up my memories in order to be happy? Can I be happy with them? No, that can’t be possible. I’ve already tried that. I just have to buckle down and forget Drake. Completely.


May 9th, 2008
Dear Journal,
I’m doing it. I haven’t thought about Drake all day until this journal entry, and I’ve seriously tried to forget about him. I think it’s working. It’s getting harder to think about him and bring back my memories. Already the fuzzy ones about when I was little are gone. I can do this after all. I can delete Drake and be happy! Aren’t you happy for me, journal?

May 10th, 2008
JOURNAL!
GUESS WHAT????? DRAKE IS GONE FROM MY MEMORY! GONE! COMPLETELY! I CAN’T THINK ABOUT HIM AT ALL! I DON’T REMEMBER ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED WHEN HE WAS STILL HERE! The only things about Drake that are still in my mind are that he’s my brother and that he ran away. I DID IT! I DID IT!


May 11th, 2008
Dear Journal,
Something weird is going on. I’m not happy. I know, I know. I should be. I really should be! I don’t know what’s wrong with me1 I’ve deleted all the painful stuff! I can’t figure out what’s wrong! I have no reason not to be happy! WHAT IS THE PROBLEM HERE????


May 12th, 2008
Dear Journal,
I think I know what the problem is. I thought about it all day and a lot of the night. I’m not completely positive, but I think that just forgetting the painful stuff might not really help. I kind of miss my memories of Drake. I miss being able to go back to them when I’m missing him and think about how great he was. True, it hurts, but I think maybe I need those memories. I haven’t looked at them since I finished writing them down, just like I promised. I honestly have succeeded in forgetting them. I wasn’t sure if it was possible, but I guess it is. But now, I’m not sure if it was the right thing to do. I don’t mean to sound all boring and grown-up, journal, but I think that forgetting the good stuff because it’s painful to remember doesn’t really solve anything. Drake is still gone, and I’m sad that I’ve lost my memories. It doesn’t hurt to think about him anymore, but that’s because I don’t remember him. I don’t want to have forgotten my brother! IGNORING AND FORGETTING YOUR PROBLEMS DOESN’T SOLVE THEM. There. I said it.
I think that maybe I was wrong about being happy all along. I think that being happy doesn’t mean that nothing bad ever happens. I think maybe being happy is taking with you all the good memories you have and making the best of the bad ones. My memories of Drake were the good memories, and the memory of him running away was the bad one. I’m not saying that I should forget about his running away, though. Not even close. I think what I’m trying to say (er, write) is that I need not to forget ANYTHING. I need to remember. Forgetting your good memories doesn’t solve anything, but remembering them will help you through the hard times. I think maybe I finally understand, journal. I’m going to read you now. The whole thing. And get back my memories of Drake.