Only I Know

 A week before his passing, my best friend Joshua came down to New York to visit his mother over the summer. He'd always wanted to stay with his mother but had to live with his father because after their divorce his mother hadn't wanted him to change schools from NYC.

Joshua's father had arrived three days early to come and bring him back home. Joshua didn't want to go back, he wanted to stay with his mother. He screamed at his father almost as if he were afraid of telling him that he was staying with his mother and wasn't going with his father.

Angrily his father left the house telling Joshua's mother that he was coming back for him in the morning. After Josh calmed down he told his mother to bring him to my house to see me one last night before he had to leave, and she did. We spent all night together talking. He didn't even mention that he had to leave in the morning up until his mother came to get him. Then he told me about the fight he and his father had before he left, and that he was afraid of his father. But he wouldn't tell me why.

When he got in the car he rolled down the window and handed me a note and made me promise that I wouldn't read it until he left to New York. I kept my promise to him, only because I wanted to wait for whatever it was he wanted to tell me. I stayed up all night that night thinking about it.

The next morning as I woke up my mother pounded on my room door and screamed for me to get up saying that Josh's twin sister Crimson was on the phone in hysterics. I couldn't make out anything she was saying at first. When she calmed down slightly, she told me that Josh had hung himself in their kitchen and left a note saying "Only Sara knows." I quickly hung the phone up and ran to my room to read the note. It turned out it was a suicide note he had written. He didn't write exactly why he did what he did. He only said how much he cared about me and his mother and sister and how I can't cry to much over him. The only other thing he wrote was "You'll see soon enough of what that monster did to me."

That night I cried myself to sleep holding onto the note and the red and black plaid blanket he had giving to me on my 14th birthday. I woke to someone whispering my name. When I startled awake, no one was there so I slowly laid my head back down to go back to sleep. But before I was able to, I felt gentle arms wrap around me the way Josh would hold me when I was cold. I felt safe and tried to go back to sleep and the last words I heard were "Only you know."

In my dream I vividly saw everything like I was right there. I was looking through Joshua's eyes and seeing bits and pieces of what was happening to him. His father abused him and beat him daily. No one knew about what was happening to him, I was the only one.

When I woke up that morning something told me to turn on my Television and I did. Strangely it was on a channel I never watched. There was report on TV about Joshua, and how an autopsy showed over the past few years he was beaten and physically molested by his father, who was seized and arrested.

For the last two years on January 19th, I have had that same dream about Joshua. I always wake up to my name being whispered and right before I go to sleep I always hear "Only you know."