The clock in my house says 2 a.m. I continue staring at the picture and thinking of how Rafe had explained him to me. I hate Rafe. I’ve hated him since I was little. I remember when I was about 4, I called him daddy, and he yelled at me. Said he wasn’t my dad. He cried, I don’t think he was mad at me. He was just upset. Hell, now that I’m old enough I still hate him, I hate him for loving my mother who had me, his best friends child. I hate my mother too. I hate her cause when she looks at me, sometimes she cries. She yells at me to leave and begins to cry. Apparently I look like Danny. So as I sit here, looking at a picture of my father, I see myself. I guess he does look like me. I hate myself just for looking like that. Funny, he’s dead and I have never met him, and he’s the only person in this family I actually like. I can’t take this house. I walk outside.
The cool night air feels good, it relaxes me. If there is one thing I have in common with Rafe is I love to fly. So I sneak out to where the plane is. And I fly. Yes I know I’m only 15, but I learned how to fly when I was 10. And I’ve been flying alone since I was 12. Once I’m up in the air, I feel better. Calmer. I fly around trying to learn how to do an outside loop. Rafe can do it. Hell, if he can do it, so can I. After a while I get a little tired. No, I’m not going to give up. Here goes…. 1….2…. 3 zooom. I did it. Ha ha, my dad would be proud. (a/n he means Danny, not Rafe) I land the plane where it belongs. Shit, Rafe is outside. “DANNY!!!” he yells.
“Er… Hi?” That’s it, I’m in trouble.
“DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT TIME IT IS?”
I look at him. Glancing in his eyes, trying to figure out how mad he is.
“You are grounded and in serious trouble when your mother finds out.” Rafe growls at me.
“Why? Cause I wanted to do an outside loop? Like you never went to fly early in the morning and try something new?”
“As the man of this house, I don’t care what I did, you are to never do that again” He really is mad He slaps me across my face, scolding me. (A/n: in the 40s and 50s that wasn’t considered child abuse.) I can’t take it anymore; I feel the tears in my eyes. I turn on my heel and run. Run as far as I can in the other direction, past my dad’s grave and as far as I can. I here Rafe yelling DANNY! WAIT COME BACK NO!! In a tearful voice but I don’t listen. I’m never going back their. I sit at a lake and feel someone next to me. I thought it was Rafe for a minute, but as I turned to yell at him to leave, I nearly fall back in shock. Sitting next to me is not Rafe, but I can’t see who the person is, his face is covered by shadows.
“Hi Danny” it says.
“Who are you?” I’m scared now, how does this man know my name?
“Don’t recognize me? You spend hours looking at my picture?” He moves over slightly, I see his face.
“Dad?” I say nervously. “Are you a ghost?”
“Yes, I have been watching you. Your not happy here, though I must say, that outside loop was impressive.”
I am in a total state of shock. “But… How?” I ask.
“I watch over you, Danny, you, Rafe and Evelyn. Your anger, and sadness has been hurting me. I want you to understand something. The reason Rafe yelled at you before, was not out of anger, it was out of fear. See I died partly cause of a plane crash that I crashed trying to save Rafe. He blames himself sometimes, and he feels that if something happens to you, he will lose the only part of me he has left. As for Evelyn, she loved me, she misses me, but she loves you too.”
I sat taking all this in. It was so surreal. I felt tears burning in my eyes; I was about to tell him how much I loved him when I heard a voice behind us.
“DANNY!” It was Rafe, He wasn’t talking to me though, and he was looking at the ghost next to me. Tears began to fill his eyes, and I noticed my dad was crying too. At that moment my dad smiled and disappeared, leaving Rafe and me alone. I was about to get up and run when he put his arm on me forcing me down.
“Danny, I am so sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you, I saw the outside loop and I started freaking. I thought It was Danny, right before his plane when down, he had done it in an attempt to get to me and save fuel. I had a flash of his plane going down, and I was thinking, ‘If anything happens to him, I am going to kill myself.’ I love you Danny, just remember that.”
I nodded mutely and got up, so did he. We walked back together, and I thought, Just maybe this wont be so bad.
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