Unlike Any Other (Unexpected #1) (10 page)

2015

Watching my father crumble to the floor earlier scared me, I’m still shaky from the entire day. Not just the episode where I thought I had lost him forever. My brothers and I head outside though none of us speak.

“A panic attack, nothing out of the ordinary,” the doctor said.

If they had a dollar for every person who arrived at the ER with a panic attack thinking they were having a heart attack, they’d be adding a new wing.

This is my father, panic or not, it shook my entire existence.

I was about to tell him that I didn’t want to see him ever again and in only seconds, I watched him crumble to the floor. The pain, of losing another loved one, knocked me down to my knees.

“He’s only staying because he hit his head,” MJ says out loud. “Stop worrying, AJ, stress isn’t your friend.”

I give him a sideways glance and don’t say anything. Our gazes connect and though I’m walking, my entire attention is on him. How can he tell me not to worry? Distracted by MJ, I don’t notice that JC stopped, and I crash into him.

“MJ, AJ duty.”

I peek around JC, who is literally blocking me. Flashes of light strobe at me along with people screaming behind the glass door. They stare at us as if we were the latest zoo exhibit. JC takes off his hoodie and throws it to MJ who covers me with it.

“What are you doing?” I growl.

“Making sure your pretty picture isn’t taken,” my brother responds, puts his arm around me and pushes me lightly so I’ll start walking. “We’re heading to the car, don’t pay attention to anything they say, and just stay close to me.”

We head outside and I hear so many voices, questions, and things that don’t make any sense. Seriously, not one word makes sense to me. I’m sandwiched between both of my brothers as people rush forward toward us.

“Is it true that Gabe Colt died?” I hear a female voice close to my ear, and I tense. “Is it true he has a terminal illness?”

“He’s fine, don’t listen,” JC reminds me. “Now duck, we’re almost inside the car.”

I duck inside and sit down immediately. They order me to keep the hoodie on. Honking sounds repeatedly continue and the car barely moves. Once the car starts to travel at a normal speed, I uncover my head.

“Not yet,” MJ commands. “Look, AJ, we need to lose them before we head home. Everyone knows the two of us, no one knows you and until you make up your mind about being part of the spotlight, we won’t let them see you.”

We drive along the coast in silence, each one of us combing through our own thoughts, I guess. My father falling to the floor and the way the three of us tried to act fast in order to save him because we couldn’t bear to lose him brings shivers to my whole body.

One of our phones rings, I check mine which is now dead.

“Hey, dude… nah, no he just wanted some publicity,” MJ‘s free-spirited tone is only convincing whoever is on the other side of the line, he’s freaking out too. I saw it in his eyes as the flashes began to blind us back in the hospital. “He’s staying overnight. No, we’re all fine. The sis?”

“AJ, your phone is dead?” I answer with a quick jerk and show him the dark screen. “Yes, it is. Yeah, give me a second, dude.”

“For you.” MJ hands me his phone.

“Hello?”

“Nine, the one time I call, you’re not available,” Mason chides me on the other line, and my lips draw a slight smile. “Everything okay with your dad?”

“Yeah, he was being… Gabriel,” I say dismissively ignoring the hollow feeling inside my chest the experience left. “He was due for a dose of drama.”

“Do you need me there?” his offer draws a bigger smile. “I can’t be there tonight, but tomorrow morning…”

“No, Mase, no worries. Dad’s fine, he’s leaving the hospital tomorrow, and we’re… ironing out a few family things,” I say vaguely because with my parents you never know what our family or friends are allowed to know. “What’s tonight, a Pokémon tournament?”

“Ha, as if, let’s call it Call of Duty—live,” his husky voice caresses my ears. “You know the drill, call if you need me. If I don’t answer, I’ll contact you when I can.”

“Thank you, Mase. Hope you win the game.”

“I have to if I want to see you again.”

The line goes dead, and I wonder what that meant. He’s insane.

MJ hands me the emergency battery charger he carries, and I plug my phone. When it comes to life, I find a few missed calls and a couple of texts.

PK:
I went home to find you and you weren’t there.
PK:
Is your father okay?
PK:
AJ, please respond, I’m worried and you know I hate that feeling.
PK:
Why aren’t you living in the house?

Porter’s texts confuse me. He knew I left the house. He stalked me a few weeks later at my new place.

I can’t conceive I was foolish enough that I accepted to move in with him, and that I lied to my parents about it. Why had I accepted all that?

The secret relationship, the lies to my parents…

2003

From the moment I met him, his hypnotizing eyes captured my attention. Dark, almost pitch-black eyes when upset, soft, milk chocolate when happy.

Not that he let others know that he was upset, but I knew, and I made sure he was always happy. My mission in life since the moment I met him.

It was an ordinary day. An average morning just like any other. I had followed my daily routine: jump out of bed, shower, dress, fix the bed, and head for the kitchen.

My parents had a busy schedule, but they prided themselves on being there for us and not leaving us with some stranger. They made sure that at least one of them was always in the house while the other worked, that we ate our meals together and that we helped prepare breakfast. The most important meal of the day.

The morning Porter Kendrick appeared in my life wasn’t any different from all the others. When I arrived in the kitchen, Dad was at the stove preparing breakfast, my brother JC was setting up the table, and MJ was rubbing his eyes grumbling nonsense. He had always been a late owl, and had a hard time waking up before the sun set, though my parents pushed him out of the bed every morning no matter what he mumbled under his breath.

“Morning, JC, MJ. Morning, parental units. How can I help?” I greeted them and skipped to the table where I found not five but six places. “Do we have a guest?”

“No,” JC whispered, tilting his head toward the corner of the kitchen. “More like a new resident.”

I turned and examined the kid who stood a few feet from the table. He was short like my brothers, thinner than them, and wearing one of JC’s Superman t-shirts and jeans. His eyes peered at me.

“Hi.” I took a few steps toward him. “My name is AJ, well, Ainsley but AJ is what everyone calls me. Who are you?”

“Porter Kendrick,” he stuttered. He extended his hand like the grownups did.

“Why is he here?” I looked at my parents.

They had found him the night before, hiding in the bathroom of a bar with a battered guitar case next to him. Hungry and cold. My parents couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to the boy and took him in for the night while they decided what would be best for him.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“Alabama.”

JC whistled but didn’t say anything.

Porter blurted his story to me. His mother and siblings died when he was almost four, including an older brother and a baby sister.

“My father was driving the car,” he continued, then pulled up his shirt and showed me the scar that began on his left clavicle and ended right under his ribs. He had another scar on the back of his ear and went down to his neck. A piece of glass that if it had come closer to his jugular he would’ve perished also. “He’s in jail—my dad, for killing my family.”

Four gasps filled the room—my parents and brothers. I remained calm.

“Where do you live?” I asked.

His head dropped and his shoulders slumped. “I mean before you came to us?”

“When my mother died, they sent me to my grandparents.”

He remained quiet for a while. I patted his shoulder reassuring him that he was safe—like my parents did with us.

“On the streets, I guess. My grandfather wasn’t nice to me,” he mumbled, still gazing at the floor. “My grandmother died… I don’t know when. The moment she plummeted to the ground, I knew I had to run.”

By then, I was holding his hand with my two, like my father did when I was sad or had a fight with my brothers.

“Do they hit you, your parents?” He lifted his gaze and the worried eyes made me realize that he was afraid of us or at least, the adults.

“Like punching people?”

He nodded several times, eyes opening in high alert.

“Well, Dad does when he’s working,” I said. “He’s an actor and is trained to be able to kick the bad guys’ behinds without hurting them. Of course, they use make-up and effects so it looks like he battered them, but he’d never hurt a fly. Right, Dad?”

“Yes, sweetie,” Dad answered.

“If you want, after we are done with our chores and homework, we can put on a movie and watch him kick some ass.”

“AJ,” Dad warned me. “Language, young lady.”

“Sorry, Dad.” I lowered my voice and leaned closer to Porter. “They reprimand us and send us to time out… mostly my brothers; they rarely catch me.”

“I heard that, AJ,” Dad used his serious voice. “I’ll be watching you closely now.”

Porter finally smiled at me as if we shared a secret. Instead of letting his hand go, we walked along toward the round kitchen table and sat together to have breakfast. He trusted me more than anyone in the house. It took a few weeks for him to warm up before letting his guard down.

2003

Life with Porter hadn’t been easy at the beginning. Not for my parents who had to convince him that they weren’t going to hurt him. Then he didn’t like to interact with my brothers, afraid they’d gang up on him and insult him as his classmates used to do. Overall, the adjustment took some time, but the hardest part had been his studies.

My parents homeschooled us. There weren’t any schools close to where we lived. Their fame and little faith in the education system weighed heavily on the decision of hiring tutors and Special Ed teachers. The latter for my brother MJ who had dyslexia.

“Of course, owls read differently and sleep during the day,” MJ used to say.

The logical thing to do had been for Porter to retake his studies with us. We rotated teachers. While one had math, the other had history, English, Spanish, or some other subject. They kept us in different rooms so we wouldn’t interrupt the others. A month after Porter had been brought to our home, I caught him crying in the music room.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He angrily used the back of his hands to wipe his face.

“You look sad.”

“I only want to play music,” he confessed. “That’s the only thing I know how to do. I can play so many songs… but they—your parents—want me to do homework and read and… I can’t.”

He pushed the open books away from him and closed his eyes.

“Those letters make no sense; they’ve never made sense to me.”

Porter told me how he had gone to school, and how every year they just pushed him to the next grade without paying much attention to him.

“My classmates, my grandfather, everyone called me stupid,” he said. “I can’t read.”

My chest constricted, and I wanted to make it better for him.

“I don’t want your parents to hear about this,” his voice drifted off. “They’re going to know I’m not smart and kick me out of the house.”

“MJ has trouble with letters,” I explained. “He learns in a different way than we do. Maybe you’re special like him. It wouldn’t hurt to try and figure it out. My parents say that everyone is smart.”

Though I convinced Porter that we should talk to my parents, he did all the talking. It took only a few days for them to find out, that like MJ, Porter had dyslexia. Unlike my brother, Porter didn’t need glasses, but they shared the special teachers.

One evening, after we helped with cleaning the kitchen and Porter refused, Dad sent us to our rooms, but I lingered around.

“Porter you need to apply yourself,” Dad began his lecture.

“I don’t want to study; I only want to make music,” Porter raised his voice, then tossed the broom to the floor and headed to his room.

“Is everything alright?” I asked Dad as he began to sweep the floor since Porter had refused.

“He’s being a rebellious teenager,” Dad said. “He refuses to do his chores, follow the rules, and everything is a battle. We can’t continue like this.”

My heart clenched, I folded as my tummy ache increased with the fear that my parents would kick him out of the house because of his poor behavior. I ran to his room.

Porter lay on his bed, holding his old ratty guitar.

“You’re being difficult,” I told him and sat on his bed next to him. “That isn’t fair to any of us. We like you, and we want you to be a part of the family… but you have to want to be part of us, too.”

“I don’t want to study, I only want to play music,” he said, his dark eyes staring at me.

I felt he needed to know more about music, so I took him to my room where I had all my music sheets.

“It’s fun to play, but it’s better when you make music,” I explain. “However, it’s smart if you write it down. Then others can play what you made or a band can play along with you… then you can also add lyrics to it. Needless to say, if you don’t know how to read or write, you can’t create lyrics. Well, you could, but you’ll forget them since you didn’t write them down.”

Porter examined the sheets without making a sound for a long time.

“Can we make a deal?” I asked, interrupting the painful silence. “Remember you asked me to teach you to play the piano?”

“Yes, you never answered.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t,” I was honest. I wasn’t as proficient as he thought. “I’ll convince my daddy to teach you, if you finish everything that is on your daily schedule.”

Daddy agreed and each day, Porter would get everything done. Homework, chores, piano lessons, and whatever extra he had pending. Every night we practiced together for two straight hours before heading to bed. When he excelled, he moved to the next instrument, and we’d repeat the same routine every night.

I made sure he finished everything to avoid any problems with my parents. He was older than me, but I had made it my mission to protect him from everything, even my parents. His biggest fear was that they’d kick him out of the family. The only people who cared for him.