The Shadow of Regret

The sound of your muffled sobs still haunts me at night. That terrible choking noise you made as you bit down on your fist, desperate not to be heard through these paper-thin walls. Blood beaded between your knuckles. I stood there, frozen, watching your pain bloom like some grotesque flower in the darkness of your bedroom.

I have memorized the architecture of your suffering, Jake. Every silent tear. Every bruise you explained away. Every moment, I should have intervened, but didn't.

They say those who witness suffering carry a weight almost as heavy as those who endure it. Almost. But I know better.

My burden is nothing compared to yours, and it's made heavier by the knowledge that I failed you. Over and over again.

I have started this letter a thousand times in my head, Jake. I talk myself out of it each time, thinking that maybe silence is the better option. Maybe opening wounds just makes them bleed again. But the truth is a bad seed. Leave it buried and it doesn't die—it grows roots, spreads underground where you can't see it. And eventually, it breaks through anyway, uglier and more twisted than if you had just dealt with it from the start.

You are counting down the days until you turn eighteen. I see those little red Xs on that hidden calendar. Each one like a bloodstain on the month. Twenty-seven more to freedom. I need you to know that I saw everything—every last unforgivable thing.

"Sometimes I think I'm invisible," you said that night on the back porch, your fingers drumming anxiously against your knee as we sat in the moonlight. "Like I could disappear, and nothing would change."

If you only knew how wrong you are, Jake. If you only knew.

Remember that July afternoon? Hot as the devil's armpit, air so thick you could almost chew it. You came home early from baseball practice, that broken bat dragging behind you like the tail of a dead animal. I knew before you did what was waiting. The sound of Dad's truck pulling in, tires crunching gravel like bones. I could smell the whiskey through the screen door before he even opened it.

I should have warned you somehow. Should've found a way to tell you not to come through that door.

I watched from behind the door as he laid into you. Not with his fists. Not that time. Just with words that cut deeper than any belt or backhand ever could. "Pathetic swing," he called it. "Waste of my hard-earned money."

And you, Jake, just stood there like one of those wooden cigar store Indians, gripping what was left of that Louisville Slugger. Your face showed nothing, but I saw it in your eyes. That little light, the one that was already dimming with each passing month in this house, flickered like a bulb about to blow.

That night, you slept with your window open despite the rain hammering down like God was trying to drown the world again. Water pooled on your floor, soaked your Yankees poster until it sagged and fell sometime around three in the morning. I know why you did it. Some pain needs to be washed away, even if it means drowning a little yourself in the process.

Then Thanksgiving rolled around like a car crash in slow motion. Your grandparents driving up in that ancient Buick that smells like Werther's Originals and Ben-Gay. Mom scrubbing the baseboards with a toothbrush at midnight, like the Queen of England might drop by for an inspection. You got that haircut that made your ears stick out. You wore that blue collared shirt that made you look like one of those preppy kids from that school across town. What was it you called yourself? A "JCPenney mannequin with a pulse."

For a few golden hours, we were the family from those photographs hanging in the hallway—the ones that always make you snort because, as you once muttered under your breath, "greatest fiction ever written."

But then Uncle Rick—what a colossal jerk that man is—had to mention your grades. And I saw it happen, Jake. The way Dad's face changed. Like clouds rolling in before a bad summer storm. That stillness. That terrible stillness that signals the moment before a predator strikes.

When dinner was over, and your grandma was dishing out that pumpkin pie with too much nutmeg, he cornered you in the hallway by those fake family photos. His finger jabbing into your chest with each syllable: "Ungrateful. Lazy. Disappointment." Your eyes searched the room, looking for someone, anyone. A drowning man looking for a life raft. And what did I do? I looked away.

Later, when everyone had gone home with their leftover turkey and their illusions intact, I found you in the bathroom. Blood on the sink. A wad of toilet paper pressed to your split lip. Telling Mom you had tripped on the porch steps.

She believed you. Or pretended to. Same difference in the end, I suppose.

I should have stayed with you in that hallway. Should've created a distraction. Done something, anything to break that moment before it broke you instead.

I watched him kill your world one book at a time. He upended that cardboard box like dumping out a sack of dead kittens. Your paperbacks hit the floor with soft thuds—Lord of the Flies, Treasure Island, that dog-eared Steinbeck book you read six times. The spines cracked open like ribs.

You used to hide inside those pages. I knew it. When the yelling got too loud, when the air in this house turned to wet cement, you would vanish into the margins. Now, here he was, peeling them apart with his meaty fingers, methodical, like a man gutting fish.

I could have intervened. But I just sat there, listening to the sound of your quiet places getting ripped in half.

"All this imagination nonsense is making you soft," he growled as he ripped the cover off your dog-eared copy of The Hobbit, the one with your careful notes in the margins. "It's time you focused on something useful for once in your life."

You did not fight back or plead for mercy; instead, you stood perfectly still with that carefully constructed blankness. I have come to recognize this as your armor, the face you wear when storms gather, and there's nowhere to hide.

I could have done something—something to divert his attention—but the coward in me kept still, kept quiet, kept safe while your treasures were desecrated before your eyes.

Later that night, when darkness pressed against the windows and the house settled into its familiar creaks and sighs, I heard you under your blankets, voice

barely a whisper as you recited from memory the stories he thought he had taken from you. You stumbled over your words as you fought to preserve what remained.

"It's not so bad," you told me the following day, your fingers absently tracing invisible book spines on your empty shelf, your voice flattened by resignation. "I still remember most of the important parts."

Your thirteenth birthday was the kind of day that haunts me when I close my eyes. Mom had promised to take you and your friends to that new Marvel movie. But she had to cover someone's shift at the hospital at the last minute. Dad was home, though. Sitting in his recliner, beer in hand, watching men in tight pants chase a ball across a field like it held the secret to eternal life.

He could have taken you. Instead, he told you to call your friends and cancel because he "wasn't a damn chauffeur." I watched you make those calls one by one. Jimmy. Then Marcus. Then that new kid—what was his name? The one with the stutter and the Pokémon cards? Your voice stayed steady, but your hand clenched into a fist so tight I could see the tendons standing out like bridge cables.

You went to your room and shut the door. I could hear you inside for what felt like hours. You would not let anyone in. Through the crack beneath the door, I could see your shadow, motionless on the floor, back against the bed like a prisoner facing a firing squad.

I wish I had made such a racket so that you couldn't stay alone with whatever dark thoughts circled in your head like buzzards over roadkill. Instead, I eventually gave up and walked away, telling myself you needed space.

Space. What a crock of crap. You needed someone to stand between you and the world for once.

Then there was that science project. That solar system model you spent weeks on. Jupiter with its swirling red spot, like an angry eye. Saturn's rings were made from some plastic strips you had cut from God-knows-what. Your teacher had given you an A+ with a note saying you might have a future in astronomy.

The pride was written all over your face when you carried it through the front door. Like you were cradling a newborn.

He barely glanced up from his phone before telling you to "get that junk out of the living room." He cut you off when you started explaining how the orbits worked. "If you put half your effort into something useful, like mowing the lawn or fixing that loose gutter, maybe you wouldn’t be such a disappointment."

The way your face collapsed, Jake. Like someone had reached inside and pulled out your skeleton all at once.

You put the project on the top shelf in your closet. Later that week, I heard the crash when it "accidentally" fell while Mom was cleaning. We both knew it wasn't an accident. Found pieces of Neptune under your dresser months later, like blue shrapnel from a war no one acknowledged was happening.

I should have found a way to protect that project. Should've shown you that someone thought your creation was worth safeguarding.

Dad's "lessons in responsibility" meant making you walk the three miles to Southridge High, even in the kind of weather that makes newscasters warn people to stay indoors. December rain that fell like needles. February snow that drifted higher than your knees in places.

I would watch from the window as you grew smaller and smaller, shoulders hunched against whatever elements were punishing you that day, until you disappeared around Elm and Westfield. The helplessness sank into me, gnawing at my insides.

"One day, I'm going to live somewhere so quiet that the loudest sound will be pages turning," you told me once while we hid in the backyard during one of their nuclear-level fights. You were reading that Bradbury book, the one about the tattooed man, and your voice took on that rhythmic quality his writing has. "I'll have shelves of books and windows that catch the sunrise, and not one single door will ever slam."

I believed you then. Still do. You are going to escape this place, and part of me rejoices for you while another part turns to ice at the thought of you leaving without knowing the truth.

Remember that night you snuck out to the 7-Eleven at midnight because you were out of milk, and Dad had threatened consequences if he couldn't have his cereal at 5 AM before work. You were terrified the entire mile walk there and back, jumping at every shadow and rustling leaf like you were walking through a minefield. I could have found a way to come with you, been your lookout, your companion in the darkness that seemed to press in from all sides.

These memories haunt me, Jake. They crowd my dreams and follow me through waking hours like persistent ghosts. Sometimes, I imagine different endings—ones where I am braver, stronger, and stand between you and harm's way like some guardian angel. But imagining doesn't change what happened. Nothing can change the past.

I know what you're thinking. That I was scared, too. That I’m smaller, and what could I possibly have done? Maybe you're right. Maybe my presence would not have changed anything. But I still wish I had tried. Because that's what love is supposed to do—make you brave when you've got every reason to be afraid.

You leave little clues, I notice—the college brochures hidden under your mattress, all for schools at least three states away; the extra shifts at Kroger that you don't need for gas money like you tell Mom. You have stopped putting posters up in your room as if you're already gone in your mind. You are planning your escape, and I don't blame you. Not one single bit.

I remember last summer when we sat by Miller's Creek, and you skipped stones across the water. You were good at it—five, six, seven skips before the stones finally surrendered to gravity and sank. After a while, you stopped throwing and just sat there, knees pulled to your chest like you were trying to make yourself smaller. Less of a target, maybe.

"Sometimes I think about just walking into the water and not stopping," you said so quietly, I almost didn't hear it. My heart stopped like a clock whose battery had just died. "Not to die or anything dramatic like that. Just to see how far I could go before I had to turn back."

You must have sensed my concern because you quickly added, "Don't worry. I wouldn't leave you behind." Then you smiled, the kind of smile that doesn't reach your eyes but tries its best anyway.

Do you remember saying that? I wonder if you meant it. Because the truth is, Jake, you are going to leave me behind. And you should. You need to go as far as possible from this house and these memories. You need to keep walking and never turn back. Like those horror movies you watch—the ones where the real mistake is when someone looks over their shoulder instead of running like hell.

I wish I could have told you how extraordinary you are every day. Your kindness during your own suffering humbles me beyond words. Your gentle nature reveals the man you're becoming—someone nothing like him.

I would have told you that you deserve so much more than they gave you. That the person they describe when they're angry isn't you but some twisted reflection born of their own failings. I would have told you I see the real you—brilliant, compassionate, and unbelievably strong.

If I could go back, I would raise such an alarm at every instance of cruelty. I would place myself between you and every raised hand, every cutting word.

But I can't go back. None of us can. Time only runs in one direction, merciless as a train on fixed tracks.

Tonight's the night—your birthday, eighteen years of endurance finally culminating in this moment of escape. For weeks, I have spied on you packing that duffel bag, noticing items disappearing one by one from your room while those extra shifts at Kroger suddenly made perfect sense.

When the house fell into its nightly silence, I saw you retrieve that envelope from behind your dresser, handling it like something sacred—a bus ticket to Portland nestled inside. Your cousin waiting there with a couch offered and promises of a fresh start far from this suffocating place.

While they slept in ignorant peace, you slipped into my room and knelt beside my bed, your whisper so soft it barely disturbed the darkness between us. "I'll come back for you when I'm settled. Six months. Maybe less. I promise."

Then you were gone. I heard the back door click shut at precisely 2:17 AM—a sound that seemed both deafening and impossibly small.

By dawn, they'll discover your absence. There will be yelling that makes the walls tremble, accusations hurled like weapons, maybe even tears from Mom that come too late to matter. But you'll be miles away by then, following those little red Xs to freedom like breadcrumbs leading out of a dark forest.

I will remain here, counting days that stretch like years, faithfully guarding what you left behind. All I can do is ask for what I don't deserve: your forgiveness. Not for your sake—you owe me nothing—but for mine. Because the weight of having failed as man's best friend is almost too much to bear.

Forever loyal, always yours, Scout