He carried me quietly, tiptoeing up the steps with my loose body in his arms. I always woke up when he reached the very top, but I never opened my eyes. I continued my feigned slumber and let him tuck me in because I knew it made him happy. He would support me with one shaky arm while pulling the covers back with the other. He laid me to rest and drew the blanket up almost to my neck. I kept my breathing steady as he brushed the hair from my face and placed it behind my ears.
When he retreated his hand, he would stand there for a time, not moving, maybe staring. He did nothing, but shortly after I would hear his footsteps and the click of the door closing. I was still, deathly still, until I was sure he had left and gone back downstairs.
I would sit up and slowly get out of bed, moving to the large window that overlooked the street. Opening it carefully, I climbed out onto the roof silently and sat directly in front of the window sill. The roof's slope was soft, so I didn't slide off. The old shingles rubbed against my pants, leaving pieces of themselves all over me. I tried not to shift my feet too much as any small movement made a gravelly type of noise that sounded a hundred times louder in the night.
Most nights, the boy from next door would join me till dawn, observing the sky and ground. All the houses in our neighborhood were not three feet from each other, allowing him to jump over to my roof from his with little effort. He sat close to me and sometimes we held hands. Together, we watched the road below, the street lamp and the flickering of house lights. The stars shimmered above us, scattered like glass on the sky and dimmed by the lights seeping from deep within the distant city.
To the left we could turn our heads and see the school. We were in the same class but didn't talk often. Only when we reached middle school did we really get to know each other. We walked to school on the foggy mornings together, and returned the same way. We sat, backs to our lockers at lunch time, sharing the food our mothers had packed for us.
On weekends, we bussed to the city and adventured around downtown all day. We got ice cream and window shopped. When we got tired, we would sit outside the coffee shop looking at people pass by and drinking iced black tea. He would laugh at the lady with a strange hat, the stern looking business man with a stained shirt, the child that tripped and cried. I would smile and examine his delicate laugh lines. He would say, 'Why is everyone in such a hurry?' while leaning back in his chair.
We usually arrived home at twilight and he would spend the night at my house. We laid on our sides, face to face on my narrow bed. I was pressed against the wall and we held hands. As we tried to fall asleep in the early hours of dawn, the sun glowed red through the venetian blinds and he sang in a hushed tone,
'Good night, good night,
The stars again,
Are shining so bright,
Sleep with no fear,
with good, happy dreams,
I'll still be here,
When morning comes,
I'll still be near,'
My eyes would slide shut and I would dream of him. When I woke up in the afternoon, he would be beside me dozing peacefully, our fingers still entwined. I pressed my forehead against his and listened to his rhythmic sighs. When he opened his eyes a short time later, we would make our way downstairs to eat and watch the sun shine through the kitchen window. We talked about anything, everything. Our family, our experiences, our interests, ourselves.
Nothing changed when we entered high school. We spent our first and second years much the same as we had for the longest time.
However, something was different in our third year. He had made more friends and even joined a club, I'm not sure which. At breaks and lunch time, I would sit outside or in the library and read. He stopped coming and I stopped bringing lunch.
On weekends, I wouldn't see him. I walked the city streets alone, or stayed home and counted the birds that landed in the trees. On nights I spent on the roof, I sat by myself and sometimes saw him come home late, strolling down the sidewalk and making his way to the front door of his house. I always wondered where he had been, what he had been doing, who he was with.
When we talked, it was about meaningless things. What we had learned in class, a book I read last week, the nice weather. I wondered when our conversations became so dull, when he had stopped being there, when I had stopped caring. When did we drift so far?
In March, a month from graduation, my father died.
He didn't come to the funeral. I saw the light from his room when I climbed up on the roof the night of the funeral. It was cold. My breath froze as I sang almost soundlessly,
'The stars again, are shining so bright,'
I could hear my mother crying through the open window of the bedroom that now belonged only to her. Sobbing, moving, breaking.
'I'll still be here,'
An ever bright moon shone a crescent above the trees, sometimes obscured by clouds that moved across the horizon. They were grey and wispy, edges illuminated. I shrugged off my suit jacket. It slid from me, down the roof and onto the grass, a black heap.
'When morning comes,'
He shut his curtains and his room went dark, I knew he had gone to sleep. My eyes watered and my throat became too tight. My voice was uneven and thick.
'I'll still be near. . .'
