(Trigger Warning: Abuse/ kidnapping of a minor)

I can’t do this anymore! I just can’t do it. I can’t go on pretending that nothing happened. I’m not like Jayson. I can’t just push it to the back of my mind and forget about it. No matter how much I want to forget, I can’t. Something did happen. It’s been eating away at me ever since.

Whenever life becomes too much and the memories bubble to the surface, I call Jayson. And when I can’t suppress the memories anymore, and everything is suffocating me, I call Jayson. I didn’t know what else to do that night. I wanted everything to go away, but it wouldn’t. I know I promised Jayson that I would never call him again, but I had to. I called him up. He hates it when I call him. He hates it whenever I bring it up.

He’s patient with me, placating me, but he doesn’t allow me to say what I need to say. At least not over the phone, and he refuses to see me in person. 

He gives me the same spiel as always. It happened twenty-some-odd years ago. We were kids, we did nothing wrong, blah, blah, blah… His rhetoric normally calmed my nerves, but this time it angered me. I hung up the phone.

It amazes me that Jayson can put the events of that frightful day behind him so easily. I don’t know how it doesn’t haunt him; it haunts me every single day. I have bad dreams and wakening nightmares constantly. The demons plague my every thought.

It doesn’t faze Jayson; not one bit. I wonder if he ever told his wife and kids. Probably not.

I always envied Jayson. I always wanted to be more like him. Callous and immune to the events of our past. I always looked up to him. He was my best friend. Truth be told, he was my hero, though I would never have admitted it to him or anybody else.

He’s right. We were kids. What happened wasn’t our fault, but it was. We did nothing to stop it. There wasn’t much we could have done. We could have gone to the police. It was doubtful they would have believed us. We could have called the police anonymously, but we didn’t. It didn’t occur to us. We sat idly by and watched as the horrors and torments happened.

We were seventeen years old, seniors in high school. I had a full scholarship to any college. I was accepted to every university I ever applied to. I could have gone anywhere I wanted and would not have to worry about the expenses. I knew exactly what I wanted to major in. I even had several jobs lined up for when I graduated college. For once, all of my hard work seemed to pay off.

I finally saw a way out of the shithole I called life. Until that day, I finally saw something better for myself. My brain turned to mush. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t handle what I was seeing. I couldn’t conceive of such horrors.

I vaguely remember standing there, shaking like a leaf, chanting, “We have to do something, we have to do something, we have to do something,” over and over again.

And then, somehow, we found ourselves in the woods behind Jayson’s house. He always kept a stash of joints and beer hidden in the little hut we had built.

He offered me a beer and a joint, but I couldn’t take either.

“We need to do something. We need to do something.” I couldn’t stop chanting it. I clung on to those words as if my life depended on it.

“Look, there’s nothing we can do.” Jayson paused, taking a hit from the joint while collecting his thoughts. He then continued, “There is nothing we can do. Best case scenario, if we go to the police, they will not believe us; worst case scenario, we will be the ones blamed for this. We will get into so much trouble for something we didn’t do. It will be our word against his. Our word wouldn’t mean much, especially mine, considering all the times I have been in trouble. Nobody will believe you because you hang out with me. C’mon he’s considered a pillar of our community, somebody we all should aspire to be.”

I tried stumbling out a few words but ended up choking instead. I didn’t want to believe Jayson, though he had a point.

“Listen,” Jayson continued. “We will be the ones to get into trouble for this. If that happens, you will lose your scholarships, your college admissions will be revoked, and you will lose that fancy job already set up for when you graduate in four years’ time. You have worked so hard to get out of this hell to actually become somebody. Nobody thought that that was possible because of your family. You have accomplished all this on your own. Do you really want to take that chance and lose it all?

“Anyway, this secret life that he’s hiding, somebody must know about it. It’s too big for somebody not to. Somebody more credible than us will find out about it and call the police. Everything will be fine.”

I don’t know what it was his words, the tone of his voice, the way he looked when he spoke, his charisma…Whatever it was, I believed him. He was able to put my troubled mind at ease, or at least for a couple weeks. After about a month, I just didn’t know how to approach it. It was too much. It was too big.

In those days, I would have followed Jayson to the ends of the earth. Everybody would have. I remember how he could convince any student to do his homework. He didn’t have to threaten them, blackmail them, or bribe them in any way, he was just that convincing.

He had a gift.

He was my best friend, and he saved my hide on so many occasions. We knew each other our entire lives. My parents were mean drunks (just like everybody else in my family), and could get quite abusive, especially when I did something wrong, like take out the trash the wrong way. Yes, there was a right way and a wrong way of doing that.

If I didn’t take out the trash like I was supposed to, Jayson would take the blame for that. He’d always take the blame if he could. Everybody in the neighborhood knew what was going on, but nobody cared, except for him. Unfortunately, he was the town’s troublemaker. Everybody thought that Jayson was rotten to the core. If anything happened, it was his fault.

Our trek through school was an interesting one. Jayson was considered somewhat of a god. He was Mr. Popular, and could Tom Sawyer anyone to do what he wanted. It was a skill I admired.

High school was a different story. We had a teacher, Mr. Weiss, who wouldn’t put up with any of Jayson’s crap. I couldn’t stand Mr. Weiss neither could Jayson. He was always on our case. He was on my case constantly for hanging out with Jayson. He couldn’t figure out why we were friends. He thought Jayson would bring me down, and eventually ruin my life. Any mischief Jayson would get into, Mr. Weiss blamed it on me for not stopping him.

He was always on Jayson’s case for not applying himself. Nothing Jayson ever did was good enough for Mr. Weiss. If Jayson wasn’t one of the first students in class, he was late, even if the bell hadn’t rung yet. Every time Jayson would turn in a homework assignment, Mr. Weiss would quickly skim through it, crumble up the paper in a ball, and say in front of the entire class, “This is trash.” He would then toss the crumbled-up assignment into the wastebasket.

I think we were the only kids in the entire school who didn’t like Mr. Weiss— everybody’s favorite teacher. The students loved him, the other teachers and faculty members loved him, and all the parents loved him. He was very passionate about his job, and would go above and beyond for just about anyone and everyone.

The entire community loved him. Everybody knew him and admired him. Year after year, he would be nominated for Who’s Who Among American Teachers and awarded the National Teacher of the Year Award.

I never understood it.

There was something about him. He was always so happy, so jolly, so passionate about teaching. He just loved his job and his students so much. I thought it was a charade; nobody is that joyful. He was just too perfect and seemed like a fake to me, always in the news and in the papers for one good deed or another.

Jayson and I were unfortunate enough to have Mr. Weiss for all four years of high school. It was horrible. I couldn’t stand the man. It was in our senior year. Mr. Weise was once again giving Jayson a hard time.

All of Mr. Weiss tests were multiple-choice, except for those he would give Jayson—all essays. Anyway, there was this particular day when Jayson allowed all the students to copy his homework. Of course, when we handed in our assignments, Mr. Weiss looked over Jayson’s and stated that his assignment was absolutely rubbish, and that he would not waste his time grading something so terrible. He crumbled up the homework and tossed it into the trash can.

The next morning, when he was handing back the assignments, he seemed very pleased. “This is what I like,” he said. “Teamwork. You all worked together and answered the questions on the assignment thoroughly and correctly. I can tell you all put in a lot of time and effort, and brainstormed…” Mr. Weiss droned on. I stopped listening at that point. I was looking over at Jayson. He’s the one that did the assignment and gave it to everybody else to copy. His assignment looked like everybody else. Yet, he got an F for it when everybody else was getting high praises.

Jayson was livid. The more Mr. Weiss went on about how great the papers were, the redder Jayson got. His hands clenched in fists. His jaw became squared, his lips became thin and tight, and his eyes became small, beady, and dark. It amazed me how much his appearance changed.

Jayson stood up and shoved his desk out of the way. He had had enough.

“Man, why do you always have to do that. This assignment that you gave me an F for, but praising everyone else. That’s all my work. They all copied off of me. I work hard on these assignments, but nothing is ever good enough. So why don’t you pick on somebody else for a change? I have had enough!” He stormed out of the room, or tried to, until Mr. Weiss stopped him.

“Jayson, I am not picking on you. I do expect more from you. You are exceptionally intelligent. In all of my years of teaching, I have rarely had the pleasure of teaching someone like you. Everything comes so easy for you. You are light years ahead of the rest of the class. I am just trying to challenge you.”

Jayson pushed Mr. Weiss out of the way and stormed out of the room. He slammed the door behind him. There was dead silence for a moment. Then, whispers erupted as the students were trying to figure out if Mr. Weise had just insulted them or not.

That class was the longest ever! I couldn’t wait for the bell to ring. I just stared at the clock for the remainder of class. To my amazement, it seemed that the clock was ticking backwards. With Jayson gone, I became the brunt of Mr. Weiss’s comments. He kept making snide remarks. These remarks went over the heads of my fellow classmates, but not mine. It seemed unprofessional to me.

I ended up calling him out on it.

“And what do you know of professionalism? You’re only a child. Stop interrupting class. There are people here who are actually trying to learn.”

There was so much I wanted to say, but before I could say anything, the bell rang. I bolted out of that room at supersonic speed. I saw Jayson in the hallway and summarized what happened after he left. The more we talked about Mr. Weiss, the angrier we became. There was just something about that man that I couldn’t stand. In the heat of our anger, we came up with this awesome idea: to totally trash Mr. Weiss’s house.

We knew where Mr. Weiss lived, and waited about a week before skipping school. We trotted over to his house. With one-hundred percent certainty, we knew that he was at school. Mr. Weiss was never absent.

Getting into his house was extremely simple. The front door was locked, but not the back.

I remember being stunned as I walked in. It didn’t look like a teacher’s house. Not that I knew what a teacher’s house was supposed to look like.

I expected books all over the place, but there was not a single book in sight. For a bachelor, his house was immaculate. It was a perfect showroom house. I was starting to wonder if we had the right place.

I had a bad vibe. There was so much tension in the air. It wasn’t a pleasant place. Jayson and I walked around the house, and then he started smashing things. I joined in the fun. We would take turns breaking things. That’s when I heard a noise. I couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from.

“Shh… Quiet, dude! Do you hear that?”

“Hear what? There’s no one here.”

“I know that, but I hear something. It… it. I can’t make it out! It’s really muffled. It sounds like it’s coming from below us. Wait! Is there a basement?”

Jayson just rolled his eyes. He grabbed some of the spray paint we had brought with us and began shaking the can.

“Dude, just stop making noise for five seconds and listen! Where is that sound coming from? It kind of sounds like a muffled scream. I don’t know, just listen.”

Jayson finally took me seriously and stopped to listen.

“That does sound like it’s coming from below us,” he said.

I followed the sound into the kitchen. There were four doors. Jayson and I opened every one until we finally found steps that descended downstairs.

When we opened the door, an awful smell assaulted our nostrils. Jayson tried to hold back his cough. His hands instinctively went up to his face to cover his nose and mouth.

“Oh god, what is that smell?” I gagged out. Jayson hit me in my shoulder.

“Be quiet!” he mouthed to me.

Engulfed by the darkness, Jayson was the first to take the stairs. He moved slowly, and I followed behind him as my eyes tried to adjust. At the bottom of the stairs, I found the light and switched it on.

The image that we saw horrified us. It was surreal—something straight from a horror movie. Neither one of us was prepared, and what we saw made us loathe Mr. Weiss even more. It made me sick to think that people actually admired him and loved him.

Down in the basement was a chain-link fence that went from floor to ceiling. There were three sets, maybe five feet by five feet. Two of them were empty, and the third was padlocked. Inside the locked cage was a naked girl with a chain around her ankle, along with a cot and a bucket with a chair over it. The chair had a hole in it.

The girl was covered in filth and blood. She was so pale and so thin. It was hard to tell how old she was. I doubt she was any older than ten. She was so tiny. I found myself trying not to cry.

I looked over at Jayson, who was frozen. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t do anything. He didn’t move. He just stood there.

“Shit! Jayson, come on, dude. Help me!” I screamed while pushing past him.

“Hi. We are going to get you out. It’s going to be okay. I promise. I am not leaving until help comes,” I told the girl in a much softer, gentler tone. Hiding in the corner farthest away from us, she was clearly afraid.

I grabbed the lock and shook it, hoping that it would magically come loose; it didn’t. I then started to shake the fence, though I knew nothing would happen; I didn’t know what else I could do. I didn’t see anything that I could open the lock with. I decided to speak to the shaking girl, hoping that she could tell me where the key was so I could get her out of there.

I noticed Jayson was still in shock, so I went up to him and shook him. I needed him to come back to his senses.

“Dude! Come on, you have to help me! We need to get her out of here!”

“Out of here,” he repeated. “C’mon, your right, we need to get out of here.” He grabbed my arm and started to pull me up the steps.

“Dude, stop! I’ll stay here. You go and call the cops!”

I don’t really remember what happened. The stench of blood, filth, and fear was nauseating. Seeing a girl locked up in a basement… In my seventeen years of existence, it never occurred to me that this could happen in real life.

All I can I remember was Jayson saying that we have to get out of there. He dragged me out of the basement. I thought we were going upstairs to find a phone so we could call the cops. I just blindly followed Jayson’s lead. He always knew what to do in any kind of situation.

We didn’t look for a phone but instead ran straight to our hideout. I kept insisting that we needed to get help, but Jayson somehow convinced me to “forget” about the girl in the basement.

“Listen, nobody will ever believe us. We are only kids with bad reputations. Mr. Weiss is a beloved figure in this town. People worship him. Do you honestly believe somebody would take our word over his? You have a chance of getting out of here. This could ruin it.”

Jayson was right about one thing, it did ruin my chance, but not in the way he was talking about. The guilt ripped me apart. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, and I definitely could not go back to school and see Mr. Weiss. So, I dropped out of high school in my senior year with a 4.0 grade point average.

I eventually stopped talking to Jayson. The fact that we just left this little girl in her torture cell, after I promised her that I would help her, was too much for me.

It still eats at me to this day. I didn’t know how to help her. I wanted to, but I just didn’t have the courage. This secret, this silence, this burden became a monster that I didn’t know how to approach.

For weeks after the event, I kept trying to talk to Jayson about it, but he wouldn’t listen. He kept shutting me down. He seemed perfectly normal, perfectly fine. What we witnessed didn’t seem to bother him.

“Listen, just shut up about it, okay? Forget it. Mr. Weiss will get caught. She will get rescued. The cops will discover her, but from people more credible than us. Anyway, something like this is huge. Mr. Weise will get caught. He has to.”

That was the end of our friendship. Jayson was right, Mr. Weiss was caught twenty years later. It nearly destroyed the town. Nobody could believe that he could be capable of such horrors.

***

After following the story on the news, the guilt is too unbearable. I decide to call Jayson. I need to talk to somebody about this, but I know it is a mistake. I’ve been mixing booze with pills hoping to drown out the guilt.

I feel like a monster. All those lives destroyed, and I did nothing to stop it. I could have at least tried, but I didn’t. I was too afraid. I did nothing.

Instead of having the life that I worked so hard for, which is partly the reason I didn’t go to the cops, I was afraid they would blame me, and now I’m living the life I always dreaded. A high school dropout, jumping from job to job, spending all my free time with my two best friends —booze and pills searching for redemption at the bottom of a bottle.