Kevin

When I was little I spent most of my summer days at my friend Emily’s house. My parents were good friends with her parents and we would often barbeque together, celebrate the Fourth of July together and go camping together. My older brother, who is four years older than me, was in the same grade as their son, Kevin. I remember the fun I used to have when I went to their house. We would stay up late watching gory television shows which was a treat for me since my parents didn’t own a TV. Emily and I would play dress-up for hours on end. She had make-up kits and it was at her house that I learned how to apply eye shadow and lipstick. I remember feeling like a grown-up when we would model our clothes for Emily’s family, showing off our costume make-up and flowered hats. Kevin was thirteen at the time. To me, he was like a brother. He was a boy and absolutely had cooties. He would play with us sometimes, he taught us how to play truth or dare and made us tuna sandwiches. But it was also Kevin that took away the innocence of a little girl one summer. She was about my age and I knew her. He forced her out of her childhood and into the adult that we so often dressed up as.

I didn’t understand it at the time but I was old enough to know something was wrong. It started with hushed conversations between my parents behind closed doors. Things were tense in our household. My older brother was pulled aside and spoken to in private by my parents for a long time in their bedroom. He came out looking serious and said nothing when I asked him what was wrong. Kevin, Kevin, Kevin. Then name was dropped a few times but no one would say what he did. Finally, after several days of serious tones, my parents asked me to stay seated at the kitchen table after everyone else was excused. They kept it light, they were sweet. But I could tell from their eyes that a piece of their world had fallen off, they were frantic with worry. “Has Kevin ever touched you?” The question seemed simple enough to me. I repeated over and over the truth, Kevin had never once laid a finger on me or made me feel uncomfortable in any way.

It was years later that my parents finally admitted the truth to me. His trial was still not over and Kevin was being tried as an adult for molestation of a six year old girl. I knew her. She was two grades beneath me. The story was kept quiet in my town. But my parents never really recovered from the severity of what happened. Years later, when I talk to them about it, their shock is still evident. Their best friends, the people who they trusted their children’s lives with, had raised a child that committed unspeakable acts at the age of thirteen. Kevin claimed to have been sexually abused when he was a child as well. I remember that after the storm blew over, I didn’t go over to friends houses for a long, long time. You never really know what happens within families and who you can trust in the wild and wonderful world, and I think my parents learned that lesson better than most.