Chapter 1

“Now, remember, he’s had a major breakdown. The doctors said that he has the mental capacity of a five year old, now. He probably won’t even know who we are.” I sucked in my breath and my hand tightened around the hand of the man warning me.

“Look, there he is!” His finger pointed and my eyes followed it to a young man with soft brown hair and a friendly smile on his face. In one hand he clutched the hand of a large black man, an orderly maybe, and in the other he held a small bouquet of onion blossoms.

He walked nearer to us, but hid halfway behind the larger man.

“Hi, Lance. My name is Justin.” Justin held out his hand, but nobody else moved, and he dropped it back to his side. The hiding man looked to my face, and I marveled at how different his sparkling green eyes looked now. All of the time that I had known him, they had been incredibly deep and sorrowful. Now they glittered with innocence, like two shallow pools of water with pale green algae at the bottoms.

My thoughts were interrupted by a jab to my side, and I looked into Justin’s cool blue eyes. He motioned toward the other people in our vicinity, and I returned my attention to them. The green-eyed man had not come any closer, but had his arm extended toward me, the onion blossoms shaking nervously. I saw his eyes again, and noticed how they were wide with a pure innocence, one I had never witnessed in all my life. It took me by surprise and I gasped, but then caught myself. I slowly took the flowers in my hand, and a smile returned to his lips.

“Thank you. They’re beautiful, Lance.” His smile grew, and he came out from hiding, though he would not drop the black man’s hand, and my eyes inadvertently focused on the pair of hands. Ivory clashed with the deep chocolaty brown, but somehow did so in good taste.

“Lance, I’m going to leave you here, with Justin and Britney, okay?” He held Lance’s face in his hands to be sure that the smaller man was listening.

“Yes, sir,” His deep, bass voice, somehow squeaked under the pressure.

“Are you going to be a good boy for your visitors?”

“We’ll make sure that he’s good, sir.” Justin patted Lance on the back and smiled, causing Lance to jump nervously and wrap his arms around his body.

“So, what’s up with this, Lance? You really don’t know who we are?”

“Justin!” I lightly smacked the back of his head.

“What? We were best friends for six years, Brit!” I glanced toward Lance and saw that confusion took over all of his features.

“My best friend is Tom.”

“Tom?” I asked in the friendliest voice that I could conjure up, taking on the tone of a kindergarten teacher.

“He makes food where I live.” His entire body moved in one big sweep as he pointed to the mental hospital that he had been staying in since the breakdown. I looked to Justin and it was evident in his face that he was holding back tears. His lip quivered and his eyes shined with unshed tears at the realization that his friend really was gone and for good. The doctors had all told us that he would never get better, he would be a child for the rest of his life.

“What’s wrong?” Lance faced Justin for the first time since the breakdown, his brow wrinkled in a very familiar expression.

“I’ve got to go. Come on, Brit.” Justin pulled me by the arm across the field, and I turned my head to watch the hospital worker go back to Lance. He pulled me straight to his car, without even checking back out through the hospital. He put on his seat belt and locked the door, but did not start the car. Instead he laid his head on the steering wheel and started crying.

He cried for a good, sold five minutes, without my interrupting him. I simply stared out the windshield, until he raised his head and looked over in my direction.

“He’s gone, Brit. He’s really gone.”

“Justin, the doctors told us he wouldn’t be his old self.” He swallowed hard before replying.

“I know, but I didn’t think he’d be like this. I mean, we were like brothers for six years, and all of a sudden he has no fucking clue who I am."

“Think how his mother must feel.”

Justin’s head fell back onto the steering wheel, and I wished I hadn’t said a word. I bit my lip, and slipped out the door after unlocking his. I opened up his door, and lightly pushed him over, into the passenger seat. We had to get back to JIVE, to repot the news to the JIVE executives.

~

“Oh My God! He’s just as bad as they told us,” He cried out in frustration.

“Justin!”

“He is, Brit. Get this! He gave Britney a bunch of weeds when we saw him.” I sighed as his rude comment.

“They’re flowers, Justin. It was sweet.” I pulled out the wilting onion blossoms and placed them on the table in front of me.

“Okay, now calm down Justin. We can fix this,” one of the executives attempted to stop Justin’s frantic screaming.

“The doctors told us that there’s no chance of him getting better. It completely screwed up part of his brain!” Justin was still freaking out, and I simply sighed, fingering the tiny white petals on the wood before me.

“We can teach him over again, can’t we?” One suit asked with his hands in his lap, probably trying to hide his sweating palms, though I don’t know why. Everyone was worried, so there was no need to try and hide his worry from the rest of us.

“I guess it could be done, but I can’t do it. He’s like a child.” I stayed out of the conversation, looking down at my hands nervously.

“Well, I guess the first step would be getting him out of that hospital…”

“Asylum.”

“Justin.” I glared at him for an instance before looking back down at my hands.

“Whatever it is, we’re going to have to have him under someone else’s care, here in Orlando.”

“His parents won’t be able to come here, but they can stay in Mississippi and take care of FreeLance.”

“Oh God! That project just went down the tubes!” I glared at my hands, tired of having to look up every time that Justin made a rude comment.

“I can take care of him,” I whispered, so that I wasn’t even sure that anyone in the room had heard me.

“What did you say, Britney?”

“I said that I’ll take care of him.”

“Are you sure that you want to do that, Britney? He’s just like a small child. He’s not the Lance that you used to know, anymore.”

“Seriously, Brit. This will be like a full-time job.”

“Until we get him placed in a home. They have those for people like him.”

I looked down at the tiny white flowers, scattered and wilting against the dark table, and nodded.

“I don’t mind.”

Chapter 2