Sideshow

Part title

My family moved six states away from any friends I had when I was in the third grade. That's why, as the introverted New Kid, I was so happy when Billy showed up one day on the playground at my new school. None of the other kids could see him. Neither could my teacher. Not my parents, either. He's what's called an "imaginary friend" is what they told me.
When Billy was still a regular feature in all my conversations halfway through the fifth grade, my parents took me to my new doctor. "It's just a phase," he reassured them, "albeit a long-lasting one."
Kids at school teased me about Billy all the time, but I didn't put much stock in it because Billy would always tell me they were jealous of our friendship. It was a comforting idea, and I clung to it. I needed it. Then Billy must have wanted the other kids to like him, because he joined in on the teasing. Nothing I couldn't laugh off, at first. A comment about my hair or clothes. A joke about how scrawny I was. But he always punctuated each comment with a laugh.
His teasing got more and more malicious, but the laugh remained. Until it didn't.
He called me some awful things that really stung. All my most intimate secrets became his weapons of choice in what became psychological warfare. I'd be playing in the backyard. My parents would hear me begin to cry. They'd run
out to check on me, first-aid kit in hand, and find a not-scraped me standing there, bawling, with my hands in fists and arms straight down at my sides. I'd tell them what Billy said, revealing some secret they didn't know about me, and they'd get upset about the secret.
What concerned them more was the fact of me letting this so-called imaginary 'friend' bully me around and that I let it weigh so much on me. Their concern waned when the doctor said it was probably my guilt about keeping secrets from them manifesting through a familiar outlet. He said it's easier to deal with berating oneself about things when we can make someone else the enemy; that it was a more extreme phase, but a phase nonetheless. It would pass soon, as I was getting to the age when people usually begin to understand their own emotions well enough to consciously adjust how to deal with things.
It didn't stop. Billy kept at it.
I kept being affected.
My parents' concern turned to anger as their patience faded. I need to grow up and stop blaming my imaginary friend for my guilt, they told me. They said he's not a good friend, and I should stop letting him hang around with me.
I told them it wasn't a matter of me letting him be there. I couldn't get rid of him. They'd see me in the backyard screaming at Billy to leave me alone and go away.
Their faces told me the anger was gone. Pity took root in its stead.
8th grade came around. Health & Sexuality class along with it. The new terminology added to Billy's ever-expanding lexicon, and you'd better believe he used those terms against me.
I told my parents about the new things Billy was calling me. The Fallopian phantom. Dad's eyes got wide. Second out of the scrotum. Mom's lower lip started to quiver. Worst in the womb. My parents took each other's hands. Sideshow zygote. Mom recoiled and gasped, stealing her hands away from Dad and putting them over her mouth.
She cried for a long time after that one. Dad stayed sat next to her, rubbing her back and doing his best to console an inconsolable hurt. When she finally calmed down enough to talk, they told me. They shared their own best-kept secret. I was a twin. They'd planned to name my brother 'William.' He came out first, but was stillborn.
Close, but no cigar.