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Chapter 1
August
Age: 25
Wake up, Valley boy, another day to greet.
I glance at the clock, glare at it, and then throw it across the room. “Fifteen more minutes,” I tell myself, and suddenly, I am getting dressed anyway.
If I could rest my head, close my eyes, and wake up somewhere else I would. Maybe in my wildest dreams I could wake up back at home in my little tool-shed house with the intoxicating scent of bacon wafting throughout the room. My Ma would stand in front of the stove, flipping eggs as she hummed serenely to herself. My brothers would romp and roughhouse like savage dogs, salivating at the mouth and ‘calling’ the largest piece of bacon. My Pa would mumble something about the ‘damn city folks’ that are ‘infiltrating the area’ as he sat in his rickety old chair, reading the local paper. I would sit up, rub my eyes, and excitedly plan another day. Another day with him.
However, I can’t do that. There are bills to be paid, houses to sell, and old memories to tuck away like last year’s shoes. Besides, even in my childhood, things weren’t so perfect. He didn’t show up until ma was good and dead-- buried deep in the ground because of too hard a beating. My Pa would hold a bottle of beer instead of the paper. My brothers would not ‘roughhouse’. They would fistfight. Still, I missed it. I always would.
We never realize what we have until it’s gone. Whether it’s a childhood in Oregon or your first love. Or maybe both.
I grew up in a small town in Oregon that no one has ever heard of. The coast was only a few hours westward and a small stream ran just a couple hundred yards away from my house. Back then, at the age of ten or eleven, my first thought every morning was how I was going to escape. I wanted to be a city boy. I wanted to be surrounded by people and buildings. I wanted to be busy because when I was busy and away from home, no one could bother me.
Now, I can only regret not holding onto my childhood tighter. I can only regret the years I spent moping around inside when the forests outside were calling. He introduced me to the woods. My best friend. My first friend.
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July-August
Age: Eleven
The day we met was like any other summer’s day, bright and warm. My brothers were swinging into the creek from an old decaying rope. I sat on the sidelines, waiting for it to snap.
As rules go, we children should have been abiding by them. We had enough of them: No harassing the neighbors, no using ’the rope’, no poking snakes, and no eating things off the ground. However, neither of us thought it worth mentioning. After all, what would be the fun in that? A sense of adventure came with disobedience and, in that, we fully agreed that silence should be therefore kept.
The trees of the forest-- thick bulky towers of life-- extended up high into the heavens, shadowing the forest floor with their leafy canopies. Through these thin tube-like leaves, stray beams of sunlight cast a soft golden hue onto patches of earth, illuminating the silver puddles, the bunches of grass, and huge fallen logs. The air boasted a powerful earthy scent of dank brush and soil. The river was like a bronze plate, glowing under the sun in the morning light, reflecting the blurry images of trees and brush like a watercolor painting.
“Come on, Alex! Jump on in! The water’s fine!” My eldest brother, Joseph, shouted, shaking the icy droplets from his matted mud-colored hair.
At thirteen, my other brothers, Matt and Eric, who were both nine, idolized him. The twins were both big boys. When I say big, I mean fat as walruses. Ma used to say it was because they were ‘healthy’. I thought it was because they ate the dog’s food as well as their own. Whatever the case, they were giants. I didn’t want to be in the water when the rope snapped and flung one of them into the air. With my luck, it would throw them right in my direction.
“No thanks!” I answered, tucking my knees under my chin. I didn’t want to be out by the creek but Pa had told Joseph to take me with him because I was getting ‘in the way’. This meant that he wanted to have a couple beers without feeling guilty.
“Come on, Squirt. Only pansy boys are afraid of getting wet. Get your a** in the water! Pa said I was in charge!”
“I’m not a pansy boy!”
“Then come on in.”
Unable to argue with his logic, I snapped the book I was reading shut and ambled gracelessly towards the water.
The creek was only about ten feet across so I didn’t bother with the rope. I was too small and lightweight to actually make it into the water. In fact, I would probably fly to the other side of the bank. The moment I jumped in, I regretted it. The icy water chilled my bones and at that precise moment, Eric decided it was his turn to use the rope. ‘So much for living,’ I thought to myself.
Eric was the rounder of the two fatties. His short stumped fingers were as thick as sausages and when he walked, he swayed from side to side in a waddling motion. I could only assume that this was because he had not yet learned how to balance himself out. You see, Eric had been born with my Ma’s feet. In other words, dwarf feet. Coupled with his obesity, this made Eric perhaps one of the clumsiest boys in town. I knew if anyone would squish me it would be him. Even though I was older then Eric and Matt, I was a good deal smaller.
Before Eric could jump and kill me, something stopped him. He froze dead still, like a hound when it hears something rustle in the brush. Joseph opened his mouth to say something but stopped when our brother started trembling, wide-eyed.
“D-did you g-guys h-hear that?”
At this point, we were all thinking Eric was somewhat crazy. After all, none of us had heard anything and if we did, we would smartly shrug it off as a bird or something. Eric could be so over dramatic.
Regaining his older-brother composure, Joseph rolled his eyes. “Eric, you didn’t hear nuthin’. Stop whining and jump already!”
“But I did! I did hear something!”
By now, Matt was whimpering and sniffling too, claiming to hear whatever Eric heard. Apparently, they had some sort of psychic twin connection going on that they hadn’t told us about before. Joseph and I just looked at each other, both terribly confused. If something was really in the forest then it was up to one of us to run and get Pa while the other stayed to fight it off. Naturally, Joseph would stay and be the ‘heroic’ one while I went off into the forest to get Pa. It was only fair considering our ages.
“Squirt, you get Pa. I’ll stay and fight.”
See?
“But what if it tries to get me?”
“Then throw a rock at it.”
With that useless piece of advice, I was off. Have you ever walked through a thorn bush? Not exactly the smartest idea, is it? This is what stumbling through the path felt like. Blinded by an idiotic fear of nothing. I could swear I heard something scrambling among the wood. I could swear I felt a static essence of panic in the air. I got but four yards down the path before…
Bump!
I screamed.
At first, I thought I had run into a tree and somehow knocked it over. It took me several moments to realize that what I was lying on top of was not a tree but an actual person. The boy looked up at me with dark brown eyes and a scrunched up face. He had the expression of someone who had tasted something much too sour. I thought that perhaps he smelled the river water on me and didn’t like it. His clothes were a bit too nice to be playing outside in and his nose was turned up a little at the end. Where I came from, such a look was the trademark ‘snob face’. Deciding I didn’t like him, because children decide things quickly, I speedily rolled off him.
“Watch where you’re going next time!” He snarled. His eyes narrowed at me and his face squished even more then before.
“Look whose talking! This is our land! I’m gonna tell me Pa on you if you don’t get off. Then, he’ll come out and shoot you with his deer gun!” This, apparently, was not the right thing to say. In fact, two seconds after I said it, the other boy decided that he was going to kill me before I got to my Pa. Children aren’t the best fighters. They fight dirty, clawing, biting, scratching and punching. However, he was my match in dirty fighting despite being a city boy and, before I knew it, Joseph was there pulling us apart.
I always thought it was weird how my brother managed to materialize out of thin air when trouble was about. In this sense, he reminded me of my Ma-- always there to ruin the fun. Seeing Eric and Matt waddling towards us, crunching any twig or branch in their path, the scrunch-faced boy allowed his fists to drop. He probably thought they were giant pet bears, not knowing much about the forest.
“Who are you?” My brother, Joseph, asked him. I thought this was a stupid question, considering he was obviously just a trespasser and deserved to be shot.
He blinked dumbly at us, as if he were trying to figure out whether or not to tell us some deep dark secret. After a few seconds of deep contemplation, he deemed us worthy of a name.
“Charlie Peterson.” he said.
“Ew.” My dog was named Charlie. He licked his butt.
“Is there something wrong with my name? Say ‘ew’ again and I’ll clobber ya!” Charlie threatened, shaking his fist in my face. I would have punched it away, but Joseph was dangling me in the air by my underarms and all I could do was spit at him.
“Well, hello Charlie. Welcome to our woods. This here is Squirt, I’m Joe, and those two fat-asses are Eric and Matt. You don’t need to remember which is which. Just call the fattest one ‘number 1’ and the other fat one ‘number 2’. That’s what the kids at school do.” Joseph flashed Charlie a crooked smile but the other boy didn’t return it. He tilted his nose in the air a bit and scrunched his face up more.
“I just moved here.” He finally said. My armpits were starting to hurt and this kid was boring me, so I kicked back and hit Joseph in the shin. It didn’t really hurt him so he set me down.
“New York, huh?” I said, almost condescendingly. “How’d a big city boy like you end up all the way over here?”
“Dad decided to move.”
“Why?” I asked, suddenly interested.
“Because…”
“Why?”
Joseph mumbled something about respecting people when they didn’t want to talk about themselves. I never understood how my brother could be so nice to other people, then turn around, and give his own flesh and blood the meanest wedgies we had ever experienced. I supposed it was because he naturally liked people but hated authority and since authority said he had to like his family he didn’t like us just for that reason. It was a reasonable assumption but when I brought it up to Pa, he whipped me, saying I had a “smart mouth”.
“Where do you live?” Joseph pried, acting the gentleman because he liked people and wanted more friends.
“Across the creek. I hopped some rocks to get to this side. It smells funny here.”
“No it doesn’t.” I argued. I was personally offended. “Is that why you keep scrunching your face so much?”
Joseph slapped his forehead, the twins balked, and Charlie sneered. The boy, with black hair so short I could practically see his scalp, ran off into the brush. He might have been crying but I was too confused to pay attention.
“What?”
I later came to realize that Charlie wasn’t tasting a lemon or sniffing poop. Instead, he was simply ugly. However, he didn’t stay that way.
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I can’t imagine what the first day of school must have been like for Charlie. He had no friends, no acquaintances, no nothing. Even I, the shy boy, had a good lot of friends that I had been familiar with since the age of four. He sat alone--silent-- in the seat closest to the window. I figured he was scared that if he spoke I would beat him into a bloody pulp. After all, I didn’t like him and if I asked nicely, I knew my brothers would hold him back as I scored a few punches. That was, if I could manage to smuggle them into Walter Ramsey’s Middle School. They were, after all, fourth-graders and still in Elementary School.
On that day, the sky was thick with gray fog, casting a dismal atmosphere over our tiny redbrick school. The school was separated into several tiny buildings orbiting around one large ‘main office’ in the center. Rain pelted the paneled roof of our classroom, emitting a gentle ‘clap plop’ sound. Mrs. Cassidy, my homeroom teacher, was a nervous woman and the rain made her hands twitch and her eyes dart from side to side. Her small body hunched in a timid manner--almost squirrel-like-- and when she walked, her feet never left the ground. She shuffled across the classroom. However, what struck me oddest about Mrs. Cassidy were the huge round spectacles she wore perched on her tiny button nose.
The class was fairly full, leaving only a couple miscellaneous seats empty. The desks were drawn close together in the limited space of the petite room. We were past the point of parents waiting in line for hours at a time to pick us up; lingering patiently to make sure their child was safe. Middle School was a totally different world. I could sense it-- smell it on the air. I could smell the adventures to be had and the mistakes to be made. I assumed an interest in girls would come later on in the year because, at that point, I had never felt any attraction to them. After all, girls had ’cooties’, right? Sure, they fascinated me, but not in the ways they should have. Clothes, hair, and gossip. All of this caught my attention. However, I stuck to my morals and tried my best to focus on manlier past-times.
My friend, Troy Smith, sat in front of me, jabbering on enthusiastically about a new game he had invented which involved both the essence of manhunt and seven minutes in heaven. My face screwed up into a scowl.
“Boys verses girls, of course.” Troy teased, smirking good-naturedly at the few boys who were nodding their heads enthusiastically. Ever since Troy had kissed Melissa Welshman in the third grade, he had been obsessed with girls. Melissa had been the third grade slut because she once came to school in her teenage sister’s sweater. The sweater had been bright pink and way too big on her (the sleeves reached her ankles and the sweater itself touched the floor) but it cut down provocatively in the front. Out of pity, I gave her my jacket when people started teasing her. After all, Ma had always told us that the Welshman were worse off then we were. It was no wonder she would get her sister’s hand-me-downs.
“What kind of girls are going to join that type of game?” I pitched in, a little less helpful then should have been.
“Hot ones!” Troy boasted confidently. “Seventh-graders maybe.”
Troy’s only redeeming quality was his huge bright smile. He got it from his dad who had once been in a toothbrush commercial. Needless to say, this was the only job his dad ever got. His mother brought home the bread.
She stole most of it from Publix.
“Where the hell are you going to scrounge up seventh grade girls?” I questioned. “I think good old fashioned manhunt is the best way to go. No girls allowed. They’d just whine the whole time, you know. We wouldn’t have any fun at all because they’d be crying about broken heels and stuff.”
“That’s not true!” Melissa argued, finally catching a gist of the conversation. “Girls are just as capable of playing manhunt as boys!”
A coy smile crept over Troy’s expression. “You should join us then. Alex can’t be the only girl.”
“You!” Before I could give him a good smack, the teacher started talking.
“Well, class. It’s good to meet you all. My name is Mrs. Cassidy.” Mrs. Cassidy’s voice was shaky, holding a slight foreign tinge to it. “M-many of you know me from last year.” She was referring to the minimal amount of sixth graders that had failed and were now attending the sixth grade for the second or third time in a row. A dumb lot, I personally believed.
I was also offended at her use of the word ‘many’ considering the amount of students attending her sixth grade class for the second time was only two or three. However, I couldn’t expect her to recognize familiar faces from new ones. She had horrible eyesight and hated children as it was.
I knew this all from what my brother, a former student of hers, told me. Joseph wasn’t exactly a bright boy and barely passed in anything he did. Any success he acquired academically stemmed from cheating. Now in eighth grade, Joseph was just a year away from being in high school. Pa said he could drop out when he turned sixteen, which greatly excited him. I thought that this just proved how little Pa expected of us.
“N-now class,” Mrs. Twitch (as many students referred to her) said. “I do believe we have a newcomer to the area in our class. Please introduce yourself young man”
At the time, I had been ignoring Mrs. Twitch, focusing primarily on Robert Tanning’s new sweater. Robert Tanning was the class snob-- not yet dethroned by scrunch-face. His parents were old: his mother a housewife and his father a former big-city lawyer. To say I was envious of my fellow classmate would be an understatement. I was so envious of the shiny blue material and the bright silver zippers that I failed to notice when Charlie stood up and began to make a fool of himself.
I only looked over when the class erupted in giggles and then went eerily quiet.
“What did scrunch-face say?” I questioned Robert, deciding he was a better source of gossip then any other girl or boy in the class. Robert, like his dad, had a gift for explaining things. I decided to momentarily put my hatred aside and ask him. After all, it was his fault I was distracted in the first place. Him and his damn sweater.
Robert, sitting a seat closer to the window then I, glanced at me once before answering, “He said, ‘Charlie’ and sat down without any more explanation.” The boy looked as bored as I felt with that story.
“So?”
“When he said it, Mrs. Twitch’s face screwed up like she had tasted something particularly sour and then her hands started shaking tremendously. She kind of looked like him for a moment there if you ask me. Minus the fidgety hands. Any ways, he asked her if she was going to have a seizure and, if so, she might want to go down to the nurses’ office now because he has no interest in performing CPR on her. Now, everyone is quiet.”
“Except for us?”
“Exactly. Now shut up.”
With that brief, hushed explanation, I looked right at Charlie. He was sitting calmly with his hands folded in his lap. I almost felt bad for him but not really. After all, all he had to say was that he was Charlie, he was from the city, and his face looked like someone had hit him with a bat because God had cursed him when he was a baby. It wasn’t that hard.
“I think you should go down to the principal’s office, young man.” Mrs. Twitch mumbled finally. The whole class fell into hushed whispers before going silent again, waiting for his reply.
“I don’t know where it is ma-am.” Charlie answered, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow defiantly.
Mrs. Twitch looked slightly uncomfortable. I pitied the poor old woman and raised my hand. “I’ll show him.” I offered. “He has to know since he’ll be visiting it quite often, I suppose.”
Charlie tossed me a glare. It wasn’t just any glare. It was a malicious, ‘I’m going to kill you’ glare; it was the kind of glare the villain gives the super hero in comic books. A glare that could turn a man’s knees to jell-o and flip a boy’s stomach. I wondered if all city boys could give what I would later refer to as ‘the look.’ With his face all scrunched up and his dark eyes suddenly ablaze, it was a wonder he didn’t shoot lazar beams at me then and there.
“That’s very kind of you, Alex. Go ahead. Thank you.”
I beamed.
The teacher liked me. First day, and already I was teacher’s pet. Who cared if Charlie was going to eat me? I had succeeded in securing a good grade for the rest of the year… in homeroom.
Charlie mumbled something to himself and shuffled out of his seat, walking briskly towards the door before I had even gotten to standing. He waited a few seconds for me to catch up before practically jogging down the ‘hall.’ By hall, I mean dirt walkway. By dirt, I mean mud.
I fell into step with him after a few moments.
The rain poured down in sheets. Wave after wave it fell, like a white haze, soaking everything in its path. The trees that circled our school leaned in the wet breeze, ruffling their soaked leaves and bending their wooden bodies. I could smell the wetness and felt the bitter chill in the air. I instantly regretted offering to take this jerk anywhere. Not only did he walk too fast but also his fists were clenched so hard that his knuckles turned white.
“You know, scrunch-face,” His fist, if possible, clenched tighter. “You shouldn’t have said that to the teacher. I’ve heard of Mrs. Twitch, you know. She picks favorites and least favorites real quick.”
“Do you give everyone a nickname?” Charlie grumbled, kicking at puddles as he walked. I figured he knew his way to the office since he was obviously going in the right direction. I had probably ruined his ploy to get out of seeing the principal.
“No.” I answered truthfully. “Just people who are easy to give one.”
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe those nicknames are hurtful?”
I thought about this for a second and then answered elegantly, “So?”
His face scrunched up even more then before and his eyes narrowed at the ground. “Whatever.”
I shivered, teeth chattering. It was freezing and we were still a good hundred yards away from the main office.
Have you ever felt really, really bad for absolutely no reason? Has your heart ever thudded in your chest for the first time? Has someone ever taken your hand and mumbled, “Come on, its cold and you need to get back to class. Let’s hurry.” Have you ever been shocked to find that, even when everything around you is as cold as ice, the hand you are holding is still warm? Have you ever said, “I’m sorry?” Have you ever started running without feeling your legs? Have you ever decided, in an instant, that you did not hate someone after all?
Sorry, but that’s not how it happened. Charlie did take my hand and mumble something about “hurrying up.” His hand was very warm. However, I did not say I was sorry and I did not stop hating him. We ran to the main office (more like he dragged me) and the moment I stepped into the warm room he let go of my hand without a word as if it were nothing. I figured it must have been a ‘city folk’ thing so I shrugged it off. After all, Ma had always said not to question other peoples’ culture.
How was I supposed to know that it wasn’t normal for my heart to thud so rapidly in my chest? How was I supposed to know that boys do not hold hands, whether they are small-town boys or city boys?
How was I supposed to know that I was slowly but surely having my first crush?
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