Whitney was sitting at the table in the dining room. The dining room was brightly lit. The darkness behind the windows that surrounded him mirrored the room. He didn’t notice the stars sneaking through the windows.
Shawn Wellner | Rawr
He was focused intently on the shape of the metal pieces on the towel. Whitney was ten-years-old. He often got in trouble at school. He often got bored in school. His teachers didn’t notice he was highly intelligent.
One time, he stole a hall pass and spent a half-hour stemming up two walls and dropping from the ceiling onto anyone that passed by. He dropped onto a teacher and ran out of the door before the teacher saw his face.
Another time, he opened the window at his friend’s house that lived next to school. The window was always unlocked. He took a handful of smoke bombs from the bottom drawer of the inside dresser. He lit them after twisting the fuses together and threw them into the post office. He went back to school. He saw the post office on the news that night with police cars and fire trucks around the building. “Anthrax scare was a hoax,” the headline read. He told his parents and they told him not to do it again. They also told him not to admit to what he had done. He never did. He didn’t get in trouble for that one.
Whitney was cleaning the carburetor for his father’s mower. His older brother showed him how. His brother didn’t need to explain how it worked or how to put it back together. Whitney understood the basic functions when he saw the inside of the carburetor. He had a towel under his chair, and one on the table because he dropped a part on the blue carpet once and discovered he hated getting grease out of carpets.
His parents were nestled in a quilted blanket on the couch in the living room. The dining room light leaked through a foyer into the living room and the television glowed faintly. They were watching a black and white film. Whitney didn’t notice it was a silent film. He didn’t notice the knocking on the door.
Cammy pedaled as fast as he could down Cemetery Road trying to make it to his house before his father. He still saw faint and dark shades of blue in the sky that told him he might make it in time. He heard the swooshing sound of a car behind him. He knew they couldn’t see him.
He swerved his bike into the gravel and weeds at the side of the road. The gravel shook his front tire and unbalanced him. He put his left foot into the gravel and leaned hard. He kept his front-tire straight and skidded his rear tire counter-clockwise and held his posture until he stopped.
He looked at his tires in the moonlight. They were covered in thorns. His bike tubes were ruined. He knew he wasn’t going to make to his house before his father got there.
He hadn’t lived in the small town for very long, and school started in one month. He had made one friend. They met while riding their bikes on Cemetery Road.
Cammy saw his friend’s house and started walking. He stopped occasionally to pull out irritating thorns from his socks. There were no more shades of blue in the sky when he knocked on the door of his friend’s house. He was worried about disturbing his friend’s family at the late hour, but he was more worried about his father beating him to their house.
Whitney’s mother opened the door. She gave him a warm smile and said “hello, Cammy.” He smiled politely and a faint “hi” was pulled out by his breath. Cammy took his shoes off and picked the remaining thorns out of his socks before stepping on the blue carpet in Whitney’s home. He loved the way the house smelled. It was always clean and warm. Cammy’s house smelled like a house. Whitney’s house smelled like a home.
To be continued…
Christopher Dempsey can be reached at a[email protected]