I shrug my shoulders at Ryder to answer his question with a “beats me” and take my bag from him. Julien leans against the locker next to mine while Jayson and Ryder stand behind me. Someone skips up to Julien and grabs his arm. “Julien, hi.” I exhale an aggravated huff when I hear her voice.
Freakin’ Samantha Winters.
She’s just as bad as Jacinda. They’re best friends. What’s the saying? “Bitches who stick together,”…I forget the rest.
Samantha and Jacinda are the two head cheerleaders here at school and they have been after Jayson, Julien, and Ryder’s attention since grade school. Jayson and Julien always have girls chasing after them, especially since they’re head jocks for their sports. Jayson is captain of the varsity swim team, and Julien is a co-captain for the soccer team. Even though Ryder doesn't do school athletics, he has his own fanbase of desperate girls vying for his attention. Ryder is like the bad boy of the group, even though he’s really the sweetest person in the world. Since his family owns and runs a custom auto shop, he grew up working on cars and motorcycles. He races his custom ‘15 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat in the Fields which is our town’s version of street racing out in the sticks. Mr. Jacoby, a local farmer, owns a lot of property and allows the kids in town to use an abandoned field to race. The sheriff’s department knows about it and allows them to do it as long as no one gets hurt and it keeps them off the town’s streets. Except for last night, it’s been so far, so good.
In my defense, it’s not like I hate all cheerleaders. I just don’t care for those specific two. We have gone to school together our entire lives and not once have they ever said a nice word to me. The opposite in fact. They go out of their way to say nasty, passive-aggressive things any chance they get. I know why. I get it. It’s because I’m with the boys. I have the boys’ attention and time. It drives Samantha, Jacinda, and several other girls here at school crazy, and not in a good way. Then there is the incident that shall never be spoken about. My teeth clench and I break out into a sweat whenever unwanted images from that night pop into my head.
Julien brushes off Samantha, moving her hand off his arm. I open my locker and a piece of paper drops out onto the floor. Several guys and a couple more cheerleaders walk up to our group at my locker. Talk is mostly about us graduating and what colleges we’re going to, but I tune it all out and go back to the note. Thinking that it’s from Hailey about why she skipped out today, I open it. I immediately see that it’s not a note. It’s one of her poems.
Broken Butterfly
she wanted to fly but her wings were broken,
she dreamed dreams but they weren't allowed to be spoken,
her feelings pushed down her throat left her choking,
he beat her down on the ground but she's still hoping,
body, soul, spirit all burned,
wishing that her family would see and be concerned,
fighting him isn't a battle it's a war,
every breath is now a chore,
she can't get air, can't fly, can't soar,
can't leave this dark room can't even find the door.
loneliness consumes her, she sees all the darkness never the light,
she doesn't see a tunnel with an end in sight, she sees the pitch black the world is night,
no one is there to tell her everything will be alright.
she's dead inside but no one knows,
how the blood boils how the heart slows,
because this was not the life she chose,
when she sleeps, she dreams,
she can still hear her screams,
her sister replaced her,
the pain he inflicted chased her,
his love like a disease,
no one hears her cries, no one hears her pleas,
in her dark world fallen on her knees,
thinking death is better than life
help me please!
one final blow is all she can take,
before she dies for good with a final shake,
now all those people who called her a mistake,
can finally rest at ease when they go to her wake.
My heartbeat picks up and I scan around hoping to see Hailey. I look back at the poem. Hailey always expresses herself in her poetry. How she feels, the things that happened during the day, her life. Always. I read the poem again. It’s heartbreaking. Scary, desperate. I should have pushed more for her to talk to me. I should have yelled and cursed and pleaded until she talked to me. About the bruises. About why she wears long-sleeved shirts all the time now even when it's hot outside. About the sounds of crying I think I sometimes hear coming from her bedroom.
I fold the poem up and place it inside my bag and shut my locker.
Julien loops his arm around me. “How’s your song coming? Ready for the competition next month?”
I grew up around music and can play several instruments. My choir director asked me to compose an original piece that I will perform at a national competition next month.
“It’s coming along nicely. I can’t wait for you guys to hear it.”
They walk with me down the hall. My mind goes back to my sister. “Hey guys, I need to go home. Can one of you sign me out at the front office and let them know it was a family emergency?”
I start to walk off without another word, but Jayson grabs my hand.
“Liz, what’s going on?”
Again, I know he thinks I’m still upset about the stuff with Jacinda. I’m not. Honestly. Ok, well, sort of, but I’ll store it away until later when we can talk privately.
“Sorry,” I squeeze his hand and place a quick kiss to his lips. “It’s about Hailey.”
Jayson stops me. “I’m coming with you.” His tone lets me know it’s not a question and not up for argument.
“Fine.”
I give Julien and Ryder a quick hug and rush out the front main doors with Jayson to find my sister.
Chapter 1
Summer Before First Grade
Elizabeth
It’s summer break and in a month I will start first grade. I am super excited because I loved kindergarten and I know I’ll love first grade just as much. My dad takes the summer off from touring with his band, and right now we’re in the middle of our daily guitar lessons. I’m sitting in his lap, his larger hands on top of mine helping me push down the chords and strum, when I hear loud banging and yelling outside our house.
Daddy started giving me guitar lessons when I was four after he found me in his music room strumming and banging on every instrument he had in there. Instead of yelling at me like I thought he was going to, he sat down on the floor, moved me to sit on top of his crossed legs, and placed his acoustic guitar in front of us. With gentle fingers, he started strumming and humming a melody to me. Mom found us hours later, me still sitting on my daddy’s lap while he strummed his guitar and we sang to each other. It made my mommy cry, but she said they were “love” tears, whatever that means. I only cry when I’m sad. I love my mommy and daddy and sister, but I hope my love for them never makes me cry. That would just be weird.
I hear more loud noises from outside. Daddy pulls the guitar off our laps and I get up quickly to go to the window and see what’s going on. We live in a two-story Craftsman with a red door and red shuttered windows. I love our backyard because it’s huge and has a forest that backs up to it and a creek where I go and catch crawfish in. I squish my nose against the window glass so I can better see the very large moving truck at the house next door to us. The family that used to live there moved out a month ago, but I didn’t care much since all of their kids were grown up and there was no one for me to play with. I hope that the new family has kids my age. It would be really cool to have friends that live right next door to play with every day.
“Yes!” I shout.
I see two boys that look my age walk across the front lawn in front of the truck. I notice that they are with a tall bearded man who is holding each of their hands. With gleeful
excitement, I squeal and run out of the room and up the stairs.
“Where are you off to puddin’?” Dad hollers after me.
Bounding up the stairs to find Hailey, my sister, I shout back, “I’m going to meet the new neighbors and I have to look my best!”
I hear his chuckle behind me as I try leaping up two steps at a time in my haste to get to my room. Running as fast as my little legs can carry me, I throw open Hailey’s bedroom door, waking her from her nap.
“Hailey! Hailey! Come on! We have to go meet our new neighbors. Get up! Get up!”
I run through our jack-and-jill bathroom to my room and fling open my closet to grab my blue Easter dress. Mommy said I looked like a princess in that dress so that is the dress I’m going to put on to meet my new neighbor boys.
“I don’t wanna go,” Hailey yawns sleepily at me standing at the bathroom door that leads to my room.
“Fine. But I’m going.”
I wriggle out of my shorts and top and put the blue dress on. Mommy taught me how to braid my hair, so I quickly comb it and then braid it into two pigtails. Seeing my gold plastic princess crown I wore last Halloween sitting on my dresser, I grab it and carefully place it on top of my head. I push past Hailey into the bathroom, do a quick look in the mirror, decide I look awesome, and run downstairs. I grab a bag of fruit candies, shove them in my dress pocket, and sprint out the front door only to skid to a sudden stop once I see my mommy talking to another lady on the porch of our new neighbor’s house. I turn around and look everywhere for the two boys I saw from the window, but I don’t see them anywhere. I walk up the steps of the neighbor’s house to where my mom is and grab her hand.
“Oh, Lizzie-bear. I want you to meet our new neighbor, Freda,” my mom says to me motioning for me to step forward and shake the lady’s hand. Freda bends down holding out her hand to me, but instead of taking it I gracefully curtsy.
“Welcome Lady Freda. I am Princess Elizabeth, ruler of the magical forests beyond,” I announce regally while pointing toward the backyard.
Freda’s face lights up in amusement and it’s then I notice her eyes as she looks down at me. They are light and metallic looking like the shiny quarters I get for my birthday.
“It’s so nice to meet you Princess Elizabeth. You are a very pretty princess in a very pretty dress.” I beam at her and give another curtsy.
“Your mom was just telling me all about you and your sister.”
I look around again and don't see the two boys I saw from my window. I start to get a bit sad that maybe they aren’t going to live here with Freda and be my neighbors. Maybe they live somewhere in the neighborhood and were just taking a walk with their dad or something.
Freda continues talking to my mom. “My husband just took the boys to grab something to eat. They should be back soon. It would be nice to introduce them to your daughters and make new friends.”
My ears prick up at her words and a happy dance rolls through me. “My princes live here? I saw two boys earlier. They really live here?”
“Princes? Oh, yes, Princess Elizabeth. I have two twin boys, Prince Jayson and Prince Julien. I am sure they would really like to meet you when they get back.”
Freda and my mom are grinning at each other while looking like they may burst into laughter. Feeling much better about things now, I turn and start racing down the steps towards the forest.
“Tell my princes to come rescue me when they get home!”
“Do not go far young lady. Dinner is in an hour!” my mom calls after me.
I reach the fort built among the forest trees that Hailey and I started making at the beginning of summer. Our fort is made out of anything we find on the ground along with some ply board daddy gave us, and is a hodge-podge of dead tree limbs, pinecones, and rocks. Mommy bought us a glitter blanket that we use as a cover to our fort and daddy chopped some firewood that we use as benches to sit on. Hailey and I try to work on the fort every day. We have made paths along the ground by taking sticks and scraping aside fallen pine needles, and we made ladders up the trees by nailing broken tree limbs or sticks in the bark.
Since I love collecting things I find along the creek, we have a collection of glass jars in our fort along the back wall. Each jar sits atop its own stump and I made labels of what’s inside. One jar has colored rocks we find along the creek bank. Another jar has freshwater shells we collect from the creek bed. We have empty jars we use to collect fireflies in the evenings. Hailey and I pretend the fireflies are twinkling stars.
Wanting to impress the boys when they come find me, I look around to make sure everything is in place and then decide to sweep the floor with a pine branch to get rid of the pine straw that has fallen to the ground from the loblollies that stand at the corners of our fort. I take out the bag of fruit candies I grabbed on my way out of the house and place it on an empty stump. I’m wondering what is taking my new boy neighbors so long when I hear a noise outside the fort. Could it be them? It’s probably Hailey or deer or a brown rabbit. I adjust my tiara on my head because it’s beginning to slip sideways and walk out of the fort. I give a startled shriek when I come face-to-face with two upside-down heads giggling at me. Dangling from their knees, upside down from the tree branch that hangs in front of the fort’s entrance, are two brown-headed twin boys with silver-grey eyes.
They’re here! I smile a huge grin that shows my two missing front teeth and they mimic me also showing they are missing two front teeth. I suddenly become shy.
“Hi,” I say while moving my right foot back and forth along the dirt on the ground.
One of the boys grabs the tree branch he’s hanging off of and flips over to land on his feet.
“Hi. I’m Julien.”
The other boy swings up and over to sit on top of the branch and starts to swing his feet.
“I’m Jayson. Our mom said we had to come rescue Princess Elizabeth. You her?”
“Yep,” I say, popping the “p” at the end of the word.
The boy named Julien grabs my hand and starts to run off in the direction of the creek. “Ok. You’re rescued.”
Jayson jumps down from the branch to run over and grab my other hand. I start laughing like a loon as we all run and stumble along weaving between the trees until we reach the creek.
Jayson declares, “This is so cool!” before proceeding to jump into the creek, fully clothed with his tennis shoes on, taking me and Julien with him since we are all holding hands.
The creek isn’t deep, the water only coming up to our ankles. But that doesn’t stop us from yelling and laughing and jumping up and down, kicking water everywhere. Jayson suddenly stops and looks upset.
“I am so sorry! Your dress is all wet.”
I look down at my muddy, soaked dress and shrug. “It’s ok. Me and Hailey play down here every day and always come home dirty. Mommy doesn’t care.”
Jayson still looks unsure, so I decide to cheer him up. “Here. Help me lift this rock.”
I bend down to a large rock that is submerged under the water and try to tip it up. Julien and Jayson immediately squat down to help. As they hold the rock tilted at an angle, I see what I’m looking for. Reaching down with my right hand, I pick up the crawfish that is hiding under the rock and hold it up to Jayson. They both let go of the rock with a small splash and I place the crawfish in Jayson’s hand. He uses his thumb and middle finger to pick it up, and Julien puts his face right up to Jayson’s hand to get a closer look at the squirming little creature.
“Is that a lobster?”
“No, silly. It’s a crawfish. My daddy calls ‘em crawdads. I guess they do look like tiny lobsters.”
I take the crawfish out of Jayson’s hand and put it back into the creek.
“They are all over the place under the rocks in the creek. You can find all sorts of things here. Turtles, water striders, dragonflies, minnows. See,” I point to three small minnows darting around a swirling eddy where a large branch lies across the creek.
“Hey, want to build a dam?” Julien looks at us before grabbing a large stick and wading to the middle of the creek.
Jayson and I start looking around for more sticks and make a pile of them along the bank for Julien to get. We work side by side for the next half hour and I ask the twins about where they’re from and why they moved here, what their favorite game is, favorite color, favorite food. I learn they moved here from Knoxville, Tennessee because their dad got a new job, we are the same age, and we will be going to the same school for first grade. I hope they’re in my class. Jayson says his favorite food is pizza, and Julien’s is tacos. Remembering the bag of candy I left in the fort, I tell them I'll be right back and rush off to get it.
When I return, they’re sitting on the ground waiting for me next to the pile of sticks. I reach out and grab Jayson’s hand and pour some fruit candies into it, and then I do the same with Julien’s. I pour some into mine then decide to pick all of the purple ones out and shove them in my dress pocket because, yuck, who likes grape? Watching me do this, Julien takes all the orange ones from Jayson's hand and gives them to me. Jayson turns to me and takes all my yellow ones but gives me his red ones. Picking candies from each other’s hands makes them taste better somehow.
I take a moment to study the twins. I know what twins are from kindergarten. We had picture cards with words on them of different people and twins was one of the words. The picture card had two identical blond girls with matching red bows in their hair. I know Jayson and Julien look the same but if you were to ask me, I would be able to tell you who was who. Jayson’s eyelashes are slightly longer, and Julien has a small scar above his left eyebrow. Jayson has seven freckles across his nose, but Julien only has four. I counted. For boys, they are really nice and I like them a lot, so as my habit, I blurt out what I am thinking.
“We’re going to be best friends forever and ever.”
All Our Next Times: Fallen Brook Series: Book 1 Page 2
