by Lauren Salem
Reunion at Walnut Cherryville
By
Lauren Salem
Reunion at Walnut Cherryville
Lauren Salem
Copyright 2013 by Lauren Salem
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my sister, Julia Salem, for always enthusiastically volunteering to be the first person to read my stories. She is a great listener and contributed many of her own ideas to this book, which made it what it is today. Her editing and marketing efforts are much appreciated.
I also want to give a special thanks to my friends: Anne Janecek, for bringing Walnut Cherryville to life with her spectacular illustrations, as well as Linda Rutledge and Erin Teeple for being my constructive critics and editors.
Lastly, I thank my parents for their patience, support, and encouragement.
Chapter 1: Johnny
Counselor Hank was a persistent man invested in correcting the lives of troubled teenagers. Behind his black, rectangle-rimmed glasses, fancy suit, and British accent, he was just a multiple choice test asking me the same question in different ways twenty million times. When he invited my friends and me to a late lunch, I felt like it was a trap to continue our counseling sessions, but we agreed to it under one condition: he must bring a lady friend from the other side of the fence. I would do anything to get out of Sonoran Correctional High School, a boarding school for juvenile delinquents, who otherwise would have faced jail time for their crimes. When I was ten years old, I murdered someone, and then my biological parents got divorced. Shortly after the murder, my father died, but I didn’t think about that too much anymore.
“I wonder who he’s gonna bring,” Collins mumbled while brushing his teeth. “She better be hot. I hope he brings that girl with the dark eyeliner, the one who always presses her boobs up against the fence at lunchtime.”
Everyone looked forward to lunchtime, not because we got to eat or because we didn’t have to sit (sleep) through boring lectures, but because this was the only time of day we got to see any girls. The school was divided by gender with the correctional school for girls on the other side of the fence. Every day we had a choice to eat either inside or outside. I know for a fact that about 99.9 percent of us chose to eat outside so we could watch the girls eat in very suggestive ways. Laura, the girl Collins was in love with, would press her boobs up against the fence and let us touch them for five dollars a feel. Many girls would let us kiss them if we gave them three dollars, or they would kiss or feel each other, but I just preferred to watch whatever I could see from a distance. Sometimes, if the boys got too close without paying, the girls yelled at them and stopped the show until they paid. Those girls would run my pockets dry, so I chose my seat carefully. An arm’s length distance from the fence, also known as front row, cost two dollars for guys who were just watching. Second-class seats were at the tables, and those were free. Rain or shine, the show always went on at lunchtime while the teachers were bitching about us in the teacher’s lounge.
“I think I know that girl from somewhere,” Vincent added as he applied a heavy layer of black eyeliner. Vincent was the Goth of the group who always dressed in tight black clothes, which contrasted against his frail, pale-skinned body and blue eyes. He used coal-colored dye for his root touch-ups every Sunday, so no one would notice that he really had blonde hair.
“Did you bang her?” Collins asked.
“No.”
“How could you know her and not bang her?”
Vincent rolled his eyes, but I laughed as I slicked back my brown hair. There was no better way to say “nice to meet you” to a nice girl than a pair of washed-out, holy jeans; a wife-beater; and a red flannel shirt.
“Collins, hurry up. We have to meet the driver in five minutes,” I said.
Collins grabbed a pair of basketball shorts and a T-shirt from his locker and quickly dressed. When he was done, we ran to the front of the school to meet up with Counselor Hank, singing “Girls, Girls, Girls.” Collins opened the car door, and there she was, the girl he was hoping for: a beautiful stallion with baby blues surrounded by dark eyeliner, choppy blonde hair, and curves like a rollercoaster.
I could imagine a mini toy truck riding those curves as she was lying down sideways on the bed. The engine would struggle up her thigh, then stop at her hip for a rest before the deep drop down her waistline.
“Look at you all: tall, chocolate, and handsome,” she said. “I’m Laura and you are?”
“Co-co-co—”
“Collins,” I said, “get in the van.” I nudged him; he snapped out of it and got in the van. I got in next, followed by Vincent who closed the door.
The driver took us to a café a few blocks from the school. We all sat around a table outside on the patio under a rainbow umbrella. The café patio was fenced in and decorated with live cacti and southwestern pottery. The waitress handed us our menus and took our drink orders.
“A pitcher of mango tango smoothie for the table, please,” Counselor Hank said.
Once the waitress left, silence brewed like a strong cup of moonshine while we stared at our menus. I didn’t know what to talk about with Laura and apparently neither did Collins or Vincent. Hey, I’m Johnny, I said slickly in my mind. How awkward is this…ha…ha…ha.
“Thank you all for coming,” Counselor Hank said. “Though you did not have a choice in the matter, I appreciate that you did not cause a ruckus in front of the other students.”
“Why do you think we’d make a ruckus? You payin’ for lunch, right?” Collins asked as he pointed at the counselor. “If you ain’t, I’ll dine and dash!”
“There will be no need for that, Collins. I’m perfectly capable of paying for your lunch,” the counselor responded. “I brought you here because I just want you to relax and think about your future.”
“Not this again,” I complained. “How many counseling sessions are you going to waste, talking about what I’m going do after high school?”
“As many as it takes, Johnny. You all are high school seniors now and will be graduating very soon. Now please, no more talking until I give you permission.”
“Free will needs no permission,” Vincent added.
“Let’s begin,” the counselor said as he took out a notepad and pen from his bag. “Where do you see yourself next year? In your vision, what are you doing?”
“Swimming in the cash that I make from the brothel in Las Vegas,” Laura answered cheerfully. “I’m gonna be legal next year!”
“Pro-NBA basketball player,” Collins added.
“I will not conform to be another worker bee in society,” Vincent said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “This just doesn’t seem important.”
The waitress brought the pitcher of mango tango smoothie. “Are we ready to order?”
“Just a few more minutes,” the counselor said. “This will be the most important decision of your life…”
I poured myself a glass and passed it on as the counselor blabbed nonstop about making choices. The creamy cold mango and banana flavors danced on my tongue as my mind drifted into a better place: a field of deer grass with dandelions whipping around in the wind. I kicked my shoes off, threw my socks away, and ran barefoot across the field…sometimes doing cartwheels…in my boxers. The best feeling in the world was as simple as the earth between my toes. Toward the end of the smoothie, my vision of the real world became blurry, and my eyelids couldn’t stay open for even another second. My body became limp, the smoothie shattered on the ground, and my head smacked against the table. In my mind, I felt sick and started throwing up as I hovered ove
r the deer grass. After relieving myself of the poison, I lay down on my back, gazing at the clouds in the sky, when I heard a voice from beyond the fields.
“They all look pretty out to me,” a man’s voice said.
I sat up and looked around, but there was no one else in the field except me. Hello? The ground began to tilt, causing me to roll down the hill. As I fell down a steep drop alongside the grassy hill, I saw a rocky creek at the bottom of the drop. Two thousand feet until collision: my eyes widened, and my heart jumped in fear. One thousand five hundred feet until collision: I was trying to snatch the grass, but it kept slipping through my hands. One thousand feet until collision: I held on to two handfuls of grass for dear life. Sweat dripped down my face as my heart fluttered. I got to take a few deep breaths before the earth began shifting again. The grassy ground now hung over my dangling body, and the sky was beneath my feet. The grass slowly broke from its roots. What would happen when I hit the sky?
“OK, just tie their hands, and throw them in,” the voice said before the last few blades of grass broke off. The wind whipped through my hair and clothes as I fell a few thousand feet. The clouds separated between my fingers, and, no, they did not feel like cotton balls. This was unfortunate. Before I realized what was coming ahead, my body fell on a transparent glass, and I got a quick glimpse of the world beyond the field.
“Shit, his eyes—”
“Shhhhh,” another man whispered with his finger over his mouth. The shadowy men stepped back, letting the sun shine brightly into the glass. Darkness began to consume the light from two opposite ends of the glass until all the light had vanished.
“What was that? You don’t think he saw us, do you?”
“Nah, it’s just a reaction. He won’t remember what he saw when he wakes up.”
Chapter 2: Vincent
