What knocked me on my ass was that after she told me the news, she immediately broke up with me, saying she didn’t think our relationship could survive such time and distance. Of course, I found out a few days later from Sarah’s best friend, Nadia—who said she was telling me because she felt bad about the breakup. But, really, she’d had a crush on me since we were in the 6th grade and she was hoping to gain some possible replacement girlfriend browny points by telling me—that Sarah had started seeing Chad Eagleton secretly a couple of months ago. Needless to say, but that little bit of news hurt me even more than her breaking up with me. Chad was a grade a dick and a pretentious douchebag on top of that. But the fact is, Sarah’s always been kind of a pretentious douchebag, too. I’d just never noticed because I was too distracted by all the near constant, mind-blowing sex.
I keep trying to tell myself that I dodged a bullet when she broke up with me. That I avoided a possible lifetime of watching crappy art house films and evenings at the Opera. I keep saying this, but it still feels like I have handful of rocks churning in my guts every time I think about it. I shake off these thoughts and focus on my plate of food and Mom instead because it would be as embarrassing as hell to break down crying in front of Mom.
“By the way,” I say as I shove a mouthful of pancake and egg into my mouth, “What are you still doing home? Shouldn’t you be at work?” Mom’s been working the same job at Crowley’s Construction since Dad died. It’s one of the few decent businesses in town and they’ve been good to Mom. She started off as old man Crowley’s secretary and is now essentially the company’s CFO.
“Oh, you know how Oscar is,” She says with a sly smile. “His brain has him convinced he’s still in high school, so he decided he wanted a long weekend and gave it off to the rest of us, too.”
“Wow, that’s cool. So do the two of you have any big plans?” Mom’s cheeks redden and she gets up from the table to better hide her smile.
“Why in the world would I have any plans with Oscar?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said with a smirk, “I thought maybe you’d want to relive your high school days along with him.”
Oscar Crowley is the youngest of the 3 Crowley sons and the only one who had any interest in taking over old man Crowley’s business when he retired. He was the one who’d hired Mom because he was my Dad’s high school best friend and knew how sharp she was. But Mom always said she thought she got the job because Oscar always had a thing for her going way back to elementary school. She admitted that she never felt that way for him, that they were just friends, but over the last few years, things had changed between the two of them.
For one reason or another, Mom liked keeping me in the dark about her personal life. When I was little, I totally got why she didn’t bring any men into our lives. Our world had been rocked by my Dad’s death and she didn’t want to inject any more radical changes into our lives—Okay, my life—by adding a complete stranger into the mix. But now that was older and getting ready to leave for college, I didn’t understand why she still tried pretending that she didn’t have a life outside of work and home, especially when it came to Oscar. I mean, how could I not notice them talking on the phone every night? How could I not notice his truck pull into our driveway at 11 pm every Tuesday and Thursday?
But, that was just how she was. I knew she still loved Dad even though he’d been dead for almost 15 years and still wanted me to think that he was the only man that she was ever going to love. But, come on, I knew that was physical and mental impossibility by the time I was 12-years-old and started noticing girls. That’s just Mom, though. I guess she’ll always think of me as a hurt little 5-year-old boy, and to be honest, I’m kind of okay with that.
I finished off my plate, dumped my dishes into the sink, and kissed Mom on the cheek.
“Thanks for breakfast, beautiful,” I said. “You’re welcome, baby. You better get going, you don’t want to be late picking up Billy and Stan.
Chapter 2: When NoWhere Is All You Know
I’ve never understood how people end up in towns like Sleepy Creek? I know that sounds a little weird considering that I’ve spent my entire life here and so had both my mom and dad. But, seriously, with there being so many great and wonderful city’s in the world, you kind of have to wonder what attracts people to living in the absolute middle of nowhere? And make no mistake, that’s exactly what Sleepy Creek is, nowhere. Yeah, I’m sure I sound like every small town high school kid in the history of small towns, but Sleepy Creek is an entirely different brand of nowhere. Mostly because the city it’s closest to—the desert paradise of Riverside—is also a nowhere. Sure, I guess Riverside qualifies as a city. It has all of the normal crap you would find anywhere else: Wal*Mart’s, shopping malls, outlet stores, chain restaurants, burnt out mini-malls, it even has a little industry. But for the most part, if you live in Riverside, chances are you work in L.A. and you moved out to Riverside because it was the only place you could afford to buy a house.
And the same can be said of Sleepy Creek: If you live here, chances are you work in Riverside, or you’re retired or crazy. My mom and a handful of people are the exceptions. She works in town and isn’t bug shit nutty. The parents of most of my friends, though, that’s another story. For instance, my best friends, Billy and Stan Winston. I’ve been paling around with the two of them since kindergarten. They’re great guys, funny, intelligent, and friendly. But their parents are off their fucking rockers. Like both sets of my grandparents, Billy and Stan’s mom and dad are ex-military. They were stationed out Edwards Air Force Base and for one reason or another, they fell in love with the desert. Or I should say they fell in love with the fact that they could live MILES away from virtually any human being. The Winston’s own 200 acres of desert and the family lives smack dab in the middle of it. Their electricity comes from a half a dozen generators and a half ass solar array Mr. Winston designed (Although, I doubt the array generates a single watt of electricity considering that most of the “solar panels” are nothing but mirrors that Mr. Winston rummaged from the dump.). And their “house” is two welded together double wide trailers that sits atop a steel and concrete bunker, which also happens to be where the elder Winston’s spend most of their time.
When I was a little kid, I thought Stan and Billy’s house was the coolest place on earth, largely because the 4 acres surrounding the house was the largest collection of junk I’d ever seen. Mr. Winston had everything, from burnt out computers-to-old refrigerators-to-the husks of military vehicles of various kinds (The coolest was a World War II era tank.). We would spend hours out in Mr. Winston’s junkyard playing war, hide and seek, and a million other games. But it kind of stopped being cool when we all turned 12 because we all realized that Mr. and Mrs. Winston were little nuts. Okay, they were more than just a “little” nuts, they were flat out bonkers. The reason why Mr. Winston collected all of that junk was because he was planning to use it. The old guy thought that the government would become the 4th Reich, or that a race war was coming, or that some foreign nation like Russia or China were going to shell America with nuclear bombs, and that the only people who would be left to fight would be guys like Mr. Winston. The only problem was almost all of Mr. Winston’s junk was just that: Junk (He did own a ton of guns, which was super cool when I was a kid, but was an entirely different story when all of the mass shooting started happening and I finally realized Mr. Winston was almost exactly like all of the guys who did the shootings: Lonely, disenfranchised, and paranoid.)
The realization of Mr. Winston’s mental health was really hard on Stan and Billy. I mean, both of them were just normal kids. They didn’t believe in any of the things that their folks did. All they wanted to do was go to school, hang out with girls, and get the fuck out of Sleep Creek and away from their parents as soon as possible. In fact, the two of them started thinking that their parents were so weird that they moved into a 6 person tent at the edge of their folks property just so they could have a life that
somewhat resembled something “normal”. Not that living in a tent was what you would call normal by any stretch of the imagination, but at least they were away from the direct influence of their parents.
Over the years since they moved into the tent, they somehow managed to upgrade their home from a large tent to a pop up trailer with a functioning toilet and shower (Before the pop up, they would have to come over to my place a few days a week to wash the grit and grime of the desert off of them.), but both of them are itching to get out of the desert, and as soon as we toss the old mortarboards into the air, both Stan and Billy will be moving to L.A. and they’ve both sworn that they’re never coming back. Unlike so many of the kids I know who’ve sworn similar pledges over the years (myself included.), I actually believe Billy and Stan will do it and will stay all the way gone.
The other thing I realized when I had my revelation about Mr. Winston’s sanity was this: Virtually every adult in my life—outside of my mom, of course—is completely off their rocker. No, they’re not as far gone as Billy and Stan’s folks, but they’re pretty damn out there. Honestly, though, I think that’s what the desert does to you. I think it seeps into your blood and brain, it integrates into your DNA, and it radically changes you. It either makes you a part of the desert and makes you into something just like a horny toad or a Joshua tree, or it makes you want to run away from it like you’re on fire. Personally, I can honestly say that it hasn’t changed me in one way or another. I don’t hate it in Sleepy Creek. I love my mom and our house, I love my friends, but I don’t exactly want to spend the rest of my life here like my mother and Oscar have. But in the same breath, there’s something comforting about never having to go anywhere else. Never having to socially struggle in a new town or city, and knowing exactly what to expect day in and day out.
Ah, you know, I’m sure that’s only the depression over my break up with Sarah talking. The fact is, I need to get out of Sleepy Creek, and I need to get out of here as quickly as possible.
I pull up in front of Stan and Billy’s pop -up trailer, and as usual, Stan’s standing out in front of it taking a piss while waving and smiling at me. This has been our morning ritual ever since I got my driver’s license. At first, seeing Stan’s junk made me a little sick. I mean, who wants to see some guy taking a piss so early in the morning (I’m sure there are more than a few guys who are into that kind of thing, but I ain’t one of them.), or any time at all, really? And as if on cue, Stan’s slightly older and chubbier doppelgänger came out from the other side of the trailer and punched his little brother in and told him to pull up his pants, which he thankfully did before getting into the cab of my crappy old Datsun.
“I swear to God,” I said as I turned the truck around and started heading toward town. “I think that little thing of yours keeps getting smaller and smaller every time I see it.”
“Your mom doesn’t seem to mind it all that much.”
“Well, mom’s always had a soft spot for helpless little creatures.”
The joke was almost like our version of Who’s on first? and we’d been repeating it virtually every day for the past two years. I had to admit, I was going to miss it.
Chapter 3: True Love Will Find You In The End
There is nothing more excruciating than the last day of school before summer break. But you know what’s even harder? The last day of school before you move on with the rest of your life. To be honest, I had no idea why I even bothered show up today. Hell, I don’t have a clue why any of us bothered showing up today, but virtually every member of my graduating class is here today. And, yeah, it’s great to see everybody, but damn does the day drag by. My only relief comes when the bell for first lunch rings.
Sleepy Creek High has two separate lunch periods. If you’re lucky, you get first period at 11:10. If you’re not so lucky, you have to wait until 12:20 to snack down. Up until this year, I always had second-period lunch with Stan and Billy. But for some reason or another, I got switched over to 1st period lunch for my senior year. Upside was I didn’t feel like I needed to start gnawing my arm off around 11:30, but the downside was that I couldn’t pal around with Stan and Billy, and I was stuck eating lunch with Ali and Steve.
Ali and Steve are my other two closest friends in town, and since the 8th grade, the two of them have been joined at the hip. Yeah, Ali and Steve are my annoying cute couple friends, and when I was going out with Sarah, it wasn’t that big of a deal to hang out with them. In fact, it was kind of fun because it almost seemed like the four of us were like middle-aged married couples who did everything together. But ever since the break-up, I’ve found their cutesy couple bullshit to be absolutely insufferable. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that they have each other. I’m happy that they’re planning a future together—including a kick ass trip to Europe this summer—but most of the time I wish they would get their heads out of their asses long enough to realize that their shenanigans were annoying the piss out of me.
After grabbing my lunch, I headed to our usual table out in the quad and noticed that only Ali was sitting there and she was dressed entirely in black from head -to-toe and glumly staring down at her mac 'n' cheese and moving it around with her fork but not actually eating any of it. The last time I remember Ali wearing nothing but black—Ali literally wears her emotions. If she’s happy, which she generally is, she looks like she’s dipped herself in a rainbow. But if she’s sad, out comes the blacks and grays—her grandmother had died. I kind of dreaded sitting down across from her because I knew our lunchtime conversation would consist of me playing 20 questions with her as she sighed and sniffled. If I had any common sense whatsoever, I’d turn tail and head back into the cafeteria and avoid this whole mess. But I guess I’m just a sucker for punishment.
“Hey,” I said as I sat down, stuffing a quick bite of mac into my mouth before I attempted to pry whatever woe she’s suffering from out of her. “What’s with all the black? Did another one of your relatives die?”
She stared up at me, fixing on me with her crystal blue eyes and narrowing them like she was going to jump up from her seat and take a bite out of my neck for even having the audacity to speak to her. But her gaze almost immediately softened and cloud over with barely contained tears.
“What’s wrong?” I asked with real concern. Ali may wear her emotions, but she rarely, if ever, expresses them.
“You haven’t heard?” She asked, her voice crackling with emotions.
“Heard what?”
“I broke up with Steve.”
It was almost like someone had punched me really hard in the chest and knocked all the wind out of me. Never in a million years would I ever think that Ali and Steve would ever not be together. Seriously, they were like Peanut Butter and Jelly, Nachos and Cheese, Bacon and Eggs, whatever and whatever.
“What happened?” I asked after the initial shock of what Ali had said washed over me.
“The stupid asshole was cheating on me!”
“What!”
“Yeah, it was with some girl in Riverside. The fucking jerk got her pregnant! Can you believe that?”
Ali started crying and I rushed over to her side of the bench, slinging my arm over her shoulder and pulling her into me. We sat like that for 15 minutes, me playing the part of the comforting best friend and Ali playing the part of broken-hearted girlfriend. But, to be honest with you, on the inside I was jumping up and down with joy. Not so much because I wasn’t going to have to put with all the cuddly cuteness of Ali and Steve, but because Ali was single again for the first time in 3 years.
You see, like Billy and Stan, I’ve known Ali my entire life. In fact, I’ve known her even longer than that because our mother’s were best friends in high school and remain so to this very day. For the longest time, Mine and Ali’s mom constantly joked about sitting us up in an arranged marriage. When we were little, we would both make funny faces and both say eeeeemwwww when our mothers brought it up. I mean, when it comes right down to it, we’re about cl
ose to family as either one of us have. But the thing is when we started to develop and our mothers would make their time-worn joke, we stopped being grossed out by it and we started eying one another like we were pieces of meat.
At least until Steve entered the picture. After that, we went back to pretending we were grossed out by one another. And I know that I should only be thinking of Ali at this particular moment as nothing more than a friend in need of comfort. That I should forget about how good her hair smells or about how soft her skin is. I shouldn’t be thinking about her standing in front stripped down to nothing but a pair of six inch high heels. But I can’t help myself, because, at this extremely vulnerable moment, all I can think about is my future with Ali in it.
“Hey, look,” I say as she wipes the last of her tears away, “Fuck that guy, he doesn’t deserve you.”
“I know … It’s just, it hurts. I mean, I trusted him.”
“Well, forget about him. Shit, forget about high school. How about you go out to the Gulch with me and the guys tonight and we’ll get you so fucked up that the loss of brain cells will make you completely forget about Steve for the rest of your life.”
A Vampire Novel: Reach Before Dawn: Inspired by a true story (A Dark And Seductive Horror Story) Page 2
