Middle of Summer

Prologue.

“Still got this rusty ol’ piece of shit, Blake?” My best friend Rider asked as he slammed the door of my ’74 Chevy truck shut.

It was the first day of school after having three months apart and I still hadn’t raised enough money to buy myself a better car. “Yeah, I do. Not surprised though. It takes a lot for my parents to give me anything, being the cheap people that they are. But, hey, if I didn’t have this, you’d be walkin’ to school.” And with that, I shut him up. Which was hard to do unless you were me.

I left the windows down, the car would be too stuffy if I had rolled them up. Here in Georgia you could barely breathe even with the windows open. The musty air made sweat roll down our necks, and our hair stick to our foreheads. Not that we were bothered by it. Growing up in the heat, you learned to get used to having to take a shower 2…sometimes 3 a day because unless you did, you would sweat like a pig.

Rider was left to play with the radio, changing the channels until he found one that would suit him. Country blared throughout the ratty truck, and we only added to the noise. The cops didn’t mind around here. Everyone listened to the same kind of music. It was a simple town, Greybrook. No one got in trouble, nothing interesting happened. Everyone knew one another. There wasn’t much to the town, no big shops or tourist attractions. We had a park where kids hung out and a small pub for the adults to throw darts on Wednesday nights. Everyone attended the same church and sang the same songs.

As we rolled into the high school parking lot, Rider turned down the radio to a dull hum and I parked the truck. Shifting it into park and throwing off my seat-belt, I hopped out of the car. Rider followed and we met up at the back of the truck to grab our backpacks out of the bed. Slinging mine over my shoulder, I wiped my fingers through my hair that was already beginning to stick. I looked around, hoping to see her, but I knew that she wouldn’t be there. She was far away now.

With a silent sigh, I replaced my fallen smile with a new one and charged into the building. People acknowledged me with “Hey!” and other greetings. I returned them all, calling them by name. No one was popular around here and no one was unpopular. We just…were. And even through the summer changes, we stayed the same. Most got tanner, their hair longer or lost weight. But it didn’t matter, you were the same person in town. And you can never change, you don’t leave either. No one’s tried to actually leave Greybrook. Not leave forever. And oh how I wish I could have changed that.