Dominion

Dominion: Wednesday [2]

Wednesday [2]

There’s no fallout the morning after. It’s quieter, but everybody goes about their usual business and no one raises the subject, and he can probably guess Sarah’s relieved about that. He can’t help but wonder if he didn’t imagine the whole thing, made it out to be more than what it really was. His bowl of Cheerios offers no enlightenment.

Luke always leaves early for soccer practice on Wednesdays, so he’s taken the car and is long gone by the time Wade and Sarah head out for school at eight. His sister seems outwardly OK, but he knows she’s still rattled. In an attempt to keep an eye on her, he takes a detour and accompanies her to the elementary school. They walk in silence through the drizzling rain: Sarah with her red and white polka dot umbrella, and Wade foregoing the embarrassment of sharing a girl’s umbrella by putting up the hood of his jacket and staying several steps behind.

They reach the school gates and Sarah turns slightly to wave at him goodbye. He gives her a lopsided grin in return and sees her off safely into the playground before going. Amongst her friends, she is smiling and animated again, like any other eleven-year-old should be. It seems she was able to put aside what happened last night, if only temporarily. Maybe it was easier for kids to shake off something like that. Then again, Sarah wasn’t the one who saw anything.

“Excuse me, son.”

Wade steps aside from the entrance automatically, then glances at the man he’s just let past. It’s Reverend Gordon, accompanied by a graying woman he recognizes as one of the town retirees who volunteers at the church – Janice something. He remembers she used to knit kids’ scarves and mittens and baby booties until her arthritis made simply holding a knitting needle pure torture. Sarah probably still has one of those scarves.

The two senior citizens make their way slowly to the school office, an odd sight in a place of children typically under thirteen. Maybe they were here to preach. Recruit for the choir. Wade doesn’t give it much thought and turns his back to leave.

He arrives ten minutes late to first period but Mrs Trickett waves it off because he’s one of her best students, and she continues speaking without any disruption about the foreshadowing by Macbeth’s witches and page 32 of the textbook. He can’t seem to focus; talks of witches and rituals only make his head spin nauseously in reminder of last night’s dream. The banality of a normal school day, in contrast, feels surreal.

The rest of the morning is a drab affair. Chemistry comes and passes in a blur of molecule diagrams and cooking up a recipe for soap. He doesn’t even have the heart to smile back at the girl who always sneaks glances at him from two prac tables down.

At lunch, he sits idly pushing food around his plate, the food no longer discernible as to what it once was.

“What’s the matter, Preston? You look like shit.”

Wade looks up to see a redheaded girl sit down next to him with her own tray – it’s meatloaf, as it turns out. Behind her, a guy with thick black-framed glasses joins them.

“She’s got that right, man. You’re, like, in zombie mode.”

Wade concedes this point. “Didn’t sleep too well.” He rubs at his eye, partly for emphasis and partly to keep himself together.

Felicity and Curtis are his closest friends at Blackwater High, ever since they took him in under their wing three years ago when he was the new kid. The Prestons moved to Minnesota in search of a quieter life, mainly for his mother’s sake. If it had been up to him, he wouldn’t have chosen a place this quiet. It’s almost stifling. Coming from a city as densely packed as NYC – with all its lights, traffic, open-all-hours, hustle and bustle, diversity – the transition took a bit of getting used to, to say the least. The kids were different as well. With the town’s population being under three thousand, they all went to the same school and tended to stick to themselves, having known each other most of their lives. Wade had no hope for anonymity. And if it hadn’t been for Curtis’s willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt, well, Wade probably wouldn’t have had any friends for a long time.

Felicity only shakes her head at him while he blinks out his blurry vision. “Gotta lay off the midnight horror channel, Wade. You’re totally chicken and you know that; why put yourself through the torture?” She knocks the back of her hand against his shoulder with a laugh.

“I wasn’t –” he cuts himself off, decides it’s not worth correcting. He might as well have been watching a horror movie. “I’m not chicken, what I have is an active imagination,” he throws back his standard retort and watches his friends snicker.

Curtis soon finds more amusement in the slush he creates with orange juice and squashed peas, and Wade’s questionable tolerance for horror films slips quickly out of mind. Curtis even dares Felicity to try his new cuisine.

She makes a face. “I’d rather eat my own puke, thanks.”

Curtis shrugs at her disdain, and brings the spoon to his mouth.

Felicity Drake is a long-standing local: her ancestors were some of the early settlers in Blackwater two hundred years ago when the place was simply a mass of woodland bordering a river. A small township was carved out of it, borne on the lumber trade. Here, Felicity has lived her entire life.

Curtis, on the other hand, has not. He had relocated to the sleepy small town on account of his parents, like Wade, but his uprooting happened when he was just a toddler. And being originally from Minnesota anyway, the change was minimal for him, if he remembered any of it at all.

Together, the two were a great help in getting Wade settled in. They form an odd trio of sorts, with Curtis the clown, Felicity the crass tomboy, and Wade the geek. The misfit cohesion.

Gazing into his plate, Wade doesn’t even notice someone coming up behind him until a hand claps onto his shoulder. He almost jumps out of his seat.

“Easy there, bro,” Luke laughs with a wide grin on his face. “Don’t tell me you’re still spooked?”

“See? I knew he was watching some horror flick,” Felicity chimes in with vindication.

Luke nods his hello to Wade’s friends, but doesn’t correct Felicity either. Wade is thankful his brother isn’t a dick.

“What’s up?” He half turns in his seat to face Luke.

“I’ve got a study group after school, kinda short notice. Can you pick up Sarah again?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure, no problem.”

“Thanks. I know I haven’t been around a lot lately, with finals coming up and morning practice and all... so, you know, if you ever need anything, just gimme a yell, alright?” He waves two fingers off his forehead in mock salute. “Catch ya later.”

Wade watches him leave to join up with his soccer friends, gathered in a rowdy bunch at the cafeteria doors as they are about to head out. One of them, Marcus, glances in his direction briefly. Wade doesn’t really know much about the senior except that he and Luke hang out a fair bit. He isn’t even sure if Marcus knows he is Luke’s brother. Would Luke have mentioned it? Probably not, unless it somehow came into casual conversation. At first glance, it would be hard for anyone to guess that Luke and Wade are brothers.

There is some resemblance physically; both have dark hair and blue eyes, tall, lean frames – though Luke is more built with all his sporting involvement – and both are also very smart, but they share little else in common. Wade has always been more of a recluse: introverted, shy, somewhat dorky. It’s not easy for him to mingle, make small talk, or make friends. In contrast, Luke is charismatic and outgoing, gets along easily with everyone, and is surrounded by people of all ages who adore him. They are almost on opposite ends of the personality spectrum. Despite this, they’re closer than most siblings. Luke used to dote on his baby brother. Of course, growing older, things change. And with the wide world ahead of him, Luke couldn’t keep his attention to just family anymore.

“Wade, you’ve barely eaten anything.” Felicity points to his plate. “That’s almost as gross as Curtis’s orange pea soup.”

It’s true; he has barely eaten a quarter of his lunch. “Not hungry.”

“Are you OK?” she asks with real concern this time. “Have you come down with something?”

He shakes his head. “I’m fine.”

The bell rings. Students pack up and put away lunch trays and head back to class. He follows suit.