The Sixteenth Summer

Chapter 4

The next morning, I was startled to find myself gently awoken by little tendrils of sunshine creeping into my room, and caressing my cheek. I smiled and stretched, wondering where all the violent rain had gone.

I turned on my little hand-me-down flip phone, and checked the time.

7:45.

Perfect. Not a moment wasted on sleeping the day away.

I pulled off my pajamas and slipped into a pair of jean shorts and a t-shirt.

I tied on my beat up converse, and headed out the door.

Wednesday. So Dad was at work already, Aaron would be playing Playstation all day, and mom wouldn't be awake before 10:30.

I headed out the backdoor.

Before I'd gone 5 yards, my Australian Sheppard, Hannah, fell in and followed me at my heels.

Hannah had been my birthday present when I was ten. She'd been my best friend since. Every time my friends didn't invite me out, or I didn't get invited to a party, Hannah was always there.

I made it out to the barn and fed Zena and Dex.

Zena was my horse and Dex was Aaron's. We'd got them three years ago. But I was the only one who rode either of them.

I smiled and patted Zena's nose. I made sure all the gates were locked, and headed out.

Hannah fell out, and lay down by Zena's feet, playing her favorite game.

'Let's see how mad I can make Zena and still survive'.

Not really a game I approved of.

My cat Mauldin (one of my many cats. The only one that was really mine. the rest are barn cats), trotted out of the shed.

He now fell into step behind me.

It was weird how it seemed like I constantly had some animal escort every where I went. I guess that's part of living out here in the country.

I strolled over to the trees, casually brushing the smooth green leaves on the trees right on the edge of the tree line. When I was very young, my mom told me to never go into the forest. I'd always assumed it was because I was young and she didn't want something to 'get me'. But after years of watching the news and 60 minutes, and hearing about kids wandering off into the forest and their bleached nasty bones being found twenty years later, something had always just kept me out of that forest, no matter how bad my sense of adventure and dangerous curiosity begged me to step past the first line of trees, and go see what treasures I could find beyond the limit of that first line of trees. Something in the back of my mind told me there was nothing I would ever find in that old nasty forest. But something else, the bigger part, pulled me towards its yellowy-green and golden depths, studying the way the sun's rays bounced off the shiny surface of the leaves.

And so this was how most of my afternoons since I was about nine had been spent. Brushing my fingertips across the border I was never supposed to cross.

No amount of rapists and serial killers could keep me from playing around with the boundaries that had been set for my 'safety'.

Eventually I got bored with teasing danger, and followed Mauldin out into the field behind my house.

I sat down in my usual place, where the grass was all lay down where I'd been sitting.

I was suddenly reminded of yesterday afternoon. I wondered if I'd just imagined it all.

Well him I mean, Elijah.

I shivered suddenly as a gust of wind came blowing across the plain.

I lay down in the grass, catching a ladybug in my hand. It was the weird kind of ladybug, the kind that isn’t in the least bit orange, and remind you of a tiny ripe tomato that some one had put polka dots on with magic marker.

Mauldin tortured some poor cricket for awhile before I made him put it down. He sure was feisty for a grown cat.

I stared up at the clouds again, searching for shapes in them.

There weren't any.

They were the lame wispy kind of cloudy that don't make shapes.

I lay there for awhile anyway, mainly cause I didn't have anything better to do.

I don't know how long I lay there. Contemplating life, myself, and well really mainly whether or not I'm going out of my mind or not.

Suddenly, something caught my attention, and soft as a whisper, there was a sound caught on the wind.

"I'm real."

I sat bolt upright.

"What?"

I shook my head.

The wind. The wind, just the wind, that's all it'd been. My over active imagination was often the blame for many a childhood freak out.

Or so mom had always said. I'm kinda starting to wonder.

I shivered, and started walking home.

I pulled out my phone and texted my friend Sara.