A Summer of Discovery

Chapter One

"She's intoxicating and I find myself horribly drunk on her very existence" These words came from my sixteen year old self, feelings left in fading ink in my beat up diary, the year etched into the peeling spine 2004.

I had found myself knee deep in storage box's the night before my trip back to my home town, trying desperately to retrieve the leather bound journal. I had read it last night on the plane to Alabama, skipping over the pages like stones on a water's edge avoiding any page where my eyes found her name. I had taught myself a long time ago naively that if I didn't think about her or see her name that she would remain locked away inside of me like a prisoner and never be thought of again, like she no longer existed. The truth was that in the eight years that had passed since graduation, in the night when I lost all control in my sleep, it was her who visited me often and although I made myself believe that I needed the journal to remember the events of my senior years in high school, it was completely untrue. If I let myself, I knew deep down that I remembered it all as if it was yesterday.

***

I drove over the town line admiring briefly the freshly painted sign 'Welcome to Fairview' and I felt nauseous. I hadn't been back here since graduation and that was eight years ago, almost exactly. I mentally noted there was almost five hundred more residents since I had left, my eyes glanced back from the sign and to the road ahead. It wasn't long before I was entering the town's hub of activity here in Fairview. The familiar scent of gasoline wafted under my nose as I passed my father's store and gas station. My eye lashes tickled my cheeks as I closed my eyes momentarily. I couldn't help but smile as the scent took me straight back to my childhood. My Pops had owned the gas station and the garage since his own father had passed away twenty years ago when I was only Six years old. It was a family business and I had inherited quite young the ability to fix anything and everything with an engine. Unfortunately that was as far as I could imagine going into the family business. I had no intention of ever coming back here and taking over the business myself. It was a grey area, I knew one day the discussion would be had but until my Pops brought up retirement I would avoid it like the plague.

Main Street had not changed, it was stuck in a time warp with the same family stores and eateries that had always been here lining the half mile long strip. I pushed my Aviators up the bridge of my nose with one finger whilst clocking the new sports bar on the corner of Elm. That was as risky as it got here in Fairview.  I drove on down the road glancing at the people busying the sidewalks stopping frequently to talk to passers-by before ducking into stores. Everyone knew everyone here in town and if you didn't get stopped twenty times within a half mile walk it must be a Sunday morning when anyone who's anyone is in church.

I took a right turn deciding on the scenic route back to our street which took me only two blocks before winding back to Main Street. Every road in town somehow took you back to Main Street if you followed it long enough. I passed the familiar houses of kids in my high school and wondered if they still lived here, if they had got out or married or stayed put with kids of their own. I welcomed the sign signalling me onto my old street. As I pulled into the dusty road I felt a knot in the pit of my stomach, my right hand dropped instinctively from the warm leather steering wheel onto the fabric of my dress, my knuckles turned white as I tightened my grip on the material that covered my stomach as if trying to hold down the anxiety.

The houses all looked the same, no one had redecorated in the last decade. The houses down my Pop's block were all built identical, two stories, the top wooden and the bottom mostly brick built with wrap around porches to the front and screens over the doors. The houses each had a small square front yard with various colored post boxes at the curb. The back yards down our street all varied in size and shape depending how the occupants maintained them, ours was a large rectangle sized yard with a giant oak tree occupying its center, and we shared it with the house immediately to the right. All homes were still spectrums of yellow or white faded by the intense southern sun, all except Mr Titches house which I suddenly found myself drawn to as it came into view, it had been painted a heavy pink and my god was it hideous. I had to commend him though, in a conservative town with old fashioned views and stereotypes he was breaking out of the confines of his little house. It started when his wife left him in the nineties, with a flamingo bath robe. I felt the corners of my mouth twitch into a smile before stopping at the curb outside Pop's house. I inhaled deeply and cut the engine.