Reckless Abandon

Chapter 1

Somehow paint doesn't fix everything. Part of me prayed it would. The goopy black paint running down the side of the barn ought to make me feel better. It really should. Only it reminds me of blood, thick, congealed, rusty blood. That vision is not exactly helping me.

Chunks of stone shift under my feet as I step away from my handiwork. In retrospect, it really does look grotesque and twisted. I've made the wooden planks into an epigraph and that's never what they should have been.

Oh well. It's wood. It's now black. It's set up on the hill, just above the highway. It's a barn we don't really use. It's small, like a shed. Honestly, it really is just a shed. My dad keeps a sowing machine in there. And now it is black, like the inky depths of my soul must be. It is as dark as I feel inside. And everyone who dares drive up that highway can feel free to see it.

---

My house is a two-story affair that would make the mouths of city-dwellers salivate at the realization of the sheer amount of space it grants. It's a sort of oddity, painted a bright blue so bright it's almost teal and perched twenty feet away from a stream. The property my parents own is also a sort of oddity. There's the gouged out sections of hill that have been stripped of their trees for pasture, all abutting a two lane highway that cuts under it along the side of the mountain. It's bizarre in a special way, with its own brilliant charm. There's cows and maple syrup taps and the glorious, burning crown of leaves that descends on the mountains in autumn and transforms the landscape into the most beautiful thing I will ever see.

This is my home and this is my hell. Home because it is where I grew up. It's where the thin scar on my chin was obtained, falling ten feet out of a tree when I was six chasing tree pirates. It is where I baked chocolate chip cookies for Christmas breakfast and got into a flour war with my brother Alex. This is where I hiked up a mountain to make daisy chains next to rusty red utility poles. This is where my essence is inextricably linked.

But it is also hell. Because of the feet. I can still feel the spring breeze upon my cheeks, feel the weak early-morning sun creating over the hill and forcing my eyes to water. I can still smell the grass, that crisp, fresh grass, bursting forth straight from the muddy dirt, mingling with the scent of cow patties. I can still feel that barn door under my fingers, the wood painted red and flaking and splintering where my hand grabbed it. I can still feel the temporary confusion as I couldn't add it up. There were the cows, chewing their cud, ready to be milked. I had my bucket firmly clasped in my hands. I had on thick rubber boots to avoid the cow crap. I hadn't ever noticed before the thing hanging above the cows.

The first thing I registered was the feet. There were shoes. Heavy-soled work shoes, tan with brown shoelaces. They were dangling. For a few seconds I didn't think this peculiarly out-of-place chandelier was anything. And then I realized that shoes shouldn't be hanging in midair attached to feet in a barn. There shouldn't be legs attached to those feet attached to a torso attached to a neck that is gracefully choked in a thick braid of chunky rope.

It took me too long to realize the reason my brother's face was blue.

That is why this place is hell.

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I shouldn't have nightmares, but I do. Somehow my dreams are haunted by this scene. I'll be laughing eating pancakes one second, then I'll be screaming my lungs out in a barn. The autumnal crown has already descended on the mountains, but it's giving me no peace. It's haunting me. He's haunting me. I can't escape the look on his face, as though he's realized at the last moment he's made a horrible mistake.

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The chatter on the school bus fizzles out as I step on. A quiet hush descends as I make a beeline for the nearest empty seat. I can feel everyone's eyes on me. Like losing my brother wasn't enough. Now I'm some kind of museum specimen. Look at the lovely specimen of the grieving teenage girl, in her natural habitat of the cutthroat high school bus!