[ In the way of ] Life & Death

First day of summer (2)

It was a hot day for the first day of summer. And since it was the first day out of school, I didn't feel like going outside. And all I did was sit around, all day, watching tv. "Jess! Did you get your chores done?" Well, almost all day. "Yeah, Mom." I say getting up, remembering that I didn't feed my dog yet. I went downstairs and put a scoop of dog food in the dog tray and was heading back upstairs. But there was a knock at the door. "I got it!" I say running towards the door.

I open the door to see my friend Dustin. "Hey can you hang out?" He says with a half smile on his face. For some reason, everytime I'm around Dustin, I always see him smile. It's not a bad thing though. But today, He has half a smile. Not like Dustin. "Ummmmm yeah, I can ask if I can hang out with you."  I said heading the other way.  

"Ok, I'll wait here." He says as I walk to the kitchen where my mom is sitting, reading, "To kill a  mockingjay." I walk over to her and say, "Hey mom. Can I go play with Dustin for a bit?" She took a couple of seconds to look up from her book, but after those seconds she looked at me. She smiled. "Sure. I'll call Dustin's mom and tell her to send you back when I need you." She looked back down at her book and without a word, I walk out the front door.

"So.. Do you want to go to our tree house?" Dustin says walking by my side. "Sure. I still need to fix that window too." Every since we first started building our tree house, that window has always fallen apart. And if you haven't noticed yet, Dustin and I are really smart. Straight A's, not to brag. "I already have your hammer and nails in my bookbag." He says moving the backpack. That's when I first noticed the huge bag on his back. "Isn't that heavy?"

"Not really. Just a little."

We head towards the woods where we always walk. We've been there so many times there was already a trail in the dirt and grass. As we ran to our tree house I noticed how you could see the city in between leaves from the trees, but there is also a huge lake in front of the tree house. I climb up the stairs to the top. "Do you have my sketch book?" I ask remembering me giving Dustin my sketch book a week ago. "Yeah."

I grab the tiny sketch book from his arms. But I catch a glimpses of scratch marks on his arms. "What happened?" I asked him forgetting about the sketch book. "What do you mean?" 

"The marks on your arms."

"Nothing." He says looking down. I automatically feel really bad for him. Did something happen and he was cutting himself? I hugged him and he started to cry. "I was lying. My dad died." I start to tear up and say, "Hey, we can share a dad now." What was I thinking. That he could move onto another dad already? "Thanks." He says with a half smirk but still a pout. "Wait so you're cutting yourself? Over your dad?" I ask not trying to be rude. But it might of sounded like it.

"No, We were in a car crash. I was in the passenger seat. And we got hit and dad cracked his neck and I got jerked out of the car and scraped my arms." He said while looking down. "Hey, It's not your fault." I said rubbing his right arm. He sighs. "Hey!" I heard a familiar voice. And the drumming of feet. It has to be Kaliey. "Hey." Dustin says to her while trying to get out some board games. "Dustin can you hand me, my hammer and nails, in my backpack?" I said putting my sketch book down. I can't concentrate when Kaliey keeps talking. So sketching was out of the picture.

Dustin hands me, my hammer and nails and gets out Monopoly. I start hammering all the nails into place. "What are you guys doing?" Kaliey says while climbing the rope up. Ever since we built this tree house, Kaliey always wanted a rope to climb. "Getting ready to play games, after Jess is done with the window." I laugh cause I was about to say the same thing. "Hey Dustin, where do I put the last nail at?" I say knowing he already has an answer because of the look on his face.

"Bottom Right still looks loose. So put it in between Bottom right and left, so it stays." Dustin says probably picturing it in his brain. Dustin's dad used to build tree houses. So Dustin grew up helping or watching his dad build. Dustin wasn't the one for building. Hint Hint, which is why I am. He only learned where to put the nails so it could stay. Basically the only reason why Dustin is rich is because of his father. His father built tree houses, not normal tree houses, a house, house.  On the tree. For the Mayor's daughter. But the good thing was, I was friends with the Mayor's daughter and we played in that house for a long time. So Dustin's dad, earn a huge amount of money.

His dad got an idea to make Dustin a tree house, so it could get him interested into actually building tree houses. Dustin's dad built the floor and a wall and gave up and forgot about it, cause Dustin still wasn't interested. Then one day, Dustin met me. Well no, I met Dustin. Dustin's dad was building my tree house and Dustin came along. So we hung out and became friends. Dustin took me to huge lake in the woods and noticed the old tree house his dad tried building. I told him I was one for building, but wasn't that good at it.

But Dustin told me he knew where to put things up at and how the structure was going to look like. All I needed to do was to pound a hammer on a nail on wood. And that's how our friendship really began. We bonded over building and it turned out that we had a lot in common and yeah. We've been friends ever since then.