Life in Words

Short Story // Pt. 1: There She Was

Synopsis: Jonathan lived in Canberra. Now Jonathan lives in a country town in Victoria. He joins the local church's youth group. Jonathan falls in love. 

Abigayle suffers from CVS. Because of this she is fragile and small. Abigayle befriends the new boy. Abigayle falls in love.

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Jonathan had lived in Canberra his whole life. His earliest memories were filled with his father dumping a hot bucket of water of the car windscreen to melt the frost, and the layers he wrapped himself up in the frigid winter nights. And he always planned to stay there, graduate university get married, start a family, get an excellent job, until he was swept up to a country town in Victoria for his mother's job.

At only fourteen years old, he left his closest friends, Timothy and Noah, he had known since he couldn't walk, they left the Australian Capital Territory for the sheep-filled countryside for his mother to work at a specialist pharmacy. Jonathan barely had time to say goodbye to Timothy and Noah, and nearly puked on the plane trip to Melbourne, and actually had to barf up his lunch on the car ride from Melbourne to Tarrington.

With his father rubbing his back and older brother taking a pee in the bush, the Downing family all exhaled simultaneously.

"Come on," mother begged, "We'll let you sit at the front so you can focus on something still on the horizon."

She offered him a napkin to wipe the vomit off his face, and Jonathan looked doubtfully at the pile of his bile and undigested food on the side of the road. Hopefully some Kangaroo wouldn't lick it up and die because of his motion sickness.

"Thanks mum," he coughed.

---

Their new house was modest, made of brick with dying rosebushes surrounding the patio. But it made him homesick, for his home back in Canberra. The moving van was late, so the Downing's walked around their empty home for three hours all wishing this never happened, except mother, who was on the phone calling clients already.

Jonathan sat on the floor in his new bedroom, running his fingers through the crusty carpet. Sighing, he stood up and gazed out the window to his overgrown garden, nothing seemed happy here. For one, the mobile signal was crap, so Tim and Noah couldn't cheer him up. To add to everything gloomy, there was a cockroach climbing across his ceiling, and he wasn't tall enough to grab it with a tissue and take away its life.

"Oh well it can live a bloody week without their heads," he muttered, picking at a hole in the carpet.

Father stood by the door looking at his miserable son, picking at the already disgusting carpet.

He cleared his throat, "Jonathan."

Jonathan looked up at his father with a completely bored expression, "Yes, dad?"

"I thought it might be easier to get to know some people," father started, "if you went to the youth at the local church."

"Church?" Jonathan asked, "At a church? So, we have to talk about bible stuff?"

"It's every second Friday, JJ, once a month there's a bible study and games, the other session is like board games and table tennis," he explained, "Please just give it a go, make some friends before you start school next week."

"Is William going?" Jonathan sighed, "I won't go if he doesn't. I won't know anyone, it'll be awkward."

"Your brother will go to the young adults' sessions Thursday nights, so no, he isn't going."