A Year Without Snow

-26-

Monday, 21st July 1986

It was unbearably hot. Every single part of my body was covered in sweat. By that point of the night, I had tried every single position possible and I simply couldn't fall asleep.

Frustrated with the heat and my lack of sleep, I sat on the bed, while cleaning a few drops of sweat that were about to fall from my eyebrow. I picked my watch from the nightstand, almost 4 A.M. I sighed heavily.

My mind was racing with places on the house I could sleep beside my oven like bedroom, however, I was sure that the whole house would be this hot.

Standing up, I put on my watch, which was the only thing my father gave me before I left for military school. I made an effort to forget about that detail seeing that I actually liked the watch. I went over to my desk, opened the last drawer and took out a pack of cigarettes that were hidden underneath some old notebooks.

As I walked downstairs, I suddenly remembered the subject that had been on my mind for my last sleepless hours.

Jim and his annoying comments about me turning into my father. It actually got me thinking. Which pissed me off, firstly because I hated my father more than anything and secondly because I let that idiot get into my head.

I made my way to the back yard, taking out a cigarette, and sat down on one of the lawn chairs. As I was lighting it, I realized that the lights of one of the bedrooms of the Kanne's house were still on. Through the window, I could only see Jim's body because he was sitting on the window seat.

While I was looking absently, the boy turned his head to me, and after a while waved friendly. Awkwardly, I waved back giving him a small smile.

Jim stood up from his seat and went out of sight. I simply ignored it and laid my head back and blew out smoke into the warm July air.

After a while, I heard a door opening and closing. And suddenly Jim's head popped out above the fences that separated our houses.

He shook above his head a small plastic bag with a green stuff inside it and asked, "Want some?"

I nodded enthusiastically and he jumped over the fence.

He made his way to the chair next to mine and opened the bag.

"I didn't know you were into this kind of stuff." I said.

"Me? What about you, military boy?" He asked while rolling a cigarette.

"You clearly don't know how it works over there."

"Thank God." He said. "Hey man, sorry about yesterday, I was just pissed about having to clean the attic and your attitude wasn't helping."

"Eh, it's alright." It wasn't, but I wasn't going to argue.

That day we smoked two joints and ended up staying up until six in the morning before heading to our separate homes.

. . . . .

The next night, after another boring day, I headed out to the back yard again, telling myself it was to smoke a cigarette, something that I could actually do at any hour of the day.

I got there to find Jim once again by his bedroom's window, and just like the previous day, I saw his head turn to me and the seventeen years old boy stand up and make his way out of the house and up the fence to sit by side.

And so we formed a late summer night ritual where he would join me in my backyard and we would stay smoking and talking through the long hours of the July and August nights. In the beginning, it was mostly smoking but as the summer went on, neither of us had more money for drugs and the talking was the only thing that came out of those hours.