Wilson Mooney
Almost Eighteen
a novel by
Gretchen de la O
Wilson Mooney, Almost Eighteen
Gretchen de la O
Copyright© Gretchen de la O 2011
Published at Smashwords
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events,
real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.
Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored on a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.
ISBN: 0-9836658-0-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-9836658-0-9
Printed in the U.S.A.
First Edition, June 2011
Re-edited by Tiffany Barkman Grayson
Original Art and cover designed by Eunice Ortegón
Wilson
Mooney
is dedicated to
all the women who
want to remember what
it felt like when their
butterflies fluttered
south for the
first time.
When I become so entrenched in the process of living life sometimes I forget to look up and smile at the people who make my life worth living. This moment is my opportunity to thank those who have inspired me to be the person I am, and the writer I keep striving to become. They are the people who gave me the confidence I needed to jump off the crumbling edge, feet first, into the refreshingly deep, crystal clear waters of my creative discovery.
My Shout-outs…
The Wilson Mooney Book Club: Allison, Becky, Brittney, Debbie, Jennifer, Karley, Lisa, and Nicole: Thanks for the insight into Wilson and Max and the dinnertime discussion of the characters you loved—and even the ones you didn’t love so much. You all hold a very special place in my heart.
April: Your belief that I could write a good story means the world to me. Thank you, sis, for giving me the push I needed to publish Wilson.
Eunice: Thank you for stepping forward when I needed someone to create my book cover. Your vision and talent are remarkable. I am so grateful for your time, so blessed by your creativity, and am truly inspired by your generosity.
Dorothy: Thank you for your wisdom, excitement, and the faith you have in me. I appreciate your wealth of grammatical knowledge.
Karley: Thank you for your endless cheerleading and your total belief in what I was doing. I am completely grateful for your support, input, and the late night readings (a chapter at a time). I can’t wait to spend an hour a week huddled around the computer again.
Debbie: Thank you for your eyes, ears, and voice; for putting up with the countless times you were forced to listen and read aloud. I appreciate the brainstorming moments and directional shifts we had standing in your kitchen that kept me focused and moving toward my goals.
My Family—Ed, Jared, Kyle, Nate, and my mom (Grandma K): Thank you for giving me the space I needed to create, and the moments in life when you had to fend for yourselves. Thank you for believing that, beyond my righteous titles of wife, mother, and daughter, you saw me as an author. Thank you for making Sunday mornings our family time. You guys are my world and I love you.
Becky: No words exist in any language in the modern world today that can express the limitless gratitude I have for you. I am beyond blessed to have you in my life. You are my twin in consciousness and my sister in greatness. Thank you for your unconditional love, your fabulous dreams, and the absolute reassurance that I am worthy. (REALLY, REALLY!)
Chapter One:
I wish I could remember my childhood. The vivid memories and deliberate words just didn’t work for me. I remember small pieces—chunks of events that took up residence in my head—but details of who took whom to the fifth grade dance or how it felt when Christian Sibley, one of the most popular boys in middle school, broke up with me…well you could just forget it. My mind was blank. It was like Swiss cheese; cheese that left a pukey, pungent flavor in my mouth after I swallowed.
Okay, so maybe I was being a little melodramatic with the Swiss cheese reference and the Christian Sibley thingy—but it stung. If I thought really hard, I could remember some of the couples at the fifth grade dance. But if you’ve lived a life like mine, you tend to make it a habit to forget the crappy parts and a struggle to retain even the mediocre ones too.
My name is Wilson Mooney and I’m a senior at Wesley Academy. I knew from an early age that my life was different. Think about it, how many girls do you know named Wilson? Then saddled with the last name Mooney? Odds were stacked against me from birth, I was going to be the butt of someone’s joke. If I had money for every time someone called me Looney Mooney, I wouldn’t need to work another day of my life; but life’s not fair.
Unlike most of the girls at my school, I wasn’t born into privilege. I was the product of a one-night stand between two under-aged, pimple-faced ninth graders. My father was a no-show from the second my mom told him she was pregnant, and my mother had made it her life’s work to live off of the state of California. That’s why I’m here. My grandparents thought I would be better off at a school away from my misguided, loser of a mother. Oh yeah, Wesley Academy is a boarding school for girls.
***
The grimy dust from the dry-erase pens always covered my hands—evidence that I was one of “those” kids. I’d been erasing the whiteboards for twenty minutes straight and it sucked. Not only did I have to use the crappy black brick eraser to wipe away the chicken scratches of my fifth period teacher, Mr. Swanks, but I also had to use a wet wipe to clean the residue that made my hands look like I belonged in the first grade again. What teacher in their right mind had to use every color pen that came in the economy-sized box? Weren’t black and red enough? After I erased the trig problems, in all different colors, I had to clean Mrs. Clouser’s boards. She was my English Lit teacher. At least she stayed to the two-color maximum.
When it’s all said and done I spend sixty minutes every day of my life cleaning the whiteboards of six of my teachers, three of whom I hate with a passion and two who I can barely tolerate. At least I have Max Goldstein. He’s the young new student teacher who came to Wesley last year to teach government.
Today Mr. Goldstein came into Mrs. Clouser’s classroom while I was cleaning the whiteboards. His strong hands pushed his straight black hair away from his face. His electric green eyes watched me erase. Back and forth they danced. I caught him staring.
“Hi, Wilson, I’m looking for Mrs. Clouser, have you seen her?”
My heart fell into my stomach. He was actually talking to me as an equal.
Don’t be stupid, answer him using sophisticated words. Think, think, think—okay, I got it.
“No.” I felt the dry eraser brick catch under my hand and stumble across the whiteboard as it flew to the ground toward him. My cheeks flushed red, how embarrassing.
“Here let me get that.” He bent down and his hair fell toward his sharp, well-built nose. The tip of his tongue w
et his lips as he held out the eraser.
Don’t stare, I kept repeating to myself as I opened my mouth and tasted the sweet aroma of his French Vanilla coffee across my tongue. A hint of Crew hair gel found the spot in my body reminding me that I was a woman. God, he is so hot! Man, I wish he wasn’t my teacher. Maybe I should just brush his fingers when I grab the eraser. I could make it look innocent enough.
“Here you go,” his voice shattered my thoughts. He held out the eraser giving it a little adjustment in his hand.
“Thanks.” I reached for it and my fingernails caught the back of his hand scratching across to his knuckles.
I can’t believe I scratched him. “Oh, I’m sorry.” Why wasn’t I more careful?
“I think I’ll survive.” His lips parted; he smiled and I melted.
“If you see her, could you tell her I came by?”
“Sure.” He turned away and left through the big beige metal door.
I tossed the black eraser onto the aluminum tray, grabbed the wet wipe, and finished the job that helped bankroll my stay at the academy, thinking about him the entire time.
I’m seventeen—I’ll be eighteen in another month—and he’s twenty-two. Four years is nothing; it was actually considered normal now. I figure with the maturity gap between males and females, I am about the right age for him.
I was born on Christmas. Yeah, it sucked for me. I never understood the hypocrisy of people getting presents for someone else’s birthday. How could I justify getting presents for someone who died for my sins over two thousand years ago? Here, sacrifice your life for me. And, by the way, look at the new iPod Touch I got for your birthday. Besides, I always got stiffed. I never had a real birthday party with my friends. It always amounted to my grandparents singing “Happy Birthday” to me as I opened my one birthday-slash-Christmas present that was surely wrapped in dreary solid red paper. I’m not complaining; my grandparents did the best they could with the cards they were dealt. They didn’t intend to emotionally damage me with the Christmas thing—they loved me.
When I lost my grandma six months ago I didn’t expect my grandpa to follow her five and a half months later (almost to the day). He went out to get the newspaper and suffered a massive heart attack. He was dead before he hit the driveway. He just gave up and died of a broken heart. They’d been married sixty-four years.
Some people tried to comfort me into believing my grandparents were together, sitting in heaven, looking down from their celestial space in the sky. Me? Well, I didn’t know what to believe. Part of me wanted to think they were sitting right next to Jesus, but I couldn’t. I just wasn’t convinced the legs of their chairs weren’t going to fall through the soft, puffy clouds. Besides, what were they going to do on a picture- perfect, clear day?
The school assigned me a grievance counselor; someone who could help me with all the “pain” I buried deep in my soul. When I didn’t show up for my first session, they called me out from seventh period and cornered me in the hall outside the classroom. Talk about a real awkward intervention. Principal Rose, Vice Principal Hardbough (known to most as Mrs. Hardballs), and the guidance counselor, Mrs. Jenkles, swarmed around me and bounced in rhythm. They kept chanting strange words about letting go of my disappointment and embracing the small, lost child within. Lesson learned that day? Fake it ‘til you make it. If I’d just gone to the stupid appointment, I could have stayed in pottery and finished the ashtray I’d been making for my non-smoking best friend’s parents. Instead I got shuffled into the guidance counselor’s office every day for the next two weeks during seventh period.
By the time I convinced Mrs. Jenkles that I was mentally balanced enough, the trimester ended and I got a “D” in pottery. You want to know what the real kicker was? My grade was a result of my lack of attendance and incomplete projects. That was the bureaucracy of it all; nobody would claim the blame. The day I took my unfinished ashtray to Joanie’s parents, I realized how much I missed my grandparents. The stupid, restless bowl of an ashtray helped me break down and understand that I was truly alone in this world. I cried hard that night into my pillow and vowed to never cry for my grandparents again; and I haven’t.
Truth be told, I wasn’t really alone in the world. I had Joanie, my BFF. We met when we were both dumped at Bethany’s Boarding School for Girls at the ripe young age of eight; wide-eyed and scared, we gravitated to one another. Joanie’s the most amazing person I have ever met. She has this way of making me believe I can survive anything. You know the type: they dared you to kick the devil between the legs while holding an angel by the wings. She was my rock through the whole death comes in waves thing. While I was busy waiting for the other shoe to drop, she was there to remind me to blow my nose and wash my hands.
Flashbacks and daydreams helped lessen the tedium of my under-aged, slave-labor moments cleaning the whiteboards. By the time I looked at the clock, I only had Max Goldstein’s board left to rub; I liked to clean his last. He had the really nice, enormous erasers that wiped the board clear in a couple of swipes. But that wasn’t the only reason. He always stayed late to work on his lesson plan for the next day and he didn’t leave until around four-thirty. If I planned my wipes right, I could spend thirty minutes in the same room with him. Thirty minutes of uninterrupted time with the hottest teacher in the entire school. No flirtatious inquiries from Bonnie Wente or stupid questions from Jacky Burlington. Only him and me, with boards that needed to be stroked and lessons that needed to be planned.
I pulled open the massive metal door to his room and shuffled past the pile of crumpled paper overflowing from his waste basket. I could smell his cologne, fresh, like he splashed some on his neck before I showed up. The hint of lavender hovered faintly in the air. He looked up from the planner he had spread across his desk.
“Oh, hey there Wilson, I almost forgot you were coming in today.”
I froze; my heart crashed down into my stomach. His words damaged me like a wrecking ball plummeting into a building. This wasn’t the first time I came to clean his boards.
“Did you need me to come back?” I asked.
“No, go ahead and do what you need to do.” He pushed his finger into a black drawn square and started to write in the time.
How dare he forget I was coming to his classroom? The way he ignored me knocked me into the swell of my own self-pity as he continued to press his pen to the planner. Fine, two can play that way. I grabbed the humongous erasers and started clearing his board, the entire thing—starting with the part where he drew a square around and wrote in big black words, “DO NOT ERASE.”
Okay, so it was immature and cruel; I would even go far enough to say rude. But I gotta admit, I felt vindicated. My emotions always ran hot and cold. That was me, that’s how I rolled. I have heard people refer to me as a pit-bull. If you were part of my pack, I’d protect you to the death. Piss me off, and I’d turn on you faster than a crazed dog chasing an injured cat.
I guess it was time for me to apologize profusely and make it look like a total accident.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Goldstein. I think I just erased something you wanted to keep.” I crumpled my eyebrows and twisted my lips. He paused from the planner and looked up. At first he narrowed his eyes and clenched his jaw. Frustration draped his face. I’ve never seen him frustrated before. Wow, he is so gorgeous. Then just as fast, his expression broke to forgiveness. His eyes rounded, his lips pulled across his perfect teeth into a smile and he shook his head back and forth.
He came over to me. “Don’t worry about it, Wilson. I know you’ve had a lot on your mind lately.” His hand pushed at my back. Shivers ran down my arms. My fingers clenched the eraser and I felt the ripples vibrate up through my scalp. He was touching me; his hand was so warm.
“I’m sorry about your grandfather.”
He dropped his hands and slid them into the front pockets of his Levi’s. His red-flannelled shoulders rose up to touch his ears, his dark blue T-shirt wrinkled by his waist.
What? What did he just say, I didn’t catch that. I guess I was too busy watching his body move. Too busy listening to my inner voice practicing my new name, Wilson Goldstein.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear what you said.” He pulled his hands out of his pockets and grabbed my shoulders. “I’m sorry about your grandfather,” he made sure I saw him speaking. I still couldn’t focus on what he said. Hello, now both hands were touching me.
They always say teachers shouldn’t touch their students. What a heap of steaming crap. Please, touch me all you want. How do you think he kept me coming back to my government class? It sure wasn’t the curriculum. Who really cared about how a bill became a law, or the difference between the three branches of government. It was because I got to spend fifty whole minutes watching him. And if it was a great day, he would have brushed his hand across the top of my chair and I would have felt my shirt push across my back as he bent down to help me with something I didn’t understand. Needless to say, I was always struggling in government. I looked forward to that moment where his smell would surround me; his one hand would rest on my chair while his other would anchor strongly onto my desk.
The edge of his eyebrow rose, waiting for me to answer.
“Thanks, but he died over two weeks ago.” Why didn’t I just say thanks and move on? His hands dropped from my shoulders and his face drained white. I felt the huge eraser I still had in my hand become too heavy and fall to the ground.
“I didn’t know—you didn’t miss any school. I assumed that it just happened.”
“No. Don’t be sorry, he lived way too long.”
“Wow, well you seem like you’re doing fine.” He shook his head. I should have known when his eyes bugged out that I came across all wrong.
That was my downfall. I didn’t know when to shut up. Open mouth and insert foot; those words should have been tattooed on the inside of my eyelids.
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