by Hart, Jerry
* * *
Two months had passed since he signed the divorce papers, and there wasn’t a day that went by when Don didn’t think about it. Even when he was blindly typing away at his computer. Conner and Jordan were upstairs, playing loudly; Don could hear them through a vent in his study.
The book he was writing now was junk, but he managed to tap into a subconscious state that allowed a continuous flow of words to spill forth. The trilogy was based on something he wrote for Language Arts in middle school. That had been his favorite subject, and he remembered that particular story fondly, about a detective who found out his best friend was a murderer.
Don’s heart wasn’t really in the story now, and luckily the house was fully paid for. All he had to do was keep the lights on.
* * *
The neighborhood was relatively nice, despite a crabby neighbor across the street named Mr. Leper. The old man always stayed in his house, which he kept locked up like a damn fortress. There were even bars on the windows. Don wondered why the man felt the need to protect himself to that extent.
Don and the boys took a walk through the suburb and found a nice little park nestled in a wooded area. Paths sprung from the park in every direction, leading to parking lots and creeks. Don sat on a bench as the boys joined other kids at play. He was reminded of a park in Connecticut where he and Ethan used to play. He also remembered a bully who had picked on the boys one day. Ethan had chucked a rock at his head, knocking him out cold.
Jordan and Conner seemed to be making fast friends with these kids, though—no bullies in the general area.
“Is this seat taken?” a woman asked, pointing to the empty space on the bench.
“Not at all.” He scooted over, giving her more room. She was very striking, with long brown hair and green eyes.
“Are those your boys?” she asked, indicating Jordan and Conner on the swing set.
“Those are my little monsters,” he replied with a dry chuckle.
“I’m Samantha.” She offered a handshake.
“Don.” He shook and caught her eyeing his left hand. No wedding band. “I got the kids in the divorce, luckily.”
Samantha raised an eyebrow. “Divorced? Sorry to hear that.”
She didn’t sound sorry.
That didn’t bother Don in the slightest.
Part 2: Ten Years Later
Chapter 5
Jordan sat in the school auditorium, bored out of his mind, while the principal tried to settle the kids down long enough to introduce the guest speaker—a local news reporter. Jordan was also embarrassed, surrounded by other fifteen-year-olds who didn’t know how to act. Morons.
Principal Garfield was also clearly embarrassed by the way the kids were acting in front of the local celebrity, Diedre Marshall. She was an elegant African-American woman, like his mother, in a red blouse and black skirt. Jordan was immediately smitten.
The dimly lit—and very large—auditorium finally began to quiet down. It seemed like the entire sophomore class of Anderton Ridge High was packed inside this room. The school was still fairly new, having been built four years prior. As Ms. Marshall spoke Jordan looked about until he found who he was looking for.
Conner waved at him from a few rows farther back. Jordan returned the wave and then faced forward again.
Ms. Marshall went on to explain the importance of school and believing in your dreams and so on. Jordan listened respectfully, but her words left little impression on him. At fifteen, he was sick of school and didn’t want to think about his future. He had no dreams to follow. He blamed his father for his lack of ambition.
Dad made his living writing cheesy thrillers. They sold very well, though Jordan doubted his father enjoyed writing them. Jordan had walked in on Dad once while he was writing. Dad had looked like he was in a trance, never blinking or taking a break from typing. Jordan stood there in the doorway for nearly ten minutes without his father realizing he was there.
Jordan could tell that, to his father, writing was a job that paid the bills, nothing more. To Jordan, however, writing was like therapy. He started keeping a journal two years ago, chronicling his horrific nightmares. He often dreamed of a black creature with horrible pink lips all over its chest that tried to suck out his soul. Every time he dreamed about it, the creature seemed to suck out a little more of it. Jordan always awoke feeling lifeless.
The audience suddenly began applauding, and Jordan realized that Ms. Marshall had finished her speech. He clapped as well, even though he hadn’t listened to most of it. The students began filing out of the auditorium.
Conner ran up to him. “Would you bang her?” he asked Jordan.
“Who?”
“That news chick.”
“She’s pretty.”
“That’s not what I asked.
“Would you bang her?” Jordan asked, refusing to answer.
Conner ran his fingers through his gelled, blond-tipped brown hair. “I’d bang her all night long.”
“Fantastic.” Jordan snorted. “Why do you talk like that?”
“Because I’m a kid.”
“Your roots are showing,” Jordan joked as they walked into the cafeteria located just outside the auditorium.
“You should get blond tips too,” Conner said, smoothing his hair down.
“A black kid with frosted tips? Why would I do that to myself?”
“You’re only half black,” said Conner as they got into the lunch line. “That reminds me—are you going to visit your mom next summer?”
“Probably.”
“I hate getting stuck with your dad all summer. Why did my mom have to kill that guy and go to the crazy house?”
Conner always seemed more than happy to tell anyone about what his mother had done to her boyfriend a decade ago. He barely remembered that night, seeing as he was only five, but he always tended to go into graphic detail about how his mother had ripped her boyfriend’s face off after he hit her a few times. Surprisingly, the story made him popular around school, especially with the girls, since he told them that incident taught him to respect women.
Jordan and Conner joined a few other kids at a circular table and Jordan immediately started dipping his chicken rings into his mashed potatoes.
“You just love those chicken rings, don’t you,” said a pretty redhead named Erin.
Jordan nodded and smiled. He liked her a lot, more than she realized.
“Maybe you should cut back on those,” said the boy next to her. “You’re getting a little chunky, I think.”
Unfortunately, Erin had an asshole boyfriend named Travis Hooper. He was on the basketball team and had an athletic build that he liked to show off whenever he got the chance. He had an arm around Erin’s shoulder, holding her close. He was grinning at Jordan, as if he was well aware of the crush Jordan had on his girlfriend.
“Stop squeezing so tight,” Erin complained, and Travis loosened his grip. He never stopped grinning at Jordan, however. Jordan, losing his appetite, dropped his chicken ring and looked elsewhere.
“So, Travis,” Conner said, “did Ms. Marshall’s speech inspire you to follow your dream of becoming a skanky ho on the streets?”
Erin chuckled. Travis looked at him and simply said, “I can’t imagine being anything else.”
If anything, Jordan admired the fact that nothing ever got under the jock’s skin. It was nearly impossible to anger him.
“What did you think of Ms. Marshall?” Erin asked, addressing everyone at the table.
“I thought she was pretty cool,” said Travis.
“Me too,” Jordan replied.
“I’d do her,” Conner added.
The sound of a throat clearing turned Jordan and Conner around. Standing just behind them was Diedre Marshall.
“Um,” Conner said, completely at a loss for words. His face turned bright red. “Um....”
Principal Garfield stood next to the reporter, equally red, though in anger as well as embarrassment.
<
br /> “I’m sorry,” Conner finally said just before turning away with a grin on his face.
“That’s quite all right,” the woman said, waving away the comment. “I’ve heard worse.” She looked at Jordan. “I was wondering if I might have a word with you, Mr. Scott?”
“Um....” Great! Jordan felt like he’d caught his cousin’s stupid. “Sure.”
He stood and followed the reporter and principal to the front of the auditorium.
“Don’t worry,” Ms. Marshall said quietly, just barely audible over the din of the lunch room. “You’re not in trouble or anything. I just wanted you to know that I’m a huge fan of your father’s books.”
“Oh.” That was the last thing Jordan had expected to hear. “Thanks. I’ll tell him you said that.”
“Actually,” she said hastily, stepping closer, “I was hoping to perhaps interview him.”
“For a story?” Weren’t there official channels to go through for stuff like this? Jordan wondered.
“You could say that,” she replied.
She was so close that her perfume practically smothered him. It smelled of vanilla. “How can I help?” he asked.
She smiled. “Maybe you could talk to him for me. Your father deplores interviews—hasn’t done many at all since hitting it big—and even when he does, it’s just to talk about his books.”
“You don’t want to talk about his books?”
“Not quite,” she said.
* * *
Jordan and Conner got off the bus and walked up the hill to their house. Jordan was exhausted and wanted to take a nap, but knew he should finish his homework first. There was also that one other thing he had to do, however.
“Dad?” he called into the house as Conner headed for the kitchen to the left, next to the staircase.
Jordan dropped his backpack on the floor and walked into the living room on the right. He walked right up to the fireplace and looked inside. Dad sat at his computer in his study; the fireplace was like a window into the little room. Jordan could see tiny black words on the computer monitor but couldn’t read any of them.
“Dad?”
The man spun in his chair to face his son. Jordan still hadn’t grown used to seeing his dad looking so old. He was only forty-one but looked well into his sixties. He was very skinny, so much so that he looked like a cadaver. His hair was dark brown with a lot of gray strands, and the corners of his eyes were nothing but wrinkles.
“Working on another book?” Jordan asked him through the fireplace.
“Sort of.” Dad turned off the monitor absently. “What’s up?”
Jordan told him about Diedre Marshall speaking at the school and how she wanted to interview the mildly famous Donovan Scott.
Dad’s face darkened slowly. “I’m not interested.”
“Why not?”
“Because she just wants to ask a bunch of personal questions that are none of her business.”
“Like what?”
Dad sighed. “Son, I said I’m not interested. And I don’t want you talking to her anymore, okay?”
“No problem.”
“Need any help with your homework?”
“No, thanks.”
Dad spun back around as Jordan left. He heard his father typing away a second later. Jordan grabbed his bag and headed upstairs to his room. As he lay down on his bed, he wondered why Dad hated talking about his past so much. Of course, there was all the misfortune that plagued his father’s childhood, but there seemed to be more to the story than just the deaths of Jordan’s uncle and grandparents. Jordan knew he would get nothing from his father and decided to ask Mom when he saw her next.
For now, though, he had homework to do.
* * *
An hour into his work, he heard a shrill voice coming from downstairs. “I’m home!” Samantha announced.
Jordan sighed and tried to get back to work. He was sprawled across his bed with his books and paper in front of him. He preferred working from there rather than his work desk.
Moments later, loud pop music blared throughout the house. Jordan groaned; that woman loved Cher. Jordan hated Dad’s girlfriend so much. They’d been together for nearly ten years, but Dad refused to marry her for some reason. Jordan didn’t blame him, but why keep her around? It was as if she fulfilled some need—
Jordan quickly abandoned that nasty line of thought. Samantha had moved in a few months after she and Dad’s first date and seemed content with the arrangement. She never hassled him about marriage or kids, at least not to Jordan’s knowledge.
Jordan grabbed his MP3 player and attempted to drown out Samantha’s music. He could still feel the beat, however. He sighed, turned off his own music, and went downstairs. There he saw Samantha dancing by the fireplace, weaving her way around the orange couch.
Jordan looked through the fireplace but didn’t see Dad in his study, so he went down the five steps that led to the long den that ran the length of the entire house. There was a bathroom on the left, directly across from the kitchen, a bar (like Great-Aunt Cynthia’s) and a comfy, gray couch in front of a large high-definition TV. This den was very comfortable, and Samantha, thankfully, usually stayed away from it; the bright living room one level up was more her domain.
Conner was in the backyard, bouncing on their trampoline. Jordan went out onto the porch and watched him for a moment; he could barely hear Samantha’s music anymore. The evening was growing cold, and he could see his breath misting in front of him.
“Jump...with...me,” Conner said between bounces.
“It’s too cold.”
“Jump...warm.”
“That’s not a complete sentence.”
“Get your ass up here,” Conner said in midair.
Jordan climbed onto the trampoline. As he jumped with his cousin, he looked to the dark woods that loomed behind the house. Their home was part of a court and was the closest to these woods. Jordan often wished Dad had picked a different house; he didn’t like being so close to this dreary forest. Conner often joked about going camping in there, but Jordan never found it funny.
“You afraid of the Texas Devil?” Conner asked clearly, despite his bouncing.
Jordan looked at him. “There’s no such thing.”
Conner stopped bouncing. “Sure there is. It’s out there, in those woods, waiting for helpless victims to wander in. One of these days, it’s gonna get tired of waiting, and it’s gonna come out and start taking people from their homes. We’ll be the first, of course, since we’re the closest.”
Jordan stopped bouncing too. He was fifteen and didn’t scare very easily, but Conner had spoken some truth. A few people had died in those woods over the past decade. Police suspected a bear or wolf, but others chalked it up to a mythical beast called the Texas Devil.
“I wish it would take Samantha,” Jordan said before he could stop himself.
Conner guffawed. “Me too.” He started jumping again. “I think I can talk Erin into camping with us. If you want.”
Jordan, who had also started jumping again, did a double take. “First of all, Dad would never let us go camping in there. Secondly, Erin has a boyfriend.”
“Who’s a total dick,” Conner added.
“Yes, but that doesn’t matter. She still has a boyfriend.”
“You’re afraid to tell her how you feel, aren’t you?”
“Yep,” Jordan answered immediately. He refused to let his cousin drag him into this discussion. Jordan wasn’t sure how Conner had found out about his feelings for Erin, but ever since, Conner barely let a week go by without commenting on the situation.
“I think Uncle Don is going to propose to Samantha,” Conner said a moment later.
“No way! Why do you think that?” Jordan’s heart raced.
“I heard them talking about it in his study. You know, through the vent in my room.”
“But they’re always fighting,” said Jordan. “I was hoping they would break up. Who brought up marriage firs
t?”
“I think she did. I came in the middle of it after using the bathroom, so I missed the beginning.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jordan muttered, causing Conner to chuckle. He almost always did when Jordan cursed like that. Conner claimed it was because he always looked to the sky and apologized to God every time. Jordan never noticed himself doing that, though.
“We should break them up,” Conner offered, bouncing slowly.
“That sounds mean.”
“She’s mean; she deserves it. She’s like Grandma Yvonne.”
Jordan shuddered thinking of her. They had met her when they turned six. Dad never really had anything nice to say about his stepmom, and perhaps that affected the way Jordan looked at her as well.
The back-porch door opened and Samantha poked her head out. “Dinner!”
Jordan jumped off the trampoline, starved. As much as he hated the woman, he loved her cooking.
* * *
Jordan, Conner and Samantha sat at the dining table, quiet as usual. The dining area was near the front door and made Jordan feel like he was up on a stage in front of an audience. This old house with its many steps and levels was in no way wheelchair-friendly, but it had enough personality to get by.
Jordan looked over at the fireplace and saw Dad in his office. He kept shouting to the kids that he was almost done, just one more minute. Samantha had cooked some kind of tuna pasta with green beans. Conner always put hot sauce on his, claiming that it made the pasta taste unbelievable. Jordan decided to try it that way tonight and was pleased with the results.
Dad finally came up from the den, walking very slowly up those five steps like it was the hardest thing ever. He looked exhausted, terrible. He sat at the head of the table, as if watching over the family from a throne.
“Jesus, Donny,” Samantha said from a seat closest to him. “You look awful. You shouldn’t work so hard.”
“Noted,” he replied as he tore into his food.
Jordan and Conner glanced at each other before returning to their meals. Silence returned as well. Jordan hated eating at the table, but Samantha encouraged it. She said she wanted them to act like a traditional family.