Story-Middle PT- 2004 Draft 1

The streets are lined with suburban vans and sport cars that stop and go with breaking traffic on an early Saturday morning. You may drive through the streets and see children on their bikes laughing, or watch teenagers with poster signs wave you to the car wash bathed in balloons and crate paper. You may notice also that no one meant any harm, as it was a harmless town where inner city news lines where watched and not lived. The only real problem now seemed to be traffic. Everyone wanted their home in Colleyville, the low crime rate and upscale real estate could earn you that high brow nod of approval, what residents sought after more than ever. Perhaps I just notice that more now, as I look back.

I sit on my windowsill, watching the town from the back window of my room. Smoking my cigarette in my usual manner, I stare down at the leather bounded journal which is open in my lap. As always, I fumble for a description of the morning. I enjoy the rise and fall of day, and this was not a new habit for me.
The wind was stealthy, pulling the hair back from my face with that shivering radiance which follows cold surprise. I begin to jot down my first thought.

The wind grows, first from the sky but now rising in the dirt of the ground, born to us as breathe. The soil is where, like all things, all things become life.

A mid September gust whirls above, dancing in the trees with invisible delight. I see past the oaks of my backyard, and onto the dirt road behind my house.
Two high school teenagers are walking home with heavy backpacks, stumbling in pants that hide their childish figures. All the while they balance the weight of their text books and shrug off the irritation with ease. They were still freshman. One of the boys hands the other his I-Pod.
“There is this program you can use to download any song you want,” he says to the other, a cold breeze hitting his face now with surprise. His cheeks burn under the brushing wind and his hair blows about.
From the corner of my room, I take my hair into a bun and exhale smoke through the window. I did not know these kids, and watching with less amusement, I inhale once more and continue to write.

You cannot see the wind, but you know it is there. You can see and feel the effects, how it brushes through your hair, moves throughout the town and cools your face. The breeze is now lost in the sky somewhere between clouds, forming the hues of sky above. A normal day in Colleyville, Texas has a sky of the brightest blue and is dotted with clouds as gauzy as the paintings a child could create. Hopelessly perfect.

I close my journal and lift the window pane open in full, staring now outward and squinting to see something form in those clouds. Maybe Mason’s face would form on those far but ascending gray sails in the sky.

I already miss him, and I enjoy retreating to my personal sorrow. In that personal place we love to spend our time, I observe how this was the only way to know that I was alone. Misery and I stare blankly down at our small town, a dull enchantment like someone’s sad reflection in a frozen riverbed, now reflects in my eyes.
That man I love was out there somewhere and I sighed at the walls of my room.

My parents are both downstairs and the television is now blaring noisily as is custom for loud and a disrespectful upbringing. I think of those clouds, feel the cold riverbed in the depth of my eyes and know he was already waiting for the night to arrive.

Stupid journal, looks like it is me and you again tonight. Let’s make something of it? I jot this down without much thought but a bitter hope, something to make the night worth living.
I hate being grounded. It was a wrapper that they found. How could Mason let a needle wrapper fall out of his pocket? I need to see him, I need something. 

Today the sky looks tainted with some sad and unspoken knowledge, it breathes onto the tireless sky and reveals that ageless gray which is peaking and is to watch over the town people in a circumspect way. The clouds tell me there will be rain.

I continue writing until rain starts to push me from the windowsill I sit upon. I close the red curtains against the cold and wet air.

Underneath the slight swell of sky, an edge of excitement rides on everyone’s mind in town. What would the night bring? The cryptic and guiltless minds that await the night are of an adolescent esurience.

These are my friends who hold their head up the highest, heavy sweatshirts and chains adorn them, each with a cap or bill worn and tilted with an angle, an affront. You don’t have to see them to know that they exist, waiting in their stalled cars with bass booming low. They are the young ones who penetrate the streets while they pass down the road, waiting to make their money or their name.

They are the young and callous faced men and women who haunt your alleyways and confine you with the terrors of that unlit street corner.

But this community is faceted with close knit neighborhood watches and police, all to guard the well built stores and restaurants that are made from stucco or brick. Callous and seasoned kids who are raised in empty estates may complain while they each grow up within wealth and convenience.

Our local high school was reputable and wealthy, without a tatter to memory and did well at sustaining the legacy. Our local school board has meetings twice a month to discuss the drug use at our school, and they speak together about at risk students and strange student behavior.

Luckily for me, my Senior English teacher was on this school board and new to our school district. Always an advocate against drug use, she now has a reason to bare her teeth and smile, and she did, each time I wrote a paper and smelled like cigarettes.

She was quite proud of her social work at Colleyville Heritage already, and it was mid September of the fall semester. Sadly I knew she was somewhat fond of me, but perhaps she did not know why I always wrote about the sun and stars, and wind. Percy Shelley explained it well the other day in class.

I am daydreaming now, reiterating points which dissolve like the rain outside my window. The humidity settles and I open my journal once more.

Tonight will be a cold and wet night, I can tell by the way the air is beginning to hang heavy in a sufferable fog. The wind is cold but now sticks to you like an afterthought, but as humid and foreign as someone else’s sweat on your face. A horse whip cracks from above and the sky throbs with the heavy clouds.
 Two cars are parked outside of Wendy’s drive through, their swisher house bass creeps out of their windows with the blunt smoke. I watch the new noise and smile, recognizing who they were.

I cannot see them anymore, but looks like another drug deal at our local Wendy’s. Who could it be? It has to be Bailey and his friend.

Once again I throw down my pen, but this time I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Who? Mike Jones!”
“Who?”
That anthem was new then.

A boy steps out of his silver beamer and pulls the hood of his red ecko sweater over his head. He shuts his car door quickly, running under the rain and handing two bills to the car parked beside him. His name was Brandon.

The wind was fierce, causing him to lose his balance and nearly topple to the wet pavement under his gangly feet and heavy denim. His clothes were soaking under the storm.

“Hey fool, there’s supposed to be a tornado watch for all Tarrant county,” he says while stooping his head into the window of a black escalade. He was nearly six foot five, but carried his height awkward so you would not notice.
“Me and my girl gotta get back to my place. I’m not staying out in this tonight,” Brandon says. There is a crackling flash of lightning above, and the the sky darkens. He stares at the driver.

The driver sits warmly, the heat blasting against the new leather of his car. His girlfriend sits beside him with a faint, wrinkled smile. She seemed spent. The driver of the car was dark skinned but non Hispanic, being absurdly tall himself and outweighing his new friend with hard arms wrought with twisted muscle. There was a strange look in his stare, it was a toughness that was bred through upbringing.

The light tan of Bailey's face glows under his chocolate eyes and black hair. He is known by everyone and sits well in that escalade, letting the heat blow on him. His friend stands in the storm outside the passenger window.

 He takes a drag off his blunt and hands it to the girl beside him. His gestures were slow and seamless. His car quiet and he exhales smoke slowly, letting each expression he cast belittle his friends and enemies with a careless motive.

 On his arm was a new watch and he was hoping Brandon would pay him a compliment. The hand of the clock moves while he leans further into the seat. Time was never hastening in his cruel and patient gaze. He looks at Brandon, his old friend from junior high, and studies that desperate face under the dark rain, the rain that grew heavier and ticking like a bomb.

“Get back in your car,” he says finally. “You are going to get us busted.” His girlfriend laughs with her full lips and cocks her head to the side.

“Yeah, seriously. What is your problem?” she takes a deep hit off the blunt and without a thought, passes back to her boyfriend. “Did you know it’s raining outside?” she laughs in her own exhale and is lost in smoke. Her beautiful jaw line and her thick lips were gone, now.

Brandon glares and feels the cold air again. He shivers a bit, and digs his hands into his wet pockets. Bailey stares at his friend and joins her laughter, inhaling the blunt and, coughing hard, he clears his throat. His eyes are red now, and he takes a slow moment to enjoy his new car, to sink back into his snug leather seat. Knowing his friend was jealous about it, his new car and his watch, he smiles. He knew Brandon never had money and would probably never own more than his late make beamer.

So he dismisses the silent argument he held in his head. “Shut up and stay out of this,” Bailey finally says. His cold and dark eyes address her privately.

The girl takes a look at the floor, that clean floorboard and smells the leather of the car. Her silent submission is what hangs her soft sloping neck, and now remembering what happened the night before, her thin arms ache. She had hid last night under her sweater. Her arm was stained with bruises, but they are darker this time. They are purple and black, these bloodless stains made both her and Jon Bailey cry when she undressed at night. When they made love.

It hurt worse this time, she thinks quietly to that clean floorboard. The painful bruise on her eye was nearly healed. A week ago she was arguing with him, but she dismisses the fight, only glad that her face was not colored in bruises now for having brought it back up last night.

Bailey continues to laugh but alone, and looks at the guy outside the passenger window, soaking in rain. “Seriously, did you hear me Brandon? Get back to your ride and take it easy. They will be here in about ten minutes, I just got off the phone. Get back in your car.”

Brandon turns away shaking his head. This tall and thin guy struggles through the rain, the puddles splash up onto his jeans and he shivers through the parking lot. He runs to his beamer, the wind hitting down on him just like the cold rain.

He sinks into his car and puts his trembling hands to the heat vents. His friend sat next to him and his girlfriend was settled comfortably in the backseat.

He looks at his best friend, a short and chubby blonde. His name was Kasey and right now he was staring at his phone. He had been chasing down an old memory for the past fifteen minutes. All day he was silent and in his head, he spun his broken wheels in an effort to put back together the pieces of an image.

The girl who wouldn’t answer his phone call, that girl he cared so much for- she kept each song for his lamentation, her name he couldn't help muttering along with every word he spoke. Each time he opened his mouth, he returned to her and spoke about her as if she were with him still. The radio unearthed his pity and every thought was wasted on what could have been said to her. He held the detached and out of focus gaze that was not idle nor in daydream.

Kasey was the one who kept quiet most of the time. When he spoke it was usually cruel and those harsh criticisms were best spoken when only the best of company could share in laughter and in shadow.

“You wouldn’t believe what I just had to deal with,” Brandon mumbles, and looks at Kasey. The radio is on again and he glares.

“Turn that shit down,” he continues, “man, what is up with you? You’ve been crying or something?”

Kasey wakes back up and flips his phone off. “Sorry, what’s up? Bailey can’t come through?” His eyes speak that he was trying very hard to be there.