Chapter 1: The Thunderhead Boy
There was grass as far as the eye could see. This is where it always ended up. Nothing but grass. Sometimes, during the day, with white clouds floating across the sun & the violently blue sky. Other times, a sky illuminated by more stars than the boy had ever seen. But day or night, he was running through grass.
This time, it was neither. The sky was grey, like a wall of stone. The grass brushed against the boy’s shins. He was wearing a wool tunic, which fell to his knees. He was barefoot, so he felt his feet dig into the moist dark earth as he ran. The grass moved. Not like it was blown in the breeze, but like something was hiding in it. This made him run faster.
He ran and ran until he felt a pain in his foot, which made him fall on his knees. Looking down, he saw a snake. Black, stained with red from the blood running from his heel. Before he could think better of it, he yanks the snake off his foot. It writhes in his hand, causing him to throw it on the ground. And then he brings his other foot down on the head of the snake. Again. Again. Again.
Every time his foot landed, a peal of thunder rang through, and he was nearly blinded by the light from each strike. They were so close, he could feel the heat from every bolt, he could taste the plasma in the air.
When the snake is thoroughly crushed, and his leg coated in the snake’s black blood, the winds pick up around him. As they rushed past his ear, he was convinced he could hear voices. It was a cacophony, and he was unable to pick up on any particular voice. They were familiar to him though. He heard these voices often in his dreams. And although he would never admit it, he did hear them once during a winter storm. One voice did join the throng though, and he was able to clearly discern this one.
“Wake up!” It was the voice of the Boy’s Aunt, Regina Walker. As he opened his eyes, he was met with the sight of her sitting on his bed, a concerned look in her eyes.
“Was it the snake dream again,” she asked.
“Well, you’re here now. So get up. Breakfast is waiting.” Regina got up, and closed the door behind her, leaving the boy to his thoughts. And his mind always raced after dreams like that.
A knock on the door. “Adrien,” said the voice of his cousin, Janet, from the other side. “Just thought you should know, Ms Jackson is out today, so, we have Mr Petrov. I swear, if you embarrass me again…”
“You’ll lock me in the Chicken Coop again,” Adrien offered. “Sorry Jan, but that threat hasn’t worked on me in 6 years.” When Janet stormed off, he thought about the last time Mr Petrov substituted. It’s not like he planned on getting into a fight with the teacher. But, he had to call the British “Famine Architects,” and it went about as well as anyone would think. He apologized to Petrov after. But, his cousin couldn’t let it go.
He walked down to the kitchen, and saw Janet & his Aunt sitting at the old round table in the corner. They each had a bowl of porridge. Adrien grabbed a bowl from the cupboard, and dished up a bowl, sitting at the table. The radio was on, and projecting clear skies.
“Ok, kids. I won’t be home until late. There was a rockslide last night, so we need to work on clearing the trails.” This was usual. Regina worked for the Bighorn Canyon Recreation Area, so when something happened, she had to help take care of it. “Let’s get you guys to school.”
Adrien squeezed into the back seat of the car, with a paper bowl of porridge on his lap. As he ate it, the flavor of brown sugar dancing across his tongue, he stared out the window at the passing landscape. Buildings were sparse this far out from the center of town, leaving things more or less natural, and the roads rockier than you’d think legal. They drove alongside a creek, where Adrien would go fishing when he needed a break from everything. The area was flooded with trees as well. Mostly the spruces, and of course the ponderosa pine. But, there is a bur oak somewhere in the mess of trees that he felt drawn to.
As they got closer to town, the roads got stabler, the trees thinned, and the air got thicker. They were stuck behind a bus, so Adrien & Janet got out.
“Love you kids,” Regina said from the window. “And Adrien,” she said before he could walk off, “you’ve got this.”
It was crowded in the hall. The mass of students were pushing past each other, trying to get to their lockers, or their first class. Adrien threw away his empty bowl in a trash can at the end of the hall, and then walked to his locker.
“Hey, Walker, what’s your cousin up to tonight?” Adrien wished his locker was next to literally anyone else. He would rather be by the jocks who don’t shower after gym, or the Jehovah’s Witness who’s trying to convert him, or even his math teacher. But no, it had to be the creep trying to get his cousin.
“Look Steve, she doesn’t… Just stop, she's not interested.” Adrien felt like he’s said this at least once a week. But Steve just doesn’t get the message.
“She hasn’t even given me a ch…”
“Stop man. She doesn’t have to, any more than you have to give Rhonda a chance.”
Adrien left his textbooks in his locker, but it was worth getting chewed out by his math teacher to get out of that conversation.
The rest of the day was relatively normal. Until his Seventh Period class, English. As he had been warned, Mr Petrov was the substitute. He was a short man, who was balding slightly. He spoke with a high voice, and a strong east european accent. He left Russia a few years previously, and started teaching almost immediately.
Adrien sat down next to Julia. She slipped him a small handful of candy. “Mr Kalai was generous today, so I thought I’d share the spoils.” It was Black Licorice.
“Don’t call me that,” she interrupted.
“Sometimes, you’re not the worst,” he finished, as he started chewing on one of the licorice sticks.
Mr Petrov clapped from the front of the class. “It is time for class, so let’s put our eyes up. Today, we are talking about…”
“Where’s Ms Jackson,” asked a girl in the front of class.
“Ms Jackson is fine. She just needed to take her daughter to the hospital. But she called me, and Little Janie is fine.”
Several people cheered at this, and Petrov let them for about 30 seconds. Ms Jackson usually brought her infant daughter to class, and everyone loved her.
“Anyway,” Petrov’s voice cut through the cheers, “Today we are talking about poetry. Notebooks out.”
The Lecture today was about the history of Poetry. It was actually rather interesting. Poetry originally began as the primary method of sharing tradition. Before writing, people needed some way to remember their genealogy, laws, and myths, and the use of poetry made it easier, like how someone can memorize a song easier than plain speech.
“And one of the methods of doing this was through the use of stock phrases. For example, Indo-European Religions had a myth of a Thunder God killing a Serpent, and through the poetry of their descendant cultures, we see the stock phrase of…”
“Gʷent hógʷim,” Adrien blurted out.
“He slew the Serpent,” said Petrov, as if Adrien had said nothing. People were staring at him as his cheeks burned.
Class finished, and the class was gone before the final bell rang. Adrien awkwardly shuffled up to the teacher’s desk.
“Hey, Mr Petrov. I’m sorry about interrupting your lesson.”
“It is okay,” the teacher said, as he put the attendance sheet inside the substitute binder. “I am more curious about how you knew that.”
“I don’t know. I just knew it.” He felt embarrassed, because he knew how dumb of an excuse that was. But, Petrov seemed to accept it.
Adrien, after dropping off his textbooks at his locker, he went to the gym. Janet had lacrosse practice after school, so Adrien went to watch practice while he waited for her.
Janet sighed when she saw him. “We’re going home with Rhonda today. Now, please don’t embarrass me again.”
After an hour of practice, the team went to the locker rooms to change, talking about the upcoming game. Adrien yelled after Janet, telling her he’ll be waiting at the front of the school for her.
He made a detour to his locker, dropping off the homework he finished during practice. That’s something I won’t have to worry about tonight he thought. He then went to wait by the locker room, where Janet would inevitably make him carry her gym bag.
As he walked closer to the locker rooms, he heard a girl’s voice. He couldn’t make out what was being said, but she sounded distressed. He rushed to the hallway just outside the locker room door, and saw Steve cornering Janet.
“Look,” Steve said, “Give it a chance. You know you want to.”
Before Adrien could process what he was doing, he was across the room, and pulled Steve away from Janet. “Leave her alone,” he said, standing between the two.
“Look, I’ll leave her alone if she gives me a chance. It’s not like she hasn’t…”
The rest of the sentence was cut off by a fist to the abdomen. Janet ran back to the locker room when the fist made contact, and yelled for Dean Sorensen. Before Steve could catch his breath, Adrien gave him an uppercut.
While he was standing over Steve, he heard a voice say “Walker, to my office, now.” It was the Dean, a woman who could make a marine shake in his boots, despite her 4’10 frame, and a face that saw the start of the Great Depression.
“Janet, Susan, carry Steve to the Nurses Office,” she said, before heading down the hallway. Most of the students were gone, so only the emergency lights were on. It lent an eerie atmosphere to the halls, paired with the sudden rain, which Adrien had just noticed. On reaching the end of the hall, the Dean opened her door, and gestured Adrien inside. He sat at the creaky metal folding chair in front of her desk.
“Your cousin told me what happened,” she started, staring daggers through Adrien. “Tell me your side of the story.”
“I saw him cornering her. He’s been harassing her for weeks. I was scared so I pulled her away.”
The Dean swivelled in her chair, and faced towards the computer on her desk. A few clicks of the mouse on her desk, and she pulled up the footage of that hallway. He saw Steve sitting on a bench by the gym doors. She fast-forwarded the footage. He perked up whenever he heard the door open. But when Janet left, he jumped up, and forced her into a corner, towering over her. Even though Janet was stronger, Steve still had a good six inches over her. He then saw himself walk into frame, and pull Steve away from Janet. Then, after a moment, he sees his arm jab Steve in the stomach.
“Adrien, I have to be honest. I trust you, and your cousin. But, I have to do something. We have a zero-tolerance policy.”
“Don’t you raise your voice to me,” the Dean said. Unlike Adrien’s yell, her voice was quiet, but had so much presence it cut through his protests. “That is another thing to consider. You already have quite the student record. I understand why though. I was orphaned myself, and fell in with a bad crowd. But, you can’t let yourself be controlled by your emotions.”
The mention of being orphaned grated against him. His mother was alive, somewhere. She had to be. But he kept that to himself. He couldn’t afford to get in any more trouble.
“You understand I have to call your aunt,” Dean Sorensen said. “I know she’s working late tonight, so you can still go home with Rhonda. But, you will be suspended for a week. Don’t worry, Steve will be punished as well.”
He left the room, and dreaded the conversation he was going to have with Aunt Regina the next day.
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