Author's note: Yes, I know I said I was going to wait until the New Year. But my inaction finally got to me and I got antsy. I just can't take not working on this story for extended periods of time. Eric won't leave me alone.
Year 1 can be found here: http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/topic20414.html
P.S. I really dislike this bit, but that might be because a) half of it was written at ridiculous hours of the morning, b) I know the bad beginnings from which it was born, and c) I'm kind of cranky right now. Have at it, my hungry wee hyenas.
Year Two
East meant Edinburgh.
I rolled out of bed, shaking off my hangover as best I could. I had made up my mind and I knew where I was going. Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. A town with a very, very rich history. And I loved history.
Also a city very rich in alcohol. And I loved alcohol.
A match made in heaven. Or hell, but that's a matter of perspective.
It was all a matter of planning when I would leave, where I would go, how I would go, and what to do when I got there. It took months of work -- my father’s bank card number came in handy, too. The logistical stuff was easy -- take a coach, get some money for the fare and for food and the like, pack your bags and go.
It was saying goodbye that was the hard part.
+++
I started spending as much time as I could with my friends. It was like the old days, when we would run around town in youthful high spirits and get away with whatever we could. We used to do it before we started secondary school. Always before the sun came up, we’d take a coach into the city and play around in one of the parks. We’d stop by Tesco on the way, buy some lunch and just while away the day in the city. It confused a lot of people, to see a bunch of teenagers running rings around each other on the swing set or the carousel. It would confuse us too, because there was no real point or purpose to it. Just the four of us spending time together as friends. A lot of times we’d end up climbing trees or playing rugby or football or something. It was fun, but completely aimless. Folks used to pin it down to too much sugar and not enough to do. Now that we were older, they pinned it down to adolescent boredom.
We pinned it down on the sheer fun of freaking people out.
“Hey, we forgot to stop by Tesco,” Chester said as we got off the coach one Saturday morning in June. We trooped to the top of a hill in a play park, where a few early morning mums were pushing their toddlers on the swings, looking exhausted.
“Ye realise ‘his now?” Clyde said.
“Erm, yeah,” Chester said sheepishly. I cocked an eyebrow at him.
“It’s only a few blocks away, let’s walk there,” Sarah suggested. I locked eyes with Clyde- we had a long history of rivalry in “walking” places.
“You’re on,” I said to the unspoken challenge. He grinned.
We took off before Sarah and Chester had the chance to say anything in protest. I nearly tripped at the start, but managed to regain my footing in time to charge ahead of Clyde. He was more athletic than me, but I was taller, with more powerful legs. And on a slope, it was no trouble gaining ground on him.
He caught up a bit as the ground leveled off and we zipped past the swing set. He nearly knocked over one of the frazzled mums pushing her toddler on the swing. I laughed my head off as he shouted an apology over his shoulder, still running as hard as he could to keep up with me. I slowed down a bit to drop into line next to him.
“Let me know when you want me to actually try to beat you,” I said lazily. He was already breathing hard, flipping me off as we jumped over the park fence in unison. I heard Sarah and Chester not far behind as I hit the ground running, heard Chester grunt as he leaped up the fence. Chancing a glance behind me, I saw that taunting Clyde was costing me my lead, big time.
I put on an extra burst of speed as Clyde and I dashed across a road, running with full, long strides down the block, weaving in and out of early morning foot traffic. We’d done stupid stunts like this so many times that it was no trouble at all to dodge in and out of folks who got in our way.
“Crazy arse kids!” I heard an old man yell after us as we blazed by. Clyde and I laughed, running backwards for a brief moment to watch him nearly get knocked over by Chester and Sarah. All four of us had wild grins on our faces, our cheeks a furious red, our breath coming in ragged gasps. I turned around and hung a sharp left down a side street, gaining a bit of ground on Clyde as I did so.
“Fucking lunatics!” I heard Sarah shout from behind me. I smiled to myself and shut out the other three, running as hard and fast as I could to get to the Tesco first.
I jumped over a low wall, pausing for a brief second to let traffic clear before running across the road. I had completely lost track of my friends as I skidded right and tore up the street, vaulting over another low wall and tearing across the massive car park that spread out in front of the supermarket.
I could see the line of carts ahead that we used as a makeshift finish line and celebrated internally. The race was mine to the point that it wasn’t even funny. I slowed to a regular run- I had been sprinting the whole time and was starting to feel my lungs catch on fire- and turned to see where the others were.
Clyde was just coming up to the low wall on the edge of the car park, and Sarah and Chester were nowhere to be found. I stuck my tongue out at Clyde as I ran backwards.
“I win,” I called out to him.
Next I knew, I was flat on my back on the ground, dazed and momentarily stunned. I watched Clyde dash past me, heard him laughing his head off. I sat up, looking at my feet. I had tripped over a planter. A fucking planter. I put one hand on the back of my head, checking for blood or cracks or anything. Feeling none, I stood up, turned around, and finished the rest of the run to where Clyde was holding on to one of the carts for dear life, laughing so hard he couldn’t stand.
“Yeah, you win a’right,” he said between laughs. “Ye shid’ve seen yerself, ma’e. One sec’nd ye’ there and nex’ one, yer no’. Funny shite, mate, funny shite.”
I flipped him off and sat down beside him, hugging my knees and watching for Sarah and Chester. My right elbow was throbbing- I glanced at it and saw that I had scraped the shit out of the skin. It was bleeding- not terribly, but bleeding all the same.
“What happened to you?” Chester asked as I wiped away the blood gingerly and he ran up, Sarah panting as she jogged up behind him.
“Got cocky and fell over,” I said truthfully. He offered me a hand and I took it, letting him help me to my feet.
“That’ll teach you,” Sarah said, breathless. “Come on, let’s go inside. I want something to drink and Eric should wash off his elbow.”
“Yes, Madame Montgomery,” I said, bowing with a flourish. She flicked my ear as I straightened up and the four of us marched inside.
I could’ve sworn I heard several mutters of “crazy kids” as we strode in.
+++
“So how did you fall, exactly?” Chester asked as he leaned against a wall, his arms folded across his chest as he watched me rinsing dirt and blood off of my elbow. I told him the story and he cocked an eyebrow at me.
“Just when I thought you couldn’t be more of a fucking idiot,” he said, his eyes wandering to the ceiling of the restroom.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked defensively as I gingerly rubbed soap into the cut on my arm.
“Oh, nothing,” he said in a singsong voice. He started to whistle as I finished cleaning my wound. I straightened up, splashed a wee bit of cold water on my face, and dried off my elbow.
“I know I’m clumsy, you can say it,” I told him as we left the restroom.
“It’s not that, I just like giving you crap,” he said, grinning cheekily at me. I punched his arm. He rubbed it with his other arm, saying, “How does it feel for someone to be cheeky back to you, you bastard?”
I grinned as we walked through the store, trying to hunt down Clyde and Sarah, who were standing in front of a shelf full of pre-made sandwiches, trying to decide which ones they wanted to take back to the park we’d started from for lunch.
“Let me just take a second and say that we’re walking back,” I said as we walked up to them. “I can only suffer so many injuries to the elbow in one day.”
“Fair enough, mate,” Clyde said jovially, articulating unnaturally well. “Here, ham and egg or tuna salad?”
I picked up the ham sandwich, cocking one eyebrow at him. “I hate tuna, you know that.”
“Oh yeah,” he said in a half whisper, picking up the tuna salad sandwich for himself. I glanced at Chester for support. He only shrugged dismissively.
“Some help you are,” I muttered as I pushed past him, headed for the checkout register. Standing in line, sandwiches in hand, the four of us discussed our plans for the rest of the day.
“Lunch at the park, and then head back home for a wee while? My folks aren’t home, we could relax at my place,” Sarah suggested. I shrugged, as did Clyde.
“Chester, any objections?” I asked. He was standing at the back of our group, staring off to his left, a vacant expression on his face.
“Eh? What? Sorry, wasn’t paying attention,” he said, snapping his head up and glancing around at us. I leaned over Sarah to stare at him. He stared right back, his green eyes thoughtful.
“Eric,” Sarah said, elbowing me and pointing. The person in front of us in line had finished and moved on, and the cashier was watching me with one hand on her hip, coughing lightly, trying to get my attention.
I apologised, paid for the food, and the four of us left with a sandwich and drink of choice each. I dropped back to walk next to Chester, letting Clyde and Sarah get ahead of us.
“You alright mate? What’s on your mind?” I asked him quietly. He shrugged.
“A lot of things, really.”
He looked down at my plastic grocery bag, where my ham and egg sandwich rested against a can of Guinness. “Did you really have to get that?”
“Well, the only other option was the tuna one, and you know how much I hate tuna.”
“Not that, Eric. That.”
He pointed to the can, barely visible through the opaque plastic. I shifted the bag in my hand.
“I wanted a Guinness, that’s all. Is that so very wrong?”
He shrugged again and said nothing more. I stared at him for a wee while.
“Hurry up, you two,” Sarah called behind her. Looking up, I noticed that they had gotten a decent ways ahead of us. Chester and I had to jog to catch up.
We walked the rest of the way back to the park where we had started. The mum that Clyde had almost knocked over when we began was still there, giving us the evil eye the whole time we ate, sitting on the grass under a tree.
“She’s really makin’ me ’ncomf’terble,” he said, shifting awkwardly. The three of us laughed.
“You should go over there and make friends. She probably thinks you’re some loose cannon punk kid and she’s telling her kid not to grow up like you. Go on, go say hi. Or at least say sorry,” Chester said, leaning over and stage whispering in his ear as if it was some big dramatic scene. Clyde grinned sheepishly and set his sandwich back down on his bag and stood up.
“He’s really going to do it, isn’t he?” Sarah said, leaning her head against my shoulder as he walked off.
“Yup, and I’d say it went a wee bit worse than he expected it to,” I remarked, taking a bite out of my sandwich as we watched Clyde open up a conversation with the woman, only to be slapped as she walked away in a huff.
The three of us laughed until he got back. We were still in stitches as he sat down, trying to get control of ourselves. Sarah got there first.
“What did you say to her?” she said, still laughing between her words.
“I jus’ told ‘er I was sorry fer earlier and ‘hat it was really stupid o’ me tae do,” he said, burying his face in his sandwich. Strangely, I felt he was lying. It seemed like a stupid reason to slap him, but I kept those thoughts to myself.
I reached for my can of Guinness and stood it up, snapping open the lid. Sarah watched me with distaste.
“Do you have to drink that?” she complained.
“Yup,” I said lightly, bringing the can to my lips and drinking deeply. She shifted uncomfortably beside me.
“I wish we could be together for once and you wouldn’t be drinking,” she said, pouting a wee bit.
“Alright, next time we do something, I promise I won’t drink any alcoholic beverage,” I said, raising my right hand in a mock oath.
“I’ll hold you to that,” she said, straightening up and scarfing down her own sandwich faster and more indecently than the three of us boys put together. We gaped at her in awe.
“Honestly, Sarah, you have worse table manners than Clyde,” Chester remarked. Clyde threw a stray bit of tuna at him.
+++
We ended up stopping at Sarah's house only to pick up a take-away dinner, and then it was off to a nearly abandoned park with a bundleful of firewood. Sometimes we'd go to the most deserted place we could find -- the beach, the stretches of green fields that made up most of Scotland, parks -- and started a fire. We called them bonfires, but they were sorry excuses for bonfires, to tell the truth. Tiny, pathetic wee things. Built entirely on haphazard firemaking knowledge Chester and I had gleaned over the years. A lit match would put our fires to shame.
I digress.
We would do them at night. We would lie under the stars and dream big. We would talk, rant, rave, laugh, drink, eat, and enjoy ourselves in a tiny, isolated bubble far removed from reality. For years we had dreamt of something bigger and better than what Glasgow had to offer, typical teenager stuff: the breakaway from parents and family, a newfound indepenence, all of that. We dreamt of a life we would never have.
That night was no different. By the time the fire was beginning to wane, we were all a bit intoxicated -- probably me more than anyone else -- but that didn't change tradition.
"Remember when we'd lie here and talk about how our lives would be in the next few years?" I said, only vaguely aware of what I was saying.
"Yeah," Sarah said dreamily from where she rested against my leg. My thigh was playing the role of her pillow as she lay on her side, staring at the dancing flames, her eyes half-closed.
"We don't do that much anymore," Chester remarked from my left, where he was hugging his knees and drawing in the dirt with a stick. Clyde was stretched out beside him, his head pointing towards my feet.
"Why not?" I wondered.
"Because we've got more sense now," Sarah said, sitting up.
"What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?" I shot back, feeling a fire ignite in the bottom of my stomach. It wasn't anger, no. It was something else. I couldn't find the words to describe it.
"'Cause we're m're se'led no' an' we're no' sub'ect to stupi' teena'e fancies?" Clyde guessed.
When will he learn to speak properly? I snapped mentally. "Stupid teenage fancies? What bollocks is that?"
Chester looked at me over his elbow.
"I dunno about you, but I'm happy here."
I felt a small pang of mixed anger and despair. I was hoping I could talk someone into coming to Edinburgh with me, so I didn't have to say goodbye. I figured bringing up our dreams of bygone years would reignite that fire. But that plan was failing fast. I had to do something.
I stood up, raising my whisky bottle to the clouded moon as if making a toast.
“Everything we could ever ask for, everything we could ever want, it’s all there. Just over the next hill. All we have to do is go get it. All we have to do is chase after it. We won’t get anything done by sitting here getting pissed night after night. We have to do something.”
I sat back down, my hair askew from the wind, a wild grin on my face. The others were just staring at me.
“It’s all we ever wanted, isn’t it?”
“Eric…” Chester said, hesitation evident in just those two syllables. My face fell slightly. “That’s what we wanted when we were younger, stupider. We’re older now. You just turned nineteen yourself. You’re not a kid anymore.”
“I know that,” I snapped. “but it’s never too late to go somewhere in life, right Clyde?”
Clyde was usually the one to back me up in situations like these. I looked to him hopefully, but he shook his head.
“Sorry, mate, I gotta side with Chester on this one.”
The way he said it told me I was fighting a losing battle.
“Sarah?” I pleaded, turning to her next.
“I thought… I thought we were going to get married here,” she said, her cheeks reddening a bit. “Now that… we’re older, I don’t think I want to leave.”
I felt like I was staring at three complete strangers. When did this happen? I thought to myself. When did they move on without me?
We had been drifting apart for a while by then. I just never noticed.
I walked home that night. Alone.
