A Tomboy's Life [1]

***Very very very very rough draft, so please, pick it apart.***

[1]

You know the feeling.

It’s the first day of fall. Maybe not by the calendar’s standards, but to everybody under the age of eighteen, the summer has come to a cruel and sudden end. Already I found myself missing the best parts of summer - ice cream that drizzled down your arm and fell onto the sidewalk in chocolate and vanilla pools, days of blistering heat and sweet summer rain, of lazy days or adventurous ones. I missed tossing baseballs in the field by the run-down church and catching frogs by the creek. Yeah, it’d all come back around again, but it didn’t seem that way. I had to remind myself a thousand times that summer returns the way all seasons do.

The pessimistic side of me assured that fall, winter, and spring would be unbearably long for the much-too-short summer to come, but an optimist lived within me too. This angel on my shoulder spoke no words, only filling my head with the echoes of laughter and adventure that warm you more than the hot sun ever will; and in a way it allowed a glimpse into the future, where I saw the same things to come.

Thank God for the things along the way. My pal Randy Hazard shouted “Yo, Scout!” from across the lunchroom when I stumbled in the first morning. Literally stumbled. What a good friend for not denying the friendship between him and me, the pathetic klutzy and infamously confused person that I am. After tripping over another person’s shoelaces and getting your head knocked into the door while being kneed by the people crowding behind you, it’s nice to know that somebody isn’t too embarrassed to be affiliated with you. My other partner-in-crime Cody Littlecreek came to aid also, and it was easy to see how he’d inherited the nickname Shadow. He was a sliver of a guy with a short-cut mess of black Apache hair, dark skin that only got darker with the welcome sun, and a pair of brown eyes that glinted with the wisdom of a mystic that knew the world of the forest by heart. If you weren’t looking to spot him, you probably wouldn’t see him, and he stuck to Randy and I with the loyalty of a dog.

Randy’s the more rebellious and outspoken one of us three. Girls fawn over him, his longer dirty-blonde hair and stubble-pricked jaw, intense but laughing blue eyes and a quarterback build if I’ve ever seen one. I have no clue why he chose us losers to hang out with above the jocks and cheerleaders. He’s pretty cool like that.

Trying to suppress a cheesy grin, I grudgingly allowed Randy to rope me into one of his one-armed death hugs. His grip was one that could envy a boa’s. Shadow ducked away from his other arm, then faced me and smiled. “Hey, Scout.”

“Hey,” I said, grabbing his arm and pulling him into our group hug. Randy and I had spent Wednesdays together playing baseball around over at the remains of Douglas Fields, an old baseball field that once belonged to the abandoned Last Candle Church. Shadow had spent all summer at his grandparents’, as usual, and he looked grateful that we hadn’t forgotten him along the way. He looked a little hesitant, too, as if he worried we’d forgotten about him. I hugged him a little harder just to be sure he knew that wasn’t true.

By the time Randy had released us, Shadow and I were pleading air into our lungs. We puffed laughs out of our chests, then slung our backpacks over our shoulders and found an empty table. We compared classes, and found out that Shadow and I shared lunch, Randy and I were together in science, the two of them were together for P.E. and World Studies, and we would all be suffering the wrath of Mr. Kyles in Geometry together for our final class.

“We’re going to find some way of tormenting Mr. Kyles, right?” Randy asked hopefully. His baby-blue eyes brightened like a sunlit sky as he anticipated it. “We could find some snakes and put them in his desk…or put some ground-up sleeping pills in his food so he dozes off during our class!”

I shook my head. “No way. No drugging teachers.”

“What about the snake idea?”

“No,” Shadow and I said in unison. He looked a little disappointed, but I had a feeling he’d find plenty of accomplices among his crew of football friends. Sure enough, he was dragged off to another table by linebacker Patrick Park not twenty seconds later. Shadow and I sat together watching amusedly. Then I saw something change in his gaze - a subtle look that wouldn’t be detectable by motion-sensitive cameras, but sent my mental trouble-detector whirring. Randy called it my ‘Shadow Sense;’ I think it’s the result of spending too many years together. “What’s wrong?”

He gave me a quizzical look and shrugged. “Nothing. I’m fine. Want some of my turkey sandwich?”

“Cody Pierce Littlecreek…” I said, mimicking his mother.

He acted like he didn’t hear me, taking his sandwich from his pocket and peeling the rim of meat that stuck out beyond the crust. Shadow dropped it into his mouth, had a contemplating yet solemn look, then seemed to decide that his decision to deny whatever was going on was final.

The bell rang and our survival mentality kicked in. I gave a heavy sigh as the two of us bolted from our seats at the sound of the five-minute bell. And so it begins. “See you later,” Shadow said, a summer-sweet smile across his face, though his eyes couldn’t hide their chill.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to evoke a regular response from myself. “Later.”

Our eyes locked for a second before he rounded the corner of the hallway, and I wondered what he had penned up beyond that gaze.

The atmosphere seemed bitter with the winds of change. Fall was on its way, no doubt about it.