Young Writers Society

Every morning of the week, those lazy Michigan suburbs would finally rouse when Rhetta Hughes sauntered towards her car. She treated her stone steps with elegant taps while passing by ferns and hostas, as her thick black ponytail swung buoyantly with a generous gust that cooled her tanned skin. When she was a few feet from the driver’s side door, Rhetta patted her hip, forgetting that the silk skirt was not the pair of pocketed, cotton pajamas she had been wearing all weekend. So instead, she reached into her purse for the keys, narrowing those chocolate eyes in light-hearted incredulity.

Rhetta, exiting her driveway, noticed the daily newspaper was not thrown into a jagged position up front as it has been for the past few months. “Looks like Jos hasn’t come by yet.” She whispered to herself while guiding the car onto the road.

Minutes later, a young boy crossed the street in his bike; Jos Huppe was on his paper route. Jos was eleven years old, and wore a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt with navy blue jeans. He had tan skin with black hair, much like Rhetta, but had much darker brown eyes.

Jos leaned his torso forward on his bicycle, while strongly gripping the handlebars to the point where his knuckles turned white. He viciously hurled the newspapers to people’s front lawns while trying to keep his balance, apathetic to the dangers of shattering windows, for he was also on his way to school. It was on that morning though, when he looked down to his Hotwheels watch and saw that he was going to be late. Yet, in a slight instant, wind and momentum worked together to lift his shirt up a small bit as he sped, revealing a large bruise on his lower back.

At three thirty, Rhetta returned home and as she stepped out of her car, she saw Jos riding by the house from his school bus.

“Jos!” she called, waving her arms, “How was your day at school? Did you have fun?” Jos looked at her with impatience.

“Whatever, it was fine…” he said impassively, continuing to bike past her. Jos wanted nothing to do with Rhetta even when she tried to talk to him from time to time. There was no personal dislike that he held towards her, he just didn’t want to talk to many people. However, Rhetta saw that something was wrong so she attempted to speak with him in hopes of giving him security. Jos was so detached from others though, that there didn’t seem to be any way of her having a chance.

There was something that pinched him at the neck and pulled at the skin. Something always seemed wrong, and his newly developed inner bitterness kept him from reaching out, despite his parent’s distress. They asked him frequently about any potential issues, considering this behavior came about suddenly, yet he gave them no response to those questions. They completely missed, however, that this change came about when they began to send him to his uncle’s every weekend to get more hours in for work, and they didn’t have the money for a babysitter. Jos never explained to his parents how reluctant he was to go, but every muscle in his body tensed the second he woke up on Saturday mornings.

The next weekend was particularly stressful for Jos, so he ran away from his house on Sunday night, just a few hours after being picked up. As relieving as it was to be back with his parents, he felt more helpless than ever. A new bruise that painted his stomach forced the pinching to return. Except this time it was no longer pinching, it was clenching the sides of his neck and tore at them until the skin stretched so far he didn’t have the ability to even feel anger towards his own uncle, just confinement.

He sat at one of the picnic tables when he reached the local river during this leave. His eyes were red and swollen from lack of sleep because of anxiety. While remaining in deep thought, Jos curled his toes and blenched his fingers while staring at the chipping wood of the tabletop.

A half hour went by and Rhetta Hughes was returning home from her much needed shopping that she had been putting off due to paperwork at home. “Finally,” she thought to herself, “I can actually sit down at my couch and eat a hot meal.” She decided to take the path down the river just to relax from filing seemingly constant insurance claims, when she coincidentally discovered Jos as she walked with the few bags she had.

“Hey, it’s the paperboy.” She said playfully, “what are you doing out here?” Jos, of course, didn’t respond and stared out into the water. In a moment of slight confusion, Rhetta stopped to see if he was looking at anything of specific interest, yet it was just the steady river. In that moment there was no explainable emotion or feeling between the two of them, as they both stared out at the same thing, but this was the one thing they saw as indeed the same thing.

“Hey, you look hungry to me. Would you like something to eat?” Rhetta tried to reach out to him again, but he didn’t respond. However, this did garner a short, immediate glance from him, but then he tried to conceal his composure by staring at his hands. Rhetta saw that she got a little bit of his attention, and continued with her effort. So she sat at the table next to him and started to go through her bags.

“let’s see, here I have an orange, which you might like, and…oh this is good, I have ice cream bars too. You can’t go wrong with those.” Rhetta put the orange and ice cream on the table and got up to lean against the fence that was in front of them, looking over the black water. As soon as she got up, Jos rushed over to the table and began to eat the ice cream.

“Yeah, you might want to hurry up with that one, you wouldn’t want it to melt.” Rhetta said tenderly as she looked over her shoulder at Jos, smiling. “You know, I’m glad that you’re brave enough to be out here, because when I was your age, I was too scared of the dark.” Jos finished his ice cream and presumed to peel the orange, and with curiosity, he asked her a question.

“So, how is it you can be out here now?” He asked distantly.

“Oh you know, my parents knew very well that I was scared of something, cause’ I was a lot like you, very shy and didn’t want to talk to people. But they didn’t realize I was afraid of the dark until I…well,” she was comically embarrassed to finish, “peed the bed, but that’s not the point, ahem. After they knew…what I did, surprisingly they didn’t yell at me or make fun of me, like I thought they would, or blame it on me…It was my mother, actually, that took me out one night and made me name things. ‘what’s that noise?’ she would ask, ‘an owl! And what’s that? A cricket!’ and we did this a few times a week, and soon enough, I was no longer afraid of the dark, because the dark itself isn’t dangerous.” She finished. Jos looked up at Rhetta blinking his sore eyes, as if he just came out of a trance.

“So, they weren’t mad that you were scared?” His voice was weak, but was more focused and emotional.

“Nope, not at all, they had no reason to be. It really wasn’t my fault, I didn’t choose to be afraid of the dark, nor did I choose to wet the bed, but I could have chosen to tell them before I did.” She sat down gracefully at the table with Jos. There was something so startlingly personal in his face as he widened his eyes and looked up to Rhetta. There was a sense of understanding that overwhelmed him.

That morning after sneaking back into the house, Jos told his parents everything that had been happening to him at his uncles. The ataraxia was overwhelming as his mother held him with sympathy and as his father made a few angry phone calls. He finally found that sense of comfort that he had been wanting for so long.

A few weeks later, he rode his bike on his paper route again on his way to school. He didn’t over dramatize the way he held himself, and passed by with an inner calm. He lightly threw the newspapers to each yard, giving them recognition. Yet once again he looked down to his Hotwheels watch after catching himself behind his schedule. Wind and momentum worked together for a second time, revealing just a light brown color on his stomach, for the one on his back was fully healed.