May Sickness (Chapter 9)

Chapter 9

Roy looked out through the passenger side window, large old growth trees whisked by. He tried to hold back the tears; constantly he tried to reassure himself, a shrewd pep talk if you will. You pussy, men don’t cry! Stop crying you bitch!With every mile marker he would turn his head to scowl at his mother, as she drove.

But soon the tears started to run; he no longer saw the tree of the forest, all he could see, through the reflection of the window, was herface.

“So what are you doing this summer?” A red headed boy was turned around in his desk, trying to engender a conversation.

“I’m planning on spending it with Nina. We’ll probably just hangout.” Roy sat at his desk, he barely knew this kid, even though they had gone to school with one another since the first year of junior high, and were then going to the same high school. Damn it! I should know his name! What is it? Joe? Ken? Nick? Wait is it John, John Smith?

“Now class, let’s settle down. I know today is the last day of school, but we should try to accomplish something.” Their home room teacher stood in front of a white board, at the front of the class room. Her eyes scanned the class, ten desks and ten students. For the last nine months what she had taught her students was infinitesimal, but what she did teach them were social skills, life lessons in the form of stories. Sometimes they were short, branching into numerous anecdotes, with each divergence losing more and more relevance to the original. With the larger stories held meaning, they were usually associated with death, family affairs, or just current events in the world and how they affect them. It was kind of like an open therapy session where anyone could join or just listen.

The teacher, Ms. Darl, was young to be working at Roy’s high school. Many of the other teachers had each worked there for at least twenty years. But they took well to their colleague, that was at least half any of their ages.

In a small town, with a population of only about four hundred people, sat a small school, Woodland School. Woodland School was the combination of an elementary school, middle school and high school, with only about seventy to a hundred students.

Ring!First period was over and the students packed their backpacks and started walking out of the room.

In the chaos of chairs buffeting desks and students pushing and shoving, a line to the door formed.

Ms. Darl held the door open and said her farewells to her students. “Have a nice summer Surly, have fun Gary, see you next year Billy…” Then the red headed boy walked pass her, “say hi to your mother for me, will you Mike.”

Mike! I knew it. He walked out of the room.

“See you Roy.”

“See you Ms. Darl.”

As Roy walked through the hallway...

“Roy!” A girl jumped into his arms, throwing him off balance, Roy fell to the floor with her on top of him.

The girl's name was Nina.

Nina lay on top of Roy, her long blonde hair covering his face and her green eyes fixed on his.

“Roy, you promised we’d skip school today, and look we’re both here, what happened?”

“I forgot, I’m sorry. But it’s still only second hour, we can still skip.”

“You’re taking me far too serious.” She brushed her hair from his face, revealing, from under her hair, his blue eyes. Nina started kissing Roy on the lips.

“Hey! You two stop that. I can give you two summer school if you would like that. It might teach you the rules of how to act in public.” Ms. Darl stood in front of her classroom door. Roy and Nina stopped kissing. “You two should get to class. And have a wonderful summer.” She smiled.

“Okay Ms. Darl.” They said in synchronous. They knew that even though she sounded austere, she could care less about what they did, she was “cool” like that.

Roy and Nina walked to their next class, which they had together.

In school they were notorious for being tardy to class, but the teachers rarely said anything. The two of them were perfect students, besides being late and noisy, in class they earned immaculate marks, completed test impeccably and, quite honestly, they were the most adorable couple in school.

Nina was reasonably shorter than Roy, he stood at six foot exact while she hovered around five-five, five-six.

“Well look who’s late again.” Their math teacher greeted them as they walked in. They walked to their desks, which were at opposite ends of the room. Their teacher was required to separate them after countless hours of them talking through his class.

The day went on in the unequivocally same manner. Teachers congratulating those that had passed their classes, while shaking their heads, in shame, at those that had not. They said their good-byes and their, “I hope to see you next year”.

The final bell rang, school was over, for three month, at least. There were few good-byes among the students, many of them knew where the others lived and knew they would see each other at least once during the summer.

Roy and Nina started their walk to their houses, she lived closer, so for the final length of his walk Roy was alone.

“What should we do tomorrow?” Nina asked. They were walking hand-in-hand down an old sidewalk.

“It’s to cold to do anything fun, we could sit around and watch television.”

“Think, there has to be something fun to do.” She rubbed her chin with her free hand. “We could find jobs.”

They stopped, looked at each other and started to cachinnate.

“I don’t know, maybe we can just hangout and play some crappy board games.” Roy said with a smile.

“That hardly sounds fun. I know, we can go camping.”

“You know how cold it gets, we’ll freeze.”

They were in front of Nina’s house. Roy could see her father looking out the window.

“It won’t get that cold, and if it does, we’ll have each other.” She started to kiss him, but stopped as she saw her father opened the door. “See you tomorrow. Make sure you get me early, okay? I want to spend the whole day together.” Nina said as she walked pass her father. He gave Roy a brusque look and slammed the door.

In consequence with some vindication, for which Roy could not figure, Nina’s father despised him, he hated Roy with a passion. The tension between them was at its zenith, to the point that Roy was no longer allowed on the property. It had been like that for over three years, but to Roy, at that point, it was just hilarious.

He started the walk to his house. It was about a mile from Nina’s house and another from the school.

“What the hell?” When Roy arrived at his house he saw a moving van. Men were moving boxes from the house into the van. Roy ran inside. It was packed, all of it, but just that morning there was not a single box in the house. He had no idea what was going on or why his things were being moved. “What the hell is going on?”

Dinner that night was without conversation, that is except for one.

“I’m sorry, I thought it would be best if I didn’t tell you.” His mother said setting across from him. She was considerably young for a mother of a sixteen year old son. She was only sixteen herself when she had Roy. His father was out of the picture and his mother raised him as a single parent.

“But why! Why do we have to move?! Why so all of the sudden?!” Roy yelled, he sat not having touched his plate.

“Because I found a job, we could use the extra money. Please, Roy, eat your food.”

Roy seized his plate and threw it against the wall. It shattered, leaving potatoes on the wall and a chicken breast falling to the floor. He walked toward his room.

“Roy,” His mother started, as he continued to his room, “you might want to say good-bye to Nina.”

Slam!The door slammed behind Roy, breaking the door’s frame.

His eyes started to water, tears began filling his eyes. Roy sat in the fetal position in front of his now broken door. The words his mother said repeated in his mind. “You might want to say good-bye to Nina.”

“One day. Just one day with her.” He hit his fist against the floor. “What can I tell her? Damn it!”

“If all you’re going to do is cry like a little bitch, then I’m turning the radio on.” Roy’s mother turned on the radio. The song playing was a Country love song, as if by Divine Will that song played just to laugh in Roy’s face. He continued to stare out the window. Damn Country!

“Just one day.”

Roy did not sleep well that night, he just stared at the ceiling. He tried disparately to devise a plan, but with each came perquisites that he could never acquire. “There has to be away.” But in the end he could not figure a solution for that problem.

Soon Roy accepted the truth and decided how he would spend his last day with his girlfriend. “I’ll just tell her how much she means to me and that I’ll try to make this work.”

They were to leave at noon, he figured he could meet her at six and that might be enough.

That night he fell asleep at around four AM.

He awoke to the sound of the beeping of his alarm clock. His hand felt for the snooze button. His head turned to see the time, it was eight, and what was about to happen flashed before his eyes, not as a premonition, but as the plan his mother told him the day before.

Jumping out of bed, he wore nothing but a pair of boxers. “I have to get going!” He looked but his closet and dresser had both been packed. “Screw clothes!” But he also could not find his shoes. “Screw shoes!”

Roy ran from his room and through the living room. “Where are you going like that?” He ignored his mother’s words.

Down the sidewalk he ran, half naked and in the freezing temperature. “Damn I should have got my shoes.” Small mounds of ice crystals and frozen mud puddles cracked under his feet. The biting cold, taking a chunk of him with each step. But he endured, what was a little frost bite to see her a again? “Damn! Damn! Damn!” Like a mantra, he repeated in his thoughts and occasionally in his words.

From their windows, an elderly couple, saw quite a spectacle. A young man running through the street, repeating the word “damn”, bare footed, and with nothing but a pair of boxers on.

“Dear, a naked boy just ran pass the house, what should I do?” An elderly woman asked her husband.

“Just let him be, he must have a good reason.” He replied.

Roy ran as fast as he could. Was it for Nina or was it to escape the cold? He no longer knew.

At about a thousand feet away reality set in. “What if her dad's home?” But even though he asked himself this question, he had an answer. “Screw him!”

Roy arrived at Nina's house, her father’s truck was in the drive way. “Damn.” He walked through the grass which, for some reason, was tens of degrees colder than the ice he had just been running on. With each plate of grass frozen, it was like stepping on a large needle. After a few steps his feet started to bleed.

Her window was in view but first he had to walk past her father’s bedroom window. If he saw Roy sneaking around his house, especially in his underwear, he would undoubtedly kill Roy.

To eschew detection he had to crawl through the grass. As sharp as razors and as piercing as needles, Roy vowed never to do anything as painful as that ever again.

Roy looked into Nina’s window.

Nina sat at the edge of her bed, with remote in hand, flipping through the channels of her television.

Knock, knock.

Roy’s knocking on the window startled her. Nina walked over to her window and opened it.

“Roy what... why are you naked?”

“No time, let me in. It’s really cold!”

“Okay.” Roy hoisted himself up and Nina helped him into the room.

Nina threw Roy a pair of pink sweat pants and a pink sweat shirt.

“Thank you, you don’t know how cold it is out there.”

“Your welcome.”

They sat on the bed, “So why were you not clothed?” She sat with her arms crossed.

“That’s just it, I have something to tell you and it will explain why I was like that.” He started, his gaze shifted to the floor. “I’m moving.”

“When?”

“Today.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I didn’t know, my mother just told me last night.”

“But why?” She grabbed his shoulder.

“She says she found a job.”

“Real funny, don’t joke like that.” She believed he was joking, but then Roy raised his head, he was crying.

Soon Nina started to cry.

They embraced, hugging and crying in each others arms.

The door handle started to turn.

The door slammed open. The opening of the door startled Roy and Nina.

Standing in the doorway was Nina’s mother.

“Roy what are you doing here?” She said in hushed scream. “You know Nina’s father doesn’t take well to you.” She looked him over, then adding, “What are you wearing.”

“Mom, he’s moving today, please can he stay here for a while?”

“What? He's moving? Why?” As opposed to her husband, Nina’s mother loved Roy like a member of the family, and liked the fact that he was with her daughter. “Well your father will be up soon, Roy you can take my coat, it should match the rest of your outfit.”

“Thank you Mrs. Smith.” Roy thanked her for her kindness.

“Thank you mom.”

As they walked out the front door of the house, Nina’s mother added, “Roy I hope you come back and visit often.”

“I will, I won’t leave your daughter that easy.”

I hope he’s telling the truth, he has helped Nina so much. They’re so cute. Nina’s mother thought as she watched her daughter and Roy starting to walk down the road.

They went to a small park at the edge of town. On their walk there, they talked about how much they meant to one another. With arms around each other they walked. Walking through their breath as it froze.

“I was just joking about calling you a bitch. I know how it feels to have to leave someone you love.” Again his mother spoke, that time after having turned the radio down.

They were yet to their destination, the lights, of one of the many cities they would drive through, shined down on them. Each of the lights shining directly in Roy’s eyes.

Setting on a swing they started their last conversation “together”.

“Will you come back anytime?” Nina asked.

“I’ll try as hard as possible, I promise.” In the time they were with each other, Nina had never heard of Roy breaking a promise.

“Well since you promise, I’ll make sure I’m here when you comeback.” She placed her hand on his. “But at least call, I don’t want to miss hearing your voice.”

“I promise I’ll call, often, hell I’ll call every day. You’re not the only one missing a voice. Yours is much sweeter than mine.”

Nina laughed, “Are you trying to be poetic?”

“Yeah, aren’t I doing it right?”

“Yes you’re doing it perfect.”

The gentle hum of the cars motor sung Roy to sleep. The window and door made for a perfect pillow.

His mother looked over at him. Just like when he was a baby. I’m so sorry about this.