Chapter 2

Elementary school can be hectic when you're a lone wolf in a flock of sheep.

October 3^rd, 1994

            A bell echoed throughout the halls of Comstock Valley Elementary School, the kids who attend it are filled with a sudden energy and joy that snaps them out of the dull trance they had fallen into. The bell signaled that it was time for lunch, a brief escape from the daily grind where the kids could fill their bellies and catch up with their friends.

            A flood of children ran out of the third grade classroom. Comstock Valley was a tiny district, the elementary school had only one teacher for each grade, and in those classrooms there were maybe fourteen or fifteen kids at the max. Comstock Valley was one of those towns where everyone knew everyone. News and rumors spread like a disease, and every person made others’ business their business. The children of the town shared this mindset as well. Comstock Valley Elementary was a place where cliques completely dominated the social lives of its children.

            Ms. Carson’s third grade class had completely emptied her room and hurried off to the gymnasium to enjoy their lunch break. Completely, that is, except for one. A small boy sat writing at his desk, blissfully unaware that his fellow students had all run off without him. The boy’s classmates overwhelmingly towered over him in height, and they could probably lift his frail body over their heads.

            In a whitewashed town like Comstock Valley, the Korean boy stuck out amongst his classmates. Yet, if he was to be placed in a classroom filled with other Koreans, he would stick out there as well. He received many of his features from his English father.

            The boy sat at his desk writing in the middle of the room as fast as he could. He gripped the pencil so hard that sweat dripped from his palms onto his notebook. The force of the pencil would often cause the tip to snap off, the boy didn’t bother getting up to sharpen his broken tools. He simply pulled out another fresh one from a seemingly bottomless desk. He was able to keep up his pace much better that way.

            Over on the far left side of the room Ms. Carson sat at her desk and started sifting through a bunch of papers she had neglected. Ms. Carson was a young teacher the school had just hired that year. She had done student teaching before, but this was the first class she had on her own. As such, she operated her class with uncertainty. She wanted to keep her kids under control, but she didn’t want to be hated by them either.

Physically, Carson was a short, stout woman with ghost white skin and brown eyes. Her hair was wavy and as red as the pen she used to grade papers with. She squinted as she looked down at her desk, the various papers seemed to blur together in a jumble of black ink and white background. A bright pink slip from the principal stood out amongst the others. She slipped on her glasses, took the slip from the messy pile, and began to read it.

            Apparently a new student would be arriving tomorrow, a girl from a school in New York City. The idea of a new student both worried her and excited her. Despite living in the same state, Ms. Carson had never been to the city. She wondered if it would be too intrusive to ask the girl questions.

            Carson put the slip to the side and looked down at her desk again. A pile of finished math worksheets sat on her desk. She sighed and whipped out her red pen. Grading worksheets was the most tedious part of her job. Mrs. Carson started to flip through the papers to check if the kids had turned their work in, counting the papers and making a mental note of the names as they flew across the top.

“Ten… Twelve… Thirteen... Thirteen,” Mrs. Carson counted. Someone didn’t turn their work in. She flipped through the work again, and found the student who was missing. She looked at her attendance chart to see if he was here today. “Yup,” Carson thought, “He’s here.” Ms. Carson looked up at the student’s desk on impulse, and much to her surprise, found he was still sitting there.

“Chris? What are you still doing here? Don’t you want to go get some food?” Ms. Carson asked. She couldn’t believe that she didn’t notice him sitting there. Chris didn’t even make a sound; it was like he wasn’t even there at all.

It took Chris a minute to realize he was being addressed, like he was just waking up. He turned his head over to Ms. Carson’s desk, “Oh. I guess…” Chris said. Chris shut his notebook and put his pencil in his pocket before standing up and shuffling towards the classroom door, dragging his feet on his way out.

“Hey, Chris?” Ms. Carson said. Chris stopped and turned around, he didn’t answer her. Chris just waited for her to continue. Ms. Carson expected Chris to answer, and they ended up staring at each other for a few awkward seconds.

Finally, Ms. Carson broke the silence, “Before you go, can you come here for a second?” Chris dragged his feet over to her desk, hanging his head like he was in trouble, “I noticed that you didn’t turn in your math homework,” Ms. Carson said. Chris nodded his head slowly. “Why didn’t you do it?”

“I dunno,” he said, “I worked on other things…”

“Like the stuff you write in that notebook?” Ms. Carson asked motioning towards the notebook Chris was clutching. Chris gave another nod. Ms. Carson waited for Chris to say something again, but clearly he wasn’t going to speak unless he absolutely had to.

“Chris, do you ever feel like you need someone to talk to? You seem troubled about something,” Ms. Carson said. Chris shook his head quickly, “Are you sure? Because I’m your teacher, that’s what I’m here for. If you want to talk we can,” Chris shook his head once more. “Alright, but if you ever need someone to talk to, I’ll listen.” Chris nodded his head and turned around. He hurried out the door like his teacher was infected with a plague.

Ms. Carson worried about Chris. It had been nearly two months since the school year started and she hadn’t seen him talking to any of the other kids all year. His parents didn’t show up to the parent-teacher conference. She wished she could do something for him, but she didn’t know what.

*   *   *

Comstock El’s floor layout was shaped sort of like a huge, uneven dumbbell, on the east side the classrooms were all clustered together, while the art room, music room, library, and gym were all clustered on the west side. The two sections had a long hallway where the main entrance connecting them in the middle.

Chris walked down the main hallway, stopping to look at the various pictures adorning the walls. Every month the school would post the best projects from the art classes on the walls of the hallway. Chris always checked to see if his work was ever posted. In art they had just finished their self-portraits, so a large amount of crudely drawn cartoon people were displayed on the walls. Chris’s was not among them. He wasn’t too distraught about it, he knew that he couldn’t draw, but being hung up in the hallway would’ve been a pleasant surprise.

Chris reached the end of the hallway and turned left toward the gym. At Comstock El the gym also functioned as the cafeteria and, if needed, an auditorium. The school kitchen was a window stationed right outside the gym door, across from the bathrooms. Kids lined up outside the window to get their lunches, but not Chris. Chris kept walking into the gym. He didn’t usually eat lunch, he never really felt hungry.

During lunch time, the staff would set up multiple circular tables spread out across the gym floor. The tables were small in diameter, seating maybe six kids each, and almost every single one was filled with laughing and smiling children. Chris walked past every single one of these tables, not bothering to look for one with an open seat. Instead, Chris walked to the back of the gym and sat down at the only empty table. He flipped open his notebook and drowned out the rest of the world.

Chris didn’t have any friends, but he didn’t need them. He never was really lonely, he simply wrote his own friends. He found the worlds of fiction far more fascinating than what reality had to offer. Chris spent a lot of his time reading and writing wherever he went. The teacher’s ramblings on math and history were of zero interest to him, and opted instead to drown her out and get absorbed in a book, or his own imagination. The same went for lunchtime and at home, Chris spent the overwhelming majority of his time in fantasy.

Another bell ran through the school. The children populating the cafeteria sprang up together almost in unison and charged through the door of the gym to recess. But not Chris, he stayed. Chris ignored the bell and kept working diligently. Recess meant nothing to him; the bell was just a meaningless signal to the other children. Chris could have stayed in that gym all day, sitting there writing.

“Hey kid,” Chris looked up and saw one of the custodians towering over him, “You need to get outta here, we gotta clean up. Go to recess.”

Chris stood up and began walking out of the gym. He made his way back to the main hallway and started walking back towards his classroom. When he returned to Ms. Carson’s room, all of the kids had already gone outside. Chris entered the cluster of desks, weaving around them until he reached his in the very center. He lifted his desk open and grabbed his pencil case resting neatly in the corner. Most kids’ desks were garbage pits, books and old papers were haphazardly spread around in them to the point where nothing could be found. By contrast, everything in Chris’s desk was orderly fashioned. He kept all of his loose papers in folders and his work in notebooks, color coded for each subject. Anything that he no longer needed he simply threw out. He hated it when his desk started to clutter. Chris removed several pencils from the case and placed it back in its proper place before closing his desk.

Chris walked to back end of the classroom where the kids hung their jackets and backpacks. Every kid had a hook with a nametag posted above it; the names were placed in a line on the back wall of the room in alphabetical order. Chris strolled down to the very end and picked up a lightweight, dark green jacket from the hook labeled “Christopher Underwood”. Chris slipped it on and walked over to the door leading outside, as he opened the door a blast of chilly October air bit Chris’s face.

The majority of children were gathered by the school building playing four-square. The big game to play at recess seemed to change every month at Comstock Elementary, last month it was kickball, and before that it was basketball. Just about every kid, from 1^st grade to 6^th grade, boy and girl, weak and strong, gathered by the squares painted into the blacktop to play.

But not Chris, Chris walked past the blacktop, past the jungle gym, and past the swing sets off into a field behind the building. Chris walked across the field, which seemed expansive to his innocent little eyes. Far to the back of the field a cluster of trees dotted the landscape. Chris pressed his back against one of the trees and sat down, propping his notebook up against his knees. Chris looked up; the leaves had turned brilliant shades of red and were slowly floating down all around him. The school and its inhabitants were nothing more than indistinguishable blobs in the distance. Chris technically wasn’t supposed to be out this far, but he didn’t care. Nobody ever came looking for him. One time Chris had accidentally spent the whole day out there, writing. Nobody seemed to notice. Chris just had to remember to head back when the blobs started to funnel inside.

Chris sat by that tree and wrote, like he did every recess. Chris squeezed every word he could out of those thirty minutes of recess. The fresh air stimulated his mind, and he kicked his writing up a gear whenever he was out there.

He never wrote with a plan, he never wrote with an outline like professional writers. Chris just started a story and figured out where it should go from there. He pumped out a new story just about every week. He never went back and edited his work, he never changed anything. He simply kept chugging along.

This method of writing often got Chris into sticky spots, like one he was in now. Chris had trapped his protagonist in a situation he didn’t know how to get him out of. The hero of his story was a boy with psychic powers; the villain of the story had him trapped by a ray beam that got rid of his powers. Chris sat and stared at his words, looking at the page over and over again before looking into the sky. Chris decided to give his hero a power that he hadn’t known about before, one that worked even when the rest of his powers were taken away.

It was a cheap way to end a story, but Chris didn’t really know good writing from bad writing, and even if he did, he wouldn’t have cared. No one else was going to see these stories anyway, Chris wrote for himself and no one else. The only person who ever read any of them was his father, and he never had the time to anyway. The details of the story didn’t matter to Chris; all that mattered to him was that his heroes had happy endings. The day was saved, the big bad was defeated, and he maybe even got the girl. Chris hated depressing endings; he saw no point in escapism if all it was going to do was make him sad.

With his latest story finally finished, Chris closed his notebook and stared back at the blobs in the distance. He hated when this happened, Chris hadn’t brought the book he was reading outside with him, and without any story to write he had nothing to do except sit there. Joining the other kids in four-square never even crossed his mind.

Something disrupted the blobs, and they all started to scramble back into the building. Chris got off the ground and started to jog back towards the school. By the time Chris had reached the blacktop all of the other kids had gone inside their classrooms, and the teachers had shut the door. Chris walked up to Ms. Carson’s door and peeked through the window into her room. The children had already filled the desks, save for Chris’s in the middle of the room, and Ms. Carson had already started teaching. They had forgotten about him again.

Chris thought about walking home, nobody would probably notice if he played hooky. He was about to turn around and walk home, but then he remembered he left his book inside his desk.

Chris pondered his options, “If I go home, I can get further in Final Fantasy. But on the other hand, if I stay here, I could read while Ms. Carson talks and get further in Narnia…” After much deliberation, he pulled on the door handle, the door barely even budged. He forgot that the school doors automatically locked. Chris tapped on the door, barely making a sound. Nobody inside seemed to notice. Chris put more force into his knock, still nobody heard him. He then began to pound on the door as hard as he could. Finally the Ms. Carson noticed him, Chris could see her mouth moving, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. She looked at a girl sitting in the back row by the door and pointed towards Chris. The girl got out of her chair and let Chris in. Chris didn’t even thank the girl as he walked to put his coat back on its hook. When he turned around and was met by a whole room of stares.

“Where were you?” Ms. Carson said with concern.

Chris dug his hands into his pockets and looked at the floor, having all eyes on him bothered him, “I… I was just on the playground…. I just… just lost track of the time, that’s all.”

Ms. Carson folded her arms and raised an eyebrow, clearly not buying Chris’s story, “And you didn’t hear the bells? Or see the kids going in?” Chris shook his head and scuffed the floor with his right foot, kicking back and forth. Ms. Carson sighed, closed her eyes and put two fingers on the bridge of her nose, “Fine. Just don’t let it happen again. Now, please, take your seat.”

Chris walked back to his seat, red as a tomato. Every pair of eyes in the room followed him back to the center of the room, where he could be seen from anywhere. Chris didn’t dare look back up and any of them. He reached into his desk, pulled out his book, and started to read.

“OK kids, now let’s get back to our lesson,” Ms. Carson said, breaking the long, awkward, silence. When Ms. Carson started to ramble on again, Chris dug his nose into The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and drowned her out.

*   *   *

The end of the long day had finally come at Comstock Elementary, and the kids rushed out of the school in their little jackets and backpacks to pile into rows and rows of long, yellow buses. Or, alternatively, the younger children stayed in the library or gym, supervised by the teachers while they waited for their moms and dads to return from work to pick them up. If it was a nice day, you might even see some of the after-school kids playing on the play structures, or in the case of today, four-square.

Chris walked down the gravel road past the buses. Even though Comstock Valley was a little town in population, it was large in area. The district needed lots of buses for a small amount of kids, and the bus rides ended up being long and boring.

Most of the kids’ houses were at least a fifteen minute drive, but there were two houses that were only a ten minute walk away. One of these houses was the Underwood residence. Chris got to the end of the long, gravel, driveway leading to Comstock El, past the buses and past the big blue sign saying “Comstock Valley Elementary School” and took a right onto the old dirt road.

Behind him, Chris heard the buses start their engines. He stepped off to the side of the road and into the tall grass that came up to his belly button. The long, brown blades scratched Chris’s pants as he walked through them, cracking and snapping as Chris stepped over them. The buses zoomed past him one by one, each leaving a trail of exhaust in its wake. Chris stepped back onto the road and looked forward at the dots in the distance. The land around the old dirt road was so flat and unblemished by trees or structures that you could see the two houses off in the distance. It looked like the fields went on forever.

The family that lived next to Chris was the only home within miles of Chris’s house. The family that lived there, the Petersons, had talked about moving out of the old house for years. The Petersons were an older couple who had six children, all of whom had gone off to college now. The youngest one, Bethany, had babysat Chris many times when he was younger. The Petersons were good friends with Chris’s father, and had let him know that they were getting sick and tired of the freezing New York winters. So it didn’t surprise Chris when Mom and Pop Peterson had packed their things and moved out when Chris was on his way to school that morning.

What did surprise Chris was how fast the new family had got there. Different moving trucks were sitting in the driveway of the old Peterson home when Chris stopped in front of their house on his way home. Both houses were old ranches built sometime during the early sixties. Apparently, Chris’s father had lived there when he was a kid, and inherited the house from his mother after she passed away.

Two burly overall wearing men walked out of the front door of the house followed by a short redheaded woman in her late thirties. Wrinkles started to appear on her face, and it was obvious that she was doing everything in her power to look younger. She piled on all sorts of makeup to hide her age, and her long, flowing, hair was an unnatural fiery red. She had dyed it over and over again, presumably to hide any grey hairs. She donned a tiny red dress that complimented her hair rather nicely, and fit her slender body well. She looked like she was ready to go to a fancy dinner party. But all of the cosmetics created an uncanny valley-like effect. The only thing that looked remotely natural about her was her eyes, which were bright blue and beautiful.

The woman was giving orders to the men as they carried a blue couch out of the moving truck, “Put that in the family room, will you? Right next to the armchair maybe… wait, never mind, put it in the living room next to the display case… or maybe, gah! I don’t know, just find a place for it,” she said.

Chris stared at the woman as the men went into the house. She looked into the back of the moving truck and tapped her chin with her arm folded and her fist resting on her chin, trying to decide what to do with the furniture in the back. She turned around to walk back into the house but stopped when she saw Chris. The woman waived at him and started to walk towards Chris, “Hi!” She said in an overly sweet voice.

“Hello,” Chris said quietly, he really wanted to go home, he felt like a weirdo for standing in their driveway like that.

The woman stopped in front of Chris and bent down with her hands on her knees, “What’s your name little guy?”

“Chris…” Chris said, digging his hands into his pockets. He did his best to try and look her in the eyes.

“It’s nice to meet you Chris! I’m Mrs. Hatfield, my family is moving in today.” She paused for a brief moment, staring at Chris with a fake looking smile. Chris didn’t know how to respond. “You know, we have a daughter around your age,” She continued.

Chris sat and waited for her to continue. But she obviously expected him to say something. Chris hated when people did that to him, he never knew what to say.

“Cool,” he said.

“She’ll be arriving with my husband later tonight, I’m sure she’d love to meet you,” Mrs. Hatfield said. Chris didn’t know what to say, he hadn’t even gotten home and all of a sudden some strange lady was trying to hook him up with someone he had never even met! Mrs. Hatfield continued to talk, but Chris wasn’t really listening, she droned on about New York City or something. Chris just wanted to go home. Mrs. Hatfield then asked, “Do you live in the house right there?”

It took Chris a minute to realize that she had stopped talking; Chris snapped back into reality and nodded his head up and down.

“You wouldn’t mind if I came with you to meet your parents, would you?” Mrs. Hatfield asked. Chris looked over to his garage and saw that it was closed, if his dad was home, it would have been open with a black jeep inside.

“Sorry, my dad’s not home. I dunno when he’ll be back,” Chris said.

“Oh it’s OK,” Mrs. Hatfield said, putting her hand on Chris’s shoulder, “Just tell him when he gets back that the new neighbors would love to meet him, OK?”

Chris nodded his head and Mrs. Hatfield patted him on the back, “Thank you! I’ll see you later Chris!” Chris didn’t turn around or answer her. He thought she seemed nice enough, if a little weird. He’d have to remember to tell his dad the new neighbors arrived.

As Chris walked up the steps to his front door, a black Labrador retriever jumped up on the window, wagging her tail. Chris smiled as he dug into his pocket and took out the house key his dad gave him. The dog jumped down from the window and ran over to the door, waiting for Chris to open it. As soon as the door swung open the dog jumped up on top of Chris and nearly knocked him over. Chris started laughing as the dog licked his face.

“Lucy! Stop it!” He said; smiling as he gently pushed the dog to the ground. Chris crouched down and started rubbing the dog on her sides, “Who’s a good girl? Lucy is! That’s right!” Lucy rolled over onto her back and Chris started rubbing her belly intensely, the dog panted, smiled, and wagged her tail. Chris gave her a solid pat on her stomach before she rolled back over and ran off to the kitchen.

Chris followed his dog into the kitchen. The house was old, but Chris’s father had done a lot of work on it to make sure it was up to snuff. The kitchen’s walls were painted a soothing yellow, with shining white ceramic tiles beneath his feet. The counter was as polished and white as the walls, with a long window over the sink and the counter letting sunlight into the room. There was no table in the kitchen, Chris and his father just sat on the couch in the family room and put their food on the coffee table to eat. They didn’t get guests very often, and when they did Mr. Underwood would pull out a plastic folding table for everyone to eat at in the near empty dining room.

Lucy pawed at her food bowl sitting on a rubber mat by the doorway leading to the dining room. Chris opened up a cabinet underneath the sink and pulled out a box of dog food. He walked over to the food bowl and started to pour in the kibble.

“There you go Lucy, suppertime,” Chris said as he put the food box back under the sink. Lucy dug her face into the food and started sucking it down as fast as a vacuum.  Chris turned around from the sink to and opened up the shiny black fridge behind him to get some food for himself. Deciding he wanted a glass of Coke, he pulled the two liter out of the fridge and turned around again to the cabinets above the sink to grab a glass. He poured his cola and turned back to the fridge, the fridge was so close to the counter he barely had to move when he turned. He returned the two liter to its place in the fridge and shut the door. Chris took a look at the calendar on the door refrigerator door.

            Chris frowned; it was October 3^rd, his birthday. He had completely forgotten about his own birthday. Most kids were excited about their birthdays, but he was rarely thrilled. All it did was remind him that his dad was never home.

            As Chris took a swig of Coke, a white corded phone hanging on the wall on the fridge’s left-hand side started ringing. Chris set his glass on the counter and picked it up.

            “Hello?” Chris said.

            “Happy birthday kiddo!” said the voice on the other end.

            Chris smiled and leaned on the side of the fridge, “Thanks Dad.”

            “What happened in school today?” Dad said.

            “Nothing much,” Chris said, picking his glass back up and taking a huge gulp out of it, “I finished the story I was writing.”

            “Good for you! I can’t wait to read it,” Dad said. There was an awkward silence as Chris gulped down the rest of his cola, until Dad continued, “Did you say goodbye to the Petersons this morning?”

            “Yup,” Chris said, his dad started to say something again when Chris suddenly remembered his interaction with Mrs. Hatfield a few moments early, “Oh, the new family just moved in.”

            “No kidding?”

            “Yeah, they wanted to meet you,” Chris said.

            Dad’s end of the line went completely silent, like the call had just been dropped. Chris could imagine the baffled look on his father’s face, “Wait… so you talked to them? You went and introduced yourself?” Dad said; his voice a combination of surprise and hope.

            “Not really, they caught me on the way home,” Chris said.

            “Oh…” Dad said with disappointment, “Well, I’ll make sure to go over there when I get home. Listen, I’ve got to get going, make sure you let the dog out, OK? I don’t want her peeing on the floor again.”

            “OK,” Chris said, twirling the phone cord around his fingertip.

            “Thanks. Alright Chris, Daddy loves you,” Dad said.

            “Dad, wait!” Chris yelled into the phone.

            There was a brief silence on the other end; Chris’s dad was putting the phone back on his ear, “What is it? Are you OK?”

            Chris took a deep breath, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to hear the answer to his question. He paused and bit his lower lip before he finally spit his question out, “You’re gonna be home tonight, right?”

            Dad paused on the other end of the phone for what seemed like an eternity, trying to find the right thing to tell his son. Chris frowned and sighed, he knew the answer already.

            “Look, Chris, I’m so sorry, I really am. But the office needs me in the city until tomorrow,” Dad said.

            “Oh,” Chris said; dripping with disappointment.

            “Tell you what, I’ll be home tomorrow night, and we’ll celebrate your birthday then. We can go out to dinner and maybe even a movie, I think The Lion King is still playing,” Dad said.

            “OK…” Chris said, still not convinced.

            “Aw, cheer up big guy. I know it stinks that I have to work so often, but I have to go where the company needs me. If it makes you feel better, I left your present on the coffee table. You can open it now if you want,” Dad said.

            “I’ll wait for you to come home,” Chris said.

            “Well, alright, if you really want to,” Dad said, now feeling guiltier than ever, “Well I have to get going, happy birthday.”

            “Thanks dad, love you.” Chris said. The other end of the line was cut by a clicking noise followed by dead silence. Chris put the phone back into the receiver and sighed as he put his Coke glass in the sink.

            A blissful panting broke the silence, Chris looked down to see Lucy staring up at him, hanging her tongue out and recklessly swinging her tail back and forth. The dog erased Chris’s frown as he crouched down and gave Lucy a hug.

            “Well, at least I have you,” Chris broke away from the hug and walked back into the family room. The present his dad had gotten him was sitting on the coffee table sitting right across from a huge wooden cabinet that held a 28 inch TV and a Super Nintendo. He didn’t know how he missed it when he walked in. Chris picked up the present, it was roughly the size of a shoebox, but much heavier, wrapped up in a shiny green paper that reflected Chris’s face. Chris picked the package up and walked over to the kitchen. He placed it on the counter where it would be out of his sight, not able to tempt him.

            Chris walked back into the family room and hung his coat and backpack on an old antique coat rack sitting next to the entrance hallway. He walked over to the TV and turned it on. Chris reached behind the Nintendo and pulled out a wrapped controller and unraveled it, he didn’t want the controller wire to get tangled up. He moved the Nintendo to the ground after plugging in his controller so the wire could reach the couch. He switched the power button on and booted up Final Fantasy III. With everything set, Chris plopped down on the couch and spread himself out. He kicked off his shoes and relaxed, trying to get sucked into the game. Suddenly he felt a massive black missile drop on the couch with him, followed by a wet tongue all over his face.

            Chris laughed and scooted over a bit to help make Lucy comfortable. She calmed down and lied down next to her human companion. The two cuddled together on that couched and played into the late hours of the night.

Author's Note

This is where things start getting more consistent. This chapter may not make much sense to you at first, but the more of the book I post the more it should be obvious what I'm going for.