Chapter Two: I Would Marry a Dead Man

Chapter two: I Would Marry a Dead Man

 

I left Sunfield because mom met Paul, my caring and fantastic step-father. He was a kind, gentle man that always tried his best to make us kids feel like we were accepted. When we moved in with him he was living in a three bedroom house with no basement in a town known as Napoleon. The house was painted blue and me and my sister slept in the blue room at the back of the house. My brothers were in the room that also had the computer and my mom slept with Paul on a waterbed that belonged to her.

 

Me and my sister used to jump off the bed. We would pull a mattress off onto the floor, along with all of our pillows and blankets. Then we’d climb to the top bunk and jump off, landing on the mattress down below. We were young enough that we believed we’d never get hurt even though mother was desperate to convince us otherwise. Our jumping game ended one day when my sister clipped the dresser and cried. She wasn’t hurt bad, but it was enough to make us never want to do that again.

 

We used to listen to the radio when trying to fall asleep. For a while at least. It was a habit that carried over from Sunfield. But Paul didn’t like it too much so he was always trying to turn off the thing. Even to this day every time I go to see him he’ll turn off my radio in the middle of the night. I don’t know why it bothered him so much, it was just one of those things.

 

In Napoleon I only had one true friend, and her name was Miriam. I didn’t fit in there the way I had in Sunfield. I was too much of a boy and all the girls there were too girly and all the boys thought girls were strange. I wasn’t allowed into their circles and I spent a long time alone on the playground desperately longing for someone to allow me to be Tornado again. I wanted to be Babydoll and beat up the guys. I needed to be kicked and bruised in the midst of an epic battle. But being that I was in fourth grade now I was expected to love monkey bars and swings, foursquare and basketball, organized things rather than hectic games. There was no more cops and robbers or freeze tag.

 

Instead all I got was Miriam, the crazy girl no one else spoke to. At first I didn’t understand why. Miriam was great, but we didn’t really connect very strongly. I think it was the nickels. Miriam had two nickels she took with her everywhere and refused to spend. They were named Phillip the girl nickel and Phillipina the boy nickel. She talked to them. At first it was funny to joke around about the nickels. But as time went on I realized she legitimately thought that they could talk back to her. After a while she started to scare me and I decided solitude was a better option.

 

I spoke with my teacher often, and although her name now eludes me, she was really my only friend in Napoleon. She had two massive book shelves that were filled in her classroom and she was always letting me borrow them to take home. When fourth grade turned to fifth she staid our teacher. That’s just the way Napoleon did things and I was glad for it.  It was in that classroom that I first read Edgar Allen Poe. It was the Raven, tucked away in a book of poetry she had recommended me.

I remember falling into the brown bean bag chair and letting in envelope me during recess. The only sound was the teacher typing at her desk and she kept looking over to make sure I was satisfied. I flipped through the poems and felt like none of them really mattered, but then I found the melodious words of the Poe. I read it twice to myself, then again out loud so I could hear the way the words seemed to dance.

 

After that reading became more than a pastime. It became the love of my life. I searched out new things and read my way across the entirety of those two shelves that year. From Shel Silverstine to the Hobbit, poems and novels, Goosebumps, American Chillers, and Little House on the Prairie. There was Holes and the Call of the Wild. I read the Black Stallion and countless others I couldn’t name.

 

But more than anything, I wanted more Poe. That man, sweet Edgar Allen, became my hero, my inspiration, and the object of my desire. And he remains all these things today. My friends tease me about it, but if that man were alive today I’d marry him based on talent alone. But alas I would not be his type as I am neither a second nor first cousin.

 

We moved again halfway through my fifth grade year because we built a new house. But it didn’t matter because I had few ties to Napoleon and my new passion for reading could go anywhere I did.