Him

Short story

Before him, I had a carefree, sticky-fingered, swimming filled summer. I was a 13-year-old girl running around the dirt roads barefoot, playing hopscotch with my neighbourhood friends. We weren't poor but we were rich. We hated the rich, their snobby noses glued to fifty shades of gray while their toes were pruning in their 10 ft deep pool. We were the kids in the sprinklers, using our 50 cent allowance to buy run down ice cream truck delicacies. We all were taught in a run down grocery store which also served as our local church. During last summer these people in yellow hard hats came and starting cutting down the trees on our hill, now, 6 months later, it's an almost finished mansion. They've already got the soon to be sparkling pool ready, they've got the set up of 4 stories ready to go, they say the owners are moving in in another 6 months. My mama says that the owners are just looking to rub it in our faces and try to make us work for some silly toilet paper company like the last people. My friends and I have been trying to picture the wife and her leopard print hats and shoes. The day the snobs are supposed to come is gonna be my 14th birthday and I plan to go far far away from their white contrasting palace on the pedal stool, that far far place would be the local famous lake of dead boy Tommy. Even though we ain't supposed to, I and my friends always swim in that lake on good days when all we wanna do is forget.

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Today is my 14th birthday, my mama gave me her run down town famous sandy cake, it looks horrendously disgusting but once you put the sweet goo on your tongue you are sent flying to heaven. My friends and I have been trying to find her recipe for years wanting to make our plentiful supply of sandy cake but we never could find it. After we finish off the last crumbs of sandy cake we heartily make our way to the lake of dead Tommy, as I said mama doesn't like us goin down there but my aunt Debra came down from her fancy schmancy cabin of luxury to see me for my birthday, my mama absolutely hates Debra on account of every time she comes down she offers mama money cuz "she's livin in slop" but mama loves the way we live here, simply, and carefree, so mama didn't even register we got up from the table. The first thing we see as we climb up the wall of logs to the lake is a boy, about my age, maybe older, standing with a rock in his clenched fist, glaring at the murky water. We halt, not knowing who he is or what he's doing, cece, my best friend since I was 3, shuffles her feet a bit and steps on the molded log and a huge chunk of it falls off sending a spray of small splinters and moist wood coated in larvae down the log wall. He quickly spins around and chucks the rock in our direction then notices we aren't whoever he hates he blushes and apologizes. He's a gorgeously handsome boy who had just tried to kill me. We don't have many cute guys here in my town that try to kill you but this... this is something I want to crave. I laugh, pick up the rock and hand it back to him, he's avoiding eye contact and looking at the rock so I quickly glance at my friends and wink. They sigh and climb back down the log wall knowing damn well I'm gonna get this boy. We spend the rest of my horrid birthday talking and laughing, he wanted to walk me home once it got dark so I was sparked with a curiosity of fire to know where his house was which could possibly explain why I'd never seen him before. He started blushing and meekly pointed to the pedal stool castle. I was shocked. Horrified. Bewildered that I, grace hestern of mildew friggin valley am in deep inspiring love with a... a... A SNOB!? I said nothing while these thoughts smashed through my mind. He obviously wasn't that type right? He's gotta be joking right? RIGHT? He interrupted my now skittish thoughts with a mildly hurt comment. He knows us folks think rottenly of his kind, we despise them and he doesn't wanna be seen as that kinda person. I slowly start to understand his speaking and realize he hates his kind as much as I and mama do. His papa is a worker, the kind of person who doesn't give two rocket poppers about their family, they just care bout the paper. Jax, the boy, hates living in his castle, he hates the luxury of it, likes the simple living, just like my mama, I go ahead and invite him over to my house for some supper, hopefully, my mama will like him coz he's like her, a rich-hating simple liver. over time he came over more and more until eventually, he asked me out on a date, I obviously said yes and quickly went to squeal to mama, she was more excited than I was, She asked if he wanted to stay with us and he agreed with no hesitation. We spent the humid summers together for years until the first day we didn't talk at all, I woke up that morning to not find him on the couch, not in the kitchen, not in his room, not anywhere in the house. I didn't think much of it considering sometimes he just needed a breather for a few hours. Once it had started to get to a few days instead of hours I got worried, I got my friends together and we made the unheard of hike to the castle. His papa answered the hulking doors with a phone to each ear, yelling at someone beyond the walls of their abode. We loudly asked where Jax was and he immediately hung up both calls and stepped outside, closing the doors behind him. The next thing he said was disgusting. He asked who I was talking about... said he didn't know who this jax kid was. I and my friends were outraged that a father could forget his own son, we started yelling and stomping about until jax himself came out of the fortress red-faced and suited. He'd betrayed me, us. He was locked in the arms of another girl, other hand holding a golden plate with chocolate covered strawberries on it. He figured we wouldn't come and didn't think it'd be us. I charged at him with a malicious force and knocked him over, ripping his delicately smooth suit and mashing the strawberries on his face while tears streamed down my face and onto his, my forced breath's contouring into his own. Nobody stopped him, nobody said anything while he held my hand against his heart and whispered for me to calm down. When I had stopped trying to hurt him I lay atop him on their white tiled floors crying and trying to get him to explain. He said nothing and smoothed my hair and kissed my forehead, his papa got me some water while my friends were to sit in the foyer. His papa and that girl left us on the waxed floor to go to the foyer and I bolted to a sitting position and he started explaining that the girl was his mother's daughter who came from Spain, she was a shy girl who liked to be in contact with an older male at all times due to an incident when she was 10 where she was kidnapped and held for ransom, he had to be at his house to care for her and wasn't allowed to leave to talk to me, and since we didn't have a phone he couldn't call. He told me he'd missed me and was dying to kiss me and in that moment I cried again, mad at myself for being a horrible girlfriend and even thinking he would do that. He kissed me once, twice, over and over until I was him and he was me until we were so close there was no telling who was who until my tears dried and I loved him once again. He made me the girl I am today and I would never ask for anything different. I love my Jax and won't ever ask anything more of him because he makes me whole and I make him full.