Michael

After his parent's divorce, Michael moves in with his Grandmother and begins attending a new school where he meets a vicious little girl named Skye.

I went to live at my grandmother's place when I was eleven.

I had never met her before. My father dropped me off at her house and drove away. Her steps were intimidating and I could hardly reach the doorbell but she opened the door before I could ring.

We stood there staring at each other for a long time before she said, 'Well, come on in!' And then she wanted to know who I was and what I was doing with my luggage on her doorstep. But she sat me down in her kitchen and pulled out a plate of cookies and made some tea while I told her that my parents were getting divorced and wanted me to live with her for a while; 'If that's okay,' I added, because it was becoming ver obvious that no one had told her that I was coming.

She frowned hard at me a moment, then her expression softened and she said, 'Of course it's alright, dear.'

She didn't have a room for me to sleep in but she let me sleep in her bed, 'I don't sleep much anymore anyway,' she explained and we stored my stuff in her tiny basement, next to the washing machine.

I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling for a long time after grandmother turned out the lights. The room was strange and a bit scary. It smelled flowery. The bed was too big and I was all alone.

Around midnight the door cracked open and Grandmother's head peeked in. 'You're still awake?' she asked. I nodded.

The bed creaked when she sat down on it and smiled sadly at me, 'It's a big scary world, isn't it?' she said. 'You never know when everything you thought was so sure is going to fall apart.' Then she put her hand on my head and sang quietly...

The next day I helped Grandmother move a bookshelf and a desk out of the small room next to hers so that we could put a little mattress on the floor for me to sleep on. 'It's just until we get you a bed,' Grandmother assured me.

That night I sat cross-legged on the mattress and cried and cried.

I had always gone to bed early. Then I would sit up in bed waiting for my mother to tuck me in. Sometimes she would sit on the edge of the bed and run her fingers through my hair and we would whisper to each other. Then, always too soon, she would kiss my forehead and be gone.

Often she wouldn't come and I would sit up late into the night waiting for her and fighting to stay awake.

Grandmother's hands were soft. They smoothed down my hair and affectionately patted my head. She folded my small hands between her big warm ones and knelt beside my mattress to pray.

She would do this every night. Or we would sit up late at the kitchen table sipping tea and eating cookies and talking until I fell asleep.

By that September we still hadn't heard from either my father or my mother so Grandmother registered me into the school down the road. That's where I met Skye. I was the smallest boy in the sixth grade and the playground was a war zone. I tried my best to stay out of everyone else's way.

'That's my swing, Shrimp.' I didn't even know the boys' names, but they knew mine. It was Shrimp. Or Scrawny. Or Stupid. Or any other demeaning name that started with S. All the big kids seemed to be friends, or they were always together. To me, they all had one face and it was always accompanied by a shove, or a thrown rock, maybe a bloody nose, and a sneer. 'Out of my way, S**t-for-brains.' Except it was impossible to be out of their way.

I kept quiet about it. Once I came home with a black eye. 'What happened to you?' Grandmother asked.

'Football accident,' I replied; it was the official story and it had worked on the principal. The football part was true, the accident part wasn't, and I hadn't been playing. Grandmother was thrilled that I was playing sports.

Then they started chasing me down on the way to school and shoveling dirt down my pants. 'Ha-ha-ha Shithead!'

'Hey F****t!' A girl's voice called out. I thought she was talking to me. How embarrassing that a girl would show up just now. She marched right up to my tormentor and punched him on the nose. He bled all over himself.

'Hi,' she smiled, offering her hand. I took it and she pulled me up. She helped me get back into my pants, clapping my shoulder. 'You're a pretty tough little F****r.'

I called her Skye. She looked like an angel and swore like a sailor. She was in the same grade as me and always sat in the back of the class--on the days that she came to school. She was famous for getting caught smoking in the boys' washroom.

'Scrawny's got a girlfriend,' they would sneer at me, but they wouldn't touch me unless she was away. Then I got it twice as bad. But I didn't tell her.

She lived around the corner from Grandmother's house and we started walking to school together in the mornings. Grandmother made her come in after school on most days and filled her with tea and cookies. We did our homework together around Grandmother's kitchen table. Grandmother was thrilled that I was making friends.

On Monday mornings Skye would come over early and we'd sit on the floor drinking hot chocolate and eating toast while Grandmother read sections of the newspaper to us; Skye and I always had the most interesting current events in history class.

'Your Granma's the f*****g bomb!' Skye exclaimed as we headed out the door.

Grandmother smiled widely, 'Have a nice day Sweetie!'

'You too!' We'd shout back, racing down the walkway.

We were back for lunch every day too. Grandmother always greeted us with a wide smile, holding the door open as we raced under her arm into the kitchen.

And one night, while she was sitting on the edge of my bed, after she had read to me from the Bible and after she had prayed with me, she put her hand on my head and smiled and said, 'Michael, I'm so glad you're here. You've filled this empty little house with life. You wouldn't believe how lonely it was before you come here.'

It was a rainy evening late in autumn, and Grandmother and I were doing the dishes after supper. I was standing on a chair because I was too short to reach the sink and drying the dishes with a hand towel from the washroom because I had dirtied the other ones trying to clean up some spilled soup. 'You use paper towels for that,' Grandmother said when she found me trying to soak tomato soup into her dish towels.

The doorbell rang and we raced to the door.

Skye was standing there dripping wet and shivering on the front step. Her lips were blue. 'Can I hang out with you guys for a while?' she asked in a shaking shivery voice. 'My dad's not home and he left the door locked.'

'Have you been standing out in the rain since after school?' Grandmother asked, astonished. 'You should have come sooner!'

She sent Skye to the washroom to take off her clothes and wrapped her up in a huge fluffy bath towel while she put the wet clothes in the dryer. Then we left the dishes in the sink and sipped cup after cup of hot tea while we played Scrabble, and then Monopoly, and then Skye taught Grandmother and I how to play poker and we played for toothpicks. Grandmother won every time.

Skye called her house a couple of times to find out if her dad was home but it was well past midnight and I was falling asleep on the couch before he finally answered. 'I've got to go home,' she said. 'Thanks for letting me hang out with you.'

'You are not going all the way home alone,' Grandmother said firmly, tugging me off the couch. 'Put your shoes on, Michael, we're going to walk Skye home.'

Skye protested, but Grandmother insisted, and no one ever won an argument with Grandmother.

She opened up her umbrella when we got outside and it was big enough for the three of us to shelter underneath.

Skye's father was waiting on the step and started yelling at Skye as soon as we stepped onto the driveway. He didn't seem to notice Grandmother and me.

Grandmother marched up to him and he fell backwards into the house. 'Whoa, lady, who are you?' he slurred.

Grandmother yelled at him for a while, then shooed him into the house with her umbrella and marched back down the steps, taking both Skye and me by the hand. 'You're sleeping at our house tonight,' she said.

Grandmother read to us from the Bible and prayed with us before we went to bed. I had to give up my room for the night. 'Girls need privacy,' she explained. I slept in a sleeping bag on the couch.

It was still dark when I woke up. Skye was standing there and she poke me. 'Hey, wake up.'

'I am,' I sat up. 'What do you want?'

'Move over.' She climbed up next to me on the couch and wrapped herself up in the part of the sleeping bag that I wasn't using.

'What are you doing?' I asked.

She started crying.

I had never seen her cry before. I didn't know that she was able. I put my arms around her and patted her back like Grandmother did when I cried.

She put her arms around me and cried into my neck until my shirt was all wet. When morning came she pushed me away. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles and said, 'If you tell anyone, I'll break your little legs.' Then she kissed me and padded back to the room.

All that day I couldn't hide my smile. I felt like my face would split open. 'Looks like you had a good sleep,' Grandmother observed as she handed me my plate with toast and hot chocolate.

'Nice to see you bright and smiling for a change,' my history teacher commented as I came through the door. Skye scowled at me.

'What are you smiling about, Stupid?' The big boy leered at me on the playground. I kicked him in the shins and ran away.

But he caught me and shoveled dirt down my pants. I smiled anyway.

I met Skye at the corner on the way to school the next day. She was wearing sunglasses. 'Let's not go to school today,' she said.

'What do you want to do?' I asked.

She said nothing and we walked down the street, past the school. There was a patch of woods at the end of the street with a creek flowing through it. We sat down beside the creek and Skye took off her sunglasses. She had a black eye.

'What happened?' I asked.

'Ran into the f*****g door,' she said.

'You're lying.'

She frowned at me, 'Shut up.'

I did.

She pulled a little box from her jacket pocket and opened it. There were cigarettes inside. 'Want one?' She asked.

I shook my head. She stuck one in her mouth and lit it with a plastic orange lighter. 'Where did you get them?' I asked.

'The B*****d.' She always referred to her father as 'the B*****d' or 'the A*****e.'

'He gave them to you?'

'What do you think?'

'Did he give you the black eye too?' I asked.

She punched me in the face. Hard. Split my lip. 'Shut up!' But then she held my hand and let me try her cigarette. It made me choke and it hurt inside my throat and where my lip was bleeding. I gave it back.

She finished smoking it and threw the butt into the creek. It floated away, bobbing up and down, until it disappeared around a bend. She lay down on her back in the grass; her hands folded behind her head and closed her eyes. I hugged my legs and rested my chin on top of my knees and stared at the creek and the things floating in it.

'Say f**k, Michael.'

'No.'

'Say it.'

'Why?'

'I want to hear you say it.'

'I don't want to say it.'

'Say it!'

'No.'

'F****t.'

'Sorry.'

'It's okay.'

Grandmother looked up at the clock when we came into the kitchen, 'You're early.'

'What are you doing?' Skye asked.

'Making cinnamon buns,' Grandmother replied. 'Do you want some?'

Skye grinned, 'Yeah!'

'What happened to your lip, Michael?' Grandmother asked.

'I punched him,' Skye said.

Grandmother raised her eyebrows but said nothing. And then the oven dinged.

'Alright, have a seat at the table,' Grandmother said, putting on her oven mitts.

We sat down and she placed a hot cinnamon bun in front of each of us and then sat down across from us.

'Now, young lady,' she said to Skye, holding out her hand. 'I believe you have something to give to me.'

Skye crossed her arms and frowned, sinking lower in her chair. Grandmother didn't break her gaze.

'Fine,' Skye said, finally, and placed the box of cigarettes in Grandmother's hand. It disappeared.

'Thank-you.' And she placed two cups of tea on the table.

At recess, we sat on the swings. 'Do you love me?' Skye asked.

'Yeah,' I said.

'How come?'

'Just 'cause.'

And for Christmas, Grandmother surprised me with a big toboggan. We took Skye and went sledding at the hill down the street. The toboggan was big enough for the three of us so Grandmother sat in front and steered while Skye and I did our best to hold on.

We built a big jump at the bottom of the hill and on the first run the toboggan went off the wrong side and collided with a tree. Grandmother and I managed to parachute unhurt into the snow, but Skye landed on packed ice and her leg broke with a sick snap and bled all over.

She screwed up her face but she didn't scream or cry. I held her hand as Grandmother pulled her on the toboggan to the hospital.

'Am I going to die, Michael?' She asked me.

'I don't know,' I said, squeezing her hand.

The doctor said it was a compound fracture but she would be alright, and they put a cast on her leg and Grandmother had to teach her to walk with crutches.

Then we drew on the cast while we sat on the floor in Grandmother's kitchen and Grandmother made us some cookies and served us tea.

School started again and Skye was still in a cast. The big boys loved it. She would try to fight them off with her crutches, and I did what I could too, but they'd always win, and shovel snow down my pants. That was worse than the dirt because it would melt and I'd have wet pants all day. 'Ha-ha-ha, Scrawny wet his pants!'

They made sure to get back at Skye too, and gave her bruises on her arms and ribs with their hockey sticks after they'd knocked her into the snow. She was tough, though, and didn't cry. I helped her up after I got back into my pants and dumped the snow out of my boots.

'Are you okay?' I asked.

She just clenched her jaw and nodded, but her eyes were on fire.

And Grandmother thought we were just having lots of fun in the snow and couldn't keep our clothes dry. She didn't seem to mind drying my pants at lunch and then again after school on some days. She scolded Skye about getting her cast wet buy Skye just laughed.

We got them back after Skye's cast came off. We chased them down after school and Skye would take her mittens off and punch their faces while I sat on them. She let me take turns punching them too, but she was better at it. Once she punched one of them in the throat and he fell on the ground and couldn't breathe. We ran away and I thought he was going to die but he was at school the next day so we did it to him again.

And then our knuckles got bloody and we had to tell Grandmother everything. But she didn't get angry.

We came in one afternoon and Grandmother was arguing on the telephone. 'You can't ignore him for seven months and suddenly come back and take him!' She shouted. 'I don't care! You are not coming here. Unless you're ready to take him home and care for him properly, he is staying right here with me and you can't come see him. No. That's the end of it.'

'I think she's talking about you,' Skye whispered.

'Really?' I asked. 'With who?'

'Fine,' Grandmother was saying. 'I'll let you talk with him. He just got home from school.' She pointed the receiver at me, 'Michael, it's your mother.'

'Hello?' I said.

'Michael, baby, how are you doing?' My mother asked.

'Good.' It was like talking to someone I didn't know and it annoyed me that she called mebaby.

'How's that cranky old lady treating you?'

'Good.'

'How's school?'

'Good.'

'Do you have any friends?'

'Yeah.'

'Well that's good. That's good.'

There was a long silence.

'You're not very talkative,' she said.

'No.'

More silence.

'Have you seen your father lately?'

'No.'

'Oh.'

Silence.

'Listen, Michael, baby, I'm going to talk to your father. Maybe we can get him to take care of you. Okay? Take you off the Old Lady's hands. Would you like that?'

'Okay.'

'Good. I'll talk to you later, I love you.'

'Bye.' I gave the phone back to Grandmother.

My father appeared a few days later. He stood awkwardly at the door while Grandmother stared him down.

'S-so, does Michael want to go for some ice cream?' He asked.

Grandmother looked at me and said, 'Do you?'

'Okay.'

So we went to Dairy Queen and I spooned ice cream into my mouth while my father asked questions.

'Are you liking school?'

'Uh-huh.'

'Do you have any friends?'

'Yeah.'

'How do you like living with your Grandmother?'

'I like it.'

And then he ran out of questions and we just stared at each other for a while.

Finally he stood up and said, 'C'mon, I'll take you back to your grandmother's house.'

He dropped me off in the driveway and I watched his fancy black car race away.

'Is your dad gonna take you away?' Skye asked when I told her about it.

'No. Why would he?'

'That's what happens,' Skye said. 'My mum didn't want me, so she sent me to live with the A*****e. He puts up with me because he gets money from the government or something.

'Do you miss your mum?' I asked.

'She's a f****n' b***h,' Skye said.

'Oh.'

So I asked Grandmother, 'Is my father going to make me go live with him?'

'Do you want to go live with him?' She asked.

'No.'

'Would you rather live with your mother?' She asked.

'No! I want to stay with you!' I shouted.

'Well! You're going to stay right here then,' she told me. 'And if they try to take you away, I'll fight them.'

I remembered Grandmother hitting Skye's dad with the umbrella and I put my arms around her and squeezed her. I couldn't help smiling.

Not long after that Grandmother got sick. She stayed in bed for a whole day. Skye came over and we made some chicken soup. I brought some in for Grandmother but she didn't want any. She just slept and coughed and wheezed.

The next morning she didn't feel any better. She gave me the phone number for her doctor and told me to call him. I stayed home from school.

The doctor came that afternoon. He arrived at the door with a black bag and a stethoscope. He spent a long time with Grandmother in her room with the door shut. Afterwards he came out and sat down beside me on the sofa. 'Your Grandmother is sleeping now. I gave her some medicine and I need her to take it every day. She's going to need to stay in bed for a while. Is there anyone who'll come here to take care of you?'

'Yes,' I lied.

He looked at his watch, 'So, if you call them, they can be here late today?'

'Uh-huh.'

'Okay. Just tell them what I said. The medicine is on the bedside table, she has to take a tablespoon of it three times a day. It's written right on the bottle. I'll be back in two days to check on her.'

And then he was gone.

I went in to see Grandmother but she was snoring loudly.

It felt like the end of the world when she died. The doctor came in and looked at her. And then he was on the telephone for a few minutes and an ambulance came, very slowly. Some paramedics put her on a stretcher and took her away while I watched and the doctor took me to the hospital in his car.

I sat in an office for a long time. A lady came and asked me who my parents were. A long while later the lady came back and told me that my father was coming to get me, in two days and did I have any place to stay? I said yes, Grandmother's house. But they wouldn't let me go back there alone.

I had to stay in a strange house for two nights and then my father came to get me. He took me back to Thunder Bay with him that same night. We didn't even stay for the funeral. And I never saw Skye again.

Reviews

[Jim Parson]

This was a really great story, Patrick. A very sentimental, very moving coming-of-age tale. I like your abrupt, no frills, no nonsense style. It fit the story well. Your character development is excellent without giving lengthy descriptions. I enjoyed this very much.

There are some punctuation issues, but not enough to distract from the story. I do have a couple of suggestions that I think you'll find will improve your writing dramatically. A friend shared this with me recently and I was shocked when I saw how often I did it and how much better my writing was after I stopped. The words "had" and "that" are usually unnecessary, although we all tend to use them a lot. If you go through your story and eliminate all that aren't essential, I think you'll be surprised at how much better your sentences will flow. Here's a couple of examples:

"...because it was becoming ver obvious that no one had told her that I was coming." (you have a typo on "very" btw) Here it is, edited. "...because it was becoming very obvious no one told her I was coming." See how much smoother without the had and 2 that's?

"A long while later the lady came back and told me that my father was coming to get me..." Here it is with no "that"... "A long while later the lady came back and told me my father was coming to get me..." See?

Another thing you do quite a bit, considered a no-no by editors and publishers, is start sentences with And and But. You should go through and delete those that can be deleted. Most can be.

I hope this helps. I really enjoyed your story and look forward to reading more of you!

By the way, I'm guessing you've already noticed, there are a lot of idiots on this site. Just ignore or block them and hang with those that are serious about writing and reviewing.