The softcover edition of "A Place of Shadows" is now available for pre-order online at Barnes and Noble. Better still, B&N has it on sale for $12.41 (35% off the cover price -- less expensive by far than I can even get it directly from my publisher!) 🤪 Fun fact: ghost stories make wonderful Christmas presents!
Attic of the Wind
A serial posting of tales by David M. Lafferty
Friday, November 30, 2018
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
New Developments
Hello, Campers!
First of all, for those of you waiting for more installments of the second book, I appreciate your patience! When writing a story, I always start out with a clear vision of both the opening and the climax, but all those annoying pages in between take some figuring out (a beginning, a muddle, and an end, so to speak.) I'm hip deep in the outlining process, and after we emerge from the holiday season I hope to be posting chapters on a regular basis. For what it's worth, though, here's a teaser: the sequel is going to be intense! Some might even call it a bit of a bloodbath. So rest assured that I'm still busy working out all the details.
In other news, since everything I've read about independent authorship insists that I need to expand my web presence, I'm doing my best to do just that. First, for those of you who enjoy Facebook, check out the David Lafferty page and give it a like! My intention is to save this blog for story chapters and transition the news updates to there.
Second, and more importantly (Drum roll, please!) I now have a website! Go to davidmlafferty.com for Place of Shadows info and links to both eBook and softcover buying options.
Wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday season! Cheers!
First of all, for those of you waiting for more installments of the second book, I appreciate your patience! When writing a story, I always start out with a clear vision of both the opening and the climax, but all those annoying pages in between take some figuring out (a beginning, a muddle, and an end, so to speak.) I'm hip deep in the outlining process, and after we emerge from the holiday season I hope to be posting chapters on a regular basis. For what it's worth, though, here's a teaser: the sequel is going to be intense! Some might even call it a bit of a bloodbath. So rest assured that I'm still busy working out all the details.
In other news, since everything I've read about independent authorship insists that I need to expand my web presence, I'm doing my best to do just that. First, for those of you who enjoy Facebook, check out the David Lafferty page and give it a like! My intention is to save this blog for story chapters and transition the news updates to there.
Second, and more importantly (Drum roll, please!) I now have a website! Go to davidmlafferty.com for Place of Shadows info and links to both eBook and softcover buying options.
Wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday season! Cheers!
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
A Place of Shadows is now available!
Attention, Friends and Readers!
The Kindle eBook edition of A Place of Shadows (formerly A Place of Secrets) is now available on Amazon.com! The paper edition is projected to be available for pre-order on Amazon sometime next week, as well as appearing in various other outlets (Barnes and Noble, Powell's, iBooks, etc) soon thereafter.
As you can probably imagine, this is a very exciting time for me, and I'd like to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your support and readership!
The Kindle eBook edition of A Place of Shadows (formerly A Place of Secrets) is now available on Amazon.com! The paper edition is projected to be available for pre-order on Amazon sometime next week, as well as appearing in various other outlets (Barnes and Noble, Powell's, iBooks, etc) soon thereafter.
As you can probably imagine, this is a very exciting time for me, and I'd like to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your support and readership!
Sunday, September 9, 2018
Vengeant, Chapter Two
“Oh, look…it’s the
freak’s cousin!”
My hearing zeroed in on the sound, and I glanced up from
where I was locking my bike to the rack.
Students flowed in from the school parking lot – some talking cheerfully
with friends, others looking like they weren’t quite awake yet – and I had to
crane my neck around before I finally found the source of the contemptuous
tone.
A heavyset girl with bad acne stood with a couple of friends
just outside the campus fence, sharing a cigarette before the first bell. She wore camo pants, flip-flops and a black
T-shirt that read Kill the
Patriarchy. I noticed the bottom hem
of the shirt was cut three or four inches above her waistband. It wasn’t a good look for her.
“Darlene’s starting early,” Les remarked.
Ab looked over, scowling.
“What’s her deal?” I asked.
Ab shook her head. “Nothing. Just a mean streak a mile wide.”
I turned back toward the scene, frowning automatically. I hate bullies.
A slender girl in a long skirt and a loose, zippered hoodie was
trying to squeeze past them through a narrow pedestrian gate. Darlene moved to block her way. “How can you stand to even be in the same
house as him?” she taunted. “Or maybe
you’re a freak, too – is that it?”
The girl in the skirt just stood there, hugging a binder to
her chest with one arm while holding an insulated lunch bag in her free
hand. The hood of her sweatshirt was up,
and she looked up at Darlene through dark hair that partially obscured her face. I could make out pale skin and brown eyes
that were wide with fear. Her expression
reminded me of a small animal caught in a trap, and before I even realized it I
was weaving my way toward them.
“What…are you deaf, new girl?” Darlene taunted as I
drew near. She reached and yanked the
binder out of her grasp, flinging it casually behind her and prompting tribal
laughter from her friends. It landed open
and face down inside the chain link fence, a handful of loose pages floating gracefully
to the asphalt like leaves. “You answer me when I’m talking to you!”
“Leave her alone,” I called out, and Darlene turned toward
me, her eyes narrowing. “What’s the
matter?” I pressed. “Was she
trip-trip-tripping over your bridge?”
It took a second or two before her expression registered
understanding, and I began to suspect she might not be the brightest crayon in
the box. “Mind your own business,
asshole!” she snarled. The eager
aggression I’d initially sensed from the big girl had dampened considerably,
but she hid it pretty well.
“Wow…you kiss your mother with that mouth?” Les asked,
stepping up beside me.
“Fuck you,
Hawkins.”
He chuckled. “Not in
a million years, princess.”
“If you want to push someone around, how about me instead?”
Ab challenged from my other side. “It
didn’t work out so well for you last time, but hey, I’m up for a rematch if you
are.”
Darlene’s friends exchanged a glance and moved tentatively
to back her up. One was tall and
pear-shaped, wearing a green and yellow tie-dye shirt and jeans. The other was skinny and had spiky hair. She wore a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut
away and the poo emoji on the front.
Classy.
Their combined feelings only amounted to nervousness and
fear, though, so I decided to end the situation before it got any uglier. Staring Darlene in the eyes I stepped calmly
forward, moving right into her personal space.
Just as I figured, she scuttled back, bumping into her friends as all
three retreated. “Come on,” I said,
turning to the girl they’d been picking on.
“Let’s go get your stuff.” I gestured
toward the gate and she hurried through.
“There goes the big man!” Darlene called out as we walked
away, but there wasn’t much conviction behind it. “You gotta love that white male privilege!” We continued to ignore her, so she pitched
her voice to carry over the crowd. “SOMEBODY
NEEDS TO TEACH YOU HOW TO TREAT WOMEN!”
Conversations fell silent as everyone in the immediate area paused
to see what was going on.
Ab turned. “Yeah?”
she fired back. “Well somebody needs to
teach you the difference between a
bare midriff and a beer-gutriff!”
Laughter erupted all around and I could hear Les chuckle
behind me as I squatted, helping the girl pick up her scattered papers. “I don’t know about you,” I confided, “but much
more of that and Darlene will lose my vote for homecoming queen.”
She raised her head slightly, looking up at me through dark
bangs as I handed the pages over, and I didn’t need my gift to sense her
wariness – I could see it in her eyes.
“That was a joke,” I explained, hoping that being friendly
would make her feel better. “I’m Ben, by
the way.”
Her wary expression eased a little. “Gina,” she murmured, sounding either shy or
reluctant, I couldn’t tell which. Then,
as if an afterthought, “Thanks.”
“No problem,” I said, rising. “And don’t worry about…”
But she was gone, scurrying away head-down through the
crowd.
The bell rang, and Les waved as he veered off toward his
first class while Ab and I headed for the sophomore assembly at the gym.
“Beer-gutriff?” I asked after a moment.
She grinned at me.
We parted ways as soon as we stepped inside, Ab heading
toward a table with a paper banner reading Last
Name A-F while I fell into a shorter line on the opposite side with the
rest of the U through Z’s. Their system
turned out to be pretty efficient. The
line moved quickly, and less than ten minutes after I reached the front I was
headed back outside again with my schedule for the semester, hall and gym
locker assignments, campus map, and a photo ID that was still warm in my
hand. They hadn’t noticed I’d crossed my
eyes.
I hiked across campus, passing a room with an open door
where the band was slowly running through their first scales of the year. Lots of flutes, trumpets and saxophones I
noted, wincing a little at the sound. They
were out of tune. It’s only the first day, I reminded myself. They’re
bound to get better.
Room 19 was in the next building over and I opened the door,
stepping tentatively into my first-period geometry class. The teacher – Miss George, according to the name
written on the ancient-looking blackboard – was still going through her
expectations while a couple of volunteers passed out books, and she waved me in
without stopping. The only desks left
open were toward the front (thanks a lot,
sophomore assembly) and I dropped into the second seat back in the row closest
to the door. Math was my least-favorite
subject, but at least I’d be getting it out of the way first thing. I watched as other kids came trickling in,
hoping to see Ab or someone else I knew, but by the time Miss George began
taking attendance I had decided I was out of luck.
Gina walked in when the teacher was about halfway through
calling out names, and she hurried over and slipped into the last open seat,
just to my left. I brightened a little,
relieved to see someone I at least recognized, but then I gave an inward sigh
when she just stared at the desktop after giving me barely a glance. When Miss George called “Gina Lynch?” she replied a soft “Here” without looking up.
So much for finding
allies, I decided gloomily. Geometry
was going to suck.
Second period was English, which I had with Ab, followed by
third period U.S. History with both Ab and Gina. I was also glad to see Vern Ashley, a guy I’d
first met a few days after moving to the area, and who sometimes joined our
Saturday night fire circle on the beach.
He had ebony skin and muscles that made him look like he’d been carved
from granite, and even though we’d sometimes talked about him teaching me to
lift weights, it hadn’t happened yet. Phys
Ed came right before lunch, and there at least I got to hang out with Les (major
score!) along with Monica, one of the other girls from Windward Cove. She was lean and athletic from long days on her
surfboard, and based on her hair and skin tone I took her for Native American,
but I hadn’t got around to asking her yet.
I checked my schedule as I left the locker room, noting that
all I had left after lunch was Biology I and then a drama class – my only elective. I’d taken Beginning Drama back in middle
school, and while I wasn’t much of an actor, I was fine with building sets,
hanging in the background and helping out as a stage hand. It would be a pretty chill way to end the
day.
All in all, I figured things weren’t looking too bad as I exited
the lunch line in the cafeteria, holding my back pack in one hand and balancing
my tray in the other. I scanned the
room, looking for someone I knew, and I recognized a familiar cascade of dark
auburn hair on the far side. Kelly
Thatcher sat at a table by the windows, along with three or four of her
cheerleader friends and some guys from the football team. She brightened when she saw me, and I could
see there was an open space to her left, but I kept my gaze moving, pretending
I hadn’t seen her. I knew that sooner or
later she and I would have to talk, but today wasn’t that day. From the corner of my eye I saw Alan Garrett walk
over and claim the open spot, and then the pressure was off.
I figured everyone else was lagging behind, so I made my way
to a large table near the wall that was mostly open. “Mind if I sit here?” I asked the only occupant, but then I almost immediately wished I hadn’t. The guy was large – probably over six feet, I
estimated – though round shouldered and kind of pudgy. He wore a dark, long-sleeved tee with a
dragon on it. He glanced up as if
annoyed, looking at me over the top of thick, horn-rimmed glasses, and then
turned his attention back to the open book in front of him. He turned the page, ignoring me.
“Ben…?”
I turned to see Gina standing a couple of steps behind me
holding her lunch bag. “Oh, hey,” I
said. “Just looking for some space.”
She chewed her lower lip, looking uncertain. “You can sit with us if you want,” she
offered at last, moving cautiously around me to the table. That earned her a scowl from Mr. Cheerful but
she ignored it, sliding into the chair next to his.
“Thanks.” I set my
tray down in the place across from them, and then hung my back pack on the
chair before dropping into it.
“This is my cousin Darren,” she told me. “Darren, this is Ben.”
“Hi,” I said.
“You know this guy?” he asked Gina, still ignoring me.
I guessed he wasn’t the welcoming type.
She nodded. “Some
girls were giving me a hard time before school.
Ben and his friends made them stop.”
“What girls?” he
demanded.
“It doesn’t matter.
It’s over now.” She began
unpacking her lunch, and I watched as she arranged a yogurt and a plastic spoon
next to a sandwich made of a single slice of pressed turkey on wheat bread.
No wonder she’s so
slender, I thought.
Darren looked like he was going to press her further, but
then just shook his head. “I told you the people around here suck,” he
muttered, and then turned his attention back to his book.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, and then took a sip from my
water glass. “Darlene’s got some issues,
but pretty much everyone else has been cool so far.”
He looked over at me with a sour expression, and then glanced
down at the meatloaf and mashed potatoes on my plate, wrinkling his nose in
disgust.
Maybe he was vegan.
Gina’s expression darkened.
“Darlene’s a…” She paused, as if looking for the right word. “A witch,”
she finished awkwardly, as if she’d said something crude. She looked down at her food, blushing.
“Yeah,” I agreed, picking up my fork. “We just pronounce it differently where I
come from.”
She looked back up, her brown eyes momentarily wide, and
then offered a tentative smile.
“There you are!” Les said cheerfully, setting a huge sack
lunch beside my tray and pulling out the chair.
Ab was half a step behind him, along with Monica and Vern, and they all
took places at the table. They were
followed a second or two later by Nicole and Kim, two more girls we knew from
Windward Cove, and the conversation brightened as we exchanged greetings. Across from me, Darren’s scowled deepened as
the table filled up, and I wondered if it was his go-to expression. Gina just retreated into her own space, staring
at the tabletop.
“Hi,” Ab said from the chair next to her. “You’re new, right? You took off before we had a chance to meet
this morning.”
As she began making introductions, Darren rose abruptly and
stalked away, obviously in a state of high pissoff. I wasn’t sorry to see him go.
“Don’t worry about Bubbles,” Les confided, pitching his
voice low so Gina couldn’t hear. “He’s
always that way.”
I shrugged, turning back to the conversation at the table.
“…and you’ve already met Ben. He’s pretty new too, and just moved here at
the beginning of summer,” Ab finished.
“So where are you from?”
Gina hesitated, but I could see Ab’s friendliness superpower
was already working its magic. I hadn’t
met anyone yet she couldn’t get to like her, and the new girl smiled shyly. “Rome,” she answered in a soft voice.
“Italy?” Nicole
asked excitedly, moving into Darren’s vacant seat so she could better hear.
The girl shook her head, blushing. “New York.
Upstate. My family has…” She paused.
“We had a farm there.”
“So what brings you to California?”
Gina frowned, looking down again. “There was an accident. I had to come live with my aunt and uncle.”
It grew quiet as a brief, awkward silence fell over our
table. “So have you tried surfing yet?”
Nicole asked, grinning.
That salvaged things, and the conversation was off and
running again. I relaxed, working on my
meatloaf and chiming in every now and then as everyone did their best to make
the shy girl feel welcome.
It looked like Gina was part of the crowd.
Monday, September 3, 2018
"Vengeant" Chapter One
“Which ghost is this one, again?” Les asked.
“The scary one,” I muttered, a little nervously. Okay, maybe more than a little.
“Dude…they’re ghosts.
They’re supposed to be scary.”
I gave him a raised eyebrow, but all he did was grin at me. Leslie Hawkins, the unruffle-able. Seriously, nothing ever seemed to bother the
guy. He’d hung around with us the whole
summer long, taking charge of the Common Sense department while Ab (short for
Abigail) Chambers did the hardcore research and provided all the ghost expertise. She’d been studying the paranormal most of
her life (if “studying” was even the right word – she was more like a raging
groupie following her favorite band), and she had emerged as our unofficial
leader.
And me? I was just the
guy who could see and feel things no one else could.
We were gathered at the end of the third floor hall in front
of Suite 324 – the only locked door inside the Windward Inn. I stood a little to one side, avoiding the cold
spot I remembered from the day my mom and I had first explored the old, boarded-up
hotel. The spot was still there, a space
of maybe three square feet where the temperature seemed to drop fifteen or
twenty degrees. But that wasn’t the part
that bothered me. What bothered me was
the feeling of detached, brutal menace that emanated from whatever lurked on
the other side of the door. I swallowed,
feeling sweat gather on the back of my neck.
I didn’t want to be there.
“This should be Frank Delgiacco,” Ab reported when I didn’t
answer. She consulted her stack of
notes, most of which were photocopies of old newspaper columns downloaded from
the internet, and I watched as she flipped though the pages. She was lean, with a narrow face and high cheekbones. Her hair was the same dark brown as her eyes, longer on top and cut shorter on the sides, and even in the dim hallway I could make out the purple highlights. The line between her eyebrows smoothed out when she found the page she was looking for. “Aha -- here it is. Frank was a gangster from
the thirties with connections to crime families in both New York and Chicago.”
“So how’d he end up here?” Les asked.
“As the story goes, he hooked up with his boss’ girlfriend –
a woman named Martina Russo. They ran
away together when they were discovered, but the mob caught up to him here a
little over a year later.” Ab frowned
down at the page. “The article doesn’t
say if Martina was with him or not.”
I reached out mentally,
immediately finding the brief vision I’d seen earlier that summer: the
muzzle flash of a gun, a spray of blood, and the body of a woman being buried
in the desert. “She wasn’t,” I told them,
my mouth suddenly dry.
What happened? I wondered offhandedly. Did
they have a fight? Did Martina have
second thoughts and want to go back?
I shook my head, realizing I’d probably never know.
“Anyway, on the night of April 11th, 1933, two mob hit men
showed up and knocked around eleven p.m.,” Ab went on. “When Frank asked who was there, one fired a
shotgun right through the door, and then kicked it in. Delgiacco took most of the blast in his chest
and stomach, but he must’ve been a big guy because as soon as the door swung
open he shot one of the mobsters in the face, and then dragged the other one
inside. He must’ve dropped his gun in
the fight, because the second mobster was found strangled to death. Frank bled out before the police got here.”
“And you want me to go in,” I said. “Is it just me, or does this sound like a
really stupid idea?”
“C’mon, Wolfman,”
Ab prodded, sounding impatient. “All we
need to find out is if this ghost is aware of people, or if he’s just another
spirit stuck reliving the past. And
anyway, we’ve been all over this place and nothing’s hurt you so far, has it?”
I sighed. She was
right, and I was probably just being a wuss.
You’d think after a summer of investigating the spirits in the old hotel
I’d be used to it by now. But then
again, each case was a little different.
From Edna Lang down in room 209, who killed herself in May of 1926 by
taking a whole bottle of sleeping pills, to William “Willie” Boyd, who got
drunk off his ass during a New Year’s Eve party in 1942, and died after wrestling
the third floor elevator door open and falling down the shaft. There were ghosts who seemed to have stuck
around for reasons known only to them, others who didn’t even know they were dead,
and pretty much everything in between – and no two were exactly alike.
My friend Lisette Gautier had spent a lot of time over the
summer trying to teach me how to reach out to them, hoping I’d be able to “help move ‘em on.” So far, though, my batting average was zero. Sure, under the right circumstances I could
experience mind-blowing visions of past events.
And I was great at sensing emotions too, both from the people around me
and any strong feelings that were sometimes imprinted on places and objects. Once in a great while I could even tell when
something was about to happen, although that was the least specific or reliable
– like having just a touch of Peter Parker’s spider-sense. But in
spite of Lisette’s patient coaching and all the ghost-hunting we’d done over
the summer, I still wasn’t able to form any sort of connection by which I could
genuinely communicate or interact. I
dunno…maybe I just sucked at the whole psychic thing. At best, I seemed to just be a spectator,
which sometimes made me feel like I brought the least of all of us to the party.
Ben Wolf…inept clairvoyant.
Moe nuzzled my hand, as if sensing my uncertainty, and I
ruffled his black, shaggy fur. The puppy
I’d found and adopted back in June had grown a lot. His shoulders now stood partway up my thigh,
and he wasn’t even close to done yet. The vet in
Silver Creek had identified him as a Black Russian Terrier; a dog originally
bred for military and police work, and if what I’d read in the internet was
true, he could end up weighing upwards of a hundred and fifty pounds. It was a good thing he was so mellow.
“Wolfman…? You still
with us?”
“Yeah,” I said, bringing my thoughts back to the
present. “Sorry.” I dug the hotel passkey out of my hip pocket
and inserted it into the lock. I had to
twist hard before the old key began to turn, and I wondered how long it had
been since the door was opened. At last,
though, something inside gave way with a grind and a snap, and the bolt rolled
aside.
My heart began thudding heavily in my chest. Ab’s research had included pouring through
boxes of old, leather-bound hotel registers we’d found in a small office behind
the front desk, and we’d found out that the last guest to stay in Suite 324 had
checked out a little after midnight on September 12th, 1934. In the seventeen months following Frank
Delgiacco’s murder, the suite had only been rented twenty-eight times, with no one
making it through a single night. Five
of the guests had switched to other rooms, but the rest had all left the hotel
anywhere between seven p.m. and three-fifteen in the morning. From the night the last recorded guest
checked out until the Windward Inn shut down in 1951, there was no record of Suite
324 ever being occupied again.
Knowing that wasn’t exactly comforting.
I twisted the knob, holding my breath as a crack of
semi-darkness appeared between the door and the frame.
And then I was stumbling into gloom, pulled inside as the
door was jerked savagely open! I had
barely a second to realize they hadn’t even bothered to clear out the furniture
before I somersaulted over the back of a sofa, my legs landing hard on a coffee
table on the other side and breaking it in half. Dust from the upholstery rose in a cloud and
I could hear Moe barking as I scrambled awkwardly to my feet. The cracks between the boarded-over windows
allowed afternoon sunlight to penetrate the room, the narrow beams looking like
lasers as they cut through the billowing dust.
I found my bearings again, looking back to where Ab and Les
stared in from the hallway wide-eyed with shock, but then something hit me hard
in the chest and I was flying through the air, my back slamming against a wall
and shattering a big mirror that hung there.
I had just landed when what felt like a huge hand closed around my
throat, slamming me back against the wall again and pinning me there with my
feet dangling a foot above the floor.
Panicked, I flailed at the towering, vaguely man-shaped distortion I
could now see in front of me, but my punches and kicks just sailed right
through. I struggled to breathe, but the
hand holding me had completely closed off my windpipe, and my vision started to
go gray around the edges.
Suddenly, the hand was gone as Moe tore into the room,
showing teeth and barking furiously as the ghostly outline appeared to retreat
in surprise. I landed on my hands and
knees, gasping, and then Les was there, hauling me back to my feet and half-dragging
me back to where Ab waited, ready to pull the door shut.
“Moe!” I managed
to choke out, my throat burning, and he turned and scrambled out into the hall
just ahead of us. Ab slammed the door
shut as soon as we were clear, and half a second later it rattled in its frame
as something heavy hit it from the other side.
The thud echoed hollowly down the empty corridor, but after
it faded the only sound was our labored breathing.
After a long moment, Les turned away from the door, his pale eyes glinting mischievously in the half-light. “Well,” he remarked casually, “ol’ Frank seems
pretty aware to me. What do you guys
think?”
I started to chuckle. It made my throat hurt, but I just
couldn’t help it. Ab and Les joined in,
and we shared a laugh that was part hysterical relief, part lingering shock and terror,
but mostly just good friends finding the moment funny as hell. We kept going until a second, louder thud
rattled the door, as if the ghost inside resented the sound, and we all jumped
a little. “Lock that, will you?” I
asked.
I watched as Les strained to turn the key. “It won’t budge,” he said at last, giving
up. “Something inside must’ve broken
when you opened it.”
That scared me a little, but then I realized that if the
ghost of Frank Delgiacco wanted to get past the door, he would have done it
already. Just the same, I figured we shouldn’t
press our luck. “So,” I asked Ab “do you
have any more near-death experiences you’d like to put me through, or can we
get out of here?”
She grinned. “Nah…I
guess that’s enough for today.”
We made our way down to the lobby, and I left the passkey on
its hook behind the front desk before following Ab and Les out to the porch.
“Have you and your mom ever thought about reopening the
Windward?” Ab asked, watching as I locked the door behind us.
“Not really,” I admitted.
“I mean sure, it’s come up, but we just got all the wiring fixed at the
house, and Mom has a lot of other stuff planned. It’ll be a while before this place makes it
that far up the To Do list.”
I watched Moe as he loped on ahead of us, and we shared a
companionable silence as we ducked under the chain blocking the entrance and
began our hike down the steep drive. The
sun was warm through my shirt, but a chill wind off the ocean reminded me that
summer was waning. The afternoon light had
been turning a deeper gold as autumn crept near, the sunsets ticking steadily
southward and giving way to twilight a few minutes earlier each evening. Thinking about it made me a little sad,
especially when I remembered it was the last day of summer vacation.
“You guys all ready for tomorrow?” Ab asked, as if reading
my thoughts.
“Yup,” said Les.
“Nope,” I answered at the same time, and we laughed.
“C’mon, hombre,” Less
offered good-naturedly, ruffling the lingering dust from his light, almost colorless hair. “Tomorrow you’re
officially a Silver Creek High Buccaneer.
What’s not to like about that?” He was a little taller than me, though thicker in the chest and shoulders in a burly kind of way that sometimes reminded me of a mountain man, or maybe a lumberjack. He was a year ahead of Ab and me – a junior – and had shown us around
the campus the week before.
I shrugged. “Nothing,
I guess. I just like summer better. You know, staying up late watching movies,
getting to sleep in whenever I want, warm nights on the beach... Now we have to trade it all in for boring
days in class, homework and all the rest.”
“Don’t forget football games and dances,” Les countered.
“Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas,” Ab added.
“Stop being so cheerful when I’m trying to feel sorry for myself,”
I complained, smirking.
From there our conversation drifted to other subjects like which
teachers were cool and which weren’t, what to definitely stay away from in the
cafeteria, and other random bits of intel Les thought we might need. It kept us busy until we made it to my house,
a rambling Victorian ringed by elm trees about halfway down the hill from the
inn. It sat in a meadow just south of
what had been a private vineyard back in the forties, maybe ten square acres of
abandoned vines that had grown into a great, tangled jungle of green that was twelve
to fifteen feet high in some places. The
vineyard had been haunted when Mom and I had moved to Windward Cove back in
June, but it wasn’t anymore. And anyway,
that’s a different story.
“You guys want to stay for dinner?” I asked. “Mom’s making her chicken enchilada
casserole. It’s awesome – one of my
all-time favorites.”
“Can’t,” Ab said. “I
probably should have been home an hour ago.
My Aunt Abby is visiting, and if I don’t go and pretend I’m a
girlie-girl for a while, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“I should go, too,” Les replied. “I need shove some clothes in the washer –
you can only turn your underwear inside-out so many days in a row.”
We laughed, and then arranged to meet early at Tsunami Joe
for coffee in the morning so we could ride to school together. I sat on the porch step, feeling sad again as
I watched my friends get on their bicycles and pedal away. I knew it was just end-of-summer blues, so I
tried to shake it off, entwining my fingers in Moe’s fur as I looked through
the gap in the western hills where the sunset was just a coppery line above the
Pacific. Pretty, and as good a way to
end my last day of freedom as any, I supposed.
“Benny!” My mother’s call was faint as it drifted through
the screen door behind me from somewhere in the back of the house. “You
around? Dinner’s almost ready!”
“Be right there!” I hollered back, but I stayed put for a
few moments longer, watching a black spot out over the ocean glide south
against the golden backdrop of shimmering water.
It was a bird – either a seagull or a pelican; it was too far away to
tell for sure – skimming a foot or so above the waves as if enjoying the last
flight of the day.
I knew just how he felt.
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