The Shadow Grove Chronicles - Book I: Fated Reunion

Da Cappo

The sun was brilliant outside the classroom window. It was close to the end of the school day at Waco High. The students were fidgeting in their desks and there was a substitute teacher that day for Ms. Tacker. Needless to say, there had been shenanigans ensuing and the poor man was just ready for the bell to ring. Off in the back corner, away from the windows, a group had their three desks pushed together so they could work on the assignment. On the left, closest to the window, was the varsity baseball team’s shortstop, Colton McKenzie. Next to him was the cross-country team’s star runner Allie Cohan. At the end closest to the wall, a very tall but extremely shy boy in glasses sat quietly while he finished the worksheet, John Delaney.

It was almost the end of the year and practically everyone was in shorts and t-shirts due to the heat of late spring in central Texas. The group described was no different; except for John. He wore a pair of baggy dark blue jeans two sizes too big that were faded with small tears held in place around his hips with a long, black, woven leather belt. He had on a baggy, plain, black t-shirt and an old army-issue jacket of olive-drab green that was general-issue during the eighties. He looked like he should be boiling inside those long sleeves, but he was used to it.

John, very self conscious about his body and felt that he was too fat to be found attractive by the girls in his school. There was something to that. He was not just tall. He was very tall for a sophomore, at six-foot-four-inches, John towered over everyone else in the school, including most of the teachers and had broad shoulders, not that you would notice under all his loose clothing. But he was built like a tank, weighing close to three-hundred pounds. Normally, he would be hunched over his desk as though he was trying to make himself as small as possible, to make himself invisible.

Allie wiggled in her chair, anxious for the period to be over with and John, watching out of the corner of his eye, noted every graceful movement of her slender frame and the sway of her long curly black hair. He bit the inside of his cheek to try to keep his secretly libidinous desires in check, this was not a time to let that part of his mind go wild, again. There were too many people around and if he got excited, it would’ve been noticed. His mind, unbidden, pulled up the first memory he had of this little pixie, all bubbly good cheer as she welcomed him into the class back in November, after he moved to Waco from Houston. His serious, stoic face didn’t betray the fact that on the inside he was smiling.

Colton was only half way through the assignment before he started having some legitimate trouble. He looked to Allie, who was almost done with the sheet, for help. She went through the steps of the worksheet with him, trying to ignore how he looked at her with blatant hunger.

John had already finished his sheet and had it flipped face-down on the desk and was reading a white hardback novel. His large hands covered the title printed down the spine in gold lettering: “Say You Love Me” by Johanna Lindsey. He had borrowed it from his mother’s extensive collection of romance novels earlier that morning and was already almost finished with it.

Truthfully most of his attention was paid on Allie, already dressed in her sports gear for after school; a pair of high-cut jersey-knit shorts, a close-fitting t-shirt emblazoned with “Waco High School Cross Country” blazoned across her chest, and low ankle-cut socks, it being too hot for longer ones. He loved to look at her, especially at her bare slender, well defined legs. He often daydreamed of touching them, running his hands down the curves of her legs’ smooth exposed skin or brushing his lips on her dainty, elfin ankles.

So too did Colton, who had more balls. He was eyeing her body like a starving wolf and had been flirting with her for most of the period. He usually flirted with her every day, and John had watched it happen the whole time he had been at this new school. He paid attention to this exchange, more interested in looking at her, than feeling any jealousy directed towards Colton or the way he could just talk to girls without feeling like some kind of freak. Allie was too delightful to look at to care about being petty or jealous over things he couldn’t control. John really wasn’t the jealous type to begin with. She was absolutely gorgeous to John. By his estimation, she was too far out of his league to even approach her on that level. But there wasn’t any harm appreciating her beauty.

Allie finally got down to the last question on the page, a very complex problem with multiple variables. She stared at it, gently chewing at the corner of her lip and bouncing the eraser of the pencil on the desk. She looked at the clock, then at John’s flipped answer sheet. Clock. Answer sheet. It was about fifteen minutes before the period ended and she really did want to finish. She was a very good student and had near perfect grades. That only comes from a strong sense of dedication, so she felt compelled to finish as a matter of her personal pride.

Allie looked over the soft lines of John’s face and the focused intensity his dark eyes had as he read. John, feeling Allie’s pretty green eyes staring at him, darted his eyes in her direction and met her gaze. He looked her up and down, an action luckily unnoticed by her, and took in every minute detail of her facial expression and posture. Then he looked at her answer sheet and quickly deduced what she needed. He flipped over his own and in a small, clear script the last problem had been completed with every step meticulously worked out by hand. She looked it over and checked the answer with her graphing calculator. A wide smile played across her face and John smiled back at her as she copied down the answer, wiggling again in her seat happily as she wrote it down.

Five minutes before the bell rang for the end of the day, all three students had turned in their assignments, setting them in the tray sitting on the teacher’s desk. Allie was sitting on her legs, stretching them out in preparation for cross country practice after school. John watched as the fabric of her shorts strained against the curve of the rounded firmness of her backside as her legs bulged from her leaning into the stretch. He noted that there was no panty-line, causing his mind to go into high gear.

“I could help you stretch if you’d like,” Colton said, staring as he grinned at her.

“I think I can handle it, Colton…” She rolled her eyes at him, showing her lack of interest. She looked over at John, tilting her head and watched him as he read his book. She wondered what it was that he was so engrossed in, but the dust jacket was missing and his large hands still covered the title.

“John, would you help me stretch out my legs?”

He looked at her as his heart skipped several beats and butterflies threatened to burst free from his mouth.

“Y-yes A-a-allie, I w-would be happy t-t-to.” His stutter went unnoticed to anyone but him over the din of the classroom.

“See! A gentleman!” Allie said loud enough to draw the attention of their neighbors. Not caring, She looked back at John and locked her eyes onto his. Her eyes were a mask of desire.

“John, I want to know what it’s like to be with a real man. I want you. To f**k me. In the ass. Right. Now...”she had said this in low, sultry tones that only the three of them could hear, burning its way into John’s ears, turning them red.

John snapped the book closed, palms beginning to sweat and he stared at her with a slightly gaping mouth. Blood rushed through his ears as his heart pumped harder, drowning out the other sounds of the classroom with a loud buzz. His spine straightened and all his muscles tensed. His face felt so hot and so did his ears, knowing that if there had been a mirror there for him to see himself, he would’ve been a shade of bright red. In his mind he played out the situation, all the complicated and impossible ways he would have to invent just to be able to spend time with anyone outside of school, let alone for a girlfriend... Any girlfriend, not just the beautiful and intelligent Allison Cohan.

She’s way out of my league, was a common thought as his mind flooded his inner eye with all the fantastic ways he could try so he could tell her “Okay, Let’s go.” Of course he had fantasized about her. He did it all the time. In fact he had just had one about thirty minutes ago... About the same exact thing she had just requested of him… Feeling as though she’d bolt if she knew about the nightmare he had to deal with back home, he tried to come up with a way, any way, he could meet up with her for the deed. In almost every track of possibility he went through it always ended badly when it came to the eventual meeting with the parents for the first time. All of this complexity played out in his mind in just a fraction of a second.

“I appreciate the of-ffer,” but just as the words passed through his lips, the bell rang and a mad dash for the door ended any further conversation with her on the matter. John was soon the last one left in the room. “… I accept…”

A lonely look of suffered resignation could be seen on his face as he slowly walked his way down to the buses parked out in front of the school. It wouldn’t have worked anyways, he thought to himself, but he was hoping…

***

John trudged through the streets on his way home from the bus stop and put his book back in the messenger satchel he used for a book bag. The hot Texas sun beat down on him and he took off his jacket and folded it over his bag, his baggy black shirt waving in the breeze. A painful sigh escaped his lips as he thought about Allie.

How he wished he had the confidence to even tell a girl like that how he really felt, playing the scene over, and over, in his mind. It was either do that or worry about what fresh hell he would step into as soon as he got home. He just hoped that Heath, his step-father, would be asleep when he returned home.

The trees swayed audibly as a gust picked up and the white noise helped John keep any sense of mortal fear as minimal as possible. Heath, once a good man, started having seizures and now was a violent, unreasonable troll, John regularly felt as though he was just his step-father's favorite personal punching bag and general scapegoat, a literal red-headed step-child. He tried to think instead of Allie’s warm, sweet smile and how it would light up her entire face. It was better than thinking about the beating he was sure to receive when he got home for some new bullshit reason.

He tried to imagine what it would’ve been like, holding her in his arms, feeling her pulse against his. A warm smile spread over his lips as his daydream drifted further from innocent cuddling to more active fantasies. He had stopped slouching as he walked home and squared his shoulders, head held up high, but as soon as he saw the door to his family’s house, what little confidence he had gained from thinking about Allie felt as though it had been drained out of him at the sight of it.

Hesitantly, John walked up the front porch steps and opened the screen door, unlocked the deadbolt, and stepped through the threshold, the smell of menthol cigarettes and large unwashed dogs assaulting his nose. His eyes adjusted to the near complete darkness inside, the drapes perpetually drawn.

Heath was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t asleep in the bed in the living room, kept there specifically for him. John quietly walked into the kitchen to get something to snack on as he did what little homework that was left from the day. It was there that he found him.

Heath stood there, mostly nude in just a pair of white briefs, arms crossed in front of his chest. His eyes were narrow irate slits and his nose flared from his heavy breathing. He looked at the dishes in the sink, then at John. A terrible look filled Heath’s face as he lunged at his step-son, arms no longer crossed but held close to his sides in a ready position to strike. A fast right hook flew at John’s head, catching him in the temple and sending his glasses flying to the other side of the room. The last thing he saw was the feral, enraged look in Heath’s eyes. He pulled up the memory of the sweet smile that Allie always had on her face every time he saw her as darkness overtook him.

***

The night was hot and muggy in the small bungalow. Jenny, John’s mother, had been found out again by Heath. He learned through snooping that she had yet another online fling, a man this time, and again he’d become insanely jealous. After their screaming match, Heath stormed out of the house and slammed the door, shattering the large window framed in it, raining glass to the floor

“John, I have a bad feeling about this one…” Jenny looked at John meaningfully. “Do you mind sleeping in my room tonight just in case he comes back?”

So I can be a human shield no doubt, John thought. “Okay, mom.”

John taped a piece of cardboard up, covering the gaping hole in the door before getting ready to go to sleep. Curled up at the foot of the king-sized bed, John watched the door to his mother’s bedroom. His ears twitched at every sound in the night while he tried to actively listen for the sound of the heavy footsteps belonging to his step-father.

It was a quarter past one when Heath finally returned home from walking the streets of North Waco. He looked livid and his eyes were bloodshot from crying. Heath unlocked the door and John awoke suddenly as the key scraped the pins in the lock. He reached over to the head of the bed and woke his mother. They stayed as silent as the grave as Heath wasted no time and went straight to his grandfather’s service revolver, a thirty-eight special. He kicked the door to the bedroom in. Both John and his mother jumped as it slammed into the wall, lodging its knob into the plaster. they both heard the audible click as the revolver’s hammer was pulled back.

Danu help me, John thought, The premonition I had six years ago is actually happening! I knew I wasn’t going to live past high school. Why the f**k did he have to wait until the week of graduation?

Heath hurled insults at them both. “Sub-human sack of pig s**t” and “Useless pile of horse vomit” being the less scurrilous of the invective that poured out of him. Nothing they hadn’t heard before. He pointed the gun’s short barrel right at Jenny, hands shaking from stress and strong emotion. John waited for the sound of gunfire. He could see the copper of the bullets in the revolver’s wheel glinting the light from the bedroom lamp, but the shot never came. Heath slowly lowered the gun, hung his head, and walked out of the room. He was defeated by his own conscience. A moment later the front door was opened and the creaking slam of the screen door echoed through the night.

“Mom, I love you, but if you’re not going to do it this time, I will.”

“Hand me the phone…”

***

And John had thought being in town was hot…

Using his graduation money, John bought camping gear for his mother and himself; an eight-man dome tent, camp stove, inflatable mattresses, just to name a few items. They had secured a place to camp at Mother Neff State Park and it was far beyond sweltering. It was a month since John’s graduation, and it was difficult trying to find an apartment for the two of them. Each campground they went to had a one week limit to how long they could stay and they had been to many. Some well over an hour away from town. The long commute into Waco for his mother’s job and his own were quickly dwindling what little resources they had left.

To pass the time, John would check out dozens of books from the library and would have the majority completely read before week’s end. Authors like Gaiman, Crichton, Cussler, Roberts, Lindsey, Salvatore, Heinlein, and King; these were now his best friends. He had tried to get in touch with Rachael hoping to spend time with someone other than his mother. She was a girl from his school’s small deaf community that he had tried to date in his senior year. Her friends didn’t like him, even though he had been signing most of his life. He wasn’t one of them and they pressured her to dump him. So, instead he delved deep into fiction and fanciful stories, anything to keep his situation from depressing him.

While they didn’t eat well, they didn’t starve. He learned to make stews from jerky, how to toast bread over an open flame, and that a person would either have to be either desperate or insane to go tent camping in central Texas in the middle of summer… Or both… It was like this for two months, go to work, return to camp, read until he couldn’t anymore, go to sleep, and do it all over again. The same monotonous paradigm but in a different location each week.

At the end of July thay had found an apartment near the technical college, not that proximity was enough to get John inside. Neither of them had the kind of money to pay for tuition, let alone all of the other costs that add up when going to college. Instead he worked: retail jobs, food service, even as an apprentice electrician at one point. It didn’t matter to him. He was too busy trying to stay alive to care. He tried to feel nothing anymore, but there was no escaping the terrible loneliness that weighed down his heart.

***

The buzz of fluorescent lights droned through the store and canned music played from the speakers overhead. John dragged a loaded pallet jack behind him as two other men pulled cases from it, spotting them in front of the shelves where they belonged. They slowly traveled from aisle to aisle, dropping cases as they went. Some were stacked halfway up the shelves behind them, not that it mattered as hardly anyone ever goes grocery shopping at one-thirty in the morning.

On his way to his assigned aisle to start throwing cases into the shelves, John saw her for the first time since graduation a little over a year ago. Allie Cohan was with her clique, a pack of girls and their boyfriends. She looked radiant. He walked up to her, heart pounding and anxiety threatening to turn him away.

“John?” Allie finally saw him as he walked towards her and her eyes lit up in happy surprise. “How are you!?”

“I’m good,” he replied, elated at the serendipity of meeting her again. “I’m more interested in how you’re doing.”

She giggled. “Oh, I’m doing wonderfully!. I’m about to transfer schools. I go to UT in the fall. I see you’re working. Do you go to school as well?”

“Not at the moment,” he said. “It’s a complicated story, but I’m planning on it when things in my life settle a bit.”

“What do you mean?”

From off in the distance, Allie’s friends called to her and John wished they could’ve waited a damned second. It was hard enough without them jogging her elbow.

“Oh! I need to go!” She ran off to go meet up with the rest of her friends.

“Allie, wait!”

She turned around and looked at him. He was already starting to get shaky as the adrenaline hit him.

“Would you… like to… go get some c-c-coffee with me sometime… before you head out to Austin?” He clenched his right hand to keep it from shaking uncontrollably.

“Oh?” She looked down, “I’m sorry, John. My boyfriend’s up there with the rest of the group. I appreciate it though.”

She smiled at him, pleased that she’d been asked out, but it did nothing to cool the hurt that he felt getting rebuffed.

“Oh… Well, it was good to run into you.” His voice sounded deflated.

“Same, but I really have to get back with the others.”

She practically danced her way back to the group and took a man’s arm into hers. He kissed her on the crown of her head as they walked away. As soon as they were out of sight, John had to grab onto the lip of a cooler to keep him from collapsing right there on the floor. His legs were visibly shaking now. After he had calmed down to where he could walk, John went back to his aisle and started stocking the shelves, heart and tongue heavy with the words he couldn’t bring himself to say.

***

It was half an hour past sunrise when John woke up. His stuff was already packed and ready for the shuttle bus to Dallas. His flight to San Francisco would leave in a few hours and Dallas traffic, especially around DFW was no joke. He crossed his fingers that he would catch his flight on time. His friend, Jake was already up playing something on the PlayStation while his two year old daughter watched from his lap. John walked outside to smoke a cigarette while he waited. Long waits always made him nervous.

Lisa, his girlfriend, had already left two weeks earlier after her father had bought her a plane ticket to come back home. John had thought he had seen the last of her, that he had f****d up somehow. He really did try with her, she just didn’t make it easy. She had been pregnant and John was more than willing to shoulder the responsibility. She moved in with him and lived in the same apartment as John, his mother, and her new husband; Brett. After Lisa miscarried her child, John and his mother had a falling out. Not because of Lisa but because of all that they had been through and they had just reached a breaking point. John had enough of dealing with his mother’s idiosyncrasies and seeing as she was now married again and John had graduated, he felt that it was no longer his problem to deal with them. That’s Brett’s job now, he thought.

They ended up moving in with a couple of co-workers of his, Chunks and Bill, in South Waco. They were old school punks and had ties to the Nightside. They could get anything as long as you had the cash to pay. It was fun living with them even though John, a long-time BoyScout, didn’t partake. Lisa though, not able to find catharsis, slipped back into her old habits and would be gone for days at a time while John would go to work and college, hoping to become a psychologist. The living situation at the house took a downward spiral as the electricity and gas were cut off. John didn’t quite know what Lisa was up to but he did what he could to be home for when she did return periodically, reading his textbooks by candlelight.

About four weeks ago, John’s mother and his new step-father arrived in their van, brakes screeching as they pulled up to the old house. They demanded that he get in and soon tore out once John was inside, leaving behind dark skid marks. They found Lisa close by the house in the South Side next to a payphone, shaking like a leaf. John asked what had happened and she burst out with all of it. She was doing Ice, this time intravenously, and had slept with her dealer. His wife caught them on the kitchen floor and chased her out of the house with a butcher’s knife, threatening to take her face off if she ever came back. Lisa’s father paid for them to stay in a hotel for a couple of weeks while she waited for a flight back home.

John had forgiven her. Jealousy was not part of his character, and any he had latent was burned off by almost being murdered by his step-father in a green-eyed rage over Jenny’s online affairs. He was just glad to see Lisa alive, safe, and unhurt. He was not expecting her father to pay for another plane ticket. He stayed with an old gaming buddy of his, who lived on campus at a different school, for his flight two weeks later. He stopped going to college and to work. There wasn’t a lot of incentive to go back to a call center to sell long-distance phone service for six-twenty-five an hour when he would be jumping state in a matter of days. He had enjoyed his time with Jake, Maggie, and their daughter; Amy. It was a shame it was so short lived.

As soon as the shuttle pulled up to the house, John said his good-byes to the three of them, threw his bags into the van and set off towards Dallas. At the airport, he found his way to the check-in line and left his large black duffle at the counter. A shock of remorse filled him as the weight of the past few months suddenly hit him. He was about to leave the state to live somewhere else for the first time since he moved with his family from Illinois when he was nine. This time he would be on his own with no friends or family to act as a support net should things go horribly wrong.

Before he stepped to the checkpoint, John looked back at the bright Texas sun and the clear blue skies through the windowed façade of the airport terminal. This had been his home for over ten years. Now he was going on the start of a long sojourn that would take him all across the country with no telling if or when he would return. Turning his back to the windows, John hiked up his pants, shouldered his carry-on and walked determinately up to the checkpoint.