1.
Maybe I’ll just tell you something about me. I haven’t introduced myself properly yet and I’m sorry for that, it makes me seem like a rude person. My name is Sean Collister currently a junior in Highschool, nineteen years and one month old and living in Windy Town.
I’m a bit old to be a junior. That’s because my parents initially thought about homeschooling me, but gave up after a year or so.
I have a dog, a mocca-white colored American Pitbull Terrier named Basta I got as a puppy about three years ago. My mom had retrieved him from my grandparents farm, their dog had birthed him and three others. It was common on farms to simply kill the puppies by drowning or breaking the neck because the farmers couldn’t afford having so much dogs and with my grandparents it was no different, but mom stepped in to at least save this one, which I’m eternally thankful for because he’s the nicest dog on earth. Well, to be honest he doesn’t like other people, but that’s okay because he likes me and that’s the important thing.
My dad is Irish, he immigrated here when he was twenty-one. I have clear memories of me and him sitting in the car, driving way too fast on the bumpy roads listening to old celtic punk. He was in the military for a long time, but then worked as a car mechanic.
Wild circumstances lead my mom and dad to be together. My dad hit mom with his car and that’s how they met the first time.
My mom was born in a village a few miles from here, but her parents are from Serbia. Because of this weird mix my hair is black, thanks to mom and my eyes are grey, thanks to dad. But that’s the only cool thing about my looks - I’m not really that pretty. My granny, on her good days when she’s nice for once, always calls me ‘a handsome boy’, but every granny does that with their grandkids. On any other occasion she only grunts insults at me in Serbian, like ‘brat’ or ‘bastard’ because my parents weren’t married yet when I was born. Thanks to that hag I was able to speak Serbian - very simplified and on a day to day conversation basis, but it was something. Not that many people know it and even less know I’m from Serbian descent. I guess you’re one of the lucky few.
I’m kind of a punk kid, known here in Windy Town, but I’ll get to that later.
Now, as you may have guessed, Windy Town isn’t the real name of the town, the village I live in. It has a real one, a official one, but it seems like most of the citizens including myself have to think a while before remembering the name it had a long time ago.
Windy Town makes its nickname proud. It is always windy here, it is often raining and we see the sun almost three times a year, but it’s okay we’re used to it. This village kind of has its own seasons: Summer and Everfall. Everfall is what I call it, a fall that never seems to end. Not during winter, not during spring and sometimes even our summers feel like everfall. Maybe this town doesn’t really like changes and maybe it’s good that way. I think Windy Town would break apart otherwise.
I don’t like to talk that much. I am more of a listener, a watching person. I wouldn’t say I’m an introvert, I’m too loud mouthed for that, but I can’t really confidently say that I’m an extrovert either. I didn’t talk a lot, but when I talked I voiced myself loudly. I like to watch people because it gives me much more information about themselves than just plain talking about things that are forced and that doesn’t matter. Don’t get me wrong, most of the time I’m just too lazy to talk. I don’t get much sleep, I have to focus on breathing and being awake first before I can interact. I’m not all the time this deep talk, presumptuous ‘Oh-I’m-so-special-I-hate-people’ teenage kid, but let us both be honest here. Aren’t you sometimes sick of it too? Aren’t we both thinking the same thing?
“Did you do the math homework?”
“How was your weekend?”
“Blue Bar is definitely better than Red Snack”
Pointless things no one really wants to talk about at least I guess so. Yes, I did actually do the math homework, my weekend was just fine and yes, Blue Bar is better but I like the little hint of spiciness in Red Snack.
Maybe it’s due to the fact that I despise mornings. That’s probably just it. But I did notice something outside my blind rage in the early morning hours: When you just watch people going on and on you sometimes get to know them better than by talking to them, sometimes you get to know them better than they know themselves. You don’t think that is possible, don’t you? I don’t blame you for not trusting me.
I am just the protagonist, the narrator of this whole...thing, who you just met and the only thing you really know about him is that his name is Sean. But let me give you an example.
My example’s name is Aine Flowerday. I’ve been watching her for years now and I probably sound like a huge creep, but it’s just very comfortable to look at what she’s doing. Basically she is crossing my way from time to time, probably without noticing or caring, but because I see her several days a week for the last years by accident, I discovered lots of things that makes this person ‘Aine Flowerday’.
First of all there are infos that you get by rumors at the school. Aine is not a talkative human being either, but in contrast of myself who is just being a quiet boy from time to time, she barely speaks at all really, so that is the only way of getting knowledge about her without observing that person. Not that I give rumors a real value, I know they’re rumors after all and most of the time not really true, but after a time I figured some things out that might be pretty accurate.
She lives alone with her father in an odd house at the outer circle of the village.
Her father is supposed to be an author, but to be honest who else would name their kid ‘Aine’ when your second name is Flowerday.
Who would name their kid ‘Aine’ initially. Make it more dramatically.
It’s a very lonely neighbourhood out there, Aine is always the first on the bus when I get in and she is always alone, day by day sitting in the same seat, on the right row the second last. I assume she doesn’t have any siblings, but I’m not really that sure about it. She always has earplugs in and listens to music while staring out of the window. I don’t really know what music she’s into, that is a thing I haven’t found out yet. Because everyone on my bus line and probably everyone in this city has their seats in the bus and that won’t change. I just can’t go up to her and ask ‘Is this seat taken? And oh, by the way, what music are you listening to everyday?’ simply because it would break the unspoken rule of the Windy Town School Bus Line Nr. 3. I haven’t even caught a glimpse of her music taste, she always takes her earplugs out before the bus arrives at school - she could be listening to anything: Pop, Metal, Reggae, Country. One day I’ll find out for sure.
You’re probably thinking: ‘If he knows her so well because of the whole creepy stalking this weirdo does, why can’t he just conclude what she’s listening to? Wouldn’t it be easy for him then?’.
You see, it’s not that simple. The way I described Aine until now maybe gives you the picture of these strange emo kids every High School in this country magically has. To this point it would be just natural for you to assume that she’s one of this kids who want to be different and special, a unique snowflake. These kids who have tons of hairspray in their edgy cut, black and neon dyed hair and who do nothing in the lessons except sitting in the back of the class drawing mass killings in their notebook with their black Dollar Store pencil. I can’t put Aine in the same box with them, because she isn’t like them.
She dresses black and grey only, that is true, but that’s the only thing she has in common and I think that’s just how she rolls. She sits in the first row in class, silently but tidily taking notes of everything that is said, passing all tests and exams with a score of at least 90 or A-. And I don’t think she ever missed a class, was sick or skipped school. She has friends, is sitting with them every day in the cafeteria and listening to their conversations. I studied her friends for a short while, very humble and modest, but energetic and straightforward persons. Not necessarily people I know well. I found it weird that Aine had picked them, because it seems that she had actively, directly chosen them to hang around with. I know that she is intelligent, why pick such simple people like them? She doesn’t really talk to them either, only giving them faint smiles or nods, but it looks like they don’t mind too.
It still confuses me.
It’s not like Aine’s mute because of an accident or an condition, I just think she is mute by choice: I personally have the theory that she doesn’t has much to tell or she thinks that the others might not be interested. I think I last heard her talk in grade nine, where a teacher pushed her into a presentation because he thought it would help her ‘breaking out of her shell’, at least that is what I highly assume he told her would be the reason. Guess the teacher was just curious about hearing her talk too. The memory is fading and I can’t get a hold of what her voice sounded like though.
Before I get to the point that in my opinion makes her so interesting you have to know something about me: I’m a cyclist. I’m really passionate about riding the bike, not in a club or on a race bike, but with an simple BMX. It just makes me feel free whenever I can ride through the streets even if the weather is shitty I’m outside. Plus I stay fit. On the bike I’m not confronted with my depressed and strict mother who I dearly love, but pulls my mood down incredibly at the same time or my little sister who just turned twelve and is a annoying little shit. I’d say that cycling is my greatest hobby next to gaming and thanks to that I’m out a lot. I think I started cycling at age twelve or thirteen and since then I’m seeing Aine, just by wild coincidence.
You know, Everfall is a really nasty weather especially when it’s around the time where anywhere else it’s normal fall or winter. It’s cold and grey and the wind makes it worse, you’re shivering and faint even colder rain hits your face. It just plain sucks. So it’s natural when people avoid to go outside at that times at all cost. Over a long period of time a huge part of the streets of Windy Town are as dead as in ghost towns. Except for two people. Me and Aine Flowerday.
I’m not nearly as much outside as she is.
Every time I’m cycling through every corner of the city, I see her somewhere. Walking through the park, watching rain drip in puddles, kicking around rocks, sitting on a bench on some lone side street with hands in the pockets of the sweater she always wears, standing in the middle of a road with eyes closed and face lifted to the grey sky letting the rain drop on her face.
She’s here and there, in places no one would find if they weren’t outside such a long period of time every day and it’s fascinating. Thanks to her I found places I never even knew it was possible for them to exist in Windy Town. I don’t think she does anything else. She probably only goes home for food and sleep, the rest of the day she’s in Windy Town doing whatever she’s doing. If anyone wants to find anything or anywhere in Windy Town, they’d go to Dick Washington the self proclaimed ‘King of Windy Town’ and the biggest cunt I know, but I would go to Aine Flowerday. Because I’m to one hundred percent sure that she knows where to find anything or anywhere. She is breathing Windy Town, she is Windy Town.
So fascinating.
It was a regular morning like any other. I was awoken by the shrieking sound of my alarm clock and when I finally decided to open my eyes, I hated everything and everyone. If anyone had thought about crossing my paths in the next thirty minutes he wouldn’t have survived the injuries I would’ve brought upon him.
But I don’t really think that’s special, isn’t it? A lot of people despise mornings and I think there are worse people than me. At least I don’t meet any family members in the morning, my little sister Suza has to get up later than me and my mother always comes back early from night shifts, sleeping when I go downstairs.
You see, Windy Town isn’t really that big of a city as you may have guessed, but the villages a few miles away are even smaller. So our high school is the next ‘big thing’ in a circle of thirty miles or so, means it’s relatively packed. But even with the kids from the other towns it’s still a small high school, everyone knows everyone and it’s hard to keep anything a secret.
I personally try to keep the lama-drama to a minimum, I’ve had enough of that when I was like fourteen to seventeen, eighteen years old through the entire middle school ‘till the end of my high school sophomore year. You see, everyone has this rebellious phase, the time of his life when they’re just plain aggressive, right? Well, to say it a bit flattery, I was know as the angry kid. I was always one of the oldest in my year and I had a bit of stuff to chew on emotionally when Dad left without saying a single word, the money was tight, Mom was severely depressed, we had to move to the shitty, small home we now live in, so I slided down a spiral of hate I openly showed. I know it’s basically not an excuse.
It reached it’s peak when I broke a kid named Connor Brown the jaw at recess in November of my sophomore year. My reputation had slowly built up until that point, no one except my two best friends, Hunter Brooks and Jason Dennett, even dared to talk to me and the two regularly had to play delivery boys between me and people who wanted something from me. I was an urban legend. I had buzzed my hair to a military cut, wore combat boots and my Dad’s old bomber jacket he left by accident, smoked cigarettes because I thought I was cool and earned extra pocket money by blackmailing poor kids on assignment by simple threats that showed result. Looked like a fuckin’ nazi, a few thought I actually was one, but that rumor never pushed through which I’m very thankful for.
I got into a lot of fights. Mostly with guys that didn’t care if I got the black eye or them. Mostly with guys that were too deep in shit themselves to even think about taking legal actions against me. It was always a battle to proof myself and the more time passed, the bigger and harder the opponent got. But I turned out to be a natural and my pain tolerance got higher, my punches harder. The King of petty crime.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
I’m still grateful that Hunter and Jason didn’t leave me behind, even if I was a shitty person they still followed me around, kind of protecting me and played bodyguard. I was pretty hardcore back then, viewed in a negative way. The thing is, Connor’s and my fight had a little build up before it actually happened. He was slowly getting known as Sean Collisters competitor, a serious problem in my business at that time. I guess he saw that I made dirty, but good money and wanted to hop on the cash train. I certainly don’t blame him for that, teenagers often lack pocket money. Especially in this filthy area. Little rumors started to grow out of nowhere. The little rumors grew into rumors, grew into bigger rumors, grew into common knowledge.
Connor seemed to have talked back on me about very, very bad things even I had way too high morals for back then and I, the angry kid that I was, got even angrier. “High morals?”, you ask, “As a dirty street rat?”. Yeah, high morals; at least in my book. So I saw Connor as an enemy and glared at him with Hunter and Jason at my side whenever I could. In breaks, between classes, in classes, outside school. The atmosphere got thicker and hotter and the more time ran out the closer the time of the explosion got.
On that day, it was a Tuesday with shitty weather as always, Connor didn’t even do something really bad or openly provocative. He was just standing there, in my opinion in my way, and when he wouldn’t move, when he decided that maybe, maybe his muscles were bigger and stronger than mine, a fight broke out. I gave him a bleeding brow, he broke my nose, I got very, very angry, punched - and with a scrunching noise I broke his jaw.
And when I was standing there, Connor wincing and crying on the ground and the crowd howling and hollering in amusement around us, when I finally felt the fucking pain in my nose and the warm blood streaming out of it. When I felt that I broke a finger with that punch and felt how sharp tears were hurting my eyes I realized...this wasn’t it. This wasn’t how I could go on. I had to change.
I got suspended for a whole month and a charged of 600$ damages sentenced by a Juvenile court plus ten hours youth therapy. And I got away with light bruises.
Why I wasn’t expulsed? The school’s standards aren’t very high, y'know, very public, very hopeless; there were too many fuckers like me in all those years the school existed.
The therapist was a bastard and obviously didn’t know what he was doing. From the beginning on he thought I was a dumb shit and I, well, decided to give him the person he wanted. He concluded I was just stupid and didn’t write anything on the diagnosis sheet.
Lucky me. I had all the luck on earth that I wasn’t put in a Boot Camp or youth prison or something, for all the bad things I did except beating up Connor. My mother in all honours is a kind woman, but a strict one if she wanted to. She paid attention that I owned the 600$ by the hardest jobs a teenager of eighteen years was able to get and the time was very painful, more painful than the broken nose and finger. Finally I felt shame for what I did the past years. Mom hadn’t intervened the years before because she knew I would get the ice cold bill served one day and she was god damn right.
I’ve changed and became what I am today and that’s pretty good I guess. But there is still the rumor going on that, if you offer me enough money I’d still beat up someone for you. And I guess that will not change, not until I left high school. I threw the boots away, let my hair grow out and somehow stopped smoking. Not entirely because it’s really fucking hard to stop, in stress situations I still need one, but most of the times I’m fine.
I threw everything of that past away, except for the bomber jacket. I still wear it. It’s the only thing I have left from Dad.
That morning I was wearing the jacket too, like every morning and I entered the bus. It was still a bit dark outside, it was mid-September and the nights got longer and the blue, cold lights of the bus certainly didn’t help much against the cold that was already creeping up on these days. Aine was already there. Like always. Routine gives you kind of a safe feeling, doesn’t it? The bus picked up the regular people on the line except for Brittany Anderson who was overall known for being sick 300 days out of 365 and dropped the students off at the Albingham Highschool about twenty minutes after I got in. The hallways were packed, but I still managed to get to my locker like everyday and then to Hunter and Jason who waited like every day in front of the cafeteria for me to come by.
“What’s up, dude”, Hunter mumbled, clearly not really awake, but I grabbed his hand anyway for the handshake. Jason just nodded my way.
“What’s your first lesson, guys”, I asked because even if they had the same schedule every day and every week I still couldn’t remember it. I couldn’t even remember mine properly.
“Wait, today’s Tuesday, right?”, Jason asked eyes closed, his head leaning against the white painted bricks of the wall.
“Yeah”
“Then Hunter and I have Math”, he said, not opening his eyes and Hunter just mouthed a disgusted ‘Fuck’. The bell closed our short conversation pretty fast and I turned away from them.
“Good luck with Math, I have Biology”, I shouted back.
“Can’t we like switch or something?”, Hunter yelled over the growing noise in the hallway, grinning and I just shook my head. I really was grateful to have friends like them.
Biology was one of the natural sciences I didn’t quite understand. Not because the things they taught were difficult no, they were quite easy to be honest, but because it seemed that it didn’t fit into this box of natural sciences. I had one guy tell me once that he was convinced that Biology was a ‘fake natural science’, to quote him here. I, of course, asked him why he thought that way because it caught me by surprise. ‘You don’t calculate, you don’t have these completely logical connections like in Physics or Chemistry. You only talk about plants and animals and how they just do what they do. To learn that I can just take a walk in the forest’. He wasn’t necessarily incorrect.
When I walked in the classroom I felt myself getting incredibly tired. I should’ve known, it was a Tuesday. Many people concentrate their hate on the Mondays like it was the spawn of Satan, but I don’t even have a thing against Mondays. My personal week downer was, is and will always be the Tuesday. Every other day is fine, but the Tuesdays are my personal Nemesis. It began in 9th grade when I always had Physics in the first period and as much as I don’t want to admit it, Physics is something I just can’t wrap my mind around it. I’m decent at Math, but Physics takes it too far. So I’d always get tired during that class, later even to the point I fell asleep. And even if I don’t have Physics on Tuesdays or in general anymore I still get extremely tired. It’s like a curse who holds on to me forever now. The Physics Curse.
I sat in my seat which was located in maybe the third row and blinked a few times consciously in order to prepare myself for the following class. I knew exactly it wouldn’t help, but at least I was trying, give me credit. The last couple of students flowed into the class among them Connor Brown, who ignored me consistently since the jaw-break and the court. I really don’t blame him, nor am I angry or something. It was perfectly logical to sue me after something like that happened and to be honest I didn’t really care about him after I changed. Just a dude in my grade I had a past with. So what?
My biology teacher Mr Black walked in, happy as always, and placed his bag on the table. Mr Black was an old athletic dude in his fifties maybe, who didn’t teach in the past years because he had cancer or something, but he seemed to have recovered and came back to teach just recently. Maybe that was the reason he was always so happy, surviving a lethal illness and all. He often told us we were too lazy and packed insults in sarcastic downplayed versions of them, he wasn’t too bad.
He grinned towards the class and I hated him in that moment, how could a person possibly be in a good mood on a Tuesday morning?
“Good Morning, students!”, he cheered and didn’t even wait for the students to respond, but grabbed a piece of chalk and went right into ecology. When he began talking about the perfect circumstances for a plant to grow and how much water and shadow and sun it needed I stopped listening and my mind drove away into sweet nothingness.
I don’t remember if I fell asleep or not, but at some point in the lesson I had a clear moment. I shook myself a bit and stared at the board completely full of writing and information, looked down and saw that I did take notes even if I had no clear memory of writing them. I sat myself up a bit, supported my head with my right hand and watched as Mr Black turned around.
“As promised and said I wanted to give you guys a project to work on. Now that we have ecology on the curriculum it’s the best chance to do so”, he declared.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of that idea, but I wasn’t against it either. Maybe the lessons would be more chill if we did projects.
“I have a few plants and trees for you to explore and research about, I’ll give you three weeks and then I expect a presentation with powerpoint and everything. You will be working in a group of two, no exceptions”.
It grew loud in the classroom, everybody was talking about the project or asking a person to be their partner in the project. I thought about asking Ian Lamberton, a tall redhead who sat at the table to my right: he was a chill dude and okay to hang out with. But before I could ask him, Mr Black rose his voice again.
“Silence, silence class! I know you are excited right now, but let me finish talking”, he waited until the last students stopped their conversation, “I know from experience with you guys, that when you are allowed to choose your partners yourself it doesn’t end well. So I decided to form the groups myself”.
Oh great. The class broke out in angry, semi-loud justifications, nobody was happy at what they just heard. Me included.
“I’m going to read out the groups and I expect them to do their project reasonable and properly”.
The angry muttering didn’t stop when he started reading out the names. I wasn’t excited about it either, but I could see his logic behind it. He put smart and lesser smart together, diligent and lazy - he was a teacher, moves like that were typical for them. I sighed and closed my eyes, waiting for my name to be read out.
“Allison Martinez and Jessica Gallagher: the dandelion, Alex Brandt and Laureen Harper: the buttercup…”
The two girls screeched, I knew they were friends or ‘Besties’ and maybe Mr Black didn’t dare to separate them.
“Connor Brown and Sean Collister: the beech…”
I opened my eyes again. So he went that way. I should have known, it was really obvious for him to put the two of us together. Mr Black knew exactly what had happened a year ago and I really didn’t know what he wanted to achieve with this. I was pretty sure that this was discussed and clarified with the rest of the teaching staff because I pretty much knew that I was always a topic at the teacher’s conferences in this school. I guess not because I was such a big problem anymore, but just because I was so representative and probably stereotypical of the group of ‘bad kid’ students and all the problematic things that happened in this school.
Flattering, isn’t it? It felt like the major part of them still thought I haven’t changed. I felt stuck in a stereotypical bad high school drama movie.
I had no problem with Connor. Not anymore at least. I could work with him and as I said I didn’t really care about him, felt neutral about him. But I couldn’t know about Connors view on the things, maybe he was still pissed, maybe he still hold a wrath against me and was an unforgiving person.
If he still was, I didn’t really expect him to beat me up or something like that, but it would make the three weeks extremely uncomfortable and awkward. Awesome.
I turned around in my chair to check on Connor, who sat diagonally behind me and apparently caught him staring at the back of my head by doing so because he quickly looked away out of the window, stretched a bit and acted like he wasn’t even looking my way.
I sighed again and turned back, this situation promised more work than the project alone and I wasn’t really keen on bothering with something silly like that. Great. But at least I still had a bit time to procrastinate everything a bit, I concluded that in a few hours when I gave everything a bit of a thought I’d come up with a solution. So I decided to push the topic ‘Connor Brown’ to the side at first. At first.
Conveniently the bell rang in that exact moment and I was very fast to pack my things and leave the room. In the hallway I was about to go directly to my English class, when someone tapped at my arm very, very softly and careful. I turned around to see Connor; he hadn’t changed that much in the past years. He got taller and stood now as tall as me at about six feet, he’d overthought his questionable haircut he once had and wore his light brown hair as normal as you possibly could, with the trend, but not too much. Right now his eyes darted from one thing to another, looking at everything but me. When he wasn’t saying anything I decided to take the matters to my own hand.
“Yes? What is it?”.
“Uhhh…”, was the response and I got annoyed. I had to get to my English class and that guy acted as if I’d bite his hand off any second.
“Just say it, I don’t have that much time”
“Look, Collister, maybe we could y’know meet up later to talk something ‘cause...yeah”, he said.
I ignored how he called me by my last name for the time being and used the opportunity to avoid to awkwardly address him myself later.
“Sure. When, where?”, I was getting tired again and I really had to hurry up to catch my class.
“At the gate, after school maybe?”
“‘Kay, see you there”, I said quickly and turned, not waiting for Connor to respond.