Happy Days

You know that game, Fallout 3? Well, we ended up dressing up as Vault Dwellers this week. It was the first time we had... I suppose the word is "performed" for him since April Fools. He had left us alone, but then he came back and... Everything hurts.

So we did something stupid, I believe it is not a first there. We have done so many stupid things. Back when I was having dreams of the Slenderman, he made up so many crackpot ideas for "cures." We tried the ones short of surgery, hypnotism, electroshock therapy... The only one that worked was dancing around in rediculous looking outfits.

I suppose we are like cancer patients, we will keep fighting it, but we know that eventually we are going to give in, we are going to fail to confuse this thing and it will make us something we never wish to become.

But until then, we have memories, we have happiness. Isn't that the American dream? Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness?

Anyway, Autumn and I stayed pretty good friends since we met.

We went to the same Elementary School, then got separated when Dad sent me to this crappy Catholic School. The girls there were horrible and I don't mind saying that. I hated the time I spent there. Girls are harsh bullies...

He would have sent me elsewhere but I managed to convince him that High School was where I needed to be I really did not need to be some private schooled kid with no social skills. Anyway, we were somehow in the same homeroom. One of the few people who knew each other in there.

I can't remember which one of us decided that we should just let them believe that we were siblings, despite the different surnames. The great deception. We'd joke about it, how funny it was. How people just assumed. He'd be the older brother who'd make sure I was safe... I am pretty sure he did the whole "you break her heart, I shove your head so far up your ass that you'll be speaking through your bellybutton" thing on the guy who took me to Junior Prom. (Much to my chagrin.) Only a couple of friends knew about it, said they thought he liked me.

When his parents moved in next door, they thought it was a happy coincidence. Summer and Autumn. Sometimes I even wonder if it was fate.

I was seventeen, throwing stones into that lake that held such fond memories instead of working on that project that had a couple of days to go and we hadn't started. I remember the spring air. The smell of trees and flowers, the way the sun glittered on the water. It was a day unlike any other.

There was a smile on his face as he spoke up finally. There had been a lull in conversation "Let's run away."
"What?"
"Into the forest. You and me. We can survive off of fish and wild berries and when we fail we can go to that grocery store and steal from them."
I laughed at him. "You really think we could do that?"
"Of course. I also think that if you get a big enough slingshot and were on the moon, you could send a golf ball into orbit. Although only one of those might happen for me." He grinned.
"Make that none of those, there's not a chance I'm going to do that." I was still chuckling.

"You just don't want to leave your warm bed, don't you?"

I huffed and walked back toward the car, an old rusting, dark red, 80's Ford pick up. August loved it so much, I think he'd have driven it until either the axel broke or it would have killed us.

He put his hand on my shoulder. "Summer, wait."

I turned around. And he kissed me and I kissed him back and all those feelings welled up inside me and they felt real, physical for the first time. Those butterflies in my chest were flapping around like headless chickens! I read about it, Love.

I was jaded enough to think it would never happen to me.

We drove home in silence, a pleasant one, the sun was setting. We said our goodbyes.

The next morning, at school. I had stayed up all night, trying to work out some speech or other to tell him that what happened... That I wanted us to be friends. But he acted like it had never happened, he cracked a couple of jokes and I just forgot about what I was supposed to say.

I suppose I was too selfish realise that I'd hurt him, but I guess that's a different story, isn't it?
I never forgot about the kiss though. It was just that I was happy, and that this was something I have never regretted.

Reading

Since I can remember I spent my time with Summer. Football ( The English kind, not the American kind... What? They had the name first. We just appropriated it.) Tag, Hide and Go Seek. Anything really. In fact there was this one time when we were playing dodgeball with a few other kids, she said use the ball. There were two. So I picked up a basketball and threw it at her. She bounced it off her hand and it broke her finger. Of course I had to pay her back so she had me turning pages for her to read aloud for the next month. Charlotte's Web. I cried at the ending. (What? I was young and imaginative... According to Summer anyway...)

She taught me to read properly when my parents were out working. Doing something or other. They worked in a pharmaceutical company so they didn't have much time for me. They were either talking to doctors and selling drugs, or talking to the company and looking at what drugs they had to sell. I was pretty young really, and I missed them. But you know that thing about gifts not making up for bad parenting? They worked out pretty well with me.

When I was younger, I struggled with reading. So she put it upon herself teach me. She would bring in a book, set it down on my lap and say "Read." If I ever got somewhere that was difficult to pronounce, or I couldn't understand, then she'd spell out the sounds like she had been taught the same way. It... I suppose she was kind of an older sister to me.

You know what happens when you learn to read? You learn to write. I did as well. Poetry I guess was my thing when I was younger. But now I don't do it anymore. If circumstances were different... Maybe I'd have made something of myself. Somehow made it as a ghostwriter or something.

Actually that's doubtful. Very doubtful even, but I can dream.

Nowadays she rests her head on my lap, she asks me to read to her as I run my fingers through her long blonde hair. Jane Austen, John Buchan, J.K Rowling... if it's beautiful or exciting she'll let me read it. She says she loves the imagery in my voice. Sometimes, when I read to her, it's like I'm visualizing the places. The Thirty-Nine Steps of the novel, the sea, waxing and waning of waves, or the buzzing of the plane engine as it flies overhead.

Sometimes I realize I've lost myself so much in this book, reading, that I'm late for work.

I don't regret a second of it really.

I'm sure most of you know this. You do what you have to do to make your girlfriend happy.

Well meeting is the most interesting part

When I first met Autumn, I was maybe five or six. We were the same age and his family moved in next door to me, and we would play games together. Cops and Robbers, Dodgeball, ( I will never forget that incident with the basketball, no matter how many times you apologize, Autumn.) Imaginary games in my back garden, like there was this one he invented that was like a magic kite and it took us to wherever we wanted and we more often than not had to survive on an island. I was a little bossy and made us drink water from a bottle rather than the lake (like he wanted.)

Sometimes my dad would let him stay over and we would just talk about nothing in particular. His parents were business people, their lives were with their work mostly... They traveled a lot. We were as good as family to him really. They would just dump him on us and say they'd be back in a week. It made me sad for him, but he never complained to us. He said that they were always busy and that he didn't miss them much. It's funny now I think of it, I remember the shy, infinitely creative boy with the tawny hair and green eyes, and me, oozing self confidence and being far too book smart for my own good.

We were eleven when we first saw him... This Slenderman... It was on Halloween, my parents are gravely against it but, well, Autumn decided to look out for me. He successfully got me to change into a fairy costume, jumping out of my bedroom window and we were off. Exploring the suburbs with candy galore. I remember his face as he told me. "Come on Summer, they'll never know..."

We were walking down another street when we saw it. Or rather him. He was tall, taller than I had ever seen, his limbs were out of proportion with his body and wearing a suit that fitted him. He had no face.

It was a beautiful costume. I walked toward him, looking up. I smiled at him, told him that his costume was scary.

He said nothing. He just turned and walked away. He smelled odd, like... I don't know. Like old people, like pipe smoke the kind my Uncle smoked.

Autumn came after me, a little confused. "Who was he?"

I smirked at him. "A stranger."

"You shouldn't talk to strangers Summer, it's bad." He frowned at me, matter of factly.

Of course I knew he was right. But I was an obnoxious ten year old.

When we got back, my parents grounded me for two weeks, they forbade us from seeing each other.

As you can tell, that worked out incredibly well for us.

Summer