Chapter 1 #2
Cy barked something from the propped open shop door in that weird rumbling thing they did and then began laughing anew.
Elm let out a noise just shy of a full on, animalistic growl, startling me as I scurried around him and slammed my trunk closed hard so it wouldn’t pop back open again with the funky latch acting up.
A funny noise squeaked out of me but I covered it quickly, rounding my car to wave absently over my shoulder.
“Well, it was nice seeing you all! Thank your ma for tossing in those avocados! I don’t think I’ve ever seen ‘em that big!” I called out.
Stepping back out with one last bag, causing me to pause, my hand on the door handle, Sunny waved her free hand frantically over her head as she called out to me, “Pru! Oh, Pru, dear! Oh- Catch her, Elm, hun, would you?! Don’t let your- Uh- Don’t let her get away, sweetie!”
Elm didn’t even so much as blink, springing into action to “catch me”, bounding over to me to clamp a thick mitt of a hand onto my shoulder like I was a thief and not simply waiting out his mother as she called out to me.
Don’t let his what get away? His little friend? Long past a friendship renewal time frame, ma’am. I’d shed enough tears over his first departure, thank you very much.
I’d love to lie and say being dumped like a hot potato without further ado hadn’t broken me but years of therapy needed to cope with the aftermath, if one wanted to say I took his rejection insanely hard, and mangled self esteem and trust issues would say it certainly hadn’t helped me out any.
With a short glare over my shoulder aimed at the moose holding me captive, I swatted his hand away. “I wasn’t going to run,” I huffed and puffed at him. And yet I basked in his touch. Damn, I’m a lunatic.
The fool was treating me like some kind of suspected criminal, like we didn’t grow up together, or have fake weddings in his backyard all those years ago, and I’m fighting the dopey, sappy feeling suffusing me at one stupid, simple, meaningless touch.
Of course, in our fake wedded scenarios I was only the bride for lack of any alternate bride choices, and the boys would take turns playing groom, best man, and minister. Essentially, I’d pretend-married all three Tree boys back in the day.
They were mainly motivated by the wedding cake we’d talked Sunny into making for us for our fake receptions. Sunny probably still had photos of it all. She was always snapping pictures of the boys like she was worried there’d be no tomorrow.
I envied her that— I should have done the same, should have taken more pictures of my folks, lived like every day might be our last.
Elm’s perpetual scowl deepened as he eyed me through that shaggy curtain of hair he liked to hide behind. It was very bearded emo of him. It wasn’t above my notice the way the fingers of the hand I’d just swatted away flexed at his side. My goodness, I hadn’t smacked him that hard.
“Don’t be a baby. It was a love tap,” I grumbled defensively as I jerked my chin at his hand.
The hand flexing at his side paused and he let out a choked grunt that told me I’d startled him. Good. Take that, you oversized ball of fur.
His beard was shaped, well groomed, but it lacked that thickness of the hairs, that crisp beard look one would expect. It was more soft and fluffy looking like the hair on his head.
Forest, Elm’s father, had some form of hair overgrowth issue.
It was pretty bad. His sons had inherited a much milder form of it but it was obvious to anyone who glimpsed them.
Think hyper-hypertrichosis, I believed I’d heard Sunny explaining to someone who’d been rude enough to ask about her husband’s rather overly hairy visage.
Calling someone’s husband a skunk ape in the flesh, a Werewolf man, or the dozens of other not so kind comments that came their way, is not exactly polite conversation, but Sunny took it all in stride.
Elm and I had met at a park play date organized by our mothers as toddlers that became a standing thing, every single Wednesday, then went to elementary school together, same grade, same teachers every year.
I had a feeling thinking on it now that Mom and Sunny must’ve requested it to be so, considering we pretty much became each other’s shadow, we got along so well.
The irony was not lost on me that the hairiest boy in our small little school preferred the company of the girl who’d suddenly started losing all of hers.
Baldy and Fuzz, the children had taunted us. Well, they did to our faces until that incident… Then, afterwards, Mikey McNicknel nursing that broken arm and the bite marks, well, it was mostly said behind our backs or on the days Elm missed school.
Elm was never much for bullies, and I tended to avoid confrontation unless someone pushed me past that point of walking away.
As we got older, headed for middle school, Elm had more and more dust ups.
Loud mouthed prepubescent boys decided picking fights with him was some sort of rite of passage into teendom, gang up on the hirsute giant.
It was gradual but Elm had started to withdraw, his worry the bullying would extend to his hairless shadow not unfounded, and he just kept withdrawing until it got so bad his parents opted to take him out of public school completely.
His brothers left about that time as well.
They really didn’t have it any easier. It was probably for the best, all things considered.
I’d gotten into my first fight because of some jerkoff trying to put gum into Cy’s hair.
The Tree boys were smart, all of them, the kind of straight A students my parents would have loved to have.
Birch was really tech savvy, or so I’d overheard Mom telling Dad.
Cy got into the mechanics of it all, be it dirt bikes, cars, farm equipment, anything he could work on, tinker with.
I’ll never forget the look on Sunny’s face when she found her dismantled lawn mower, Cy still trying to puzzle out how to put it all back together.
He was around thirteen, I think. Now, Cy’s beefed up truck was his pride and joy.
You couldn’t miss the damn thing roaring down the street.
Dad has helped him with it a time or two over the years.
My parents still remained fairly close with the Trees and accepted my reluctance when it came to anything to do with them.
My joke one evening post Dad lending a helping hand, about men in big trucks overcompensating for something was not a well received dinner table joke in the Dubois house.
Not at all. I’ll say that much. I never knew Dad’s face could flush a weird purple in embarrassment.
Why that flustered Mom and embarrassed the crap out of my father, I never quite figured out— we’ve never owned an overcompensator before.
I’d had to settle for them both being flummoxed by a random penis joke from their only offspring, despite my age.
The Trees camped and other outdoorsy stuff a lot, my kind of dream family fun times, doing their schoolwork remotely, always outside enjoying something, some sort of hybrid model of learning, to hear Sunny explain it, to what they offer in public hybrid learning models now.
If only that could have been me, maybe I’d have been a bit more invested in my studies.
I mean, maybe I wouldn’t. Who knows.
I’d felt a bit lost without Elm. I’d like to think I’d eventually adjusted.
I’d been more than a bit lost at first, to be completely truthful here.
Grimacing internally, I mentally rolled my eyes at myself. All bull crap aside, I’d been devastated. It had felt like a betrayal, and it cut deep.
At some point after junior year of high school, I’d like to say I’d reached a turning point but I’d honestly just stopped caring— other people’s expectations can’t crush you anymore if you stop giving a single muggy goose fart about them.
Embracing my eclectic self fully by adulthood, my straight laced, by the book folks didn’t know what to do with their think outside of the box child by that point.
They worked with what they had. I’d tried my best.
I wasn’t the greatest student, school just really wasn’t my thing. My attention span lasted about as long as a goldfish’s. Maybe less. Maybe that’s insulting to goldfish. Either way, I graduated on time, if by the skin of my teeth, that had to count for something, right?
It felt more like I’d survived, tolerated the whole high school experience. Can’t say I missed a single bit of it, not even after all these years.
Thinking offering a bit of an olive branch was in order here with Elm, soothe his pinched feelings, I muttered quietly, ““Dark Enough To See The Stars”. I know I’m a bit late to the party but I heard it the other day.
It’s, like, top of my playlist right now.
Right up there with “Island in the Sun” and “Buddy Holly” good.
” Clearing my throat, I added, “I don’t know if you still listen to-”
“Pru, dear!” Sunny came charging up, tightly bundled in her favorite pink coat, her behemoth of a husband Forest rumbling unintelligibly a short ways behind her.
Forest’s thick arms were outstretched as if in preparation to catch her, should she lose her footing.
The most relatable thing about Sunny was her epic klutziness.
Unlike her, I had no strapping male who absolutely adored me waiting in the wings to catch me. I ate crap, I fell, I flippin’ felt it.
It was comical watching this enormous man decked in flannel and holey denim chasing after his marshmallow of a ball of sunshine of a wife so heavily trussed up in warm clothes she looked like a pretty pink puffball confection scrambling up to us.
“Elm listens Weedzer still. Old moodvies like used to, too,” Elm grunted out shortly, before stepping aside to let his mother by.