Chapter 10
Before being ditched in Texas to live with Jack, I’d never really done something like sit in bed and stare out the window at the moon and stars.
I’d never sat in the dark of my mind and the silence of my loneliness, thinking about my life.
My life—my every day existence—was full of noise and movement.
The sounds of the road and theaters and motels were my constant companions.
I never really had friends to talk to—not even via text.
I never really stayed anywhere long enough to meet people my own age.
My friends lived in the T.V. or on the radio.
Or maybe, for a single day, some kids I swam with at the motel swimming pool.
Those friendships were fleeting. If they were even friendships.
They were just one lonely boy searching out temporary companionship from other kids who had some other city or state to be in the following day.
Except they were going somewhere new on vacation or back home.
Sooner or later, when I left a motel, it was so Mom could move us into a new motel in a new town where she had found work. I’d never know for how long.
After a while, at least, once I stopped being a stupid kid with stars in his eyes, I realized that trying to make friends was pointless.
Eventually, I stopped trying to play Marco Polo in the pool with other kids who were staying for a night or two.
I stopped talking to kids I saw at the vending machines.
I stopped trying to be friendly with the kids who lived near the motel who walked by on their way to the corner store or to the movies…
or wherever kids with a permanent home go to have fun.
I started to think of myself as a desert tortoise.
Desert tortoises live on their own in the desert.
Naturally. They only meet up to mate or to share a burrow during hibernation.
Even when a momma desert tortoise lays eggs, she digs a hole, lays the eggs, covers them, and leaves them, rarely ever to return.
The hatchlings, no bigger than a quarter, are on their own from birth.
Sink or swim. Maybe one day they’d share a burrow during hibernation if ever their paths crossed again.
My mom and I hibernated together at night at motels, but otherwise, I was on my own.
We shared our burrow. But I spent my days in the desert alone, wandering, foraging, and waiting for another hibernation period.
Night time was good. Sleep was good. Because I wasn’t alone then.
Usually. Sometimes Mom spent the night with one of my “uncles.”
Yeah. I’m sixteen. I know what they were doing.
But that was me. A desert tortoise.
No real purpose other than to exist, forage, hibernate and, eventually, maybe one day help to perpetuate the species.
Then I’d have someone to abandon like I’d been. Make someone feel as rotten as I did most of the time, though I didn’t know it. Okay. I did know it. I just never had time to sit in the quiet and think about it much.
And I never had anyone to share that thought with when it popped into my head. So, not only did I discover I was a tortoise, I only had myself to share it with when I discovered it. That’s the true definition of loneliness.
When you get good news, who do you call first?
I didn’t have an answer for that.
I had me. The tortoise.
Up in my room on the third floor of Jack’s house, I had the time and quiet needed to really think about life.
I found myself that night, sitting cross-legged on the bed in front of the dormer windows, staring out at Possibly.
The inky outlines of downtown in the distance, standing quietly as the stars and moon shone down placidly.
Shadows are usually black, right? With the moon and stars shining brightly, and no light pollution to speak of, the shadows looked a little blue.
Maybe the town of Possibly felt lonely sometimes, too?
My phone was laid on my thigh, its screen dark.
It had been almost three whole days and Mom hadn’t bothered to text or call.
Not even to see if I was okay and if Jack was fine with me staying with him.
I would’ve been fine if she didn’t want to tell me what she was doing—it probably wouldn’t have been anything I hadn’t seen her do a million times before—but she could have at least shown interest in what I was doing. Shown concern for my well-being.
Was that too much to ask?
Jack wasn’t really much of a talker. I didn’t have any friends to text.
Mom could have at least helped make me feel a little less lonely by shooting off a “How are you, Jordy?” text.
As I stared out at the blue glow of the moon on the rooftops of the buildings in Possibly, I realized that maybe I could create a friend.
My head rolled back to stare up at the moon, high in the sky, swollen with appropriated sunlight and the hopes cast off by dreamers all over the world who were fast asleep. The moon has no light or hope of its own, but it borrows some each day.
Maybe the moon could be my friend? I could tell it my thoughts. Who else did the moon have to talk to, anyway? The moon might be lonely. How many people give it the time of day? Ask it how it’s doing? I could sit on the bed and tell the moon how I felt.
Just as I contemplated this ridiculous—and possibly insane—idea, the barn off in the distance, down by the creek, caught my eye.
Lights were coming from it once again. Though, this time, it didn’t appear as though lasers were coming from its roof.
Instead, it looked like the soft glow put off by white Christmas lights.
How does it look like lasers and lights are coming out of the roof but I can’t see the source of the lights?
I watched, mesmerized for several minutes, wondering what was going on at the barn.
Finally, I pushed the middle dormer open again and listened to the breeze.
Just like the first night, a song was riding the wind, but it was too faint for me to make out.
And, just like that, the lights and the song were gone.
Possibly was pitch black and my eyes were adjusting to the darkness once more.
I touched my phone screen.
Midnight.
The wind and I were each other’s friends for a minute as I listened to the quiet and watched the darkness of the town. Finally, I shut the middle dormer once more, staring at the barn for a moment longer through the glass.
I slipped out of my shirt, threw it on the floor, and crawled under the covers.