The Memory Giver (#Wattys2014)

Chapter 5

                                                        Chapter Five

        Ansley Meade had wanted to let it go.  His brothers, who drew the line at fighting girls—assholes—had moved on, and Ansley was wise enough to know he wasn’t nearly as tough without them as he was when they were standing shoulder-to-ass whuppin-shoulder. 

        He told himself that he had let it go.  Yet, while he pretended he didn’t care, he’d kept a secret eye on both of them all day.  And just when he was satisfied that the girl was indeed a liar—I knew that was your real boyfriend’s jacket—and that he could tell his brothers Lard Ass was the liar of liars, and they ought to meet up with him and beat the truth out of his lumpy hide—he saw the two of them walking home together.  Turtle and Rita.  He followed at a close yet discreet distance, and the more he saw, the more he didn’t like.  He particularly didn’t like the way they were talking and laughing, and Lard Ass was carrying her books, as if he could actually be her boyfriend.

        “This is bullshit!” Ansley grumbled, peeking out from his hidey-hole across the way.  And I’m going to prove it.

        What the hell can she see in that tub of lard, anyway?  Nuthin! Ansley hated Turtle for being fat, he hated him more for being smart, and now he’d hit the trifecta—a reason to hate him even more, because Turtle was stupid enough to believe that a girl, any girl, would like his fat ass.

        I’ll show ya, Ansely thought.  An ass whuppin’ was too good for Turtle.   You think you’re so smart. I’ll show you what an idiot you really are. That was when Ansley began to hatch hisplan. 

                                                               *

        The boys in the neighborhood called it The Lots.  It was a mile and a half of open space grown over with trees, oleander and scrub brush just beyond the foot of Canal Street that ran along the edge of the creek.  It was unclaimed land that the Foster City government didn’t want, and the commercial developers hadn’t yet realized possessed any value. 

        To the grownup eye, it was nothing more than an oversized vacant lot, an eyesore that some of the businesses in the area used as a dumping ground.  Yet toany Foster City boy with an inch of imagination, The Lots was a little piece of heaven.  Turtle and A.D. had yards of imagination that they used on their many excursions to The Lots.  For them, it was a child-size wilderness that ran alongside the creek, a creek that reminded many a Foster City boy of the old the Mississippi that Huck Finn and Jim cruised on a raft with a wigwam hut.

        For Turtle and A.D., one day it was transformed into a baseball field like Busch Stadium, where AD would throw knuckle balls and Turtle would complain he wasn’t letting him hit one, until he did. The next day it would be an African Serengeti where the boys pretended that long tree limbs were elephant guns they used to bring down big game all the way up the chain to the king of beasts.  Some days it was a quiet spot, where they’d spend hours digging in the dirt, not saying a word to one another, allowing their imaginations to run free.

        Turtle brought Rita to The Lots that afternoon.  He wasn’t sure why.  It was very much a guy place and as tough as Rita might have seemed that first day, she was very much a girl, or a lady, as she put it.  He brought her there because The Lots was his favorite place, a mysterious land that he was tethered to for the memories it held.  And if Rita really was his girlfriend, shouldn’t he share his best kept secrets with her? So he brought her there, and hoped she’d see in The Lots what he saw.