Approaching Storm
Casey Addlemon walked slowly through the thick, wet sand, focusing his vision on his two feet which crossed with each step as they left a deep imprint. He turned to look up at the sky, which was filling with grey thunderclouds that swallowed out the light from the sun. He heard rumbles in the distance, far out off the coast of Florida.
"Looks like the storm's coming in earlier then they said it would," he spoke in a low voice to his girlfriend of three years, Samantha Marner, who also trudged silently along the water's edge.
The waves lapped at her own bare feet, and she pulled tighter on the leash of her French bulldog as the first sudden thunderbolt vibrated in her ears. She looked at her boyfriend for a moment and sighed,
"Do you think it'll hit us?"
"I hope not," was all he said.
Casey Addlemon had spent nearly every waking hour his summer vacation before sophomore year with one person - Sam. It was as though she was his entire life. Every moment he would shut his eyes and open them again there she was, sitting so beautifully under the lazy blue sky that matched her eyes.
It seemed to him that they had been together forever. The first time he kissed Sam was in second grade, the night their families went to dinner at the Breakers resort when he had promised to kiss her and had finally gotten up the guts to follow through. Earlier that day they had been playing in the tree fort in Sam's front yard and Casey had been too scared to slide down the fireman's pole that ran from the fort down to the ground.
Sam pestered him about in her usual way, offering him two options, one of which caught him by surprise. He could either slide down the pole like the other kids or he would have to kiss her. Casey had spent his time in the bathtub thinking it all over before it would all go down.
Since then, the two were seemingly in love with each other from that childish puppy love moment then on. On and off for about four years, Casey and Samantha would date, fight, break up, fall back in love, date, fight and break up again. Both of them had only a few other relationships in between so they finally came to terms during their freshman year that they were destined to be together and would probably marry, have babies, grandbabies, grow old and pester each other in their rockers about pointless things like who gets the last of the gravy for their mashed potatoes.
Casey and Sam attended the same school, Rosarian Academy, a catholic establishment run by Adrian Dominican sisters and went from Montessori to eighth. The two had both gone there since age three. But come high school, they went their separate ways. Casey made a daily morning bus ride out to the King's Academy, a Christian school on a beautiful expansive campus out west of town while Sam entered Cardinal Newman High School. And this year, they would be there together.
Casey had made the decision to transfer even before he had attended the first day of school because he felt that he had made a bad choice in leaving his old friends in hopes of finding new ones. Most of his middle school friends went to still went to school with Sam, and he felt utterly left out.
He missed them dearly, and would hang out with them every weekend and think about what it would be like to go to school together. One day on the way out to the King's Academy, Casey passed Newman (which was on a road off of the one he took to school) and started to cry from sadness and teenage angst. So come the end of his freshman year, he hugged goodbye to his new friends and begged his mother, Fiona, to sign him up for Samantha's school.
He was then officially a transferee.
Still on the high that he got from his personal euphoria, Casey's summer past like a dream. He would wake up (late) and spend the daylight hours running hard from party to party, friend's house to friend's house, and his blissful and loving time with Samantha. They both were happy in every way and agreed that that summer between freshman and sophomore had been the summer of their lives.
They would lie out on beach towels and listen to Jack Johnson and Justin Bieber (Sam's second favorite boy) on Sam's portable iHome while soaking up the rays. They went to movies and dinners, went shopping, relaxed in each other's arms in which minutes and hours would pass and they would do absolutely nothing but look into each other's eyes which glittered in the moonlight.
Casey would strum his acoustic guitar softly and Sam would try to sing along to every song he knew how to play. They would ride their bikes around their island home, heading in no particular direction but just feeling the bright, sweet, wholesome feeling that was young love in the summertime when there was nothing to do but what you wanted to do.
Everything was at peace.
Before they knew it, August had come. There was something different in the air- something scholarly. The teenage dream was coming to an end and it was time to wake up and smell the cheerios. No more late night partying on the beach with his best friends or raving, drinking his mother's chardonnay and tracking sand all over his house while his parents were out to dinner. No more just living for the moment. The time he had waited for the whole last school year had finally arrived.
It made Casey's heart thump fast in his chest, but it was no longer solely a feeling of excitement. It was apprehension. He had butterflies in his chest. School shopping time came, and as he donned his new blue and gold polo and khaki slacks, Casey took a good look at himself in the mirror. Six-one feet tall with grayish blue eyes and ash brown hair. It had been blonde when he was little. He spoke some words of encouragement to himself silently and smiled at his reflection. He thought he looked rather handsome.
"You look nice," his mother told him as he stepped out of the dressing room at the uniform store and did a little model walk down the invisible runway.
Casey began to count down the days until the first day of sophomore year, looking at his Sports Illustrated calendar each time he walked in and out of the room as though the dates would just erase themselves if he didn't keep his eyes on them at all times. He began to see Samantha much less, but he blamed it on the fact that they both had things that they had to do before school started.
He could just image how cute she would look in her pleaded skirt and tight polo that showed off what God gave her. A typical boy thought. He wondered if their relationship would be different once they began seeing each other again daily but this time in a school environment. Casey had arranged his schedule so that he would have as many classes with her as possible. She could then help him with his work and they would have plenty of time to be together. If this plan worked out, then everything would be all good.
Life was about to change though, and he could tell. Starting a new school, an experience of which he knew of from starting freshman year at Kings, was a big leap towards a different path that one follows down in life. Even though he would be back with his friends and the love of his sixteen years of life, things would not feel the same as they did when he was just an immature middle schooler, which was something that Samantha had warned him about even during their thoughtless and careless break.
Cardinal Newman, the school which he would now attend and that was Facebook official for the graduating class of 2014, was a new playing ground, a new game. He had to institute himself as his own individual there, even in the presence of teens he had known for many years. Casey was about to be put into new situations, given new problems, and would be required to find new ways to fix or prevent them. He would meet some new faces that would become entangled in the innermost personal parts of his life.
He would never be the same person he was the day he would walk into the doors of that school. It was a thought that he in his inner shyness and personal reserve had not even begun to fathom. Casey never considered that his existence would ever become any more different than it already was. Of course he would have his ups and downs, highs and lows, but he didn't stop for a moment and think that he was diving headfirst into a whirlpool of drama that could push even a strong-willed human being to do and go to immeasurable and unthinkable measures.
Casey saw before him a black and white picture of his life. He never thought about things that he didn't believe would happen to him. Problems so early in the game that was sophomore year at the college preparatory located on Spencer Drive were completely out of sight and out of mind. The worst that he could expect on the first day, or even the whole first week of school, was to spill a little food on his new uniform or fail a ruthlessly graded pretest. After all, he pondered to himself as he walked out to his black Jeep that was parked in the brick driveway; high school isn't really like a television show.
He was right. It's worse. And it's real.
