WildFlower

Chapter 1

At the threshold of the woodlands, a pine tree stood its fingertips in the bowl of the sky. Its flesh stirred the breath of the earth. The moon, its crooked crown. The stars, its silver trinkets tied to the sky. Animals prowled the woods at dusk scattered as a creature emerged from the tree. Every sound, from a snap of a twig to the shallow wind, dissipated with its birth. A young boy who did not look a day past thirteen woke. Sitting up, the boy was in a sea of colorful flowers of wild. The pleasant September wind broke the boy out of his trance. Kell had fallen asleep and had no recollection of what he daydreamed. He jumped at the sound of footsteps. Another boy appeared, unlike Kell, his hair the color of straw wheat, his eyes the color of a frozen pond.

"So, this is where you were hiding?" He asked, his friend laying in the dirt.

"Come on," he grumbled. The boy dragged Kell by the ear.

"It hurts," Kell whined. Ace did not free his hostage. The noise of the party was making Kell's head buzz. Ace pulled him along to help his brother Ash with a party. They invited all of Galloway High. Kell looked on from his new hiding spot, praying Ace did not spot him. He hid in plain sight amongst the crowd in the living room. He kept his head down, trying not to draw attention to himself. Curious, he glanced around the throng of people. His eyes settled on the corner of the room. The buzzing in his head disappeared when his eyes locked with another to be replaced with a peculiar sensation. Kell reached to touch where the feeling bubbled up to pause looking at his hand. Abruptly looking back up to a room filled with people only to see them. Only them.

Kell stared at the same hand thinking of that night years before, reaching for where the feelings welled up to once again stop himself. At the time he couldn't describe the peculiar sensation, he still couldn't but the same feeling now made him feel sick.Kell forced himself not to look back at the corner of the field where "he" stood not knowing what he was doing to him. The sound of the opening passenger door made Kell realize he was gripping the steering wheel and staring at the dash.

"I think coach needs to get laid" Ace commented, throwing his bag into the back, and jumping into the seat to slam the car door close.

"Gross."

"What?"

"Oh...right, imagining your dad getting some is gross isn't it."

"Surprised you didn't skip today."

Kell scuffed "Are you kidding me? A week before our first game, my old man would have my head. Summer was bad enough."

"Isn't he going to have your head anyway when he realizes you didn't apply to Rowan?"

"Just because he went there doesn't mean I have to."

"Yes, yes it does"

"Shut up"

"Your funeral, if you end up at the bottom of the ocean, I saw it coming"

Kell ignored Ace to glance from the road to the sea that hugged the coast of the small town. The drive from and to school was also always the same. Kell always picked up Ace, who lived 7 blocks away from his house and went to school.

Everywhere you looked, the town reminded you of how old it really was. A lighthouse rocking on the coast tall, grand, with a sipping ocean. A police station where an elderly man dressed in uniform flipped through the newspaper with a phone perched never interrupting him, only watching. A gas station only had two pumps with a shaggy man hunched over married to the chair at the corner. You could not tell who he was by appearance just he was always there. A post office with a sun-bleached closed sign, a small bookshop where books seemed to grow from the walls like mushrooms in a forest of dust and brown with dipped valleys, and leaning mountains. A diner with a jukebox in the corner played no music. The light seeped through as if the whole windows were cracked showing its usual patrons. A church that was made up of short, stacked bricks that were all different shades of white, tattooed with weeds as its bed. Almost every building was forced into one along the strip was held up by stilts of green. Small normal red-roofed yellow slanted houses of all different sizes paraded along the side of the mountain. The only two buildings that showed no weathered time were the high school that used to be an old car factory that kneeled to the mountain, along with the glasshouse sitting on top of the mountain supposedly belonging to the mayor with his family. Aside from these buildings, there were more meadows than houses or people. Cedar trees full and merry, this was proof the town was not meant to be there but was.

A small red-roofed house came into view, up close it had a squat brick chimney bowed slightly. The outside of the house was the color of a daffodil with a dull blue door. As small as it was it still had a porch; white just like the shutters. Kell stared at the dull blue door of the red-roofed house for a brief moment before putting the car into park to let Ace out. The two said their goodbyes before Kell backed out of the gravel driveway. Before Kell knew it, he was pulling up his own driveway. Looking up at the similar red-roofed house. The outside of the house was the same with a dull-colored door and a porch; white just like the shutters. Kell stared at the front door with his keys in his hand. The air that smelled cold and earthy always meant a promise of rain wrapped in the silvery sky.

He didn't wait for the first drop of the wintery rain before taking cover. Kell did not remember ever caring for the cold rain, the briny breath of the sea, or the taste of salt in the air. In fact, he hated it, still, he stood on the porch, not moving. His gaze focused on the unkempt yard filled with weeds with a walkway made up of bricks outlined by moss as it rained. Lost in his thoughts, he didn't hear his father's car pull up next to his.

Only when his father slammed the car door, making a run to the porch where he stood, Kell looked up.

"What are you doing?"

"I just got home" Kell's words fell on deaf ears as his father took off his faded fishing cap to shake it to place it back on his head. Kell's father was a burly, disheveled man with beady eyes who invariable smelled faintly of musk.

"Hate this damn rain, this damn weather. Can't have a damn day where we aren't waterlogged." Kell's father ranted, realizing his son didn't answer him and staring off into space. The boy was just like his mother with nothing upstairs. She should have taken him with her he thought before he made it into the house leaving his son on the porch.

Kell didn't want to go in but he did, he didn't bother talking to his old man since there was nothing to talk about. Even with football they never talked, his old man spoke and he had to just do what he was told.