The Memory Giver (#Wattys2014)

Chapter 1

                                                        Chapter One

Marty was gone now.  That's what his friend called it.  Not here, not there, just gone.  The Other Place, that’s what his friend called where they were. Marty didn't like The Other Place, but there was nothing he could do about it.  His friend promised him that soon there'd be others.  Good, Marty thought.  It would be better when there were more of them.  

                                                        *

                                                        Turtle

            Ambushed!

            When Turtle Dawson turned the corner, he was surprised, no make that stunned to discover Ansley Meade and the other Meade boys coming toward him up the block.  He froze for a nanosecond.  It was too late to duck back around the corner and head the other way.  Turtle could see they’d already spotted him.  In fact, from the satisfied smirk on Ansley’s lips, they’d been expecting him to come spinning around the corner.  Damn!

            Turtle stood his ground.  Even though his legs were wobbly like jello, and the thought of peeing his pants tap danced at the outskirts of his consciousness, he stood his ground.  He had to. He couldn’t out run them.  Heck, Turtle couldn’t out run anyone, not with the girth he was carrying.  Turtle weighed in at one hundred and sixty-three (hefty—that’s what his mother called him) pounds.  That was an easy forty pounds heavier than any kid is his class with the exception of Ross Rainey, who tipped the scales at two hundred.

            “Well, lookie, lookie.  Isn’t that Lard Ass down there?” Ansley asked at the top of his lungs, his voice trilling joy.

            “Yup.  That’s the fat little creep,” one of Ansley’s older brothers replied.  He was maybe fourteen, with the beginnings of a mustache dusting his upper lip. Turtle didn’t know his name.  He didn’t know either of the older brother’s names.  What he knew was that when Ansley called, his older brothers came, and when they came, it usually meant an ass-whuppin’ for the poor kid Ansley had in his sights.  This time the poor kid was him.

            “You been avoidin’ me,” Ansley said in a playful sing-song as he stopped a few feet in front of Turtle. He was at least a full inch shorter than Turtle, dark complexioned, with beady-mean eyes, and built like a little fire plug.  Turtle had to outweigh him by twenty or thirty pounds easy, yet Ansley’s diminutive stature seemed to make him all the more intimidating.

One of the older Meade boys silently circled around behind Turtle.  He was now surrounded.

            “Nuh-uh,” Turtle replied, his tongue feeling as if it was swathed in cotton.

            “I told you to wait outside the school gate for me yesterday, and you weren’t there.  You weren’t there today, either.  You’re a bad boy, Lard Ass.  And you know what happens to bad boys.”  Ansley began routinely rolling up his sleeves, as if ass-whippin’ was an everyday occurrence for him.  School, homework, ass-whippin’.

            “My moms called the school,” Turtle blurted.  “She said I had to get over to Miller’s Grocery right after school or I’d be in deep shit.  Said she’d be watin’ for me there, and I better be on time.  That’s why I didn’t wait for you.”