Refuge

Chapter 1

After a very long summer, Damien woke up to the cursed sound of his alarm clock on the first day of school. His open window let in the dry Arkansas air fill his room. The only reason Damien got out of bed was to prevent himself from getting a heat stroke. After silencing his alarm, Damien sat at the edge of his bed, feeling his dreary eyes slowly start to shut.

    "Six o'clock... too goddamn early..." he muttered to himself. Like every other kid, Damien cursed the school system for making them get up so early. He decided to get up and close his window, relieved to hear the air conditioning power up and circulate throughout the house. The cool AC tugged playfully at the edges of basketball posters that lined Damien's wall.  Damien huffed; his room seemed like that of a child. Crowded desk, basketball posters everywhere, clashing themes from different stages in his life. He's been wanting to clean for forever, but the question is, when? The only things that seemed to matter anymore were his basketball and his sketchbook. Sometimes he'd use the posters as references for his drawings, but most of the times he just scrolls through Instagram and finds a pose he likes. Damien loved to draw basketball players mid-dunk or dribbling; he was able to make it seem like time stopped and they randomly froze just before their feet came back down to touch the ground. 

    Damien pulled a navy blue t-shirt over his head and put on sweatpants. He quickly combed his dark hair out of his face and put his sketchbook in his book bag. Grabbing his basketball, Damien turned his room's light off and headed out the door.

    Damien was an only child, so he occupied the only bedroom on the second floor. He lumbered down the stairs and into the kitchen, where his mother had already placed a bowl of cereal on the counter. "Good morning, Dami," she said from her position at the sink, where she was currently washing a couple of dishes.

    "Hi mom," Damien replied, dropping his bag and ball near the front door and sitting down on the bar stool at the counter. Instead of eating his cereal, Damien rested his head in his hand and felt his eyes slowly beginning to close, until -

"Hey sport! Ready for your first day of school?" Damien felt a slap on the back and immediately straightened up, all feelings of drowsiness forgotten. He turned to see his father, a huge man with receding gray hair and always wearing a tie, standing over him with a broad grin on his face.

"Guess so," Damien replied, not as enthusiastic as his dad. He was more ready for the end of his first day of school than the actual day itself. Damien began eating to avoid having to continue the conversation. Damien's mom walked over to the window beside the front door and turned around. "Honey, the bus is here," she called.

"Okay be right there." Damien wolfed down the remainder of his cereal and brought the dish to the sink, then jogged over to his book bag and basketball. "Bye mom," he said, slinging his bag over one shoulder. "Bye dad," he called, already out the door.

"Don't forget to play some b-ball!" his dad shouted. Damien rolled his eyes; he plays basketball everyday, he doesn't need a reminder. Without looking back at his house, he boarded the bus and greeted the driver, an elderly man with a mustache and aviator glasses. When Damien turned toward the rest of the bus, he felt happy for the first time that morning.

"Bradley!" he called, a grin stretching over his face. His stout friend looked up from his phone and laughed. "I missed you this summer," Damien said, sitting down next to him. Bradley goes away every summer to a sleep-away camp and then spends the rest of the summer at his step-father's house, which means Damien is left to fare on his own during the hot summer months. Most kids hate school and cannot wait until summer, but Damien thinks the opposite. He's no rich jock that has a million friends and a backyard pool; he's just a shy junior who happens to be good at basketball.

"Me too man," Bradley and Damien proceeded to do their secret handshake, making the other kids on the bus scoff. Normally Damien would be self-conscious of such attention, but he was too elated to care. "So what've you been up to?" Bradley asked once the two friends stopped laughing.

"Well, I just... played basketball, pretty much... all summer," Damien replied, trying not to add too much detail.

"Any pick up? With other guys?" Bradley looked at Damien expectantly.

"Uh..." The truth is, Damien is too shy to want to play against strangers. Bradley has always been encouraging, and he tries to help Damien get over it. Sometimes Damien thinks he can talk to other people for once, but in the heat of the moment, Damien gets nervous and backs down. He's tired of Bradley trying to help with his "anxiety", so all that comes out is, "Uh yeah, yeah a little bit."

"Wow, great! I'm proud," Bradley beamed, and Damien forced a smile, feeling horrible that he lied, and apprehensive now that Bradley thinks he did what he did. Now he'll expect him to play regularly with other people.

After a moment of silence, the bus stopped again, letting in a group of girls. Damien's heart skipped a beat; one of those girls was Clara, his hopeless crush. His eyes were trained on her as he watched her laugh with her friends, her blonde hair bouncing around the frame of her face and her half smirk forming a dimple in her cheek. Her blue eyes sparkled with joy, and she sat down in one of the front rows, surrounded by her friends. Damien felt frustrated that he lost sight of her, but she turned her head to face a cherry-haired girl behind her. In that instant, she locked eyes with Damien. He felt his heart stop and his breathing quicken; he lowered his gaze and studied his feet, feeling his face heating up. Shit, shit, shit, he thought, closing his eyes. After he thought it was safe, he glanced back up at Clara to see if she was still looking at him.

She was.

She smiled and rolled her eyes a little before turning back around. Damien shifted lower into his seat, wanting to disappear. Bradley chuckled beside him and nudged him.

"It's fine, Damien," he reassured him. Bradley was the only other person who knew about his crush. "Once she sees how good you are at basketball this year, she'll fall head over heels for you."

Damien hoped he was right. He glanced once more at the beautiful blonde head and rested his head on the window, looking out into the blur of trees. Maybe she will like me, Damien smiled at the thought of that. Now that I'll be on the varsity team, she'll have to notice me. But he still felt doubts weighing him down. He's shy and antisocial; he'll seem almost invisible, like past years. No, he thought. I'm going to involve myself with her as much as possible.

But that is what he always says, and then he backs out last minute. And Damien realized it, right then and there, when Clara and her group were interrupted by a flirty Senior basketball player, Josh. He was tall, with a sharp jawline and light hair, and he wasn't afraid to be seen. Resting an arm on the back of Clara's chair, he spoke, a smirk on his face, to specifically her, ignoring the other girls.

Damien felt too distressed and hopeless to watch anymore. There was no way he could even become friends with the girl, not with Josh dallying with her all the time. Eventually he saw Josh walk to the back of the bus with his other friends, leaving the girls alone. Damien looked up briefly to see what Clara thought of him, but she was facing forward. He sighed and rested against the window, questioning his life the whole way to school. What a way to kick off Junior year...