Trip & Stumble

{ CHAPTERS 1 - 8 }

This novel is dedicated to my short-lived sister

Robin

my short-lived sister

Erin

and our indomitable mother

Cindy.

Tomorrow's scars were less than a day away for the unsuspecting old woman.

The lively lady of the house held her bare hand between the spitting grease of the bacon pan and her florescent pink, lace-knit, shorty apron. Her whole-hearted husband had arranged for it to be custom made, just for her. The feature of the intricate embroidery was the left half of a heart shape with the initials: [E.H.] inside of it. She had been mouthing the words to her favorite Billy Joel song and she most certainly did have "a way about her".

The knowledge she received from the phone call that interrupted burned directly through the only part of her life that she still danced for.

*  *

1

Pink fireworks rippled through the white, liquid sky.

Trip Higgins drank up the milk in the bottom of his cereal bowl even though he didn't want to. The flaky remnants of Captain Crunch swished like soggy, little, lifeless tadpoles down the back of his throat. Life was a similar torture, summertime on a farm for a friendless thirteen year old boy. Time was his enemy and the sun its arch-sentinel. Trip needed a lift but he would rest convinced that only the impossible could save him now.

Trip was happiest during the school year. Things he knew had a solution never scared him. Teachers and books were friends to him. The other kids didn't hate Trip though. They very much enjoyed having a target other than themselves for the cruelty of teenage society. Trip was a wall of absorption when he wanted to be one. His progression of nicknames stretched from weirdly juvenile things like "Pig-nut" and "The Yak" to more sophisticatedly designed insults like "Grandma's Boy", "Fatty McSqueeze" and (his personal least favorite) the very classic "Dick-face". The being friendless technicality wasn't as disheveling to Trip in that kind of environment as it might have been for other kids his age. He still had his escapes: places in the library nobody thought to check, the bathroom stall with the broken door latch, and the bench outside of the principal's office. Yes, Trip liked being at school. The craziness may have been more concentrated but it was still guarded by the walls of a trusted establishment. Too bad for Trip, lifelines like rules and punishment enforcement didn't exist out in the real world.

Trip's grandmother was a pinch-faced, bitter, old lady. She had her moments of sincerity and warmth, but ever since her husband died, grief had driven Eugenia Higgins to become much more stern. Visitors and farmhands would call her "Gina". Trip would call her "Grams". His birth parents died in a plane crash when he was still a baby and Eugenia and Byron had raised him since. Trip missed his grandfather, Byron, whom he called "Pops". Smiling in every memory Trip had of him (Grams too), Pops would make a joke to fill each and every moment of silence he was a party to. Trip missed Pops very much (Grams did too).

Between the constant cackle-coo of the chicken coop and the deadening moo from the cows in the pasture behind the house Trip spent most of his hours balancing his sanity. He would lay in the shade of his favorite bush near the stream where the moss gathered stray violets and the steady trickle of water became the music of an otherwise melody-less existence. But July had hit an increasingly slow spell and sounds alone were too flimsy of a savior to keep him smiling on the inside. Time was winning the war and Trip slowly swayed away from maintaining his keep. He wondered about the concept of being grateful for the things you have and wished he could do it too. But then he remembered the invisible collection of broken wishes that piled up in the back of his mind. "Oh yeah," he sighed aloud.