The next day, I woke up to the sounds of birds and cars. The birds were a lot closer of course. In fact, they were right outside my window on the sill cheeping their heads off. The cars made the usual long droning sounds of taking off and then tapering off into the silence. It was like the soundtrack to a movie. I just laid there, and eventually reached around to the pictures I took recently.
As I flipped through them, I realized that there weren’t any people in them. Lots of strange angles, some cool devices from where Uncle Kevin worked, and the sunset on my first day here. It felt empty, like I had just captured the outside of things but I was missing the inside. Before I left, I was going to take pictures of — people. Friends wasn’t exactly right, but I wanted to remember them: Kirandra, J, Uncle Kevin — everyone. It would be a lot better than forgetting, like I had never been here at all.
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Wednesday had arrived before I realized it. It was my first day off, and Uncle Kevin and I had worked out the details the evening before. He gave me a house key and said that I had to be home for dinner, which fit my plans just fine. Cutler had called later on and said that we played from one to about three. I told Uncle Kevin that I needed to go get my film from Edward’s Photo Hut also, so after LARP I’d head down there and explore Tarrant a bit more. He was ok with everything, so it looked like tomorrow would be smooth sailing.
Saturday began as an unexpectedly boring day. It turned out that Cutler and his family were taking a day trip to Akron. “It’s better than it sounds,” he had said, “because there’s this awesome gaming store in the mall. I won’t be here. I’ll be there.” He had spun around and pointed off to the northeast. Kirandra had the day shift at the antique store, so she wasn’t around, and Uncle Kevin had left for errands before I woke up.
It was Friday. I took a deep breath and basked in that fact before realizing that it was summer and so Friday wasn’t the end of the school week. Still, it was summer, and I felt like anything could happen.
So far, just about anything had happened. In three days, I had gone to see my uncle, halfway across the country, found out that I’d be working most of the summer, met Kirandra, her mom, Shira, Culter and Steve, gone to see TOGAC, and had taken tons of pictures. I ate some cereal, a little overwhelmed by it all.
Uncle Kevin was impressed with the back yard. “Now I won’t have to mow it for another six months,” he said. I didn’t find that funny, so I crammed some more fries in my mouth instead. “All you have to do is finish up the murder strip.” I knew that he meant that last bit between the trees.
“So did you meet Kirandra?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, quickly following up with, “You were right. She is different.”
If he could hear my mixed emotions, he didn’t say anything. I asked him, “Have you heard of a guy called John Cutler?”
I made my way downstairs and discovered that Uncle Kevin and I still had similar tastes in breakfast — cereal and milk. He explained in a note that he didn’t know what I liked anymore, but he figured that “Sugar Bomb Explosions” was out. I munched through some Raisin Bran while reading the rest of the note. The lawnmower was in a shed out back, along with the gas and oil and the usual shed tools in case I needed them. I looked around the house for a few minutes and then changed into some shorts and went to work.
Mowing the backyard was slow and tricky work. The lawnmower died if I moved it more than a few feet at a time, because it couldn’t cut the tall grass quickly enough. The morning trickled by in rivers of sweat and in stop-and-go mowing. I dodged an old shoe and most of the the plastic Mtn Dew bottles. One I didn’t dodge went flying out of the lawnmower and pegged the fence like a fastball.
“So you took this one, huh?” said Uncle Kevin, striding into the doorway and leaning against the jamb.
“Yeah,” I said, turning from the window and feeling suddenly self-conscious. He didn’t say which room to take, so I just picked one I liked. “It’s ok and everything, right?”
“Sure,” he said non-comittally. I don’t think he cared that I took this room, but it was a change having someone else around.
And then then my stomach rumbled. Lunch was an airport double-cheese burger that cost four times as much as it should, and that was five hours ago. Uncle Kevin grinned. “You must be hungry. I think they heard that one down the street.” I shrugged. “Anyways, let’s go downstairs and order some pizza.”
Things weren’t going too well at home, again, and I wasn’t sure if my parents were going to pull through. I really tried to stay out of it, but part of me felt like I was slowly breaking apart, like rust was flaking away, bit by painful bit. I said that I’d like to go spend the summer with my uncle Kevin. They both agreed. They needed some space and I thought that if I weren’t around, they could work things out. I’ve always felt responsible for their problems, somehow.
It was the beginning of June when they said goodbye to me at the airport, and within fifteen minutes, I was on a plane to Tarrant, Ohio to see Uncle Kevin. It was beautiful and strange. Tarrant was one of those small towns nestled in a valley where history and hope seemed to be part of the air, and Uncle Kevin wasn’t really my uncle, but an older cousin. Still, I had called him uncle since I was about six, and the name just stuck. He owned a three-story house that must have been built in the early 1900′s.
