A short story I wrote back in high school

Seriously, I wrote this as a kid, don’t judge it too harshly, hopefully it’ll distract you guys from your worries for a bit.

You know how it is, when there’s someone who wants to be your friend but you don’t want to be theirs, and you can’t ever tell them you don’t like them because it would hurt their feelings. So every time you see them you say hi and talk but you never really hang out with them one on one. They might suggest it, but you always have some excuse, you hang out with them in a group if at all.

Michael was like that to me, and Andrew was our group. Andrew is my cousin and Michael was his friend who always seemed to think I was just as close to him as I was to Andrew. I liked hanging out with Andrew, but Michael was just a friend of a friend to me. Michael was extremely pale, with blue eyes and blond hair. He was small and skinny; he looked really young for his age.

Andrew looked more like me, brown eyes, dark hair, normal skinned and average sized. Our moms were sisters and our step-dads had been best friends, so we’d grown up together and hung out a lot, even though I was younger and a little shorter. Andrew and Michael met when they were twelve years old through sports; they were in soccer, baseball, and basketball together and liked to play frisbee in the park. Michael looked out of place around Andrew because he was so small.

Because he and Andrew were great friends, and Andrew and I were great friends, Michael thought he and I were buddies too. But his “What’s up, buddy?” irritated me because he was annoying, told the same jokes all the time, and had a loud, dumb laugh. But since he was always over at Andrew’s and I definitely didn’t hate him enough to stop hanging out with my cousin, we ended up hanging out a lot. He was okay most of the time but while we had fun playing frisbee or hanging out around the park he always did something that made me mad, ruffle my hair like I was a little kid or tease me. I think Andrew kind of knew how I felt because he told me, “Don’t let Michael bother you, he treats everyone like a little brother, it just keeps him from feeling so small. He’s a good guy to have around, you know he’s always got my back and I have his.” I didn’t care what Andrew said, I hated Michael more than anything, but I guess I was getting used to having him around too.

Andrew cried a lot at his funeral. I cried a little too. I couldn’t believe he was dead, couldn’t believe something this horrible had happened. However I felt about him, Michael had never ever deserved this. The whole next year was different, because Andrew’s family moved away to a different neighborhood and Andrew and I didn’t share a single class anymore. Hanging out with him wasn’t the same. I couldn’t talk about it to anyone but the therapist I went to all year long and I struggled with intense feelings of guilt for not liking Michael, for actually hating him when all he wanted was to be friends. It took a long time for the feeling of remorse and horror to fade, every time I happened to pass his house or went to the park to play frisbee I felt it. “I’m sorry, Michael. I’m really sorry.” I’d whisper over and over, hoping his ghost, or angel or whatever it was would hear me. I knew he couldn’t hear me, that I was really saying it to myself, but it made me feel better to apologize.

But, sometimes, bigger troubles come to fill the place of the ones you thought were the worst. Every other Sunday I had to go live with my mom and my step-dad for a week. He was ok, at first, but he was always bugging me to go out and play more, said I played too many video games, didn’t hang out with friends enough, didn’t do this or that. Gradually I realized he just didn’t want me around him. When I went back to school if I was home I had to be either studying or doing yard work otherwise he’d start yelling at me again. It got so bad I started asking my dad if I could just stay with him for an extra week instead of going back to my mom’s house.

“Just talk to your mom, John. Tell her how you feel, she’ll understand.” He said. “Maybe you guys can find a balance, because you should be helping out with yardwork and doing your homework anyway. That’s not a bad thing.”

So I told my mom how I felt, that Brad wouldnt leave me alone and he always treated me like crap. She didn’t really help. I don’t know if she talked to him or not, but things seemed to get a lot worse after that. If he ever had anything to say to me it was to insult me or to tell me to go outside. I always knew he didn’t like me, but now I was beginning to think he actually hated me. Sometimes I’d catch him staring with burning anger in his eyes, and I’d take whatever I was doing and go up to my room to get away from it. I complained to my dad again and he said he’d talk to mom about it. But then he was called away on a business trip that week, and at the same time mom was gone for a business trip of her own. I was left alone with Brad.

The first night he was gone all night long. I am not even kidding, I played video games late on a school night and fell asleep on the couch, only to hear him come in at five in the morning. I have no idea where he was all night but he was drunk when he came back. I had to call Andrew’s mom to bring me to school. When she got there, she asked why couldn’t Brad do it and I told her, and she got this worried, depressed look on her face. I hate seeing that look, it makes me feel like adults aren’t really in control. “I’ll have to tell Alice. You should come stay with us until she gets back.” She told me. “I’ll get your stuff after school.” I almost liked that less. However bad Brad was, Andrew’s step-dad was ten times worse. He threatened Andrew a couple times and started a huge family scene when we found out Andrew’s sister was pregnant. He almost threw her out of the house but Andrew’s mom called his real dad and they dealt with it. Lynn ended up moving out soon after anyway, but neither she nor Andrew like being around while their step-dad was there.

Anyway it was arranged that I spent the night at Andrew’s for the next few nights. It was cool hanging out with him again, though it was still different and we got in trouble the very first day. We’d been outside shooting bb guns at cans set up in the trees in Andrew’s backyard, came in hungry and thirsty and bugged his mom for something to eat. When she said that there was nothing to eat, Andrew mumbled “Come on, mom, there’s no way you could’ve eaten all our food.”

My aunt’s voice rose. “Andrew Christian Pierce! Don’t you dare tell me that. You get what you need when you need it and a lot more besides! Now go put those damn guns away!” It was the first time I had heard my aunt cuss.

“What’s all this noise?” I cringed inwardly when Andrew’s step-dad came in. He wasn’t too big, only an inch taller than my aunt, but he was bigger than us and angry looking and constantly verbally or emotionally abusive towards the family. I was scared of him. He looked at us, pointed his finger at Andrew. “You! Get your ass out of the kitchen right now before I throw it out. What’s that skinny kid doing here?” He growled at my aunt as he looked at me. She brushed her hair out of her face. “He’s staying with us for a few days, James.”

“Not without my permission he’s not! You’re letting another whiny little brat stay here? You can’t even keep control of your own kids!” He yelled at her, his face flushing. My aunt gritted her teeth and Andrew and I escaped from the kitchen as their shouting match started. It didn’t get any better the next few days. Finally, the day before mom was supposed to come back, things came to a climax. I’d been feeling weird all day, it’d been an unusually warm afternoon and the air-conditioning wasn’t working in my last class so the teacher opened the window. I was lucky, my seat was next to it and I felt the breeze first. Warm sweat ran down my neck as I listened to the cicadas drone on and on in the August heat and began to get this sick feeling.

“Mom, where are you going?” Andrew called to her as she went to the car. She didn’t answer, just got into the car and drove away. We went inside and saw Andrew’s step-dad watching TV and drinking beer.

“Your mom’s gone for awhile.” He grunted. “You better not give me any trouble.” As we walked past him he swiveled in the overstuffed chair to look at us. “Hey.” He threw a frisbee at Andrew. “Go play outside for awhile.” Andrew looked down at it and I knew he was thinking about Michael. “I SAID GO!” James roared. We stayed out there all afternoon, tossing the frisbee back and forth.

“Yeah. Every time I go by that park.”

“Me too.” He tossed the frisbee half-heartedly and it landed a few feet from me. I didn’t even pick it up. Andrew walked over and got it, then he threw it high and far into the trees behind his house. “Let’s do something else.” We picked up his baseball mitts that were lying around his yard and began to play catch. “I hate it when mom’s not here.” He said. “Especially once James started hitting me when she’s gone.” I remembered him showing me the bruises and making me promise not to tell anyone, because James said if he told he’d hurt the family. “He really scares me.”

“Me too.” I picked up the baseball bat and he pitched. I swung, connected and it also went into the trees. We stood staring after it for a moment. A wind blew around the yard, ruffling Andrew’s dark hair and making goosebumps rise on my arm. Then it was gone, replaced by the warm, sticky heat and an unsettling quiet. The sun had begun to set, the cicadas had gone quiet and dark clouds were rolling in. I shivered. “Let’s go inside.” I said, the uneasiness from earlier today stirring inside my stomach.

Andrew turned his head to watch as the sun, a blazing, orange globe entangled in the trees, sank a little further. The sun turned him into a black silhouette. “This can’t last much longer.” He said quietly. “Something is going to happen.” We went back into the house, leaving all his baseball stuff out in the yard.

The TV was still going and Andrew’s step-dad was still in front of it, the only difference is that he now had a cigaret in his mouth. Andrew grabbed some food from the shelf while I drank from the sink. It was piled full of dirty dishes and I had to move some of them aside to reach the faucet. We had poptarts and milk for dinner and were talking about our history teacher, apparently the school had given us the same teachers but at different times, when James came into the kitchen.

“Where’s my frishbee?” He slurred. We looked at him, didn’t say anything. We watched, waited to see what he would do. He came closer and grabbed Andrew, “Where’sh my frishbee?” He yelled again.

“W-we left it outside somewhere” Andrew said. His eyes were wide and I knew he was scared of his step-dad. I sat with my half-eaten poptart in my hand, being very quiet. James backhanded his stepson and turned his bloodshot eyes to me.

“Go get it, John.” I slid off my chair and pulled open the glass door. Outside the sun had sunk farther behind the trees and the sky was rapidly darkening. The clouds had not moved, they just sat above the house in an ominous mass, waiting. It felt like something else was waiting out there too. I could see the bright orange edge of the frisbee at the edge of the bank where the yard slipped away into trees and a little stream, and the dread I’d felt all day culminated in my chest. I turned back to see James right behind me.

“I-I don’t want to go out there.” I mumbled.

“Whatsa mattr? You a coward like Andrew here? You afraid of the dark?” He sneered, the beer on his breath wafting down to me.

I was afraid of this dark. Normally nighttime didn’t scare me, but today something didn’t feel right. “Can’t I get it tomorrow?” I whined. He grabbed me and put his burning cigarette against my skin. I screamed and writhed and he snarled into my face. “I said go get it.” He dropped me, and with the little round circle burning with pain just beneath my left eye I ran out the kitchen door into the overshadowed backyard, sniffling. Halfway towards the trees my bare feet seemed to slow of their own accord. I could see the bright piece of color at the edge of the embankment was just a piece of plastic, meaning the frisbee was even farther into the woods, and I had to go find it in the dark. The creeping fear took over me again.

I looked back, and couldn’t see Andrew or his step-dad in the kitchen. Everything was getting dark. I could just barely see the baseball mitt on the ground where Andrew dropped it, but I didn’t see the bat anymore. I started moving towards the woods, my fear gripping me so tight I almost couldn’t breath. I stepped on twigs and rocks but my feet didn’t feel anything. It was so warm out, and way too still. I entered the trees and breathed a sigh of relief to see the frisbee sitting on a branch at the other side of the stream.

The stream itself was shallow but the bank was steep, and I had a little trouble getting down it in the dark. I dropped down into the streambed and walked across the stream, up to my knees in the warm water and my ankles in squishy, soft mud. On the other side I climbed up and had to pull myself up the gnarly roots to reach the little branch where the frisbee was waiting. I could barely see the frisbee as I reached for it, so eager to get it so I could get back inside. Chills ran down my spine at the silence behind me and I couldn’t help looking over my shoulder. The loud, dumb laugh came out of nowhere. I jumped and screamed, my fingers jabbing against the frisbee and causing it to slide down between the roots and the dirt bank. It landed on a face. Dead blue eyes staring into mine and I screamed loud as a boy rose from where he’d been squatting underneath the roots of the tree. He had a baseball bat in his hands. I lost my grip and fell backwards, landing with a splash in warm water as he stood over me.

“What’s up buddy?”

My heart was pounding hard in my chest and my ears were ringing. I stared slack jawed up at a figure in the night, then I turned and clawed my way back up the embankment and sprinted hard across the yard, not stopping until I was through the sliding glass doors and in the kitchen. I stood there, trembling and shaking, the table between me and the door and James and Andrew in front of me. I started to cry. James knocked me to the ground when he saw that I didn’t have his frisbee but I didn’t feel it. I couldn’t explain what I had seen and the terror was too fresh and real to make room for anything else. They both stared at me, they didn’t see the figure moving across the backyard towards them.

As the frisbee dropped onto the kitchen floor. I realized with another painful jolt that the door rebounded just enough when I slammed it in my rush to get inside, for someone to push the frisbee through. Michael was standing right outside the glass, staring in at us. His fingers followed the frisbee through the crack and the door slowly began to slide open. The light from the living room illuminated his pale body, his features, grinning and lifeless. One side of his body was spattered with blood and twisted, the other side streaked with red-brown dirt. He came in as we stared at him and looked down at me on the floor, over at Andrew who sat at the table, whos face was bloody from James. He looked at each of us in turn, and we stared back, no one knowing what to do. All of a sudden Michael was standing in front of me, and he put his finger on the burn mark on my face.

“Is he hurting you guys?” He looked at James. “Are you hurting my friends?”

James stumbled backwards and Michael stepped forward, a baseball bat hanging from his hand. Andrew and I could do nothing as he followed James to his room. There was a drunken scream and crack, followed by more screams, then Michael came back out. “Don’t go in there.” He looked at me and I sucked in my breath, nauseated and horrified. “What are you doing here on a school night?”

“It’s because of your step-dad, right?” I was too terrified to nod. Michael’s skin was translucent in its whiteness and blue veins stood out in the dark kitchen. His unnaturally pale hand reached for me, I closed my eyes tight and felt a hand ruffle my hair and heard the phone dialing. “Don’t worry,” Michael told me, “Everything is gonna be fine.”

We heard the door open and turned to see my step-dad walking into the house, drunk. He stopped in the doorway, eyes wide and staring. Michael sat between Andrew and I, we started playing video games with Michael when he asked if we wanted to, both of us to terrified to do anything other than what he asked. I saw Brad’s eyes travel down Michael and up again. In the bright living room light the slpattered blood showed luminescent, clear against his face and body. That, combined with the morgue-pale skin and the broken body, seemed to scare Brad more than anything.

“Meet my friend Michael.” I said.