The Summer of Winters (3 page)

Still, I would have preferred a sleek ten speed with the breaks on the handlebars, but at eleven I’d already gotten used to not getting what I wanted. It was like last fall when my mother had done some back-to-school shopping without me, and she’d come home with this pair of no-brand high-top sneakers that were a bright neon orange color. I knew my mother thought she’d bought me something that was “all the style,” as she liked to say, but what she’d actually done was saddle me with yet another thing that the kids at school could ridicule me for. Eventually I took an old nail and ripped up the left shoe, then told my mother I’d snagged my foot on a root when playing in the backyard. The pair of shoes she bought to replace them were even cheaper but were at least plain white and didn’t draw any unwanted attention in the school hallways.

However, unlike those orange high-tops, I wasn’t embarrassed by the Purple People Eater. Sure, it might not be my dream bike, but it was still a bike, and that meant freedom. As much as I enjoyed the backyard, sometimes I wanted to play the part of Explorer. Not that there was much to explore in Gaffney, South Carolina, but in my limited experience the town seemed vast. Of course, I typically ended up in one of two locations. The Oakland Cemetery or the Public Library, both places of quiet reflection.

As I took my bike through the basement’s outside door into the backyard, I felt unaccountably nervous. It wasn’t that I was afraid Paige wouldn’t show up; I was afraid she
would
. I wasn’t used to someone wanting to actually spend time with me. Granted, I was still pretty much a stranger to her, and there was always the possibility that once she got to know me she would catch the stink of loser on me and run screaming. That was the root of my fear.

I could have just gone back inside, told Julie I had an upset tummy, and went to bed, and the truth was, I considered doing just that. Why set myself up for more rejection and ridicule? Then again, how would I ever make any friends if I didn’t put myself out there, take the risk that went along with extending a hand toward someone else? After all, Paige had asked to hang out with me, not the other way around. Of course, it was possible she was just setting me up for some mean prank, like when Ryan Dumas and Marquis Jefferies had asked me to sit with them at lunch in third grade and had ended up knocking my lunch tray into my lap, everyone in the cafeteria pointing and laughing at me as Mrs. Childers led me to the boy’s room to get cleaned up. But Paige was new in town, had just met me; why would she want to pull a prank on me already?

These were the conflicting thoughts ricocheting around my brain as I wheeled the Purple People Eater up the steep hill to the front yard. I continued to entertain the idea that Paige might not show, but that was dashed when I discovered her already waiting for me on the sidewalk in front of my house. She stood next to her bike, which was resting on its kickstand. A typical girl’s bicycle, pink with a banana seat and a white wicker basket mounted on front. Paige herself was wearing a pair of denim shorts that were baggy on her and a red T-shirt that was too tight. I had a feeling Ray and I weren’t the only kids in the neighborhood who got their clothes secondhand.

“Hi,” Paige said brightly. “Nice bike.”

I tensed, searching her expression for some hint of mockery, but there didn’t seem to be any. Not that I could detect, anyway. “Thanks.”

“So…you ready?”

“Um, sure. Where do you wanna go?”

Paige giggled. “I don’t know, silly. That’s your job, to show me where there is to go in this town.”

“Oh, yeah, right. Well, Central Elementary is just a few blocks from here. That’ll be where you go when school starts back.”

“Sounds good. Lead the way.”

We both mounted our bikes and started off toward the school, Paige keeping pace right next to me. We rode in silence at first, and I kept trying to think of something to say. Finally I turned to her and said, “So where are you from?” because it seemed like the kind of question you would ask someone who’d just moved to town.

“Columbia.”

“That’s a pretty big city, isn’t it?” Not that I knew for sure. I’d never been outside of Gaffney in my entire life. All I knew about Columbia was that it was the state capital, so it had to be big.

“I guess so. Compared to Gaffney anyway.”

“So why’d you guys move here?”

“Dad lost his job, couldn’t find work. My Uncle Johnny lives here in Gaffney, said he could get Dad on with the construction company he works for. So here we are.”

“You miss Columbia?”

Paige shrugged. “I don’t know. I miss my old room, I guess. And my friends. But I heard my dad tell my mom one night when they thought I was sleeping that it was either move here or starve, so I guess moving here was the right thing to do whether I like it or not.”

“Oh,” was all I could think to say.

“Anyway, my mom just got a part-time job waiting tables at the Pizza Inn. What do your folks do?”

“My mom…well, she…er, she works at the Limestone mill,” I stammered, not wanting to admit she
cleaned
the Limestone mill. “And my dad…well, he’s not around anymore.”

“I hear ya. A lot of the kids at my old school had divorced parents, too.”

I neglected to mention that my parents weren’t technically divorced; my dad was just
gone
.

“Is that the school up ahead?” Paige asked.

“Yeah, that’s Central.”

Central Elementary School sat on the corner of Montgomery and Johnson Streets, a long building of red brick built in an L shape with some mobile units out back. It had a small playground that consisted of two jungle-gyms, a slide, one basketball hoop, a swing set with only four swings, and an open field where we played kickball. It was a place I dreaded seeing during the school year, but on summer break—emptied of students—it didn’t look so bad.

We rode our bikes onto the playground and stopped by the metal jungle-gym that looked like a complicated knot of pipes. It reached up about twelve feet, embedded into the hard ground, no sand or wood chips.

“Race you to the top,” Paige said, jumping off her bike and popping down her kickstand with a foot before scaling the bars with the agility of a monkey. She was already at the top by the time I got off my bike, letting it just fall over on its side.

I normally didn’t like to climb to the top of the jungle-gym, as heights tended to make me feel queasy, but I didn’t want her to think I was some kind of chicken. So I swallowed down my fear and made it to the very top, perching myself on a bar next to her, refusing to look down.

We sat in silence for a few moments, a warm breeze catching Paige’s curls and making them dance around her head, reminding me of that snake-headed woman I’d read about in some book of mythology. I sat rigidly, as if the slightest movement might send me crashing to the ground below, but Paige seemed to have an ease about her, as if she were sitting in her favorite rocking chair at home.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said after a while, “but this is kind of a pitiful excuse for a playground.”

I surveyed the area and had to admit to myself that she was right, not that I’d ever given it much thought before. I usually spent recess sitting on the two-foot high brick wall that surrounded the flagpole, reading a book.

“I’m not bragging or nothing, but at my school in Columbia we had a much better playground. Had see-saws and a merry-go-round and everything.”

“They got some of that stuff over at Thompson Park,” I said.

“Thompson Park? Where’s that at?”

“Down by the Public Library.”

Paige rolled her eyes. “Well, I don’t know where the Public Library is, now do I? Is it far?”

“Not really, just a few more blocks.”

“Well, what are we doing here? Let’s go to Thompson Park.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t like to go there; I like it here better.”

“How come?”

“There’s usually a bunch of kids at the park.”

“And that’s bad?”

I started fidgeting on the bar, felt like I was slipping and held on tight, even clinching my butt as if maybe I could get a better grip with my cheeks. “I just don’t like crowds.”

“Mike, what’s wrong? You can tell me.”

I considered it but then shook my head. “No, you’ll make fun of me.”

“Will not, I swear,” Paige said, taking her forefinger and making an X over her heart.

“It’s just, well, I don’t have…” I was going to say
any friends
, but at the last moment I changed my mind and finished, “many friends.”

“You got one more today than you did yesterday,” Paige said with a smile, reaching out and squeezing my hand before she started the quick climb down. “Now let’s go.”

I hesitated a few seconds, staring down at my hand where she’d touched me, then I followed.

***

Thompson Park was indeed as crowded as I had expected. As we coasted our bikes down Union Street, I thought all the kids running about looked like a swarm of ants. The swings, the slide, the merry-go-round, the sandbox; all seemed occupied. There were even some teenagers using the tennis court. A bunch of parents were congregating by the picnic tables, which were housed under a shelter that consisted of a flat slate roof held up by poles at each corner. The place looked even more packed than usual, as if yesterday’s rain had driven them out from underground. Just like ants.

“Hey, did you know there’s this neat graveyard not too far from here?” I said, pushing back on the pedals to slow my bike. “Has all kinds of little roads running through it, great for bike riding.”

“We’ll explore the graveyard some other time. I wanna go on the merry-go-round.”

With that, Paige rose up off her banana seat and really pumped her pedals, zipping across the parking lot before skidding to a stop by the bicycle rack. She pulled a small chain from her wicker basket and secured her bike to the rack. I didn’t have a chain, so I just parked my bike next to hers and trusted that no one would want to snatch the Purple People Eater when my back was turned.

“Come on,” she said, taking my hand and dragging me toward the merry-go-round. It was a round, rusted affair, bright red with yellow handrails spaced around the circumference at regular intervals. The thing was nearly filled to capacity, with a handful of kids standing on the ground around it getting ready to push.

Paige jumped up on the merry-go-round, squeezing herself into the group, then pointed to the nearest handrail. “Help push.”

The few times I had played on the merry-go-round, I never wanted to be one of the kids pushing. It scared me, and sometimes once the merry-go-round picked up momentum I wasn’t able to jump on and enjoy the ride; once the centrifugal force had knocked me flat on the ground where I cut open my chin on a rock. All the kids on the merry-go-round had laughed, even some of the nearby parents.

However, as happened at the Central jungle-gym, I found myself doing what Paige told me. I hadn’t even been hanging out with her an hour yet, and already I was letting her talk me into things I would normally never do. Maybe this was the peer pressure I was always hearing so much about. Next thing you knew, she’d be getting me to smoke cigarettes and jump off bridges.

When the other kids standing around the merry-go-round started to push, I grabbed hold of the yellow handrail in front of me and did my part. Started out at a trot that turned into a jog, but then the thing picked up so much speed that I really had to hoof it to keep up. I noticed the other pushers jumping up onto the merry-go-round, their whoops of joy trailing behind them. I wanted to jump, but I was too frightened to make the leap. And yet I wasn’t going to be able to keep pace with the thing much longer. Already my feet were started to skid along the ground, and I just knew I was about to eat dirt again…but then I felt a hand grip my forearm and
pull
.

Paige yanked me up and I collapsed against her, actually putting my arms around her to steady myself. She laughed in my ear, which made me start laughing. The ride was dizzying, the world passing before my eyes in a kaleidoscopic blur of color. I felt vaguely nauseated, but it wasn’t a bad feeling. I had to keep a finger on my glasses so they didn’t fly off my face. The ride couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of minutes, but it seemed longer. When the merry-go-round finally slowed and came to a stop, Paige and I stared at one another for a second then without a word we both jumped off and took up positions to push.

We rode three more times then moved on to the slide. She got me to go down on my stomach, which I’d never tried before, but it was exhilarating, almost like I was flying. Yes, that was me, Superman, transplanted from Metropolis to Gaffney. Also transplanted from a barrel-chested muscleman to a gawky pimply little kid.

We were waiting in line for the swings when I glanced toward the sandbox, and that was when all my good feelings seemed to dry up and blow away on a foul wind.

Standing with a group of his friends, facing away from me, was Dennis Winters. He was by far the meanest kid at Central Elementary, came from a bad family I’d heard my mother say and was certainly carrying on the tradition. He’d once cornered me in the boy’s room before lunch and demanded my lunch money. When I hesitated he’d grabbed my crotch and squeezed so hard I felt he was going to rip my thing right off. I’d ended up in a heap on the floor while he rifled through my pockets until he found the crumpled dollar my mom had sent me to school with.

When Mrs. Childers had asked me why I wasn’t eating, I said I must have dropped my lunch money on the way to school. She’d looked at me with a mixture of pity and disgust, then she bought my lunch for me. I didn’t tell her what Dennis had done for fear of what else he
might
do if I tattled.

And I made it a habit to avoid him if at all possible. So when I saw him standing by the sandbox, his kid sister Sarah standing beside him tugging on his shirt, I knew I had to get out of there.

“I gotta get home,” I said.

Paige turned to me. “What? Now? We haven’t gone on the swings yet.”