The Everborn Page 31

  The remaining constant in Andrew’s life was, together with the absence of his father, the likewise mysterious absence of his brother. His brother had played an intimate role in the first two years of Andrew’s life, the only years Andrew could never truly remember at all. The sole remnants of his brother dwelt within his mother’s latent memories, a stagnant police report, and the lingering possibility that he may still be alive.

  Then again, the same could be said about A.J. Andy’s mother had suffered for years with that possibility. Others, including her, attributed Andrew’s periodic reclusion into fantasy to the traumas of his lost father and brother. To them, Bari and those related fantasies were invented to replace the loss.

  Andrew hadn’t the faintest idea what an Everborn was, nor that he was one, to say the least, nor that he was his own father reborn, nor that his brother was indeed alive...and that his brother was currently involved in a conspiracy to kill him.

  ***

  Andrew retired to his room early that night, around about nine o’clock. He replaced the clothes he wore all day with sweat pants and a white t-shirt, pulled down his bedcovers, switched off the room light and clicked on the knob of his table lamp. It was the usual routine on a typical Sunday night, but he was unusually tired and bored.

  The entire weekend had proven to be uneventful. The small circle of friends in his life had been unavailable, having parent-decreed matters to tend to and Andrew himself had been stuck with yard work alongside his stepfather, Dan. The greenhouse he and Dan built together the previous summer next to the backyard patio was growing increasingly depressing, since the weather had grown cold and his Venus fly traps had blackened and withered. Those plants were his prize and how he’d loved feeding them chunks of ground, beef and struggling red ants with tweezers.

  His high school homework was completed and rested in folders amidst textbooks beside his table lamp, below shelves of multitudes of read and reread paperbacks. Emerging into high school was easy academically, but the social complications for a newly initiated ninth-grade introvert expanded way too many unwanted horizons.

  Andrew wasn’t exactly hating life; he was merely in post-pubescent purgatory.

  He sat upon the edge of his bed and sedately surveyed his room. His bedroom presented a curious feast for the eyes, a feast for a boy or girl of any age. Posters of movies and movie monsters matted the otherwise antique-white walls. The overhead ceiling dripped rubber spiders and space figures of various shapes and sizes, held suspended by shoe laces and string. At the corner desk, a typewriter came up for air amidst a sea of typewritten pages and drawings of original stick-figure-like cartoons. A pile of notebooks upon his bedside table near his school textbooks harbored a handwritten collection of completed and half-completed short stories. Earlier in the day, he’d determined to work a few pages of short story scribblings before he went to sleep, but tonight this just wasn’t going to happen.

  Tonight, he was tired and bored. He switched on his clock radio, but even Doctor Demento could not give him solace.

  This was a weary, lonely night, and Andrew eventually called it one, and fell into a deep sleep.

  Even Bari hadn’t shown herself for weeks.

  He hadn’t a clue that Bari would show herself tonight, finally, not to mention a few special guest stars that would make him anything but tired and bored for the rest of his life.

  37.

  The Playground

  Andrew awoke from a dreamless void with a start to find himself shivering from the outside frosty air. Yes, he was outside. Disoriented, his senses gathered to absorb the situation. It was difficult to grasp, being that he was freezing his ass off, being that the last thing he knew was the pillow of his warm and comfy bed in the darkness of his room.

  Now, not only was he outside, but as he looked down upon himself where he was sitting, he saw that he was naked.

  He was naked.

  He sprang upwards in an immediate panic upon seeing this, only to knock his head into a vertical metal pole situated beside him, sending him back down again with his head lowered and into his lap, his hand raised towards the now-throbbing pain coursing above his right ear.

  What a fine how-do-you-do to reality.

  When he raised his gaze to the world around him a second time, his awareness registered, and he knew exactly where he was.

  He was at the playground of the elementary school across the street.

  He could not fathom how he got there or why, and since he lacked clothes of any sort, he was frightfully apprehensive. Despite the outrageous lack of reason or sanity in it all, it occurred to him that behind this obscene practical joke Bari lurked in the shadows.

  The school grounds were still and quiet and graveyard-dead, save for an occasional breeze responsible for a greater part of the chill. Where he found himself was in the center of the first-thru-third-grade playground’s jungle gym, seated with legs outstretched before him and embedded within the inner patch of tall grass impossible to be mowed by the groundskeepers’ mowers. His bare buttocks and legs were drenched with the remaining wetness caused by late evening sprinklers, and in the distance he could view the sprish-sprish of the sprinklers at work past the lengthy asphalt of basketball courts and tetherball poles and foursquare spaces at the grassy opposite end where the fifth and sixth-graders of the daytime world engaged in recess and soccer and kick ball. He could see the distant sprinklers, but for some reason despite the quiet he could not hear them.

  To his right there was another field of not only grass but a dozen or so tall evergreen trees, their branches swaying to the rhythm of the wind. Below them were the wooden lunch tables he recalled chasing friends around when he was younger and attending school here, swapping childhood roles from Superman to Star Wars characters to teasing the objects of long-lost crushes. This was all bordered by the rickety fences of the backyards of homes at the rear of the school, their lights now off and dormant to the milieu of the late late night.

  To his left and past the obstruction of the water bead-strewed jungle gym bars he could see the extensive plateau of the school building itself, sectioned by rows of hallways and hedges and grass, obscuring the outer stretch of parking lot and Gilbert Street beyond, and the adjacent row of homes where he resided. By the look of things, the time was an hour or two after midnight, or easily perhaps more, for the timer running the exterior lights of the school had clicked to an energy-saving semi-darkness where the moon and the stars generated more illumination to the grounds than the two remaining lights perched around the center main office.

  To Andrew’s rear, past the plain metallic merry-go-round and the row of swings, stood the chain-linked fence encompassing the school’s kindergarten playground. Beyond that there was a dry cement river of gutter reaching from the curb of the street in one direction and extending past the homes at the school’s rear; chain-link fenced on either side, it served as a partition between the elementary school and the expanse of field and running track leading to the high school next door.

  There was a portion of this section of gutter and fence, which held an opening and a wide wooden plank for the young people of the high school to sojourn across on their trek toward home.

  Andrew scanned the area, his thoughts running rampant towards a quick solution to this nightmare. Technically, he was only across the street from his home. If all remained quiet as it was, he might get away with a simple jaunt away from the school, away and to the safety of his house. He merely hoped that when he’d arrive there, he wouldn’t be locked out. Then what would he do?

  The answer lay right behind and beside him. Upon the wet grass as he turned to his extreme right were his sweat pants and t-shirt, tossed into an inside-out mound in the middle of the first inner segment of jungle gym bars.

  Had he walked here in his sleep and disrobed during some incredibly wet dream? This was unheard of for him, to have done such a thing. Still, it was a relief to discover he hadn’t abandoned his clothes. As he moved to collect them
, he called out Bari's name, softly, in hopes that she’d appear with assistance and insight into all of this.

  “Bari?“

  His gaze darted about him and into the encompassing darkness as he gathered his sweat pants and proceeded to straighten them out.

  Suddenly, as he cast his gaze behind him, his predicament escalated into something much worse. Three....no, four...figures were strolling his way from the grass field of the high school, making their way across the wooden plank of the cement gutter between the two schools.

  Andrew called out for Ban again, this time in desperation, albeit just as softly so as not to be heard.

  “Bari....Bari!"

  The figures were treading along the chain-linked fence of the kindergarten area the next minute, much too close for Andrew to make a sound or to make a run for it without his unclad spectacle giving him away. If he remained perfectly still, perhaps they wouldn’t even notice his presence in passing....

  As they closed in, strolling up casually, he could hear their conversing. One of the figures paused to bend down, a hand reaching into the grass. He reverted back up and continued onward with the rest, tossing whatever he’d retrieved, probably rocks, this way and that. Another figure was smoking, another halted to light a smoke for the fourth one.

  Andrew slumped his body down to camouflage himself in the shadows as the four figures approached. As he tilted his head to keep a trained eye upon them, he held his breath as it looked as if the entourage were changing their course towards the rear perimeter of the school, past the trees and to the back fences of the neighboring homes.

  But the next thing he knew they were doing just the opposite and made their way to the section of swing sets between himself and the kindergarten area, directly behind him, only several yards away.

  Slowly, meticulously, he positioned his sweat pants atop his legs and waist; at least, in the event they noticed him, this would give the appearance that he was halfway clothed. He wouldn’t dare risk the movement required to put them on fully, sicne they were so close.

  He turned the other way, to catch better sight of them. They were at the swings now, flicking the orange cherries of their cigarette butts to the ground. One of them, the shortest, took hold of a swing and spun it around, afterwards flinging it with a clang into a pole before it hit one of his companions.

  “Cummon, asswipe,” spat the one hit with the swing, the tallest of the lot.

  “Man, I am stoned,” exclaimed the swinger. He was clearly Hispanic, Andrew could tell by his accent. The others wore dark, thick jackets except for him. This one was covered in a mere t-shirt baring some indistinct logo, and jeans. He must’ve been freezing almost as much as Andrew, but, hey, he was stoned.

  “Everybody must get....” said the tallest, in jovial sing-song.

  “Yeah,” admonished another, abandoning his place at the kindergarten’s chain-linked fence and stepping up to the tallest. This one apparently wore glasses, for as he walked they fell from his face and he stooped to retrieve them. After this, he continued towards the tallest, replacing the glasses on his face to clasp hands with his friend. “Ralston, my man! You are hot hot hot!"

  “I’m hot for some tush, Bel Geddes,” an enthusiastic Ralston said to him.

  “So where to now?” asked the Hispanic mesmerized with the swings, now seated and twirling about upon the one he’d flung. “Hey, Bel Geddes, what about your sister? She home? Let’s go to your pad, man, see if she’s home.”

  “Fuck you,” Bel Geddes responded. “My sister hates you. No offense, she hates all my friends. Hey Ralston, what about you? Let’s hang at your place, strike up another fattie, watch some tube.”

  “No way,” Ralston said. “You know my mom. Let’s hang out here.”

  “It’s fuckin’ freezin’ here,” said the Hispanic guy, and no wonder, with his mere t-shirt and all.

  “Hey Michael,” Ralston said to the fourth, who as of yet had yet to say a word. Andrew was forced to twist his neck to catch sight of him, and when he did, he found the bastard directly behind him, not more than four or five yards away, crouched, his gaze jetting outwards in Andrew’s direction. “Michael. You with us, man? What about your pad?”

  But Michael had surely caught sight of Andrew and the following few seconds confirmed it. Andrew began to shiver again, this time not from the cold, but from dreadful alarm.

  “Guys,” Michael announced, “there’s a dude over there.”

  “Over where?” said Ralston. Already, Michael was sauntering up to the jungle gym. The others took notice and followed, until Andrew was surrounded by the four inquisitive stragglers.

  Andrew raised his gaze to each of them in mute salutation and with a quirky half-smile, his ungainly defenses overwrought by the desperate inclination to play the part as if absolutely nothing was wrong. On one hand, he was naked, literally, and vulnerable. Even if he was a fighter, which he wasn’t, it would be no easy task defending himself like this. On the other hand, Bari was sworn to be around to protect him at all times.

  Bari. This was likely her fault to begin with.

  Now that the four were upon him, their appearances matched the mental sketches Andrew had drawn in his mind during their liaison at the swings, intensely personified now, extremely threatening. They were hoodlum rock n’ rollers, at least two years Andrew’s seniors and undoubtedly high schoolers, or high school dropouts. Each was crowned with short dark hair and various shades of dark skin save for one, the tallest, by far the whitest, the one whom the others called Ralston. The moonlight revealed his long, shoulder-length hair, and at this new angle Andrew could view the black baseball cap he clenched within his right hand.

  Ralston knelt down in between the bars directly before Andrew and intrusively closer than his counterparts, who were now leaning against the jungle gym bars but otherwise stood erect.

  Ralston took the initiative to be the first to speak at this point. “What’ve we got here?”

  “Dude,” remarked Bel Geddes, the one with the glasses, to Andrew, “you look fucked up.”

  Andrew took solace in that they were stoned, and that consequently any response should do, After all, for all they knew, was a hoodlum rock n’ roller high schooler, too. He said, “I got in a fight with my folks. Got kicked out on my ass.”

  “Bummer,” said Bel Geddes.

  “That’s fucked up,” said Ralston. “I’ve been kicked out on my ass, but never like this, at, what, what time is it, anyway? You must be freezin’ your ass off, lookin' like that.”

  “I am,” Andrew said. The illusion was working, his sweat pants draped across him as they were. “It’s okay. No sweat. I’m used to it.”

  “Hey,” exclaimed Michael, the bastard who discovered him in the first place, leaning dramatically closer and through the first set of bars, “this dude’s got no clothes on!”

  The bastard.

  Ralston leaned closer, too, his eyes studying. “What? No shit.”

  Andrew was speechless. There was a pause amongst them, and if it was any longer a pause, it would’ve allowed time for him to summon an explanation. But it was too late for that.

  Unexpectedly, Ralston commenced what began to seem like a slow, disgusted reversal from Andrew as he withdrew halfway from the mouth of the jungle gym. He lifted his baseball cap and placed it upon his head, adjusted it.

  Andrew took advantage of this pause and rather than spend it proclaiming excuses for his nudity he endeavored to hasten his sweat pants over his ankles. He managed to merely bring them up to his kneecaps when Ralston threw himself forward and pounced upon Andrew.

  “What are you,” Ralston challenged, “some kinda pervert? Huh? Fuckin’ pervert.”

  And with that, Ralston went for Andrew’s ankles, took a firm grasp of them, and with spontaneous ease slid Andrew’s body across the wet grass and out of the sanctuary of the jungle gym.

  The nameless Hispanic swing-set guy called over to Ralston, “Hey, give him a chance, man...let him put his p
ants on....”

  But the others ignored this and Ralston initiated a swift kick to the side of Andrew’s rib cage, then sent a blow just short of his hip. The other two flanking each side of Ralston followed suit, the nameless one helplessly looking on as his friends shouted and cursed, as Andrew curled into a ball and took it in all its painful humility, longing for Bari, feeling by now she would never come.

  As for the ones who proceeded to beat him, they continued to do so, allowing Andrew a merciful pause so he could pull up his sweats, though they wouldn’t let him be just yet.

  For now, they’ve settled on a place to hang out at and found something with which to occupy their time.

  ***

  Andrew experienced more humility than pain from the beating. Their blows could have hurt a hell of a lot worse if these weren’t typical high school bullies more apt to cruelly teasing him than to seriously injure him. But with each slam dunk to the head, he felt himself becoming severely dizzy.

  Just then, out of the direction of the dark asphalt sea behind them, there cried a loud youthful voice.

  “Leave him alone!”

  Andrew’s assailants instantly discarded him on the grass and turned to look, all at once, all in the same direction like a group of rogue vultures startled from their writhing quarry. Their rumpus had attracted an on-looking guest. To Andrew, the voice was relievingly similar to Bari’s; when he managed to turn over on his side to catch a glimpse of whatever it was the older youths were seeing, the figure he beheld did not match Bari’s voice.