The boys went back to the church, staying with the nice people until their mom was allowed to leave the hospital. They found more permanent sleeping arrangements and learned a wide variety of prayers. It seemed the church people had prayers for everything. Prayers before eating, prayers before sleeping, prayers before playing, prayers before going to school. The list went on and on.
They went to the school the church people paid for. The one that taught them every day of the week, including Sunday. Albert had told them he was certain school was not supposed to be on Sunday, but they told him they knew better. They stayed with the church people until after their mom came home from the hospital with their new sister, Olivia Lydia Felix. After that, they stayed with their mom again, but she still left their sister with the church most of the time for daycare.
It was a nice chapter in their life of driving from coast to coast. It was the longest they’d ever stayed in one place, in one town, in one church. However, the van never sat dusty for long as the ache for adventure would eventually call them again.
He was ten years old, and his brother was eight. Their new sister wasn’t quite as new now that she was three.
Their mom had been having trouble with the church. They didn’t like how his mom had no permanent place to raise so many children. They didn’t like that she was doing it on her own. They didn’t like that she wasn’t looking for anything they wanted her to look for. Albert remembered the day his mom declared him old enough to look after the baby, and that was that. She ended her relationship with the church and had all their things packed by the time they’d arrived home from school.
This wasn’t Albert’s first time saying goodbye.
He’d said goodbye to synagogues and schools and teachers and classmates more times than he could even remember. He was not sad to see the church disappear in the rearview mirror of the behemoth as it took its rightful place on the highway once again. He was happy to feel the wind in his hair through the window of the passenger seat that never fully cranked up all the way.
He was finally old enough to sit up front.
Fred wasn’t as happy. He’d never hated the van, but the illness from too much driving didn’t go away after three years in one town. The child was far less vocal about it now than he had been then, but he still groaned and closed his eyes as the van bounced along. He’d frequently ask to use the bathroom just for an excuse to stop the car. He’d also gotten quite attached to that church. He’d enjoyed the songs they’d taught him and the certain sense of stability their ideas had given him. He spent the day very silent, but he didn’t complain. On some level, Fred had known just as well as Albert that it wasn’t going to last.
That night, as they spent their first night in the van again after three strange years, Albert joined his brother and sister in the back. He didn’t miss the church and he knew he never would, but he’d also never forget it. He sat in the back with his brother and sister and said their nightly prayer with them, if only to make them feel better.
“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray The Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake, I pray The Lord my soul to take.”
Albert didn’t know that the journey's rest would only be the first. They returned to their nomadic life for a while. They spent their days with the wind and the radio as the only things that could catch them. Winding through the state like outlaws on the run. Albert got to show his sister Olivia new things, like what plants only grew in the rain and how to make a rubber band gun with your fingers. It was paradise on the road once again until his mom parked the car.
He was ten years old, his brother was eight and his sister had just turned four.
In the mouth of the woods, just outside Elsewhere, Pennsylvania.
Strange to name a town 'Elsewhere', but it wasn't as strange as the place outside the town that was introduced to them by the man named Jim and his wife Eleanor. It was privately owned land that had been repurposed for something. It was something that most people saw as out of the ordinary in terms of a way of life, but Albert's life had always been out of the ordinary, so his hopes were high. Buried deep in the private woods sat a little town, a little village, self-sustaining and cut off from the rest of the state. It was the strangest town Albert had ever seen, with tents instead of houses and trails instead of roads. He’d never been ‘camping’ before, but he imagined from the stories told by now-faceless children he’d met at various schools that this was what it was like.
They still lived in the van, but the van was no longer alive. It sat, parked and stationary, in its place. A house on wheels that never moved. It all had happened so fast, just months between being stuck then moving then stuck again. Albert wasn’t sure he was ready to settle down, but Fred was excited. He reveled in getting to play in the woods every day and live in the van without the endless jostling. While Fred went out and made friends, Albert stayed by the van. Not willing to get used to something that wasn’t going to last.
He hoped bitterly, this wouldn’t last.
Albert sat on his camping chair in front of the van doing puzzles in his coloring book. The weather was warm and mild, but that was because it was spring. He watched his brother play land marco-polo with some of the other kids in the commune. There weren’t many of them, and they were all disparaging ages, but they seemed to have a way of making the day fun with what little they had. Albert had seen kids from six to sixteen who’d never gone a day without watching a specific TV show. He’d seen kids with personal Ipods and video game consoles to fill their time. They would get bored in the middle of laser tag and just leave.
He looked up from his coloring book and pitied them, but he’d never seen anything like this.
A girl with the posture of a bird about to strike at the water followed silently behind the older teenager with his eyes closed. He shouted “Marco!” and she got close enough next to his ear to shout “POLO!” in a holler that made the boy flinch. He whirled around with his arms out wildly. The children couldn’t hold their giggling as they quietly edged around the section of the path that was considered ‘in bounds’. The girl repeated this several times, bare feet making no noise on the dirt trail as she stayed just close enough to mess with him, but just far enough to walk silently and leap out of reach when needed. After a few more attempts and shouts of “Marco!” The older teenager finally opened his eyes in frustration.
“You’re ruining it!”
“You opened your eyes, you’re out.” She laughed, pride evident in her victory. The kid looked at the other kids gathered for the game before looking back at her.
“Whatever, spaz.” He grimaced, tagging the nearest player who just so happened to be Fred. There were ‘ooooh’s from the onlookers but the girl seemed unbothered.
“You betray your own!” She called after him, but the kids around had already started chattering and picked back up the game. He’d gotten the last word. The girl left the game, apparently unwilling to mess with Fred as she did with the teenager. Whether it was due to her bruised pride or her indifference toward Fred was unclear. She picked a nice spot on the ground across the trail from Albert and sat down in the weeds. No chair or shoes, just bottom to dirt. She scraped the soil around and pulled the brambles out by their roots.
Albert realized he hadn’t looked at his coloring book in a long time as he watched the girl. He still couldn’t find a way to look away as she produced a water bottle from her backpack, dumping half its contents into the small hole she’d dug. She stirred it with a stick and added the plants she’d been uprooting. Her mouth was moving but Albert couldn’t hear her from where he was. His fixation was finally broken when movement by his feet caught his eye, and he jumped clear off his chair at the sight of a large, gray rodent sniffing around his shoe. He kicked madly at it and it scampered across the trail in fright, breaking up the game in shrieks of fear and disgust. He wasn’t sure he liked the woods.
It passed the girl but she just watched it scurry with interest before turning back to her stirring. Fred saved him, pulling him off his chair by his arm and demanding he play on his team for an impromptu game of ultimate frisbee.
Albert rubbed the stinging red spots on his hands from where he’d been knocked into the trail during the game. He’d brushed it off at the time to keep playing but now that the endorphins of sport had worn off he could feel the brush burns clearly. It was getting late into the evening and the sun had gone from a gentle overhead presence through the trees to a warm and golden blanket on the horizon. Albert made to cross the trail to where his chair was, only to stumble, shoe and sock suddenly soaked as he tripped over the hole in the ground. He felt disgusted at the sensation traveling up his spine before he was interrupted by a voice.
“Hey! You ruined my potion!” the same barefoot girl from before stomped up the road to where he was half kneeling in the dirt.
“Your hole ruined my shoe!” He shot back. Who did this creep think she was? Digging holes in the walkway was a disaster waiting to happen, even if he had seen her do it.
“Well…” She looked down as his soaked and muddy shoe next to her now overflowed and half-empty pit in the ground. “I guess we both suck.” She announced. For some reason this made humor rise in Albert's chest. She just admitted she sucks? And something about the flat way she said it. He tried to hold it in at first but it came out his nose in a snort that became full laughter. The girl crossed her arms, snickering a little if only at the sight of him.
“Yeah you suck,” He agreed, standing up again and rolling his ankle to make sure he hadn’t sprained it.
“It’s ok to suck.” She responded. Albert felt an arrogance blossom in his skin at her admission. “You’re the new kid, right?” She added afterward.
“One of them.” He answered. “My brother and sister are new here too, and my mom I guess.” He rattled off as he finished crossing the path, sitting down heavily on his chair and kicking off the wet shoe. She followed him into his ‘yard’ without permission, taking a seat on the ground in front of him and examining his discarded shoe in her hand. “That’s gross.” He remarked.
“How?”
“It’s covered in mud.”
“My potion.”
“My foot was just in it.”
“So you’re gross?”
“No!” He shouted in indignation, her nose wrinkled as she grinned from getting a rise out of him. “You’re so weird.”
“Thank you.” She answered earnestly. “But you’re weird too, why were you staring at me?” She asked, pointing accusingly at him with his own shoe.
“I wasn’t staring at you.” He defended, and she whistled. How did she do that? Albert didn’t know how to whistle.
“You’re really defensive.”
“No, I’m not!” He defended again, completely proving her point. What was happening? “You’re just wrong a lot.”
“Yeah but it’s fun, you turn red when you’re mad.”
“No, I…” He stopped himself this time, his face was hot and now he knew why. “What are you doing here?” He asked instead. She lowered her eyebrows in confusion, fixing him with a dark-eyed stare that made him feel see-through.
“I thought we were talking. You’re new and I wanna be friends.” She said it so honestly, so shamelessly. Friends weren’t something Albert talked about having or wanting to be. They just happened naturally, otherwise, it was weird. Right?
“Why?” He found himself squawking. She smiled a big toothy smile at this.
“Cause I made you laugh.” She said, and Albert didn’t know what she meant by that. This was the first conversation he’d ever had with someone his own age where he couldn’t figure out what to say. At least he thought she was his age, but she’d had a twist on everything he’d expected from her so far. A zag for every zig and a dodge for every swipe. “What’s your name?” She asked after a moment of silence from him. He began to call himself his nickname but corrected himself in time.
“Albert…Oliver Felix.” He introduced himself in full. She grinned and gave him a side-eyed glance.
“You have three first names?”
“No.” He said shortly, and she didn’t push it.
“Ok, Albert Oliver Felix,” Dodge, “It’s nice to meet you.” She stood and brushed the dirt off her denim overall dress, sticking a hand out to him. He took the handshake without thinking, realizing too late as his skin scorched over and his eyes avoided her that this was the first time he’d ever touched a girl his age. At least, he thought she was his age.
“Nice to meet you,” He responded stiffly, unable to come up with something clever as he panicked in his head over the contact. She pulled her hand away too quickly and the awkwardness left him.
The tree’s shadows had grown so long that they covered the entire forest floor. The sky had gone from bright white and yellow to a medium blue with soft orange on the edges. The wind carried with it the chill of approaching night as it swayed the trees and wicked the sweat off Albert’s neck.
“I should probably go inside since it’s getting cold,” Albert remarked after a while. The girl picked up her backpack from the opposite side of the trail where she’d left it by her handmade puddle.
“If you want.”
“Are you going home?” He asked, not entirely sure why he was curious.
“Nope.” She grinned but didn’t explain more. Albert looked at the rapidly darkening woods, the cicadas and crickets already beginning their nighttime songs.
“Where are you going?” He asked, confused why she’d want to stay out so late. She crossed the path to him again, handing his shoe back. Her smile was bright and evil and lopsided, not the smile of a pretty girl.
“On an adventure.” She responded vaguely, not a zig but a zag. Albert felt his thoughts stall as he processed someone else using the same words. “Wanna come?”
“At night?” He asked finally. She kicked the pebbles on the ground with her bare heels, as if waiting for him to stop talking to her so she could leave.
“Yeah, the woods feel different at night.” She said to the stones.
“But it’s dark,”
“You’re scared of the dark?” She asked. It didn’t sound like a taunt, just a question. As if most people were afraid of the dark. Albert rose to it like a taunt anyway.
“No, but I don’t like snakes and ticks and-”
“That’s…” She hesitated for a second. “That’s still being afraid of the dark.” Albert fumed in silence before snatching his coloring book off his chair.
“I’m going inside.”
“Kay, good night.” She laughed at his frustration. She laughed way too often. He heard her turn around as he opened the sliding door to the van. He’d just stepped inside, tossing his coloring book on the other seat before he heard her shout from down the trail. “I like your name by the way!”
He slammed the door before he processed what she said.
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