Felix was ten years old. He lived on the road and slept in a car.
Until the best summer of his life.
Granted, his life had not been very long until that point, but he couldn’t imagine a better way to live it. His days were spent running around the woods with his brother and the other children, finding branches with which to do righteous battle. They climbed trees and collected cicada shells, and hunted birds with homemade traps and homemade cunning. He spent his evenings telling stories of the road to the other children around the sparklers they lit to honor the god of the stars. His morning’s doubt in their new life went to sleep as the sun went down, and he felt that home could mean a parked van, a tented commune, and a copse of trees that no one could take from them. He felt like home has the world, not the van.
His nights…
His nights were never for sleep. His brother started to notice the dark circles that formed under his eyes as the weeks passed. The way he’d take naps at school and spend much of the day resting in the sun rather than running around with his fellow children. He worried, but Felix didn’t care, because the nights belonged to them. The nights when the last robin fell silent and the only life in the village was the gentle crackle of the nightly bonfire, that time was just for him and Locust.
She was right, it was a peculiar name. However, he hadn’t laughed. She went on to tell him sometime later that it was a particular insect. A kind of creature that was the plague of religious cataclysms. It was a harbinger of death, pestilence, and forthcoming disaster. He’d told her, in the nicest way he could, that he thought the name fit her perfectly. Locust. His Locust.
He spent his nights by her side that summer. They were close during the day, but only as close as friends were. In the night they were close as two souls staring into an endless cosmos together. There was an understanding that they both had no idea what they were doing, but it would be fine and it would be fun so long as it was together. She made him a woven string for his half of the wishbone, two strings of dark blue and one of yellow. He wore it around his neck as a continual line to bind him to her, to whatever this was. She wore hers as well and said it was so they could match.
He was pretty sure she wasn’t magic, but she had placed a kind of spell on him that night they split the wishbone. He was hers, and he didn’t even know what that meant. It was fitting, how she invaded his thoughts and his actions like a parasite, like bugs in his ears that wormed their way into his brain and left holes in his thoughts. He saw the dry wildness of her hair in the trees and the grass, he saw her wobbly laugh in the dappled spots of sunlight on the leaf-covered ground, he felt her thoughts in his own decisions and her wonder and terror in his words as they developed.
Everyone called him Albert, but she was the only one to call him Felix.
It was the best summer of his life until the day it ended, and his mom unparked the van. She’d been having trouble in the commune for a while. Felix didn’t know the full extent, but he had picked up more than he had back at the church a lifetime ago. They spoke in hushed voices around him as if he couldn’t hear, but Felix could hear. He heard them when they said his mom couldn’t bring certain items or commodities into the commune, but she did anyway. He heard them when they said his mom wasn’t allowed to invite outsiders into the commune, but she did anyway. He could understand well enough to know that the man who’d been keeping her away from the van most nights was unwelcome.
He was eleven, his brother was nine, and his sister was five.
His mom had their things packed before they’d gotten home from school.
This time it was Felix who threw a fit when she gave them the news. He didn’t care if his mom had gotten kicked out, he hadn’t. He loved the road as much as they did, but he had reasons he wanted to stay. He had something to lose. An eleven-year-old boy had little authority against his mom, but he could still run from it. He ran down the trail in panic, sprinting as fast as his young legs would carry him to the one place he knew he could find answers, the one person who could understand.
Locust lived in a lean-to on the other side of the commune's center pit. Her home was large and open and inviting, but she wasn’t there amidst the colorful clothing and tapestries that formed the boundaries. Her mom was there and caught him as he circled the home, panting and searching the outside with frantic eyes. He called for her over and over.
“Locust!”
“Felix?” It was not the voice he wanted to hear as Locust’s mom approached him, hands red and green with tye dye. He didn’t like that she called him that, only Locust was supposed to call him that. She wore a bright orange dress with a giant tree on it.
“Um…Mrs. Locust’s mom, I need to talk to Locust.” He said nervously, not actually knowing her last name. Or first name, for that matter.
“She’s not here right now, she’s at the library in town with her dad.” She said gently. “What’s got you all worked up?”
“I…my mom…” He wanted to talk to Locust, but with no way to do so, he just fell apart in front of the woman. “My mom’s…sniff…making us move…sniff…to Nevada with that guy…sniff…and I’m not gonna see her anymore…” He wasn’t crying yet, but he was blubbering like a kid. He was a kid, so the kind woman just put down her laundry basket of to-be-dyed cotton and knelt down. She hugged him and petted his hair. It wasn’t unpleasant, but he didn’t ask for it.
“Hey, shhhh it’s ok honey.” She placated the child on the brink of tears. “When are you leaving? Locust will be back soon and you can say goodbye to her properly.” She promised, but the prospect just made him hyperventilate harder. He’d never find anyone like her again, especially not in Nevada.
“I don’t wanna say goodbye.” He pleaded desperately, too upset already to be ashamed of the way his voice squeaked.
“I know, I know…” She tried to comfort him, and it almost worked. He almost felt like the world wasn’t crashing down around him until his mom found him.
“Albert Oliver Felix!” She called his full name from the trail, obscured by the colorful blankets hung from branches and clotheslines.
“Is that your mom?” The woman whispered. Felix shook his head desperately, but the woman just gave him a look of pity.
He didn’t like it.
“Albert-”
“He’s over here, Roberta!” She called weakly over Felix’s head where she held him. He felt betrayal sit bitterly in his stomach. He screwed his eyes shut as his mom came through the tapestries, Fred close on her heels.
“Oh, thank you, Raven.” She breathed, kneeling down and taking Felix’s face in her hands, examining him closely. He stared stubbornly at her shirt. “Why’d you run off?” She asked firmly. Felix kept staring at her shirt. “Answer me little mister.”
“Don’t wanna go.”
“What was that?”
“I don’t wanna go!” He yelled, pushing her hands away and trying to free himself from her grasp. Fred leaned around their mom's legs, thoroughly enjoying his brother being in trouble.
“He doesn’t wanna leave his girlfriend.”
“I DO NOT!” He shouted, not even sure what he was arguing, just certain he wasn’t going to let Fred win.
“Albert Oliver!” Their mom interrupted both of them “You’re not old enough to have a girlfriend. You-” She glanced around at the foreign yard with foreign hangings and seemed to remember where they were. “We’ll discuss this in the van.” With that, she picked Felix up like he was still small and carried him away from Locust’s home. He kicked and screamed and threw a fit like he’d never thrown before, but it was fruitless. He was too small and she was too big. No matter how big or important his feelings, no matter how real his love and devotion to Locust, he was still an eleven-year-old boy.
He gave it his everything, he had to for her, but he’d worn himself out by the time they got back to the van. His mom set him down in the back seat next to Fred. Olivia sat in the last row of seats in her car seat.
“I…” He didn’t know why he cared, perhaps it was the last ounce of pride he had left. “I get to sit up front.”
“Big boys get to sit up front, you’re acting like a toddler so you get to sit back there.”
“I’m not a toddler!” Fred chirped, “Can I sit up front?”
“Few more years, hun.”
“I don’t wanna go.” Felix reaffirmed. He was keeping his foot down. “I’m not leaving Locust.”
“Locust?” His mom floundered for an instant. “Oh Raven that’s not…Is that her name..?” She asked several unfinished questions to the steering wheel before getting back on track. “You’re too young to have a girlfriend.” Felix had never thought of Locust as his ‘girlfriend’. He didn’t know how to have a girlfriend. He didn’t know how to be a boyfriend. The thought as he had it made something stir in his stomach that would have resembled satisfaction, the idea of being called her boyfriend. Even though he’d never considered her a girlfriend, he knew what his mom meant, and he wholeheartedly disagreed.
“I am too.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about…” She said idly as she dug around one of the backpacks in the passenger seat. Felix fumed and decided to just go for it, he knew better than to challenge people, especially moms, but Locust made him brave.
“I love her.”
His mom struggled with the straw on the juice box for a while behind the passenger seat where he couldn’t see, looking at the ceiling in aggravation at his declaration.
“God…” She muttered. “Damnit, Albert, you’re supposed to wait until you’re at least a teenager to do this.” She spoke complaints to the open air and not to her son before handing him the juice box. “Here, hydrate, maybe you’ll calm down.” She instructed. Felix didn’t feel like taking the juice box, but he did anyway. He sipped it silently as she gathered a way to respond to her hysterical little boy.
“You’re not in love, Albert, you have a crush.” She explained. “Crushes are normal and will go away with time-”
“NO!” Felix slammed his feet into the passenger side chair. “It won’t go away! I don’t want it to!” He pleaded. His mom pinched at the bridge of her nose under her glasses, taking a deep breath and visibly wilting as she gave up.
“Just drink your juice.” She said finally, leaning her head back in her seat and waiting. Felix sipped his juice bitterly and stared out the window, hand on the door handle and ready to jump out the instant the van started moving. He waited for the van to start but it never did, it just sat idly for minutes on end as his juice got emptier and his eyes started to droop. He must’ve worn himself out throughout his fight. His mom glanced at him from time to time through the rearview mirror, as if to check on him as he became more and more sleepy and his juice became more and more empty. He could hardly move as the engine kicked to life. He hardly noticed when the same man his mom had been spending all her time with climbed into the passenger seat. He was asleep before the car even started to move.
Comments (0)
See all