Free Bird by MagicBJohnson at Inkitt

Chapter 1

Chapter 1: The Storm Before Morning

“Children raised in storms learn to sleep through thunder.”

The sky is dark, darker than most nights, with the wind howling and quick flashes of light resembling machine-gun fire, followed by even louder booms of thunder like bombs hitting their target. I don’t ever recall it being this loud. The sound rattles the house and shakes the earth beneath it, yet I remain calm in my bed.

I think to myself: if this is the end, if a tornado touches down right on this house, I would be okay with that. If this were the coming of the apocalypse, I’d be okay with that too.

Sometimes I wonder if everyone my age thinks like this, but almost immediately, I know they don’t. Sometimes it feels like no one is like me. I notice it in their faces as I walk the halls at school and sit in class among them. The clean clothes they wear, their neatly combed hair, and the lunches someone packed for them. I can almost smell the food through their lunchboxes.

Most of them seem to have families who love them, and they are part of a home.

I am not that fortunate.

No one at home cares for me. This night is actually a peaceful night for the Collins residents. If the storm did not bring the thunder, it would be the screaming, the yelling, the smashing of glass, or the all-too-real, not-too-rare gunshot going off as my father chased my mother around the car trying to shoot her while screaming, “This is finally it, you bitch, we are going to hell tonight!”

Then morning comes with the sun bright in the sky, and everyone acts like nothing ever happened until the foul wind blows again. This is the life I know, and I may only be thirteen, but even I know this is not how people are supposed to live.

Maybe I’m not the brightest colored crayon in the Crayola box, but I have got that part of my life figured out.

The rock bounces down the sidewalk, making little clicking sounds as it hits the pavement before stopping a few feet away for me to kick it again. The mornings on the way to school are always so quiet and peaceful. Sometimes it feels like I’m in a completely different world. Kicking the rock is my reprieve, a way to remind myself that I am still in this world and that the monsters in my imagination are not going to come out of the fog and get me.

It is almost the end of the school year. After this year, I will be going into ninth grade. We just moved back to the small town of Shady Town from Niton City. I had just started making friends there when we had to move back here. Mom couldn’t take it. She wanted to be what she always called “back home.”

I always believed her “back home” was somewhere between whiskey bottles, pill containers, and clouds of marijuana smoke. No matter where we ended up, that’s where I always found her, crawling across the floor, sometimes through her own vomit, crying about her life, and how she wasn’t a good mother. Always apologizing. Sorry, sorry, always the sorries.

This is where we are, and this is where we are going to be. At least until I turn eighteen. After that, I don’t know where I’ll end up, anywhere but around this family, hopefully.

As I arrive at the school, I pause and take it all in. We are the last group of eighth graders that will ever attend this place. Right now, the only grades left are seventh and eighth. The school used to hold fourth through eighth grade, with four or five classes for each grade and fifteen to twenty-five students in each one. It was never a very big school, but it feels even larger when more than half of it sits empty.

The building always smells strange when you walk inside. Old. Damp. Like something forgotten. Back when I attended here in fourth grade, I thought that smell was normal. That was before we moved away the first time because, as Mom always says, “I can’t stay in this piece of shit town any longer.”

That seems to happen every year. Sometimes every half year. By this point in my life, I’ve moved thirteen times. Whenever I tell people that, they usually ask if my dad is in the military. I laugh and tell them no.

The truth I never tell is that my parents are drug addicts who piss off every neighbor we have and fight in the front yard like they are hosting some kind of WCW main event. That is always the worst part, when my mom drags me out into the yard screaming that we are leaving. We never do. She and my father just stand there yelling at the top of their lungs while the whole neighborhood watches. It is even worse when the only friend you manage to make lives next door.

But nobody really wants the truth. I learned that a long time ago after a counselor asked where I got the bruises from. I told the truth. They sent me back to class and mailed a note home to my parents. Guess what I got for telling the truth? More bruises, and then we moved.

So now, whenever people ask, I just say no.

It is weird being the “new kid” and the “been here before” kid at the same time. This is actually my fourth time living here. Kindergarten, the beginning of second grade, the end of third through fourth grade, which was the longest stretch, and now the end of eighth grade.

All the kids know me, and I know them, too.

The strange thing is, I barely resemble them anymore. I just spent the last year living in a city with more people than the five closest towns combined. The closest thing these people have ever seen to a city is Postmont. Hell, I used to think Postmont was a city too.

But things are different now. I learned a completely different culture and way of dressing while I was gone.

Only a few people wandered the halls when I arrived early to school. In my hand was a piece of paper with my assigned homeroom written on it: Room 201. The principal must have noticed me staring at it, trying to figure out where to go.

“Andy, do you need some help?”

Looking up, I saw Mr. Hindbock towering over me. The man was a giant, but he had always been nice to me. I think he secretly knew what I dealt with at home.

“I’m supposed to be in Mr. Burtain’s homeroom. Room 201,” I said.

He took the paper from my hand and gently placed one hand on my back while pointing down the hallway with the other.

“This way. Your classroom is on the second floor.”

As we walked, I noticed how rundown the school had become. It carried that strange smell only old schools seem to have. The kind of smell where, if someone blindfolded you, you would guess you were either standing in an old library or an abandoned school. The floor tiles were faded green and white, laid out like a giant checkerboard.

Once we made our way upstairs, he pointed toward a classroom at the end of the hallway.

“That’s your room there. You got it from here?” he asked with a smile.

“Yes, sir. I can manage from here.”

I continued down the hallway alone. The walls were covered with children’s art projects that looked like they had been hanging there for years, taped against white-painted cinderblock walls.

The classroom was nearly empty when I walked in. There was one kid asleep at a desk in the front row while Mr. Burton sat at his desk reviewing a stack of papers. He glanced up from his papers and noticed me.

“Mr. Collins, take a seat right there,” he said, pointing to a desk about four rows back along the windows of the room.

As I sat down, it immediately felt like the perfect seat. I was thankful it wasn’t in the front of the class, and I loved the view outside the window. The early morning fog slowly drifted away in the sunlight, revealing dew covering the soccer field outside. It seemed like it was going to be a warm, sunny day.

This was not the environment I expected at all. I remembered this town being quiet, but this was something different. This was peaceful. I thought back to a normal morning at Niton Public School. By now, there would have already been a fight in the hallway, and somewhere off in the distance you would probably hear gunshots or sirens echoing through the streets outside. But here, the only sound in the classroom was the snoring from the kid asleep in the front row.

As I sat there staring out the window, I got lost in my thoughts. Before I knew it, the classroom had filled up. Well, full by Shady Town standards anyway.

Coming back to reality, I noticed Ashley A. sitting in the row beside me. She was looking at herself in a little mirror before slowly turning toward me.

“Andy… is that you?” she asked with a confused look on her face.

I immediately looked down at my clothes, checking to see if I had spilled something on myself or had something weird on my shirt. But no, it was just my white tank top and my usual baggy pants.

“Yeah, it’s me,” I finally managed to say.

“What happened to you? You look totally different,” she said with a smile.

“What do you mean?” I asked, genuinely confused.

“Your hair… your clothes…”

She was probably right. The last time she had seen me, I was still wearing old sweatpants from hand-me-down piles or clothes my mom got from church donation boxes. Now my hair was messy and gelled up into spikes like artists in the music videos on MTV.

“I don’t know,” I replied with a shrug. “I guess this is just me now.”

She smiled before turning back around and slipping the mirror into her backpack. Then she pulled out a Pop-Tart, opened the package, and started eating it.

The smell instantly reminded me that I hadn’t eaten anything yet. My mouth started watering immediately. Class hadn’t even started, and already all I could think about was food. I tried to focus on anything else before my stomach started growling. That was always the worst part, loud enough for everyone nearby to hear.

So I turned back toward the window.

A few dark clouds drifted slowly across the morning sky. They resembled rain clouds, but there were only a handful of them scattered above the soccer field. Making shapes out of clouds was something I always liked doing. Animals, monsters, faces… anything really. But today I couldn’t make out anything at all. They just drifted there, dark and empty.

That was when I was snapped back to reality as the first bell rang. Then, a minute or two later, the second bell rang.

Then a crackling noise came over the loudspeaker.

“Good morning, students, and happy Friday. I know we’re all looking forward to the weekend coming up.”

At that point, I tuned out.

I wish my stomach had done the same thing. It growled so loudly it woke the kid sleeping in the front row. A few students giggled quietly. After glancing around the room, I realized everyone else was doing the same thing. That meant nobody could actually figure out where the sound came from.

“Thank God for small blessings,” I whispered.

As I glanced around the classroom, I noticed Jacob sitting near the back of the room. My best friend Jacob. Well… previous best friend, I guess.

He might not even remember me. It had been a while. I did call him once after we moved away last time, but long-distance calls were expensive, and honestly, I probably would have gotten beaten if I kept doing it.

He didn’t seem to notice I was there.

So I turned back toward the window.

The few scattered clouds from earlier had grown darker now. What once looked harmless had turned into a storm gathering on the horizon.