New Horizons by Dan Carr

Author:Dan Carr [Carr, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B01AKWPJ6M
Publisher: Dan Carr
Published: 2016-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

11: HALF NAKED

Before my granny died from being 75-years-old, she told me that there was no one happier than someone who whistled. It was an allusion of a peaceful mind, someone lost in a place that wasn’t in front of them, and no matter how bad things got, someone who could whistle was always going to be okay.

I whistled.

“Could you stop that whistling.”

I looked up.

Karen was just ahead of me. Her tight braids pulled at the roots of her hair, and made her eyes look like they were being tugged to the sides of her head. There had to be a better hairstyle than those braids, and they had to be hurting her. But she wore them like she had no other choice. Maybe it was all she knew how to do with the kind of hair she had.

“I could stop, sure.” I whistled non-sense from then on. No particular tune, just awful sounds that made whistling the worst. And then I whistled that camp song from the other night, Black Socks.

Karen was cranky. That was something all of us hormonal teenagers were probably used to—attitude switching on a dime. I had heard all about it from my folks. She turned around and pretended to ignore me. There was no such thing as actually ignoring annoying people, you could only pretend to.

“I love to whistle,” Sharon said. She began to whistle Black Socks too. I stopped because suddenly it wasn’t fun anymore.

Rick’s group of boys were waiting for us. They were spread around in a circle, lost in the chitchat of manliness and muscles and pubes for moustaches. Karen made a beeline for the spot next to Murray. I knew where I was sitting as soon as she did that.

“Excuse me.” I tried to get around her.

“Move it, Valerie,” Karen said.

“You move it.” I shoved her.

She shoved me back. I flew across the pit and landed on the ground.

“Did you trip?” Sharon gasped. She held out her hand for me to take. I stared at her old hand, and it was so close to my face that I could almost smell her skin.

“Nope, just a really big wind blew me over. Like a huge one.” I stood up and grabbed the spot next to Murray. “That and there’s a lot of sticks and stones around here. Maybe even some bones.”

“Well be careful,” Sharon said.

Karen was still standing in the circle.

“There's a spot over there next to Brooke," I told her.

Sharon started things off fast. We had our jugs of water in our hands and I leaned forward, took a sip of 49, and tried not to make eye contact with anyone.

"This is the talking stick." Sharon held up a colourful stick. "When you have it, you can talk. When you don't have it, you can't talk. You can voice whatever is on your mind, and you don't have to have a point. Before we begin, are there any questions?"

"What's the point?" Freckled Landon asked.

"The point is to open up. The point is to trust the people around you.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.