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fallen029 · 7 years

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Forest Through the Trees.2

Part two for those of you who are interested and something for you to scroll passed for those of you who are not (or read it; that would be cool too).

Previous Chapter

An entire week past before we arrived at our neighbors’ house, my mother holding a store bought pie in her hand that had been shifted to our never actually used for baking pan, while my father held my hand, listing off to me all of the things I was not allowed to do while over at a hosts house.

I can’t quite remember what they all were, but it was safe to say, I was pretty much allowed to do a whole lot of nothing.

“They have a child for you to play with,” my mother offered as she grinned widely down at me, flashing off her teeth. “A little boy.”

If you’re still holding out for the part where the whole thing clicked in my mind and I realized that Aardvark was not exactly who he’d portrayed himself to be, then keep on holding. It would be another good ten minutes.

The door was answered by a tall, lean man. Mr. Anderson, as I would learn to call him, was former military (Navy, to be exact) and loved to show off his display case of medals to prove it. That was the first thing he showed to us, after shaking my father’s hand and calling out for his wife to come and take that pie from my mother. I followed along silently, not the least bit interested as my father and he conversed about his military honors as well as my grandfather’s service in the United States Army, something my father loved to boast about as well, as if somehow his own father’s accomplishments were his.

My mother and I were met halfway by a woman much younger than Mr. Anderson. Jenny. That’s what I was taught to call her, early on, if only because it’s what Aardvark did.

You know, when he wasn’t busy calling her that ‘whore-bag of a step-mother’.

Jenny was much younger than Mr. Anderson. As a kid, this didn’t register, but as I got older, I realized that she was only, at most, in her mid-twenties while Mr. Anderson was definitely in his forties, if not quickly approaching the dreaded fifties. She was so bubbly and happy, that first time that I met her, it was hard to believe I’d eventually grow a strong distaste for the woman.

And Mr. Anderson as well. He complimented me on my dress that I’d been shoved into, I recall, and even commended my father and mother on what a lady they were raising, when I thanked him for this.

“My boy,” he’d grumbled something of the like after this comment as, following his showing off of his medals and Jenny’s introduction to my mother, we all met up in the little foyer area before the staircase, “now, he ain’t nearly as polite. If he’d ever get down here- Will! Would you get your butt down here?”

He yelled that. At the end. I remember. Having not been expecting it, I recall taking a step back, as I was standing slightly in front of my father, so that my back rested against his knees.

Needless to say, I was quite surprised when the eight year old that came down the stairs with a glare on his face looked exactly like Aardvark.

At the same time however, he looked nothing like him.

Aardvark had messy blonde hair and wore dirty sneakers to match his ripped jeans. Will was sporting gelled hair, a sweater vest set that it was far too hot for that day, and some very nice slacks. The biggest difference, however, was that Will had on some glasses while Aardvark hadn’t been.

Which, given that the non-changeable features of the kid before me were still all the same, this should have told me without a doubt that this was the child I’d been waiting to return that hailed from the forest and had the coolest collection of Pokemon Cards I’d ever seen. But I was six and just been introduced to Will as someone else entirely and it was screwing with me a bit, I will admit.

“Well, go on, Will,” his father grumbled as he made his slow way down the steps. If I was shocked to see him, he certainly didn’t appear to be me. “Say hi to your new friend here.” To my parents, Mr. Anderson explained, “William’s a bit angry, you see. Thought that he was spending the weekend with his mother, but she decided that she had better things to-”

“Oh, you two living so close,” Jenny intervened at that exact moment, oddly, which might be the only reason I remember such a moment so clearly, “you’ll just be the best of friends, huh?”

No. Not if the way Will was mugging me was to be used as any indication. I remember his father made him shake my parents hand and then mine. He did so way too hard and it hurt, but when he glared into my eyes, I knew he’d done it on purpose.

I stared right back though, still trying to turn things over in my mind. This was clearly the kid I’d seen that day and played with in the forest, but at the same time, he was not only acting like a jerk to me (I’m talking squeezed my hand like it was a stress ball), but also had been introduced by an actual family and not at all by the name I knew him by.

My parents either didn’t notice my unease or, once more, didn’t care, as at Jenny’s suggestion that Little Will as she called him take me up to his room, they sent me right on up without concern.

Now, I wasn’t really a shy kid, I don’t think. Not overly so anyways. So I feel a bit just in my apprehension as I climbed the staircase with the boy, both silently, and was led down the singular hallway up there to a room that Ms. Agatha used for sewing.

I stood there for a moment, in the doorway, as Will walked in and came to a stop in the center of the room, glaring over his shoulder at me. My hand still hurt a bit and now a good distance enough away from him that, should we get into a foot race, I could escape back to my parents (seriously, he’d gripped my hand something fierce), I finally got out what had been eating at me since the moment I saw him.

“I thought,” I asked quite loudly and in a tone far too confident for someone who looked so horrible in a dress as I did (trust me, it was never a pretty sight, even when I was still remotely cute), “that you didn’t have any parents?”

His glare intensified and for a moment, I felt downright fearful.

Then he replied, “What are you talking about?” and all I felt was shame.

“Before,” I tried to insist. “In the forest. You-”

“This is why I don’t like playing with babies,” he grumbled, as if two years at that age made much a difference (perhaps it did). “All they do it make up stories.”

And I wanted to yell at him that this wasn’t true, but at the same time, I didn’t know what to make of the situation. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t Aardvark. Maybe there was no Aardvark. Maybe I’d made him up.

I considered the last one heavily as Will went to sit on his bed, a videogame controller resting there. That’s went I took notice that he had a TV in his room and a freaking Sega Dreamcast, which I definitely didn’t have and wanted to look at immediately (that winter, I would be gifted a Nintendo Gamecube for Christmas and all thoughts of stupid Sega would dissipate, but that summer, his house was the place to be when it was too hot; and it was always too hot).

This kinda ended the conversation, for as far as I can recall. Will didn’t let me play with him, but allowed me to sit there, on the floor, and watch.

Silently.

Not that I followed this rule, routinely voicing my complaints over not being allowed to play with him to which I got a variety of responses from, “You’re such a baby,” to, “You’re just a stupid girl.”

Quickly, I was beginning to think that this was not the same kid as Aardvark who had no problems allowing me to play with his Pokemon cards and never once threw in my face that I was clearly slightly younger than him.

But I sat there, regardless, rapt by the basketball game he was playing, trying my hardest to think of a way to convince him that I deserved a chance at the game. Not that we were up there long as, about twenty minutes later, we were called downstairs to eat and that was that.

Jenny led most of the conversation during dinner. She told my parents all about where they’d just moved from, two states over, and how they just loved how quite it was, in our current town. My mother smiled and agreed while my father informed them that the little old lady who’d lived in their home previous enjoyed the silence as well, no doubt an underhand way of saying he wished they’d do the same.

Mr. Anderson wasn’t to be outdone though, regaling us (or at least attempting to) with one or two quick stories from his time in the military.

Not that I really remember much of what was discussed. Honestly, I just remember liking Jenny’s food and the fact that they’d sat Will and I right next to one another. We didn’t speak and I only did when spoken to.

He didn’t at all.

He was upset about something, I could tell, even then, and now being older, I’m certain it either had to do with that dashed chance at seeing his mother or something his father had done to him.

As the years would roll by, I’d learn that it was always of the two.

They made Will and I clear the table. Now, I had never heard of such a thing (we were lucky if we were all even in the same room, much less at a table together), so I only followed along with Will’s example as he stomped around, gathering up the dishes and taking them to the kitchen with me.

“You have to do that?” I asked, speaking to him for the first time since we were upstairs.

Having not been expecting an answer, I was a bit surprised when he grumbled out, “Every night.”

“How come they don’t gotta take their own plates to the sink?”

“Because they’re adults,” he told me, as if this was just common sense.

It probably actually was, as now I know this is pretty commonplace for a lot of families.

But none in even my extended family, as far as I knew.

We scrapped them off in the trash and, while we did so, he told me about how he also had to wash the dishes and how annoying it was. Used to my home’s style of us all piling our dishes up in the sink until, with a grumble about the other, either my mother or father would finally wash them, this made me nod my head sympathetically.

Jenny loved the pie that my mother bought for dessert and it seemed to be the only thing that Will ate with a gusto, finishing quickly and asking to be excused almost in the same breath he swallowed his final bite with.

“Take your new friend,” was his father’s instruction and it seemed to have saved him from having to gather those dishes as well, the two of us only taking our own plates to the sink (where he’d have to wash them later, he informed me with a frown), before heading off, back upstairs.

Time had either ebbed away some of his anger over the situation or, perhaps, I think now, maybe he was just convinced finally that I didn’t think he was Aardvark. I believe that was probably his biggest concern, when his father told him that they’d invited the neighbors to dinner and they had a daughter. Unlike me, being naive and stupid, Will knew exactly who would be showing up at his house and how his ruse would be over.

And as I’d come to find out, Will never liked being caught up in one of his own lies.

Will’s room still had many boxes in it and, this time, instead of keying in immediately on the videogame system, he took to digging through some of them to find us something better to play with. He was digging through a box of action figures and, though I mostly believed him to be a different child at that point, I still hoped to see his prized Superman toy in there.

It wasn’t.

“Here.” He pulled out some for us to play. “You can look at these.”

We did more than look at them, falling quite easily in that way that kids did into playing with one another. Now that he was out of his funk, it was actually kinda fun. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I was still a bit unnerved by him and the entire thing that I was being a bit submissive towards his style of play. He had these long, drawn out scenarios for the toys that he’d clearly thought about in his mind a lot while me? I mostly just made them fly around and very much so enjoyed throwing them from high places.

Will wasn’t like that though. I think part of his ideas for the action figures came from the cartoons in which many of them were features, just reenactments of certain events, but he always took things a step further. Added his own twist.

Because most the good guys never really won.

This annoyed me many times when we’d play together that summer, when at the last minutes whichever X-Men action figures we were playing with would suddenly trip and fall into the vat of acid (plastic cup) they’d just saved the damsel in distress from or, out of nowhere, Joker would suddenly have attack dogs that would eat Robin and Batman’s faces off.

I tried to explain to him many times that that would never happen, literally ever, but he’d just call me a girl and a baby and that I didn’t understand.

That day though, I was just pretty glad that while Aardvark seemed to be long gone, I had this somewhat mean, somewhat nice kid just across the forest to come play with. No way was I mucking that up.

It was when Jenny came up to tell us we had to clean up the toys, that I was about to go home, that it happened. Trying to be helpful, I started cramming the toys back into the paper box with him and, in doing so, shook the floorboards a bit. This had some sort of chain reaction in which his bookcase on the other side of the room shook a bit and, from the top of it that was way out of my line of sight, my soccer ball came tumbling down.

This scared Jenny, I recall, as she had recoiled a bit while I only stared in shock and Will’s face became extremely blank. It still was, too, when I glanced back at him with wide eyes.

“Maybe be a bit more careful, huh?” was something to the affect of what Jenny said as she went to pick up the ball and place it back up on the bookshelf. No way was I letting this happen though.

It was mine. I left it in the woods with Aardvark and somehow Will had it now. I don’t think I necessarily saw this as irrefutable proof that they were one and the same, but it did mean something. Not to mention, that was my ball and, in that moment, I wanted it back.

Right that second.

Jumping up, I wouldn’t allow Jenny to do as she wished and place the ball back up there. Instead, I rushed over and snatched it from her hands, to the complaints of the woman and the silence of Will. Not sure what else to do with it, I rushed from the room and downstairs to where I could hear my parents saying their goodbyes to Mr. Anderson, who was actually who I ran smack into as he was at the bottom of the stairs and I was stumbling a bit down them in my rush.

“Careful there,” he remarked as I managed to keep my balance and somehow find my way over to my parents, my soccer ball held tightly to my chest. The look on my face as I stared up at my father’s much have clicked with the man for, oh, that once in a blue moon he actually took notice of my discomforts, and caused him to speak.

“What’s going on?” he asked with a frown, glancing from me to Mr. Anderson. “Where’d you get your soccer ball?”

See, that was a thing. How I knew that it definitely wasn’t Will’s soccer ball that fell down. Because, really, it wasn’t mine either. It had been one of my older cousin’s, who like most children played a variety of little league sports, and had left it over there with me on one of their rare visits. His mother just bought him a new one though and I ended up with my very own, white and red soccer ball.

I thought it was special because it was discolored, as the ones we played with during recess had been the traditional white and black. And for any last doubt, on one of the white spots, was my cousin’s name in bold, black Sharpie marker, for when he would take it to practice no doubt.

It was most certainly my soccer ball and I wasn’t leaving without it.

“Yours?” Mr. Anderson asked with a frown, staring heavily at me then. I obviously hadn’t come in with one and as, to his knowledge, he and I son had never met, much less exchanged toys, it made no sense for this to have occurred. “What do you mean?”

But his eyes were heavy and I swallowed, I recall, quiet just long enough for Will and Jenny to come down the stairs as well.

“What,” she asked with a frown, “is going on? Huh? You snatch things from people, you know.”

“What are you talking about?” My mother was getting antsy, but not from the uncomfortable environment that was forming. Rather, it had probably been a bit too long away from the PC for her. “What happened?”

But my trap was shut. Which was fine, as Mr. Anderson’s eyes were turning from me to his son, who’d stopped midway on the staircase and was just staring down at me. Still clutching my soccer ball, I looked anywhere, but back at him.

“Will?” Mr. Anderson was speaking with that barking tone again. “Did you take this girls soccer ball?”

“No. It’s mine.”

“No!” I held it even closer to me then, finding my voice then. “It’s not. It’s mine.”

My father, a bit uneasy, only patted me on the head as he said, “How’d you get it over then? Huh?”

It was then that I wanted to tell them about Will pretending to be Aardvark (which I was pretty close to sixty percent sure on in that moment) and that I’d waited for him, but he didn’t come back, and how he’d told me that he was raised by animals in the forest.

If ever there was a moment to make this explanation, it was then.

But I froze once more, when Mr. Anderson stared at me, leaving my mother a chance to speak.

“You lost that ball in the forest, didn’t you, sweetie?” Her hand was on my shoulder then, a soft touch, as she stared over at the other child’s father. “And you, Will, must have found it. Right? Kids?”

I didn’t wanna agree to it. At all. Because it wasn’t right. I didn’t lose it. I forgot it. And Will didn’t find it. He took it. With what I think now, honestly, was the intention to return it, had he seen me again as Aardvark, but he hadn’t before he was reintroduced to me as Will, screwing everything up.

Still, admitting that I had run off into the forest purposely wasn’t exactly something I wanted to do. Especially after lying about being in the forest for a complete other reason. So, with a swallow, I nodded, prompting Will to do the same.

“You shouldn’t take things that aren’t yours anyways,” his father grumbled and, now finishing the few steps down the stairs, Mr. Anderson hit him hard in the back of the head, making Will flinch a bit. “Whether you find them or not. Apologize. Now.”

I must have gotten something that could be construed as one, because I don’t recall Mr. Anderson grumbling anymore. Awkward was probably how it went though, or farewells. I remember on the walk back home, my mother carrying the left over pie with her, my father teasing her on how Jenny had asked her for the recipe, knowing damn well it was store bought and my mother mostly ignoring him.

But neither asked me much about my soccer ball and I wasn’t offering anything up. I was confused, honestly, still, and would be for the rest of the night.

My father was off the next day, so my mother kicked me out of the house to go play in the yard quite early that day, so that I wouldn’t wake the man as he slept the day away. Which was fine, really, as I was kinda glad to have my soccer ball back and wanted nothing more than to kick it at things.

I was very busy with that when he showed up. This time, I saw him a long way off and didn't greet him with even a hint of a grin. Instead I kicked the soccer ball straight at his head.

And missed.

I never said I was good at soccer.

“What are you doing here?” I asked with a glare at the other boy. He wasn’t wearing his stuffy attire anymore and had, once more, ditched the glasses. “I don’t wanna play with you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You stole my soccer ball!”

“How could I steal if it if you just kicked it at me?”

“Because last night. You had it and-”

“I didn’t even see you last night.”

For the record, I wasn’t stupid. I might be a little dense, but not stupid. Aardvark was most certainly Will and there was no two ways about. When I only glared at him though, Will turned away, walking the short distance to where my soccer ball had rolled and came to set it on the ground in front of me.

I wanted to stay mad at him. For lying, for continuing to lie, for making up more lies, but…

That was problem with Will. That would always be my problem with Will. No matter how shitty he was or how much I hated when he’d lie to me, to me of all fucking people, I almost always forgave him. No reason. Just did. From the very beginning.

“Are we gonna look at my Pokemon cards?” He was moving to take off the knapsack slung across his back then. “Or not?”

What was I supposed to do? Say no and continue playing with myself? Call him out on the fact that I knew who he was?

Honestly, what?

Nothing a six year old could figure out. I just sat down with him, there in my yard this time. Rather than just looking at them again, Will produced a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolding it to reveal the clear handwriting of an adult with a numbered set of instructions on how to play the game.

I wanted to point out to him that no way did his animal parents do this for him, but I kept my mouth shut. Beside, like most children, we really didn’t understand the instructions, even though it had been written out simply for us by an adult, and we kinda just winged it. Made stuff up as we went along.

The number one rule was that, no matter what, Will always won.

Always.

And it served me best, over the next few years, to not get too pissy at the rule changes he would make in not only a dumb trading card game, but also many others, less I risked him storming off and refusing to speak to me.

I didn’t know about that though, that day. And, when he snatched his cards away from me, shoved them in his pack, and ran back off into the forest, I only sat there for a bit, blinking after him.

“You should have invited Will to stay for lunch, sweetheart,” my mother scolded gently when, about ten minutes later, she called me inside for just that. “It’s something you do, you know.”

I didn’t, actually, but whatever.

Aardvark didn’t come back that day. Or the next.

But Will did, walking out of the forest in his glasses.

Not the sweater vest though.

Or the backpack.

“My dad,” he grumbled to me as he found me knee deep in some intense tree climbing, “wanted me to ask if you wanted to come to my house to play. He says that I have to, because I stole your soccer ball, which I didn’t-”

“Can we play Pokemon?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

So I slowly climbed down from the tree where he was waiting at the base before asking, “Can we play videogames? Like, I play them?”

“If you want,” came his grumbled answer, which was more than enough of one for me to rush off into the house and inform my mother that I was gonna go over to Will’s house to play.

It wasn’t something I’d ever done before; just asked to just go over to someone’s house. I was a bit nervous that she’d deny me this, but my mother was so absorbed in her computer that she just warned me against getting myself in any trouble over there.

That’s how it started. Officially. Every day that summer, short of the very few he’d be at his mother’s, Will would either show up in his glasses, tipping me off that we were headed to his house to hang around there, or he’d ditch them and just squint a bunch, which meant we’d get to play around in the forest, which my mother became more lenient about me going into because she thought that so long as there were two unaccompanied children under the age of ten running around alone in the dense woods, they would be perfectly safe.

It worked out for us, anyways.

I might have even learned to enjoy it, just a bit, honestly. It was kinda like a game. Aardvark was a lot more fun and Will was typically angry about underlining things and seemed to constantly want me over at his house with him. When I was a kid, I thought his planning behind who he’d come as was completely random if not just whoever he felt like, but when I was older, I understood, at least a little, why he was so angry and why he needed someone else around.

Not that it would help, really, me being around after a while. Overexposure, I suppose. His parents just got used to me being there. Or realized he was trying to use me as a buffer.

It was the middle of summer though, before that would happen, and for those few weeks of June, I really came to enjoy the different sides of Will. He could be mean and he was one hell of a liar (to my face, even, about things I obviously knew), but he was all I had.

And, the Fourth of July, understandably, was a big deal to children our age. I don’t remember much of it now, really, but I know my father was out of town and my mother was never much one for those sorts of things, so Mr. Anderson and Jenny took us out to watch the county fireworks ring in the beginning of the end of that summer, over in a big field where most everyone went. If you’d asked at the time, I’m sure I’dda said I’d never forget it.

Now though, it’s completely tarnished by the morning of the fifth, when I found out why Will escaped so much, into the woods, to pretend to be someone else.

I would have too, honestly.

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#Original story #Short story #friendship #children #I never learned how to tag

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