We Become the Night

Nightmare on Oak Street

Nestled right near Elk River, Idaho, is our town. It’s in the middle of nowhere and has a staggering total population of 162 people. It’s the middle of my junior year at Browne School (go Fighting Moose). Our school is kindergarten to twelfth grade, and, since kids from neighboring towns are bussed in, at 250 students, our school has a higher population than the town itself.

Cole and I have been attending since we were in kindergarten. I have practically no friends or even people to occasionally talk to except for the one faithful friend I have, Max, and my brother, Collin. I don’t expect this to change in the near, or let’s be honest distant, future. Max is the same friend I’ve had since before either of us was capable of coherent thought. Our moms are friends and so they hung out together before we were even born, when Collin was an infant. In fact, Max and I were born only one day apart. I’m proud to say that I’m older. Unfortunately, that’s the only thing I have to be proud of.

Of course, I’m still the butt of pretty much every joke in school and picked on regularly, regardless of the fact that my best friend is the most popular kid in school. I’ve always thought that it is really strange that I, the most unpopular, and he, the most popular, are best friends. I keep waiting for the day he tells me he can’t hang with me anymore, yet it doesn’t happen.

Even the underclassmen hassle me, but the junior high kids and elementary kids, for the most part, don’t bother me too much. I try to not let it get to me, but then some days it’s just too much. I’m clumsy, gangly, and can’t really do much of anything physical. Every year I barely pass P.E. So, I’m bullied for that. Then I’m also super smart. I don’t mean to brag, but I’m a junior in senior classes. So, I’m the youngest in my class, not athletic, incredibly shy, not attractive in any way shape or form. Yeah, I’m picked on all the time.

This day starts out the same as the hundreds before it. I wake to the irritating sound of my clock/radio alarm. My hand snakes out from underneath the covers and smacks the button to shut up the evil thing. I lift the covers off my head and stare, bleary-eyed, at it for a few seconds before the time of 6:45 a.m. registers. I groan loudly as I stretch to work out the kinks and stiffness of my back. I must have had a bad nightmare. Not that I remember what I dreamt, but I only feel like this in the morning after a really bad nightmare.

I get a flash of something, and my brain tries to hold onto the image. Claws. Fur. Yellow…eyes…maybe. That’s all I can make out before the image gets fuzzy again. This doesn’t bode well for the day, I think, as an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach arises. I’m not really superstitious and I’ve never really believed in ghosts and ghouls, but right now, when that uneasy feeling passes through my stomach and a shiver runs up my spine, I can almost believe in anything.

I fumble slightly for my glasses which are right next to my alarm clock. Or at least they’re supposed to be. I look around on the floor and there they are, just slightly sticking out from under the bed. I sweep my hand around on the ground where I thought I saw my glasses and I swear I feel something furry. I jerk my hand away.

“What the fuck?” I ask quietly to no one in particular. I shake my head and think it had to have been an incredibly bad nightmare if I knocked my glasses off in the middle of the night and now, I’m imagining there’s some kind of furry thing underneath my bed. I laugh at my own ridiculousness. I bend at the waist, almost falling off my bed, and put one hand on the ground. I grab my glasses, put them on my face and forget about nightmares, furry creatures, and yellow eyes.

I can hear my mother downstairs cooking breakfast. She always sings to herself as she cooks, and her beautiful voice drifts up to me from the kitchen. I catch a couple of lyrics and smile as I hear an almost perfect rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables, my mother’s favorite musical. I never understood why she loves a musical whose title literally translates to “The Miseries,” but then everyone is different. Personally, I prefer “One Song, Glory” from Rent, or anything from Rent really.

I know that she’s likely been up for hours already as she would’ve gotten up with my father who leaves for work at 5:00 a.m. on the dot every weekday morning as he has for longer than either my brother or I have been alive. Father gets up at 4:00 a.m. every morning. I admire my parents so much for everything they do for us.

“Kids! Breakfast! Hurry up and get it while it’s hot!” my mother shouts from downstairs. I hurry to get dressed in basic khaki slacks and a blue polo shirt. I realize I’ve been staring into space for the past ten minutes or so just listening to her singing. I grab my book bag and take a glance in the mirror on my door to make sure I don’t look like I just rolled out of bed. I square my shoulders and bring myself up to my full 5’8” height. My limp, brown hair is nothing special and there’s a stubborn piece of hair on my right side that refuses to stay down no matter how much I comb it or wet it down. Even hair spray doesn’t help. Oh well, I try to flatten it once more before giving up. The small clump of hair springs back to sticking up. I shrug as I pull my door open and start to exit my room only to collide chest to chest with my brother, Collin, who has his fist raised to knock on the door. His fist comes down, nearly knocking on my forehead before he stops himself and laughs.

“Hey, kid,” he says. He calls me “kid” all the time even though I’m only one year his junior. I look at him intently and my mind wanders a bit again. He’s fairly easy on the eyes, at least that’s what girls at school say. My mom always said he’s a handsome boy. I suppose either or both are true. I’ve never really thought about that before, ya know, with him being my brother and all. He’s pretty tall, around 6’4” with dirty blond hair that always, and I do mean always, looks like he’s walking the red carpet at a movie premier or some kind of gala with the world’s most elite...movie stars, millionaires, or whatever. I mean, I don’t think he’s even had one pimple while he was going through puberty whereas I have acne all over my cheeks, forehead, and chin. He even has a light dusting of dark brown hairs along his square jawline, making him look, I guess the word would be rakish or maybe rugged. My gaze shifts to his eyes. His eyes are a warm chocolate brown, and they constantly look like there’s some private joke between you and him, but he never lets you in on it. I think about my own eyes as I look at his. Where his are a deep brown, mine are a gorgeous bluish-green, truly the only part of myself that I like. His brow furrows as I study him. I can tell he’s getting a little uncomfortable and wondering what I’m looking at, but he just shrugs.

He slings an arm around my shoulders and asks, “So, ya gonna ask your secret crush to double date with me and Jackie?” This is an ongoing joke between us. Jackie is his longtime girlfriend. They’ve been together since something like seventh grade, never straying. I’ve never even been on a date with anyone and because of this, he thinks there’s some secret crush that I have, but that I won’t tell anyone. He thinks my secret crush is the reason I won’t go out with anyone. Well, there is that, but also, it’s difficult to go on a date with someone when everyone knows you as the school loser.

Honestly, he’s not wrong about the crush. There is someone that I’ve been crushing on since we were both in the eighth grade. He’s the most popular kid in school and he also happens to be my best friend. I could never go out with someone like him in a million years though. I mean, there’s an exceptionally long list of reasons why not, but the most important one is that we don’t exactly run in the same circles. I mean, obviously, I’m gay and he’s not. But that’s not the most important reason. Even if he would go out with me, I could never destroy his social status like that. In high school, especially a small school like Browne, social status is everything. I’m at the bottom and he’s riding high at the top, where he belongs.

This thought follows me as we make our way down to breakfast and I feel that gnawing sensation in the pit of my stomach start to grow. I just know that something is gonna happen, I just don’t know if it’s going to be good, bad, or otherwise. Regardless, I don’t like the feeling. We make it to the dining room just as our mom has the plates laid out on the table.

“There you guys are.” she sighs as though it’s been an hour since she called us down. In reality, it’s been maybe five minutes. My brother and I sit at the table and dig into a full breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast. Ma always says that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and she makes sure that we eat a full one every morning. It’s not always bacon and eggs; sometimes it’s omelets or cereal with fruit or pancakes. On one memorable morning it was grits, but with my super sweet tooth I dumped so much sugar on them that Ma vowed we would never have them again. Well, in any case, we eat well. Collin manages to burn most of it off in track practices and meets. I manage to burn off most of it running from bullies, though occasionally I do some swimming, nothing competitively though.

Our mom joins us at the table and, having already eaten, sets her coffee mug down and holds it with both hands. The steam from the mug fogging up her glasses a little as she lifts the cup up to her lips. She looks us over as she sips from what is certainly her third or fourth cup this morning. She swears that coffee is her one and only vice and that if she only has one, she may as well make the most of it. I chuckle to myself as that thought crosses my mind. Mom looks at me, head cocked to the side, but doesn’t say anything. I smile at her, and she smiles back at me.

Breakfast is a quiet affair, and we hurry so we can make it to the bus stop on time. While we can both drive and we do share a car, we take the bus every day. Partly, because we don’t always have the spare money for gas, but mostly because we didn’t get a parking pass at school. The school holds raffles to see who can get a pass since there is limited parking. We got one last year, but not this year. Who knows, maybe I’ll get one next year after Collin has graduated and then I can drive all by myself.

The whole time we’re eating, our mom is smiling at us. She does this most mornings and we don’t notice too much anymore. We eat everything on our plates, not even leaving a crumb big enough for a mouse. Our mom beams at us as she gathers up the plates to bring them to the sink.

“Better hurry so you don’t miss your bus,” she says to us as she turns on the sink to wash dishes. I glance at the clock and realize we only have five minutes to get down the block. Collin grabs his bag as I grab mine and we rush out the front door shouting a good-bye and “I love you” over our shoulders. As we’re running down the block to get to the bus stop, I see the bright yellow of the school bus start to pull up to the stop. Collin, who’s a bit faster than I am (he better be, after all, he’s been all-star for the past two years in a row in track!) gets to the stop first and has the driver hold the bus for me. I clamber aboard as my breath wheezes in and out of my lungs. The driver just looks me over and closes the door. I manage to get out a faint, “Thank you” as I drop into the seat directly behind the driver. I take the time on the bus to get settled before getting to school.