CHAPTER NINE
After serving a month’s time while losing my apartment, job, reputation, and life, I went to downtown Port Salmon. The massive city had many points of interest to entertain anyone. Theaters offered people to see live performances and catch glimpses of works that were yet to be released. Offices and apartments were scattered throughout the skyscrapers. Often, people would check out the tallest of these for a complete and respectable visit to the city. From the pinnacles of the biggest buildings, people could spot the suburbs, woods, the bay, and the tourist attractions that lay hundreds of feet below them. Even cars and trucks looked like little bugs crawling about the crowded vicinity. This was where I was going to.
The bus terminal was filled with departing buses going to various places with different kinds of people. Some buses just went around town, while others were heading across the country. It was an early morning and overcast skies made for a gloomy experience for those wanting a good trip in Port Salmon. A bus leaving for a place called Rockland at about noon passed by Pine Grove at around 2 PM. Rockland was more of a junction than a destination. It was a city of 30,000 people that was in the southwestern corner of the province where the forest displayed a density of trees unseen throughout the rest of the country. This was because it was also near the country border with Enner, another neutral country that lays to the south. In Rockland, people either caught buses to Enner, or to Daieez, the province to the west. I purchased a bus ticket and was on my way.
Halfway to Pine Grove, I still saw the skyline behind me. Soon after heading into thick woods, the bus I was on passed by the same spot where my parents drove off a hill. Flashing past my sight was a bench which said, “In memory of Mr. and Mrs. Nick Hilton.” The stretch of road in the area called for a slow-down in speed from 50 to 25 MPH. For a couple of miles, twists and turns veered our bus back and forth. Guard rails lined the road all the way up a big hill called Green Hill. Hawks, eagles, deer, and other creatures thrived in the forest. This forest followed all the way up the coastline in both directions.
Eventually, the bus sped up as it scaled the hill and got into less dense woodland area. Before long, I found myself back in the town that was miniscule compared to, yet hundreds of times scarier, than the big city. Here in Pine Grove; it was ‘loved by one, loved by all; hated by one, hated by all. I, Travis Hilton, was loved by one, but not all. When we got in front of the hospital, the bus driver announced that we were at the Pine Grove bus stop. I was the only one to get off the bus, but Terry Brandford was getting onto the bus. He waited for me to get to the lowest step on the bus before moving forward with his bus ticket.
I heard him mutter, “Did they hate you in the city too?”
The doors shut on the blue bus just as Terry began to wince at his joke. As the bus pulled away and accelerated westward, I took a deep breath in. He wasn’t worth the trouble, especially since it was the first time he denoted the fact that he knew I existed. Those were the only words he spoke directly to me since he moved into town eight years before.
Walking over the town’s river, Temperate River, I smelled the dew on the blades of grass and weeds that lived between the segments of sidewalk. I was usually desensitized to the river, but its smell was strong that day, and therefore, I took notice to it. The concrete used to build the arch bridge had its own unique smell when it was wet. The location of the town was perfect as far as I was concerned since it was enveloped by woodland with various fauna and flora. Small towns were actually my style and enjoyable to me, but this town was full of heinous debauchees. People from the outer ring of town seemed nice, though. Aside from the main part of Pine Grove, which was a square mile, there was a “ring” that engulfed the main part of town and it wasn’t unincorporated territory. It was grassland with a few houses built in the wooded hills and fields. At most, 100 people lived in that area and weren’t as associated with town as the other 3,100 or so. I didn’t even know the names of the secluded people, and only a few people I knew were connected to them. Still, a small portion of neutral people didn’t make the town any better.
I got to the compact, cream-colored, one story house with an emerald door and I knew something bad was going to happen between me and Clements. At the time, I didn’t have a clue as to what the damage would be. In front of the door, a prominent line of bushes cut precisely to perfection embraced the green glow of the wooden door. Mosquitos bombarded me the moment I stood still to ring her doorbell.
When the door opened, I saw her with no expression on her face. Her skin was always light, but it was pale when I came that day.
“You found out?”
“Yeah,” I said while I felt my legs convulsing.
“That wretched jerk should’ve gone to prison, but he didn’t because everyone felt sorry for him. You know, I ought to”-
“You ought to! You ought to? I ought to!” I corrected with tremendous anger. “You could have just told me he was dead. Instead, you place me in this make-believe world where it’s as if he didn’t exist. Only a heartless person would perform such a disastrous…stunt! You were the only one, the only one I trusted and you still didn’t let me know. Some person you are!”
She gasped as she absorbed my little speech. Just as I was about to depart forever, she replied.
“What? I did you a favor. The only reason you haven’t killed yourself from depression yet is because you thought Arnold was still out there. I even hacked multiple websites and requested extraordinary quantities of newspaper articles pertaining to the incident for you. In fact, the moment I found out that you knew the truth I threw out all of the newspapers I had. They are still there, all 5,000 of them. I requested them a week after the incident for Pine Grove residents. The distributing wing told me they weren’t going to overproduce the newspapers from that day, which made the plan much easier.”
I walked to her driveway to find newspapers flowing with the wind due to the overflowed garbage cans behind her house.
“Just face it; you’re stuck in the past. You know what, it’s gone and so is Arnold. You wouldn’t have handled his death anyway!” She looked upon me in a downward direction even though I was taller than her. It wasn’t a height difference she was trying to impose; it was something deeper, like how an amateur hunter looks at his first kill. In volume, height, mass, length, strength, and physical capabilities, the target was superior. Other than intelligence, there was something the hunter tried to describe within his mind, but the only conclusion that could be reached was that he was better. This was how she looked at me, and I knew that the whole time I lived among the different, I was in the right and they were in the wrong.
“Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do!”
People started wading out of their houses to throw stupid comments my way.
“You know what, forget me, you can do anything you want to do, Travis. Just remember, people around here are very similar to how they are out there. So you better start changing yourself. Not…the pure side of you, but, the, reactant side of you. That’s what I’ve been meaning to say, the reactant side of you. Be social, and don’t be pessimistic about everything.”
“I know that the best thing to do is to treat other how you want to be treated, so I’m not changing.”
“Then, in that case,” she remedied, “forget about the past. It makes who we are today, but that’s why today is important. Today is the ever-changing point in time that is currently being…experienced. It makes tomorrow. If you focus on the past, then there won’t be a future for you. I’m sorry you had to find out in this manner, but I seriously think you’re making things more catastrophic than they are.”
The jeers were mashed together in my brain for a sound that was not unlike static, so I paid no attention to them.
“More social, that’s what I’m taking from it. But, you said it yourself, live in the present. So…I’m, I’ll be, I’ll be, I’ll be on my way. Pine Grove is part of the past, and so are you. I might be changing for the better, but I hope this town w
ill initiate the same kind of transformation soon, before it destroys itself. If you’re right about everybody else in the world, then they better do the same. I’m not going to worry about Pine Grove or the world, but I’m not wrong, either. I’m not wrong.”
Those were the last words I said in Pine Grove, the desolate and hopeless town of beasts. I turned and walked away, ignoring the countless slurs and yells from people that were never to say a word to me again after that day. In hindsight, I felt hypocritical for telling her I would change before ending our last conversation on a cynical note. I was truly planning to browse the lands in hopes of a place to be a different person. Not in every way, but in ways that would change other peoples’ opinions about me. More importantly, I would change in way healthy for me and my delicate body systems. Losing stress to such a remarkable level would be beneficial in so many ways. Finally, I wouldn’t have to deal with the people of Pine Grove anymore. That wasn’t too important, but it was the most relieving aspect to my metamorphosis.
* * * * *
When I got off the bus at Moutera, the largest city in the country, I spent five minutes with my eyes closed; reminiscing on the world I left behind. I thought about all of the revelations I had to experience to realize that improving me was the key to happiness. Finally, I willed myself to forget about the people in my past for the remainder of my entire life. Then I opened my eyes to see my new environment, my new home, my new world, my new life.
Well, you made it to the end of my story. Just to make matters clear, I’m a teenager who shares viewpoints with some of the characters, but there is really no representation of myself or anyone I know within these characters. Don’t take this the wrong way, because the characters ultimately represent my best attempt at trying to bring all people I know into the extremely limited number of characters in the story. Please take the time to write a quick review at your favorite retailer.
P.S. I’m not a writer. I finished a book and I wasn’t about to let a year’s work amount to nothing. That’s all.
Thanks to all and always strive for your goals; and a special call for readers and writers to persevere through the gauntlets of taking as much as you can from a book as well as putting as much as you can into writing one.
Christopher J. Archuleta
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