Spud Read online

  Copyright © 2009 by Patricia Orvis

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by WriteLife Publishing

  (An imprint of Boutique of Quality Books Publishing Company)

  www.writelife.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  Photo Credit:

  Front Cover: Brian Chase © 2009.

  Back Cover: Yuriykulik © 2009.

  ISBN 978-1-60808-009-0 (p)

  ISBN 978-1-60808-118-9 (e)

  First Edition

  For Danny, John, and Brad…

  Acknowledgments

  So, this whole process is quite an adventure, and it can’t be done without some serious support and believers. I must, without a doubt, thank certain people.

  Of course, thanks to the family. You always believe in me. I could tell you I was thinking of backpacking through a closet to Narnia and you would support me. Not that my writing skills are as preposterous as the idea of a fantasy land (I hope!), but still, you would act like my passion was the best idea ever. I love you, Mom, Dad, and John.

  And John, you are not quite “Jack” in this book. But he is based off of you. As you know, I tend to twist the truth in order to create my fiction. You remember the essay about the Ouija board, right? I’m not a statistician, but a writer, my dear.

  Thank you, to Sally, Rich, Sandy, Jamie, and Brad. I know this is a very emotional topic. I hope some light is brought to it. Your support has meant so much.

  Cindy Grady, David Martin, and the whole WriteLife team, you are amazing! I am very lucky to have come across such brilliant, kind, and helpful people. A writer could not simply be any more fortunate than I have been to come across such a friendly group with hearts of gold. And, Bailey Palmer, I appreciate your time and brilliant ideas. You have a bright future ahead!

  Tom, my fellow book fiend, I love ya!

  Dr. Diab, thanks so much for everything. You are fabulous.

  Vin, Dr. Bauer, and Miss Downes, thank you for making writing experiences and applying grammar rules quite the…adventure? Tim Blake, kiddo, here it is, so you can quit asking! And how’s the high school treating you? Are you driving yet? Watch out, Illinois motorists! Kidding. Just kidding.

  Thanks, too, to my greater, extended family. All of you. Danny’s family, you know much of this is for you. While this book is fiction, lots of made-up stuff here, my inspiration was to pay tribute to my wonderful cousin. I know his passing was and always will be very difficult, and it’s what I wanted my first published book to be based upon. I’m so sorry for your loss. I love all of you tremendously. I miss you!

  Mr. Eric Klinenberg, thank you for Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, with its facts and statistics about that 1995 Chicago summer. You must be quite an awesome professor out there in New York. Thank you very much!

  I thank my friends, too, who always give encouragement, and my co-workers, and just all of you in my life. I love my life, I love you all. Thank you.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons is coincidental.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Author’s Note & Biography

  Chapter 1

  “Hey! Hey! Get back here you sneaky little…!”

  I look up, startled at the language, you know the kind. The cashier, exasperated and a bit heavy, a big zit on her sunburned nose, calls uselessly after a nervous boy. The blonde kid has just bolted out the door with his five-finger discounted Pepsi. The kid’s got some guts. Just took it and ran, and she, this cashier, just couldn’t go rushing after him; she has more customers, and she’s simply way too, well, fat.

  “Damn kids,” she mumbles, clearly not too devastated by this incident, “school needs to be year- round, already. Sheesh! Where are the parents?” She continues, shaking her head, then gets back to her short line of customers, also shaking their heads, likely wondering who raised such mites. Well, people just like them did, really. The town is truly not all that big.

  I browse the standard selection of candy bars down the aisle, in no hurry to find one and escape the comfort of the air conditioning. I can’t blame the kid for the pop pilfering. For real, a one-hundred plus degree day, summer vacation, and much roaming around town in search of something to bust the boredom make a kid thirsty. We’re all too young for jobs, and we don’t have much cash; thus, we’re in need of liquid refreshment! Plus, to be cool, not nerds, at our age it’s much more acceptable to pass the hot days hanging in gas stations and wherever than at home with the parents or annoying siblings.

  Typically, we laze away our days at the public swimming pool, the air conditioned gas stations like the one I’m in right now, and the library. Those are about the only choices in this hick town. No mall, no McDonald’s, no movie theater, nothing. Around here, we’re limited. But hopefully, even if next summer is this hot, we will by then have finished our sophomore year. Spud and I will have both have a driver’s license and be cruising to Ottawa to see some movies, grab a Big Mac, snag a girlfriend, whatever. Anything that gets us out of Seneca.

  As I said, this is the hottest summer ever, and I’ve been here all my life, so I know. This one, we’re indoors a lot, where the air conditioning is, and this week, even swimming at the public pool is out of the question. Preposterous, this deal. I have spent all my previous summers either at the pool or playing in the town baseball league. I’m too old for ball now, thank God, because wearing that gear in this heat? Just thinking of sweatpants and thick socks makes me nauseous.

  School’s been out for a month or so, and while June was great for the pool, pick-up baseball games in the field by my house, walking around town or shooting some basketball, July has been a whole new story. These last couple of days, well weeks, have been scorchers, as if we’ve drifted into Hell. I mean, we’re hit with hundred-plus degree days that just won’t let up. It sucks to never be comfortable, to sweat all night when you’re trying to sleep like you peed the bed, but worse. Also, what fun is a summer break when you can’t go outside? If we are out too long, there’s the fear
of becoming sick, the body shutting down from heat and getting all dehydrated. Not a fun time.

  Then, people like Candi the cashier are moodier than usual, uncomfortable and mad, swearing too much, clothes all sticky. In addition, who wants to hang around their boring house with even more boring parents after us to clean our rooms, wash our dirty cups and plates? So, we hit places outside the house that have AC, until we get kicked out, hence the afternoon here in this gas station.

  At this moment, how on this great earth does a starving fourteen-year-old guy, um, me, choose between the Twix or the Snickers… or the Milky Way? Kit Kat? I’m kinda partial to caramel… not really in the mood for peanuts, or wafers. Hmmm.

  I rub my hand over my freshly shaved head, which resembles a sweaty bowling ball today. Lots of the guys are sporting the shaggy look, and I did try for a bit, but I gave up this summer. Too icky. Maybe I’m a wuss, but I decided the matted, sweaty mess wasn’t worth it. The poor girls. How do they handle those mops on their heads? My mousy-brown hair never looks good when it is long anyway. Spud, though, refuses to chop his hair like mine. His brown hair is long and messy and floppy, and he likes it that way. The girls do, too! Guess some suffering does pay off!

  “Jeez, I’ll never make up my mind,” I mumble to Spud, my best buddy who’s transfixed by the magazine stand, gazing at the cover of Sports Animated, his eyes bulging at the sexy pictures of the never-aging Madonna in a red bikini. Well, it is summer.

  Yup, Spud is lost in his fantasies. He gets that way. He will get all interested in something and tune out the rest of the world.

  Surprisingly, he pops out of his deep thoughts and mumbles, “It ain’t no life er death situation, Jackson. It’s all just a buncha chocolate. But whatever, take yer time; it’s too freaking hot to go back outside for a little while. Whatever you buy, we’re staying in here to eat. That way I can flip through this mag. Of course, if the cashier bitch doesn’t shoo us out first.” He glances at her and makes a nasty face.

  Obviously, she ain’t his favorite person. She accused his little sister of stealing a bag of gummy worms last winter. For all I know, Rhia did steal, but whatever. That kid’s not the most trustworthy, and at eleven years old, she’s a brat.

  This Candi chic is short-tempered, about a hundred pounds too heavy, and her teeth are so yellow she looks like she munches Cheetos all day. She’s something like thirty, and she’s rude. But instead of those aforementioned Cheetos, she spends her shift gobbling Ranch Doritos (that she probably steals), grumbling and getting fatter. The only reason she’s still employed, obviously, is because nobody else wants the job. I mean, who wants to spend their adult years in a hick-town gas station waiting on rude customers, annoying kids, and making coffee for the stuck up doctors, bankers, insurance reps and shop owners who pass through all day?

  Everyone knows everyone, and it’s best not to be the lowly gas station worker. No wonder she’s a bitch.

  “Grab a seat;” I sigh, nodding my head toward the booth and playing eenie, meenie, minie, moe, and having to settle on a Twix. I grab it and merge toward the counter before I have second thoughts. Sheesh! Decisions! “You want anything?”

  “Yeah, ice cream. Grab me a Nutty Cone, and I’ll be at a booth.” Sure thing, boss, I think as I make my way to the counter. Let me pay for it, too! And I will. Spud doesn’t get much help from home, especially in the form of cash to hang with friends and buy stuff. No biggie… he is my best pal.

  The gas station, Casey’s, has a little kitchen that makes pizzas and sandwiches, so there are two small red-leather booths near the back of the store for anyone who wants to sit and eat. Nobody really does, unless they have no agenda, no lives, no place else to go, but me and Spud have no desire to tread back into the sweltering sun and decide to milk our time in the AC.

  As I join Spud at the booth, he looks up and around cautiously, after he snags his ice cream from me, then asks, “Did you hear about the latest heat death? Guess some old couple had no AC in their ratty apartment and couldn’t take it. My pops said they died naked, in half a tub of cool water, sitting there trying to cool down. It was like in Chicago or something. What a way to croak. Think of it; their old wrinkled bods extra shriveled with the water and all.” He cringes, frowns, and shakes his head, then licks his ice cream cone thoughtfully.

  He continues, “How freaking sad. Like lately all these old people and all these poor people who can’t afford more than a dumb fan. I mean, what help is it anyway for a fan to just blow around this suffocating stuff we call air?” He gestures to what we are, obviously, forced to breathe in. “It’s gotta be rough, you know, to have no means of air conditioning and no water. Damn, how could they live? Telling ya, Cooper, this here,” he waves his arms more wildly about this time, but careful not to drip his treat, “this July ‘95, here, it’s gonna go down in the record books.” Nodding that he knows he is right, Spud then cringes his friendly face once more and shivers, despite the heat, as he returns back to flipping through the magazine.

  As he licks his cone again, his floppy brown hair bobs into his innocent looking face. He’s not a bad guy, just got it rough, you know, at home? He has some poor language, but he’s sincere.

  “I just hate this heat,” I moan as I chew, not intending to sound like a baby. I guess it’s just something to say, cuz who likes it? Yup, I’m changing the subject, as each day we hear of more heat deaths, and I don’t feel like getting all depressed. I mean, my Twix is even already half-melted! God! Even though there’s AC in here, it’s still a damn sauna.

  “When do we get a break from this? I totally think we need to get back to the pool where all the girls are, or we’re gonna lose our touch.” But since the weather forecasts don’t really look promising, I doubt that we’ll head there soon. It’s a block from my house, but it often gets crowded by little kids and their floaty rings and their overprotective moms or ugly babysitters, so it kinda isn’t much fun for soon-to-be sophomores like us.

  “Haha. You mean my touch. You got no game, Cooper,” Spud teases. “But keep dreamin’.”

  “Funny. You’ll see,” I defend, then occupy myself with making an airplane out of a napkin.

  Anyway, sometimes when we’re really brave and can sneak away from the parents for a few hours, we head down the local I and M Canal road that connects to the next town, about six miles, and we hang out at this park where we can access the Illinois river, swim near the shore, and stay cool that way. Some of Spud’s braver, less bright friends jump from the town’s bridge there and then swim to shore, as a way to prove they’re cool or something, and to keep cool, too, but I’m not gonna try that. With my luck, I’d get hit by a car, or once I hit the river, I’d end up getting sucked under by the current. Shivers!

  However, hanging at the park and the river is much cooler than spending the day knocking into Barbie floating toy things (whatever they are called) and worrying if some little Billy or Tommy is gonna pee in the pool. Plus, the lifeguards are high school stuck-ups who make us get out for breaks every hour or so, and the place always gets more populated with little tykes than teens like us. Even more importantly, at least to Spud, there ain’t a chance of sneaking a six pack into the public pool. Not that I’m a drinker really, but it can be fun to hang with pals on a hot day, take a dip in the river, and kick back a Miller Lite while puffing a Marlboro. The
light kind only! Relax. And with filters! That stuff is not for me, though, and more on that later. In town, we’d never get away with that. Absolutely out of the question. But the pool does offer the chatting up of the girls in bikinis. High school chicks who really rock out. You win some, you lose some.

  The only thing is the parents don’t know we sneak off to the next town to swim or hang out, and we’d surely face serious heat from them if they knew! It’s not that we don’t respect them or whatever, it’s just, well, the peer pressure.

  Wiping melted ice cream from his chin, Spud says, grinning and showing that dimple in his left cheek that the girls seem to simply gush over, “Hey, what ya say we hit up your place tonight? I don’t wanna spend a hot uncomfy eve with ma and the Jerry dude.” He tosses his wrapper into the ash tray on the table and continues to glance at his Sports Animated, still grinning, pointing to the hot picture of another almost-naked chic in front of him.

  He lives about three miles north of town with his mom and her boyfriend, Jerry, and he is not real crazy about the farm life up there. Spud’s actually my cousin, as his real dad has been married to my dad’s cousin. His real dad lives in Marseilles, where we go to the park with the river and all. Spud pretty much grew up with his dad and this step-mom, only recently going to live with his real mom because the schools here are better. You know, one of those adult decision things. It sounds confusing, but all that matters is we view each other as cousins and best friends.

  So, Spud gets away from his lonely farm-ish house by riding his bike the three miles into town to my place, especially in the summer, and my parents treat him like their second son. My ma absolutely loves him; the pop’s a little weary, though, and my little sister, Zoë, a year younger than us, doesn’t seem to always care much for him. She knows he drinks and smokes, and she’s such a goody-two-shoes, it drives her wacky that he hangs with me. I think. I could be wrong.