Chapter One
I have never witnessed such a glow from the sunset against the waves before. The lake looks as if it is on fire. The northern sky is blazing red and purple with a melting orange afterglow. I’m lying perfectly alone at the beach and stretching my extremities to the max. I wiggle my toes free of gritty sand. The evening air is brisk but my body is warm from the sand. The beach is small, but full of promise. The sand is never groomed so the shoreline is always full of seaweed and algae. The only way to this beach is through a sandy path full of driftwood that links off of a dead-end road. The entrance to the beach casts a wide view of the lake which stretches out for miles so it‘s hard to distinguish where the horizon line is. The beach is shaped into a half circle and there are trees and brush on either side and the brush is so thick that it‘s near impossible to peer through to see what lies beyond. The sand is hard on my feet because it’s never grated. Jagged rocks and smooth stones are littered throughout the beach and the sand is infested with thick weeds popping up everywhere. I gaze upon some birds flying off into the masterpiece painted in the sky. Every time I see this I think of workers going home after a long day of hard work. The waves crashing against the cliff side behind the brush and trees to my right sound louder then ever. I always wonder how big the waves are further out in the lake as I have never been out on the water. I just watch the sailboats and imagine myself on one. If I could just break my routine, I’d hop onto a ship and would sail to far off places and I enjoy thinking about all the things I might see but of course, reality always comes rushing back to my mind. This is where I’m staying.
I was almost home when I heard shouting. My shoes slapped against the cracked sidewalk as I darted towards the end of the block. I stop. I haven’t seen something like this in quite some time.
This town is boring as hell. Nothing exciting happens here. Some days I’ll go through the motions. I will wake up, get dressed, eat, meet up with my best friend Mike and we’ll waste most of the day walking around hoping for a sign of adventure. Then dinner time will come around and I’ll eat and afterwards I’ll be sitting in front of the TV as the light casts weird shadows in the den, or I’ll go to the beach and I’ll lay down to read.
It’s an average town which is barely noticeable on a map, just another dot along the rural highway line and it‘s barely populated. The men mostly work fulltime at random blue collar jobs and the average women stay close to home and raise their average children. Most families go to Mr. General’s Store for their shopping. Mr. General’s Store has all the basic necessities the town will ever need. There’s also an old library with a few broken windows. The library looks uninviting with old red bricks and moldy windows. It’s usually deserted except for the older women with nothing better to do. Those women have probably read every dusty book twice over. If the weather is nice, I sometimes find them sitting on the old picnic table outside of the library discussing literature. Seagulls will walk around the worn, chipped table squawking away as the squirrels leap and scurry through the green grass from tree trunk to tree trunk. Across from the library is an aging park full of rusted equipment and wildlife. The playground is small and the grass is long and drowning in weeds. Surrounding the playground is a forest of old deciduous trees. Mosquitoes haunt the park and prey on any child brave enough to play on the equipment in the summer. There are two park benches in the playground for the parents but one of the benches was broken by some teens that were visiting family last summer and it still hasn’t been fixed. The other table has brightly painted graffiti on it. Then there’s the beach or as I call it, sanctuary.
As I get up off the sand, I shake off all the grit from my back and hair. My name is Genesis. I’m tall and lanky with longer hair that covers my baby blue eyes. I also have shiny braces which seem to be taking forever to get off.
I kick stones here and there as I walk home on a peaceful late summer night. Sometimes I find myself just daydreaming about random things like the future and the past. My friends could be talking to me, but I can’t help but fixate myself on certain words they say and start thinking about memories created from their speech and when I shake out of it and see them looking at me with a confused look upon their face, my face turns red.
I hear a soft whistle and as I look over to my left, I find Mrs. Johnson waiving at me. Mrs. Johnson’s hair was slowly turning grey and her face is weathered. I imagine her as she might have looked back in her day, fair and beautiful, but those days are long behind her now. I smile a bit as I notice she is wearing her pink top she always seems to wear, revealing her frail bony arms. Her black dress droops to her ankles and she has over sized glasses that she constantly pushes up her nose with her wrinkly index finger. She is a widow and lives alone in the corner of the town. She’s shouting something but I can’t make out what she’s yelling because of a big rumbling truck that shot by.
“Happy belated birthday Genesis!” she yells again in an old raspy voice.
Being singled out always makes me feel funny but I give her a thank-you wave. She waves back and walks quickly in an old pace towards Mr. General’s. As I continue along the crumbling road I begin to smell my neighbour’s barbequing something delicious. Such intoxicating aromas are so nostalgic. It reminds me of late summer when I would be walking home or riding my bike and I would smell the barbeques cooking. I’d stop my bike and creep up to the fence and peer through a hole and just let their dinner filter through my nose. Sometimes I would forget I was even standing there and would get caught up into a fantasy inside my mind‘s eye.
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