My Summer of Firsts

Chapter 5 - Out on the Town

After breakfast, we walked aimlessly through town. The entire town was barely five miles from one end to the other, surrounded on three sides by mountains almost always visible above the tops of the buildings. Most of the businesses were in the center of town, with a few exceptions. Houses surrounded that. The larger homes sat along the winding roads in the hills that led up toward the mountains, looking down on everyone else, much like many of their occupants. Our trailer park was on the outskirts of everything on the seldom used old highway road with only the desert beyond us. Best to keep the poor people on the periphery, I suppose.

We'd reached the historic section of town where brick roads replaced asphalt. Trees lined the narrow lane, dotted with wooden benches and iron lampposts. If someone wanted to make a postcard for our town—God only knows why anyone would want that—this would be the picture on the cover.

I pointed out where to get the best of everything to Elian as we passed each building. "That place has amazing ice cream." I nodded to Olde Sam's Sweet Shop beneath the red and white striped awning. "It's all homemade."

"Since 1933," Elian recited, reading off the sign. "Must be good to have stuck around so long."

"I'd ask if you want to get a cone, but you made your opinion on dessert in the morning quite clear."

Elian rolled his eyes. "I don't think it's that weird to not want that much sugar at ten o'clock in the morning."

"I'm just messing with you." I gave him a pat on the back. I wished I could just leave my hand there. Or, better yet, put my arm around him, to hold him close as we strolled down these streets that I'd traveled alone for so long.

Despite the sidewalks being wide, he and I walked so close that our arms and hands and shoulders kept brushing together. I realized my shoulders were higher than his. I'm not sure how I hadn't noticed that he was shorter than me. Only by a couple inches, but somehow I'd imagined him as the taller of us. Maybe that was my mind building him up to make him more mythic.

I studied his profile as he told a story about eating six Eggo waffles before school when he was ten. "I literally spilled my guts all over my teacher."

I burst out laughing. "Seriously?"

Elian sounded defensive when he said, "She didn't believe me when I told her I felt sick. I asked if I could go to the nurse. I even asked if I could just go to the bathroom, but she wouldn't let me. She thought I was faking it to get out of a spelling test. I still feel bad sometimes when I remember that."

"You shouldn't. It was her own fault." I said. "I always hated teachers who don't listen to kids. Or the ones who act like going to the bathroom is some kind of privilege. Like, bitch, it's a biological function that I can't control."

He didn't laugh, but I could tell he wanted to. "Well, anyway, I haven't been able to stomach the idea of eating sweet food for breakfast ever since."

"See, that I get. I had a similar experience with broccoli." I shuddered just thinking about it. "One time, my neighbor was babysitting me and wouldn't let me leave the table until I ate every bit of my broccoli, but I was already full, so the more I ate the worse it tasted. I mean, I didn't achieve the same level of epic-ness as you by barfing on her, but I can't even smell broccoli anymore without wanting to vomit."

"I'll have to remember that. No eating broccoli around Steven."

"I mean, you could eat raw broccoli. It's just that sulfuric stench of cooked broccoli. Blech." I stuck my tongue out.

Elian's laugh gave me butterflies. It was so warm and genuine. "Noted. I'll keep that in mind for when we have dinner together." He said that so casually, as if it was a foregone conclusion.