Wild Nights, Hot And Crazy Days

Part 4.3: New Friends the Weird Way

***Author's Note: This short chapter does little to advance the plot, but introduces and describes some new friends. They were (and are) just friends, but the first honest-to-goodness friends I'd had in years. They will feature prominently through the rest of the story.***

The following day I was getting ready to go fishing again when there was a knock on the door. It was Trevor and Jeff with two other kids I had never met. Jeff introduced me to them. One was slightly shorter than me but much thicker – not really fat, just thick, with a blond buzz cut and lots of acne. He was about six months younger than me but was in a lower grade. He talked slowly with a deep voice. He immediately reminded me of Big Moose from the Archie comic books. This was Dale.

The other was slightly shorter and thin, with dark hair, freckles, and large, goofy looking lips. He was four months younger than me and was in the same grade. He was actually very good looking in a weird kind of way. His shirt said "Goofy Newfie" on it, and the moment he first opened his head to talk it was immediately apparent why: His Newfoundland accent was so thick you could hardly understand a word he was saying. His family had just moved here from Gander.

When I introduced myself Dale looked disappointed.

"What's wrong with you?" Trevor asked.

"When you told me his name was Carmen I thought he'd be Chinese or something!" Dale said.

I had to laugh. "What? Since when is Carmen a Chinese name?"

"I don't know. It just sounded foreign or something."

"Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you".

The bunch of us started laughing, Dale included.

It's funny how life can be sometimes. Here I was in the middle of a deep depression, not looking for friends at all, and something that started out as terrifying and dangerous turned into a lifelong friendship. For the rest of the summer, indeed, for the next several years we would all remain friends. The depression would remain, of course, but now at least I felt like life was worth living again.

Dale, Rodney and Jeff all lived in the "S" section, while Trevor lived in the "N" section. As summer wore on I got to know them all better. Dale lived with his mother, father, and younger brother in a duplex on Sampson Drive. He was very much like Big Moose from the Archie comics indeed, right down to his personality. He put on an air of oafishness but was smarter than he let on. He was also extraordinarily hard headed, both physically and metaphorically – I once saw him crack his head on the pavement when he wiped his bicycle out while trying to make a sharp turn with a flat front tire. It sounded like somebody had cracked a coconut open, and that was exactly what we all had feared, but when we approached his apparently lifeless body he started barking out "Nobody touch me! I'm fine!"

... And then he did the exact same thing again that very night. Hard headed indeed. He was also very much into military type movies and shows such as Rambo, which explained his buzz cut.

Jeff lived two houses down from Dale with his mother, younger sister, and evil stepfather. I say evil because Jeff wasn't his son and he never let Jeff forget it. He was quite an asshole, really, and his small moustache, dark hair, and strict demeanour reminded us of Hitler, so that's exactly what we called him. He would actually lock the doors to his house at exactly 9:00 PM and if Jeff wasn't home by then he'd be on his own. He had spent the night at either Dale's, Trevor's, Rodney's, or my place many times because of that! Jeff was not particularly athletic but was really into hockey. He was also terrified of the dark or anything that might skew toward the supernatural. He would not, for example, cut through the graveyard to get to the Burger King with the rest of us, instead choosing to walk around it, which involved navigating a huge hill. Naturally, we wasted no opportunities to bug him or prank him. One time I told him that the background demon voices in Alice Cooper's song Sick Things were not supposed to be there, that they showed up mysteriously and every time they tried re-recording the song the noises were there again so they published it anyway. After that he flat out refused to listen to that song anymore! Jeff didn't spend much time in our group though – his family moved to Edmonton later that winter.

Trevor lived on Nordic Crescent with his mother, father, and two brothers (one younger, one older). He was small in stature and younger than the rest of us, but he was very athletic. He was into baseball, hockey, football, etc, and actually played baseball in the summer time. He was a bold little bugger, too – he would say anything that entered his head to anyone that was around. One time we had all taken a bus into Halifax for Mardi Gras, a street party that happened every Halloween, and he actually asked a prostitute on Hollis Street for a cigarette. And she gave him one! He also developed a bit of a drinking problem early on, one that would come back to haunt him.

Rodney lived on Spinner Crescent with his father and two older sisters. His parents were divorced. Perhaps because of this he got everything he wanted. He had a dirt bike, a top-of-the-line Norco BMX bike, always had cigarettes (and was allowed to smoke!), and always seemed to have money for junk food, the arcade, etc. The one thing he didn't have was parental love. His father did not bother with him at all, so his sisters took over the task of raising him. He resented them for it, though, and often lashed out at them. He was a bit of a spoiled brat, actually, and had a habit of lying a lot. He lied so much that you could not trust a word he said. Because of this he was kind of the punching bag of the group, the tag-a-long. Plans were never made around Rodney, but Rodney was always there. I didn't mind much, as he was good looking. I couldn't touch, of course, but I could look, and that was better than nothing. Dale, who had grown up in a poor family, always resented Rodney for his always having things, but tolerated him, sometimes barely.

Shortly after I joined this group of friends I sort of became 'leader'. I didn't make orders or anything, but we usually met at my house (as it was before, my downstairs bedroom and parents who rarely came downstairs made it easy to smoke, swear, and otherwise misbehave) and I usually decided on what we would do each day. Since we all had similar interests this worked out quite well. I would have been the brains of the operation, if the operation had any brains at all. I would not tell them my deep, dark secret, not for a long time in the future, but they got to know me well other than that.