Leaving Laurabelle Falls

Chapter 9

There are some memories that never leave your head, no matter how fuzzy they become. There are some memories that flee with such immediacy, you wonder whether or not you ever actually had them.

I was ten years old. Noah was thirteen.

"Hey," He shouted up the stairs. It was swelteringly hot; the summer was almost over, and I was sitting in front of the AC unit. "I'm going out with Dylan. Don't tell mom."

Torrent sat up from her place lying on the bed.

"Where are you going?" She shouted down, cupping her hands to her cheeks. This was the summer when Torrent had stayed over at least once a week.

"The junkyard!" Dylan shouted.

I heard a muffled smack and a small hiss.

"I mean, uh. Not the junkyard!" He clarified.

The junkyard had a fence around it that, to my child eyes, looked to be at least 100 feet tall. But man, did it look cool on the inside.

It was the kind of dilapidated, rusted hangout that I could imagine teenagers flocking to to drink beer at in the movies. There were cars with doors torn off, hoods askew revealing the mechanics inside, windows that were cracked and caved but not quite entirely broken.There were piles of furniture nobody had touched in twenty years, clocks that had been broken and were never repaired. It had wide walkways and places where the dirt had sunken in to form little indents, and to either side of the walkways, the occasional old lawn chair that was rusted beyond folding.

"We want to go!" I shouted, immediately stumbling towards the door. I was still in my pajama pants, with a white tank top on over top.

"We're not taking you!" Noah shouted, exasperated. I turned to Torrent, and raised an eyebrow. Then, I did something... Mildly evil.

"If you take us, we won't tell Mom!" I shouted down. I heard Noah cuss under his breath, and heard the tip of his shoes hit the bottom of the stairs. Back then, his shoes always ended up oddly flat at the top. He kicked something every time he got angry.

"You have to listen to everything we say!" He shouted back.

"Okay!" I agreed. "Give us a few minutes!"

I turned back to Torrent, motioning for her to get up and start changing. Her bookbag, with half of her clothes already leaking out of her bag, was spread open across my bed.

"If you girls take too long, we're gonna leave you anyways!" Dylan shouted.

Torrent was lying on the bed, frozen as she stared at the pile. She slowly got up, her movements stunted.

"Come on," I encouraged. I turned and walked over to my closet, grabbing my nearest pair of jeans and a T-shirt with a bedazzled monkey on the front. "If we take too long, they're gonna leave us behind."

"I don't know if this is a good idea," Torrent argued, moving anyway.

"C'mon," I said. I didn't elaborate beyond that; I knew that Torrent was going to do what I said. She almost always did. "This is gonna be so cool."

I grabbed a brush and a ponytail, and began to meticulously put my hair up in the mirror. Yes, my ears were big, and I tried to avoid showing them when I could. But it was the California summer and we were heading to a junkyard.

I wasn't about to have beads of sweat dripping down my back when I was supposed to feel cool.

Several short minutes later, I ran down the stairs with Torrent trailing behind me. The boys had already opened the door and were making their way across the porch, mumbling about girls and getting dressed.