Braxtonburg

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Tuesday September 8th 1938

Blaire and I just hung out in the gym. Most of the other kids went outside to the yard, but there were still a few students in here with us. The gym was a large room with a stage. The stage had wooden backdrops that were most likely painted by students. There were brooms and mops in the corner of the stage. In the back there were costumes hanging on racks, various props were in a wooden crate next to them. We just talked mindlessly, Blaire began doing a goofy dance on stage at one point, which got a laugh out of me as well as the few students who were there. At long last the final bell rang. Blaire and I walked out of the gym and began to retrace our steps back to our lockers. We rounded the corner that we came around to get to the gym. Blaire stopped me.

"Hey Max look, your blood is gone." Blaire said, pointing to the spot where some of my blood had dropped to the floor.

I looked at the ground. The area around where my blood was earlier was wet.

"A custodian must have cleaned it up." I replied with a shrug,

"I bet the custodian was surprised to find your blood on the floor." Blaire laughed.

I laughed, picturing the face that the custodian must have made. We both kept walking through the increasingly crowded hallway and we found our way back to our lockers no problem. We grabbed our backpacks and swung our lockers shut, locking them.

"We survived our first day of High School!" Blaire said with a laugh.

"It was good. Well, excluding what happened with Tony." I agreed.

Blaire nodded, then her green eyes lit up.

"Oh yeah! Hannah invited us over to her place, didn't she?" She asked.

She took the address Hannah had given us earlier out of her pocket.

"19 Aspen Drive." She stated.

"We should go ask our parents if we can go." I suggested.

"Yeah, good idea." Blaire replied.

***

About ten minutes later we were both back at the school. Both our parents had said we could go to Hannah's.

"Aspen Drive is to our right, but we need to follow a few different roads to get there." I told her.

I led her off the school grounds and onto the road. We walked up Park Street for a few minutes. It was still chilly, the sun was obscured by clouds in the sky. The ground was still wet, it must have rained again while we were in school. We then turned left onto Miller Road. When we got to the end of the road, we saw the street sign. It said that Aspen Drive was to our left. We walked onto Aspen Drive. It was a dead end road with a chain link fence at the end. Over the chain link fence was a park, but I don't go there very often.

We walked down Aspen Drive until we reached house number 19. We walked up the grey steps and onto the wooden porch, which was also painted grey. There was a single chair to our right near the railing, along with a little wooden table.

The door to the house was a pale green color with white trim around the circular glass window. The house was painted pale green as well, with orange clay flower pots on the windowsills. The smell of fresh baked cookies drifted out the window. I rapped on the door.

We heard footsteps coming to the door from behind. An elderly lady opened the door. She had long grey hair and her blue eyes were rimmed with grey glasses. Her lips parted in a smile.