The Unpocalypse Series - Volume 1

Jaye - First Day of School

Roughly 10,000 people lived in the developing town of Fort Schilling, if one included the 2,000 military members and their families stationed at the army base after which the town was named. The base was on the southern edge of town, near the humble neighborhood called Elmwood, where young Jaye lived. Roughly fifteen acres of trees, short of what would be considered a forest, separated Jaye's neighborhood from the base. That patch of trees was mostly elm, and so for as long as anyone could remember, was known as The Elm Wood, and from which the neighborhood also took the name.

Elmwood was the area where poorer families lived and one of the few parts of Fort Schilling, for example, which still had no paved streets. For some folks in Fort Schilling, pointing out that a person was "from Elmwood" was a polite-sounding way to put them in their place or to establish they were of a lower class or lesser means.

At 10 years old, Jaye had still not quite realized he and his mother were poor. They fit into their neighborhood. They seemed to have a similar enough standard of living to everyone around them, and it all seemed very normal, and this morning he was just like every other kid in Elmwood, waking up to get ready for the first day back to school. His mother patted his back as he opened groggy eyes. She kissed him on the cheek, ruffled his brown hair playfully, and walked out of his bedroom, on her way out to work. Inch by tired inch, he forced himself up and stretched.

"I made you a lunch pail on the table," she said, her voice somewhat muffled from the next room. "Have a good first day and don't you set foot outside without combing your hair! Wet it down so it doesn't stand up in back. I have to go." Her voice trailed off as she stepped out the door and Jaye could hear the front door shut.

He slowly dressed in a plain shirt and trousers, some of the new clothes his mother had bought him for the new school year, with a mixture of excitement and dread. He slipped on his new shoes. He liked getting new clothes and shoes, but with each passing school year, he liked school less. It felt more and more difficult to get along with classmates who seemed intent on starting trouble. The thing he dreaded most was the two-person desks in his school. Every year, the students in each class were broken into pairs and seated together in a wide desk and were desk partners all year long. Last year his partner was the class bully: a mean, fat kid with a sour body odor.

Jaye walked into the kitchen, pumped the handle at the sink once, and caught some water in his cupped hand. He sucked some into his mouth and splashed the rest onto his brown mop of hair and tried to smooth it down. He walked into the bathroom, grabbed the comb, and looked into the warbly glass of the old mirror there. He tried for several minutes to make his hair look presentable, but his mother had just made him get a haircut for school. It was cheaply done by the old barber down the street, with the thick spectacles. His hair looked peculiar and bad, and the comb didn't help.

The mantle clock, his mother's one prized possession, chimed eight and his heart sank a little. He took the lunch pail his mother left for him, put on his new denim cap, and stepped out for his walk to school. Part of him was reluctant to let go of his summer, but once outside he couldn't also help but feel a little giddy. He clonked down the wooden porch stairs in the stiff soles of his new shoes and stepped into the hard-pack dirt road. The fall morning air was cool, and didn't it feel fine to wear new clothes and shoes? he thought to himself, stroking his fingers up and down one strap of his suspenders.

He saw the blond kid Mikel Hughes walking up ahead of him, also headed to school. He thought momentarily of greeting him or catching up to walk with him, then felt a little awkward and decided against it. Mikel only lived around the corner, but he and Jaye had barely ever spoken. Mikel lived with his grandparents. They were strict and they hardly ever let him out to play for some reason.