To Look for America (4)
The phone rang in the Walker household and John breathed an exasperated sigh as his mother ran to answer it. He waited and listened while she talked for a few moments and then hung up, pausing to look at her hands before coming into the living room.
“That was another call about your grandmother,” she said. “Your aunt says she’s not doing so well. Will you be ok while I run into town to see her at the hospital?”
“Yeah, Mom.”
“All right, sweetie. I’ll be back in time for dinner.” She walked over to him and kissed him on the head. Embarrassed, he moved away, but she was already past him and grabbing her coat from a hook on the wall beside the door.
The door shut with a slight echoing boom and at once, John was aware how silent the house was. He shrugged it off and continued working trying not to notice the constant high buzz of electricity and growing boredom. The phone rang again and he stood up slowly to answer it.
“Hello?”
“Johnny? This is Bree.”
“Oh, hi. What’s up?”
“I was just wondering if I could talk to you about our trip. Is this a good time?”
“Um, sure.”
“I told my mom you’re coming to pick me up so we could do homework at your house. We can then go to Ol’ Man’s wishing well and talk there.”
“Actually, my mom’s out of the house, so you can just come here. I’ll be right over.”
He hung up the phone before remembering that the family car was with his mother en route towards the hospital. He slapped his forehead and reached for the phone but stopped and without second thought, gathered his keys and extra helmet, locked the house door and walked towards his motorcycle.
Author’s note on post 374: Continuation of the story. Nothing much more to say. I had debated a lot about Johnny’s father and the jury is still out about his presence in the story.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 29th, 2010 at 12:14 pm and is filed under End of Childhood, Fiction Prose, Realistic Fiction, Short Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.