Story for my English class[please comment/suggest], Called Two-Story Drop |
Story for my English class[please comment/suggest], Called Two-Story Drop |
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It's long, but I beg you to suggest anything you feel should be changed.
The assignment was to write about memories we have, so I went with it and this was the result. Oh, and don't comment on indentation or any syntax errors, because these forums are weird and it doesn't show up here like it does in MS Word. Please comment, thanks! It's called "Two-Story Drop". ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ “Y’know, I been thinkin’ about somethin’, Justin” declared Eric, the neighborhood 9-year-old Tom Sawyer, and my best friend. “Do I really wanna know?” I requested anxiously, as hesitantly as I always did when pressed with one of Eric’s zany ideas. “Yeah, have you seen how white Nate Chapin’s house is?” he asked. “Duh, I live here, don’t I?” “Jus’ pay attention, smartass. When it rains, I’ve noticed that ol’ Chapin’s house gets pretty darn stained, and I been thinkin’, that’s only rain. He has to scrub his walls for hours after a storm! If we were to…” “No,” I cut him off, “we’re not stirrin’ up any more trouble after what you did last week in the Mormon Church’s parking lot. No, siree.” At the end of Blueberry Dr there sat an atrocious, rotten, repugnant structure that every prude, sanctimonious Mormon in all of the state held so dearly, and cavorted about so gaily that to the naked eye, it would seem that the Pope had relocated from the Vatican to the end of my subdivision. Everyone my age despised everything about the Church, and we expressed it through our actions, though I was regularly the kid who attempted to persuade the guys against it. Naturally, when the Church security guard told us to “get lost” when we were playing basketball in the Church lot, Eric’s brain took charge. Eric lived in the green house with the flared out porch, and the gargantuan mailbox. He was what my mother called, “the bad influence in your life.” He had bleach blonde hair, cut in such a precise bowl that you’d think his barber used dishes as hair care tools. He was long, and slender, and had a characteristically thin nose, that sniffed out the easiest way possible to delve us head first into a pool of trouble. His knees shone through the rips in his Levi’s, and he was rarely comfortable with a shirt that had no tears in it. The only time he’d give in to wearing “adult clothes”, as he called them, was when he desired access to the Mormon post-sermon reception. We’d slip in through the sliding door in the back, and glut our pockets as full of chocolate chip cookies and boxes of juice as physically feasible. As soon as we were told off by the guard, his eyes glared with the raging fires of mischief that ignited in him daily, and threatened to singe me to the police station. On the Sunday after the basketball incident, Eric dove into his father’s closet drawer, pulled out three small, red tubes, literally grabbed me by the collar, and drug me to the Church, refusing to let me resist. When I reluctantly asked him what the red tubes were, he replied with a subtle response. “They’re called Emmy-80’s, I think. My pop’s showed me ‘em; said they’re quite a hoot.” When we trotted up next to the sliding door, he pulled the M-80’s out of his pockets, and began to twine the three green wicks together. He then proceeded to pull out his matchbook, slide open the door, and tell me to “run for my life”. In a flash of booming confusion, I spun around, and leapt to the street, appalled at the gray cloud of smoke billowing out of the Church door. It was like nothing I had ever seen or heard before. The explosion was violent; a malignant vibration that sent a shockwave throughout the entire block. When the smoke cleared, we were wedged between the brick wall of the Church’s back fence, and the hedge that was the only visual beautifier that the Church possessed. Infuriated Mormons rushed out of the building, cookies and coffee in hand, and clothes in ruin; Tom Sawyer had struck again. The eccentric pastor, with his bright purple suit and hot pink undershirt made a resounding swear from the top of the street to involve the authorities if we were ever spotted within eye distance of the Church again, and from that point, I saw to it that Eric and I abstained from making our presence felt there again, no matter how humorous it was. He continued with his spiel about Nate Chapin’s, saying, “Just hear me out, bro. This is foolproof. No more of that Mormon nonsense. I wanna get that ol’ jerk Chapin back for ratting me out to my pop’s about taunting Ronnie’s dog.” Ronnie was my next-door neighbor, the 68-year-old ex-cop, who was the eyes and ears of Blueberry Dr. He was nearly bald, with malicious eyes and a stoic face. He rarely uncrossed his arms, maintained a monotone voice, and rocked curiously on his porch swing for the entire day, everyday. When he showed he was human, and went on vacation with his spouse to Bali, Eric saw to it that his house was tampered with, but apparently, Chapin was already on the job. Eric took a nice beating for throwing stones at Ronnie’s German Shepherds. “We’re going to do something this time like we’ve never done before,” he said, “we’re going to do our job at 3:00 A.M.” “3:00 A.M.???” I demanded, “I have a hard enough time getting up before noon! You have absolutely gone off the deep end this time, buddy. I must say, your ideas get screwier and…” “I took some sidewalk chalk from the Womack kids yesterday, and I think it would stand out quite nicely on that pearly white paint if we had the time to press down hard, and we will at three in the morning.” He declared. “Are you down with me or not, ‘bro’”? He hurtfully asked. I sighed. I didn’t know just what to say to him. On one side, I could sit in my room in safety, and not take heat from my parents, but on the other side, the grass seemed greener with adventure, and mischievous companionship with my chum. Naturally, I conceded. “Let’s do it.” I said enthusiastically. “That’s my boy!” He shouted, as we high-fived, and ran off to work out our plan. I lived in the pink house, three down from Eric. In my backyard sat an eight-year-old jungle jim, with a good amount of rust collecting on the ends of each pole from its survival of the seasons, and turbulent weather. The grass grew slightly taller under the jungle jim due to my stepfather's dilatory lawn mowing methods. At the peak of the eye sore was a small, enclosed area just before the corkscrew slide began, which had enough space to hold at least five kids my size; we called this "our lair". When we reached our destination, we began to discuss preliminary procedure. We examined our quarters. My task was going to be much more effortless, because there was a white picket ladder with ivy embossed on it that would be a cinch for me to climb down. When we gazed at Eric's window, we came to conclude that the only way he was going to safely reach the ground would be to hang from the gutters, slide himself to the drain pipe, and shimmy down. "Hah! It's almost too easy. Just be at the bottom of the drain pipe at 3 o'clock, and bring your Super Soaker. Don't worry about me, I know what I'm doing." He vaunted triumphantly. He had eliminated the concept of sidewalk chalk, claiming that it would be much too obtrusive to the neighborhood about who perpetrated the actions, we now had a new crime instrument. The Super Soaker XP 3000; the most advanced water rifle ever created, and we possessed two. These were to be our high pressure graffiti tools, and I knew for a fact they would work wonders on the white walls, and on getting me grounded. Eric, being the avant-garde trouble maker of the century, decided to take it a step further and mix some dirt in with the water in our tanks, just to be "on the safe side". He explained how this would make the words show up better. "What words?!" I demanded. "We can't spray any words, that will get us caught for sure!" "But I thought writing S N I T C H on the side of the wall would add a nice touch!" he contended, adding the "sad puppy dog face" for effect. I quickly sought for way to persuade him against it, but my lack of foresight prevented me from making the biggest mistake possible, by blurting, "If we spend so much time writing an individual word, we'll have wasted our chance to ruin the entire house!" "Wow! You're right, by-gum! We'll just drench the whole house! Sometimes you just shine bright, Justin." He reveled. "Get to sleep early, okay? About 6:30 to 7:00. Jus' tell your folks you don't feel good, so you can be ready and fresh at 3 o'clock. See you then, and keep a low profile." "Okay, Missouri's most wanted." I snapped back wittingly. As I walked away I thought I heard Eric mumble something, but I shrugged it off and headed home. As I lied in bed, I just gazed blankly at my ceiling. In deep thinking, I marveled over the fact that another living person enjoyed my company so well. We had so many memories together. Ironically, when we first met, he was attempting to get on my nerves. We had just moved into town, and had finally got all of our boxes into the house, and returned the U-Haul truck. A wooden bench wrapped around the bay of windows on our house, and I sat there, a frightened, lonely 6-year-old new kid eating pancakes and sausage. Evidently, he was crouched beneath the windows, tossing pebbles at the screen in an attempt to pester me, but I was oblivious until one scraped by my calf. In retaliation, I tossed a sausage link through the small slit in the screen, and it made contact with his head. Following this, I said, "Hi, how are ya?" He stood up, brushed his hair off, and said unsurely, "Uh, I'm good. What'cha eatin'? Pancakes?" "Yep." "That's cool. Say, d'you think you could come out and play?" "Sure. Let make sure with my mom." From then on, it was chemistry. Pure chemistry. 2:55 glinted from the alarm clock on my nightstand, and I decided that I would head out early, in order to be at Eric's at three on the dot. I threw one leg out onto the ladder, then the next, and carefully lowered myself to the ground. I took a terse look into my parent's room, and once I had decided the scene was serene, I trotted along the back fences, and arrived in Eric's backyard. I stopped moving so hastily in order to regain my composure, when I spotted something curious. I squinted and tilted my head to the side in an attempt to make out the shadow I was seeing. It appeard to be a limp, unresponsive figure lying lifeless on the ground. A better look determined it was Eric, sprawled out on the ground, exanimate, and not breathing. He had fallen from the gutter! In parylizing dismay, I gently turned him over to examine the wreckage. His face was painted red, his arm twisted aberrantly, and his conciousness lost. I bawled with everything in my being, "HELP! Someone please call 911! He's hurt!" My voice cracked, and sweat exuded from my pores in a continuous ooze. I utterly, and truly thought at that moment, my immaturity had taken away the best thing in my life: my best friend. Stricken with such powerful throe, I too lost my conciousness, and slumped pathetically onto Eric's chest. There we lied, two debilitated, enfeebled 9-year olds with nothing but grass, sky, unconciousness and blood to keep us company. In seconds, windows illuminated with the light of a concerned neighborhood, shadowy figures came sprinting from every direction, sirens screamed in the distance, and I knelt helplessly over my friend, unconciously brooding over our immaturity, and irresponsibility. The neigborhood was somber that evening, and when the melancholy event had passed, and I recovered from my anguish-induced stupor, I awoke in an uncomfortable hospital ward, with Eric in the bed beside me. I could tell he was seriously marred, and I urgently pleaded with the nurse to tell me his condition. When it was all said and done, Eric had broken three fingers, his wrist, his arm at the elbow, dislocated his shoulder, shattered two ribs, suffered a near fatal concussion, and nearly died from internal bleeding. The doctors claimed that it was miraculous that he hadn't been killed. We walked away with a few cuts and scratches, and a new outlook on life. I've been alive for sixteen years, and many more occurances have taken place since that tumultuous summer night in 1997. We've experienced puberty, girls, driving, violence, presidential elections, terrorism, and most of all, human nature. When our screen goes black, we will have lived complete lives, and will have looked back on every second of it as time we should have cherished. We spend too much time trying to mature ourselves, and to grow into society-accepted adults, when we are, in truth, so far from that goal. In a mere amount of time, we will be graduating, but it will not be the end. Our bond is too strong, our love too great, our maturity too embryonic. Just like Tom and Huck, Butch and Sundance, and Bonnie and Clyde, the legacy of Eric and Justin lives on in every infantile child that will grow into a knowledgable adult. The legacy lives on in every knowledgable adult who has regressions of their infantile childhood. And finally, the legacy lives on in all of humanity; the universal coming of age that humankind still has so much work to do in order to be accomplished. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ignore any punctuation errors, too. I think I got most of them, but I typed this is WordPad, I'll hit it up in MS Word tomorrow. |
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