[Note: I decided to adapt the 'flashback' style associated with Pere Callahan's story in Stephen King's Wolves of the Calla. Let me know if it works.]
2
It begins with a whisper.
As though her lips were placed gently against his ear, a warm moist breath floating past his lobe as it crawls deep into the nape of his neck. There's no time to react, and so he reacts as we all would.
His eyes shoot open, while his breath suddenly halts with a gasping whimper. He feels the hair on his arm stand on end, soldiers at attention welcoming a high ranking official.
Someone important. Please enter, and come and go as you please. Make yourself at home.
Jake lays frozen in bed, while an idea makes itself cozy deep within his mind. Though he's sure this has all been a dream, or apparition, he knows where he must go. And so he rises, shaking off his slumber as he dresses himself. Old jeans, grey t-shirt, and a white sweater.
And he goes, as he must.
It was but a dream, of that he is certain.
But if he's right, something really is different this time.
Something wonderful.
3
The hungry hustle of pattering feet on a rocky hill. Boys running faster and harder. Eager to become the men they assume life intends. Peach fuzz on their upper lips and chins, deep breaths rising along broadening shoulders, the newfound feeling of pure testosterone fleeting through their veins.
It began with a promise. This, he remembers.
As one boy falls to his backside, informally requesting a rest, his bookbag shakes against against the terrain of reeds and leaves. Two glass bottles shake lightly against one another.
The other boy plants himself down alongside his pal. As they both gasp deep to catch their winded breath, two bottles of beer are produced and Dean can feel their condensation drip to the ground beneath as he passes one along.
It has been almost six years since this moment, and still Jake can recall the serenity he experienced in isolation from the cares of a waking world.
The grass beneath them, dry and crunching beneath their feet. A cold front has brought an early autumn to their corner of the world, and with it the looming fear of change and all that is to come.
The unknown. A never-ending abyss of seeking direction, pivotal choices, the terror of taking unsuitable routes. And more gravely, being forced to live and die by the route one chose.
One way in, one way only.
One way out.
"The storm is coming," uttered one of the boys, and a silence hung in the air like a hollow knock in the dark. Neither could truly be sure who had uttered those haunting words.
Dean, in a desperate scramble to break the unnerving silence, took a loose cigarette from his ear and searched his pockets for a light. He was greeted by Jake's open palm presenting his father's Zippo. Engraved with care, it showcased two nude ladies sitting back to back in that scandalous pose you recognize from skin magazines and the mud-flaps of eighteen wheelers. Real greasy shit.
As Dean brings its flame towards the cheap dart between his lips, Jake felt an urge to speak. He looked at the beer, resting upon his knee.
"Even the worst storm couldn't take this away," he began to speak, "and you fuckin' believe that. Let it do its worst."
A soft and ominous wind shuffled the reeds against their backs, a tender reminder that this was the most luxurious of views. Dean thought, upon reflection, that he may have even seen the Lower Battery through the low fog bank. One could never be truly sure in this harbour.
"Time'll try and change who we become," Jake added, unsure from where this sudden insight was coming, "but it can't take who we are. You're my buddy, and I've got your back."
The neck of his beer was extended almost simultaneously towards Dean, who returned the gesture with considerable gratitude. As the conversation delved into matter of less significance, Jake knew he would be forever grateful to have a brother blowing life off and grabbing a beer instead. Years later, it would remind him of reading the last line in a novel before you start. It may spoil where you end up, but it's easier to face what's to come when you know where you stand in this world. Or where you will stand.
And Jake enjoyed the comfort of a lifelong friend, entertaining the idea in his head as he sipped cold beer and smoked loose tobacco under a calm aurora sky.
Every star was out, each one brighter than the last.
