For the Love of Whitney - Sample Chapter

Prologue

 When I was growing up, I was told that childhood years were the magical years. I don’t think that is, or ever was, true. Not after the nightmare my friend David and I lived through that snowy winter of 1978 in good ole Merrimac Massachusetts. That year seemed to last forever. We made a vow to each other we’d never speak of it to anyone, ever. I’ve broken that vow.

             Everyday for fifteen years I have thought about that winter and what we did. I could never forget about the love of my life, who died in the icy waters of Cobblers Brook, known as Sewer Lane.                               

1    

It was my sixteenth birthday. I was walking home from the bus stop alone in the dark, sore from wrestling practice, and thinking about the presents my mother had bought for me, and the usual bullshit present I always got from my grandparents.

            My best friend, David, was sitting on the church steps against the doors . He was holding a bottle of Vodka he most likely stole from his father’s liquor cabinet. He walked toward me with his finger stuck in the throat of the bottle swinging it from side to side.. His knees and elbows were dirty from possibly being pushed down to the ground in a fight, or maybe he fell. I didn’t know, and I didn’t ask. As he walked closer to me, for some reason I noticed he seemed taller, a lot taller. That instant I felt strangely intimidated.

            “What are you doing, Matt?” he asked tossing the bottle into Mr. Shaw’s rose garden across the street. “Hey, happy birthday by the way,”     

            “Thanks,” I said surprised he even remembered. “Nothing, I’m just going home to have some cake and ice cream. Do you wanna come?”

            “Yeah, sure. I’m always up for cake!”

            We walked towards home, up the steep hill as we did everyday since we started taking the bus. I looked up at the broken street lights he and I smashed sometime ago, remembering all those thousands of rocks we threw, and giving each other the credit for finally hitting it.

When we walked into my front door, I could smell the burning candles my mother had just lit. Everyone started singing happy birthday, except for my father, the shitbag. He left when I was six. He figured the liquor bottle was more important than his kids..

David stood against the wall making funny faces at me until the singing stopped and then sat next to me at the dining room table. We knew David didn’t get along with his father, and my house was a kind of retreat from his home life. Some days he would walk in with bruises on the side of his face. He would claim he fell down the steep stairs at his house, but we all knew the truth, especially when he wouldn’t want to go home.

            I blew the candles out just as the phone rang, and saw my mother quickly reaching for it before it stopped. “Hello,” I heard her say from the kitchen. Then, without another word said, she hung up the phone. I knew who it was. My mother came back in the living room with her famous fake smile, holding one of those big knives you see in a horror movie. “Let me slice the cake so everyone can have an even piece,” She said softly still holding her fake smile. David was the first one waiting as though he hadn’t eaten since school started last September. He looked at me as if he wanted to tell me something

            “After we eat, let’s go down to the cellar. I want to show you a new move on the weights,” I said, making an excuse for him. He nodded.

When we went down stairs, David was fidgety and smiling at me like he had won the lottery.     “Donna showed me,” he said with the biggest smile on his face. Donna, the quiet girl with biggest brown eyes and the longest brown hair in the neighborhood, She was the star of David’s nightly dreams. Or so he says. He would dream of her wrapped up in his arms, stranded on an exotic island, and then wake up in a drenching sweat in the middle of the night. She was his ticket to happiness. She was his ticket to living.

            “Showed you what?” I asked, knowing exactly where this conversation was going.

            “She showed me her boobs,” he said, and then he smiled as wide as a child getting the taste of his first lollipop. I saw in his eyes he was imagining his hands fondling them, so I had to ask.

            “Did you touch’em?”

            “No, she was in the other room.”

            “Did she know she showed you her boobs?” I asked, knowing the answer already.

            “I don’t know,” he said as the smile left his face.

            “Maybe she knew you were there,” I said trying to make him feel better.

            “Whitney was in the room with Donna the same time she was changing her shirt,” He said knowing I had a thing for Whitney.

            “Whitney,” I said as a smile came over my face. The dreams, the thoughts of her made me feel like I was giving the orphanage a million dollars. She was different from the other girls we knew in the neighborhood. And she was seventeen—a whole year older than David and me. 

            “What was Whitney doing?”    

“Nothing,” he said looking down at the weights like he was lying to me.

            “Who was she with?” I asked him, realizing there was more to his story than just seeing Donna’s boobs.           

“She was with that new kid from New York, what’s his name?”

            “Peter,” I said, almost spitting his name. He was the other older one, the one who had a license to drive. He was eighteen and able to legally buy beer. God I hated him. I hated his name. I hated even the thought of him. Peter was the only person in the world that could make my blood boil David must have seen the jealousy in my eyes. I didn’t want to hear anything about Peter. The mention of him completely ruined my birthday, and I was about to chastise David when Mom yelled down to me that I had a visitor.

            “Whitney!” I whispered to David, and ran up the old wooden stairs. There she was, my love, Whitney Williams taking off her coat with her back towards me, and that slim sexy body I’ve wanted to hold since I discovered that girls were more than just girls. Her hair was long and silky draped over her shoulders like a black negligee covering the length of her back. She turned around holding a dark blue, plain wrapped box and looked into my blue eyes. I smiled feeling my hands getting sweaty, wanting to hold her ever so close, gaze into her brown eyes forever, and kiss her ever-so soft lips. “Hey,” she said with a soft twinkle in her eye that made me melt. I wanted to believe she had feelings for me, and that’s the reason she came tonight.

            “Do miracles happen?” I asked myself. “Do they?”

            “Happy birthday old man,” She said handing me the present with her arms straight out. I lightly pulled it from her hands, imagining for a brief moment about how life would be if I could just hold her forever. My mother and sister giggled and looked at. David stood behind me staring at her. He knew she was beautiful, and better looking than his make-believe girlfriend Donna.

            Whitney was wearing a black sleeveless dress just covering her knees, and a black pair of boots with a zipper on the side. She looked as though she came to pick me up for our first date. She nervously touched her thin gold necklace, and followed it down to the neckline of her dress. Suddenly she turned her head, and looked out the front door window as though she heard a strange noise. There he was, Peter, knocking at the door, and waving. My mother smiled as she opened the door. 

            “We, well, I wanted to stop by to see you on your birthday.” Whitney said, clasping her hands together, and stepped back from the door to give Peter enough room to enter. Her perfume tingled in my nose. I closed my eyes for a moment, breathing in, absorbing her very essence. I was crazy about her. I just wished she felt the same way.

            “Hey,” Peter said, waving his hand like the true piece of shit Yuppie that he was. And then I saw him lightly put his hand on the small of Whitney’s back. I cringed and fisted my hands tight. Peter was ugly to the bone. He had brown eyes, stick straight brown hair, with a slim, weak-looking body. He also had this, “I’m better than you attitude.” Maybe since he was from the Big Apple, he thought he could do what he wanted, and never had to worry about getting caught. That doesn’t happen in the small hick towns, especially Merrimac, Massachusetts

            “Hey Peter,” I said, thinking how good it would feel to punch him in the face as hard as I could. “What are you guys doing tonight?” I asked, trying to sound friendly in spite of my anger.

            “We’re going to the movies. We thought maybe you wanted to go with us, since it’s your birthday

I looked at my mom. I wanted to go, but I didn’t know whether she would let me. I was surprised when she said, “As long as you come home after the movie is over.” She handed me a five-dollar bill.

“Can David come?” I asked, turning around to see him. He was obviously trying to avoid being anywhere near Peter since he was in the kitchen when I found him

Whitney looked at Peter, and kind of smiled. I could see she was afraid to ask. “Sure, if he wants to.”

            “Are you coming David?” David looked at me and must have seen in my eyes that I really wanted him to go. No matter what, I wanted him to go. He nodded.

                        “Be home after the movie,” my mother said again giving me a, you-better-get-your-birthday-ass-home-after-the-movie or else look on her face.

            Whitney slipped into her coat, and smiled, putting her arm around me and making me melt inside as we walked out the front door. I wanted to grab her hand and hold it like we were lovers, but remembered that shitbag Peter was walking behind us.

            Peter parked his father’s two-door Chevy Nova in the middle row of the drive-in movie theater in Haverhill, one of the last drive-in theaters in the country. Whitney sat up front with Peter. David and I sat in the back on the leather seats that had made us slide in every direction every time he turned a corner. I could smell the horny nervous sweat coming off Peter’s body, and felt sick to my stomach.

            “We’re going to get some popcorn,” I said pushing against his seat. I looked over the front seat trying to squeeze through and saw Peter’s sweaty hand on Whitney’s bare leg close enough to feel her crotch. I slammed the seat forward causing Peter to bang his head hard against the steering wheel. David laughed and did the same, again slamming Peter’s head as he squeezed through the door.

“Assholes!” We heard Peter scream at us. “Don’t bother coming back.” I looked back at him and glared as David and I walked to the snack shack. Peter’s eyes glistened in the light, and something told me I should have stayed in the car.