Sixteenth Year

I started off my sixteenth year with a blowjob from a girl I had never met before. I’m not quite sure how it happened. She had found out it was my birthday, and I guess she wanted to give me a gift. I cherished it greatly.

Later that night I walked home. It was quiet. The floorboards creaked beneath my feet. From further down the hall, in the room across from mine, a lump lay on a mattress underneath a thin bedcover.

A few months passed. I got my license, and was given the family’s old green minivan. Some say it was blue. Let’s just call it teal. I would drive it all over town.

I spent my morning’s before school shaking my father awake. Sometimes I would try to drag him out of bed. He was worse in the mornings, while I was worse at nights. Together, we made a complete happy person.

I started to date a girl who was more interested in having her skin wounded than caressed. I did not know why everyone around me was so sad.

My mother once told me that we surround ourselves with what we most manifest. She could no longer remind me of this. I had to remember for myself.

My father stood at the doorway of my bedroom. He told me his life insurance plan would leave over a million dollars to my name. He had thought it through very carefully.

We rode in the teal minivan down the street so that he could speak with my friend’s mother. I dropped him off, then left to pick up milk from the local convenience store. I drove all over town.

I ended up parked on the side of the road. My arms were too tense to grasp the steering wheel. I lay in the backseat, my body shaking.

My father once told me that some people are not meant to go through life alone. That he needed somebody. I hopped in the teal minivan, and drove all over town.

Later that year I was later honored as an All-Conference track athlete at my high school. I was good at running. I did it a lot.