Hello Otakus fans around the world of Anime and Manga. Good Morning, Afternoon or Nights, the time you are watching this.
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RIGHTS DISCLAIMERS:- I AM NOT THE OWNER OF THE DRAGON BALL Z SERIES AND FAIRY TALE, THE CHARACTERS ARE BELONG TO THEIR RESPECTIVE CREATORS.
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The Boy Next Door
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Since I'm the only family member going and I don't have a car, I'm forced to take the bus all the way into BFE where my grandparents live. The three and a half our drive is a nightmare without my cell phone or laptop. Dad has given me a lousy book to pass the time. Island of the Blue Dolphins. He said it was his favorite book as boy. I refuse to read it out of spite. The bus makes a few stops and is nearly always empty, disappointing me each time by having no interesting riders. The seats smell like pee and poor people. My dreams of sitting next to hot college guys won't come true. I don't talk to anyone. I don't do anything but stare out the window. It's a boring view from start to finish.
I arrive exactly on schedule and it's amazing how bus companies do that. Grandpa waits in the parking lot of a small convenience store that doubles as a bus stop. He's driven the same black Ford F-150 since before I was born. It still looks brand new when I crawl inside.
"Hi, Grandpa," I say, shoving my heavy suitcase into the backseat. He nods and pulls out of the parking lot.
"Lucy, nice trip?" My grandfather is not a man of many words. I nod. His lips press together in acknowledgement. The wrinkles in his face have gotten deeper and the hair that doesn't fit in his cowboy hat is grayer than I remember. We say nothing for the next fifteen minutes but it's not uncomfortable silence. Grandpa doesn't speak to anyone.
We pass so many farms and ranches with massive wrought iron monogrammed gates that I start to wonder if it's mandatory to grow some kind of crop or raise livestock to live in this town. The house next to Grandpa's has a new lake in front of it. An awkwardly shape, rectangular ellipse hole in the ground that I'm only assuming is a lake. I can't see any water in it from the road. That definitely wasn't there last time I visited and neither were the dozen lumps of dirt that now separate the neighbor's house from my grandparent's.
"What kind of farm is that?" I get out of the truck and Grandpa grabs my suitcase and hauls it up the porch stairs. I follow him
"That ain't a farm. It's a kid running the damn law," ...I don't understand, but don't ask any more questions. Gram knits a blanket and watches soap operas.
"Who is this?" she asks, smiling when I walk in the living room. I don't know if she's joking or being serious. Gram is sweet but a little batty. Sometimes calls me by my mother's name, sometimes forgets my name altogether. She sometimes tells me the same story multiple times.
"It's Lucy," I say, hugging her carefully to avoid becoming a Cyclops with one of her knitting needles.
"It's so good of you to come visit me. Old ladies never get any attention," ...I suspected this. Dad didn't tell her this was my punishment, but it made it seem like I wanted to come see her. Right, because no internet and no cellphone is exactly how I want to spend my entire summer.
At least the food is good. We eat dinner at exactly six. Play cards for an hour after that. Watch the eight o'clock news and then go our separate ways for bed. Only it's eight-thirty and I'm not sleepy. The crickets and the howling wolves outside aren't sleeping either. I don't hear a single car horn honk or loud bumping music like I would hear at home. I keep reaching for my cell phone but it isn't there. I keep thinking of things to post as a Facebook status but there is no Facebook here. I'm only a few hours into this summer and it already feels like I've been dumped on an isolated island and left to stare to death.
I'm staying in Dad's old bedroom. It still has the same twin size bed and writing desk he had as a child. His stuff is all over the place. I used to think it was fascinating, but now I hate it. All of the memories and heirlooms of my dad's just remind me of how me of him and how rude he was to send me here. This isn't a mere punishment, this is hell. The only cool thing about this room is that it's upstairs and has a balcony with a view of, well acres and acres of nothing, but still it's cool. I hang out here for a long time, dragging a beanbag out so I don't have to sit on the wooden balcony. I stargaze for an eternity that is only five minutes. I count as many stars as I can see, and get bored after thirty-six. Then I try closing my eyes and day dreaming about SatZ . I Wish I could pull out my cell phone and text a status update to my Facebook. It'd say: Bored as hell. So bored in fact, I may just drop dead. A voice catches me off-guard.
"You should learn to take a hint !..."
It's a male voice, coming from the neighbor's backyard. I freeze in the beanbag chair, not wanting to move and give myself away. A shadow comes into view just to my right. I turn my head and squint in the dark to see him. He's a younger guy, definitely not a grown man but probably older than high school. He's wearing dark jeans and no shirt, holding a cell phone to his ear. I guess some phones can get reception out here.
"I don't care what you feel," he says running a hand through his short spiky hair."You should have thought about that before you fucked that dude,"
I gasp and turn away, feeling guilty for eavesdropping on such a private conversation. I'm glad he doesn't know I'm here.
"Stop calling me." he says, his voice weary. "I don't want to hear from you again, or I swear I'll break this phone in half." ...I let out a deep breath. Break his phone in half? He has no idea what life is like without a phone.
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Bright and ridiculously early the next morning, I help Gram dust the obscene amount of pig knick-knacks that stretch from the living room into the kitchen and down the hall. She's been collecting pigs since the invention of time. She doesn't even own any real pigs. As we work, Gram sings oldies- not the oldies that I know, but the old oldies. I pray to stumble upon a time machine so I can go back to last week and not piss Dad off. I can't seem to shake the habit of slapping my back jeans pocket, reaching for a cell phone that is not there. Not that I have anything of importance to tell anyone, but some random friend's text would help so much right now.
We finish the pigs and Gram makes us turkey sandwiches and then settles into the living room to catch the beginning of her soap operas. She doesn't give me any more chores to do so I assume I'm free for the afternoon and that actually sucks more than cleaning. It is so boring here. There is no cable Tv so the channels are playing soap operas, divorce court, a show about cheating spouses and Spanish soap operas.
I decide to take a walk outside, hoping I'll trip and fall off the porch into a three-month coma and wake up in time to go back to school. A police car turns into the driveway. Dust from the gravel road puffs around the four tires. Grandpa was tending the flowerbed and now walks up to the officer's door to talk to him. I sit on the porch swing. If a cop showed up at my house I would be all sorts of excited, dying to know what the drama was about. But in this small ass hick town, everyone knows everyone and I wouldn't doubt if the cop is here just to invite Grandpa to a rip-roaring game of bingo in the town square. And then I hear yelling.
"You have got to get control of your town, Sheriff!" Grandpa is actually yelling, and at a police officer. God what I would give to be able to tweet about this. I stop swinging to shush the creaky wooden porch swing.
"I understand Ed, but there's nothing I can do. The boy owns the land now," Grandpa gazes at the neighboring piles of dirt and haphazard newly dug lake. He frowns and shakes hands with the officer.
"I know Gohan is turning over in his grave. He would have never wanted his house to become a motorcycle playground." As soon as the cop is gone and the dust settles in the driveway. I run to the flowerbeds to talk to Grandpa.
"What was that about?" He hands me a pair of gloves from a bucket of gardening points to a weed.
"You remember Gohan from when you were a kid?"I grab and pull the weed from the ground.
"Yeah...," i said,
"He died about five years ago. Left everything to his ungrateful brat grandson. He never did talk to his own son after a big fight they had." I'm blown away at how much Grandpa's talking to me. I'm almost scared to ask another question in case he's used up his word quota for the day.
"So the grandson made all those dirt piles?"He nods.
"Why?" i asked him,
He shrugs, letting his face go back to a grimace. I guess I've made him talk too much. I pull a few more weeds as penance. We work in silence until all of the weeds are gone. Finally, he talks, and I've almost forgotten my question.
"He rides motorcycles on it. Everyday." He wipes sweat from his brow. "Surprised he ain't out there now."
I smile. Grandpa's warming up to me. After dinner, during which Grandpa didn't say a single word, I retreat to the balcony for another afternoon of stargazing and nothingness. Only it isn't in the dark, so I make do with finding shapes in the clouds. The first blob is shaped sort of rectangelish which reminds me of my cell phone. I roll my eyes. I must be completely insane if I'm creating cellphones out of clouds. My heart aches for my phone as much as it does for SatZ.
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A grasshopper appears out of thin air next to my shoe. I pick it up, cupping it inside my hands like I did as a child. It hops around, tickling my fingers. Catching bugs has become my new past time in this stupid small town. I sigh. I'm pathetic. A firecracker-like roar fills the air and revs a few times like a motor. I jump and the grasshopper escapes as I jerk my head around looking for the source of the noise. Puffs of smoke sneak out of the neighbor's backyard shed. The motor revs again, in quick spurts.
A man pushes a motorcycle out in to the yard. He pulls back on the throttle a few times and the motor screams. Soon, the smoke stops and I can tell that it isn't really a motorcycles, at least not a Harley type motorcycle. It's a dirt bike. The recreational kind my cousin wants so badly. Now that I get a better look at that guy, he's closer to my age. He's wearing these funky looking black and yellow pants with a white undershirt. Muscles ripple through his arms as he grips the handlebars. I grab a hold of the wooden rails of the balcony, pull my face up to the crack between them and watch. He can't see me, but I can see him. For the time being, my cell phone is the last thing on my mind.
Like some kind of creepy stalker, I watch him for the next hour. He rides laps around his yard using the piles of dirt as jumps. Once he landed on the front wheel first and almost flew over the front of the handle bars. I thought I would scream in horror for a second. He put on a helmet after that and my secret presence got to remain a secret.
When the sun shuffles behind the trees enough to make it harder to see, he shuts off his bike and props it up on a metal stand. My feet tap against the railing. I want to talk to him, learn his name, get to know him. Yelling from the balcony hardly seems like the way to make a good first impression. It's almost dark so I have no reason to be casually walking around outside so I could "bump" into him. Leaning into my beanbag, I think. And then I cough. It's accidental at first, a piece of dust caught in my throat, but then it gives me idea.
I suck in a deep breath and force myself to cough again. In sounds unconvincingly fake and worse, he doesn't notice it. He keeps working on his bike, the back tire is off now and he's holding the chain in his hand. He takes off his shirt and uses it to wipe the sweat from his forehead... Oh my god, oh my god. SatZ doesn't look like that with no shirt on. I walk back into my room, pace in front of the mirrored dresser. What can I do to get his attention!?
Dad's childhood bookshelf displays his collection of snow globes, each more cheesy than the one before it. It would be a shame if one fell off the balcony...
"Oh my god, No!" My mouth stays open. My hand grasps my chest. I lean over the railing, seeing all of the broken pieces. Pretend to give a damn about them.
"This sucks," I say, louder than a normal person would talk. I run my hand through my hair, try to look dejected and sneak a glance in his direction. He's watching me from overturned plastic bucket he's using as a chair. Bingo...I run through the house, down stairs and out into the yard. Dropping to my knees, I pick up of pieces of the snow globe and turn them over in my head. The ground crunches behind me. I whip around faking a surprise.
"Hi," he says. He does a little hand wave.
"Hello," I stand up and shake his outstretched hand. "I'm Lucy," It's warm and kind of sweaty.
"I'm Son Goku but you can call me Goku...What happened?"
"I dropped it , and it rolled off." I let the pieces fall back onto the grass, frowning . "It's definitely not repairable,"
"That blows." he says. "Do you collect snow globes?"
"It was my dad's. That room was his and it still has all of his stuff in it." He looks up at the open balcony doors, than back at me. His eyes are brown.
"So this is your grandparent's house?" he asks and I nod... "I don't think I've seen you around here,"
"I'm just visiting for the summer," I say. "The whole summer," I add with a groan.
"The whole summer in this hick town? Welcome to my nightmare," We laugh, and he has no idea how much his presence is going to make my summer a whole lot better.
"There's really nothing to do here," I shrugs.
" I love to watch HBO." he said.
"I love HBO, but my grandparents don't have cable," I say. I've never actually watched HBO, but I bet I would like it. Especially with Goku. He chews on his lip, deciding I guess, if he would take my bait or not. He takes it.
"Want to come watch it?" Instead of showing how excited I am, I shrug.
"Sure,"
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His house looks like my grandparent's house on the inside. Oldish and full of knick-knacks, including a stuffed deer mounted on top of the fireplace. He catches me looking around the living room and probably notices the cringe on my face.
"Yeah, I didn't decorate the place," he says, motioning to the stuffed quail on the mail. He opens the fridge and takes out a coke. "You want a drink? I've got Coke, Mountain Dew, Sweet Tea.."
"Coke is cool, thanks." he tosses a cold can to me. I wait a second to open it so it won't explode. "So if you didn't decorate the place, who did?"
"My grandfather," he plops into the recliner and I sit on the black leather couch closer to him.
"Do you live with him?" Judging from what Grandpa and the cop said about him earlier, he's dead. But I'm not about to act like I already know that. He shakes his head, looking uncomfortable when he says "He died a few years ago, cancer. He left me the whole house and everything he owns." he opens his arms wide, gesturing to the house around us.
"I'm sorry for your loss," I say.
He shrugs. "Eh, I never really knew him that well. Him and my dad had a falling out and so they never spoke, so I dunno,"
"Wow, he left everything to you and you didn't even know him?"
"Well he had no one else in his life," Goku says.
"And you just live here without changing anything?" I pop open my coke. He's drinking from his can and his eyes dart over to me while the can is still at his mouth. It's cute.
"Nah, I live in California. I just came here for the summer. Take inventory of what is now mine and all..." he trails off and I decide to drop it. Besides, I don't want to know about his dead grandfather anyway. I want to know about him. The living, breathing, super sexy guy sitting across from me.
"So, you're from West Coast and you like dirt bikes," I smile.
"It's a little more than like, girl. It's my entire life," He sounds way too serious to be joking, but sports can't be people's entire lives, can they?
"what do you mean?"...He flips through the channel guide on the TV.
"This movie is hilarious, wanna watch?" ...I nod. I'm always down for a funny movie. "So what do you mean?" I ask again. He looks at me in this weird way, like he doesn't trust me. And it's kind of insulting because I'm in his house, I should be the untrusting one here, not the tall muscley guy. The silence gets long and awkward.
"Okay fine, don't tell me." He leans forward in his chair, clasping his hands together. "Sorry, I know that's rude of me but I'm not in the habit of telling people about my career right now."
"Career? Yeah you should definitely tell me," I say with a smile and a lighthearted laugh hoping it will make him tell me his deep dark secret. "You can't possibly be old enough to have a career." He makes this what - the - hell face and spills,
"I race Moto cross for a living. You can go pro at 18. It's my first year of being a pro. You know, getting paid to ride."
"Wow, so you're like really good?" I ask. he makes a half-frown and nods, the kind of thing people do when they aren't too sure of themselves. He's modest I guess.
"So is it the off season?"
"Not exactly," he says there's finality in his voice and I know the conversation is over for now. We watch a movie in what is mostly silence and then he shows me around the house. I wonder if my grandparents are wondering where I am. It's creepy how he has left his grandfather's room completely the way it was before he died, walker in the corner and pills on the nightstand. He says he wants to contact the local church to see if anyone wants to come get the stuff He doesn't know what to do with it. Then he shows me his room. It looks more like a teenager's room, minus the suitcases of clothes. He's hung up posters of rock bands, and a few of swimsuit babes. This dirty clothes all over the place and a silver Mac book on his bed. Next to that is his cell phone. I snap back to reality in a microsecond. Not reality like life, but reality like remembering that I am in this hellhole of a summer of being grounded without a cell phone or computer and there is now both right in front of me.
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" Goku, I know we don't know each other very well, but do you think I could please, please borrow your phone to call my friend real fast?" I beg him. He nods. "Sure, knock yourself out." I grabbed his phone and dial Erza's number.
"Thanks so much, I'll only be a second. It's just that my phone broke... and I haven't been able to call my best friend for days." He smiles and holds out his hand to shush me. "Yeah, it's cool. I'll just be in the living room when you're done."
"Thanks," I say again. The phone rings and Erza says hello more high pitched then normal, confused about the random number calling her.
"Hey, it's me."
"Lucy? Where are you? Did you lose your phone again?" God her voice reminds me of home. I laugh, like a mad woman. I am so happy to hear her voice.
"No, you're never going to believe this shit. Dad took away my phone."
"No fucking way! That's weak."
"It gets worse," I say. "He sent me to my grandparent's house for the whole damn summer." ...There's silence for a minute, she's totally speechless and I don't blame her. This is almost too shitty to believe. "Dude," she says. "i'm sorry. I thought you were pissed about SatZ and just ignoring the world."
"Nah, I'm grounded. Wait!...what do you mean about SatZ?" There is an awful, gut - wrenching pain in her voice. "You don't know yet..."
"I don't know what?" I shout, probably loud enough for Goku to hear. "Don't I know?"
"Bulla, you know that girl from the party?" She says slowly. Very, very slowly.
"Yes, I fucking know her, now tell me!" Go, I hate being titillated.
"She updated her Facebook to being in a relationship..."
"And...?"I say, my hearts beating rapidly beneath my chest.
Her voice is sad. "With SatZ "
"Guuhhat?" Goku's IPhone ways 1000 pounds in my hands.
"I'm sorry Lucy, I really am." Her voice seems far away. Three seconds go by and I take a deep breath. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Of course he wouldn't wait for me to get back. I mumble some kind of goodbye and hang up the phone, using all of my will power not to throw it across the wooden door frame squeaks and Goku leans against it.
"Something wrong?" He asks.I turn to face him, my jaw set tightly so I won't cry.
"Nope."
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That'sit Guys!, Plz don't forget to comment if you like this chapter,
Hope to see you in Next Chapter based on your response?
Goku is 18 years old.
Lucy is 17 years old.
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See ya, until next chapter!