“Yeah,” she said with a laugh. I couldn’t help but smile when she did. “The high school I would have gone into down in Portland was a 5A school.”
“Wow,” I said, chuckling as we turned down the hall. “I can’t even imagine going to a school that big.”
“You grew up here?” she asked as we stopped in front of a random door. She dug her class schedule out of her bag and handed it to me.
“Yeah,” I said as I looked it over. She had English first period, just down at the end of the hall. We started towards it.
“So, are you like, super smart, or something?” I asked, handing her schedule back to her. Most of her classes were ones only juniors took.
She shrugged, her face turning slightly red. “Maybe I’m just weird, but I like school.”
“Not weird,” I said as we stopped in front of her classroom. “Someday we’ll all be working for people like you.”
She laughed and I mentally patted myself on the back.
“Well, thanks for showing me to my class, Jake…” she trailed off.
“Hayes,” I filled in. It was weird having someone on the island not know who I was. “Jake Hayes.”
“Nice to meet you, Jake Hayes,” she said, her smile blinding me.
“You too, Samantha Shay,” I said, stuffing my sweaty hands in my pockets.
“Sam,” she said, placing her hand on the door knob.
“See you later, Sam.” I smiled as I walked away.
Sam may have just stolen my fourteen-year-old heart.
24 hours ‘til the Homecoming game
10 months ‘til Air Force
The Hayes house wasn’t exactly tiny. When one has seven kids, each with a personality just a little too big for their own good, one had to have a lot of bedrooms and space. But with the entire OHS football team and a good handful of other parents in the house, the walls were in danger of being knocked out and the roof collapsing on us all as we weaved in and out of each other.
I sometimes wished my parents would send the younger kids to friends’ houses or something when we had these dinners. I could be grateful that at least John and Jenny were away at college. That was two less bodies. But that still left us with Jordan, sixteen; Jamie, thirteen; James, ten; and Joshua, seven. But my siblings were almost a part of the team. They didn’t seem to care if their ages were in the should-not-be-cool-cause-you’re-like-this-big range, and most of the team was pretty cool with them.
“Jake!” Mom yelled from the kitchen. Her light-brown, curly hair was sticking in every direction, giving her a crazed but warm look. “Take this to the table.”
“This” translated to a huge bowl that contained a salad, a scalding hot dish that contained something I didn’t even recognize, and another huge bowl full of rice. It was pure luck that I made it to the table without dumping something hot on someone’s head. Dad then instructed me to herd the thirteen chickens we owned back into the coop. I seriously hoped none of them had laid any eggs in the yard. There was nothing like ruining a team dinner by stepping on some hidden rotten egg in the yard.
Sadly that had happened before. The same night Carter had barfed in the living room.
“Excuse me, Blake Shaw?” I heard Mom scold from inside. “You know better than to use language like that. I don’t care if you’re a teenager and a football player. You will not talk like that in my house.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Hayes,” I heard Blake apologize. “It won’t happen again.”
“It better not, or I’ll wash your mouth out with soap, and don’t think I won’t.”
I chuckled as I closed the door to the chicken coop. Mom had no tolerance for foul language, something she engrained so well in her children I had literally never let a swear word slip passed my lips, ever, even when I was just with my friends. She’d instilled the same values in half the kids on this island, since half of them had spent a good amount of their summer in our house or backyard.
Finally it was time to sit down and eat. Not only had Mom cooked enough to feed the army that was the football team, she could have fed a whole other army. Everyone spoke too loud as we reached around each other for food, endless taunts and pep talks rose up about the game the next day.
The people on the island may have been weird, but they were generally good people. You didn’t find people like that in other parts of the country. You wouldn’t find someone who would ask if your pet alpaca was feeling better after a bout of suspected chicken pox. You wouldn’t find people who would unexpectedly bring over dinner or show up to clean your house just cause your mom wasn’t feeling too great. When you needed help, you’d get all your friends out, as well as a dozen strangers, sometimes whether you wanted them or not. The people on the island took care of one another.
As I looked around at them all, I felt just a little twinge of self-doubt in my decision to leave the island so soon after graduation. I’d always been so excited to leave this tiny island and its tiny and weird people.
Until that night, with my departure looming so close, I didn’t think I’d miss any of them except Samantha.
5 months ago
2 months ‘til the end of junior year
Every time I finished a solo flight it felt like I was on some kind of drugs. I always wondered if that was what feeling high was like.
I couldn’t stop smiling as I walked from the Bronco to the front door. I didn’t even notice how our huge, eleven passenger van was missing, Mom and the younger kids out somewhere for the night. I closed the door behind me and peeled my jacket off.
“That you, Jake?” Dad called from the back door leading out from the kitchen into the backyard. I could smell something floating through the house. Steak? Dad didn’t grill steak often. With so many mouths to feed, steak got a little expensive.
“Yeah,” I said, following my nose. “Just finished flight number seven.” I found Dad closing the door to the backyard behind him, carrying a plate with two monstrous sized steaks. “One of those for me?” I asked hopefully. My stomach instantly started growling.
“Yep,” Dad said, setting the plate on the counter. “Your mom is out with a few friends, and your siblings are off playing with the other island hooligans.”
“Just the two of us tonight?” I didn’t hide my surprise. I couldn’t remember the last time it had just been me and Dad in the house. Dad just nodded.
We didn’t say a whole lot as we piled food onto our plates that was sure to clog our internal workings. When they were fully loaded, we headed to the loft and Dad turned on a basketball game.
Half way through dinner, and just after the second half started, Dad nudged something on the coffee table with his toe. “This came in the mail for you today.”
I glanced to the table, and suddenly froze, the fork halfway to my mouth. It said
Air Force
on it in big, bold letters.
“You want to talk about that?” Dad asked, breaking his eyes away from the game to look at me.
Letting out a big sigh, I set my fork down on my plate.
“You thinking of joining the Air Force?” Dad asked when I took too long to answer.
“Yeah,” I responded, my eyes not quite meeting his.
“How soon you think you’d join?”
“I was thinking pretty soon after graduation,” I said, not sure if I should be nervous about this conversation or not. I’d only decided for sure that I was going to join a few days ago. I’d requested the information from the Air Force’s website long before then. “Like, September?”
Dad’s eyes glanced back to the game when the commercial ended. “You sure about it?”
I swallowed hard, meeting Dad’s eyes again. “Yeah, I’m sure. I’m ready to see more of the world. I’m not afraid. And I love flying more than almost anything else.”
Dad just nodded. A smile slowly started growing on his face. “Okay. I’m proud of you Jake. That’s an honorable thing to do.”
I couldn’t help but smile, my entire body finally relaxing.
“But you might want to talk to your mother about it sooner than later. It might take her a while to warm up to the idea.”
4 hours since winning the Homecoming game
10 months ‘til Air Force
Out of the thirty-seven seniors at Orcas High School, every single one of them had been at the homecoming football game. It was a Friday night, the sky was cloudy, threatening to rain, a picturesque September day on Orcas Island.
The Vikings had crushed Tree Hill Baptist High, thirty-two to eighteen. I had scored four of those touchdowns. And I celebrated with twenty-four of my senior classmen.
“Jake!” Carter shouted from across the bonfire. “Catch!”
I barely got my hands up to block the Budweiser can from hitting me square in the face.
“And that’s how we won the game today!” Carter cheered, the rest of the crowd cheering and shouting with him. I shook my head and laughed as I watched Carter grab another beer from the cooler at his feet and chuck it at Rain.
The entire football team was at the party and if we got caught we were screwed for the rest of the season. I could think of nothing worse than having the cops roll up. We were on track to win districts
this year. I had told Rain and Carter they were stupid for throwing this party, and yet there I was, drinking with the rest of them.
Ignoring my mother’s voice in the back of my head, the one that was always there whenever I was doing something I knew I shouldn’t, I popped the top of the can. Carter joined at my side and slapping his hand on my shoulder said, “Race you to the bottom?”
“Chug,” Rain started chanting. “Chug! Chug!”
“It’s on,” I taunted. Not hesitating, my lips met the lip of the can and tipped it back.
The alcohol burned my throat as it went down, and everything in me wanted to cough it back up. But I’d never admit this was only the third beer I’d ever had in my life. The one I’d finished not three minutes ago was my second.
Crushing the can in my fist as the last drop slid down my throat, I threw it at the ground and raised my arms in triumph. Carter coughed as he choked on his, laughing.
“That’s how we do it, Hayes!” Rain egged on, beating on my back. “Maybe you aren’t as innocent as we all believed you to be.”
“Shut up, man,” I shoved Rain, laughing with the rest of the crowd.
We’d all flocked to Rain’s house out in Deer Harbor, nearly at the end of the world on Orcas Island. The Jones’ had owned the twenty acres of ocean front property since the early nineteen hundreds, which was lucky. Rain’s hippy parents would never have been able to afford a place like this on their own.
And lucky for the student body of the high school, they were down in Portland for some sort of hippy convention about saving salmon, or ferns, or the cross-eyed, two toed crane, or something granola like that.
None of us would ever admit it, but parties like this happened all the time on the island. There was nothing to do on an island so tiny, so parties with red plastic cups and glimmering glass pipes were the frequent solution.
“I seriously can’t believe you guys invited all of these people,” River said as she stopped at Rain’s side, giving him the look of death. It was hard to believe they were twins, with River’s nearly black long hair, and Rain’s nearly white-blond hair. They couldn’t have looked less alike.