Andrew's Season

A night of sparkling stars covered the softly rolling hills, bouncy and shining with life from the work of a new irrigation system. Barely visible behind the shadows of the hills, was a boy of eleven lying between two emerald crests. His blonde crown twitched occasionally as he attempted to gaze at the stars while the plague of bugs that summer brings all seemed to be trying to invade his heavily patched, but neat overalls. As he scratched his itching body for what seemed like the millionth time to him, he heard a shrill female voice calling, “Andrew! Where are you! It’s supper time!”

 

            A quick as lightening the boy got up, attempting to escape in the opposite direction from the voice, however, a tall dark haired girl was in front of him, before he could even reach for the bulging knapsack beside him. “What are you doing Andrew? How many times has Mrs. Hamilton told you to stop gazing at those darn stars and to act like a normal boy” questioned the girl angrily holding her long skirts in a nervous bunch. Gathering up his tattered belongings he snapped, “What’s it matter to her? I’m leaving. I’ve decide to pack my stuff, get a few vittles, and leave this terrible old orphanage”!  Crouching down to smooth his tight yellow curls she said in a soothing, somewhat jocular tone “now Andrew, why would you ever do that? Do you think you could survive on your own? Little you? Why you just learned algebra and now you’re fixing for a life on your lonesome”?

 

“It’s just, I hate this place! Isn’t it bad enough my ma and pa died!  Satan must’ve decided to add on to the whole lot! And make it so none of my family could take me and I have to stay here until I’m 18”, exclaimed the boy, pushing away her sympathetic pats. Trying to make a point the boy stood up and imitated the notorious Mrs. Hamilton, “Make your bed Andrew! Stop being fanciful Andrew! Must you be so dramatic Andrew? You wish to be what Andrew? No, no, no, you will be a respectable farmer or banker like all the rest of the boys wish to be.” Raising his prepubescent voice he ranted, “I am sick of her! She is just an old, disgusting, skeptic! I want to die whenever I see her! I want her to die when I see her! When she enters the same room as me it feels like my stomach has flipped inside out and was drowned in fear! I hate her! I hate her! I hate her,” finishing with tears filling his chocolate eyes. “Oh my”, murmured the girl “Perhaps, maybe you should rest or- interrupting her clumsy assurances Andrew stated bluntly “I am sick and tired of resting from her. I am leaving.”

 

Picking up the last of his belongings he gazed once more at the stars. To him, they symbolized everything that was lost or slipping away from him in that orphanage: hope, dreams, love, and most important of all a reason to live. As Andrew walked away from the pitying dark haired girl, ignoring her commands to stay, her tugs on his clothing, her assurances that she would talk to Mrs. Hamilton; he grew up a little

 

. There is a season between childhood and adolescence that creates a series of dark lamentations for which a child feels that they have wasted their childhood or perhaps more precisely, their childish looks. Upon realizing this melancholy truth, they become to understand that adulthood and all it’s so called “responsibilities” is not a far, looming, prospect, but a reality coming closer with every inhale.  This is Andrew and that was the beginning of his season.

 

Author's Note

This is also part of a book I am writing