Lonely Little Petunia

[scorpio1690]

A story I'm writing for English. My teacher wanted emotion, which I hardly write with, so I gave her this:

His body was right there. Right in front of my own eyes, and yet I still couldn’t believe it. His skin was cool to the touch, and had a purple hue under the layers of makeup applied to make him look somewhat presentable. I had to look at his body in the right direction or else it looked distorted, as if someone had someone had added bulges and depressions where there shouldn’t have been. “This isn’t Josh,” I thought. This wasn’t the kid who I met in grade eight. This wasn’t the person that came to Edmonton with me the same day I invited him. This was his body- not a body, a portal into a personality. Not even a week ago, it had all happened. That day will be forever branded into the back of my skull.

The day started out with a good tune. Flory’s birthday party, and all our closest friends were there. The sky was pouring, which was the only reason we hadn’t taken our good times to Harrison or Cultus Lake. As I sprinted from my car door to the golden entrance of Boston Pizza, I tried my best not to get my perfect hair wet. I saw the gang as I entered the restaurant and took a seat near the end of the table by Josh– who was sporting a shirt that appropriately said “Don’t Get Emo” on it– since all the centre seats had been taken already. Seventeen was the new sixteen, so this would be a day to remember. Songs, laughing, presents, it was all there. I had grown tired of dinner, and being at the end of the table limited my options to conversing, which I had done for the past hour, or causing a little mischief. I started to throw salt packages into peoples’ drinks down the table when they weren’t looking. No one was that impressed, but Josh joined in on the fun too.

The next morning I woke up cold and shivering. I was in my boxers on Colin’s couch, still partially wet and freezing my patookus off. “How’d I get here?” I thought. No one else was sleeping in the living room, maybe I was the only one in the house. Maybe everyone left. Something kept making noise. A hum. No, more of a song. A horrible melodious tune that crashed through my skull like an anvil through ice. It would start up, get a couple seconds into the song and then quit. “I’m a lonely little petunia in an onion patch, an onion patch, an onion patch.” There it was again! I figured it was just a radio that had been haunted. Needless to say, it scared me almost half as much as when I found out that it was only quarter after eight in the morning. I conquered my growing fear and ventured up the three steps to put an end to this haunting, it was disturbing my cold, wet beauty sleep on a couch. As I reached the top of the stairs I looked to the right as a breeze blew threw to my bones. The front door was open. “What irresponsible ass would leave the front door open?” I whispered aloud as my intellect began to awaken. But hell, for all I knew it was me that left the front door open. I shut the door and staggered back down to the couch. As soon as my head hit the pillow that irritating haunted song came back on. I forgot about it, but now my interest was really peaked; I thought I had just imagined it earlier. I was going to end this mental battle with the electronic device, it pushed me too far. It pushed me so far that I found my pants, nice and wet, and sought out my fellow peers that I assumed spent the night.

In Colin’s room everyone was sound asleep, that is until I came in. I leapt onto the bed, shaking Colin and Kavin out of their slumbers. Like a couple of hibernating bears, they rolled over and ignored me. It wasn’t until Robyn came into the room that they actually got up. “Someone stole my car!” she exclaimed. We didn’t believe her. Robyn wasn’t exactly the kind of person that could be taken seriously on any account. “No, look,” Colin pointed out his bedroom window. His roof was blocking part of the driveway. “You just can’t see it ‘cause the roof’s in the way.” Then that haunted sound came again. Busting through my ear drums I looked for the source, which happened to be in Robyn’s hand. Turns out a haunted radio wasn’t tormenting me; it was a cell phone with a crappy ring tone. She went off somewhere to talk on her phone as I laid back and tried to recall what happened the night before. Play fighting in the rain. I guess that explained my wet clothes. Before I could get on to my next thought Robyn came bursting back into the room. Apparently her car had been stolen, guess we were wrong on that one. But what was even stranger is that it was crashed into a tree with an unidentified dead body in it. Now, this was just plain strange. Her parents had been phoning all morning under the assumption that it was her in the car since the body was disfigured beyond recognition. That’s a scary thought, someone dead in her car. My parents would’ve lost it for sure.

One by one the good ol’ gang started waking up. We were making quite a ruckus in the household and soon everyone was up. Everyone but Josh. Where was he? I swear I saw him asleep on Colin’s parents’ bed the night before. He must still be there. I ran up the stairs and opened the door. The sheets were a little ruffled, but no Josh. I felt a pit forming in my stomach. I ran back downstairs; no one else could find Josh. It couldn’t be him in the car, could it? I thought we were invincible. We’re seventeen for God’s sake. This kind of thing doesn’t happen in real life. It happens in crappy shows with no storyline and low ratings. He must’ve picked up a hooker after stealing Robyn’s car. It was the only plausible explanation I could form in my head. Yes, that’s exactly what happened. We all went to bed, Josh got up, stole Robyn’s car, picked up a hooker and then drove home and she took the car. That thief! Didn’t she know that stealing cars was illegal?

Now that our rag-tag Scooby Doo team had solved the mystery, I was ready for some breakfast. Not everyone was satisfied with my answer though and reality started to dig its teeth into our juicy teenager brains.

Turns out, it was Josh in the car. Robyn’s mom’s cousin or brother or father or someone was in the RCMP and heard down the grapevine about what happened. She filled us in on the wonderful news when she arrived at the house. Math was never my strong suit, neither was science so this next tidbit of information that was disclosed to us was a little overwhelming. A car sped down Whatcom Road at 120 kilometers an hour around four in the morning, approximately an hour after we had all gone to bed, and hit a tree at the end of the road. Add rain into this mixture, and it’s quite the deadly concoction.
More people started to show up at the door which I closed not too long ago. Siblings, parents, counselors; no one I cared about. I wanted to hit someone, something, anything. Scream, yell, vomit or die. It all looked pretty good at this point. That’s not civil though, and as young adults we’re expected to act in civil mannerisms that reflect society and our parenting. Left with my only option, tears flooded my face. Hoping I’d drown on them or that they were filled with poison I kept crying. Everyone was crying and then the day got worse. Friends started to arrive at the house, some who had seen the crash site already. People were already trying to reflect on the good times they had with Josh, which was stupid since it was obviously a hooker in the car. I thought that this was the hard part, realizing that someone was dead. It sure as hell seemed like the hard part.

It turns out that seeing the site was the hardest part. To my surprise the air smelt rather delightful. I guess all the different fluids from the car mixed into a romantic aroma. The sweet air burned my lungs as I sobbed. Wet drops of rain mixed with my tears as I crossed the road into the property where the accident occurred. I could see something sparkly, something dazzling in the embedded in the tree. It looked beautiful, like some mosaic an overrated Italian artist made. My mistake, it was just windshield glass imprisoned in the now naked tree. The impact ripped chunks of the tree’s fleshy bark off its limbs. The aroma got thicker as I drew closer to the tree. People were already here, dropping flowers around the trunk. “That’s stupid,” I thought to myself. Why would Josh want some pansy flowers? Flowers are for wimps and fairy boys. He’d want hockey sticks and awesome Dragonforce music blaring, not crying and hippie flowers. This was stupid. My whole day was ruined right from the moment I woke up. As if on cue, my head began to spin and my stomach began to lurch. I hit a wall and the festivities from the previous night caught up with me and beat me down. My day had gone from terrible, to gut wrenchingly pukalicious.

I spent the next week at the tree almost every day. I’d just lie on the grass and listen to music. If I laid on a piece of shrapnel that jabbed into my side I didn’t care. It was nothing compared to what had happened. My dad was right though, “It’s been a day since Josh died.” Tomorrow it will be two days, then three, then four. I didn’t want to get further away from that day. I had seen Josh hours before he died and I wanted it to stay that way. The further I got away from that day the worse I felt. I had to stay close to it, because the further away I got from it the more my lessons faded. “No more drinking. Treat everyone with respect because we aren’t invincible. Do your homework” This was my mindset in the following weeks. They didn’t last very long though. I was back to my old habits a little over a month later. My friends had secluded themselves from me, and I learnt how to cope with it myself. I didn’t want to be involved in their ways of getting over things. “Let’s watch comedies and laugh the pain away!” Good plan! Who can remember their dead best friend while watching a rib-grabbing comedy! There was no relation between me and them. It died with Josh, and I was on my own.

Anything I can improve on? Suggestions are welcome.

True story fyi.