DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Josh and Wendy

 

Josh’s adoptive parents always told him his face was full of freckles because he was a star sent to them from heaven.  Judy and Andy adopted him when he was seven years old and living in a run-down, hopeless neighborhood. To Josh the dirt covered porch had been home, but to the Andersons, giving Josh a good life would be something that would give their lives more meaning.

 

Being adopted by the Andersons meant that he had to be separated from his older brother, Jesse.  Josh didn’t know what happened to Jesse after he was adopted. Nights before Josh was adopted his birth parents would flop themselves on the soiled couch, one of the only pieces of furniture in the house, and watch sitcoms like Taxi and Friends in silence.  The antenna on the television was bent in three different ways to get a decent picture.  Their mother never did dishes, or vacuumed, and the water dripped from the roof directly on to the place where Josh and Jesse would place their only shoes; near the front door.  Josh and Jesse shared a dingy bedroom with cracked paint and a window that had about five feet in front of it until it met with the garage.  Just past the garage was a patch of grass that was about fifteen by twenty feet, where they would beat around a soccer ball they stole from the yard of some rich kids about a mile away.  The people that lived in the shack before them built a humble tree house.  It consisted of rain-worn boards, a rope ladder, and most importantly no ceiling, so that the sky was as open as a book, and the clouds and stars were stories to be read and understood only by him and his brother.

 

These were distant memories in Josh’s mind now, overrun by preparatory schools, expensive clothing, and the unconditional love of his adoptive parents.  His childhood bedroom at the lakeside upper-middle class home was run with the theme of blue and white; blue carpeting, white walls, a miniature blue basketball hoop with a white hamper under it. When Josh first moved in, reoccurring nightmares of water flooding his old bedroom to the point where he would drown in it led his new parents to let him adopt new dogs, Ringo and Sampson. 

Years and years later, after the nightmares had receded, Josh had a recurring dream where he and his brother were lying in the tree house.  A lightning bug circled around his face until it landed on his nose and began to glow.  Just as Josh’s eyes uncrossed, some stars in the blackness twinkled in a gentle pattern: one, two, three-four.  Jesse looked Josh in the eyes with his; one blue, one green. Jesse squeezed Josh’s hand just as the worn wooden boards gave way and Josh fell down, down, down.  The feeling of falling enraptured Josh’s stomach just as he sprang up and threw his quilt at Sampson.  Restlessness and emptiness surrounded him.  He wanted to visit his old home. 

 

Josh had known for some time that the shack was abandoned.  After traveling on a train overcrowded with impatient passengers he placed his feet at the very front of the path to the fragile front door.  He placed a foot in front, then back, then in front again.  Two pink-eyed rabbits darted out from under the cross-fenced porch. Across the street there was an empty police car, otherwise, he was alone.  He stepped cautiously onto the first of two tall steps, as to make sure it wouldn’t fall through.  He stood on the step, with his one foot, for a whole minute.  Before proceeding to the next step, he kicked the cross-fenced porch to see if there were any other animals living there. 

 

“WHAT DO YOU WANT?” said an estranged voice.

 

Josh tripped over the step and fell hard onto the ground.  Out from under the porch crawled a twenty-something year old dirt-covered woman, wrapped in three jackets and carrying with her two bags filled with garbage, grocery bags and remnants of food.  Her face was filthy, and the stench probably carried through to the next block.  She had one blue eye and one green eye. 

Josh took two quick steps forward and stopped right in front of the woman, gazing into her eyes.  Then he stood as upright as he could, and put out his hand.

 

“I am Josh Anderson.  Nice to meet you.”

 

The woman put out hers.  It was cold, with long fingernails and thin fingers. 

 

“I’m Wendy.”

 

Josh took her hand and guided her to the worn rope of the tree house.  He assisted her up as she put one tattered shoe in a loop at a time.  Josh followed her, putting all of his weight on his grasp and his arms.  They sat in the tree house as Josh stared admiringly at the eyes similar to the brother he had lost. 

 

For hours they sat reminiscing on the hardships they had found in life.  Josh took in all of the strength and bravery he thought he could never have had with clasped hands and smiling eyes.  Wendy took a pen from one of her bags and wrote on the wall of the tree house, Wendy was here.

 

Josh wrote, So was Josh.

 

           

           

           

           

           

           

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.