Page 20 of Possibly Texas

Then I’d have someone to abandon like I’d been. Make someone feel as rotten as I did most of the time, though I didn’t know it. Okay. I did know it. I just never had time to sit in the quiet and think about it much.

And I never had anyone to share that thought with when it popped into my head. So, not only did I discover I was a tortoise, I only had myself to share it with when I discovered it. That’s the true definition of loneliness.

When you get good news, who do you call first?

I didn’t have an answer for that.

A good reading habit deserves a next page.

Keep a few more books close by with Lokepub.

I had me. The tortoise.

Up in my room on the third floor of Jack’s house, I had the time and quiet needed to really think about life. I found myself that night, sitting cross-legged on the bed in front of the dormer windows, staring out at Possibly. The inky outlines of downtown in the distance, standing quietly as the stars and moon shone down placidly. Shadows are usually black, right? With the moon and stars shining brightly, and no light pollution to speak of, the shadows looked a little blue. Maybe the town of Possibly felt lonely sometimes, too?

My phone was laid on my thigh, its screen dark. It had been almost three whole days and Mom hadn’t bothered to text or call. Not even to see if I was okay and if Jack was fine with me staying with him. I would’ve been fine if she didn’t want to tell me what she was doing—it probably wouldn’t have been anything I hadn’t seen her do a million times before—but she could have at least shown interest in what I was doing. Shown concern for my well-being.

Was that too much to ask?

Jack wasn’t really much of a talker. I didn’t have any friends to text. Mom could have at least helped make me feel a little less lonely by shooting off a “How are you, Jordy?” text. As I stared out at the blue glow of the moon on the rooftops of the buildings in Possibly, I realized that maybe I could create a friend.

My head rolled back to stare up at the moon, high in the sky, swollen with appropriated sunlight and the hopes cast off by dreamers all over the world who were fast asleep. The moon has no light or hope of its own, but it borrows some each day.

Maybe the moon could be my friend? I could tell it my thoughts. Who else did the moon have to talk to, anyway? The moon might be lonely. How many people give it the time of day? Ask it how it’s doing? I could sit on the bed and tell the moon how I felt.

Just as I contemplated this ridiculous—and possibly insane—idea, the barn off in the distance, down by the creek, caught my eye. Lights were coming from it once again. Though, this time, it didn’t appear as though lasers were coming from its roof. Instead, it looked like the soft glow put off by white Christmas lights.

How does it look like lasers and lights are coming out of the roof but I can’t see the source of the lights?

I watched, mesmerized for several minutes, wondering what was going on at the barn. Finally, I pushed the middle dormer open again and listened to the breeze. Just like the first night, a song was riding the wind, but it was too faint for me to make out. And, just like that, the lights and the song were gone. Possibly was pitch black and my eyes were adjusting to the darkness once more.

I touched my phone screen.

Midnight.

The wind and I were each other’s friends for a minute as I listened to the quiet and watched the darkness of the town. Finally, I shut the middle dormer once more, staring at the barn for a moment longer through the glass.

I slipped out of my shirt, threw it on the floor, and crawled under the covers.

“So, I’m thinking it’s a night club or something,” I said as Jack inspected the channels he’d dug in the top of the table. “I mean, the first night I was here, there were, like, lasers coming out of the roof. Last night, it was Christmas lights. Kind of. And I heard music each night.”

Jack focused on his work.

“What is it?” I asked.

Jack’s eyes never left the table and his fingertip ran along a channel, inspecting it for depth and consistency as I blathered on at the other end of the table.

The two of us had risen early—as we had every day since I had arrived—and ate a breakfast of cereal. I didn’t realize it when I’d had breakfast at Jack’s the first morning, but he liked the same cereal I did. It didn’t dawn on me until the morning after seeing the Christmas lights at the barn, but it struck me as incredibly lucky. I wouldn’t have known how to approach food likes and dislikes with Jack. Not that I didn’t feel like I couldn’t talk to him about not liking the food he had on hand, but it would feel rude to tell him I didn’t like the free food he provided each day.

So far, he was batting a thousand in the food department.

“Come on, Jack?” I pleaded. “If there’s some cool place to go hang out at night, that’d be cool. There’s nothing in this town! A club would be cool. I mean, if it’s all ages and all. Not if it’s only twenty-one and up. That would suck because then that would mean there is something cool here, but—”

Jack looked up at me and held a hand up.

Stop. He was saying. But he wasn’t upset. He was amused.

After it was clear that I wasn’t going to keep blathering on with questions and thoughts about the barn, Jack reached for his back pocket again. His notepad came into view and he flipped through to find a page to write upon. I tried to wait patiently, but my thoughts about the cool things that could be going on at the barn had me bouncing on the balls of my feet. When Jack had finally held the notepad out for me to read, my heart sank.