As the firewood had popped and snapped, Bennett had begun to tell me about this kid, Damien, he’d met at one of the fancy summer camps his parents had sent him to. I had always hated when he’d gone off to camp because it’d meant I’d be stuck at home without him. We’d written letters back and forth, but it hadn’t been the same. When he’d returned home, we’d spent hours catching up and making up for missed adventures.
The story about Damien had scared the fuck out of me. According to Bennett, the kid had gone to the shore to visit his grandmother and had found this haunted roller coaster. As the story had continued, it had gotten more and more farfetched until I’d finally realized it was all made up.
But the kicker about that damned story? It didn’t matter if you knew it was bullshit, and it didn’t matter how many times you heard it. It was still scary as all fuck. Because the sounds he used to tell the story were the sounds you heard sleeping outside at night. Cracks of the roller coaster were cracks of branches. Pops of the coaster struts were pops from the firewood. The wind itself was the cold breath of death, and so help me fucking god, Bennett was an expert at making the old woman’s voice sound like the hoot of an owl.
The first time he’d told it to me and I’d realized it wasn’t true, I’d smacked him on the back of the head and called him something ridiculous like buttwipe. He’d laughed so hard, he’d fallen over backwards off the log we’d been sitting on. I’d yelled at him that it served him right to fall on his ass, and then I’d tried like hell to pretend the story hadn’t scared me. I’d lied and told him I was over it, but he’d known the truth. He’d always known when I was bullshitting.
So, that night when it had been time to slide into our sleeping bags, Bennett had pretended like he was the scared one, afraid of being alone. He’d asked me if we could zip our bags together so he’d know if I left him during the night. As if I’d ever, ever leave him alone in the dark.
Of course I’d agreed, and we’d ended up falling asleep telling each other as many jokes as we’d been able to think of in order to keep from getting scared. I still remembered what had happened right as we’d been about to finally drift off to sleep.
First a log had cracked somewhere off to our right, and then a giant boom of thunder had split the air about ten seconds before the skies had opened up.
I wasn’t sure our feet had even hit the ground before we’d been safely back inside Bennett’s bedroom in the big house.
We’d dried off, re-settled ourselves in his double bed under the covers and laughed at being such scaredy cats. When our laughter had died down, Bennett had turned to me with his trademark goofy grin on his face.
“Dude, I’m totally telling that story like a million more times in my life. That was the best.”
I chuckled as I recalled that moment.
Bennett’s goal in life had always been to make me laugh.
And I’d sure as hell needed that, especially as I’d been forced to watch my parent’s marriage implode. I’d never really understood what had brought my parents together, because they’d never actually seemed happy.
In love? Maybe.
Happy? Most certainly not.
Not if their constant fights had been anything to go by.
My parents had met in college, though they’d been an unlikely couple even then. My father had been an art history major with dreams of teaching someday. My mother had been an energetic business student with the lofty ambition of someday running her own Fortune 500 company. I’d heard enough stories to know my arrival hadn’t been planned, and while neither of my parents had ever said I’d been the reason they’d gotten married, I had always wondered if that was the reason I’d never seen any pictures of my mother in her wedding dress from the neck down.
As a child, I hadn’t thought it unusual that my father had been the one to stay home with me all day. I’d learned later on that my mother hadn’t even needed to take time off of school to actually have me, since I’d been born a week before the fall term of their junior year. My mother had been there for the start of class, my father hadn’t. When graduation day had rolled around, my mother had accepted all sorts of scholastic awards and accolades while my father and I had sat in the crowd. I’d asked my father once why he hadn’t gone back to school when my mother had completed her degree, but he’d never really answered my question other than to say, “It is what it is, Son.”