Creative Writing

b) … and I really thought that he would do it!

It’s impossible for me to go through my childhood without mentioning the old wooden house. My family and I have lived in the countryside for eighteen years. It was fun because I had the opportunity to get in touch with nature and I’ve always had a lot of space to play in and, most of all, I was not alone. There were many other kids living there.

The school was a little distant and I had to wake up very early in the morning, sometimes in complete darkness. My father used to take me by car - the lessons started at eight - and then he went back home to get my mother who worked together with him in a textile factory. At that time, they worked twelve hours a day but they earned “peanuts” at the end of the month. Our grandfather left us the car when he passed away but my parents almost sold it because it was very hard to pay for its maintenance. However, when I went to school they decided to keep it.

The neighbours were very kind but I was rather shy and before going to school I had never met or played with their children. Actually, I almost never left our wooden house without mum or dad looking after me - but school changed me. There, I met Adam and Eve who lived next door to me and they knew each other already. Sometimes, from my window, I could see them playing on the riverside.

I learnt to fish and hunt rabbits with dad but I never hunted anything besides some snails and blackberries. With these new friends everything became different. Despite being a boy, Adam was very fearful while Eve and I climbed up the trees and I remember that one time we swam on the river and I got a terrible cold because it was autumn. My mother always felt like killing me when she saw me looking like a drowned rat and almost freezing. Eve had challenged me. She had said that I wasn’t capable of doing it and that was what had compelled me to enter that icy water. That plunge granted me the reputation of being brave and I was sure that, from that moment on, nobody would dare mess with me. Well, when I got home, my mother’s yelling could be heard in the nearby cities.

The next day at school everybody knew what had happened but no one made any questioned me about my courage or about the frozen water. I was asked by all of them if my mother had lashed me and if it had hurt. I was so ashamed to see everyone pointing at me…

We lived in a small place so everything that happened was instantaneously known in the surrounding houses. We also knew that Adam’s father had left his mother to elope with another woman. That had happened very recently and it explained why we hadn’t seen him for the last two weeks, even at school. I asked my mother if it wouldn’t be a great idea to knock on his door and to take him some of his favourite biscuits, but she answered that I was too young to understand what was really happening to this family and told me not to call Adam because his mother had become very austere.

Yet I was very stubborn too and the next day in the afternoon I used our old signal to call him – I threw some small stones at his window. I saw his mother’s face and she saw mine but she didn’t open the window. I could hear her footsteps coming down the stairs in rashness. She opened the door and came out shouting at me. My mother was at home and through the kitchen window she heard her and saw me. I was already crying but I remember asking Adam’s mother if it was his fault that her husband had left her. Mrs. Bogart became even more furious but this time she was staring at me, she had no answer to that. My mother apologised and grabbed my hand, taking me home. Once more I had to listen to her telling me off because I hadn’t respected her warnings. She sent me to my room and told me to think about what I had done and all the consequences that it could have on Adam. I felt a dark sense of guilt, how would Adam be feeling after all this? But all I wanted was to help him…

To my surprise, that same night, Adam called me, standing at my window. I managed to get out of the house because he told me that he really needed to talk. We did so for around two hours and it was enough to scare me. Poor Adam…He wanted to run away. I could only think about that idea of his and when I got back home, I found myself wondering whether I was happy or not. Adam surely wasn’t happy anymore. He asked for my help to get him a bag with some food and things that would help him through his escape.

I had talked to Eve the day before and she told me that she didn’t believe he could do it – not Adam, he was the fearful one! But I still had my doubts - the whole plan was very well thought out - and that night I found out that he was determined to go through with it. He called me again and this time he gave me a list with each and every need he had to take up his adventure. I was very surprised at his courage but I still tried to convince him that it was not a good way of dealing with the problem. It was just a phase; her mother was only going through a hard time. But I wasn’t capable of changing that look. I had to promise to help him and not to tell anybody and Eve had already made the same promise. Eve was charged with getting the train tickets because her father was working at the train station and, once in a while, the company gave the family some tickets to go into town. And so did Eve. And I played my part as well. Two days later, Adam told us that he was prepared to leave. I looked at him once more and I really thought that he would do it!