Tree's

By: Jacob La mar

The darkness on the walls was impenetrable and untarnished with light. But as the morning grew older and the first rays of sun began to peak over the horizon, sprinkling the city of Forest Grove with waves of pink and red light, the darkness began to dissipate to the light.

            A young boy named Jacob was lying in bed, and despite the premature hour of the day, was fully conscious. He was lying, huddled in his blankets, cuddling his pillow as he watched the lights move across his walls. They were moving in and out, and up and down, and back and forth, making designs and pictures on his bedroom walls. He could see a pink tree that began to fade to red as his eyes followed its trunk down, until eventually it faded to black near its roots. He could see a giant multicolored Farris wheel, which transitioned from red to pink and back to red before being blotted out by black. He continued to watch the designs for what seemed like hours. He looked back to the tree only to realize that its black roots had changed to a light blue… the color of the wall. The light from outside was now streaming through his open window as if invading a castle of darkness.

            Noises started to rise from outside his bedroom door. He could hear his dog Snowy barking at people as they strolled past the house. He could imagine her standing on her hind legs attempting to see out the front window, her fur the color of the white living room walls, which had been stained with various marks over the past eight years. Someone was walking down the stairs, aiming to be quiet, but unfortunately forgetting about the creaky top steps, the squeaky bottom steps, and all the other noisy ones in between. Jacob pondered for a minute who the perpetrator of silence could be but was interrupted by a much louder noise. His brother Andy had just burst into his room with an expression somewhere in between a smile, and a really big smile.

            “We’re all gathering at the basketball hoop to play some hockey if you want to come” he spoke. He ran out without waiting for an answer.

            “Yea I’ll be out in just a minute” Jacob yelled, barely able to contain the great feeling of maturity he felt. A couple times a week the older kids in the neighborhood would congregate on a side street directly in front of his house. They didn’t own actual hockey goals so they would use the sewer drains that were built into the curbs. They, at one time had used actual pucks but eventually got tired of losing them down the drain, they had since converted to using large pieces of gravel. Up to this point Jacob had been too young to play with them, and with great longing at his core was forced to watch from the curb. His brother Andy was the best player out there. He was stronger than all the other children and faster too. Jacob was only the youngest to look up to his brother as even the kids that were older and taller than Andy looked up to him in some fashion. Jacob looked to his door where his brother had disappeared only moments before and ran in the same direction.

            Before he could join the other boys he needed to make a pit stop in the garage. When his family didn’t use something but didn’t want to throw it out, it migrated to the garage. There were mountains of dusty objects in there. Sometimes Jacob would spend hours in the garage playing. He would use a plastic bat as a lightsaber and duel with Darth Vader or use an old anchor as a machine gun and shoot the people that were invading his fortress. This trip to the garage however, would be nothing like that for he knew he had little time before the other boys started the game. His destination lay on the opposite corner of the garage where a giant tub of sports gear resided. With difficulty, that included swinging from the rafters like a monkey and slithering on the ground like a snake, he succeeded in reaching his objective. In the tub he extracted an old right handed hockey stick that he liked to practice with. It was slightly awkward to use, because Jacob was left-handed. He also found his roller blades and a pair of old soccer shin guards that would surely protect him from an enraged hockey stick. Yet again Jacob wormed his way out of the garage and headed for the front door to meet the others.

            When he arrived at the basketball hoop he was pleased to see that he was one of the first arrivals. His brother was there, as well as his best friend Tommy. Jacob and Tommy were about as different as two friends could be. Jacob was quiet and unsocial and scared to talk to girls whereas Tommy was a wrestler and popular and despite the fact that they were only fourth graders, nearly always had a girl accompanying him. Tommy lived three houses up the street from Jacob. The two houses were as perfectly alike as the boys were different.
            Not more than five minutes later the last of the boys arrived and the game was ready to start. They came in a group of three. The first was named Jr. He was tall and Hispanic and had a friendly but competitive face. The second’s name was Skylar. Skylar was as tall as Jr. but his skin was as pale as if the latter had been thrown into a washing machine and dumped in a container of bleach. The third and final to arrive was a boy named Dirk. He was the oldest of the group by at least a year but didn’t look it. He was shorter than Jr. and Skylar, but taller than Jacob, Andy and Tommy. He had a slight overbite and when he smiled his lips went up so high Jacob thought he resembled the Joker.

            They allocated into two teams with Andy and Jr. being captains. The teams that were finalized consisted of Andy, Tommy, and Jacob on one team. They were set to play against Jr., Skylar, and Dirk. Tommy and Dirk decided to be goalies and casually skated to their respective sewer drains. Andy placed a single piece of gravel in between the two sewer drains and then he and Jr. met on either side of it. The two of them hit their sticks on the ground, then against the other stick directly over the gravel. They did this three times and then they were off. Andy took possession first and spun past Skylar so fast that neither he nor Dirk saw the gravel fly right through the center of their drain. They faced off again, and again Andy won possession, this time dribbling the gravel right through Skylar’s legs, and right past Dirk’s waiting stick. The score was two to zero and they had only been playing for about a minute. Again the captains met in the middle for the face-off. The result was Andy taking the gravel yet again, but as he was attempting to skate past Skylar, Jr. poked it away from behind. Skylar passed it up to Jr. and he was off, going full speed like a bullet. It was only Tommy and Jacob in his way and neither of them could have expected his speed. Jacob only felt the wind on his face and the cheers from the other team as the gravel had evidently gone in. Just to reinforce that fact Jacob heard the unmistakable sound of a splash as the gravel hit the pool of water on the bottom.

            The rest of the day seemed to blur by as Andy continued to score goals while Jr. would occasionally score as well. Skylar even got three goals but Jacob remained scoreless. To add to his frustration the day was beginning to get later and he was starting to worry that he wouldn’t score a single time. Andy had started to notice his little brothers’ frustration and started passing to him even more than normal. The only effect this had was the overall scores began to even out.

Then it happened, Jr. came zipping down toward the goal. He saw Jake waiting in front of the goal and assumed he would have an easy goal, as he had all day. He attempted to slash to the right but Jacob was ready for him. Jacob cut to the left and stole the gravel from right under Jr.’s stick. It was now Skylar and Dirk in the way of him and his first goal, and he wasn’t going to let that be his downfall this time. He thought of Andy and how his brother was so good at everything he did, and a desire opened up in his chest to be like his brother. He thought about the tree he saw on his walls that morning, and thought about how his brother was like the tree and he was like the roots. He was always at the bottom trying to grow, trying to be just like the tree above. He had always been the roots but always wanted to be the branches. The desire in his chest seemed to have opened just a little bit more and now washed over him filling his mind and skin and limbs. In that moment he exploded down the street towards the goal, passing Skylar as if he was rooted to the ground, spinning and smashing the gravel so hard, he could have sworn he heard the gravel shatter in the drain. So many splashes resulted that it sounded as if twenty goals had been scored all at once.

            The game continued for a couple more minutes, and Jacob scored one more goal before it was all said and done, but none compared to his first goal. For a shining moment he had felt like the branches, but had indubitably expected it to fade. But as the different neighborhood boys packed up their possessions, Jacob was pleased that the feeling did not fade or even dull.

            Jacob went into his room directly following his arrival home. He pulled on his pajamas and crawled into bed where his blankets and pillows were eagerly awaiting his arrival. There were little bits of light coming in through his window. They were making pictures on his ceiling and walls. They were beautiful depictions of deep red, dark blue, and a dark somber purple. The place where the Farris wheel had been that morning was replaced by a burgundy dragon that soared over a blue castle with a plum colored moat. The tree from the morning was still there but the colors had changed. The light red of the roots had darkened and was now portraying the branches. The dark red faded to an opaque blue, which was so near black he could barely see them. His eyes started to droop and the already dark colors gradually began fading to black.

The city of Forest Grove was being saturated with dark winding colors that went in and out, and up and down, and back and forth. It submerged the city and its landscape in its waves of color. The buildings became blue, the houses became purple, and slightly glowing in the dark red rays were the branches of the trees.