Waiting Outside the Window

Chapter One

It was the spring of 1999. Val and Ryan were 9, out on a boat in the middle of the lake behind their house. They both lay breathless on the edge of the boat, Ryan in a wetsuit and Val wearing the dress her mother just made her. It was sleeveless, going down to her knees, and yellow, with little violets and pansies all around.

“Are-are you OK?” Ryan asked through gasps of breath. Val coughed up water and nodded in response, attempting to sit up. Ryan, being the sweet little boy that he was, propped her up against one of the built in chairs on the boat.

After a few minutes of coughing and wheezing, Val smiled at Ryan.

“Thank you,” she managed to say.

“How did you get out here anyway? We’re in the middle of the lake and I don’t see a boat anywhere other than mine.”

Val didn’t give an answer, and only smiled at her new friend.

Ryan never got an answer to his question of why Val was out there in the middle of the lake that day, even after almost six years.

“Happy birthday dear Ryan, happy birthday to you!” they sang. Ryan, his best friend Val, and their parents all sat around the kitchen table, surrounding a german chocolate cake with 15 burning candles and the words ‘Happy Birthday’ written in blue frosting across the top. Ryan impatiently blew out the candles and brought out a knife to cut the cake. Val carefully pulled out each candle, starting with the left side of the cake and making her way to the right.

“Can’t you do that any faster?” Ryan asked, eyeing the cake with hungry eyes.

“Yes.” Val never gave explanations unless she was asked for one. She decided long ago that there was no reason to say more than needed.

“Why don’t you?”

“I enjoy making you suffer,” she said as she pulled the last three candles out all at once.

Ryan cut the cake and gave everyone a piece before cutting a piece twice as big and giving it to himself.

“You’re gonna get fat,” Val said, poking Ryan in the stomach as they sat on his couch.

“Don’t poke my skinny!” Ryan said with a full mouth. Val cringed at the sight of chocolate stained teeth and gooey brown gunk in the back of Ryan’s mouth. He took another giant bite and purposefully chewed with his mouth open just to annoy her.

“Just because you’re skinny now doesn’t mean you’ll still be skinny by high school. You know just as well as I that you can’t control your appetite, and you’re lazy during the summer.”

“So, have you decided which high school you’re going to? I think my parents are making me go to the one down the street so I can walk there. Apparently they’ve got a good sports program as well.”

Ryan’s parents had always controlled his life. If they wanted him to go to high school at the neighborhood school, then there was no reasoning with them.

“I was actually thinking of going to that art school a few miles north,” Val mumbled.

“What? You should come with me. It’ll be way less fun without you.”

“But you know me. I want to do something artsy with my life, and that’s a great place to go. I doubt your high school has much of an art program since it’s filled with jocks and stoners.” Val put her plate down with half her cake still in tact. She had lost her appetite.

Ryan nodded, not completely understanding, but pretending he did.
The subject wasn’t brought up again. Through the last few weeks of the school year, people didn’t talk much about the future. Friends didn’t bring it up because they didn’t want to rub it in that they were going to separate schools, slackers didn’t even think about it, and the rest of the school was too busy finishing and turning in final projects.

Val’s birthday happened to be the last day of school, June 2nd. She hated how her birthday was always in the last two weeks of school, if it’s even during the school year at all. It reminded her that she was one of the younger and the shorter students in the grade, and next school year she’d be shorter and younger than almost the whole school.

When summer came, Ryan and Val immediately brought out the boat and went out onto the lake. It was their tradition to sleep out on the boat in the middle of the lake on the first day of summer break. They’d slept in the rain, the hail and the heat. Nothing had ever stopped them from going through with this tradition.

It was silent as Ryan steered the boat out to the middle of the lake. Val sat by his feet, staring into the water beside them. It didn’t take long to get to their destination. They dropped anchor, making a splash that seemed ten times louder than it actually was because it was the only sound around.

Ryan sat down next to Val, leaning against his seat. For a few minutes they sat there watching the sun slowly sink down behind the rooftops.

“So what’s the topic?” Ryan asked. He hated silences.

“School.”

“What about it? We’re going to totally different schools and we’ll probably stop hanging out all together.”

“Don’t have that attitude. We can still be friends if we want. All we have to do is want to be friends.”

“What about the fact that we’ll never see each other?”

“Weekends, after school, vacations, etcetera.”
Val unrolled her sleeping bag and shook it out. The strings flopped about and hit Ryan in the face.

“Ow!” he whined. He rubbed the left side of his face.

Val laughed. There was nothing funnier than your best friend being in mild pain. It sounds horrible, but you’d laugh too if it were you.

“That wasn’t funny,” he said.

“Yes it was.”

Ryan bent over the edge of the boat and swiped some water at Val. She pulled the sleeping bag up over her head before it got there. When Val snuck a look over the top of the sleeping back, Ryan was standing over her with a cup full of water, which he dumped on her head, getting both her and her sleeping back fairly wet.

“That wasn’t nice,” she pouted. Val took the other end of her sleeping bag and attempted to dry herself off.

“Nobody said I was nice.”

“Yes they have. You changed the subject, you know.”

Val threw her sleeping bag in a corner in hopes that it would dry, and then looked at Ryan.

“Damn, I was hoping you wouldn’t notice,” he joked.

Val’s eyes didn’t leave Ryan, making him rather uncomfortable. He averted his gaze to the lake. The water rippled as the boat rocked back and forth calmly. You could see the mud through the dark water, even in the twilight.

“Why do you have to go to that art school? Why can’t you come with me?” Ryan said into the water. Val sighed.

“Because, you know that I have no use for your school. I need a school that meets my needs.”

“You sound too much like an adult. Are you sure you’re fifteen?”

“Not always.”

Ryan crawled over to Val and sat down next to her. “Sorry, go on.”

“It’s just that I want to grow up to do something artsy. Maybe becoming an art teacher or a writer is what I want, but if I want to do that, then I need a school that can help me.”

The world went silent for just a moment while Val paused. The lake was still as the dead; the wind wasn’t blowing; and everyone around seemed to have disappeared beneath their covers.

“We’ll still be friends though, right?” Val asked.

“Yeah.” Ryan wasn’t too sure of this, but he didn’t want to upset Val, so he pretended he was confident about the whole thing.

After a while the mood lightened and they made strange conversations consisting of obese fish and psychotic math teachers.

Val and Ryan spent the rest of their summer as though it was their last. They did all the things they wanted to do that wasn’t illegal and was located in their city. From catching crawdads to jumping off high rocks into a deep lake, they did it. On the first day of school, though, everything started to change.