Your name was Jay Williams, and you were quite delighted to be off school and heading home for the weekend. At fourteen, life was kind of rough for your anyway, as it is for any guy of that age--you know, being stuck between boyhood and manhood and all that good stuff. School was especially tough for you. You were never too popular, and those who were popular made fun of you for your awkward and reserved temperment...and being berated all the time by the popular kids just made you want to withdraw into yourself all the more. You were also a bit of a chubby kid--not too bad, about 25 lbs overweight, but of course the popular kids jumped on that too as a way to make you feel like crap.
Your home life was not a whole ton better. Your mother Linda worked a lot, and she cared a lot about you, so she was always all over you to get your grades up, be active in school, and get some self-confidence and some direction. The problem was the she just didn't understand how much ridicule you went through while you were in school and why that made it so hard for you to branch out. Your father was a very distant man...you got along ok with him; he just wasn't one to show emotion or be easily impressed. Trying to talk to him about school was like trying to talk to a brick wall.
You were hoping to forget about your problems for the weekend, as you and your Grandpa Joe were going to go fishing. He was really the only person who would listen to you. Your mom's father, he tried to explain your situation to her, and she just didn't get it. Some time of relative solitude--just you, grandpa, and the fish--would do you some good.
Walking through the park just a few minutes from home, you look over among a pile of leaves and sticks to see something that glimmers a bit in the brown, shriveled-up autumn grass. Walking over to get a better look, you see that it is a small, pretty plain, bracelet. Normally, you'd have no interest whatsoever in wearing any kind of jewlery, but for some reason you felt compelled to bend down and pick it up. You put it on as you walk the rest of the short distance to your house. You enter the front door, glad to be out of the brisk fall air, at least until grandpa showed up to take you fishing. "Hello?" you call out, interested to see who beat you home. Who do you see first?
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