The Shoreline Redemption

Chapter 2
Chapter 2

Jonathan woke to the dull throbbing of jungle drums thumping in his head. He was lying in a small room, a pair of grinning plastic sharks dangled from the ceiling, and a cluttered bookcase sprouted with trophies stood in a corner. A boy stepped into view, reddish copper hair, speckled with freckles, thin and slender like a salamander.

“Mum, he’s awake!” he hollered before coming by Jonathan’s side. “I found you out cold in front of my house. Looks like you fell off your bike. You okay?”

Jonathan groaned. The jungle drums thumped louder.

“You’re that new third grader aren’t you? I’m in third grade too, in Miss Herman’s class. My name’s Roger.”

Jonathan groaned again. Footsteps approached, and a kind, friendly face appeared above him.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Jonathan.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Not so good…”

“Can you remember your parents’ phone number?”

Jonathan recited the digits. She gave him a reassuring smile, and left to make the call.

A familiar jingle caught his attention, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Roger perched at the end of the bed, bent over his phone. Yanking himself up, he crawled to the boy’s side and peeked over his shoulder.

“You want to have a go?” Roger asked.

Jonathan practically snatched the phone from Roger’s hands, and was still playing when his foster mother arrived to take him to the doctor’s.

+--+--+

Over the coming weeks, Jonathan sought out Roger whenever he could. The boy had just moved to Shoreline after his dad had been transferred. He was a little shy, but amiable and easy-going, and crucially for Jonathan, generous with his phone. It was also a bit of a relief to have someone at school he could talk to, even if their conversations were mainly about the games they played together.

As the school year rolled on, Jonathan was confronted with another unexpected feature of Shoreline Elementary’s curriculum – mandatory after-school swimming lessons. Never keen to be reminded of his prepubescent body, he found the whole experience of lining up in speedos with the other kids particularly galling. At least his rejuvenation had wiped away all the scars, tattoos and lumps, leaving his skin smooth & flawless.

To compound Jonathan’s embarrassment, the students were divided up by skill level, and the other third graders, who had taken lessons in previous years, were assigned to the “Stingray” or “Pike” level. Jonathan had never swum in his life, and so found him relegated to “Polliwog” with the first graders, some of whom he swore were still wearing swim diapers.

He was sullenly holding onto the pool’s edge, practicing kicking water with his legs, when Roger walked by and squatted down to face him.

“You know, at this rate, you’re still going to be a Polliwog next year.”

Jonathan scowled at him.

“Would you like some help?” Roger asked.

“Don’t you have to take these lessons too?”

“I’m exempt. I’m on the school team.” Roger slid into the water beside him. “Come on! All the coaches know me, they’ll be cool with it. Just watch and copy what I do.” He proceeded to trace out the arm motions for the front crawl.

Figuring he had nothing to lose, Jonathan let the boy guide him, and after a few lessons, he had improved to the point where he could splash his way across the pool’s width, albeit with Roger treading water alongside him and occasionally supporting his body. That got Jonathan promoted to “Jellyfish”, and he was feeling pretty pleased with himself as they walked back together to change in the locker room.

“When is your birthday?” Roger asked.

“November.”

“Mine is in August. So that means you’re younger than me.”

“Urm… okay.” Jonathan shot Roger a glance. The boy seemed nervous.

“You know how hard it is to make friends when you join a class in the middle of the year? And I don’t have any brothers or sisters, so it’s kind of lonely. I… I was just wondering if… you’ll be my… little brother?”

Jonathan’s eyes widened, and he had to fight the urge to sock the boy in his chin. Be his little brother? What the heck was this squirt thinking?

Then again, he couldn’t afford to draw more attention to himself, and he certainly did not want to endanger his continued access to Roger’s phone. He struggled to find the right words, but saw that Roger had already deduced the answer from his expression.

“It’s okay. Nobody has ever agreed.” Crestfallen, he was trying hard to smile.

“I…”

“It’s okay. Really.” Roger placed his hand on Jonathan’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “I’ve just… always wanted a brother. Sorry, I didn’t mean…” he trailed off and paused for a very long while.

“So… did you want to borrow my phone again?”

+--+--+

PE was one of the few school periods Jonathan enjoyed. Despite losing his strength, he still retained his skills and agility, which gave him an easy advantage over the other kids. Today they were playing indoor hockey in the gym, and he was having a swell time twirling his hockey stick around.

As the plastic puck sailed thru the air, he aimed and swung hard. There was a mighty thwack, but instead of streaking towards the goal net, the puck veered off into the adjoining gym where a class of fifth graders were doing a relay up and down a rope. There was a loud bellow of pain as it slammed into a thuggish, barrel-chested boy.

“Sorry!” Jonathan shouted as he retrieved the puck from under the fifth grader’s furious glare and returned to his game, not giving the incident a second thought.

That proved to be a mistake, because later in the changing room, he felt two pairs of arms grab him from behind and lock him in a full nelson. He writhed and struggled as they stripped him, but the fifth graders were too strong.

He was dragged like a jaybird thru the changing area, where the other kids stared at them like a herd of cows, and then thrust out the doors into the hallway. A pair of girls were walking past, and they twittered as he clasped his palms to his groin and flushed red. Turning, he tried to force his way back into the changing room, but his assailants were leaning against the door.

A muffled voice was shouting inside, which he recognized to be Roger’s. There was a sharp yelp, and the pressure on the door eased. Jonathan pushed his way back in, just in time to see a fifth grader with a bloodied nose grab hold of Roger like a sack of potatoes and plow his face into the wire mesh of the lockers.

The other fifth grader lunged at Jonathan from the side, hoping to catch him off guard, but a swift kick to the boy’s crotch sent him crumpling to the floor. With a flying leap, Jonathan threw himself at the bloodied fifth grader, knocking him backward against the wall and forcing him to let go of Roger.

As he staggered to regain his balance, Jonathan leapt forward and smashed his fist again and again into the fifth grader’s face. While his matchstick arms didn’t pack much power, the fifth grader screeched so loudly that his voice reverberated throughout the school. He only stopped when the kids scattered and the coaches ran in to find out what all the ruckus was about.

+--+--+

“You know you should have stayed out of it.” Jonathan repeated.

“It was two guys on one. And they were much bigger than you.” Roger replied. “I always watch my friend’s back.”

Something stirred deep inside Jonathan. Nobody had ever said that to him before. As long as he could remember, he had only cared about himself. It was his way for surviving in this cut throat world. But could there be… another path?

It was beginning to rain, little drops driven sideways across the car’s windowpane, streaking and dotting the glass. The boys were sitting together in the back seat, Roger’s mum was driving. Roger’s right cheek was still a kind of zombie blue even though a couple of weeks had passed since the incident.

Jonathan hadn’t wanted to go on this trip, but felt somewhat obliged. Roger had been getting bored with his piano lessons, and his mum had come up with the idea of bringing him to a classical music concert to spur his interest. Anticipating a mind-numbingly dull evening, Roger had begged Jonathan to come along.

Jonathan had never been to a concert in his life. Sometimes, others in the gang would turn up something on the radio involving heavy beats and discordant shrieks, which was about as close to music as he got.

The concert hall was cavernous with marble floors, grand staircases and fluted columns that soared to a dimly frescoed dome. Jonathan fidgeted on the plush velvet seats as the house lights went out and a thin man in a black suit strutted out in front of the orchestra to thunderous applause.

He raised his baton, and the sounds poured out, the lower notes like bellows, the lyrical voices of the strings clear as if flowing out of a pure thin pipe, spreading thru the hall like a glaze. The harmonies were strong and round, with a great brightness and glitter. They excavated deep into Jonathan, into the fibers of his being, into the armored interior chambers, awakening a part of him he didn’t know still existed.

From deep in his core, in extraordinary flashes, he felt a long forgotten melody surge up thru his feet and up thru his chest and into his heart. It was Johann Brahms’ Wiegenlied, the lullaby his mum had sung to him every night when he was little, before alcohol and violence had destroyed both her and his father.

Jonathan let the music lift and envelop him in a transcendental haze. What if things had gone differently? What kind of life might he have had? What kind of life… did he want?