A Rough Draft

So, I have messed around with writing a book as a hobby for a while now. I have started a book about rage, that has a couple chapters, but I don't feel rageful, so I find it hard to conjure anything more with it. I have also started a young adult book, that I work on in secret (not so secret now) by writing chapters on little index cards which I number and file. I am going to post sections on the blog in hopes of getting live editing. It will all be first or second drafts of the section. I will still blog my normal things when so moved, but I figured why not throw something else out there...the skeleton at least.

Part I
I

On the day Walker Sutton's mother died, Eaton Fork Elementary's 5th grade class had walked out to the softball field to release balloons in honor of cancer awareness. The mass ambled and giggled their way up the small hill to the field. Their fingers reddened as they clutched their ribbonned balloons tightly, desperate to no be the one kid, the one jerk who let their balloon go too early.
When the mass of eleven and twelve year olds congealed into an acceptable shape, Principal Rooney took a megaphone and spoke to the class.
" Today children we release these balloons in both hope and remembrance--the hope that cancer will one day be defeated, and in remembrance of our friends and family who have lost their battle."
Walker thought of how Principal Rooney's eyebrows reminded him of woolly caterpillars. Dark, fuzzy...the thought of the hundreds that crossed his road from cornfield to cornfield every spring. Principal Rooney began to read names off the list before him. Alice Channing, Martin Keller, Tate West. People had paid $5 to have a name read in public and a flower planted in their honor in the school garden. Walker Suttons's mother's name was not on that list, for no one yet knew that she was dead-- and even so she wasn't dead from cancer.
Just after reading the last name, a light breeze stirred the crowd. The pink and salmon balloons swayed and leaned to the east. Children in red and blue ball caps, pink polka dotted sunglasses, looked up at the vast blue sky in anticipation. Principal Rooney gave the command to release the balloons, and the reddened little fingers released their grips. The balloons jolted upward in a bright cloud of cotton candy. One child screamed out in joy over the vision. Another child said it looked like a spilled bottle of Pepto Bismol Walker strained his neck upward watching the giant tangle of balloons. He thought it looked like a sort of impressionistic flamingo if he squinted real hard.

II
There were many rumors in the days and months that followed about how Walker Sutton's mother had died. Busic, the school custodian, told a kid that she had fallen in the shower and hit her head.
"That's why the cleanup didn't take long, cause the water had washed all the blood down the drain."
He said he'd seen that kind of thing before. Bea Kurtzwilde told the girls in the kickball line that Mrs. Sutton had shot herself in the head. Said she was tired of not knowing where her husband was, and of having a son that was ugly as the day was long.
"It's true," she shrieked as she ran to the plate, waiting for the round ball to bounce its way to her foot.
The fact was no one really knew how Walker's mom had died. The ambulance came, the police came, people were questioned, but not much had been said.
They had a funeral on a sunny afternoon. The casket was a simple pine box that had been varnished and shined. People had cut branches off their lilac bushes, their forsythias that lined long, paved driveways. They had pitched the floral tokens into the clay red pit. The purple and pink globes of lilac reminded Walker of fireworks. He stared down at the casket. The flower heads arched and burst under the stretching comet tails of the yellow withes. He through his withe into the stream that gurgled next tot he cemetery after the service was over. He watched it float, amble and swirl down the stream. His aunt waved him over to the long, dark car, where he climbed in on hands and knees carefully next to his cousins. Walker cried the entire way home.

III

Walker Sutton Sat in the last row, 2nd seat from the left in Mrs. Maggie Landing's 5th grade class. Mrs. Landing was know for order and precision. Every diagram of the water cycle hung perfectly straight, perfectly level in sync and in row with its cousin and brother. The lines and angles of Maggie Landing's room were sleek and sharp. Walker drew all the time. He drew many pictures while sitting in that last row in Mrs. Landing's class. She new that the pictures help calm Walker, and taht there wasn't much sense in worrying about Walker mastering one-step equations or not.
"One, Most likely he would anyways at some point, and two, his mama was dead and no algebra was gonna heal that wound, " she said to Prinicpal Rooney when he asked why Walker wasn't working on his math like the other student in her room. Principal Rooney held a metal clipboard in his hand with yellow carbon sheets of paper attached to the top.
"He has to learn Mrs. Landing. Ignorance isn't going to heal that wound either."
Walker could tell they were talking about him. He could see their heads jabbing in his direction as he peered up away from his sketch of a rabbit running through a briar thicket. He stopped shading in the shadows of the brambles, and began to work on solving for X. He didn't want Mrs. Landing to get in trouble, and he certainly didn't want she or Principal Rooney to walk over to him and start asking him questions, or poking around in his desk. He had the list taped to the right inside corner. He knew it would make them nervous, and he wasn't ready for that right now--not just yet.

IV

Truman Copely...Mrs. Blackburn...Reggie Stivers were just three of the names on the list. Walker had just finished scribbling the "y" on Lena Charlsey when Mrs. Landing had called his name from the front of the room.
"Walker, time for your meeting."
Every Tuesday Walker met with the district's school psychologist. Sophie Chapman was a large woman with a round face and tall brown hair. Most sessions she would catch Walker glancing at it after he had mumbled some answer to something she had asked. Walker traced his finger along the grooves of the cool bricks, dragging his finger behind him as he walked down the hall to meet with Mrs. Chapman in the cafeteria. He moped down the ramp, found her at the usual round table and sat down across from her. On Tuesdays it was just him and her. Sometimes on Thursdays he met with her and four other children whom had lost someone too. "Lost" was a word that Sophie Chapman used often when talking to Walker. She would ask what it felt like having lost his mom? What was his aunt doing to help him deal with his loss? Today she started the session with making him point to a picture that described the level of sadness he felt because of his loss.
Walker didn't like the term loss.
"Please stop saying the word loss...and lose to me."
He fidgeted with a penny he had found in his pocket.
"Why don't you like those words?" she had asked him.
Walker didn't answer. He just kept flipping the penny over and over in his hand while he looked at her blankly. He didn't tell her that he didn't like the word(s) because it didn't feel accurate, didn't feel the same way as he viewed what had happened to him. Taken...stole...broke, these were all better words he thought.