Daye and Dwight

Chapter One

The Hidden Bench

​

Dwight Everett

February 25th, Friday, 4:00PM

 

Do you ever look back and think to yourself, man… I was a weird ass kid? Like actual outcast weirdo kid. I always understood in a weird way, but never much minded. I knew that when it came to sitting with Brandon or Juan at that cool kids table, that I could technically sit there, but the seat I would sit at was by no means my seat, nor my place. That belonged to the other cool kids or the cute girls or whatever cliques existed back then. I almost never think back to those times, even though I reference how easy those times were. That was so long ago, and the person I was then is very clearly not the person I am now. Times definitely change. 

My dad would sit down with me and tell me that these would be some of the best years of my life. He would tell me how I needed to enjoy myself more and he would tell me how there will be a day when I miss it. I do miss those times every once in a while. I remember when my biggest problem in life was not being able to draw as good as some of the other kids. I remember thinking it was the worst day of my life when I threw up in the middle of class in the second grade. I remember when I accidentally broke the living room TV and how much trouble I thought I would be in. Nobody told me that the older you get, the harder your problems get. They only told me to enjoy what at the time, couldn’t be enjoyed. Nowadays my biggest problems consist of getting kicked out of the house for weeks at a time, or having a fuckbuddy let me know that they’re catching feelings for me. Cheryl…

Or even killing the family dog. That one was fucked up, especially because I didn’t mean to do that. Trust me, I've got nothing against dogs by any means, but the dumbass little pug came out of nowhere when backing out of the driveway. How do you even account for something like that? Like how can you actually pin that shit on me, mom? Like fuck! Anyways--- This is not about how I killed my family dog. This story  starts months before Christine’s story, just for dramatic effect. Even though you don't know who Christine is yet, wait till the next chapter. 

The sun was bright as ever, causing my bedroom to turn into a tanning station or a microwave or any other stupid metaphor that means that it was hot as hell in my room. When this happens, or whenever the sun is out for that matter, I resort to the restroom. Not to use it, but because our upstairs bathroom happens to be the only room in the entire house that does not have a window in it. It also has a vent, meaning that out of all the rooms in the entire house on a hot summer day, the upstairs restroom is the coolest. A pillow and a blanket change a lot when it comes to our restroom. We have a ridiculously huge bathtub, so I tend to throw a pillow and blanket in it, and bam! Comfy cozy little sleeping space. 

I pull my phone up and check the time. 4PM on the dot. I look through my messages until I find the name, Layla. 

“Hey,” I send. I’m not exactly what you would call nervous, but whenever I send a message to Layla, I question if she wants to be messaging me, or not. I exit the messages menu to start scrolling through Insta before getting a reply. 

“Hey :),” the message reads. That’s a good sign.

“What’s got you smiley?” I ask.

“We got our test results back for our finals and I got a 98%,” 

“You already took finals?”

“No, it was a practice final,” 

“Wait, you test for the test?”

“What?”

“Like taking a test for a test to test what you know? Like a normal test?”

“Oh my God, you are so confusing. Do you wanna call?” she asks. I start to reply saying yes, but I decide to just call her. I adjust my pillow back, leaning back in the tub before scrolling through my phone to call her. Half a moment later she answers.

“Hello Dwight!” She says enunciating the T in my name.

“Hello Layla!” I say enunciating the second L in her name. She lets out a gasp of a laugh. “Whatcha up to?” I ask.

“Waiting for my dad to get ready so we can head out. Anyways--- I was saying that we have a practice final! That way we can determine the areas we need to study harder in,” Layla explains.

“Right, what class was this? Or did you even say?”

“It’s AP Physics,” 

“AP Physics. Pshh, I passed with a perfect A,”

“Did you now?”

“No, I actually passed physics with an A and decided that I had enough science credits since I technically didn’t even need to take physics,”

“Quite the story. So what do you wanna do when you get older, Dwight Everett?”

“I-- wanna have fun,” I say. This is a subject to explain. I could try to explain this to her, but most people hear this response and move on to the next conversation .

“Same though! But like, career-wise! Like what do you want to be?”

“Alive,” I say. God, I am dodging this subject.

“Okay, fine, don’t answer,” she says. I take a deep breath.

“There is a million things I wanna do. I want to write a successful book. I wanna turn that book into a movie, and direct that movie. After that, I wanna pitch ideas to make a tv show. Once I’ve had my share of the show, step away and start making music. After I drop an album or two, I wanna step away from that and start making art, and after I--”

“Okay, okay, okay,” She interrupts. “I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not, but if so, cool, if not then like, you don’t have to tell me,” she states. She doesn’t believe me, but I guess that’s okay. This is her handing me the map out of this question.

“One day,” I say. “What college are you-”

“Hey, I have to go. My dad and I were going to go shopping and he’s ready to go now,” Layla says in a rush.

“Okay! I’ll message later or something, yeah?” I ask.

“Yeah! Okay! Bye!” Layla says before hanging up. I hold the phone out, checking the time. 4:09. Interesting. I pull the phone to my chest and get myself comfortable in the tub. My eyes start to feel like a burden to keep open. I let my eyelids slide shut before getting another message. I jerk my phone out as though I wasn’t actually ever tired in the first place. Cheryl.

I open the message sent by Cheryl and read it. 

“I hurt a lot after---” Alright fuck this message. I back out of Insta and lock my phone. She sent paragraphs to me. Paragraphs. There is nothing in this world that I can tell her that would fix anything. I get up out of the bathtub, leaving the blanket and pillow. I walk to my room and put my phone on the charger before heading downstairs. I make my way to the fridge to shuffle through it. Even though there’s food in the fridge, let’s be honest… There is no food in the fridge. I close the fridge door and hear footsteps from down the hall. I take a few steps back and poke my head out down the hall, seeing my mom. I pull my head back and look around. The kitchen looks clean, I think. 

“Dwight!” my mom calls out. Shit. 

“Yeah?” I yell back. She makes her way down the hall and to me.
“I’m about to head out to get Diana, make sure you pick up around here, okay?” She asks. I nod my head and she nods hers. “Okay. See you later,” she says before turning around and walking down the hall. 

“Oh, hey, I was going to head out in a bit. I should be back sometime before dinner though,” I say. 

“Okay! Just make sure you clean up before you go,” she yells back as she opens the front door. 

“Alright!” I yell out right before the door slams shut. Well the house is already clean, which means I am good to go. I look into the livingroom and see coloring books open with crayons everywhere. I walk to it and close them up. I put them all in a small bin and rush them upstairs to Diana’s room. I head back downstairs and glance around for a quick once over of the house. It looks just as good as any other day. I walk through the kitchen to the garage door and go inside. I snatch my skateboard off the wall and make my way back in the house, through the kitchen down the hall and out the front door. I walk out to the street and drop my skateboard to the ground, holding it to the ground with one foot and standing firmly with the other. Where am I going? 

I step onto the skateboard and with one strong push, I am soaring down the street. If I can get to the park, I can head to the back of the baseball field in the park and chill out in the shade. I continue down street after street, non-stop, almost no time to look both ways. I see the park from a far and remember the gravel that’s ahead. I put my foot out to slow down my speed so I don’t eat shit when I arrive. After the wind caught up with my foot, my speed slowed to a stop. I picked my board up and continued my journey to the park. The smooth concrete ground has officially disappeared from under my feet and has been replaced with the gravel I was talking about. 

The park is a really nice place, very open, mostly empty due to this town being dead as fuck! Sometimes I wonder if I’m the most adventurous thing here. I continue walking and the gravel below me is now replaced with that weird rock shit that they put in parks. Then that is replaced with grass as I make my way to the baseball field. The grass is replaced with red dirt and that's replaced with grass one last time as I finally arrive to the bleachers. I make my way around the bleachers to get to the bench placed under the bleachers. Talk about awkward placement of a bench. I’m the only person I know who ever uses this bench. I turn the corner and see some chick with bright grey hair is standing next to-- wait… where’s the bench? So like, the bench is supposed to be right about where she’s standing, but it’s not. 

“Hey!” I call out. She turns around and looks at me. 

“Oh shit! You scared me!” she says while taking her airpods out of her ear.

“Sorry. Wasn’t my intention. I was just wondering if you know what happened to the bench that was here,” I ask.

“You know, that’s exactly my thoughts,” she replies.

“I’m surprised anyone else even came to this bench. I’ve never seen anybody come anywhere near the bench, let alone the bleachers,”

“Exactly why it was a great hangout spot,”

“A good spot to get away from people,” I joke. She smiles which is a good sign, I think. 

“People can really suck sometimes,” she says.

“I KNOW! For instance, you could be trying to go to a hidden bench to get away from people, but then run into people instead of the bench,” I joke.

“You know what--” She says with a semi dropped jaw, half-smile. “I was here first,” 

“I never said you weren’t,”

“You got any bud?”

“No, unfortunately I don’t do that stuff,” I say.

“Mmm, so why are you here?” she asks.

“To get away from people,”

“Wow! I come here to smoke,”

“I guess that makes sense. So are you meeting up with some friends? Like should I run away before even more people arrive?”

“Nope. Just me. I don’t really hangout with anyone much. Unless you’re a murderer, than all my friends are like 2 minutes away,” she jokes. 

“Man--- I guess I’ll have to murder a stranger some other day,” I say as I kick dust. She continues smiling. 

“You look familiar,” she says. Well shit. Not full strangers if there’s a recognition.

“My name is Dwight,” I say.

“Holy shit, dude, we went to elementary together! It’s Stephanie!” she says. Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie. God, elementary feels so long ago, being a senior and all. Wait… 

“6th grade, transferred out?” I ask.

“Exactly! We were reading partners for all of fifth!”

“Wow… damn, that feels forever long ago,”

“Because it was. That was like--” she pulls up her fingers to count, “Sixth, Seventh, Eight, Freshy, Sophy, Junior, Senior… Like 7 years ago!” she excitedly says. 

“May as well be strangers. 7 years ago, I’m 11. I would hope that now being 18, I changed a little bit,”

“Same! Actually, today is my birthday!”

“No way,” I say. She nods her head excitedly. “That’s crazy! So you’re 17?”

“Nope! 18!” she says.

“Let me guess. For your 18th birthday, you asked for the hidden bench to get removed from it’s resting place?”

“No, I happen to like that bench, thank you very much,”

“We should find that bench,”

“We should find that bench,” she agrees. I step out from under the bleacher and she makes her way out with me. We both look around and I rush around to start climbing up the bleachers until I am at the top. I look around at seemingly nothing for a moment before looking back down at her.

“Any luck?” she asks.

“No,” I say. She lets out a short laugh. I smile in response and take a single step down the bleachers. 

“Do you have any other cool hangout areas?” Stephanie asks.

“I do,” I say while walking down the bleachers. Let’s see, there’s an abandoned house that’s pretty cool, but it can also seem pretty creepy. Though judging from her bull nose ring, and the tattoo on her chest, I think that that’s right up her alley. On the other hand, there is another park nearby, with a church in the middle of it. The back window is always open and we could totally sneak in. It’s Friday, so nobody would be there. Decisions, decisions… “Okay, there’s a church and an abandoned house. Since it’s your birthday, you decide,” I say.

“Am I choosing one of your normal hangout spots, or am I choosing where you’re going to murder me?” Stephanie asks. I pose as though I am in heavy thought. I stand and wait for a moment before looking back at her and opening my mouth as though I’m about to say something. I hold my mouth open for a second before letting out a quick sigh and shrugging. Stephanie starts smiling again. “I guess I would rather get killed in an abandoned house. Churches scare me,” she replies. I nod my head and take the final step off of the bleachers to the ground. 

“Alright, so, it’s not that far from here, but it’ll take a moment to get there, if that makes sense,” I say. Stephanie nods, then rushes back under the bleachers and grabs something. She comes back holding a longboard. “You skate?” I ask.

“Yeah!” She replies. 

“Well then the trip won’t be long at all,” I say as we both make our way across the baseball field.

“Do you think the city removed the bench, or do you think someone stole it?” Stephanie asks. 

“Well… I have no idea… I was going to crack a joke, but yeah, I actually liked that bench a lot,” I reply.

“So you hung out there a lot, and so did I, but we never ran into each other?” 

“Not that I can recall. You’re pretty distinguishable, so I assume I would remember running into you at some point. I usually only hung out there on hot days or if I didn’t wanna go too far from home,” 

“So you live nearby,”

“Nothing here is far, so I guess so, yeah,” I reply as we finally cross past the park. We both line up at the street and simultaneously put our boards down. 

“Don’t worry about me falling behind,” Steph tells me. 

“If you fall behind, I’m leaving you,”

“Good to know,” she says. We shoot down streets non-stop, turning back to back and almost getting hit by a few cars along the way. I stop at a long gravel road. There are 3 houses far off in the distance, and an abandoned train track bridge crossing over the small stream running across town. Steph kicks her board up to her hand and looks at me.  

“It’s not the easiest to skate on gravel, but the houses are down there,” I say. 

“Then by all means, lead me to an abandoned house, stranger,” Steph says as she looks at me. I smirk and start walking. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m surprised she’s not freaked out. Like, she doesn’t know me, and for all I know I just lead her to a random location to murder her. 

“How’d you discover these houses?” she asks. 

“I was mostly just trying to get to that bridge, but then I saw these houses. Some look caved in and others are pretty damn solid, all things considered” I respond. She nods and we continue down the path. We get around to the first house which is boarded up.

“Well how are we supposed to get in?” She asks. 

“Around back,” I say as we walk around the house and see a staircase. I walk up the creaky staircase, trying to keep my cool, but to be honest, these houses are sort of creepy. Steph follows looking way more calm than I feel. The door up here has a cutout at the bottom that you can sneak into crawling. “Alright, watch your head, but we’re going to have to crawl into this place,” I say. Steph nods. I get down on my knees and poke my head inside. “If anyone’s in here, I’m coming in! Tell me if you don’t want me here and I’ll dip!” I yell. I wait for a quick moment. No response. “Alright! I’m coming in!” I yell. I crawl through the opening and Steph follows behind me. 

The floor is tiled, but it looks aged. Maybe at one point it shined whine, but now it looks more matte than anything and faints yellow. Luckily it doesn’t stink, but there is dirt everywhere. I get up to my feet and turn to Stephanie, offering a hand. She takes my hand and stands up, looking directly at me. 

“Thanks,” she says with a smile. I try not to look, but she hasn’t let go of my hand. 

“So is this the spot? Or would you like to choose another location from the Dwight catalogue?” I ask. Steph looks around. 

“Here is fine!” She says with a smile. She lets go of my hand and starts wandering around. I stay close behind just in case someone is here. A door is shut that wasn’t shut the last time I was here. I keep a close eye on the door as we walk past it. Stephanie observes everything as we walk through the house. Though it’s not by any means the biggest house, the curiosity in why there’s so many things that were abandoned here can leave you thinking for a while. Kid toys lay all around. The kitchen's shelves are still packed with pots and pans. There are jackets that are hanging up on the coat rack, and there’s a bookshelf with books lined up on all shelves. It’s been abandoned for years and years, but you gotta wonder why.

“What’s through there?” she asks while pointing at the closed door. 

“It’s a bedroom, but the door wasn’t closed last time I was here,” I say.

“Do you think someone’s in there?” She asks.

“No. Actually, I’m unsure. I’m curious though,” I say without even really thinking. I feel obligated to open this door, but there could be someone behind this door and that would be scary as fuck. I walk to the door and try to push it open, but it doesn’t open. I guess I need to turn the doorknob. I grab the doorknob and totally hesitate. I twist and push and hear something fall over in the next room over. Panicked, I jump back and Steph does too. “Oh good, I thought I was the only one who was a little freaked out right now,” I say.

“Definitely not. This is how all the stupid characters die in horror movies,” Stephanie says. I nod in agreement and take a quick look at the opening. I push the door a little farther, which reveals the empty room. 

“That was fun,” I say. Steph looks at me and smiles. I walk into the room and turn back to her. There is a small gap in the floor that she’s looking at. It’s actually a pretty big gap now that I look at it. I could have fallen down to the first floor had I not been careful. “If you don’t wanna come in here, we can go,” I say. Steph puts her hand out and I take it, helping her across. She stops in front of me and looks at me again. Again, this hasn’t been too long since my past mistakes have hurt me. I am more than likely reading into all of this very very wrong, but the tension doesn’t feel like it’s only coming from being in this abandoned house. I slowly back up and so does Steph. She stops backing up and looks me directly in the eyes. 

Do you ever feel the hesitancy in any situation associated with your uprising, whether it be miscommunication or rejection, or exactly what you expected and worse, or just as bad? I'm hesitant on the idea of hooking up here and I'm unsure if she's trying to push for that. The staring into my eyes, the holding my hand 5 seconds too long, her smile, it's all just too familiar. I stare into her eyes pondering on these thoughts and I stare just a second too long before turning away. Her posture adjusts to my thoughts.

“Oh my God,” Stephanie says. “I am so sorry, I was just-” 

“Hey, no, we’re good. You’re good. I want to. You seem really cool,” I assure her.

“I’m too straight forward,” she says.

“Hey, Stephanie, it’s okay. Seriously. I’ve been so nervous this entire time, like a lot of tension,” I say.

“Definitely what I was going for, Dwight. I just jumped the gun. I’m just not much of a romance,” she says. 

“No worries, I’m not much of a romance either. My relationships haven’t exactly been the best,” I say.

“I don’t mean to add to that list,” she says.

“Well, I like you. Umm, you’re hot,"

"Cause that matters most," 

"What? No, not what I'm saying. Just... You’re really cool, but because of that I would rather this not be a hookup, you know?” I say.

"So you're looking for a romance here?" 

"I don't know what I'm looking for here," I say. This isn't what I wanted though.

“I’m sorry. I’m just used to this. Like… I’ve had this talk before. I’ve been here before,” Stephanie says. I watch her bracelets clank as she wipes her hair from her face. 

Stephanie looks at me and looks around the house. She drops her shoulders letting out a sigh. "I don't mean to be a downer," she says. "I feel like I'm not sure where my mind is at. I just think we should go,” she says. 

“Okay, that’s fine,” I say in assurance. I nod my head and look around and to the doorway. I jump over the gap and turn around, offering help. Steph jumps over the gap without hesitation. I lead her outside and we make our way back down to ground level. After a quiet walk back to the gravel road, Stephanie finally breaks the silence with three simple words.

“This was fun,” she says in an almost apologetic tone. 

“Yeah,” I sort of sigh. We continue down the gravel path, holding our skateboards close. When we make it to the concrete, we both put our boards down. 

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“Probably home,” she says.

“You can follow behind me, and I’ll just lead us back to the old park we were at. You can probably get home from there,” I say. She looks at me a little taken back and nods. 

“Yeah, sure,” she says. We both skate off down street after street.

Making mistakes is pretty common for me. This feels like I am making a big mistake by not pursuing anything here, but is it an even bigger mistake to not do anything. I guess if both are mistakes, I should do the one that I would like to do more. I slow to a stop and step off the board, kicking it up to my hand and waiting for Steph to do the same. Here I go.