From Graves to Gardens, page 1
From Graves to Gardens
Copyright © 2023 by Heather Camacho
A publication of Purple Morning Press, LLC
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.
First Edition: April 2024.
ISBN: 978-1-962902-03-8 (ebook)
ISBN: 978-1-962902-04-5/978-1-962902-10-6 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-962902-05-2/978-1-962902-09-0 (hardback)
Cover: Emilie Haney of EAH Creative.
Editing: Jessica Welch of Just Right Editing and Allison Wells of Well Versed Publications.
Proofreading: Kendra Gaither of Kendra’s Editing and Book Services.
For Mr. Halloran — I have told myself since high school that I would dedicate my first book to my favorite teacher and now I have. The things you do and endure for your students really matter. Thank you for teaching me how to English good.
For Kevin — The boy who came to me in a dream with fear in his eyes, begging for my help. If your story touches just a single person, I’ll know I was successful.
For God — Whom I hope to impress the most, and without Whom I could not have written this.
CONTENTS
1. Kevin
2. Sarah
3. Kevin
4. Sarah
5. Kevin
6. Kevin
7. Sarah
8. Kevin
9. Sarah
10. Sarah
11. Kevin
12. Kevin
13. Sarah
14. Sarah
15. Kevin
16. Kevin
17. Sarah
18. Sarah
19. Kevin
20. Kevin
21. Kevin
22. Sarah
23. Kevin
24. Sarah
25. Kevin
26. Sarah
27. Kevin
28. Sarah
29. Kevin
30. Kevin
31. Sarah
32. Kevin
33. Sarah
34. Sarah
35. Kevin
36. Kevin
37. Sarah
38. Sarah
39. Kevin
40. Kevin
41. Sarah
42. Sarah
43. Kevin
44. Sarah
45. Kevin
46. Kevin
47. Sarah
48. Kevin
49. Kevin
50. Sarah
51. Kevin
52. Sarah
53. Kevin
54. Sarah
55. Kevin
56. Sarah
57. Kevin
58. Kevin
59. Kevin
60. Kevin
61. Sarah
62. Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
KEVIN
1
Growing up, I didn’t have a dad who gave me sage advice about life, instructed me on how to talk to girls, or even sent me to my room hungry when I wouldn’t finish my dinner. What I had was more like a wicked stepfather. A Craig Wyatt, to be precise. And the only thing he ever taught me was how to stay out of striking distance when he got wasted.
Last night, he and my mom coupled their drunkenness with something worse that he apparently hadn’t yet come down from. I found the remnants of their over-indulgence after getting home from work and had gunned straight for my bedroom, where I’d been ever since.
This morning, the morning of the first day of my last semester in high school, Craig slammed his fist into my bedroom door like a sledgehammer, jarring me from what hardly counted as sleep. Trusting my extra locks, I turned to my side.
"Get up, boy," he shouted. The door handle jiggled as he swore incoherently and attempted entry. He could try all he wanted, but I'd learned to take precautions. I’d never get an ounce of rest in this house with him roaming around, if he could just pick a simple knob-lock and walk right in. "Do you hear me?" The pounding continued.
"Come on out here. Your lazy mother is still in bed, and I want breakfast. Don’t you people know a man needs a hot meal before work? If she ain’t makin’ it, then you are!”
“I’m not your servant,” I muttered through the grogginess of another sleepless night. And I would find out just how “lazy” my mother was when I got home from school and counted her new bruises.
“You’ll do as you’re told!” he snapped back.
As I squeezed my pillow around my head and clamped my ears, trying but knowing I could never truly drown him out, I resorted to shouting, “Buzz off, Craig!” I knew it was the wrong move before I even said it. Issuing challenges to him never worked out in my favor, but it felt good to have that fleeting second of control.
“This is my house, boy. You think I can’t get into your room and make you do it?” He made a sound resembling laughter, and then his footsteps receded.
This house was the furthest thing from his. My mom rented it when I was a baby and then paid it off with a small family inheritance a long time ago. Things were looking up for us for a while in those days. My mom was already an addict, but she had it under enough control that I didn’t know yet. We had food on the table every single night, not just occasionally. That was right around the time Craig became a regular fixture, and our façade of normalcy fell apart for good. She had met him years before I was even born, if I remembered correctly, but their involvement didn’t get serious until about six years ago.
With Craig on the move, I had a brief window of opportunity to get dressed and sneak out of the house for school before he came back and did something irreparable to my door. There was no saying what he might try after my outburst, but if my room was open — and empty — when he got back, there would be no cause for damage.
Hopefully.
I threw off the covers and got out of bed. The first thing I did was open my window and glance at the sky. Still black. Still trying, like me, to wipe sleep from its tired eyes.
Taking me by surprise, Craig appeared in the backyard outside my window, his dark figure triggering a motion light on the side of the house, spotlighting his intoxicated endeavor. Back and forth, he rocked haphazardly on his feet. Talking angrily to himself, he approached the storage shed, which housed an assortment of tools, Mom’s long-abandoned gardening supplies, and all their recreational stuff. Craig became increasingly frustrated when he lifted the padlock and failed repeatedly to satisfy the combination. Swearing like a drunken sailor, he staggered over to a window and clumsily tried to pry it open. When it didn’t give, he fell back and sputtered. He looked too exhausted to mess with it anymore, so I pulled my clothes on. I was just tying my shoes when I heard the first crash.
Returning to my front-row seat, I saw a hole in one of the shed windows and Craig recovering from having thrown something through it. He then reached his arm in and groped for something, withdrawing empty-handed. Picking up another object from around the shed, he took more swings at the unyielding padlock, yelling for it to open. Wood split and debris sailed all over the yard. It finally occurred to him to focus his efforts on the lock itself, and while he was toiling away at that, I made my move. There was no point in staying around to watch the rest.
Once outside, I sprinted to my truck and roared away, not knowing if the theory about my door and Craig would pan out. For now, a broken door was a risk I was willing to take. Missing school over another Craig ordeal was not. If I played all my remaining cards right, at the end of this semester, all of this would be over. The nightmare that was my life would finally end, and I could wake up. Graduation spelled sweet deliverance for me, and it couldn’t come fast enough.
After leaving my house so early, I had at least an hour to burn. It wasn’t the first time I’d loitered in the parking lot, waiting for school to open. There were many occasions during my junior year, after I’d gotten my truck, that I slept in it at the far end of the lot. I was more than willing to do a lot worse things to stay away from home as much as possible.
Shifting into park and killing the engine, I glanced out at the approaching daybreak. I’d beaten the sunlight there. Only the welcoming pink streaks of morning stretched out across the sky so far. Then, little by little, the sun peeked out, diluting the colorful palette above.
My phone went off about a hundred times, all notifications from Craig. If it wasn’t a text berating me for leaving in the middle of his “conversation,” it was a call and a new voicemail of his disgusting slurred words. When all his contact attempts came to an abrupt halt, I concluded Craig must’ve finally passed out. With any luck, he wouldn’t remember this morning by the time he woke up.
As the minutes ticked
To enforce the impression that I meant business and nothing else, I sat alone at the last empty table in first period Advanced Placement Biology. Though it was behind two chatty girls, I considered it a bonus to be at the very back of the room. All I wanted to do was fade into the background, mind my business, and get the rest of the school year over with.
The five-month countdown to freedom was officially on.
As the warning bell fired off, Mr. Hallinger stood vigilantly beside the door and watched the minute hand tick by on the large white clock above it. Whoever wasn’t there already only had minutes to go.
I knew all about the strategy implemented in room 204 once the late bell rang. How many times had he locked me out for being tardy last semester? Even if I hadn’t skipped the entire school day so often, Mr. Hallinger’s method alone was enough for me to fail his class.
Realistically, I shouldn’t have taken any AP classes, but I wasn’t thinking clearly when I signed up for it. I discovered it counted for double credits and jumped on it. Our school’s weird, ninety-minute-long class structure worked out for me in the end, because the first and second semesters were the same, each semester fulfilling a needed class and credit. I would be behind, and royally screwed, if classes were all-year long.
Then, before I knew it, it was too late in the year to change my mind, so I had to accept an Incomplete in order to avoid an F that counted for two. That meant I had to take it over from scratch, and since time was quickly running out, I had to pass. Without these last credits, I had no hope. Like it or not, I had no choice but to adhere to Mr. Hallinger’s conventions. Given how early I could get to school, anyway, being late was no longer much of a worry.
I had my sights set on Texas A&M Central University next, for their Bachelor’s program in aviation. As far as I was concerned, Killeen might as well be Timbuktu. College would get me away from everyone and everything that had ever done me wrong, and I couldn’t wait to never look back.
For the first time, my future looked something other than dim. I’d already passed all my preliminary exams and qualified for a partial scholarship. It wasn’t a full ride, but it was enough to get me started. Working my way through the rest wouldn’t be difficult. I was already used to working like a horse with little to show for it. At least at school, the money I earned would actually be mine. Never again would I have to pacify Craig by funding his habits, nor would my mother and her own bad choices hang over my head like a never-ending storm cloud.
Adios, Corpus Christi. I won’t miss ya.
While everyone else in class was socializing, I started drawing on a blank page in my sketchbook. Hallinger wouldn’t cover anything I didn’t already have notes on for a while, so why not? I didn’t need to be taking new notes in order to be listening.
The drawing distraction was nice but short-lived. My attention was diverted when Sarah Stevenson, a girl I recognized from the halls, walked through the door at the last second.
Mr. Hallinger whistled, the note low and dramatic. “Down to the wire, Stevenson. I think there’s still a spot for you right back there.” Hallinger pointed my way, and I shot my eyes down. Of course, the only empty seat left in the room was the one next to me. Sarah headed my way as the bell finally sounded.
“Alright, now that everyone is here…” With his arm emphasizing the white board behind him, Mr. Hallinger reiterated his welcome message aloud to us. “Welcome back, seniors! I know we’re all going to have a great final semester together. How do I know this? Because I know that each and every one of you will strive to make it to class on time, —” at this, he winked at Sarah, “— and will respect one another as well as me, so that the learning in this room can flourish. Oh, and pay attention to where you sat today, as that is now your permanent residence, and the person immediately beside you is your new lab partner.”
Part of the room sighed with relief. Some groaned with annoyance. As for me, I kept my head down and my hood up. My focus was on the class, not the strawberry blonde only an elbow’s length away. She would do her share if I had anything to say about it. If she thought to try coasting by on her looks to avoid doing any actual work, she was mistaken. Things at home were rougher than usual, if such a thing was possible, and I could not afford to lose any momentum.
Determined more than ever, I paid no attention to Sarah. Keeping my eyes on the sketch in front of me, I bent my arm around it protectively. As she slung her backpack onto the floor between us, it hit my chair, and I scooted further away.
“Oh, sorry,” she whispered, dragging the backpack around to the other side. I offered nothing in response and remained silent for the rest of the period.
Near the end of class, Sarah leaned over, just as I was putting the finishing touches on my drawing. “Hey… You’re Kevin, right? How come you didn’t take notes?” When I didn’t answer, Sarah bumped my elbow, causing my hold on the sketchbook to shift and my pencil to skid across the page.
Now irritated, I erased the stray line. “Yes, I’m Kevin. No, I didn’t take notes.”
“I’m not going to let you just copy mine later,” she warned in a hushed, accusatory tone.
“I don’t need them.” Wanting to shut down her assumption, I reached down into my backpack and took out a black and white composition book labeled “BIO.” Opening it firmly so the pages would lie flat, I slapped it onto the table. I see your notes and raise you forty pages.
From the corner of my eye, I watched her tilt her head in order to read it.
“Oh,” she quietly acknowledged. “Nice.”
I adjusted my hold and scowled, put off by her arrogance. I might’ve needed a scholarship to escape town, and I may have needed a viable partner for this class, but I didn’t walk around asking for handouts. If Sarah pulled her weight on whatever assignments we were stuck doing as a team, everything would be just fine. The only thing I would need was extra durability for my nerves. We weren’t even through the first day and Sarah Stevenson was already well at work on all of them.
SARAH
2
On the second day of class, the girls and I were chatting away our free minutes before the period officially began. We were talking about nothing of consequence when Sammy fished a nail file out of her backpack and pointed it suspiciously at me before starting on her nails. “Where were you yesterday morning, by the way?”
My face threatened to warm, but I faked it away with only part of the story. “Yesterday morning was chaotic. I overslept and had to rush.” The rest of it was that I spent extra time in my car inhaling a banana and juice box, then did my morning bolus in order to bring my blood sugar back up before I really felt awful. My glucose number might’ve temporarily suffered, but at least I made it to class on time. But I didn’t tell them that. I didn’t tell anybody about my Type 1 Diabetes.
Birdie nodded, accepting my explanation. “Oh, that stinks. Sleeping through your alarm is the worst.”
Sammy refused to let it go. “Sounds kinda sus to me. You’re never late anywhere.”
“Things happen. Even to us perfect specimens.” I fluffed my hair in jest, inciting laughter that caused them to forget the subject.
