Chapter 2: Meet the Neighbors

Grandpa Joe's house sat old and tired at the edge of town where the main road forked off into the middle of nowhere. As the pickup truck turned onto the dirt path that led up to the driveway, Lucas had faint flashes of the hot summers he spent running around the front yard with his cousins when he was a kid. He had loved it here for the sole fact that it was quiet, simple, and absolutely nothing like New York. But as the truck skidded to a stop in front of the white farmhouse that desperately needed a new paint job and numerous repairs, all thoughts of fond memories disappeared and Lucas was left with the feeling of dread that had been eating at him since the day his parents told him he would be living here.

"Welcome home, Lucas." Joe parked the truck and gave Lucas a sincere smile before pushing open the door and stepping onto the pavement. Lucas looked up at the house from his seat in the truck, taking in the rickety old swing on the front porch and the overgrown bushes that looked as though they hadn't been trimmed since the last time he had visited.

"This isn't my home," Lucas muttered to himself as he stepped out of the truck and began gathering his luggage from the back. He got as far as the front steps before a tall woman wearing a red and white checkered apron with flour speared across the front, came barreling towards him with her arms opened wide.

"Lucas Friar, as I live and breathe, get over here boy!" She stopped at the top of the steps and waited for Lucas to come to her, her eyes lighting up with every step that he took.

"Hi, Aunt Linda," Lucas mumbled into the giant duffel bag he was balancing on top of his rolling suitcase. Once he had managed to lug his baggage up the steps, Lucas stood in front of the woman he hadn't seen since he was seven or eight, and took in the little tufts of gray hair poking out of her ponytail, wondering if all of his relatives looked different than he remembered.

"You are even more handsome than you are in those school pictures your mom sent, my goodness!" Linda placed two flour-spotted hands on both of Lucas' cheeks and gently moved his head this way and that as she tried to get a better look at him. "Joe, did you get a good look at this boy?"

"I looked at him, Linda," Joe carefully made his way up the stairs, clutching the railing to steady himself as he came to stand next to Linda at the top of the porch. "He takes after his Mama, that's for sure."

Joe led Lucas into the foyer, Linda trailing closely behind them as she watched Lucas take in the cramped living room with its much-too-big furniture and antique photographs of famous rodeo stars that Joe had collected over the years.

"You remember the place, don't you?" Joe asked, coming around the couch to stand in front of the broken coffee table in the center of the room. "I know it's been a while, but-"

"I remember it," Lucas cut him off quickly, dragging his bags to the side of the the staircase that led to the upstairs portion of the house.

"Good," Joe nodded and clapped his hands together excitedly. "Well, you'll be up in the same room you stayed in when you were little. It hasn't changed much, I'm embarrassed to say. Your grandmother did all the decorating around here."

Lucas watched his grandfather's face change at the mention of his grandmother. He noticed the way his eyes went blurry and distant, as if he was remembering something that he hadn't thought about in a long time. This almost made Lucas feel sorry for him, as if the time they had spent apart hadn't distanced their relationship in the worst ways imaginable and he was once again the same ten-year-old boy who went fishing and sang campfire songs with his grandfather on hot summer days.

"Anyway, go on up, get settled in," Joe shook his head, and they were both thrown back into reality. "Like I said back at the airport, Linda has organized a barbecue for tomorrow, but tonight I thought I'd cook up my famous chili, maybe catch up on what you've been doing the past few years."

"Actually, I'm not very hungry," Lucas said quickly, his voice coming out much colder than he had intended it to. "I think I'm just going to go to bed."

"Are you sure, Lucas?" Linda stepped out from behind him to stand directly across from Lucas' grandfather. "Joe's not exaggerating, his chili is the best in town. And I'd love to hear about all your adventures in the big city."

"Well, I'm sure that Joe here has told you everything of importance," Lucas snapped, his gaze drifting across the room to meet Joe's eyes. "I mean he told you why I'm here right? Then I guess he's told you about the other twenty or so infractions too. Me being a screw up is pretty much the only thing anyone ever talks about, so I guess you've heard everything you need to hear."

"Lucas-" Joe tried to meet Lucas at the foot of the stairs, but he was already halfway up before Joe could hobble his way around the couch to get there.

"No, it's fine," Lucas called back to him from the top of the stairs without looking down to see Joe and Linda staring up at him with concerned expressions. "I'll just see you in the morning."

Lucas tossed and turned all night, the heat wrapping around his throat and wrists, choking him and pinning him down so that it made it almost unbearable to lay in one spot for too long. It was early September, but it might as well have been mid-July the way the heat seemed to linger in the air and remain untouched from when the sun came up until it fell behind the trees, unseen from the rest of the world. At half past five, Lucas finally gave up on any hope of sleep and padded downstairs in his bare feet to watch the sunrise on the front porch.

The house was quiet, undisturbed by the heat the way Lucas seemed to be. Silently, he crossed through the kitchen and the foyer to quietly turn the doorknob and step into gray-blue glow of early morning.

"Morning, Lucas." Joe was sitting in one of the two rocking chairs set off to the side of the wraparound front porch. He had a steaming cup of coffee that he was holding with two hands that lingered close to his mouth, as if it were winter and he was using the cup's warmth to stave off the cold.

"Sorry, I didn't think anyone else would be up this early." Lucas took a few steps closer, but didn't make any moves to take the empty seat next to his grandfather. He wanted to turn back around and head into the house like this had never happened, but quickly thought better of it.

"I'm always up this early," Joe admitted, gesturing to the rocking chair next to him and patting the arm with one spare hand. "Come on, have a seat. Trust me, you don't want to miss this."

They were quiet a moment. Either for the lack of anything to talk about, or the fear of ruining the silence of morning, Lucas wasn't sure, but he knew that he wasn't going to be the one to break first.

"There's nothing like this anywhere else in the entire world, Lucas," Joe said a moment later, his voice barely above a whisper. "I don't care what anyone around here says, but sitting right here in this chair, in this exact spot, the sun looks more beautiful than anywhere else in the world."

Lucas watched as the sun slowly made its way above the horizon, casting a brilliant glow of yellow-white light all around them.

"It just looks like a normal sunrise to me," Lucas shrugged, unable to see why his grandfather thought the scene before them to be so brilliant.

"Well, maybe by the end of the year, you'll understand what I mean," Joe glanced at Lucas a moment before turning back to the sunrise, his lips curling into a knowing smile. "I'm going to go get breakfast started. Your aunt and cousins should be here by eight to start setting up for the barbecue. It would mean a lot to everyone if you were around to help."

"Yeah, well I'll check my schedule," Lucas grumbled, adjusting his position in the chair without meeting his grandfather's eyes.

"Right," Joe nodded, slowly standing from his own chair with much more of an effort than this movement should have required. Lucas swore he saw a wince in his grandfather's expression, but it was gone a second later and Lucas was unsure if he had even seen it at all. "Well, enjoy the Texas sunrise, Lucas. You might be here for a year, and you could very well see another hundred of these, but you'll be surprised with yourself for missing it as much as you do when you go back to New York. Enjoy it while you can. Like I said, there's nothing like it."

Joe turned on his heel and carefully made his way back into the house. Lucas stayed in his chair until the sun was completely risen, and the day looked back at him with a sunshiney glow that made Lucas grimace in annoyance.

"It's just a sunrise," he mumbled under his breath. But as he stood from his chair, watching it rock back and forth as it adjusted to his absence, Lucas thought back to the last time he had seen a proper sunrise. He thought about his life in New York, his childhood, even the summers he spent in Texas. But no matter how far he went back in his memories, Lucas couldn't remember one time where he had actually seen a sunrise at all.

Oak Creek, Texas was a sleepy little town brushed off to the side somewhere past the interstate, nestled between Dallas and Waco. It wasn't known for anything special, like the world's biggest ball of yarn or America's longest living tree. It didn't even gather any importance from being a town that you passed through to get to a bigger city. It was simply there - an old friend forgotten, but ready and waiting if ever they were needed. The townspeople were proud to live where they did though, and were sure to tell anyone who said otherwise. They reveled in celebrating every holiday, season, and founder's day like it was the most important event of their lives, and were sure to include every last member of their community - young and old alike. That is why now, as Lucas watched in horror as a good quarter of the town helped set up for his 'Welcome to town barbecue,' he had the urge to run away and never look back.

"Over here, Hanna!" Linda waved frantically at a tall, chipper-looking woman who had just entered through the house and was now carefully making her way down the steps to join everyone in the backyard. She was clutching a crockpot in both hands, looking as though she was afraid that if she made one wrong move, the whole thing would go flying from her hands. "I want the baby back ribs on the same table as the pork and barbecue chicken!"

"Mom, where do you want the tub of games and balls and stuff?" Lucas' fifteen-year-old cousin, Alyson, emerged from the shed at the back of the property, dragging the blue bucket with one hand and squinting up at her mother as she waited for an answer.

"Just set it over there," Linda instructed her daughter, gesturing to the only grassy area that was free from tables, chairs, and children running around as they waited for their parents to be done with whatever task Linda Friar had given them. "I want it out of the way so Jerry doesn't trip over it on his way back to his table with his giant plate of food like last time."

"That was hilarious." Another cousin, a few years younger than his sister, came around one side of Lucas to sit next to him on the deck.

"Caleb!" Linda shrieked in protest, looking up from her task of smoothing out a wrinkled tablecloth to glare at her son from across the yard.

"What? It was!" Caleb insisted, nudging Lucas in the elbow and looking up at him for confirmation, as if he had been there when the event in question had occurred to agree with this statement.

"You're being rude, Caleb," Alyson mocked, sticking out her tongue before setting the bucket in the grass where her mother had instructed.

"You laughed too!" Caleb jumped up from his spot next to Lucas and descended the stairs to meet his sister in the middle of the yard.

"Oh, whatever-"

Lucas drowned out the rest of the bickering and gaped at the scene that was unfolding before him. Men and women he had never met before were winding streamers around bannisters and blowing up balloons like it was a five-year-old's birthday party. Someone had turned up the stereo on their truck that had been pulled up to the edge of the backyard and was blasting a country song he had never heard before while children danced in front of it like they were on stage and anyone who looked in their direction was their audience.

"Where the hell am I?" Lucas mumbled these words to himself, but he hoped that someone, anyone, would give him some sort of an answer that would actually make sense.

Unable to witness another second of this nightmare, Lucas pushed off the deck and headed down the driveway onto the road that would lead to the main part of town. He had to get out of there. He needed to feel miserable without aunts and uncles and cousins he hadn't seen since he was a toddler coming up to him with concerned expressions, wondering if they could do anything for him. It wasn't like anyone had died. He got kicked out of school and now he was paying the price for it. He wanted to deal with that on his own.

He wandered through town, taken aback by how familiar it all seemed. The old movie theater where he had tricked his cousin Nathan into seeing their first rate R movie at the age of nine. The ice cream shop, Nina's Coffee House, Homegrown Diner, the auto bodyshop where his uncle worked. It all came back to him like no time had passed, yet Lucas still felt like a tourist making his way through a foreign town in a daze.

"It's been here since the 1920′s you know." Lucas glanced behind him to see a boy who looked to be around his age standing on the edge of the curb, pointing up at the old movie theater's sign that was almost completely faded beyond recognition. "It was probably the most popular spot in town for anyone under the age of twenty. But now, hardly anyone ever buys a ticket to anything playing. Granted, they've played the same six movies since 1999, but it's still sad to see something that was so full of life, completely dead after having such a great run."

The boy took a few steps closer to Lucas, rubbing the back of his neck as he navigated his way around a few late afternoon shoppers making their way to the shops before they closed for the day.

"I personally see the Breakfast Club once a week," he admitted. "I'm probably the only customer keeping this place going. But I just can't bear to see it shut down for good, you know?"

They were both silent for a moment as they figured out what they were supposed to say next.

"I'm Isaiah by the way," he greeted Lucas with a warm smile and offered out his hand for Lucas to shake.

"Lucas Fri-"

"Lucas Friar. Joe's grandson," Isaiah finished for him, and Lucas raised his eyebrows in confusion. "Small town, remember?"

"Right," Lucas nodded slowly, shaking his head at how bizarre this whole situation was for him. "That's going to take a lot of getting used to."

"Yeah, I could only imagine," Isaiah leaned one shoulder against the faded paneling of the movie theater, turning his body slightly to face Lucas. "Well maybe I couldn't. But I have a vivid imagination."

"Do you ever get used to it?" Lucas asked after a moment, crossing his arms in front of his chest and knitting his eyebrows together as he met Isaiah's gaze. "Having these people know every detail about your life, whether you want them to or not?"

"Believe it or not, that doesn't happen to everyone," he admitted, and Lucas noticed that he saw something in his eyes that almost resembled disappointment. "Only the truly interesting ones get that burden. Sorry about that."

"I'm not that interesting, trust me," Lucas muttered under his breath, his gaze dropping to the pavement before Isaiah could meet his eyes.

"Oh you are to the gossipers around here, believe me," Isaiah's eyes lit up as he mentioned this little tidbit, his lips curling into a slight smile as he continued his explanation. "Angry city boy gets thrown out of his fancy New York private school, forcing his parents to send him to live with his estranged grandfather in Texas for his last year of high school. You're a hot topic among the Sunday Brunchers. Or so I hear from my older sister."

"That's not who I am," Lucas said firmly. "I mean that's what happened. But that's not me."

"Then who are you, Lucas?" Isaiah posed this question to Lucas as if he expected him to know the answer right away. But Lucas couldn't think of a single answer that made sense to him, and that made Lucas more upset than he'd like to admit.

"I think that's why they sent me here," Lucas explained, his voice barely above a whisper. "To figure that out."

"Well I hope I get to know him," Isaiah admitted, pushing off the wall and turning to head in the direction that Lucas had come from when he first walked into town.

"Hey, my grandfather is having this big barbecue for me this afternoon," Lucas called after him, and Isaiah turned back to smile in his direction. "You can come if you want."

"Oh I was already planning to," Isaiah beamed, taking a few steps backward toward the other side of the street. "Joe got the mailman to throw an invitation into everyone's mailbox last week."

"Of course he did," Lucas muttered, annoyance starting to rise up in the pit of his stomach. "Well I'll see you there I guess?"

"Yes you will," Isaiah said as he turned back in the direction of the one and only diner in the center of town. "Oh, and you can call me Zay! That's what everyone around here calls me anyway and like it or not, you're a part of 'around here' now! See ya, Lucas!"

By the time Lucas made is way through the rest of the town square, taking his time looking at all the shops and business nestled along the main road, he was already half an hour late to the barbecue. As he pushed his way through the gate that led to Joe's backyard, Lucas was hit with a thousand different sights and smells that almost reminded him of his life back in the city. Then he rubbed his eyes to adjust his eyesight and realized that it wasn't anywhere close to being in the city.

"There you are!" Aunt Linda and four other excited women Lucas had never seen before swarmed him at the gate, already handing him the biggest plate of food he had ever seen.

"Where have you been? You have people to meet!"

Before Lucas could protest, he was ushered off to a table closest to the old barn at the back of the yard. He spent the next hour shaking hands and learning people's names that he forgot half a second later. Everyone was so friendly and welcoming that it made Lucas want to run off to a secluded part of the world and never talk to anyone ever again. To Lucas' surprise, and relief, no one mentioned the incident that had got him sent here, but he knew in the back of his mind that everyone was aware of his situation. And this fact alone made being at a party with these people even worse.

"I think I'm going to go inside for a few minutes. I need a break, if that's okay," Lucas explained to the crowd of people he had been listening to talk about obscure faming tools for the past ten minutes. They all nodded as Lucas made his escape, and rolled his eyes as he heard them resume their conversation a second later as if they hadn't even been interrupted in the first place.

"Lucas, I hope you're not skipping out on the party early," Joe's voice came from somewhere on the back porch and Lucas did everything he could to suppress the eye roll that was threatening to take over.

"Just going inside to use the bathroom," Lucas snapped, running his hands through his hair as he turned to meet his grandfather's gaze. "Is that allowed, or do I have to ask permission?"

"Listen boy, I'd drop the attitude if I were you," Joe barked, his voice low and threatening. "I'm doing your Momma a favor by taking you in and if you don't straighten out-"

"You'll what? You'll send me back? But we both know you're not going to do that. You think that if you ship me back so soon she'll think that you're letting her down somehow. Good ole' Joe Friar can't even fix the trouble maker son, so he must be a lost cause right? That's just unacceptable isn't it?"

"Watch your voice," Joe took a step closer to Lucas and he could see that he was clenching his fists hard enough to cause the little veins on his temple to pop out. "Go inside and cool off. But I expect to see your butt back out here in five minutes, mingling and acting like your damn ecstatic to be here with everyone do you hear me?"

"Loud and clear," Lucas mumbled as he pushed past his grandfather to head into the house.

The entire downstairs was covered in complete darkness, so Lucas cautiously made his way through the living room, reaching out to touch the objects in front of him to ensure that he wouldn't bump into anything. When he finally reached the staircase, Lucas' hand bumped into something that let out a terrible screeching noise that made Lucas jump about a foot in the air.

"Jesus Christ you scared the living daylights out of me," the voice spat, moving slightly backwards into the shadows underneath the staircase.

"Me? You're the one lurking by the staircase like an animal stalking its prey," Lucas argued, his heart rate slowly returning to normal.

"I was waiting for a friend," the girl stated matter-of-factly, as if Lucas was meant to know this to be the reason for her scaring him half to death.

"Well wait somewhere with better lighting next time," Lucas suggested, and he could practically feel the girl rolling her eyes in the darkness. A second later Lucas saw her figure stomping its way across the hardwood floor to flick on the lamp resting on the table next to the front door.

"Happy?" The girl whirled around to face Lucas, and he immediately recognized her to be the person who fell onto his lap on his flight to Texas the day before.

"Hey, you're the girl from the plane!" Lucas pointed one finger at her, and he could see the color in her cheeks changing to a faint pink as the recognition set in.

"Uh, what?" She stammered, taking a step backward and bumping straight into the coatrack sitting by the end table. It teetered back and forth in protest and the girl reached out to steady it before it toppled to the ground. "I'm not sure what you're talking about."

"Don't play dumb, you fell onto my lap!"

"That could have been anybody," the girl argued, crossing her arms in front of her chest and raising her eyebrows at him amusedly. "I'm sure lots of girls fall into that lap all the time, it's probably easy to think that I was one of them, when I was in fact, not."

"No, I could never forget those eyes," Lucas smirked, staring at the girl intently. "And I doubt anyone else has any quite like them."

"Riley, you ready?" A short blonde girl with angry eyes appeared at the top of the steps, and they both turned to look up at her.

"Yep, definitely! Let's go," Riley sputtered out quickly, already making her way through the living room to head back to the party. She waited impatiently by the backdoor for her friend to descend the staircase, her foot tapping the hardwood floor in a sporadic, fast-paced pattern.

"Don't fall onto any laps out there," Lucas teased, and the girl turned her head to glare at him. "That's our thing, remember?"

Without saying anything, the girl took her friend by the arm and they both disappeared back into the crowd of partygoers. Lucas smiled at them as he made his way upstairs, knowing that he had already surpassed the five minutes his grandfather had given him, but not even caring anymore.