Cameron Malone

"This is stupid. Why do I have to go?"

Cameron Malone mumbled to his father on the way to their new home in god knows where. This was the third move in two years.

"Because you're only fifteen which makes you a minor and considering I'm your guardian, you have to stay with me, bud. But don't worry about it, you'll make new friends and I really think this is permanent!"

"Yeah. Just like the last time, right?"

With that, Cameron snapped his headphones back into place and drowned out his father's lecture.

After about an hour more of driving and sulking in the passenger's seat, Cameron and his father arrived at their new home. It was a smaller, cozy type one floor house that was white with dark green shutters on the windows.

"Wow dad, didn't know you booked us into a Disney movie!"

He acknowledged a warning look from his father and started unloading boxes. He picked a random room on the far East side of the house to be his bedroom and plopped down on the bed that the movers had already brought to the house. Looking up at the ceiling, Cameron started thinking about how life had changed with his father's new job. What was the point of making friends or keeping up grades when they were just going to move again?

After Cameron finished helping his father with the last bits of unloading, he locked himself in his new bedroom the rest of the night and organized his things, including the family picture that had been taken about a year ago, before his parent's divorce. As he set down the photo on his nightstand, something caught his eye out the window. It was a small boy, couldn't have been more than eleven or twelve, looking back at him from across the street. The boy was somewhat scrawny, had a pale face and pale blond hair. Cameron couldn’t see his face, but still felt like his eyes were boring into him. This went on for a few seconds, before it just became too odd to bear.

"Weirdo."

Cameron muttered under his breath. He shut the blinds and dismissed the incident, putting his headphones back on in time to hear the electric lullaby from his favorite band, The Flying Turtles. Cameron was just about to fall asleep when he heard the muffled shout from his father. He bolted upright and ripped the headset off of his ears to see his father standing with his arms crossed in the doorway.

"Do you have to keep that thing cranked so loud?"

"Sorry, dad."

With a disapproving look, his father continued.

"I found a good high school for you, it's only a few blocks away, walking distance. Would you be okay walking? My hours are a bit hard to work around this week."

"Yeah, I guess."

"Good. You'll start there tomorrow..."

He started to walk away but then turned back to face his son.

"Just try, kiddo."

"Try to what?"

"I think you know."

Cameron didn't respond and just looked down at his hands, pretending to fidget with something. His father looked at him for a few seconds and walked away.

The rest of the night, his father never bothered him, and it wasn't long until Cameron went to sleep.

Cameron woke up to the sound of his alarm, telling him he should get ready for his first day at a new school. Again. When he realized his father had already left for work, he calculated on his smart phone how long it would take to walk to this place.

"Walker lake high school, home of the wombats.... Why wombats? Isn't that some kind of rodent?" Cameron said quietly to himself. After finding that the school was, in fact, just up the road, he got dressed in a pair of black jeans and one of the many black metal band tees that he owned. He grabbed a quick bowl of cereal (completely forgetting to close up the box and put everything away), grabbed his old beat up backpack, and started walking. When he got about halfway there, he noticed a group of boys walking on the other side of the street. They looked about his age, and they were clearly talking about him. All three of them were pretty lanky and they were starting to weird Cameron out. He put on his headset and pretended to not notice them. And before long, he was at the doors.

The school looked as ordinary as any other school, a brick building with a flag pole out front. Before walking inside, Cameron looked behind him to see if the boys were still there only to find that they'd disappeared. He figured they'd probably slipped past him in the morning crowd.

First things first. Cameron maneuvered his way to the attendance office of the school to get his schedule for the day and quickly hurried to his first class, which was biology. Cameron actually enjoyed any type of science and loved learning about the human body.

He picked a desk in the far back corner next to the window and hoped that nobody would notice him. He didn't really want to be the one weird new kid that started the school year two weeks late. Luckily, none of the kids in the class acknowledge him. About a minute later, the teacher walks in. Cameron has to look at his schedule to remember her name.

"Hello class, today we have a new student starting at walker lake. Cameron Malone?"

Great. Cameron reluctantly raises his hand to show that he's here.

"Ah yes. Well Cameron, welcome to Walker! I'm Mrs. Stacy."

Cameron gives a weak smile in get direction and puts his hand down.

"If you need anything just let me know." She then goes back to addressing the class.

Cameron looks around at all of the students that keep glancing at him and decides to just look out the window. The rest of class drones on, all he absorbs is something about how a body's brain changes in the process of dying and is relieved when the bell rings to go to next period.

He walks to the next class with his bag still over his shoulder, not willing to go find his assigned locker. As he's walking through the hall, someone bumps into him and drops their books.

"Oh gosh, I'm sorry man."

Cameron says as he picks up a notebook and hands it back to the boy that hit him. Upon making eye contact he realizes it's one of the boys from this morning.

"It's no problem at all." The boy says with a sneer. "It's Cameron, right? I'm josh. I think I saw you walking this morning."

"Uh yeah. Hi. How did you know?"

"Word gets around quick here. Anyway I've gotta get to class and so do you. Maybe I'll see you at lunch."

"Sure, yeah. See ya."

Cameron is a bit stunned with how nice josh seemed. But is a lot more concerned that everyone already knows there's a new kid and they know that it's him.

Cameron makes it to his next class with about two minutes to spare and introduces himself to his next teacher, Mr. Cory, and goes through the same routine as first period. This time a couple of girls are glancing back at him and giggling to themselves occasionally throughout the hour. When the bell rings, he goes on through the next two periods just as bored as the first two, and finally it's lunch time. Cameron finds it odd that he hasn't seen josh or either of the other two boys in the halls the whole day, but hopes to see them during lunch so he doesn't have to sit completely alone.

After going through the line and getting his meal, he quickly finds the table with the the boys in the back of the cafeteria and sits down with them.

"Hey Cameron!"

This comes from the shortest of the three boys, and Cameron acknowledges a smirk from josh.

"Hey."

"Cameron!" Josh starts off. "So I see you've become acquainted with Jojo, and that's Mitch."

The other boy, Mitch, waves slightly from across the table.

"Well, nice to know I'm not alone for lunch on my first day." Cameron says, not making eye contact with any of them.

The the boys let out quiet laughs and some girls at a nearby table give Cameron a strange look and begin gossiping.

Jojo notices Cameron looking at the laughing girls and says

"Dude, as long as you're hanging out with us, you're gonna get weird looks."

Cameron hears a low snickering from the rest of the boys and with one last glance at the giggling girls, finishes his lunch hardly saying a word.

Cameron trails behind the boys at the end of lunch while exiting the cafeteria, lost in his own thoughts. He finds himself looking down at his feet and thinking, what exactly was the point of befriending these guys when he was just going to move? And right then, he decided that he was going to make something of life this time around. After all, his father said to try, right? So try he would. And the first step is letting himself have a friend or two. Or three.

Just then, someone drops their tray on the tile floor somewhere behind Cameron, and he snaps out of his thoughts, and looking up, realizes that his new “friends” have disappeared.

“Was I really that out of it?”

Cameron finished out his classes for the day in near silence, and was fairly certain he fell asleep for a few minutes in last period. He was relieved to hear the end of the day bell, which signalled it was time to leave. Cameron began his walk home, and when he was only a few yards away from the school, someone tapped him on the shoulder.

“Hey dude.”

It was Josh, and of course, Mitch and Jojo were with him.

“Uh.. hi Josh. What’s up?”

“Not much. But, hey. Are you busy?”

“Right now?”

“Well duh right now. Wanna come hang with us?”

“I don’t know if I should…”

Cameron thought about it and wondered if his dad would mind. But then again, he told him to make friends.

“C’mon man, it’ll be fun.”

“Sure. Why not.”

“Sweet! Follow me.”

Josh lead Cameron, Mitch and Jojo back toward Cameron’s house. None of the boys talked much on the way to their destination, and Cameron was getting uncomfortable.

“Where are we going?” Cameron asked, the curiosity was killing him.

“Nowhere.” Replied Mitch, with a slight devilish smirk and dead seriousness that made the hair on the back of Cameron’s neck stand up.

“What?”

“Seriously dude, that’s what the folks around here call it. The Nowhere Field. Some stupid legend that everyone here is told as a kid. It’s total garbage if you ask me.”

“Legend?”

“Yeah, man. Are you deaf or something?” It was Jojo this time, and he along with the rest of the boys laughed.

Cameron stayed silent, but still continued following. They had passed Cameron’s house a long way back, and had taken a turn toward a dead end street. The boys were ahead of cameron now, jumping around and snickering about something Josh said. They all looked back at him a few times. They had gone on past the end of the street, and all Cameron could think was that this place was, well, dead.

All of the grass in this feild was dead and crinkled when Cameron walked on it. It was a light brown color and the sky above was cloudless. It seemed as though time stood still, and the whole field was empty. Except for one large tree stump… and that was what they were headed for.

Cameron was very freaked out. He thought about going back, but what would that make him? Afraid. And that was never going to happen. The boys had gone back to barely talking and they had almost arrived at the stump, Cameron could see it more clearly now, and it’s roots were above ground. The color of the tree looked almost lifeless, it was twisted and gray, but then he saw him.

“What the hell?” Cameron muttered under his breath.

It was the boy from his window the previous day. Standing the same way as before, perfectly still, just intently staring.