Rodney walked into his grandmothers house and literally felt the fear and dread practically fall off his body as he passed through the front door. He closed the door behind him and realized he could barely remember why he'd been so afraid in the first place.
He dropped his backpack at the foot of the stairs and kicked his shoes off into the pile. The kitchen smelled very much like childhood memories he had been trying to forget. He found his grandmother sitting next to the oven reading Blood Night: Lust. His entrance caused her to look up from her book. "Well how was your first day? I want to hear all about it." She said with a smile as she set her book down and moved her chair over to the small dining room table. Rodney sat across from her and told her everything. It all came out like water freed from a dam.
He told her about his meeting with the vice principal, his history teacher, the T.A. assignment, the fact that he had a crush on his only friend's sister. He wanted to continue but his stomach tightened, like it was fighting revealing the experience by the woods, but, why would he not share that? His grandmother might be able to explain it away, make him feel better about it.
Or she might not believe him. Most people didn't believe in 'intuition', or a 'sixth sense'.
But she had asked, and he had already told her everything else.
His grandmother tried to catch his gaze which had drifted in his silence. "Is there something else?" She asked with genuine concern.
It took all his will power and then some, but he nodded.
Her concern became significantly more intense. :"Do you want to tell me about it?" She asked very seriously.
"I -" He could feel the room closing in on him. He was torn between sharing and running out of the house screaming.
She reached for his hand, and he let her hold it in both of hers. He could feel something gritty on the table, she must has spilled some salt before he had come home. She stared at him with such intensity he felt exposed. "You can tell me, anything." she emphasized the last word, and he felt more now than ever that he wanted to tell her. He could feel her fingers wiggling slightly as she held his hand. "I will never judge you, or punish you, for talking to me." She rubbed the top of his hand counter clockwise and the pressure in his stomach slowly released. He told her about the parking lot, the walk home, the forest, the rage, the darkness, the cold, and the feeling in his stomach until just now.
By the time he ran out of words she had severed both of their plates and sat down again. Before they started eating she complimented his decision to avoid the tree line and the woods all together.
The rest of dinner was wonderful, afterward he did the dishes and cleaned the table, wiping the salt she had spilled earlier into the kitchen trashcan. He put the hand towel back on the oven handle and went back out to the stairs to grab his back pack and head up stairs to start his homework. The closer he got to the front door the more tension he felt return. He approached his back pack carefully, feeling the darkness and tension creep further and further with each step.
He grabbed his bag and decided that for tonight at least he would do his homework in the kitchen.
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