Wilson Mooney, Almost Eighteen
Read Wilson Mooney, Almost Eighteen Online
Authors: Gretchen de la O
Wilson Mooney
Almost Eighteen
a novel by
Copyright © 2011 Gretchen de la O
Smashwords Edition
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ISBN: 0-9836658
-1-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-9836658-1-6
Printed in the U.S.A.
First Edition, June 2011
Original Art and cover designed by Eunice
Ortegón
Mooney
i
s dedicated to
a
ll the women who
want to remember
what
butterflies fluttered
south for the
first time.
of living life sometimes I forget to look up and smile at the
people who make my life worth living. This moment is my opportunity
to thank those who have inspired me to be the person I am and the
writer I keep striving to become. They are the people who gave me
the confidence I needed to jump off the crumbling edge, feet first,
into the refreshingly deep, crystal clear waters of my creative
discovery.
My Shout-outs…
The Wilson Mooney Book
Club: Allison, Becky, Brittney, Debbie, Jennifer, Karley, Lisa, and
Nicole:
Thanks for the insight into Wilson
and Max
and the dinnertime discussion of
the characters you loved and even the ones you didn’t love so much.
You all hold a very special place in my heart.
April:
Your belief that I could write a good story means the world
to me. Thank you sis, for giving me the push I needed to publish
Wilson.
Eunice:
Thank you for stepping forward when I needed
someone to create my book cover. Your vision and talent are
remarkable. I am so grateful for your time and so blessed by your
creativeness. I am truly inspired by your generosity.
Dorothy:
Thank you for your wisdom, excitement, and the
faith you have in me. I appreciate your wealth of grammatical
knowledge.
Karley
:
Thank you for your endless
cheerleading and your total belief in what I was doing. I am
completely grateful for your support, input, and the late night
readings (a chapter at a time). I can’t wait to spend an hour a
week huddled around the computer.
Debbie:
Thank you for your eyes, ears, and voice. Thanks
for putting up with the countless times you were forced to listen
and read aloud. I appreciate the brainstorming moments and
directional shifts we had standing in your kitchen that kept me
focused and moving forward in my goals.
My Family—Ed, Jared, Kyle,
Nate, and My Mom (Grandma K)
:
Thank you for giving me the space I needed to
create; and the moments in life when you had to fend for
yourselves. Thank you for believing that beyond my righteous titles
of wife, mother, and daughter, you saw me as an author. Thank you
for making Sunday mornings our family time. You guys are my world
and I love you.
Becky:
N
o words exist in
any
language in the
modern world today that can express the limitless gratitude I have
for you. I am beyond blessed to have you in my life. You are my
twin in consciousness and my sister in greatness. Thank you for
your unconditional love, your fabulous dreams, and the absolute
reassurance that I am worthy. (REALLY, REALLY!)
Chapter
One:
I wish I could remember my childhood.
The vivid memories and deliberate words just didn’t work for me. I
remembered small pieces; chunks of events that took up residence in
my head, but details of who took whom to the fifth grade dance or
how it felt when Christian Sibley, one of the most popular boys in
middle school, broke up with me; well you could just forget it. My
mind was blank—it was like Swiss cheese; cheese that left a pukey,
pungent flavor in my mouth after I swallowed.
Okay, so maybe I was being a little
melodramatic with the Swiss cheese reference and the Christian
Sibley thingy—it stung. If I thought really hard, I could remember
some of the couples at the fifth grade dance. But if you’ve lived a
life like mine, you tend to make it a habit to forget the crappy
parts and a struggle to retain even the mediocre ones
too.
My name is Wilson Mooney and I’m a
senior at Wesley Academy. I knew from an early age, my life was
different. Think about it, how many girls do you know named Wilson?
Then saddled with the last name Mooney? Odds were stacked from
birth I was going to be the butt of someone’s joke. If I had money
for every time someone called me Looney Mooney—I wouldn’t need to
work another day of my life; but life’s not fair.
Unlike most of the girls at my school,
I wasn’t born into privilege. I was the product of a one night
stand between two under aged, pimple-faced ninth graders. My father
was a no show from the second my mom told him she was pregnant and
my mother had made it her life’s work to live off of the state of
California. That’s why I’m here. My grandparents thought I would be
better off at a school away from my misguided, loser of a mother.
Oh yeah, Wesley Academy is a boarding school for girls.
***
The grimy dust from the dry eraser
pens always covered my hands—evidence that I was one of “those”
kids. I’ve been erasing the whiteboards for twenty minutes straight
and it sucks. Not only did I have to use the black crappy brick
eraser to wipe the chicken scratch of my fifth period teacher, Mr.
Swanks, but I had to use a wet wipe to clean the residue that made
my hands look like I belonged in the first grade again. What
teacher in their right mind had to use every color pen that came in
the economy sized box? Weren’t black and red enough? After I erased
the trig problems, in all different colors, I had to clean Mrs.
Clouser’s boards. She was my English Lit teacher. At least she
stayed to the two color maximum.
When it’s all said and done, I spend
sixty minutes, every day of my life, cleaning the whiteboards of
six of my teachers. Three of which I hate with a passion and two
that I can barely tolerate. At least I have Max Goldstein. He’s the
young new government teacher who came to Wesley last year as a
student teacher.
Today he came into Mrs. Clouser’s
classroom while I was cleaning the whiteboards. His strong hands
pushed his straight black hair away from his face. His electric
green eyes watched me erase. Back and forth they danced. I caught
him staring.
“
Hi Wilson, I’m looking for
Mrs. Clouser, have you seen her?”
My heart fell into my stomach. He was
actually talking to me as an equal.
Don’t be stupid, answer
him using sophisticated words. Think, think, think— Okay I got
it.
“
No.” I felt the dry eraser
brick catch under my hand and stumble across the whiteboard as it
flew to the ground towards him. My cheeks flushed red,
how embarrassing.
“
Here let me get that.” He
bent down and his hair fell towards his sharp well-built nose. The
tip of his tongue wet his lips as he held out the
eraser.
Don’t stare,
I kept repeating to myself as I opened my mouth
and tasted his sweet aroma of French Vanilla coffee across my
tongue. A hint of Crew hair gel found the spot in my body reminding
me that I was a woman.
God he is so hot!
Man I wish he wasn’t my teacher. Maybe I should just brush his
fingers when I grab the eraser. I could make it look innocent
enough
.
“
Here you go,” his voice
shattered my thoughts. He held out the eraser giving it a little
adjustment in his hand.
“
Thanks.” I reached for it
and my fingernails caught the back of his hand scratching across to
his knuckles.
I can’t believe I scratched
him.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
Why wasn’t I more careful?
“
I think I’ll survive.” His
lips parted, he smiled and I melted.
“
If you see her, could you
tell her I came by?”
“
Sure.” He turned away and
left through the big beige metal door.
I tossed the black eraser onto the
aluminum tray, grabbed the wet wipe, and finished the job that
helped bankroll my stay at the academy, thinking about him the
entire time.
I’m seventeen, I’ll be
eighteen in another month and he’s twenty-two. Four years is
nothing. It was actually considered normal now; I figured with the
maturity gap between males and females, I am about the right age
for him.
I was born on Christmas.
Yeah, it sucked for me. I never understood the hypocrisy of people
getting presents for someone else’s birthday. How could I justify
getting presents for someone who died for my sins over two thousand
years ago?
Here, sacrifice your life for
me, and by the way, look at the new iPod Touch I got for your
birthday.
Besides, I always got stiffed. I
never had a
real
birthday party with my friends. It always amounted to my
grandparents singing Happy Birthday to me as I opened my one
birthday slash Christmas present that was surely wrapped in dreary
solid red paper. I’m not complaining—my grandparents did the best
they could with the cards they were dealt. They didn’t intend to
emotionally damage me with the Christmas thing—they loved
me.
When I lost my grandma six months ago
I didn’t expect my grandpa to follow her five and a half months
later (almost to the day). He went out to get his newspaper and
suffered a massive heart attack. He was dead before he hit the
driveway. He just gave up, died of a broken heart. They were
married sixty-four years.
