The Darkwood

Chapter 3: Third Grade, and The Five

Johnny sat at the dining table, eating his supper and thinking. Later that night he would tell his friends all he had began to remember. He took another bite of the meaningless food and thought back to third grade again.

It was not long after the incident in the nurses' offce that the fve friends– Johnny, Andy, Karen, Heather, and Teddy, started hanging out. The group had instant chemistry. They all became close friends quickly– as if they were fve pieces of the same puzzle. The only "hiccup" in the group was Johnny's feelings for Karen. She stuck mostly near Andy. Johnny had observed Andy holding Karen's hand a couple of times. Johnny didn't know he could feel both love and hate at the same time– until then. A beneft of the fve of them being together, other than friendship, was protection. Teddy knew some martial arts, so Danny started to stay away from the fve of them on the playground. There were occasional moments when Danny would corner one of them alone, even one of the girls, and torture them in one way or another. The faculty of the school viewed most of the bullying as "just children playing," but when Dan O'Reiley started picking on Karen and Heather, they intervened. One such incident involved Danny following Karen into the girls restroom, pulling her pants down so he could

49

see her underwear, and throwing her to the foor. It was lucky for Karen that Mr. Baylor walked in at that moment– he had seen Danny walking into the girl's restroom, and knew something suspicious was going on.

Danny was sent home and parents were talked to– or at least the fve assumed that his parents were talked to. They did not assume it would have done any good. However, after that, Danny picked on the girls less, but turned all his anger toward boys. When one of them was alone, Danny made sure that they got "what was coming to them." Not even Teddy was immune to the new savage beatings– Danny's friends started helping in different ways. They had made plans: they would corner someone, hold them down, and Danny would go to work on them.

It wasn't until Danny started following them home and waiting for them to split up– going to their different houses, that the fve friends decided they needed some place they could go as a group. It was then that "The Place" was christened. Johnny's house had a detached garage; and for some reason it had a second-foor. There was a swinging rope ladder that led up to the space that was originally intended for storage. There was enough room for children to stand up but not adults. Plus, the swinging ladder made it extremely diffcult for a grown person to climb up

50

easily and bring objects with them. Johnny remembered his father swearing once when he tried to climb the ladder with a box under his arm. The rope ladder had started swinging, and the box went fying– shattering whatever contents were inside. Johnny assumed it was something expensive because most of the words that his father screamed at the box, he had never heard before.

So, as the fve of them walked together after school, Johnny stopped them, "I think we should all come to my house. I've got a place... The Place. We can all go there after school to meet and talk about things... or just hang out."

"Are you talking about the top of your garage again?" Andy asked.