A Purple Winter

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Tonight, as I crept out of my apartment, the front yard seemed bigger—the sky above dark and ominous.

Hallow’s Eve. The night of ghosts and ghouls. Never cared much for Halloween, but determined to catch the action, I pulled my sweater sleeves over my hands and headed for Wellington Street.

Earlier this evening, the guys had said that they were going to toilet-paper Sebastian’s house for getting Boone Lund in trouble at school this week. Problem was, Sebastian was David Pinet’s younger brother, and that made him almost untouchable because how close Nick Lund, the gang’s ring leader, was to David. But tonight, the guys had gotten the green light from Nick, and if he said jump, the other guys jumped, no questions asked.

The gang wanted to teach Sebastian Pinet a lesson. Supposedly, the reason Boone had attacked Sebastian at school and consequently been suspended was because Sebastian had called Boone’s older brother Nick a retard.

Big mistake. You didn’t call Nicolai Lund a retard and expect to live, no matter whose brother you were.

It was midnight, past my curfew, and I wasn’t supposed to be out this late, but I wanted to see what they’d done to David and Sebastian’s house. And of course, catch a glimpse of Nick.

These days, any excuse to be around my neighbor Nick was good enough for me.

There was a thin coat of frost on the ground and I walked fast, with my head down. Most houses were fully decked out for Halloween and some of them gave me the creeps. I hadn’t brought my inhaler and I was beginning to feel short of breath, so I slowed down near Gordon Street, near David and Sebastian’s house.

Then I heard voices.

I stopped. Nick’s voice was the deepest of them all. I could single it out easily. “Your little c*m stain of a brother had it coming,” I heard him say.

“Boone hit my brother, Nick!” David yelled. “You can’t come over here with your posse and TP my damn tree!”

I came up on them, walking with my hands in my pockets. As usual, none of the guys acknowledged me.

David’s big maple tree looked like the dress little Lene Lund wore when she was a flower girl last year. I guess Nick had gotten toilet paper from everyone who would give it to him. Also, the guys had egged the front door really badly. It looked like an omelet.

Then I saw Sebastian rolling on the ground with JF, the two of them punching each other’s shoulders and growling like mad dogs. They were tough as hell for little boys. I stayed clear of those two, whenever I could.

A few feet away, Josh was trying to hold Nick back from hitting David. David kept yelling, “Come on, Lund! Come on, hit me! I know you want to. You’ve been wanting to hit me ever since I told you I was taking off for Vancouver!”

David had been part of the gang, until his parents had transferred him to Loyola, an all-boy private school. Nick and David had abruptly stopped speaking last month. I never understood why. Their relationship fascinated me. They reminded me of that symbol my Aunt Fran had shown me last year. It was called Yin-Yang.

Nick backed away, an intense emotion heating up his arctic blue eyes. “You think you’re better than me, Davie,” he said, licking his lips and looking away at the street. “You were just gonna leave me behind, anyway.”

“What?” David tipped his head, his face tightening with sorrow. “No…God, no. Nick, how can you believe that? I could never…” Then he stepped back suddenly, and of course, didn’t see me standing there by the curb. His shoulder came straight at my face, hitting my forehead. I tripped on the curb, falling back. When I opened my eyes, I was lying on the lawn. What had happened?

I felt different. Bigger. Taller.

Now…it starts, my little enchanter. You’re going to revisit your story, Derek. And come back to the present. That’s the deal. Don’t linger too long.

Why was I thinking of my Aunt Fran now?

Nick was pacing around me with a worried expression. “This is your fault, Davie, I swear to God. If he has a concussion or something, it’s gonna be on you.”

“He’s fine, okay? Your little red-headed hottie is fine.”

Had David really said that? Me, a hottie?

I tried to sit up, but Terry, the smallest guy in the gang, held me back. “No, Derek, stay down. Sebastian’s getting some ice. You bumped your head.”

Before I could speak again, I heard a woman’s voice in the background. It was Mrs. Pinet, Sebastian and David’s mom. “What in heaven’s name is going on here?”

“Mom, it’s okay. We were just having a little fun and it got out of hand.” David wiped his lips and gave Nick a deep look. “We’re just fine, right, Lund?”

“A little fun? David, look at my tree! And the door? What happened to my door?”

Sebastian had managed to slither pass his mom in the doorway and was bringing me a pack of frozen peas.

“Who’s that for? What happened to him?” Mrs. Pinet sounded like a baby bird. “Oh my, is that the O’Reilly boy? Derek, is that you?”

I sat up and gazed at the front yawn. JF had bailed. Predictable. Sebastian sat on the curb with his head between his knees. Josh and Terry stood a safe measure away from Mrs. Pinet’s slimy front door.

Nick was pulling the toilet paper out of the tree. He’d gotten so tall this year, he reached the middle branches. He must have been close to six foot five. Then I suddenly remembered that I’d hit five-seven this summer, after I’d turned sixteen. Yes, and I’d been lifting weights and doing stomach crunches, hoping to build up some muscle tone. It was working. Last year’s T-shirts didn’t fit me.

I wasn’t a kid anymore.

“Nicolas, you leave that alone. Don’t touch anything on my property.” Mrs. Pinet was on her way to me. “Oh dear, look at you. What are you doing with these, these criminals?”

I dusted myself off. I never hung out with the gang. I wasn’t included in their camaraderie, but because I was Nick’s neighbor, my presence was tolerated.

Though I knew they called me a fag behind my back. They had no proof of that.

Yet.

Mrs. Pinet lifted my face to the street lamp and frowned. “Well, you aren’t bleeding. You look all right. Sit down. I’m getting some trash bags and rags.” She walked away, then said, “You know Derek, your mom’s been through a lot. She doesn’t need all this extra worrying.” Mrs. Pinet went back into the house and I sat on the curb like she asked me to.

My mother had lost a baby four years ago. Right around my twelfth birthday. My baby brother. She’d been depressed since then, rarely leaving her room. My Aunt Fran tried to help whenever she could, but she traveled a lot. And my dad? He’d gone off on some job again. In the Hudson Bay area, this time.

“What if she calls the cops or something?” Josh had taken a few steps in Nick’s direction and was trying to make eye contact with Nick. Josh was a tough guy with a crew cut and sad brown eyes. His dad was a military man and rode him hard. “I gotta go, Nick!”

Nick was staring at the ground, his long blond hair hanging down in his stunning face. Nick Lund was so beautiful, every thought I had of him was obscene. So I tried not to think about him, but that didn’t work well. “So f*****g what,” he whispered in his usual low voice. “C’est la vie.”

“Oh, Nick, man, I can’t get in trouble again, you know my dad…Come on, Nico boy, don’t lemme stand here with my d**k in the wind.”

“Okay, take off,” Nick said quietly. “Get outta here.”

Josh bolted out of the street faster than Carl Lewis. “I owe you one, Lund,” he shouted over his shoulder.

“Nick, why d’you let him leave?” David’s dark eyes shone every time he spoke to Nick. Like he had fever.

Mrs. Pinet had come back out. We all stiffened at the sight of her stern face. “Okay boys, you’re gonna clean this up before your father comes home tomorrow and sees this.”

Sebastian kicked a rock in the street and looked over at Nick. “This is all Boone’s fault, you know. He started all of this.”

David slapped his brother’s shoulder. “No, you did, by insulting Boone’s brother. You know the Lund code.” Then he stared into Nick’s face. “Right, Nicolai?”

“Right,” Nick said with a smirk, pushing a knot of toilet paper into David’s flat stomach. “You mess with one, you mess with all of us.”

David laughed a little. Dark-haired, thin and graceful, he was a ballet dancer, and everyone in town knew it, too. But because Nick protected him, Terry and Josh didn’t mess with David. There was something between Nick and David no one dared name or criticize. It was a sacred bond.

I couldn’t dream of ever being admitted into their world. David was so much more refined than the other guys. Always wearing black and smoking his long cigarettes.

“Hey, I’m sorry for what my brother said about you.” And another thing, whenever David spoke to Nick, he always sounded like he was in pain. “You’re not retarded.”

Nick was severely dyslexic. He’d quit school after his last bad report card last month. Everyone said he was going to become a bum.

Funny, I didn’t think so.

Finally, Nick glanced at me, his cobalt blue eyes sending a thrill of excitement down my spine. “Um, you all right, O’Reilly?” he asked, his tone turning gentle. “You’re not too hurt, are you?”

I shook my head. No. I bit my lower lip, unable to say a word. My crush on him was turning into an obsession. We’d been neighbors for years, but never friends. We’d talk once in a while, or he’d say hello to me in the school hall last year, but everything had changed over the summer. My feelings for him were overwhelming, and Nick seemed uneasy around me. He never called me by my first name anymore.

“How come you’re allowed to leave your house after eleven?” Sebastian was throwing strings of toilet paper into a trash bag and grinning maliciously at me. The kid was eleven, but that didn’t stop him from bullying me. “Your crazy mom is gonna come looking for you and—”

“Call his mother crazy again.” Nick eyeballed Sebastian. “Come on. I dare you.”

Sebastian swallowed hard, glanced at his brother, and then quickly turned away, going back to the house.

I felt bloody triumphant.

“I’m gonna go.” Terry was walking backwards into the street. “I was supposed to meet Laurie an hour ago. She’s gonna be pissed.” He was obviously looking for approval from Nick. “We’ll catch up tomorrow, right? I can get you those tires, like I said.”

Johan, Nick’s father, had given Nick a car for his seventeenth birthday. It didn’t run well, but Nick was fixing it and Terry was scoring points with him by giving him parts for the car. The guys were always sucking up to Nick like that.

After Terry had left, it was just Nick and I in the street. David was cleaning up the lawn. I knew I had to go home before my mother decided to check up on me.

I took a few steps back. “I’m—I’m g—go—onna go,” I stuttered. My speech impediment was getting better this year, but not around Nick.

“I’ll walk you home.” Nick was wearing worn blue jeans and a black wool sweater full of holes, over a white tee. As usual, his long blond hair was tied up, with stray strands falling over his forehead. He tucked one of them behind an ear and looked over at the lawn. “See you?” he called out to David, before walking away.

There was a secret in David’s dark eyes. “So, you’ve forgiven me then?”

“Yeah…” Nick smiled a little. What was the deal between those two? One moment, they were at each other’s throats, and the next, they were friends again.

I wanted to say good night to David, but he wouldn’t have heard or acknowledged me. I hesitated, then followed Nick, not walking right beside him, but staying close.

We didn’t say a word the whole way home. Once in a while, I’d chance a look at him, seeing his regal profile in the grainy light, and then my hands would tingle. Nick was Norwegian, and last month, curious to know more about Scandinavian culture, I’d read a book about the Vikings. In it, it said that the feared warriors of the North had ruled over Ireland many years ago. There was even a poem about it. I remember my mother reading it to me from the Saint Gall. Sometime in the ninth century, a Viking named Thorgestr had horrified the Irish folks by desecrating their altars and turning Christmas into some wild pagan feast of decadence and debauchery.

That warrior reminded me of Nick.

I was part Irish. My father’s folks were from Limerick, and on some nights, I’d lie there wondering what it would be like to be under Nick’s power. To give up my good-boy-manners and half-believed principles and let him do to me what that Viking had done to Christmas. But there was no sense in fantasizing about Nick. It would only drive me crazier than I already was.

Nearing our street, Nick’s walk was determined, and yet, it almost seemed as though he was purposely slowing his pace to allow me to keep up.

Or maybe it was all in my mind. I did have a vivid imagination, or so my Aunt Fran said. She was partly responsible for my dream world. She’d been bringing me books since I was eleven. I read too much, always looking for a way out of my dull existence.

When we’d arrived at our apartment building, Nick and I both took the path leading up to our connecting front porches. Our balconies were separated by a railing, but we shared the same back yard. I’d grown up around the Lunds, and yet, tonight, I realized something about Nick had always escaped me. I didn’t really know who he was. He was like a myth to me. But I wanted to know the real him.

At my door, I paused and looked over at him. “H—heard you got a job at, um, at a restaurant,” I said, glad for the cover of darkness. My face was hotter than a boiling teapot.

Nick shot me a quick look, his eyes catching the lamp post light. “Yeah, that’s right.” Why did I feel so naked whenever he looked straight at me?

“As—as a cook?” I knew he was interested in cooking, and that Helga, his mother, was teaching him things.

“Nah, just waiting tables. It’s decent money though.”

As stunning as he was, I bet he made a lot of tips.

Nick quietly opened his front door. “Is your head all right?”

My head was a mess of dreams and fantasies, and all of them involved him. I nodded and smiled a little. I’m crazy for you, I almost said.

“Well…good night, O’Reilly.”

“‘Night,” I sputtered.

Why did it feel like something important was finally going to happen to me this winter?

“See you around.” On those words, words I felt I’d heard before, Nick shut his door.