From Me to Me

He took a deep breath and exhaled.          

Here goes.

Slipping the picture of his father into the time capsule, he shut the metal door and pushed the green button. It lit up, and a sucking sound was made and then—gone. The picture, when Danny had reopened the capsule, had poofed to smithereens. Or at least it looked that way, as nothing but white shreds of paper all fell to the ground and made the circular bottom look grey with flecks of white sprinkled on it.

Almost like confetti but triangle-shaped and stiff-looking.  

Almost like my dad being there but not. Danny shoved his medium hands inside his ugly leather trench coat pockets. Almost like my dad saying he’d bring me along but never wanting to because he was too busy being Mr. Adventure. Exploring unchartered territory, waging war against pirates too big for him and whose ships are four hundred times bigger than his stupid paddleboat. Danny snorted. What a joke!

He kicked the door shut, turned indifferently and walked away from the closet, smirking and shaking his head. His dad’s ship wasn’t really a paddleboat—it was more like a huge boating boat but with the necessary equipment and materials to wage war against Mr. Fairchild’s enemy, the pirates, defeat them. Danny didn’t even know, but he would say his father was a pathetic wimp who never had time for his son but could blow the whole pirate ship (somehow) to smithereens. He could boast all he wanted. Because all he had time for was winning against those literary pirates from that pretend book back in the library his, Danny’s, mother would bring him to on the weekends. He couldn’t even say goodbye to Danny when Danny was watching him drive himself to the library….  

Danny got off the grass and went inside his house to see whether his mother was going to bring him to the library today. She should because it was Saturday, and he’d always go on these days, especially. But he couldn’t find her as he pounded through the kitchen and paced through the hallway. Did she just leave him? He was only eight. He didn’t stay home alone unless she was at a neighbor’s house or just down the road at the park. But this day, maybe she just—   

“Oh.” He spoke aloud, standing there behind the burgundy leather couch with a blanket and feet sticking out from under it. Soft, slow breathing came from the other end, near the other armrest. Danny stretched up on his tiptoes and looked down at his sleeping parent. He immediately got down and crept away, heading for the front door. Walking across the street after looking both ways, he sprinted straight for the neighbor’s front door and knocked on it. His neighbor opened it a second later and asked with raised eyebrows, “Yes?”

“Could you take me to the library?”

“Uh…” The neighbor peered up and then crinkled her forehead. “Isn’t Mom awake?”

“Sleeping.”

“Okay.” She widened the door, and Danny stepped inside, but before he could go any further, his neighbor barked at him to get some shoes on. “Like I’ve always told you!” She whizzed open a door and threw him some of his best friend’s sandals, and he grabbed and wore them. Grabbing her purse, she took a minute to write that Danny was going with her to the library, and walked over with Danny first to stick it on his refrigerator door.   

“Your mom will see it like she always does.” His neighbor quietly exited Danny’s house with him in tow, and walked over with purse on shoulder to her car. They no sooner reached the library two minutes later than did Danny’s neighbor’s cell ring. She answered.

“Danny—is he with you?” The sleepy answer caught Danny’s attention.

“Yes. You didn’t see the note?”

“Okay.”

Click. His mother had hung up. The neighbor sighed and looked over. Danny almost rolled his eyes.

“What’s wrong, buddy?” She put the pumpkin orange Honda Civic into park and shifted to put a loving hand on Danny’s white shirt.

“My mom just says Bye. She doesn’t even say I love you or I miss you or Have a great time with Mrs. Slenders. She doesn’t care!” Danny blinked quickly as he picked his head up and cocked it. “She doesn’t really notice me that much after Dad disappeared. All I get it ‘Okay.’ I don’t even get a ‘How’s Danny?’” He sighed and swallowed, frustrated. “Ever since I pulled that picture out of the time capsule—”  

“Oh, honey! She’s just upset at him.” The naïve neighbor opened her pale arms, and Danny got up after unbuckling and crawled into them. Laying his head on her purse shoulder, he blinked and almost cried, “She doesn’t really notice whether I even put my shoes on!”

“Oh, Danny. She cares. She just doesn’t want to… She doesn’t want to …” The neighbor inhaled and sighed, not knowing how to make him know his mother, though nonchalant ever since her husband’s disappearance, still cared for Danny, doing all she could to raise him as her only son and only child. She inhaled through her nose and looked outside Danny’s window at the massive library. Then she looked down and soothed, “How about both of us go in this time and pick out a book? It’s the summer, so you can get something you would like to show your classmates this year in fourth grade. Okay, Danny?”

He got up and nodded heartily, the neighbor smiling a little. “There we go!”

He smiled and got out of the car, telling her all about this amazing book his father had read and even went into for adventures. He was more excited about it than usual, and even demonstrated his anticipation for her to open it so he could actually go find his dad this time. The neighbor stared at him and furrowed her eyebrows. And cocked her head.

“Went on adventures?” She shut her door, her purse swinging from her shoulder. “How could he have fake adventures?” She was now walking around the car and towards Danny on the sidewalk.

Danny shook his dirty blond head of short hair. “He just did. He actually had fun ones!”

“Okay!” The neighbor sighed, laughing, but Danny grabbed her outstretched hand and lead her into the library, jabbering about the book and how it had pirates and a group of boys called the Pirate Boyz and how they always waged war against the pirates who stole from their and others’ ships. As her airy laughter carried into the main lobby, she told Danny to pipe down and go find a book with pirates in it. He scampered off, and she went in his direction, slipping her purse down to get her phone and text his mother. When she looked up at the sound of pounding shoes and a semi-loud call of “Look! Look!” the neighbor shushed him before one of the smiling, chuckling librarians could. He came to a stop but shook the book in front of her.

She told Danny to come with her to one of the quiet sections of the floor, but Danny just jabbed at one of the open pages of the thick, golden threaded covered book. His neighbor consistently reminded him to keep his voice down and then told Danny to get a chair from one of the other tables and take it to her so she could just read the book to him. He agreed and plopped the wooden chair right next to her big ugly orange sofa-like one. He crossed her jean legs and opened the book towards him, him making her laugh at his bouncing up and down in his seat.

“Now, now, little Mr. Excited. Let’s get this adventure started!”

As his neighbor raised and lowered her voice as appropriate, making Danny scoot to the edge of his seat and gasp whenever the bad pirates were going to attack the Pirate Boyz, Danny’s hands grasped the book’s white pages and covers. He slowly leaned his head towards a page and furrowed his brows, deciding he’d fight off those pesky pirates himself before finding his dad again! He was going to punch them right back to their island, swinging a clenched hand out towards the book—but it was cut off mid-punch.

“What?”

Danny tried pulling his fist back out, but he felt another hand pull it and then—

“Ouch!”

Rubbing his head, Danny looked up and gasped, widening his eyes as he stared gapingly up at another boy roughly his age, many a year older, a year younger. He crawled out from under a wooden board and looked around at all the other boys standing there in greasy, seaweed tangled mesh clothing. Ripped grey and orange-red clothing hung about their shoulders. Their pants were torn at the seams and holed at the knees with buttons hanging loose.

“You guys…?” Danny rubbed his eyes and then looked closer. “…must be the Pirate Boyz!” His eyes darted all around. “We’re in a cabin part of the ship. We’re supposed to be fighting the pirates!” He dashed off to find what he said were swords and scabbards but halted dead when he heard an answer. He whizzed around.

“No!” One of the boys almost demanded, or at least it sound like it. Danny stood straight as a pole, looking him dead in the eye and jerking his head immediately every time the boy inquired about him.

“Yes, sir!” Danny even saluted him.

The boy stared at him and then snickered and shook his dark brown head, turning away from the “oblivious Danny” and heading to the spot he had left before attacking the poor newcomer. He ordered of the boys—Bozzy—to come over and give Danny some lessons about how to be a real Pirate Boyz. Danny asked what that was, but Bozzy was right on him, firing a million questions all at once.

“Bozzy!” The first boy fired at him, and some boys oohed.

“Yes?” Bozzy, cringing, spun right around.

“Stop wasting time and let the kid think!”

“Yes, Swords!”

“Now,” this leader of a group began, and spread out his filthy arms while a couple of boys stood at attention, all eyes locked onto his brown ones. “This here is a boy around our age. His name is…” All the boys looked over, and Danny felt a little put on the spot. He fidgeted but then answered as professionally as he could. “Danny.”

“Danny?” A boy hissed to another, but the leader cut him off.

He introduced himself with a slap of a palm to the chest and then introduced all the boys with the same dirty hand. Then he waved Danny over, and Danny was right there by him. As the other boys turned around to talk and laugh with each other, the leader stomped a boot, and all heads turned and all bodies shifted so Danny could see each serene look on the filthy, streaked faces and blinking eyes. As some boys rubbed theirs, and others yawned, Danny looked to the sky outside a small square window up to the left—it was growing dark. He hoped to find his father before it got too late but he also wanted to get back to his neighbor and the library.

He stood respectfully, focusing entirely on the leader and his strong words about the next steps they’d all take to welcome Danny and turn him into a Pirate Boyz and give him his needed clothes and proper training. When the boy everyone kept calling Swords silenced everyone once and for all—no boy spoke for the rest of the time—he dismissed them to their regular duties. The boys murmured and laughed with each other while the sound of metal buckets and rope brooms made their way up the stairs towards the upper deck and into the tiny kitchen. But Danny looked down and blinked. He didn’t dare cry in front of the other boys, especially Swords, but he needed to look for his dad. But maybe, he felt, he was going to be here for a while…

He saw this Swords commanding some boy to scrub the metal pans harder but then studied Swords’ ragged clothing. His blood-red shirt was ripped and his sapphire pants had holes in them like they were almost part of the garment. Where’d he get these clothes? More importantly, didn’t he care about them? If he were the leader, wouldn’t he at least keep them nice? Maybe they’d all laugh and tear up Danny’s clothes if he kept wearing his own, but at least Danny would be showing them how to dress—like boys.

Like leaders. Danny thought. He also couldn’t help but take in all the fine woodwork and linen cloth-coverings decorating the captain’s quarters, rails and parts of the pirate wheel as he snuck to the outside where seagulls cried and the breeze played with his hair. Whatever that wheel was called, Danny had no idea—

“Hey!”

Danny spun around. Some boy was motioning him over almost as quickly as Danny had tried to get his neighbor to sit down and read him the pirate book story. He pursed his lips, looking straight out, and made a mental note to escape tonight. He then ran up the small flights of stairs to the upper deck in front of the captain’s quarters and stood before the boy. He tried not to plug his nose. The boy smelled like dead fish and rotting seaweed—if seaweed could rot.

“Look, I need to make rope. And knot it. So could you help me with these things?” The boy looked at Danny, and he nodded reluctantly. Then he instantly threw a grin on his face and a wet, meshed arm around Danny’s shoulder. “I knew I could get some help from a boy like you!”

Danny grimaced and winced as the boy yanked him into a one-arm hug. When he let go, Danny inhaled a deep breath and plastered on a fake smile before he set to convincing the boy that if he found his dad first, all three of them could do this boy’s job.

“Oh!” The boy looked interested. Danny then looked out towards the front of the ship, itching to take the steering wheel as he mentally labeled it and just guide the ship towards his dad—wherever he was.

The pirate ship creaked and rocked, but Danny crept out of bed late that night and tried his best to hide behind the barrels and piles of rope as he made his way to the stern. He managed to climb over the railing and released himself into the water. He treaded, waiting for someone to peer down or call that the new kid had hurled himself overboard. But he heard nothing save a huge snore and then swam off to a small yellow light in the distance. Maybe this was a lantern his father used to find his son! Trying not to make such huge splashes, Danny felt it took forever to get over there. He was about to grab onto the edge of the boat and hug his father and tell him that he had missed him when he started panicking, feeling something surround his legs and engulf them completely. He shrieked, crying out to his father that a fishing net had gotten him!   

Laughter rang out from way behind him, and Danny whipped his head over to see the culprit of his capture. The voice sounded like Swords, so Danny let him order a couple of boys pull him back to the ship. Once the yanking took place, however, he soon found himself crying out for his dad, yelling that his father should be hurtling himself into the ocean to rescue his son when he started wheeling forward, struggling, panicking for air, almost drowning...  

“Whaaa….?”

Danny moaned again and then opened his eyes slowly. A bucket of sand threw up on him, and some boys laughed, their big bodies hunched over him. It hurt Danny’s ears, and the next thing he knew, he was being told to get some net on and start helping Knothole with his rope work. While Danny listened, Swords and some of his followers chuckled and gossiped about his “stupid clothing” and “rude hair!”

When Danny came back from the latrine that afternoon, he slowly dismissed his need for cleanliness and even his pristine attitude.

Swords and his boys really put Danny to work. But he constantly obeyed orders. He even rejected “stupid, former boy talk” as Swords put it after saying he went to a place called an elementary school and ate lunch in a place called a cafeteria.

“Knock off that grub, and eat some real food!” Swords slapped Danny on the back of his greasy mesh shirt as a boy was ordered to get some “yuck” Swords called Danny’s new dinner that night. Danny’s stomach growled, but he kept this part hidden. He didn’t want to get slapped in the face with a fish tomorrow morning.

Or by Swords.

Danny’s real food tasted bitter, bland or mushy. He slurped the soupy water, but he couldn’t take the nauseous feeling, and ran up on the upper deck to go hurl it from his stomach into the sea. Some boys joked he’d eat that vomit for breakfast, but Danny just glared at them. They stopped.

He smiled, surprised. Maybe they’d listen.

Then he noticed Swords glowering at them and their guilty faces.

Swords spoke. “Any backtalk, gossiping, slandering or any stupidity, and….” He made a cutting motion across his throat with a finger. Each boy simultaneously threw a hand up in salute. Swords jerked a nod.   

“Good.”  

Danny smiled small. That didn’t mean Swords couldn’t—or wouldn’t—do as he tells others not to. He sighed, trying to blink back the tears he had for his dad.