Chapter 1

It was 1970. I was 14 years old.

We have been living in Florida for four years, but it seems like a lifetime already. We moved here on August 5, 1966. It rained every day for the first three months. I don’t know what was wetter, the yard outside, or my mother’s face from her crying.

At first, it was just the lizards that made my mother jump because it rained so much that frogs would lay eggs in puddles by the streets, and within a few days, our yards were covered in frogs. So many frogs, you could walk into the bathroom, and they would be on the walls in the shower. The frogs would get into the pockets of our jeans that were hanging on the line in the back yard, then jump out of the laundry basket, nearly scaring my mother to death. Our yard had crab holes too. Crabs, snakes, turtles, frogs … oh my.

I would often come home from school and just find my mother sobbing in the kitchen in the dark.

“What’s wrong?” I would ask her.

“Nothing!” was always the answer. I had so many mixed feelings about my mother. How do you feel abandoned and cared for at the same time? I knew she was preparing me for a different life than she had raised any of the others, but why? And why do I feel so abandoned now in Florida? She hates it here! I was 10 when we got here. What 10-year old wouldn’t love a place where you could play outside almost every day of the year?

Dad would say, “For crying out loud!” Or “Quit your bellyaching!” whenever he would see her crying, which was appropriate, I suppose. He would say that all the time for anything, though. Then he would say, “Would ya quit your bawling? We ain’t going back,” or “Stop your whining, for Pete’s sake.” I would find out later the tears were from something far more profound than just our current location.

My name is Wyatt, (not really, that’s the name I would have named me). My name is Gerald Anthony Donovan. Everyone calls me Jerry, except my mother, who still calls me Gerald!

Gerald, could you come up with a geekier name? (And yes, I know, my initials are G.A.D.) My best friend is Tom Murphy. He’s a year older than me, but like everyone else, he’s two years ahead of me in school. Being born in December sucks. I was held back from starting school with most kids my age. After all, my birthday passed the cutoff by one day, which was strange, now I’m almost a full year older than most of the people in my class. Plus, in the last few years, I shot up, and now I’m almost a foot taller than most of my classmates. But being rail thin, I probably weigh 20 pounds less than most.

Tom and I have a lot in common. We’re both pretty geeky kids, and we’re both smart. I had the disadvantage of being intelligent and skinny. Tom was very well built for his size and age, and no one ever messed with him. We both had taken drafting. Me this year, Tom a couple of years ago. The teacher, Mr. Clark, said I was one of the best students he had ever had except for Tom, of course. He could draw architectural drawings blindfolded. Mr. Clark has actually had a couple of Tom’s works framed and put up on the wall. He was that good!

The last weekend before the last week of school, I’m in eighth grade. Next year I’ll be a freshman. Nothing changes, really. In South Florida, junior high is seventh grade through ninth grade. I won’t change schools until the following year when I go to the high school across the street. My brother Danny and my best friend Tom are sophomores there.

It was Miami in the summer, and we had a lot of time on our hands. My parents would never spring for summer camp or anything like that. I was not really looking forward to this summer. Last summer, I spent most weekdays locked in the bathroom. My brother Danny has been ignored by our father, and he’s decided to take out his frustrations on me. Any day that my parents aren’t home, he starts picking on me. Over the dumbest things too: how clean I am, or actually, how dirty I must be, or how clean my room is or how disappointed mom and dad are in me. We might start playing some game, and if I’m winning, he’ll accuse me of cheating, and he’ll start pushing me around, or saying he wants to wrestle. It’s never going to be good for me. My only safe place is the bathroom. It’s the single room in the house with a lock on it. I have to stay in there until he leaves. He never hits me hard enough to leave a bruise or break anything; I think it’s more psychological than anything else. At least this year, he has a job, so he’ll be out of the house more often.

Last night was a little rougher than usual. We had been in my room. We were always in my room, looking at car magazines and talking about what kind of cars we were going to get when we got older. For some reason, he got on the subject of how weak I was and how I needed to toughen up. The next thing I know, he’s pushed me into the corner and is slapping at me. I learned a long time ago that, if I don’t cry or show emotion, he will eventually stop. It went on for more than 20 minutes until Mom got home. When he heard the door open, he went running into the living room. I went into the bathroom and locked the door and cried quietly.

Mom came into my room later and asked if I was OK. Nothing ever changes. If I tell her what’s happening, she’ll defend him. Sometimes it feels like it’s no use.

This year I’ll be 15, and I can get some kind of small motorcycle, I’ll be able to get out of the house instead of locking myself in the bathroom. I have a paper route, and I cut lawns in the neighborhood with my friend Tucker. I have like $300 saved. Only a small portion of the ninth graders are old enough to drive. Then I would be cool.

Still, I am pretty geeky, with delicate blond hair in a crew cut, and skinny. My one outstanding feature was a huge nose, not long like Cyrano De Bergerac or anything, but broad and flat, filling up the center of my face. It was just noticeable to most people, the type of thing that makes you give someone a second look. I have hazel eyes and so far, have been blessed with little or no acne. That would be awful, a large pimple-covered nose! Although, since moving to Florida, I did have a fungus covering most of my upper torso. (“There’s a fungus among us,” a doctor once said to me, and we laughed and laughed… not!) The doctor told my mother I was missing something, a gene, or something that fought off fungus. He said he had never seen anything like it and actually took Polaroid pictures of me, but my mother seemed to just brush it off. There was no permanent cure, but there was an expensive cream that smelled like rotten eggs that I could put on twice a day and leave it on for half an hour. Needless to say, the cream was not used; therefore, the prescription was not refilled, and the fungus did not go away. I just didn’t take off my shirt. It only itched when it was hot and humid (which was like 360 days a year).

I was smart, borderline genius they told me, which only made the other kids want to beat me up more. I tried not to appear too bright, but I had almost a photographic memory. I really didn’t need to study much; if I heard it, or saw something in class, I would remember it on a test.

I have an unnatural fear of vampires. I don’t know why. I remember seeing Bella Lugosi in a vampire movie as a kid, and I’ve been afraid of them ever since. If I saw the film today, it would probably make me laugh! I know vampires and werewolves don’t exist, but I’m still afraid of them. I was also scared of the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz, but wasn’t everybody? I have recurring nightmares that I’m being chased by alligators or crocodiles. I’m not sure which, but when they catch me in my dreams, they don’t seem to have any teeth, just gums.

I couldn’t drive yet. You could get your learners permit at fifteen, but I wanted to get out in the world. We had bikes, cool bikes with fat tires, and banana seats with sissy bars. Mine was metallic blue. My parents bought them for Danny and me when I was 10, and he was 11 before we left Chicago. Mine was a combination birthday and Christmas present. Just a birthday present for Danny because he was born in November, (Did I mention being born in December sucks?) Tom had the most recent bike that just came out, of course. It had multiple gears and front brakes. His was metallic red, and his seat didn’t have tape holding it together like mine. He also had a motorcycle, a Yamaha 100, but he still liked to ride bikes with me. His parents bought him whatever he wanted. They were rich, father worked in a bank. Well, wealthy to me anyway.

That was when I came to know this place called Interama. It was a failed attempt at building a permanent Pavilion of the Americas. It was a vast undeveloped parcel of land that stretched from 135th Street to 167th Street and from U.S. 1 all the way to the Intracoastal and Biscayne Bay. It was probably the most significant piece of undeveloped waterfront land in all of South Florida. There were some paved roads but mostly rough gravel roads to nowhere. There was a completed bridge that was one entrance on 167th Street. There were cement posts jackhammered in all over the place, the foundations of buildings that would never be built. We rode our bikes out there. We broke bones out there, and we caught funguses. (I got ringworm there, but they can cure that.) And we had weird allergic reactions to the plant life out there. There were bugs, mostly mosquitoes, but other stinging bugs as well. I once brushed against a poisonous caterpillar, and my whole arm swelled...