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I suppose I didn’t expect this to happen in this way… but I suppose I never expected it to happen but then it always does. I look down the hallway at it, it stares straight back at me. It looks like it is giving me a moment to run, but I wait for things to be different.
Maybe this time it won’t, maybe this time it will be nice? Trying to give the thing some sympathy. But it only glares at my soul, I know it is going to attack me, and I’m scared.
It bends its head down,
I move backward a step,
Its wings are spread,
I look for an opening in the crowded hallway,
than bobs its head up and down, I start to quick shuffle to an opening,
And finally,
“HONK, HONK, HONK”
I sprint down the hallways.
“Fuck,” “fuck,” “Fuck,” I curse as my mind wonders, why the bloody hell does this keep happening to me?
(Charlie age 7)
I love it when Tori and I can go to the park. Usually, I don’t like the outdoors much, but with Tori, it’s more fun.
We aren’t the ones to run a lot so we explore the ground and trees. I see a ladybug on a plant and go to pick it up, it’s so small in my hands.
My grandpa says I have much too small hands for a boy my age, but they look so big compared to the ladybug. I like bugs, or at least the pretty ones. I don’t care for plain beetles, but Tori also likes bugs. Dad says that’s unique because most girls don’t like bugs.
Dad is in the car on a phone call, we are supposed to leave in the next thirty minutes or so, but I don’t mind, I get to see Grandma and Grandpa later today. I like seeing them. I always get treats.
I want to show Tori my ladybug, she sits under a tree reading a small book, and she is almost entirely still. Tori doesn’t look for bugs with me anymore, Dad says it’s unique for her to like bugs but girls at her school called her weird for liking bugs. Tori doesn’t help me look for bugs anymore.
I stay with the ladybug in my hands and look at my sister, she looks sad. I don’t want to make her upset by showing her the bug, but I don’t want her to be sad all alone.
I sit down and look around at the rest of the park,
A man with his wife on bicycles,
A woman setting up a picnic with her toddler,
And at a football game with boys my age, I suddenly feel a bit nervous, I always get nervous around boys my age. Mom says it’s because I am just sensitive and shy and one day I won’t feel nervous around them. I don’t know if I believe her yet.
I watch them kick the ball around, I could ask to play, but I think I want to hang around Tori until she feels better. I look at the game one more time. It looks like another person is about to join the game as a blonde boy runs up, but then I see it.
A goose, no more than six feet away from me.
I didn’t know this park had geese. I reach out to pet it with the hand that is not holding the ladybug, it stares at me as I move closer. Then it moved its head down and flared its wings. I stay still in confusion. Then it hisses, I stand confused as “HONK, HONK, HONK,” It runs towards me and I scream, running as fast as I can away from it.
I run over the mud, over the little creek, around the bushes, through the flowers, near the trees and I am about to run into the field when “WAP!” I stop and look around. It’s Tori, with no more book in hand as she had thrown it at the goose.
Tori stood firm, but the goose looks like it was getting back up, Tori grabs my hand and runs us to the car. We ran quickly and Tori opened the door and got me in, but Tori barely made it but not before getting bit by the goose.
Dad turns around looking at his frazzled children and Tori’s now bleeding hand, asking us why we interrupted his phone call. We explained the goose, the running, and Tori’s hand, Dad just laughed.
In fact, he laughed until we got to Grandpa and Grandma’s house, and there in between the laughing he said to tell the story to Grandparents and we did, to which they started laughing.
After a minute or two, Grandpa interrupted the laughter by saying, “Chin up kiddo, a story like that will only happen once, you have a good story to tell.”
I laughed awkwardly, little did I know that I was going to wish Grandpa was right about this.
(Charlie age 13)
The park had become a bit of an unsafe zone for me since the Incidences. Since I was seven, I've had two goose attacks, both of them ending with me sprinting to the car. Other than seven I was also attacked at age ten. Luckily Tori had been with me both times and saved me. She still has the goose bite mark since the seven-year-old goose attack.
This made me have a bit of a fear of geese. Or geese. Whichever works. Either way, I have been terrified to go to the park by myself. But now it’s different.
I have made a lot of friends since I was seven, or at least a lot of friends for me, Tao, Issac, and now Elle.
They all made friends because they weren’t quite normal. He could make friends because he's Charlie, but he was very highly anxious. Tao couldn’t make friends because he was just very… passionate about things. Issac had a hard time making friends because they always had their heads in a book and barely looked up.
And Elle, well Elle came out as transgender and lots of people found that weird for some reason.
But nonetheless, they all became friends, it was a strange mixture but it worked. In a lot of ways, they all made fun of each other.
No, they were all walking through the park, all with ice cream in hand. And for a moment Charlie forgot he was in the park. And little did his friends know that he needed to be aware when he was in the park.
“-and so as I was saying, DC movies have no reason to survive, and will die off within the next Marvel movie phase,” Tao said, moving their beanie a bit out of their face.
“Not really I mean think about it, DC has been around way longer than Marvel, comic-book-years-wise at least,” Issac interjected,
“Actually I think I’m gonna agree with Tao on this one, the DC movies are horrendous, and Marvel seems to be taking over the world,” Elle says twirling her short but growing hair.
“Maybe they’ll actually-“ I start but don’t finish, as I make eye contact with once again the only goose in the park.
“Bloody hell,” I whisper, as my friends stand very confused, not hearing me curse very much and for apparently having an eye contact contest with a goose.
I think to myself don’t, don’t, please don’t.
Its head bends down and I don’t wait for what to happen next, I drop my ice cream cone and start sprinting to my house.
As I run I hear my friends calling out for me but then I also hear “HONK, HONK, HONK,” so I decide not to stop in Sprint all the way to my house.
Back at the house I quickly explained to my friends on the group chat what was happening and the other two stories of getting chased by a goose.
All that group chat had to say is that a new inside joke was created. And it was titled “Charlie don’t look now but there’s a Honk Honk.”
I am glad that my friends can laugh at it, I just wish that I could.
(Back to modern times)
Five times! This has happened to me five times, and why?! Who the bloody hell knows! Though I do have to give the goose points though this is the first time it tried to chase me not in a park, how did it even get to the school?
Not the matter now, now the battery is trying not to get bit by a goose running to my next class.
I make it to the next hallway where my next class is, and for a moment I swear I see and hear another goose on the opposite end of the hallway. What the hell are they ganging up on me now? But I realize it looks like it’s chasing somebody else.
Thank. Fucking. God.
I run into the classroom as the hissing gets too close to my legs for comfort. I barely get a chance to say good morning to the teacher when I have to run over to a table and jump up away from the goose.
The goose starts to calm down a little bit but not enough to try and stop trying to get on the table. Then all of a sudden a tall blonde boy runs into the classroom, and What was tailing him but a god-forbidden goose.
He sees my idea and runs up to the same table, having to grab my arms to get up, and once he gets up with a little room on the table, he kind of just holds me there.
At that moment the geese seemed to calm down. In all my years of being chased by geese, they have never calmed down well when I was around.
I’m not sure if I’m all safe yet from them, but I do look at the boy holding me, he’s tall, blonde, a bit familiar, it seems to be covered in freckles, but the thing I seem to notice at that moment is that he is fair very cute.
“Hi,” he says still holding me, but looking into my eyes,
“Hi,” I say back with a sneaking blush at the cute boy,
“Nice to know someone has similar problems to you,” he smiles,
“What,” I say,
He points at the geese,
“Oh yeah…Yeah!” I laugh, it’s weird I have never been able to laugh at my misfortune with the goose but now I feel so easy to.
“Nick Nelson by the way,” he says.
“Charlie Spring,” I say in return.
We stood there for a moment.
“Ahem,” The teacher says,
“Oh right of course,” We climbed off the desk as the goose was all calm and now it was picked up by two older boys in class and thrown out the window.
we sit down next to each other, he looks me in the eyes and I look into his.
Maybe the goose wasn’t so misfortunate after all.