Chapter One

Barry was fifteen years old.   He had never lived anywhere but this house in this neighbourhood.  Never been anyone but 'Nobarry',  a nasty way the kids had of saying, 'Nobody'.

 

He looked at his glasses lying on the desk beside his diaries..   How he hated those clumsy glasses, how he hated his life, contained in those diaries.

 

Barry had begun keeping a diary at the age of twelve. He had to tell 'someone' the horrors of his life. He didn't want to upset his parents, didn't even want to hear his voice recounting the humiliations of being 'Nobarry',  so he wrote it.

 

He wrote his pain in his diaries.  

 

He wrote it out, page after page of the pain, the lonliness of his life. 

 

That's the first diary, a dull green.  The next was brown, then beige... he had three full years of diaries. Lots of diaries.  For the pain was not going away,   being Nobarry was not ending.....

 

Until now.

 

Now he and his folks would move far from 'Uglytown'  (his parent's name for this place) to a new city.   He would leave his life as here as 'Nobarry' for....?

 

Who would he be, how would he be?  A thousand miles away from here...

 

That stack of diaries contained what had been his life.

 

He had bought the first, and had begun scribbling as soon as he had reached this room, this desk.

 

No introduction, no names,  just begun with how he had been pushed down the steps, and his books had scattered, but his glasses hadn't broken. He heard the kids laughing at him.  

 

He was crying and they were laughing at him crying...

 

That was the first entry.  It didn't get better.   It got more explanative, clearer, with dates and times and names, but it stayed the same.

 

Year after year....

 

There was a lot in those diaries which he didn't want to carry. He didn't want to go to the new town as Nobarry.

 

Why take these diaries with him?  Why not leave 'Nobarry'  in Ugly Town and become....someone else?

 

Barry decided to burn the diaries.

 

His parents had built a fire in the trash can, and were burning old receipts and letters, things they didn't need.   He didn't need these diaries. Didn't need to carry who he had been to who he was going to be.

For in that New Town, a thousand miles away, he didn't have to be, he would not be Nobarry.

Chapter Two

Barry Smith had, when he thought about it, always been a nerdy nothing.   It wasn't until last year he learned about 'cool' and that he wasn't and would never be.

 

He recalled sitting in the corner, looking at the other kids,  and for first,  actually saw what was being 'presented'.

 

Some boys  were strolling as if they were super stars.   How they walked and held themselves, the expressions on their faces and how others viewed the 'presentations'.

 

No one had or would ever look at him, at Nobarry like that. In this town, among these people there was no way he could not be Nobarry.

 

In the new city where no one knew him, he could be who he wanted to be; one of those confident, attractive guys that caught the eye.

 

Yes. 

 

If he could walk like that, hold his body like that,  have that look on his face...

 

None of the boys he had looked at were handsome or well built.  They just gave the 'image'.   And because they had grown in Uglytown thinking they were super stars,  they gave off that 'vibe'  and everyone saw them as they wanted to be seen.

 

He couldn't do it.   Not here, not in Uglytown...but in a city one thousand miles away?

 

A city where no one knew how he had cried when pushed down the stairs... 

 

Chapter Three

 Barry's parents decided driving one thousand miles to the new city was a good idea.  It would be a journey and they'd rent a small U-haul to hold the things they would carry.

 

Just about everything in the house they occupied was old and needed replacing.  They had often thought of buying a new bed or table, but didn't.   They didn't because they had been sending applications to businesses in other places believing that one day they would get the opportunity to make a new life in a new place.

 

Why carry old things that held no memories when they could buy new things they truly wanted?

 

New things for a new life.

 

Barry's parents had found themselves 'stuck' in Uglytown doing jobs far beneath their ability. They put up with what they despised because  ...

 

the excuses they had given themselves when they married, when Barry was born, up until he was eight years old, were rubbish.   They realised that they should have never stayed in Uglytown so long.

 

They had continuously applyied for positions elsewhere. Some of their applications received no response.   Some were declined.  A few they  had declined.

 

Their dream was to live in or near a real city with divergence and interest. They wanted jobs that challenged. They wanted salaries which would enable them to save money, even after buying what they wanted.

 

They wanted Barry to have the benefit of a new quality school, and opportunies he would never have in this town.

For eight years they had searched.

And now, they conquered.

 

They had secured good jobs, just outside a modern city, and would live in a semi-rural area. The house they would get was large with plenty of yard space. The school that Barry would attend was new and modern.

 

Everything seemed perfect.

 

So they packed what they wanted to keep in a U-haul, leaving what they didn't and  spent their last night burning what they didn't want to keep, in a trash can in the back as a kind of semi-spiritual ceremony.

 

Barry came out and tossed his old notebooks and diaries into the fire. He was not going to be Nobarry in his new town. He was going to be special. 

 

He was going to swagger and smile, be cool and confident. The pages listing his humiliations and sorrows would not come with him.

 

Burning the diaries was removing those aspects of himself he didn't want to take.

Chapter Four

Barry's and his parents burnt their 'past' in a trash can in the yard, watching the flames in silence.  Then they went into the house to sleep.

 

On the first day of July they loaded the U-haul and got on the road . They could do 1000 miles in four days without pressure, but decided to turn the trip into a kind of tour where they would stop and see the 'sites'.

 

There weren't many sites on the journey, but there would be family time and stops at motels and eateries, so a week was set for travel.

 

His parents did a coin toss for who would drive first. His mother won, and they began the journey.
She drove for just over three hours, then stopped at a restaurant.   They used the toilets, ordered a

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 20.12.2020
ISBN: 978-3-7487-6900-2

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