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    The Blue-Haired Boy
    The Blue-Haired Boy
    The Blue-Haired Boy
    Ebook65 pages51 minutes

    The Blue-Haired Boy

    By Courtney C. Stevens

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Set before the events of Courtney C. Stevens's debut novel, Faking Normal, this digital short story focuses on Bodee Lennox, otherwise known as the Kool-Aid Kid.

    Bodee Lennox has secrets. About where he got the four-inch scar on his leg. About the bruises on his back. About what it's really like to live in the Lennox household. These are things he doesn't share with anyone . . . until he meets Gerry, a girl with bright-green hair and a smile the size of Alaska. When Gerry falls out of a bus in Rickman, Tennessee, and lands at Bodee's feet, she gives Bodee two things he desperately needs: a friend and a chance to leave Rickman behind, even if it's just for a few hours.

    He joins Gerry on her epic bus trip for as far as his money will take him. And by the end of the day, more of Bodee has changed than just the color of his hair.

    Epic Reads Impulse is a digital imprint with new releases each month.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperTeen
    Release dateMar 4, 2014
    ISBN9780062295170
    The Blue-Haired Boy
    Author

    Courtney C. Stevens

    Courtney “Court” Stevens grew up among rivers, cornfields, churches, and gossip in the small-town South. She is a former adjunct professor, youth minister, and Olympic torch bearer. She has a pet whale named Herman, a band saw named Rex, and several books with her name on the spine: Faking Normal, The Lies About Truth, and the e-novella The Blue-Haired Boy. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee. You can visit her online at www.courtneycstevens.com.

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    • 4/5
      Sometimes people that we meet are only supposed to be in our lives for a short time but in that short time we learn from them. Sometimes these chance encounters have a big pact on our lives as in the case of Bodee and the green haired girl who meet at a bus station and escape from their lives for only little while. This is a quick little enjoyable novella leading up to Courtney Stevens novel "faking normal"

    Book preview

    The Blue-Haired Boy - Courtney C. Stevens

    Chapter 1

    IT’S a thirteen-minute walk from my house to the Clip-N-Save parking lot, but I don’t care if it takes a year. Dad has the day off.

    I’ve been to this shopping strip plenty of times. There’s a bench I like to sit on here. It’s in front of the army recruiter store. Technically, Army Recruitment Center. But they buy people—people like me, so store it is.

    I’ve still never been inside.

    My older brother, Ben, joined the day he was eligible. Mom and I walked him down here, but I sat outside on this bench. They met with the recruiter, signed on the dotted line, and Ben went off to boot camp instead of Rickman Community College. And left me to deal with Charles Lennox’s beer bottles and fists.

    I’ve seen you here before, a voice says from behind me.

    Yeah, I say, and swivel on the bench to face a man in army wear.

    You thinking about joinin’ up? He’s not a hick, but from his accent, he definitely grew up somewhere near here. Tennessee is hard to get rid of.

    Yes. No. I wish I could. I can’t today. Too young, I say.

    And your name? he says, as though he’s taking mental notes.

    Bodee Lennox.

    He shakes my hand and doesn’t do the crush all your bones thing that Ben always does. I like him for this right away.

    I’m Lieutenant Williams, he says, as he points to the patch with his last name. And, Bodee Lennox, from the size of you, you can’t lack much till you’re eighteen. What are you, six-two?

    Six-one, I say. Which most people don’t notice. Mom says it’s because I walk with my hands in my pockets and my shoulders rolled forward; I say it’s because Dad started beating the crap out of my tall when I was five. I’ve got two years and some change before I graduate, I tell the lieutenant.

    Your parents know you’re interested?

    Nope. Because I can’t be interested. I sit here because it’s next to the cheapest way out of town. And some days I need the reminder there’s any way out, even if I can’t take it.

    Lieutenant Williams props one black boot on my bench and leans toward me. I bet he’s done this a million times to guys like me.

    It’s a big decision, but it can take you places, he says.

    I know.

    I’ve lain in bed plenty of nights thinking about those places. Anywhere. Nowhere. Somewhere I won’t find one of Mom’s punched-out teeth on the floor of the kitchen. Somewhere I’m not the one who plays EMT after Dad buries a bottle in her skin. Somewhere I don’t wake up with his hands around my throat.

    I’ve thought about it a lot, I tell him.

    You sound like you want to get out of Rickman.

    Doesn’t everybody? I ask, and am immediately frustrated that I’ve extended the conversation. Lieutenant Williams is interrupting my bench time. I didn’t come here to talk.

    Not exactly, the lieutenant says. Most of the people round here are kin to trees or something.

    I raise an eyebrow.

    They’re rooted, he says, sliding both hands into his pockets as if he’s given up on signing anyone ever again.

    I’m not.

    And this is a lie. Mom and I aren’t just rooted, we’re cemented, concreted, and chained to Dad. We—Mom, Ben, and me—tried to leave him once, and he almost killed us. Not the way kids at school might say a roller coaster or a wild car ride almost killed them. Like dead. The real dead way.

    I guess almost dying still counts. It kills things like strength and belief and will and hope. Now, Mom’s as broken as an old horse. She doesn’t buck Dad. And I don’t buck her.

    The lieutenant smiles and winks. No pretty girl to write home to?

    There’s a pretty girl . . .

    And . . .

    "There’s no and." Out in the world, at school, I don’t talk. Because Exhibit A, I’m the son of Charles Lennox. And Exhibit B, there’s nothing I can offer the girl I like.

    "From the look on your face, there is definitely an and."

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