Playing the 'Son' Card

By Wilson James

At age 9, Troy Evanson lost his father in an accident. Ever since then, he’s been steadily losing confidence in himself and his ability to make his way in the world.

It certainly doesn’t help that his mother has had her own difficulties coping with his father’s death, and Troy has been on his own a lot. He’s stopped doing all the extra things he did with his Dad and he’s just barely hanging on. He had been a good swimmer and was becoming a talented diver, but he just hasn’t been able to convince himself to go near the pool since his father died.

The kids at his school have really started to pick on him, and Troy has become the victim of bullies. It was just verbal bullying at first, but now in middle school it’s starting to get physical. He is bright and likes learning, but he hates the daily nightmare that school has become. Any kind of socializing has become torture, and he basically just hates being around people.

Now, at age 12, he has a one-time chance to change his life and start new. Will he meet the challenge, or will remain the victim he has become? Will he be able to pull himself together and become the man that his Dad was trying to help him be, or will be forever be the lost little boy whose life ended when his father died?

Find out if this is the uplifting story we all hope for. Find out what choices Troy makes in "Playing the 'Son' Card".

The author of "Playing the 'Son' Card" is Wilson James, a second round nominee for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, and whose work has been reviewed at a major online retailer as “Very Inspiring” and “A Great Book.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilson James
• Release date: Dec 12, 2009
• ISBN: 9781452300603

Wilson James

Wilson (Wil) James was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest and currently lives on the coast in northern California. He has worked in, on, and around the water, and loves to travel. He claims to be a sailor in addition to identifying himself as an author of adult and young adult fiction.The stories of Wilson James mostly target Young Adults, and describe adventures about family, loyalty, honor, tenacity and courage with various backdrops including sailing, aquatics, downhill skiing, international competition, and success at young ages, set in Europe and North America.As Wilson says, his books are about empowering youth. “If my stories help young people, by giving examples of kids persevering in difficult situations, then I will be very satisfied. If my stories help young people overcome their own challenges, and perhaps find some inspiration, then I will be happy. If my stories help young people find the tenacity and courage to succeed in their own lives, then I will be very pleased. If my stories help achieve some better understanding among friends and families, then I will consider myself fulfilled.”Wilson describes the ultimate reward for writing. “If even one young person finds some example in one of my books that he or she can use in their own life, then I will consider that every moment I spent writing those books was the best possible way to spend that time.”His YA fiction book A FAMILY LEGACY: THE WATSON WORKS made it into the second round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Another of his titles, PLAYING THE BASEBALL CARD, has been reviewed as a "Great Book" and "Very Inspiring" and "In my 53 years of living this may be one of the most emotional books I personally have read", and for more than a year maintained an overall sales rank well into the top 1% at Barnes and Noble as the top fiction 'Baseball' book.He has a number of titles available in print and as multi-format eBooks at Smashwords and other major eBook retailers. One of his books, SONS and BROTHERS in SEATTLE, made it to the top of the Best Sellers list for Adult Drama fiction. He is also proud to say that two of his titles have made it to the top of the YA Best Seller lists at Smashwords. One of those titles, ROBERT's RIDE, made it to #1 only 6 weeks after being published. The other top title, SONS and BROTHERS in SEATTLE, sat in the #1 spot for two weeks before being pushed back into the number two spot by ROBERT’S RIDE.To contact Wilson directly, email wil.james (at) live.comFor details of all his titles, including where to find his books, and occasional promotional e-coupons for his eBooks, and information on works in progress, visit his blog, at http://wilsonjamesauthor.blogspot.com/

Book preview

PLAYING THE ‘SON’ CARD:

A BOY FINDS HIS WAY TO A NEW LIFE

by Wilson James

At age 9, Troy Evanson lost his father in an accident. Ever since then, he’s been steadily losing confidence in himself and his ability to make his way in the world. He’s stopped doing all the extra things he did with his Dad and he’s just barely hanging on. The kids at his school have started to pick on him, and Troy has become the victim of bullies. He hates school, and he hates being around people. Any kind of socializing has become torture.

Now, at age 12, he has a one-time chance to change his life and start new. Will he meet the challenge, or will remain the victim he has become? Will he be able to pull himself together and become the man that his Dad was trying to help him be, or will he forever be the lost little boy whose life ended when his father died?

Find out if this is the uplifting story we all hope for. Find out what choices Troy makes in PLAYING THE ‘SON’ CARD.

SECOND SMASHWORDS EDITION

© Wilson James 2011

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome and even encouraged to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

Cover Photo Credit: Wilson James

Work of Fiction

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, public or private places, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to those who are trying to find the courage to attempt something new and to those who have met the challenge and succeeded. This book

CHAPTER

1

It was to be a move across the state, but it became much more than that. With my widowed mother, I was going to move from Spokane to Bellingham, and I had real hopes that this move would give me a chance to really start fresh, and escape the loner life that I’d come to live back home.

I was twelve that spring, heading for the end of 8th grade, and the move was to be two weeks before the end of school. With our plans, I was going to miss a graduation ceremony from my middle school and a school dance, and I was really happy about missing both.

Like most things in my life after the death of my father in an accident when I was nine, activities that involved socializing were real torture for me.

For some reason, I’d become a bit of an outcast in the last two or three years. I had no real friends at school, and only a couple of neighbor boys that I had played less and less with. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, only that I felt different, and that drastically affected my self-confidence. I guess my peers could see that, and I increasingly became the object of teasing and a bit of outright physical roughness in the playground and during gym class.

I didn’t really know how to deal with the bullying, except to try and avoid contact with the worst of the bullies as much as possible. I kept my head down, and just did what I had to do at school. I got there as late as I could in the morning, and left as quickly as I could at the end of each day.

Of course I could not escape the unwanted attention completely. The teasing and increasingly aggressive behavior towards me was getting worse. The words were bad enough, and I found I reacted in spite of my firm resolution to tough it out. The hateful and humiliating words were always spoken out of earshot of any teacher or adult, so it was impossible to report anything, particularly as I knew they’d all gang up to call me a liar.

I found it much more difficult to put up with the physical aggression towards me. I found doors ‘accidentally’ slammed in my face, and I got tripped in the hallways, or on the stairs. When we were in gym class, lots of bad shots with balls ended up hitting me somehow, and the labels of clumsy and uncoordinated seemed to follow me in spite of the fact I knew the other boys were setting me up for falls.

When my father was alive things were different. He’d taken me lots of places and did lots of things with me. He’d started taking me to the pool when I was a baby, and by the time I was four, I could swim a couple lengths of the pool without stopping. By age five, I had started learning some springboard diving, and knew all of the swimming strokes, including butterfly.

My father continually praised my efforts at trying things, and told me that I was really advanced for my age. He told me that I had a really muscular body for a young kid, and when I look at photos of me at the pool or at the lake at age five, I see that he was right.

I started school a year early, thanks to my father. He knew I was smart, and had helped me learn to read and do basic math even before I was five. He knew I needed more of a challenge, so he convinced my mother that they should start me in first grade in the fall just before I turned five.

With a December birthday, I would have been younger than most of my peers anyway, but now I was quite a bit younger. As far as the school was concerned, my father ‘fudged’ the year of my birth, so they didn’t know.

We did other things like going for bike rides, canoeing, sailing, or skating in the winter. He got me going early on the computer, too, and taught me things around the house and some basic care and maintenance.

My mother was nice, too, but it was my father who was the real driving force in my life. After his death, she was dealing with her own grief. Between that and her work, she had little time for me beyond the basic care. As a result, I stopped doing all the extra activity. I went to school, and came home to an empty house. I often had to fix my own supper and look after myself if my mother was staying late at work.

Sometimes she even had to travel for work, and I was home on my own for up to three days. I managed okay, as far as looking after things and getting to school and stuff. I still got good grades and did well academically, but the spark was missing from my life.

As I headed towards puberty, I started to feel even more different and alone. I was as tall as many of my peers, but I was skinny and underdeveloped. I seemed to have less interest in their preferred topics for conversations: sports, girls and sex. That made we wonder a lot about myself. With the increasing lack of confidence brought about by the absence of my father, I was not a very happy kid.

So, when my mother approached me about moving to a new city, I was quite ready to make a break from my miserable life, and think about starting fresh.

It was in January of my 8th grade year when she first talked to me about moving. It was a Saturday morning, and I was in the kitchen making french toast for breakfast when she came into the kitchen. She thanked me for making breakfast, and set about getting her coffee.

I could tell she was excited and happy about something, and I figured she’d tell me soon enough. I was just pleased to see her looking so happy, and whatever it was had to be good.

I served our breakfast, and sat down across the table from her. I said straight out what I observed.

You look happy about something, Mom.

Well, yes, I am, Troy. I hope you’ll think it’s good news, too... or at least that you’re okay with it.

She told me she had an opportunity to take a transfer and a promotion at work, and she was excited about it. In fact, it the first thing that she’d been really excited about since my father’s death.

She told me that it was something that she’d been hoping for and working towards, but it was coming earlier than expected.

This is such a great chance for me, Troy, and I really need to do it. I have been working very hard with the hope that they might see my potential. I really hope you’re okay with this.

Mom was working as a real estate agent, and had done very well. They were going to open an office in Bellingham and they wanted her to run it. From the way she talked,