The Return of James Dean

By JB Lewis

This is the Inspired story of Nora. A 14 year-old girl from the rough side of the tracks with terminal brain cancer. As Nora grows into a young woman, she begins to imagine what it might be like to have known her father that passed away when she was only three-years-old.
Having nothing but an old and yellowed Polaroid picture, and her mother’s memories and references to James Dean to go off of, Nora creates a secret garden in her consciousness where she and her father reunite. At the same time, Nora is being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that has baffled the experts on how their young patient is still walking around in her advanced condition.
Nora and her mother make the long trip from California to Memphis’ St. Jude’s Hospital where she settles in for the long haul, and makes the hospital her new home. She goes on late night walks through the empty areas of the hospital to contemplate life, love and being a young woman on the verge of life and death.

All seems to be going as well as expected until a tall, dark and mysterious stranger appears to her one night at the end of a darkened hospital corridor. A little bit terrified and somewhat intrigued, Nora strains through the shadows for a better glimpse of the man wearing blue jeans, a white t-shirt and dark boots, before vanishing into the darkness.
As Nora begins to learn of her cancerous fate, the mystery man reappears to offer her a whole new world of possibilities, for here on Earth, and the hereafter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JB Lewis
• Release date: May 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781484002988

JB Lewis

I have been writing since the third grade. The genre has progressed through horror, fantasy, romance, fiction and even metaphysical. I love contemplating the cosmos, meeting new people, skating like it's 1982, hearing undiscovered talent sing and discovering new authors with brilliant and original ideas. I am somewhat outspoken in my writing but laid back everywhere else. I live in Portland, Oregon with my two daughters and my earthly divine light, Heather.

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The Return of James Dean

JB Lewis

Copyright © 2013 JB Lewis

All rights reserved.

You may contact the author by email anytime: [e-mail]

Or

Justinbrianlewis.webs.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged this edition as follows.

Lewis, JB.

The Return of James Dean

Editor, Nancy Kees

ISBN-13: 978-1481240314

ISBN-10: 1481240315

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic or electronic process or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or otherwise be copied for public or private use – other than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews – without prior written permission of the publisher or author.

Chapter 1: An Out of Body Moment

An inspiration came to me in my dream, like a voice carried by a soft wind tickling the inside of my ear. It told me to build a garden in my mind; a place for my bare feet to run free; letting the tips of my hair dance across my cheeks. That voice of inspiration was always with me, telling me things in a way that my fourteen year old brain could understand. It told me everything would be all right, and not to be afraid of the doctors that punctured my skin with needles to invade my vessels, and rob me of my blood like a vampire.

Come on into me, I must have told the doctor. I am yours to violate. Remove your protective mask that hides your vile, monstrous teeth that protrude from your lips. Give me the venom you call medicine, and infect me with a poison that will leave me a hollow shell. While your needles suck the wickedness from my body, perhaps you can inject it into yourself so we may die together, and I won’t be alone in the afterworld.

I thought of this every night when I was alone in my hospital room, hating the non-stop illness caused by the efforts to save me. Aside from some black-outs, I never really felt all that bad until the medicine was introduced.

When the doctors and nurses would come in to my hospital room, I would hear a voice tell me to look relaxed; show no fear and retreat to your safe place. Yes, my safe place. At the end of every day, I would get into bed and construct a magnificent, imaginary garden before mental exhaustion sent me into the darkness of my mind that I dreaded so much.

In my garden, I grew every blade of grass, every tree, rose, flower, plant and animal. I memorized it exactly, so it was the same every time I closed my eyes. To keep it interesting I would add things to make me smile, like funny creatures that only existed in my garden, or give myself a force field so I could walk into lakes and explore without getting wet. I remember about a year into my cancer, I ran out of things to imagine into my creation, so I added James Dean straight off my mom’s old posters; the ones that hung on our tattered wooden walls when I was little.

I could see the streaks across James’ waistline that was left behind from Mom’s fingers. She obviously had dreamed of caressing him. I imagined his leather belt must’ve creaked when he removed it from his pants. His ripped jeans and the permanent wrinkles branching out from his crotch must have drawn her in. He leaned his back against the brick wall behind him, and propped his leg and black boot onto it. He had a beautiful, but vague expression on his face as he stared out, looking at nothing particular as his eyes balanced on the orange glow of the horizon, while contemplating his life.

About a year before my cancer diagnosis, Mom and I rode out towards the scene of the fatal crash of James Dean, but we could never agree on where the exact spot was. I did some research on the crash, but was rather glad we couldn’t find it. It all seemed a bit macabre to me; visiting a spot where someone died a horrible death. I actually hated death and wanted nothing to do with it – not even my own. I mean, to me, death was a black void of nothingness where we disappear forever. I figured the only way around that dilemma was to live forever. For all I knew, my dad and James Dean thought they would live forever too. But the sad truth is, they didn’t; and I won’t either.

Mom had three or four different James Dean posters that she bought after my dad died because she always thought he was a dead ringer for James Dean. My mom even went to so far as dressing my dad in a long, black London fog over coat with a cigarette in his mouth; snapping a photograph as the burning ember, attached so fragile at the tip, gave birth to the dead remnants of paper and tobacco that would soon crumble to the ground.

I didn't know what my dad looked like since he died when I was three. I would pretend my dad and I would go on walks through my secret garden and spend all day together until he had to go to wherever dead people go at night. Another picture my mom took had my dad on a Harley with a black leather jacket, jeans and boots. The Harley belonged to some biker they didn’t even know but they daringly used it for their modeling exploits while the rider was in a local pub getting wasted. Oh the stories my mom has told me.

My mom used to say my dad was like nothing she could eat but everything she wanted to consume.

Dad always appeared perfect for me when I saw him in my garden, and he always seemed to show up whenever I thought of him. Since he died when I was so young, I never had a face to engrave into my memory, so I built my pictures of him around my mom’s descriptions. I discovered later that my mom seemed to only remember the best parts; like she had deleted any flaws and kept what remained as her perfect memory.

I knew my dream was all an illusion, but when I was in the midst of a conversation with my dad, it was very real to me. Of course, the realism was probably induced by the chemo and radiation that was finally corroding my head? Had I perverted reality and make believe into a toxic playground where only I could play? Even though my head must have resembled Chernobyl on the inside, it was still the only place I felt safe.

Anyway, hello and let me introduce myself. My name is Nora, and I am a very intelligent fourteen-year-old young woman. My first name means light, and my middle name is Morningstar, which means that my parents were children of the hippie age, and I got the unusual name to show for it.

I was born in 1980 in Bakersfield, California, have blue eyes, no hair and a tumor on the back of my brain called, Anaplastic Ependymoma; (grade III). That means it’s the most aggressive. The doctors had no explanation why I went so long with no symptoms, why I was still walking around, or even why I was still alive; so that made me the research project of the year. That was two years ago. More than anything, I was just another kid trying to go home cancer free. But between you and I, that probably won’t happen.

My mom, Jennifer, along with my grandparents, Bill and Martha and younger, ten-year-old brother, Martin, have been spending most of our days and nights at St. Jude hospital in Memphis; a long way from home, I know. But after a few months, I was less homesick. Not that home was so great, though. I think I just missed the routine and familiarity of it all.

There were some things I didn’t miss; like living in a trailer park community with nine registered sex offenders nearby, where just walking out of our door could get us placed on a milk carton. Another curious point about home was that, around 2 in the morning, if the traffic was quiet, we could hear the buzz of the high voltage power lines that towered over the trailer park on enormous metal structures. It was like the electricity emitted a force field, barring us from the rest of the world; not letting in cell phone signals or television reception very well. If I stood still long enough outside, the static coming from the metal monsters over me would charge my skin and raise the hairs on my arms.

My next door neighbor, with silver hair like he had just been shocked himself, lined up ten fluorescent bulbs under the power lines by jamming one end into the dirt and leaving the other end exposed to the air, causing the bulbs to light up, using only the earth as a ground and the radiating electricity from over head as the power source. That alone proved to me that energy cannot be contained within some wires. It must be in the spaces in between too.

At night couples would come and hug and kiss and be all romantic around the lights. How little they knew just how much juice was flowing into them from the electricity above.

The trailer park was situated right off one of the busiest roads in Bakersfield. But on the other side of the road were numerous low income houses (even lower than ours, if that’s possible) with a filthy element about them; the kind of place where red and blue police lights make regular appearances. Not to mention the putrid smell that oozed out into the surrounding streets, like an infected wound. It was constantly littered with small children playing outside in diapers or ratty clothes and unsupervised by any sort of adult or quality looking person; a dreamland for anyone looking to kidnap a child.

The constant parade of criminal activity around our trailer and the ghetto across the street didn’t leave many places of solitude in which to escape. However, of the few places I could go to be alone, was the sidewalk just on the other side of the trailer park fence. The sidewalk didn’t lead anywhere. It was going to be part of a new subdivision that never got competed; more than likely when the first trailer moved in next door, the plans were scrapped.

The sidewalk was next to a very busy highway, so I wasn’t really alone, but being out of the trailer, away from the usual happenings, was close enough. And as you probably could guess, standing by a busy road in California on the sidewalk is practically a death wish in itself. Naturally, most people drove on by, but the really trashy ones liked to yell out obscenities, or throw garbage at me. I had one car fly by and throw an egg at my face. It stung for two days. I guess they thought I was less than human for living in a trailer park.

If I wanted to get to school I had to take that same route every day. I tried to use the walk to school as my time to think and relax. That is, when eggs weren’t flying through the air. But eventually, I knew I was going to reach the prison – I mean school. My only reprieve was that I would be paroled at the end of the day.

My school was so rough, the powers that be, made us walk through metal detectors to assure we weren’t packin’, if you know what I mean. They would check us for a gun; if we didn’t have one, they would give us one. It was that rough. But since the education was top notch, it was all worth it – NOT.

I was, however, in a gifted and talented class for smarter kids, whatever that means. But it didn’t take me long to figure out there were no smart kids in the class; except for me, of course. That may have been the attitude that got me removed from the class.

On the very first day of class, the teacher gave us an assignment to create a play that was entertaining, yet, educational.

Well, in case anyone has forgotten what it is like to be fourteen, let me remind you - we know everything. Plus, I’ve always been exceptional in English and literature since I picked up my first book at four years old, and read it cover to cover. I realize I might not have fully understood the content, but that is just a trivial perspective that doesn’t merit further discussion.

However, I had been writing stories, of a sort, since the third grade, so needless to say, when the gifted and talented class all agreed on performing a play titled, Romeo and Juliet Does Drugs, I was flabbergasted, and felt qualified to stand right up and inform them all, that they were stupid, and that was the most ridiculous idea for a play I had ever heard. Of course, I never offered up an idea of my own – I simply knew their idea sucked the big toe.

I did realize that my mouth had a brain all its own, and I often wished I could make it shut up. Nevertheless, the teacher calmly replied, Nora, would you like to be removed from the class?

Yes I would, I said instantly, like I actually knew what I was saying. I didn’t want to be removed from the class, but I said the answer so fast I couldn’t take it back. The other kids gasped. They were surprised at my behavior, and so was I. That wasn’t me; it was the adolescent hormones talking. But on that particular day, at that particular moment, I couldn’t stop the words that were coming out of my mouth. So I gathered up my books and walked the long corridor to study hall, where I remained the rest of the year during that period. That’s where I got my reputation for being a bad, bad girl. It was a blessing and a curse.

I couldn’t be sure, but my attitude may have been a reflection of the diagnosis I had gotten the week before. No one at school knew. They all just thought I had lost my mind, I guess. Two weeks later we were at St. Jude’s and I hadn’t been back to school since. My mom thought it would be better if she homeschooled me to relieve the stress of peer pressure, blah, blah, blah. That was her nice way of saying, I was becoming too unruly.

Just to explain, briefly, I will tell you about my girlfriend, Jodi. She was even more unruly than I. As I recall, one particular Tuesday, I strolled onto my school’s campus around 7:45 in the morning, and was met happily by Jodi – a bright-eyed, bubbly girl, dark hair, wildly amazing green eyes and always with color coordinated fingernail polish