Well you met Ivy and then you met Calvin.

Here is the final main character , Omar, from my first  novel called the Fourth World that I am currently working on for completion early this year which I aim to submit to various publishers.

I am trying not to give away too much story-wise but at the same time I want to get you guys interested and me revved up for what’s to come .  Besides, it also helps me focus better in the direction I wish to take them all in as far as their own personal character development. I want them to grow and you grow with them eventually as the pages turn so you feel your in each of their shoes as they get thrown into whatever pit of despair, dark forest,  or forgotten world they may find themselves.

Enjoy the last installment  in my third excerpt form the novel. More will come…but I just gotta write it first…:)

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Chapter 3 – Great Expectations

“Omar! Ahora, mijo…get your butt downstairs, it’s time to eat.” Omar’s mother yelled at him from downstairs from somewhere probably near the kitchen.

“Coming!” Omar kept punching the buttons on the game controller staring ahead at the television in his bedroom. More minutes past.

“Omar! Muévete!” His father yelled at him from the hallway almost to his room.

Omar threw down the controller (but not before pausing it), jumped up, and turned off the television like a well practiced professional who had done it a thousand times.

His father came in his room not looking pleased just as Omar stood up from laying on the bed.

“I thought we told you no games for two weeks. Do we have to take it all out and store it at your grandmother’s house thirty miles away?” his father’s hulking frame intentionally barred the only way out of his room.

Omar didn’t look at his father as he stood waiting to leave.

“No.” Omar said simply.

“Well if we catch you playing it again, that’s what going to happen. You’re supposed to be doing your homework until they let you back. How’s that cut doing anyways.” Omar father reached a hand out as if to touch the stitches on the side of Omar’s head.”

Omar reflexively moved away from his father’s touch.

“Fine.” Omar said, still not looking at his father.

“He got you good didn’t he.  I can’t blame him from for it. Three on one. I’m not gonna ride you anymore about it, but I don’t want you thinking your going back to school to find an excuse to bump into him by accident. You stay as far as you can from him. Got me mijo?” Omar’s father walked a little closer to him to make sure he got the point.

“Look at me Omar, do we understand each other.”

It took everything he had to look his father in the face.

“I understand.”  Tears started to brim in his eyes and he quickly looked down.

“You’ve got this year, and then two more until you graduate. We just want you to stay clean until then. You’ll be the first mijo. The first one in the family to EVER graduate. Can you manage that. Don’t let your mother down. Your a smart kid so start acting like it.”

“Yes.” Omar simply said.

“Boys! Time to eat!” Omar’s mother yelled again from downstairs.

Omar’s father moved from barring the door to his room and Omar practically ran.

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“So, you in Omar? We thought we’d let him get comfortable for a week  or two and let him think he’s safe. Then we’ll get him away from the school. You get first dibs since he busted you up side the head.” Omar heard Neil giggling like a little girl in the background of Jake’s phone.  He could imagine Jake smiling his smile that all the girl’s liked so well on him. He could hear it in his voice over the phone.

“Yeah, I’m in,  paybacks are paybacks right?” Omar said, talking quietly up in his room,  knowing if he got caught making a personal call on his cell his father would take it and everything else way in his room.

“That’s right baby now you’re talking. Time to open up a can of some whoop ass on the freak. Smart ass will remember this lesson for a long time to come.”  Jake said laughing along with Neil.

“Yeah boi!”  Neil yelled through the phone.

“Okay man, I’ll let you go, don’t want you in trouble with your Pops. We’ll pick your ass up on tomorrow for school. Don’t forget to wear your special helmet. I’m just fucking with you man. The exile will soon be over. The posse is back in town.” Jake said.

“Fuck you man and go posse. I’m out man”  Omar said, almost smiling but with no real strength behind the words. Omar hung up his phone. 

Grabbing a comic book from his nightstand, he flopped down on his bed, laid on his stomach, and started to read. He idly touched the stitches on the side of his forehead right above his temple, rubbing the length of it with his thumb. The feeling of it started to needle him. It was going to leave a scar, he just knew it. Then all over again the anger swelled up inside of him at what had happened that day. Stupid freak, why couldn’t he just shut the hell up for once.

He was glad the freak wasn’t gonna be there tomorrow. He didn’t know if he’d have the strength not to try something. Omar threw the comic book down on his bedroom floor; something he would have never done a year ago. Back then he had treated them like gold, putting each in their own plastic bag, taping them closed and storing each in a box he kept in his closet after finishing them.  Now they lay strewn everywhere throughout his bedroom.  He’s not sure why he even still bought them anymore.  He knew soon he would stop buying them all together, one day.

He looked at the clock and saw it was almost eleven. I guess it’s time, he thought.

Omar often like to stay awake as long as he could.  He liked lying in bed and thinking of nothing and losing himself in the nothing. That way the next day would take longer to arrive.  Because tomorrow there was always something, with his mom, his father, his friends, school. He like being trapped between moments, to just be alone between tomorrow and today.

Omar’s head hit the pillow as he tried to fight the sleep that he knew was coming.  A sleep that sped him through dreams he never remembered, no consolation for even that for closing his eyes. The light would always find its way back to him, to peek and pry it’s way in through the blinds of his bedroom and peel back another day which he would learn to love reluctantly and then do it all over again the next.

He never noticed his mother as she quietly entered his room and covered him with a blanket, kissed him lightly on the cheek, and turned off his lamp…..