CenterVille

 

CenterVille

 

Johnny Johnson was in “special class.” In 1947 learning disabilities were simple. You were either considered “normal” or you were retarded and confined to a class with likeminded individuals be it low IQ, dyslexia, or any other condition that made one stand out in the crowd of otherwise regular students. Johnny was in the last year that he would be allowed in public school, but like his classmates, he’d never see graduation because “retardos” didn’t graduate, they were dismissed. 

 

This didn’t stop him from having friend on both sides of the intellectual spectrum. One of his friends was nine-year-old Carol Ann, a fourth grader who aspired to be a teacher when she grew up. A quick child with blonde curls, who saw Johnny as a big brother she didn’t have. They met in the cafeteria each day and Johnny would always split his desert with Carol. She didn’t see him as different in spite of her mother’s warnings about him, just knowing that he was “not in her class.” She trusted him immensely. 

 

“I found a dead wolf in the woods,” Johnny told her one day after school. “Do you wanna go see it?”

 

Carol considered the offer, but quickly rejected it, wanting to obey her mother’s strict rule of always coming right home from school. 

 

“Oh c’mon,” he pressed. “We can just cut through the woods to see it on your way home. You can look at it and won’t be late at all. Won’t take long.”

 

She weighed the proposal. True, cutting through the woods instead of taking the usual route wouldn’t take that much longer, indeed, may even be slightly shorter than following the sidewalk for blocks compared with just cutting through the woods. She wondered why she hadn’t done it before. Well of course she hadn’t! The very fact that there was a dead wolf there indicated that there must be more, but Johnny was her friend, and he was a big boy, certainly good protection. She decided to walk on the wild side. 

 

Cutting into the pines was both exciting and frightening at the same time, but Johnny assured her that the wolf was just ahead. As she ventured farther and farther from her traditional route, she began to have reservations, and no dead wolf was to be found she decided to abandon the quest altogether. 

 

She told Johnny that she was going back, but he protested, grabbing her hand, telling her that the wolf had to be nearby. Carol tried to get him to let go of her hand, but he only pulled harder. Her feet slid along the forest floor and in one final attempt to break free he lost his grip, causing little Carol Ann to fall face first onto a rock where she lay unresponsive. 

 

Johnny tried to rouse her, but when he turned her over her eyes stared blankly at him, and Johnny ran from the scene deeper into the woods. In his panic he knew, even with his fogged reasoning that he couldn’t let anyone know what had happened, but as he ran deeper and deeper, he felt that he was being followed. Forced even farther until he was lost. 

 

Nobody knows what fate found Johnny Johnson. He never came out of the forest, and he was never found, and the citizens of CenterVille could only speculate what he found him in the pines!