Chapter 2: The Next Town

Sherry started getting bored scrolling through her phone while waiting for the train to arrive in the town she called Dwattale, so she decided to look outside the train’s window behind herself and quickly noticed how ‘Dwattale’ was coming into view. To further solidify that they were approaching the town, the automated message on the train announced that they were arriving at the train’s next stop soon. The train’s automated message was announced to the passengers in each carriage telling them all.

“Thank you for using J-Land Transport! We will soon be arriving at our destination, Dwattalebringdamadodoka, very shortly! Please be sure to check that you have all of your belongings before we arrive at Dwattalebringdamadodoka’s Station so that you may exit the carriage with the best possible experience! Thanks again for travelling with us!”

Sherry turned herself back from peeping out the window and started getting ready to get off at the train station she and many other people nicknamed ‘Dwattale Station.’ Sherry prepared herself by standing up from her seat with a bit of enthusiasm in her step and held onto the strap holder on the straphanger placed above her and across all of the seats in the carriages until it reached the doors of the train. Sherry also made sure to hold onto her Generic Brand plastic carrier bag in case she left it behind on the train when she left the carriage.

Once the train got closer to the Dwattalebringdamadodoka station, it started to slow down as the train arrived at Dwattalebringdamadodoka Station. Sherry stood near the train’s closest doors with a few other strangers as they all waited for the train to stop and open up the automatic doors of the carriage, they were in to let them leave the train. The doors made a loud ding noise before opening up and allowing Sherry, with the crowd of people on the train in the carriage she was in with, to walk out with the announcer telling them all the passengers as they left the train.

“We have arrived at Dwattalebringdamadodoka, in Dwattalebringdamadodoka Station! Thank you for using J-Land Transport! We hope you’ve had a pleasant experience travelling with us.”

As Sherry started to walk onto the open train station platform, she looked at her phone once again for the time being and began to think about where she should go next, especially when it came to finding what she wanted and needed for her new custom school uniform. Sherry thought to herself as she headed towards the exit of the train station.

“Right then! Hopefully, they’ll have some pieces for my uniform here, or else…mom will….”

Sherry started to get cold shivers down her spine, imagining Samantha staring and glaring at Sherry with furious eyes. Sherry’s eyes looked fearful, so she said to herself while walking farther away from the train station as she exited in a hurry.

“Right then, I need to get going!”

Sherry walked around Dwattalebringdamadodoka for a while to try and get her bearings since she started to feel a bit unwell due to the lack of energy in her body since she sprinted out of her house without eating or drinking anything first. So when Sherry got near Dwattalebringdamadodoka’s park-like area, she decided to walk in through the yellow front gates that lead into the park and sat down to rest on one of the olive metal benches in the garden, eyeing the colourful playground contrasting itself against the rest of the park’s mainly green naturistic look.

Sherry sat down on the olive-coloured, metal bench and took a deep breath before resting her arms on the back of the cold bench with exhaustion. Sherry leant on the back of the olive-coloured bench while staring at the lovely clear pale red sky above her. After admiring the pale red sky, Sherry started monologing to herself as she rested on the metal olive-coloured bench.

“Coming here without eating anything first was not a good idea... At least if I were here with Ma or Mom, I would feel a bit easier since I wouldn’t feel so tired right now! But now that I remember… the last time the three of us came here, Ma was constantly begging me to buy her something with my money since she said she was saving up her own money for something important near the end of the year…but what was it again?”

Sherry stopped her train of thought and started to give Yovan the benefit of the doubt even though she couldn’t remember what the important thing at the end of this year was. Sherry continued her train of thought even if she couldn’t remember this ‘important’ event.

“To be fair though, ever since ma and mom met each other, ma has been giving me extra money recently on top of what she gave me before.”

Sherry posed a question and wasn’t expecting an answer; instead, she asked herself the question so that she would think about it for this whole ‘hunt for my uniform’ trip that she was on in Dwattalebringdamadodoka.

“I wonder what they’re up to. Maybe they’re planning something big during Legendmas this year or something? But then again, why haven’t they constantly told me about it? Whatever it is, I’d love to help them with it. Maybe it’s not that big of a deal if they’re not reminding me about it…”

Sherry eventually ended her train of thought by shrugging her shoulders, got up from the olive-coloured metal bench while gazing off into the pale red, clear sky above herself and started to wonder to herself depressingly before she left the park as she felt a sudden mood shift within her.

“Will I be okay this school year?”

Sherry suddenly stopped walking and thought on the spot she stood on for a minute, with a genuine look of concern on her face. After feeling dreadful, Sherry finally managed to smile and started laughing while thinking to herself in reply to her question.

“There’s nothing to worry about! We’re all … moving school all at once! I shouldn’t have a problem continuing with the way things are now, right? Who knows…maybe someone new will move into the school, and we’ll become best friends or somethin’!”

Sherry smirked nervously as she finished her last thought of wanting a friend and started to get back on track to why she was in Dwattalebringdamadodoka in the first place. Sherry’s next thought was.

“As long as I can find everything I need for my uniform today, I should be good! Oh and… maybe get something to eat too!”

 Sherry walked away from the park after taking a quick breather and walking joyfully through Dwattalebringdamadodoka while thinking to herself.

“All right, let’s get back to searching! There’s only so long that Ma can keep Mom busy before they both get home! Or at least…I assume she will still keep Mom busy for me anyway….”

Sherry smiled brightly as she headed into town and cheered herself with encouragement out loud.

“Let’s go!”

 

Sherry searched high and low throughout the town of Dwattalebringdamadodoka and started to get her uniform in individual pieces as she visited many shops in the local area. Sherry began to get some parts of her dream uniform that she wanted out of the selection of pieces that the school website on her phone told her she could choose from.

After searching around and claiming clothing from various stores as her new school uniform, Sherry stopped near a desert place named Fraid’s Deserts and got a single scoop of strawberry ice cream in an ice cream cone. Sherry’s eyes lit up as she adored the ice cream she had just purchased since she was a big fan of strawberries, as could be told by the many items she owned that had strawberry symbology on them in one way or another.

Soon after eating the strawberry ice cream, Sherry searched for the last item she needed to find to complete her ideal secondary school uniform… the skirt. Sherry was searching for quite a long time while also taking a bit of time to go sightseeing as she walked the streets of Dwattalebringdamadodoka since she had never been to Dwattalebringdamadodoka by herself and had never bothered to ask Samantha or Yovan to stop still to look at things in Dwattalebringdamadodoka as they walked around together. While sightseeing, Sherry also searched for the appropriate store with the perfect skirt she would need for her ideal school uniform.

However, after a while of searching and giving up on finding the skirt that she wanted, since it was starting to get late for Sherry, she decided to look at her phone only to realise that it was past the time when the trains that were passing through Dwattalebringdamadodoka were no longer going to stop at Dwindabre. This was because the trains could not afford to stay at smaller stations near the end of the train’s scheduled day.

Sherry sighed with what little energy she could still muster up from being so exhausted from searching around Dwattalebringdamadodoka all day. After that, Sherry began to make her way to the nearest bus stop since they were still running and going to Dwindabre. As Sherry headed towards the bus station, she started to get suspicious that she hadn’t gotten a single text on her phone from Yovan or even Samantha yet which caused her to think in surprise.

“Wow, ma must be really keeping Mom busy if she hasn’t let her text me yet.”

Sherry pulled out her phone to double-check it to see if she had gotten any messages from either of her mothers but didn’t hear any notifications go off for whatever reason during today’s journey and could also not see any message notifications at the top of her phone. Sherry continued her train of thought by thinking to herself.

“Yeah, nothing yet, huh? Well! I better get this next bus- “

The sight of another Generic Brand: Superstore cut off Sherry’s train of thought close to the bus stop that she needed to wait at when a bus that went to Dwindabre came to the stop. Sherry kept walking to the bus stop but passed it as she decided to check out the Generic Brand: Superstore first since she hadn’t entered the shop yet to try and find a skirt for her school uniform. Sherry wanted to ensure that she checked everywhere for the skirt she wanted, even this Generic Brand: Superstore in Dwattalebringdamadodoka!

Sherry was astonished that she was going to finish her search for her new school uniform skirt in Dwattalebringdamadodoka without checking the same superstore, in a different town, that was causing her this grief and made her go out on this journey for her new school uniform in the first place. Sherry thought to herself as she quickened her pace to the Generic Brand: Superstore in Dwattalebringdamadodoka!

“Wait! How have I not checked here yet!?”

Once Sherry made it over to the Generic Brand: Superstore in Dwattalebringdamadodoka, she was soon reminded of how much bigger this shop branch was compared to the one in Dwindabre. Sherry estimated that the Generic Brand: Superstore here was at least three times the size of the one in Dwindabre! Sherry was stunned by the size of the shop, and she said while surprised.

“Wow! I forgot how huge this place is! I’m so used to seeing the small one back home that I forgot that these shops come in different sizes!”

Sherry giggled to herself as she was about to walk into the Generic Brand: Superstore proudly until she looked and noticed something being displayed on the advertisement screen on the right-hand side of the superstore’s main window. The screen showed a greyed-out picture of a Dwindabre uniform and had a massive red sticker on top of it saying.

“RESTOCK OF SKIRTS NEXT THURSDAY!”

The screen even cycled from various tops and bottoms recommended for wearing at Dwindabre Secondary School by showing that the bottoms of the picture change from pants to a skirt and then back to pants again while un-greying the pants that showed and greying out the skirts as they came back into view.

Sherry dropped her shopping bags, somehow without spilling anything from the bags since both of the bags stood up straight, and she fell to her knees. Sherry put her hands onto the window while rubbing them down the glass, which started making a squeaky sound from her hands sliding down the window. Sherry’s hands eventually slipped off of the window and fell to her sides as she tilted her head downwards in disappointment.

Sherry suddenly went pale at the thoughts she had earlier in the day before she came to Dwattalebringdamadodoka about how Samantha would react if she told her that she had not gotten her uniform ready yet. Even with these recurring and imaginative thoughts, Sherry let reality and logic escape her mind and whispered to herself.

“I think this my chance to run away while I’m already in the next town….”

Sherry chuckled slightly while her eyes looked defeated. Sherry had no confidence or hope that Samantha would forgive her once she got home, so she started picking herself back up and off the ground with her bags and began walking away from the Generic Brand: Superstore with what little energy she had left after the shock of finding no skirts in Dwattalebringdamadodoka. Sherry decided it was now time to give up and return home.

Sherry groaned and started sulking when walking away from the Generic Brand: Superstore as she realised that she was taking the bus back home too, which took way longer than the train ride home.

As Sherry walked from the Generic Brand: Superstore and over to the bus stop down the road, Sherry thought to herself.

“I guess I’ll use some of Mom’s money to get the bus home and get scolded for not using it to get my uniform ready for tomorrow.”  

Sherry also thought to herself a few seconds later.

“Wait…what if I asked ma for a ride home….”

Sherry looked annoyed since she was the one who asked Yovan to distract Samantha in the first place on her getting home later without letting Samantha realize that she was out for so long, so Sherry started to give up on that wishful thought and walked for a few more minutes down the road until she arrived back at one of the bus stop’s shelters.

Sherry walked into and underneath the bus stop’s weird-looking shelter while looking up at it briefly. Sherry thought the new shelter she was standing under resembled a giant white umbrella. Albeit was a square-shaped umbrella-looking shelter instead of a circular or hexagonal one.

Unfortunately, as much as Sherry would like to rest by sitting down in the other bus shelter beside the one that she stood under, she couldn’t get a spot to sit down since there were a lot of people who were already seated in the other bus shelter’s red metal, bumpy and skinny bench. Sherry thought again, hopeful that Samantha would forgive her once she walked through the front door of their house and made it back to Dwindabre.

“Maybe if I’m lucky, Mom will forget that I was even out getting a uniform for myself in the first place!”

After this thought, Sherry continued to think about some of the ways and situations where she might be able to convince Samantha why she couldn’t get her full uniform ready for school tomorrow but instead let out a big sigh and gave up shortly afterwards while trying, since she realised that there was no way she could win in this situation.

Sherry’s eyes dropped and closed fully until she nearly let herself slip and fall to the ground due to exhaustion. Sherry woke up a bit and tried to stand with enough energy to balance herself out so that she wouldn’t fall over again. Sherry thought to herself.

“Maybe I should’ve bought something from the shop to eat before getting here….”

Sherry continued thinking to herself about how she could pass the time and somehow play off the situation with why she didn’t have her full uniform ready for school yet.

“I can play it off tomorrow with everyone in school when it comes to wearing it on the first day…right?”  

Sherry then remembered that her old skirt from Mrs Drillhole’s Secondary School was too big for her now due to Sherry losing weight recently, which is why Samantha even bothered to tell Sherry that she should go out to buy a new uniform in the first place and gave her the money to do so. Sherry continued her train of thought by telling herself.

“I don’t know why but… not being able to get the whole uniform feels like I’ve failed somehow. Even though that’s not my fault...for waiting until the last second to buy the uniform….”

Sherry had to, once again, stop blaming everything else but herself since she knew full well that she was the one that was at fault for not preparing the school uniform sooner rather than later for this upcoming school year, even though Samantha had reminded her for the past summer to do so. Sherry thought about her predicament and started to think too hard about the matter since it led her to start thinking about ditching school. Sherry thought to herself while looking serious about her suggestion.

“You know, even if I don’t have my uniform yet, I could always take the first week off of school until I get the skirt from a shop somewhere…it is a transition year after all, right? It’s not like we’ll do much work now…or for the whole year, right?”

Sherry giggled internally while continuing her train of thought as she told and asked herself.

“I can’t remember when someone said they hated Transition year! What’s the harm in taking an extra week off anyways?”

Guilt started to build up in Sherry from what she was trying to convince herself to do since it didn’t sit right with her, along with the fact that Sherry knew that she didn’t think she could pull it off anyway since her parents knew that she was going to be going back to school tomorrow. Even if Sherry tried, she wouldn’t even get permission from Yovan or Samantha about not going to school for the first week just because of a missing uniform piece.

Sherry thought to herself defeatedly.

“AH, it’s no use… I guess I’ll just have to go back home and suck it up…maybe I’ll look around one more time before I go home, though!”

As Sherry tried to feel more determined to complete her school uniform before heading home, she started to feel more defeated and looked again at the cold ground pavement below her white and pink trainer shoes. Sherry was worried about how Samantha would react to her when she came home but was also thinking too hard about her classmates and how they would view her for not preparing her whole school uniform in time for the next school year.

 

Sherry briefly looked up at the space where the bus would park since she thought that the bus that she needed to hop onto had just pulled up to the bus stop. Sherry looked around but didn’t see the bus anywhere; she double-checked by looking around again and only noticed a bunch of cars parked on either side of the restricted bus zone. It was surprising to Sherry that no one had decided to park in the bus’s restricted parking spots since it commonly happens.

Sherry soon felt nostalgic by noticing a blue weathered-looking car across the street from her that seemed very familiar to her. Sherry couldn’t seem to remember clearly why this blue car was so familiar to her and why it was so nostalgic to her too. Sherry continued looking at and into the blue car to see a burly round man with a turkey neck, brown-haired stubble on his face, and golden yellow eyes. The man also wore a light blue polo shirt with a white outline around the neck hole of the polo shirt. The polo shirt itself also had a little panda logo in dark blue stitching on the left-hand side of his chest. Sherry also noticed a young boy about her age walking out from the sports/gym shop from across the bus stop that she was standing at as he walked to the weathered blue car that the burly man was inside.

Sherry squinted her eyes to try and get a clearer image of the young boy himself. The boy that Sherry was eyeing had black hair with golden yellow eyes and was around five foot, nine inches tall. He was skinnier than both the man in the car and Sherry herself. Sherry noticed that the young boy was wearing a pastel yellow t-shirt and grey jogging bottoms with white lines going from the sides of his hips down to the bottom of the jogging trousers he was wearing.

Before the young boy opened the left-hand side door of the weathered blue car and slipped into the car itself, Sherry felt that she needed to urgently shout and call across to him since she realised that she might recognise him. Sherry rushed to the curb of the pathway connected to the bus stop to shout over to the young boy from across the road near the weathered blue car while attracting some passersby’s attention.

“DOM!?”

Sherry had a big smile on her face, along with suddenly getting the energy to cross the road quickly while looking out for oncoming traffic. The boy himself froze in place as he had his hand on the weathered blue car door’s handle with a surprised look on his face, along with the man in the car since they were both seeing someone that they hadn’t seen in at least five years.

After Sherry reached the blue car, it was made evident to the man and the young boy that the pink-haired girl shouting across to them was Sherry Aweber! The young boy, Dom, replied to Sherry, shocked, while laughing back at her with disbelief.

“SHERRY!?”

Sherry made her way over to the right-hand side of the weathered blue car while slightly hugging the car so that she could stay off of the busy road. Without thinking, Sherry slammed her hands onto the car’s roof with her bags still in her hands. Sherry asked Dom excitedly.

“Dom!? Is that you!?”

When Sherry asked Dom this question, he continued to be frozen in place while being completely surprised by this fated encounter with his old best friend that he hadn’t seen in what feels like forever. Before Dom thought up of a reply for Sherry, he soon realised that Sherry was preoccupied with talking to his dad in the weathered blue car.

Dom saw Sherry hastily take her hands off of the weathered blue car and apologised to Dom’s father, Gavan Bremdat, for suddenly slamming her hands onto the roof of his car without thinking and with excitement for seeing the two of them again after not seeing them for years.

Up close, Sherry started to realise that the car was more weathered than it appeared from over at the bus stop where she was waiting. Gavan put his hairy right arm onto the warm car door, which was still a bit warm from the sun beating down on the car for most of the day and looked up at Sherry while telling her with a hearty and surprised tone in his voice.

“No way! You’re Samantha’s kid, aren’t you!?”

Sherry replied to Gavan with a bigger smile than his.

“Yeah, Gav! Oh, my lord!”

Sherry turned to Dom, who was still gawking at her from the other side of the car while carrying a small plastic bag of stuff from the gym store that he came out from. Sherry and Dom’s few seconds of silence soon ended as Dom smiled at her while squinting his eyes and saying in astonishment to Sherry after seeing her for the first time in five years.

“Sher…”

Dom was thinking about going to the other side of the weathered blue car to hug Sherry but decided not to since he didn’t want to embarrass them both out on the streets of Dwattalebringdamadodoka. However, if he were younger, then he wouldn’t even need to think twice about it since Sherry would be the one to hug him anyway.

Once Dom blinked his eyes, he suddenly felt thrust back on the spot he stood on and thrust out of his thoughts too as Sherry had made her way over to him in the time he blinked his eyes to hug him, as if she read his mind and did what he wished he could do. Sherry started their conversation by complimenting him.

“Hey, Dom! Wow, you’re so much taller than me now!”

Sherry finished her sentence giddily into Dom’s face while hugging him with glee. Dom’s face started to light up red as he looked down to see that Sherry had done precisely what she would have done five years ago, which was an excellent thing for Dom since it meant that not much had changed about her since he had last left her.

Dom’s face soon faded from embarrassment since nostalgia started to wash over him. With this feeling taken into consideration, Dom decided since Sherry wanted to hug him anyway, the least he could do was return the hug to Sherry by placing his arms around her even if he was a bit embarrassed by the sudden hug.

After the long-drawn-out reunion hug, they both let go of each other and stared each other down with millions of questions sparking in their minds about what the other person had been doing since they hadn’t seen each other in so long.

Gavan went over to Dom and Sherry to give Sherry a big hug too, since he also remembered how good of a friend Sherry was to Dom when they were both younger. Gavan also thought of Sherry as a daughter since they both got along so well even when Dom wasn’t around with them.

After talking for quite a while on the sidewalk beside the weathered blue car and with Sherry having the newfound energy to emit a marathon equivalent of conversations with Dom and Gavan, Sherry soon started to realise that she had forgotten about the bus that she was trying to take back to Dwindabre.

Sherry heard the bus on the other side of the street honking its horn at a car that suddenly braked in front of it as it pulled out and onto the main street’s road. Sherry’s face went pale as she started to feel a sudden loss of energy again after gaining so much energy in a nano-second.

Dom and Gavan looked over to where Sherry was looking and soon realised that she was turning pale since the double-decker bus that was pulling out onto the street, the double-decker bus that Sherry was probably going to get onto to get home, had just left without her and it was their fault that she missed it.

Dom asked Sherry in a worried tone.

”Sorry, Sher, were you waiting for that bus that just pulled out there?”

Sherry nodded with a tear in her right eye and also getting increasingly annoyed at herself for being so nostalgic that she wasn’t paying attention to when her bus had arrived at the bus stop. Sherry replied to Dom tiredly but picked up her voice so she wouldn’t sound too depressed for missing the bus.

“Yeah, it was… but I didn’t book a bus ticket yet, so hopefully, there’s some extra room on the next bus whenever it gets here!”

Dom took another look at the bus shelter, which started to overflow with more people walking into the bus shelters as the crowd was finishing up their late working jobs for the day. Dom eyed the number of the bus stop and then quickly used the maps app on his phone to look for the bus times near him along with the routes of the busses that went to Dwindabre from Dwattalebringdamadodoka, assuming that Sherry still lived in Dwindabre of course and as Gavan apologised to Sherry too. The maps app on Dom’s phone marked the bus stop across the road from him and said there wasn’t another bus for at least two hours that went to Dwindabre.

Dom felt bad for Sherry since he felt like he and Gavan were the ones that were keeping her from getting that bus ride home. Dom was about to ask Sherry and Gavan if she wanted to get a lift back to her house, but Gavan was already a step ahead of him as he sat into the car and rolled down the left car door window, asking Sherry loudly so that she could hear him from the inside of his car.

“Hey, Sherry! Would you like a ride home? I might still remember where ya live if you haven’t moved out since we last left ya!”

Dom blurted out loud in surprise at Gavan’s offer to Sherry.

“Can she, Dad!?”

Dom started to feel relieved and happy for Sherry until he turned to Sherry herself, staring him down with a smug look on her face, and had her hand over her mouth. Dom knew full well that she would start teasing him for worrying about her this much because of her smug facial expression and posture.

Dom coughed while saying and trying to move on from his genuinely excited outburst.

“Well then…let’s go.”

Dom headed into the passenger seat across from Gavan, who was obviously in the driver’s seat. As Sherry looked at Dom entering the weathered blue car, she soon worried about hitching a ride from them. So, Sherry asked Dom and Gavan a question to ensure they wanted to give her a lift home.

“Are you sure? I can always take the next bus home.”

Dom rolled his car door window down again with the black window button on the car door itself since Gavan had already closed it up before Dom entered the weathered blue car. Dom was rolling down the window to let Gavan respond to Sherry again and reassure her about giving her a lift home since he was the one who offered her a lift anyway.

“Of course, you can, Sher! It’s grand! It’ll start to get dark soon anyways! I wouldn’t want to leave a young girl like you waiting out in the dark in another town for too long!”

Sherry looked around herself to realise that the purple sun in the red sky was in the position to set soon. After realising this, Sherry smiled and looked at the back left door of the car to find the car door handle so that she could enter the car. As Sherry opened the weathered blue car door, she said to Dom and Gavan while slipping in.

“Thank you, guys, so much!”

As Sherry slipped into the car, Dom was almost done with sweeping and dragging the shopping bags from various stores that he and Gavan were at today onto the other side of the car’s back seats to give Sherry some room to sit down.

 

Soon after Sherry entered the weathered blue car and they all put on their seatbelts, Gavan lit up the weathered blue car’s right indicator and safely pulled the car out onto the busy main street road with relative ease. The weathered blue car took off with Sherry, Dom, and Gavan in the car as they headed back into Sherry’s quiet hometown, Dwindabre!