Crazy summer Chapter 1.

1

Dust rose behind the wheels of the black car on the dirt road. Evening was approaching, but the oppressive heat showed no sign of abating. The driver's eyes were heavy, yet he tirelessly scanned the surroundings, combing the space in front of him with his gaze, convinced that he must be in the right place. The July heat was stifling, the trees in the distance danced lazily, and the horizon undulated like an irritated snake.

He picked up the T-shirt he had rolled up and left on the passenger seat an hour ago and wiped his sweaty forehead and shoulders. When he was still wearing it, it was sweaty but still white. Now, because of the open window and the dust that had flown in and stuck to his body like a natural mud mask, its color resembled socks that had been worn for a week.

Damian was fed up with long journeys. Maybe it would have been easier if they hadn't drunk so much yesterday, he wrinkled his nose.

Finally! He exhaled with relief, like a tense bull blowing steam from its nostrils, when the terrible dusty dirt road was momentarily embraced by forest on both sides and the car found itself in the shade. He threw his T-shirt, which could have been wrung out, back onto the passenger seat. Suddenly, he saw something in the distance. He squinted dazedly through the dirty windshield and at the same time, while concentrating intently on the scene in front of him, he felt a trickle of sweat running down the back of his neck between his shoulder blades, becoming an increasingly unbearable and distracting, almost torturous element. His back, leaning against the seat, stuck to the suede upholstery. He jerked angrily. He was wearing sweat shorts, but that didn't change the feeling of sitting with his bare butt in a boiling pot. Hard-boiled egg, he thought, and shifted his position.

He tensely grabbed the T-shirt thrown next to him, proudly bearing the Calvin Klein logo on the chest, which now blended into the background, and threw it around his neck like a towel. He couldn't recognize what he was seeing and whether it was even real in this Saharan heat. It's called a mirage, isn't it? He lifted his sunglasses on his nose and wiped his face with the worn piece of fabric.

A moment ago, he got lost in the nearest village. He would have liked to ask a local native for directions, but the square and the three streets around it, which encompass the entire village, were deserted. He vaguely remembers that a terrible dirt road leads to the house, and he is driving on one such road, but that doesn't mean it's the right one; there are hundreds of them here, unlike roads. No other asphalt roads lead here except for the main one.

He hears cows mooing; there is an organic farm behind the hill. Steaks on legs, Damian thinks, and he remembers how he and Tommy used to poke sticks into cakes on the pasture and compete to see who could throw them first. They must have been ten years old, and he and Tommy were inseparable friends. It looks like he's going the right way.

It's been ages since he last visited. He regrets not making more of an effort to come here, but what's done is done. Redemption for his guilt is now taking a heavy toll!

After a hundred meters, the forest gave way to a parched meadow, its color long since lost, and the wildflowers were closed. With a dry croak in his throat, he sighed deeply and pulled his damp, smelly T-shirt over his head.

Damn it, this road to hell! No theatrical symbolism, just fact.

He cursed with a long string of swear words; he had been traveling from Prague to Olomouc for half a day. The drive from Olomouc to his destination would have taken him only half an hour if he hadn't been spinning his wheels like a hamster in a wheel, drowning in despair and self-pity at the thought of the inevitable, terrible future that awaited him in the coming weeks. Life would be much easier if his phone hadn't run out of battery and he could set up his GPS and play music from his playlist. God knows where his cable is.

He had only begun to realize the bleak reality of his own life in the last two days. Most of all when he said goodbye to his friends in Prague. Wow, what a ride! Everyone acted as if he were leaving for the Amazon rainforest to be devoured by a jaguar, as if he were disappearing from the face of the earth forever, as if he were flying to Mars in a spaceship. That made it even harder. They didn't even consider the possibility that there were means of transportation that could connect them in three hours.

Hopefully, he wouldn't have to curse his grandfather. But when his grandfather, Pepa Šimůnek, asked him if he could take care of his house over the summer, he couldn't refuse. Fortunately, he no longer keeps livestock, as he used to. He simply couldn't bear the sight of the 82-year-old man lying in a hospital bed, staring at him imploringly with his brown eyes. He agreed without thinking about the consequences.

"I knew I could count on you. You're on break now, as I heard from Marcelka, you've taken a break from school, so it won't restrict you. Evička would like to help me, but as you well know, she goes to work and doesn't have much time. Thank you very much, Damíček, it's only two months, then I'll be back from the spa and I'll manage on my own at home." He clasped Damian's hands in both of his and stared at him with his kind, age-faded eyes.

Damian nodded, but inside he was seething. Evička lives and works in Olomouc... Why couldn't his stepsister just commute the twenty kilometers to Polany? It's not possible. It's easier for Damian to move to Polany from Prague, after all, he has nothing to do! And maybe he didn't want to ask her because she's not his biological granddaughter.

What can you do, it's true that Damián has no obligations. No school, no job, no official girlfriend. Damián is his only grandson, he has to accept it. He'll manage somehow until the end of August. And then he'll hurry back to his own world.

He finally has to face life's trials responsibly and not run away from them. It had to happen sooner or later; after all, he was twenty-seven this year. Will he last two months in this wooded hole? His mother doesn't believe in him, his stepfather doesn't believe in him, his stepsister gives him a week... Only his grandfather has placed his trust in him. Perhaps only superficially, but it seemed credible. His irritation grew as he thought about the future. He pursed his lower lip and concentrated on driving.

He put his worries behind him, thinking that things would work out somehow, as they always did.

The smudge on the horizon turned out to be a white house. It danced in the hot air like the pole dancer at the club the day before yesterday. Damian had to squint his dry eyes to make sure it wasn't a mirage caused by dehydration, and in doing so, he forgot to watch the road, which is unforgivable here in the Wild West. He took his hand off the steering wheel for a moment to remove his sunglasses, and at that moment a violent impact shook the entire car. The glasses flew through the air, along with his T-shirt, and Damián's inertia threw him upward, his head colliding with the ceiling. He groaned loudly in pain at the sound his old Audi A3's chassis made when it hit a deep pothole. The car swayed and, accompanied by a disturbing rumble, all four wheels landed back on the road. A cloud of dust rose from the ground.

With a pained grimace, he stopped and examined the hole in the road in his rearview mirror, expecting to find an exhaust pipe or something lying next to it. Fortunately, none of the innards of his beloved car were lying there. He breathed a sigh of relief. And then he crouched down with a grunt to reach under the seat for his discarded belongings, which, at his height of 187 centimeters, was a circus act in such a confined space. To hell with the T-shirt, but without his glasses, he would go blind in this treacherous weather.

There was nothing but dust, so with a slight feeling of anxiety in his stomach, he had to dig deeper under the seats. At that moment, it was as if he had stumbled upon a treasure chest. He fished out a cigarette box—empty, of course—a half-eaten Mars bar with long hair stuck to it, a Coca-Cola cup, and a crumpled KFC box, a condom wrapper, a used condom—all of which immediately flew out the car window—and finally, his glasses.

He straightened up contentedly and would have put them on his eyes if he hadn't noticed the color at the last moment. Pink? He stared at the sunglasses with pink frames and cute little ears. Cute for whom, he gritted his teeth and threw them out the window onto the already large pile in the ditch. The second attempt was successful, probably because there was no trash on the ground anymore. He polished the glasses on his shorts and immediately put them on his eyes. He felt that if he hesitated any longer, the sharp rays of the sun would burn holes in his brain through his eye sockets.

He started the car and drove off. Fortunately, the chimera on the hill was a real house.