After my sixth trip, I came back down to find Poncey breathing heavily as he tried to move the harp. It’s the last thing to go, but I guess Poncey’s too weak to move it on his own. “Ah, is the poor little Ponce tired?” I chuckled.
“No; is dumb-head Dinger still trying to raise his English grade using alliteration?” Poncey shot back.
“Wow, it’s not every day I hear you use big words,” I replied. “Okay, I’ll help with the harp.”
“Just get it yourself.”
“If you’re tired, why don’t we take a break?” I suggested. “Betcha the harp won’t be needed for another ten minutes anyway.”
“Yeah, good idea.” Poncey flopped down on the stool behind the harp. He laughed and put his hands on the strings. “Hey, Dinger, do I resemble an angel?”
“Angels don’t exist, Ponce,” I replied. “People just say they do so they feel better about stuff.”
I relished getting to tell him the bad news. It’s fun to tell the children Santa Claus doesn’t exist.
Poncey shook his head. “You’re so narrow-minded, Dinger.”
“What!?”
“Yeah. You can’t prove they don’t exist, and people have seen them and everything. But you can’t believe in them. So you just block the entire idea out. That’s called being narrow-minded.”
“No, that’s called being logical.”
“Ha! Logic doesn’t always happen with the miraculous,” Poncey smirked. “Take that.” He laughed as I stared at him, a disgusted/dumbstruck look on my face. “Anyway, don’t you think I look good like this? I’d make a good harp player, I think.” He strummed a few of the strings, making a jargon of noise that sounded not too bad but still completely horrible, considering Poncey didn’t know how to play.
I grinned. “Let me try,” I insisted. “I’ll bet I can make it play better.”
Poncey laughed again and moved so I could sit in the harpist’s seat. “Go ahead and try,” he taunted me.
I reveled in the challenge, dramatically stretching out my fingers. “Just watch,” I said, arranging my hands on the harp like I’d seen on TV.
That’s when it happened again.
I felt my mind swept away as I was suddenly tangled in my alternate reality. “Huh?” I was back in outer space like the times before, in the hospital, in class. And this time I was fully engaged, and fully aware I had a right to be petrified.
Wildly, I tried to shake myself out of it, like it’s some spastic condition in my brain I could control. “What’s going on? I don’t like doing this anymore!” I shouted. “I didn’t ask for this!”
A soft laugh whispered behind me.
My back went icy with prickled awareness. “Huh?” I knew that laugh. My heart simultaneously stilled and beat faster.
I felt a hand on my arm; the voice tickled my ear. “Close your eyes.”
“What? Why?” I asked. “Who are you?”
“Please, trust me,” the urging gentleness whispered. “I’ll show you.”
I uneasily closed my eyes (against my better judgment.) Instantly, a pair of small hands intertwined with mine, and guided me as I plucked and strummed the harp, perfectly in tune.
Now I couldn’t resist; I opened my eyes, and turned around.
“Huh?” I blinked. I was back in the classroom, playing the harp harmoniously, with Poncey staring at me, his mouth agape. I would’ve laughed if I wasn’t so preoccupied with my own wonder.
“Wow! How do you do that?” Poncey asked, amazed.
My hands fell off the strings, shaking. “Was I playing the entire time?” I asked.
“What? What do you mean? You just sat down and started playing like a pro,” Poncey told me. “And hey, it was really good, too. Really, really good. I’ll bet if you composed a song on the harp for Gwen, she’d forget Tim and come running to you.”
All of the wonder and amazement dropped out of me as reality brutally slapped my face.
“Sorry…” Poncey muttered, seeing my stricken face. “I heard some of the other guys talking about what happened with Gwen and Tim and everything.”
It was time to work, not to brood, not to think, not to care. I shook off my sadness quickly enough. “Well, let’s get this harp moved, anyway.”
Just as we finished hauling the harp up to the auditorium, Gwen beckoned us. “Hey, guys,” she called out. “That run was pretty good, don’t you think?”
“If you mean my running back and forth for the music equipment, I disagree,” Poncey quipped. “Sorry, Gwen, we didn’t catch your performance. I’m sure you broke a leg, though.”
More like a heart, I grimaced, recalling how she and Tim are oh-so-magically-in-love now.
“No!”
I’m jolted out of my bout of self-pity as a familiar voice raked into the far reaches of the auditorium following a loud clanking noise. Almost instantaneously, everyone grew silent. It’s apparently time for a real show.
The noise, I saw, came from Courtney throwing down her paintbrushes. It’s disturbing that I could see, far back as I was, anger clearly etched onto her no-longer-pretty face.
I was more surprised Mikey wasn’t the one on the receiving end of her tantrum. It was that girl. Raina…Raiya? Whatever her name was.
“Wonder what Raiya did this time?” Nearby, a group of Rosemont girls were muffling their giggles as they whispered excitedly.
“I think it’s brave of Raiya to stand up to Courtney,” another girl says.
“Shush! Do you want to go against Courtney Knox? She was the most popular girl at Rosemont. Besides, Raiya’s just getting in Courtney’s way.”
“I suppose you’re right. Poor Raiya.”
I sighed. Girl talk was so shallow and pathetic. Talking about the social pyramid when I’m nearby was almost insulting to me.
There’s a smaller banging noise and a loud “Oof!” all of a sudden. I looked over to see Courtney had just tried to storm off, but she’d accidentally sunk her foot in a paint tray and tripped over.
I had a hard time not laughing; so I gave up and snickered loudly. Others joined in quickly and with little persuasion. Courtney turned a flaming red, making us all laugh harder. “Augh!”
“What’s that all about?” Gwen asked. I commended her for her question; things are often funnier with the whole story.
Gwen was answered by one of the giggling Rosemont girls. “Well, apparently, Courtney was upset at Raiya for painting the backdrop.”
“Oh, that’s all?” Gwen shrugged. “It seems like a lot for something so little, I’d say.”
Mikey and I both watched as Courtney came stomping down the aisle towards us. Her face had a sour look on it, like a dried-up raisin. It did her no credit with her nose stuck up in the air like that, either, her face scrunched like that of a half-melted Barbie doll.
I smirked at Mikey. “Still going to ask her out?”
Mikey didn’t take his eyes off of her retreating form until she was gone. Then he shook his head. “Nope.”
“Twenty dollars.”
“Nope. Couldn’t pay me to.”
I snickered. “I’ll say this – detention might be bad, but it’s definitely entertaining.”
Gwen sighed wearily. “I wish this wasn’t happening. Tomorrow is opening night, and the last thing we need is conflict…”
I stopped listening to her soon enough. It wasn’t that I didn’t respect Gwen, but why didn’t she bother Tim? After all, she was Tim’s girl now, right? It was not my job to make her feel better.
Gwen finally caught on to my non-attention and hit me on the shoulder. “Hey! You aren’t listening to me, are you?”
“You know, Gwen, you’re really being too selfish about it,” I said, before calmly walking away.
I heard Mikey and Ponce lau
ghing even harder than they had at Courtney’s departure, and I felt good despite leaving at odds with Gwen.
Well, she was being selfish. She was too busy being caught up in her own problems to see I had my own life.
I walked up onto the stage, just to look around. The balcony piece was dry now; Courtney’s mediocre painting was permanent. Imagining Tim trying to climb up and having it break amused me. That would be hilarious!
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Samantha walking in my direction; I scampered aside, deciding it was best to duck out of the way.
“Oof.” I found myself cursing softly but no less urgently as I tripped. “What the –?” I looked down to see a night sky. The backdrop.
A small sun near the bottom captured my eye; it’s painted a darkish red color, with surrounding yellow and orange clouds that faded into pink, and from there became purple, which then turned into a dark blue. Huh. The orange had been a good call. “Wow. That’s really good,” I whispered.
It’s almost real enough to dream under.
A small movement flashed in the corner of my eye. I turned, but saw no one there. “Huh…” I could’ve sworn I saw something.
I didn’t have time to worry about it. The detention bell rang, and I was free. Free at last!
11
Attack
The rain seemed to match my mood as I walked towards the school once more; a full week of non-stop rain had passed. But I couldn’t be sure whether it was the rain or the mess with Gwen and Tim which made me raw and awful.
Rawful, I supposed.
“It’s not my fault,” I muttered to myself, splashing through the puddles. “How could I anticipate Gwen would feel so sorry for that drama geek enough she would say she had ‘feelings’ for him? Those feelings could easily be pity as much as love.”
I just haven’t had the best week, I told myself. First we lost at Homecoming, then I got detention, then I’m stuck at play practice for detention, and then girl I’ve deemed lucky enough to go out with me decided to hook up with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s long-lost great-grandson.
I sighed, looking up at the sky, a small part of my mind worried that it was worse than that, too. There was also the question of my sanity, the condition of my brain, or the conspiracy of my company to consider – the flashes of alternate realities haunting me since the meteorite struck.
The images, which I once thought were peaceful and welcoming, like a private island for the mind to wonder off to occasionally, had begun burning and stinging into my very bones – although that might’ve had something to do with the fact I kept falling asleep in drama class.
Earlier that morning, I’d woken up to a dream of some sort, with my back and arms stinging and my head pinching with pain. My eyes had been blurry, but I could’ve sworn my arm was glowing at first, too.
It wasn’t even that weird of a dream, except for a couple of things.
There was this woman in it. She was colored a blue color. I called her Maia, the name I’d assigned to her from the other dream I’d had.
She seemed familiar to me as she lounged about. She’d taken a nap in the sky, high above all the city rain. I saw her as she dozed peacefully, while something like a servant or a minion punched out rain, thunder, and lightning on the city below.
I looked up at the sky as I walked onward to school, and in between blinks I shook my head. There would be no way to see if that were even remotely true. Clouds usually… I faltered. Looking up again, I saw just rain falling. “There are no clouds.”
“There are no clouds.” Then it’s another dream that scourged my mind. The girl. That’s what she’d said as she looked up at the sky.
“That’s weird,” I murmured slowly. “Huh.” I shook it off as best as I can. The power plant one town over must’ve been experimenting with nuclear power again. I pushed the thought aside as I relentlessly marched on through the rain.
One day I would run out of excuses. One day this relentless pursuit would end, and I would be flooded with new revelation. The shadow of light that hunted me would one day be the death of me, and I would no longer be able to shade the truth to my liking.
But it was not yet that day, thank goodness.
I welcomed the sight of Rachel’s Café like a lighthouse on the shore. Perhaps Jason was inside. And I was hungry. And it was a good place to look for a distraction.
“Hey, Jason’s friend!” Rachel called out as I walked through the door. “How are you?”
“Hi, Rachel,” I waved back. “It’s okay, I guess.”
Rachel smiled. “You’re lying, I can tell.”
“How?” The word escaped me before I stopped it. Slipping up because of the weather, no doubt.
“No one’s having a good week. I don’t expect any different from the expression you had as you walked in here.”
“I guess you’re right. It’s been a bad week. I would like some decent food to help it out.” It hadn’t helped when I’d arrived home from the worst day ever the day before and right away noticed two critical things: Estella-Louise had left a bowl of Vegan-O’s cereal (ce-“unreal”) and organic almond milk for dinner (“Boy, someone’s getting lazy,” I muttered), and the refrigerator had nothing in it like meat or something looking relatively normal. Or anything I could recognize.
Rachel got up from her stool and put on fresh coffee. “I’ll make you a chai blend,” she offered. “It’ll cheer you up.”
“Thanks.”
As Rachel handed me her special chai latte and a plate of cookies, the news popped up on the TV behind the bar. I barely paid attention – only enough to know I was truly and undeniably bored.
“Good evening, it’s been a wet week in Apollo City,” Jack Anchorman started out with a clearly forced grin on his middle-aged made-up face.
“Yes, that’s right, Jack,” Patricia Anchorwoman keyed in. “But there is more concern elsewhere. In medical news, hospital officials are still stunned as they have yet to diagnose the cause of the latest sickness going around town. A serious outbreak last Friday night at the Falcon-Tiger game at Apollo Central High sent twenty-six people to the hospital. While there have been reports alluding to foreign and domestic bioterrorism, individuals are highly cautioned to be on the lookout for signs of sickness or mysterious activity.”
I stilled, almost frightened. Friday’s game. Bioterrorism? Sickness?
“Awful, isn’t it?” Rachel asked. “It’s so weird how that all started up.”
“How many times must I tell you, Rachel?” an angry old voice piped up. Rachel’s kooky grandpa was sitting nearby. I inwardly groaned.
Grandpa Odd leaned forward. “It’s not a sickness,” he declared. “It’s got to be something else.”
“Like what?” I asked, despite myself.
“It’s a curse, no doubt about it.”
Voodoo was not something I believed in. I (wisely) turned my attention back to my food. “You make the best stuff,” I told Rachel, glad to change the subject. “What kind of cookie is this?”
“Chocolate strawberry-banana,” she smiled. “It’s organic, too.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that,” I muttered disdainfully. “My mother’s on a crazed vegan diet this month. She’s try to lose weight I think, even though she’s already thin enough.”
Rachel laughed. “Sounds like the average woman, that’s for sure. Although I’d never go vegan for that.” She pulled out another cookie and bit into it. “Seriously, if I was fat, I’d make fun of skinny people.”
I broke out in snickers. “That’s great! I like your food. At home, Cheryl’s got a chef who comes in and makes her stuff, but it’s always like grass clipping casserole or baked soybeans. You should be her cook.”
“Oh, that’s a nice offer, but this is my home,” Rachel grinned. “Literally. I live right on top of the bar
with my mother and cousin… and Grandpa, too, though he’s supposed to be in a nursing home right now.”
“I told you I’d never go back,” Grandpa Odd spoke up. “I don’t need anyone’s help to survive.”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “Yeah, sure, Grandpa. Since you’re so capable, why don’t you go and hang up that new picture? I just got it from the framer’s today.”
“Are you kidding? That’s a job for a young whipper-snapper. Why don’t you ask him to do it?” The old man huffed into his cup, nodding at me. “When will the young learn common sense? The tragedy of youth…”
“Eh, what?” I didn’t understand him. The words were easy enough, but the meaning?
The eyes of the old man twinkled from beneath his old ragged hat. “The tragedy of youth… lamentable!”
“Grandpa, enough. He’s becoming one of our most valuable customers,” Rachel scolded him.
As Rachel and her grandfather started arguing, I smiled down into my near-empty cup. It’d been a good visit. It’s always nice to be reminded that no matter how much life sucks, someone else has it worse.
And I was glad for the reminder, as I was just off to go and make my life even more worse.
I’d been coerced into seeing the play tonight.
The thunderstorm last night had kept a lot of students up much later than usual (Most of them go to bed at two in the morning anyway) – but today was the play’s opening night. That was reason for some kind of celebration, to some anyway, meager and unimpressive though it is.
Gwen was especially bubbly, I noticed as I watched her from behind the stage, a sour look no doubt hanging on my face. It’s probably because of getting to make-out on stage with Tim. Gross.
I want it known I only went to the play for three reasons.
One: my parents had insisted on it. And they are paying, so I am duty-bound to take freebies from my parents whenever I can. Especially to make my grades even better, which was reason number two for going. My teachers all offered extra credit for seeing Romeo and Juliet. Yes, our school district was that poor.