Chapter 13

Chapter 13

This is one of those good weekend mornings. Waking up early with no struggle, cool sheets against your skin and the scent of brazen air and musty windowsill filling your morning sun drenched room. One of those mornings where all it takes is one stretch to be ready for a day which has no obligations or expectations. Where you would be completely content with hanging out in bed for hours, or to get out of bed right away and see where the day takes you. I take my one needed stretch and right on cue for a perfect morning, I hear aluminum clanking against the walls in the hall outside my bedroom. It stops at my door. It’s closed so I hear patting trying to find the handle. She struggles momentarily to twist the door handle completely till it finally opens. There is one final clank of the aluminum stick against the floor and then rapid steps of Rose’s bare feet against the hardwood, and a tiny grunt, and thud, onto my bed, lofting the fresh laundry detergent smell, and cool air from the crisp sheets.

“How was the music show last night? Did you sleep well? Did you see the bad man?”

“How do you I wasn’t sleeping Rose?” I playfully ask rubbing my eyes.

“I didn’t hear you breathing.” I guess she can hear the difference between sleep breathing and awake breathing.

“So how did you know I wasn’t dead then?”

“Will!” She says smiling as she sprawls backwards hanging halfway off my bed exuding a perplexing display of energy for the morning.

“And what is a music show anyway. I went to a concert silly.”

“Yeah concert. Was it fun?” She says as she pops up from being halfway off the bed and transfers effortlessly into an Indian style sitting position looking directly into my eyes. I look at her and smile.

“It was beyond fun Rose. It was amazing. Perfect.” I kiss her on her forehead and mess up her hair. She goofily blows the strands of hair away from her face with her bottom lip.

“Did you see the bad man?”

“What do you mean? What bad man?”

“On TV. The news.”

“What about it?”

“They said somebody was killed at the music show. The concert. Mommy said a bad man did it.”

I pick Rose up and carry her down the stairs to the living room and sit her on my lap and turn on the news. Rose was right. Somebody was killed at the concert. Her name was Abby Reeves. I don’t know if you remember but she was the girl that was talking to me at the party where Trent was murdered. The girl that liked me. They said that like Trent, Abby’s friends said the last time they saw her she was really upset and said she wanted to kill herself, however, all evidence said it was clearly a murder. It actually happened in the middle of everyone as people were exiting the crowd but, it was so chaotic and crowded that there were no witnesses. She was stabbed multiple times in the back. The police are unsure of why she declared she was going to kill herself and ended up being murdered but, it shows that it is likely that the two murders of Trent and Abby are linked.

“Did you know her?” Rose asks.

“Yeah. I did know her. She was really sweet.”

Rose kisses me on the cheek. “She’ll be okay where she is going. Don’t worry.”

I’m kind of sad by all of this. I didn’t know her that well but I can’t help but to feel really upset. Especially, since out of all people, for some reason, she saw something in me that she liked. What if I was her mystery boy or something. Why do I feel guilty?

“Will did you hear?” My mom says as she walks in from the kitchen.

“Yeah.”

“Did you know her, honey?”

“Yeah he did. She was sweet.” Rose answers for me.

“Will I don’t want you to be out by yourself. It’s not safe until they find this guy.”

“Why do you think they said they wanted to kill themselves?”

“I don’t know it sounds to me like whoever is doing this is brainwashing these poor kids. Maybe it is some kind of demented cult leader or something. I don’t know.”

“What’s a cult?” Rose curiously asks.

“Rosie, honey, come help mommy make some chocolate chip pancakes for Will. He’s sad”

“Okay!”

“I’m not sad mom.”

“Okay well we’re going to make them because it’s a beautiful day, aren’t we Rosie?”

“Uh huh!”

I continue to watch TV to hear more details about the murders. This is really creeping me out. I can’t stop thinking about that man that I keep seeing. Why does he always seem to be looking at me? Am I one of his targets? For some reason I can’t seem to find the courage to tell anyone about him. Maybe this isn’t going to be a good day. I wonder if they are going to cancel tonight’s concert.

“Will can you get the door?” My mom yells from the other room. I open the door and see her.

London.

Maybe this will be a good day.

“Come on.” She says with an energetic smile and leads with a nod of her head.

“Where are we going?”

“Just come on. You’ll see.”

I look into the kitchen at my mom and she is smiling already and shoos me away. I hear Rose yell I love you as I shut the door.

As we walk, London is excitedly skipping ahead. She doesn’t skip like a child. It’s more of a graceful prance. She is really happy today. She has her camera that she usually has around her neck. She didn’t have it last night at the concert. She continues to playfully skip around, urging me to hurry even though I don’t know we are going to be late for anything. She talks a lot about how happy she was that we ran into each other last night. Just before we ran into each other she says she was having a terrible night. Brad was giving her a hard time. She also says how a lot of the girls she was friends with are immature. Not because they are bitchy and mean but, because they are really sweet people and they feel like they have to act bitchy and mean. She says she has a lot of hope for them and thinks they will learn to be more indignant rather than being angry at themselves. She says for now, she doesn’t really want to be their friends since they changed when her and Brad broke up. She says all this while taking pictures of me and flowers and fences in between sentences.

“You don’t talk much do you?”

“I talk. I just think more than I talk, I think.

“It’s not me is it?”

“No I like you.”

“So you’re shy?”

“No not really.”

“It doesn’t matter I like you too,” she pauses, “you’re just mysterious.”

I laugh to myself when she says that. The mystery girl calling me mysterious.



We walk into town and up to a tiny shop in town called Pieces of Eden. I must have walked passed this place my whole life without even noticing it, let alone even going in it. That’s strange for me to not notice something. I notice everything. I don’t know I how I could have walked by this shop almost everyday and never see it. Or choose to see it.

The letters that read Pieces of Eden above the screen door which is bordered white, with chipped paint, are faded and not large, along with a cursive script, with a color that seemed to be once gold but now, rubbed by the hands of time to a color of stonewashed rust. Maybe that’s why I have yet to see this place. It certainly doesn’t stick out. I don’t think so though. You would still think I would have seen it by now, right? For some reason I think have just always chose to not look. Pieces of Eden huh? Hmm I don’t know.

London opens the screen door and the rusty spring hinge yells at us. She lets go, and the door slams behind us like it’s pissed at us for opening it. London walks in with a composure like she has been here a million times and dealt with the moody door like a patient nurse tending to a stubborn old man that secretly loves the company. This store has a lot of character. Further displaying a perpetual sense of character, we walk into a wall of thick air, with a scent of black pepper incense and wet leaves. Irish bagpipe music softly immerses throughout the dim lit store. Filled with antiques and dream catchers and old records and Native American clothes and Persian style rugs and along with a myriad of other random things, leaving us merely no room to walk through.

“Hey Dmitri, are you in the back?” London affably calls out as she meanders through the store picking up random things and putting them back as she gracefully bounces around, leaving me trailing her like a confused puppy.

“Is that you Bella?” He answers hard pressed and stifled as if he’s struggling with something.

“Yeah, What on earth are you doing back there old man?” She asks amusingly confused.

“Ahhugh!” He grunts as he walks out of a back room carrying a giant moose head three times the size of his body.

“Dmitri! Jesus, let me help you with that, crazy!” London yells as she quickly helps him place the moose head on the dark unfinished hardwood, revealing Dmitri’s tiny body. He’s an old man with a very thin layer of grey hair over his pail walnut shaped head, going along humorously with his tiny walnut shaped body. When I say tiny I am not exaggerating by any means. He isn’t a thin gray hair over four-foot-ten. He isn’t skinny but he’s not all that fat either, he’s sort of just round. Ish. Like a walnut. Like I said.

“Ah Bella! Such a pleasure to see you. A man can only wish to see something so beautiful in one day, as you.” Dmitri bellows out with a high pitch and resilient Italian accent.

London smiles and lightly hits Dmitri on his shoulder with the back of her hand, “What the heck are you doing with a moose head?”

I love how she talks and smiles at the same time.

“Ah, you know, customers eh, they are always right, no? Is that not how the American phrase goes?”

“Somebody seriously requested you to order a moose head for them?” London asks amazed but familiar to Dmitri’s ability to never cease to amaze.

“Well, life is like a box of chocolates eh, as the Forest Gump would say.” He says into a bellowing Italian wheezy laugh. He seems to try very hard to relate to American customs. Except, he is more like a retro baby blue tuxedo, with the white ruffled button up, and bowtie at a party of black and white suits when it comes to trying to be American.

“Where do you find something like a moose head?” I ask him.

“E-bay.” He says excited again with that wheezy laugh, sounding like an applauding accordion, as he hooks his thumbs under his bright red suspenders.

“So Bella, what can I do for you today?”

“I was wondering if those candles I asked for came in?”

“Ah, yes, yes, they came in early this morning,” he says with his continuing excitement leading us to the candle section of the store (that is if you could call anything a section in this store,) “St. Valentino, the patron saint of love.

“Why does he call you Bella?” I whisper to London in attempt for the eccentric little Italian to not hear me.

“It means beautiful. He thinks I am beautiful.” London answers playfully batting her eyes like she is impersonating a women from a classic movie.

“Yes! Beautiful! Is she not a beautiful girl young man?” He joins in.

“Well, young Will, aren’t I just beautiful.” She says continuing to impersonate a temptress from an old movie.

They both look at me as I pause uncomfortably and they laugh in a teasingly manner.

“We’re just messing with you dude!” Dmitri bursts out.

“Yeah dude,” she says kind of mocking Dmitri and smiling at me, “But seriously I am just kidding you don’t have to ans--”

“Yes.”

“Excuse me?” She says confused.

“I just don’t like to throw that word around because it gets used too often, A sunset is beautiful, waterfalls, abundant skies, flowers, butterflies, are all beautiful. You are something more than that. Yes--I think you are beautiful.”

I am and idiot. I can’t believe I just said that.

In my peripheral vision I see her looking at me. She looks at me like she just fell in love and knows she isn’t supposed to. I don’t know why or how she would look at me like that but I do know that has these amazing big silver blue eyes. And I know that at certain angles they twinkle green when she is thinking about something. A lot of things are beautiful but she is beautiful. A caterpillar’s dream to fly.

“Where’d you go just now?” London asks in a soft tone I have never heard before.

“Huh?”

“You were just somewhere else.”



There has been something I have always wondered about people. Whenever I read a book or listen to a song I always take it with me through my day as some form of different life I am living in my head. I think we all sort of do that, maybe without even noticing it. I think we just naturally find some temporary form of escape from our usual lives. So we take a story that isn’t ours with us and pretend that it is. Without knowing that we do it. I have always wondered when I watch people pass by through their fleeting lives that move a lot faster than they probably realize, I have wondered what book or song is in their head at that moment. What story that isn’t theirs. Are they pretending to help them with their own story? Does it help them slow it down? I hope so. I think this world needs to do a lot of slowing down sometimes. I so badly want to walk up to these people and ask them--what song is in your head. What book have you been taking with you. Even though I want to--I never ask them. I like to think that one day I will go up to everybody and ask every person what song is in their head at that moment. I’ll write it down and at the end of the day I’ll take all of the songs and make a CD and give it to a random stranger. Maybe you?

“If I fall. If I faaaaall. Will you catch me?” London subtly hums to herself in a high pitched tone.

“What song do you have in your head?

“If you fall by aqualung.”

Track one. If you fall-aqualung.

Her dark hair shimmers in the sunlight as she prances delicately ahead of me as the tall grass field seems like moving water with the trail of deadened grass around her legs. We continue to walk through this copious field with the high clouds above our heads like paint splattered meticulously spread across a twilight canvas. This is a world too beautiful in a way that it seems as if we are spoiled. This new moment and the continuing moments to come are going to be always good enough. We walk aimlessly through this world of unknown beauty to a place of an unknown destination in which she seems to be aimlessly leading me. It doesn’t feel like we have a destination at all, but in a game in which we are learning how to play it as we walk. She seems to know more about this game more than me.

“So are you going to actually tell me where you are taking me?”

“Nope. I have always believed that the journeys we take are much more devious and endearing if you don’t know where you are going.”

“Is that how you are? Devious and endearing?” She looks back at me and smiles. Deviously and endearingly. But doesn’t answer. Two butterflies swoop up to our sides and float in the air like little rose peddles that just learned to dance. They fly besides us as if they are dancing to the sounds of our conversations.

“They don’t know where they are going either, do they?” She says without looking back.

Hmm.

“So wait, you don’t even know where we are going?”

“Yeah well I do actually,” she says laughing at herself, “but come on, lets do those kinds of things that nobody do,” she turns and grabs both of my hands walking backwards, looking into my eyes, “Don’t you want to, Sweetie? When is that last time you have walked nowhere but everywhere with that girl of your dreams.” She is so devious and endearing.

Never.

We continue walking through the scenic views and a lot of open and closed landscapes. We reach a cemetery and begin, with out knowing how or why, playing a game of tag. The flirty kind you would play with a girl in fourth grade when you first become attracted to the opposite sex. This is the first time I have laughed in a long time. Like really laughed. We are just having so much fun. It is sort of ironic that we feel most alive in a cemetery. I don’t know if that is wrong of us or not. We however, respectfully of course, just don’t care. I know if I were dead I would prefer to have life waltzing around my place of rest. I can almost feel the deceased smiling watching us reminiscing of their moments of love and solace. We are just living. It is comfortable here.

We get to London’s house which is not large but very new, clean, and untouched by chaos. Basically it is the opposite of my house. We walk up to the front porch and I blurt out.

“A little early to meet the parents, huh?” Of course I say this completely joking. She doesn’t seem to think it was funny. She doesn’t look mad but she just looks at me like she didn’t like me saying that. She reaches down to the welcome mat and grabs a key from underneath.

“Lets go.” She says sternly further exuding her displeasure with my comment.

“Wait, I was just kidding. I want to meet you parents and family. Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“Isn’t a little early for that?” She snaps.

“I’m sorry. I know nothing about you. At all. I am anxious to know everything about you. I really do want to meet your family. I’m just having trouble finding things to say. I should have realized that I am not funny. I am really not funny. I’m sorry. Shit.”

She turns and looks at me, her eyes sharply pierce my nerves with that ‘London look’ that I am just learning about now. I can’t help to think about how cute her face is when she is pissed. Her bottom lip slightly puckers up and a tiny wrinkle forms just above her nose between her eyes. She continues to pierce me with this stern look waiting for some kind of reaction. I am not sure how I look right now but I probably look like an idiot at a loss for words. Her face beautifully, yet, mockingly transforms to a smile with laughter stifled just behind it.

“I’m just giving you a hard time! You’re funny. Hey, don’t be nervous around me. I’m not that kind of girl.”

“I’m not nervous.”

That definitely sounded nervous, shit.

She answers with a smirk that looks like a sarcastic, yeah sure. She walks to the passenger side of her car and tosses me the keys.

“Get in you’re driving.”

“Wait no. I can’t drive, I don’t have my license.”

“Ha I know.”

“But I have never even driven before.”

“You have never driven before?” She asks curiously and excited.

“No.”

“I thought you people around here started driving at like thirteen?”

“Yeah I don’t know. I live life at my own pace I guess.”

“So you have never driven a car before?”

“I have never even been go-carting before.”

“This is going to be--absolutely--” she pauses to think of a word, “amazing!”

She begins to laugh hysterically and sits in the passenger seat regardless of what I just told her.

“London I am not driving this car.” I express to her adamantly and firmly.

Continuing to laugh, “Oh yes you are.”

“No I’m not, I can’t drive. I told you.”

“Yes you are, great time to learn.”

“I don’t want to learn.” I think I am beginning to sound bratty.

“William, I will dump you right now if you don’t get in this car and drive it.”

As soon as she says that I pause and swallow. “We are together?” I ask faintly.

She half smiles and looks at me, “Yeah. Aren’t we?”

I half smile and put the keys in the ignition.

“That’s my boy.” She says excitedly.

I turn on the ignition and the car starts and a power from underneath the seat that I have never felt before. Certainly never in the passenger seat. I begin to get nervous, my vision starts to get blurry, so I put my head on the steering wheel and close my eyes. My knees start jumping and shaking.

“Hey,” She says comfortingly and gently runs her fingers through my hair, “You will be fine.”

God that feels good. I have a girlfriend. London McGuire is my girlfriend. Screw it. I am going to drive this car! I can do anything! All hail Will Evans! Man I am crazy.

This upbeat song begins to play on her CD player.

“What is this song called?”

“Take this to heart by Mayday Parade.”

I peel off much harder than I ever thought I would have the balls to do. London squeezes my leg and starts laughing wildly as I completely drive off the dirt road and through the grass field.

“You might want to get back on the road!” She screams over the loud music.

“I’m trying!” I shout over her laughing as well.

We could both die and all we can do is laugh.

I finally get the hang of the steering and find the road. Breaking isn’t like I thought it would be. London can’t seem to breath she is laughing so hard as the car jerks us back and forth by my impeccable breaking skills.

“So where are we going Ms. McGuire?”

“Just keep going straight for about five minutes. I will tell you when to turn. You’re a good driver.”

“Yeah sure.” I say laughing at myself.



“Turn here!” She yelps just before the turn. I frantically yank the car left as the tires squeal like dying pigs around the turn. London once again begins to laugh like a crazy women.

“You did that on purpose didn’t you?” She shakes her head for she is laughing too hard to get a word out.

“I forgot. I swear.”

“I am beginning to think you are crazy, you know that?”

She shrugs her shoulders, “Better than the alternative I guess.”

“And that would be?”

“Boring.”

She certainly is not boring. I am feeling a lot less boring of a person myself lately.

“Okay Will, there is another left turn about twenty seconds away. Lets take another crack at that left turn, what do you say?”

“Ha yeah ill try to preserve our lives for a little bit longer.”

She giggles, “We’ll see.”

“Whoa wait isn’t this the turn onto the highway?!”

“Yup!” She shouts, blazingly laughing.

“I think we should stick to dirt roads and grass fields. You know, where there is no traffic.”

“Well this is the only way to the city that I know. So you are going to have to suck it up, Mr. Evans.”

I pull onto the five lane express way like a child who skipped the slide at the playground and went right for the rollercoaster. I guess I have always been comfortable with that.

“Not too bad, Willy. You’re a natural.”

“Willy? Yeah I guess so. What if I wasn’t though? We would probably be in a ditch right now.”

“Ha-ha yeah probably.”

“How did you know I could do this?”

“Because I told you that you could.”

“That’s it. Just because you told--”

She quickly throws her right leg over in between mine, grabs my face with both hands and starts kissing me passionately. Not quite romantic slow kissing but more like sexual hard kissing.

God that feels good. Wait, I’m still driving!

“London! Stop London I am driving on a highway!” I say loudly but muffled by her passionate kissing.

Her lips are so soft. Man.

As I try to pry her off my face she begins to laugh still kissing me. I give one final strong push and throw her back to her seat and we swerve into a lane next to me almost creating what would probably be a fifteen car pile up.

“You really want to kill us don’t you?

“Ha oh come on. You don’t think we are meant to die here like this. We will be fine. I’m never really afraid to die. Are you?”

“Actually--no I’m not.”

“You sure seemed like it about ten seconds ago.” She yelps into a now unsurprising frenzy of laughter.

“Very funny,” I pause and smile and look at her. “You laugh a lot don’t you?

Her face changes and she shrugs. “Better than the alternative.”