Chapter 16

Chapter 16

I awake to the dulcet sound of the sweeping stream beside our laying bodies; an affluent unison to the gentle concord with the trees and the wind between them. I don’t remember falling asleep or being asleep at that. I attempt to rub moisture back into my eyes, parched, as is my mouth which is like hot vinyl car seat against my tongue. My mind is as dimly lit as the day is. I look up to a high overcast sky with silent lightning rolling deep in its face like ideas in the sky. London is still vast asleep beside me on the blanket in which I must have somehow missed when I decided to go to sleep. She looks peaceful. I feel like crap. I haven’t felt this kind of crap before. I believe it is normally entitled a ‘hangover.’ Which is something I surely I didn’t see myself feeling in any form of the near future.

“It might rain, you may want to wake up.” I nudge, disrupting her peacefulness.

“Nuh uh.” She murmurs stifled with closed lips and squirms into a new sleeping position.

I don’t think its going to rain anyway.

I can tell she’s not the type to let herself be woken up by anything against her will so I don’t continue to try. Out of the hundreds of times I have been here, I have never had such a ferocious urge to drink out of the stream.

My mouth.

Is…

So dry.

I drink from the stream.

As much as I feel the effects from the wine last night, the esoteric events of these epical past few days looms as a much more palpable hangover. I feel a little bit like I was just in a car crash, you know, drowning in the shock value and surreal sense of it all. But the surprising thing is that there is this ‘life will never be the same’ type effect that I feel. Do you know what I mean? It feels good.

“Where do you think it goes?” I hear London ask me hugging me from behind.

“Where what goes?”

“The river. It’s got to go somewhere doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I guess I never really thought of it.”

“That’s it? ‘I have never really thought of it’? Come on lets think of something better than that for our little magic river’s end.”

“Well I like it here. That’s all that matters to me.”

“So you’re not curious where the end of it is?”

“Not particularly.” I say unintentionally condescending.

“So you never believed in a pot of gold at the end of rainbows when you were a kid?”

“I never really believed in the end of rainbows at all,” After a few moments of silence, “so I take it that you thought there was a little shiny pot of gold waiting for you?” I ask further seeming condescending. Unintentionally.

“Well no, unfortunately my father pre exposed me to a scary movie called “The Leprechaun” when I was four so I was terrified of rainbows or even anything the color gold. Or Irish.”

We sit there in this position for awhile. I say awhile but really, its only about a minute, but I feel like we said a lot to each other in that minute without actually saying anything. I don’t know if I have ever had a hug from behind before. Silly as that sounds, I think that is my favorite kind of hug. It’s a kind of hug that gives you at least three different feelings. One feeling is surprise. That one is pretty self explanatory. You cant see behind you and when someone does something to you without seeing it enhances what it is they intended for you to feel. Especially when that expression is affection. The second feeling is reassurance. The sort of ‘oh that’s just so and so giving me a hug from behind, not a six hundred year old leprechaun trying to bite my neck off for stealing his gold‘ feeling. The third feeling is…hang on…let me get the right word for this…love? No. Inspiration? No. Comfortable? No. Lovecomfiration. Yes that’s it! No but seriously, it’s a good feeling. In the sliver of the time between specific and insignificant moments that is the surprise and the reassurance is what inescapably comes next. Just a really good feeling. Especially when it’s the most beautiful girl you ever seen in the entire tiny world whom happens to be named London McGuire.

I try to turn to look at her but with her arms wrapped gently around my shoulders and her weight fulcrum upon my back, I cant turn my head, so I strain my eyeballs till I pull a muscle in my back to see that she had fallen asleep, reassuring the fact that we actually have been sitting there for awhile. Or she is just really tired and can fall asleep in the sliver of insignificant moments. Either way, I smile with the lovecomfiration that a human being whom I am in love with could actually fall asleep on me. I kiss her forehead and gently lay her back down on her blanket to sleep deeper into the day.

I get up to walk around this personal garden of my Eden and wander through the woods. I almost feel like I am not walking through this forest to find anything, or see anything, or do anything but to enjoy right now. All I can really do is just think about all that has happened and how it seems like how my life took seventeen years of sequences, and random events, that have been weaved together to only create the canvas of my life that is just starting to be flickered with paint. After wandering and sulking in the shrillness tone of how things are right now, I come across a dead bush with branches like skeleton fingers, with a patch of misfit roses grown below its twisted frame. There are about six or seven roses colored orange and lavender. I can’t remember what those colors stand for but I decide to take my chances and pick one of each color for my love awaiting my return.

I get back to Eden and see two bottles of empty wine, one ruffled blanket, and minus one brunette. A gust of wind blows a storm of flowing pollen around me. She didn’t say goodbye? Why wouldn’t she even say bye? Does she not like me? Is all of this happening too fast for her? Did I scare her off?

After a few more moments of feminine bantering the real panic starts kicking in. I immediately start scanning the tree line, staring into the surrounding woods. My mom warned me about this. She told me to not be alone too much. There is a serial killer reeking horror in Eden and I leave, quite possibly the love of my life, alone? In the middle of the woods!

I feel the heartbeat heavy in my hands and the relentless sheet of brown doom encompasses my vision of all that surrounds me. I can’t tell if this sensation is blood running into my head or away from it but it feels as if I am going to pass out. Repetitive glimpses of a beautiful women I don’t recognize but feel like I have known for years flash on and off like a cartoon flip book in my head. Sound is now starting lose me and I silently drop to my knees. Sound shoots back into my head as my head hit’s a pile of sticks on the blanket. I look up to see that it isn’t a pile of sticks but its sticks put together in the form of a house. As the brown dissipates the femininity returns but in a gleeful array this time. I’m not sure what she even means by this house but I know it is something London would do. I am especially confused of why she put the letters S and J next to it but I’m sure its something cute and clever. I’ll ask her later.

I’m now walking home and can feel he sun breaking through the overcast sky as if the clouds were just morning breath and the day just brushed its teeth. I haven’t felt this good in an eternity. I don’t know when I will see London again. I mean we have a long weekend so I will at least see her in school in a few days. Either way I think I am going to just let London just pace her own way into my life. As much as I would love to be in every moment of her life, I am just going to let our dance take the steps that it takes for it to be a natural act. Not something forced or contrived. Just--right. Basically what I am saying is, I would of course love to turn the corner and see her again right now but I just know its going to be a little before that happens.

“Are those for me?” London asks startling me as I walk up to my porch.

“We’re going swimming!” Jack screams as he, JP, Kyle, and Norah come sprinting down the stairs nearly taking me with them.

“They are beautiful.” London swipes the roses from my hands. Smells them. Kisses me on my neck behind my ear.

“Swimming huh?” I say finally getting a word out.

“Yep. You’re not the only one with a favorite spot.” London smiles.

Jack and JP of course are walking a good fifteen foot pace ahead of us while Norah walks to the left of London. London is just ahead of me with her right hand on Kyle’s head, fingers immersed in his thick red locks of hair. I am just now noticing that my jaw muscles are concentrated elsewhere for my mouth is ajar as my eyes are fixated on a sure testosterone arousing sight. London’s super short cutoff jean shorts with pockets flailing to the side is just wrong in so many ways at the expense of adolescent virgin teenagers like myself. The muscles in her lean and long, naturally tan legs act as two vigilantes taunting me with brute force toward my arousal, yet with the grace and subtlety as a paper airplane landing perfectly upon the floor. Each of her butt cheeks seem as if they are in competition to see which one can jostle higher with each stride, flip of her flip flops, and every sway of her mirage like hips. Her dark hair along her back looks as if it is whispering to the sun about me for the sparkles in her hair uniform with each strand as its own separate energy of that of flirting children. She looks back at me as if she knows I am staring at her and winks at me, enticing me even more than any flailing pocket vigilante mirage could.

We reach London’s house and walk around to her back yard. There isn’t much back here besides a shirtless man in coral Hawaiian swim shorts, a ridiculous straw hat, and an acoustic guitar to his side passed out on a lawn chair.

“Is that your--”

“No that’s Bob. He just lives with us,” She answers casually, “He’s a musician.”

“Some water, fucking would be nice.” Jack yells as they stare baffled, towels looking disappointed furrowed to their ankles, their heads slung towards the sight of a waterless in ground pool, bottom overlaid with a seaweed like substance.

London walks over to Jack with mischief in her eyes and haste in her step. She grabs Jack by the chin squeezing his cheeks pursing his lips together.

“Fucking in water is overrated,” she says to all of our shock, “Would you kiss your mother with that mouth?”

Jack stands intimidated with a demeanor that he has never been touched by a girl before and represses through squished lips, “I don’t know.”

“Would you kiss me?” She says sternly with sincerity; eyes blazing with sexuality. After a breath clinging pause, London slowly moves her face towards Jacks lips. I feel like I can hear his heartbeat from here as London pauses--looks into his eyes-- and kisses the air a slight centimeter away from Jacks lips. She unhinges her fierce grip from his face and gives a light smack on his cheek snapping him back to reality and into puberty, perhaps a year too early.

“There is just something so unethical about swimming in a man made pit of water when you have what awaits us just through that amassing labyrinth.” London says like a French poet as her hand exhibits along the tree line ahead of us like the women on the price is right unveiling our prize. She skips towards Norah wisps through her hair and looks at it through her fingers in the shape of a rectangle like a movie director, steps back and says, “ Now you are a voodoo child.” I can tell Norah doesn’t have any idea what that means but I can tell she liked it. London now runs towards me and swings around my shoulders and onto my back and screams like a wild women and pointing ambitiously ahead. “Lead us to our fate sir William!” Like a women from the middle ages.

“You’re becoming more and more weird everyday.” I say amused.

“See, that’s where you are wrong about me darlin,” she says over my shoulder. She takes her hand and acts as if she took a cigarette from my hand, puts her two fingers to her lips, takes a fake drag, and blows imaginary smoke warm against my face, “I’m insane.”

We exit the woods and duck under the shaggy dwindles of the massive low swooping willow tree to envision nothing but a knurly, anti social dock, lopsided in ten different directions kamikaze-ing itself into the perfectly round and seemingly archaic lake, sprinkled with pollen and wild flower seed. Everyone stops and stares at it. Everyone for reasons of their own. I stay paused longer than everyone else as they all kamikaze their selves into this lake as if it is the only way to approach it. It’s like this place has a presence about it almost divine. Like it has a face that does not boast nor does it welcome warmly.

I see London out of the corner of my eye staring at me. I think she knows by now that I do these little cognitive binging sessions. I however pretend that she is admiring how I look mysterious and inept, immersed in thought, in a way that makes me a likable protagonist in her story. Not only likeable, but somebody just flat out unique. Different. Able to be loved. And want to want to tell things that they have never told anybody. I want to be that person. Does wanting to be that person make it impossible to be that person? You know, like how if I considered myself, lets say, a funny guy, doesn’t that automatically make me a much less funny guy? If I wish to be mysterious, likeable, and conceited enough to assume that I was a protagonist in somebody’s story, does it mean that I can’t be those things? I guess it’s strange how things look different out of the corner of your eye. They become something much bigger, literally and symbolically. A stray eyelash could seem like a person walking, which would then enable your instincts as a human to reason, and then conclude, most likely an arid assumption (also a very common human instinct) and further reinforce your belief in ghosts. We believe in ghosts to make our lives seem more interesting, we believe in what we see out of the corner of our eye to make what isn’t interesting seem alive, tangible, touchable, something that has a hollow reflection off the surface of what you want to see, not actually know. Some people only look at things out of the corner of their eye and don’t even know it. Me? I don’t know either.

I look at London and she isn’t looking at me at all.

“Where’d ya go just now?” She says to me out of the corner of her eye.

She must have meant that question to be rhetorical because without waiting for me to even exhale she runs to the slumping trunk of the willow tree hanging its branches out over the lake and climbs up into the tree and screams to everyone in the lake “I will walk on water!” She now pulls a rope attached to an even higher branch and runs and swings into the air into a perfect swan dive crashing into the water. After being under water for a second long enough to make you nervous for a second she breaks through surface of the water and her eyes wide and mouth gasping for a breath. After barely even getting a breath JP dunks London’s head under the water. Norah then sticks up for London by dumping JP’s head under and then Kyle does to her and so on and so on. After about twenty seconds of this dunking and splashing of bonding they burst into a ravaging frenzy of laughter. As soon as their laughter dissipates and their breath returns they look up to see me flailing through the air plummeting backwards and upside down heaving right towards them splashing all of them with amusement to my mind but with fanatical pain to my ass.

I transpire from the water with a limp body, in a lot of pain of course, but mostly hoping to get some good ol’ London McGuire hospitality and accord. Which of course I receive.

“Nice form on the back tuck champ.” She says as she ducks her head under my arm while laughing. Laughing for sure at my expense. She pulls my deadened body through the water to a floating dock in the middle of the lake and plops me face first onto the warm and ardent surface. She climbs onto the dock and straddles me from behind whispers with a desperate yearning in her voice. “no quiero que usted se despierte.”

“What does that mean?” She just lays on my back, both of our bodies warm, a flaccid mold, with cool beads of water falling down our backs like finger tips on our skin.

As soon as I accept the fact that I will probably never know what she said she lifts her head slowly from my back. She presses her wet lips against my ears and whispers, “Si vous vous reveillez je meurs.”

As much as I want to ask her again what that meant I can’t take my mind of how turned on am right now. All I can think about is rolling over and just ripping her black bikini from her--

“A storm is coming!” I hear in a collective voice from afar. London and I sit up with our legs submerged in the water and watch everyone run for cover. I have always found in odd when people run for cover when it rains. I don’t know why but I have never felt that urge. Are they just afraid to get wet? I suppose this is a reasonable time because lightning can be dangerous in the water but standing under a huge willow tree isn’t the best solution to that either. Ever since I was a boy I used to just let the rain wash me over like it was some kind of cleansing. Cleansing of what? I couldn’t tell you. It just always felt peaceful, comfortable, calming. I guess I’m just weird. I know I’m not like most people. I find calm in the things people find I highly uncomfortable. I feel uncomfortable in situations most people run to. I glance over to see London smiling with her eyes closed and her head hinged upward, welcoming the rain.

“Will you go to prom with me.” I ask.

“Do I look like a cliché to you?” She snaps casually.

“A little obsessed with being a nonconformist are we? How many languages can you--”

“Fine I will go to prom with you. Only if we make it interesting. A prank perhaps?”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“What’s the matter Willy.”

“I don’t know. Can’t we do something normal? You know, go to a nice dinner, go to prom dance, have a few glasses of probably drug or alcohol induced punch. Possibly go to a fairly romantic spot afterwards.”

“Something normal? Wouldn’t you be a lot less obsessed with me if I were normal?” I don’t respond. “Don’t worry okay? Trust me. Prom is going to be great. I did a normal prom last year and it isn’t anything that we will like. Especially you. We will do all the normal things…just with a slight twist. Oh and don’t worry I will bang your brains out after everything is done. It won’t be weird that you are a virgin either so don‘t fret.”

“I am not a virgin.”

“Oh well great! Then you can be the one in control since you know what you are doing. I love when the guy takes control.”

“Yeah I am a virgin.”

“I know.” After a moment, the PMS-mood-swing-like-weather stops raining and the refreshing chill of the water and meets the reemerging sun.

“Hey.” London chimes softly.

“What’s up.”

“I came up with the prank.”

“Oh yeah?”

“What are your thoughts on ecstasy?”

“The word?”

“No Will. Not the word.”