Hello, Writing Cafe (new names -_-). I haven't posted anything here in awhile, but I had the idea to get some thoughts on a trilogy of short stories I have written for school assignments (yes, school). They turned out very decent, and while they have more than their fair share of adjectives and adverbs (more than I personally like), I will edit those out later. I'm posting them one short story at a time, in order, likely all in this thread if allowed. Each is 4-6,000 words, and I have two of them done. Keep in mind that, because this is a for-school written story, it does not have near the description of what I normally write (TPOR). It also is less thought-provoking.
Rating explanation: PG. There is kissing and a sort of relationship between tweens in this, mind you.
I present to you Book 1: Meltdown.
Mother said that she would have not one relationship until she was older.
Mother said that it was to steer her in the right direction in life.
Mother said that it was to protect her.
Mother had never said that the restriction masked a feeling so good it could melt your heart. But Kerie Lynn Swenson found out soon enough that rules are meant to be broken, to achieve these ends. She had found love, and no rule would impede her quest to clench it by the throat and strangle it until she found the bliss the novels depicted. She wanted love to herself . . .
And she was only eleven.
***
Kerie Swenson started off the fated day as a run-of-the-mill preteen girl, just being herself, coy and flirtatious, all in hopes of appearing feminine and "scoring" potential boyfriends for high school. That day, she dressed out in a light-blue, short-sleeved shirt; cuffed denim short shorts; and pink flip flops, your average "hot" outlook. Complementing this was a silver necklace dighted with a pendant bird's wing and a silver bracelet with a dangling heart on her right wrist. Up top - upon her cranium - there hung a full head of light-blonde hair, fallen to the length of her shoulder blades and all held back by a neon hairband, and argentate butterfly studs adorning her earlobes. In her green purse, slung over her left shoulder, a pair of pink-rimmed glasses rested, in reach in case they were required, plus the rest of her accessories - including her silver, heart-shaped earrings, her second most-beloved - and that Hello Kitty wallet that drives her friends up a wall in invidious envy.
All of this stacked upon her bantam body made for a girl that most boys should covet, but she had always been too young. It depressed her that she was mature in mind, but not in stature or girlhood. So, just for what she expected to be the far future, Kerie started on any plausible, promising males that she could find attractive in her eyes later on in her epoch. So far, so good, but the wait became unbearable.
Reis Scrimsher made her go giddy and happy and dizzy and almost faint in the hallway during the first passing period. He simply blew her a kiss and she fell like a house of cards in a hurricane, so captivated by his smoothness that her brain and heart exploded at once. Her purse fell to the ground with a light thud accompanied by the jangling tunes of her shaking jewelry bag and the muffled rattle of her glasses case. Kerie herself had been talking with her "best-bud", Payden Gidrey, and Payden providentially caught her - otherwise, a locker would have yelled "Hello!" to the back of her head.
"Kerie, my gosh! Are you okay?" Payden yelped, anxiously shaking her inane body. Kerie's mouth drooled, giggling asininely. Payden could swear Reis had just had a night with her, because a spastic laugh, incessant, resounded from her. Prompted by her madness, Payden slapped - lightly or not, she did not care - Kerie even more senseless. The giggles would not stop, the beatific tears would not cease their flow, and the girl in her arms would not come back to reality.
Praying that the school's bell would halt for them, Payden lay Kerie on the tile flooring and opened both lockers, gathered the apparatuses needed for mathematics, and reset the dials upon re-locking them. Laying Kerie's supplies on the floor next to their owner, Payden trotted to Mrs. Callegan's room at the end of the hall. Apparently, the Gidrey girl had just left her friend to come to her senses on her own.
Kerie came to two minutes after the tintinnabulation of the red bell above her, beckoning something she refused to comprehend.
***
Kerie slipped out of school with nothing more than lunch detention, much to her dismay, but as Payden would say it, that's the way the cat kills itself. She remained largely unfazed throughout the day, however, as the sensation she had experienced after Reis had made her swoon proved memorable. She had learned that Reis was the new boy five houses down from hers, and he conveniently shared two-thirds of each day with Kerie schedule-wise. Kerie had never fallen for someone akin to that moment, but her instincts told her that he was the one. He was the one.
They apparently rode the same bus, so Kerie, after the final bell, met Reis at the corner of the road where the yellow tarantula parked each afternoon. She figured that it was now or never, as Reis seemed the type to move on.
"Um, hello, do you remember me? I fainted in the hall because of your affections to me. Remember?" she begged, seriously comprehending dropping on one knee.
Reis turned his head towards her, simpering awkwardly. "Yeah, I remember. Kerie Swenson, was it?"
"Yes, yes! That's it!" Kerie cheered, bouncing sillily on the balls of her toes. "I never caught your name though."
"Reis Scrimsher. Don't wear it out," he coolly said, brandishing a sparrow track in his left hand and tracing a circle behind it with his thumb. "So, how have you been, fine lady?"
Kerie blushed, bringing her knees together. "Oh, you . . . Yeah, I've been great, Reis. I've just been thinking about you. Why did you make me faint?"
"Because I love you." The bus came anticlimactically, and he urged her on. "I think I'll walk today. Give you some time to think about it."
"Wait!" Kerie screamed, but Reis forced the doors on her, leaving her to go sulk in the back of the bus with a question as big as the universe on her frail mind.
***
At supper, Kerie described her day to her parents and six-year-old sister, Kyli, but intentionally left out Reis and her fainting. Her mother would smash her skull in, frankly put.
"Sounds interesting," Mom replied. "Did you study for that A+?"
Wiping her face with a fistful of napkins, Kyli shouted, "You bet!"
"Kyli, shush!" Kerie harshly said, partially gritting her teeth. Her parents were giggling, surprisingly, so Kerie added, "Ha-ha-ha." Turning to Mom, she said, "Yeah, I did. When you have a bud like Payden, it's never too hard. She is one workaholic, y'know?"
Dad rolled his eyes. "I think we know, dear. You mention that every time Payden is brought up, don't you?"
Mom looked at him funnily, then back to Kerie. "You and Payden, I just don't know. How do you get along?"
"We just help each other. What's the big deal with that?" Kerie asked.
"Nothing at all, hon. I just thought that you'd be spending time with girls like you rather . . . Oh well."
"Oh well is right. I just prefer her company because she knows what she's doing. All these other chicks are brats and goths and jerks and cats with double-pierced ears. It's depressing, y'know?"
"Kerie," Dad interrupted. "It isn't nice to judge classmates like that, but I see what you mean. My intermediate school was just like that. The boys around me were all jerks save a few."
"Oh, you have no idea. I am not kidding, Dad. I mean, Maddie Kindelfeld has two in each ear, Molli Rainier has two in each ear, Isabel Caez has two in each ear, Hope Collins has three in each ear, and freaking Sidney Kittinger has four in each ear. Honestly, what the fruit? And even though she's sorta my buddy, Addie Shatner is a month younger than me, and she has two on her lobes and a cartilage ring on the left. I do not want to hang out with those types of people. Save Addie, they're nothing but freaks who have a half-chance of ending up sixteen and pregnant in an alleyway while the lover is off playing football. Just no."
"Kerie, you seem to be done, so please go up to your room."
Kerie looked down. She had not touched her plate.
***
Locking the door of her house before striding as always to the bus stop, Kerie only thought that the "detention incidents" had only been bad luck. She denied their magnitude mainly because she had met Reis Scrimsher that same day, and apparently, that, to her, outweighed the incidents massively.
Ending her humble skip at the corner, Kerie looked up and found the same figure: a sepia shirt, blue jeans, and blue-and-white Nikes. Smiling crazily, she strolled up beside him. This smile masked the puzzling thoughts of yesterday, however.
"Hello, Miss Swenson. I assume you are grand as always?" Reis's accent mimicked an Irish brogue, polite and all, and Kerie cracked, writhing with giggles.
"Yes, kind sir, I am 'grand' . . ." she replied, curtsying. "So, about yesterday-"
"Ah-ah. Miss Swenson, I know. But your parents won't like it, will they?" Reis stared at her. "Consider that."
Kerie threw her hands up, beaming. "I don't give anything about what Mom says! I love you too!" She fell over again, this time landing in Reis's anticipant clutch. Her right shoulder now rested upon his hands. Hanging her head back, Kerie looked up at the bottom-side-up face of Reis. "I just wanna know, what do you like about me?"
Reis sputtered somewhat, then leaned his head down, still gazing at her, both dreamily stricken. "Everything. You dress cutely, your hair is beautiful, your eyes are captivating and darling, your personality is winning and funny, and to be frank, I love those butterfly earrings. They bring out your daintiness, should I say." He paused. "Wait. One's upside down . . ."
Kerie felt his soft hand work between her cheek and hair and relaxed, sighing as he rotated the butterfly. "Thank you, Reis. I love those same things about you. Plus, you're just you, a boy that I would love to be with," she said, watching his charming face.
Upon finishing, Reis looked at her eyes again. "Boyfriend?"
Kerie beamed once more. "Girlfriend?"
Reis flipped her around so that she stood upright, then said, along with Kerie, "Always." The bus rolled up to the curb subtly in the background, and they walked towards the doors, hand-in-hand.
***
Now that Kerie flew free from lunch detention, Reis joined Payden, Addie Shatner, and herself at a table. Payden was about Kerie's height, with wavy blonde hair, a green shirt, pink short shorts, and sandals. Addie seemed four inches shorter, with brown hair that fell to her high shoulder blades with the left side of her forehead slightly more showered in it, a pink blouse, short shorts like Kerie's, and silvery flip flops with glitter on the tops.
"Hi, Reis!" Kerie squealed, cheerfully waving her hand as he sat down next to her. "Girls, this is Reis Scrimsher. Payden, he's the one who made me faint in the hall."
Addie banged her hand down as a fist, standing from her chair and hunching over her lunchbox. "No way. You managed to make Kerie faint!?"
"Indeed, miss," Reis said, bowing his head. The girls giggled again. Addie offered a high-five that he gladly accepted.
Payden patted Kerie on the back. "No kidding. He's a real mate. Good find, Kerie."
Kerie stared at her awkwardly, and they both cracked. "You haven't heard the load of it. And neither have I, now that I think about it," she said, turning her head to the one she then requested to "unload it." Accepted.
Reis spent the majority of the lunch sharing his back-story. How he moved from Iowa down here to Little Rock, how his childhood was spent, how - everything, it seemed. The girls caught a fever of laughter as if it was cancer, always hugging one another for support to keep from falling off their seats. Reis sure knew how to talk with jokes, as Payden said midway through the lunch.
Towards the end, Kerie noticed that they had been holding hands the whole lunch, under the table. She nudged Reis with the same hand's shoulder, pointed with her left hand at it, and smiled warmly. Reis mirrored her, then cordially gestured towards his shoulder. Kerie patted it, but strangely, it felt unnaturally warm. Little heed was paid, unsurprisingly.
Kerie's head lay there for the rest of lunch, dreaming. She failed to register what they conversed about, but it seemed a friendly enough palaver that she was well off with disregarding. She figured that her boyfriend would relay it to her at the bus stop.
The problem: neither of them took the bus that day.
***
Reis led Kerie into the woods through a back alley instead come three o'clock, slipping through a gap in a wrought-iron, rusted fence that must have been axed down just last week - at least in Kerie's eyes, and she was perpetually blind at this moment.
"Where are we going, Reis? I've never been in this section of the woods before," Kerie asked hesitantly, partially wondering if this was a date of some sort. She enjoyed the idea, that certain.
"Well, that's where we're headed. I want to show you something." Reis's anxiety reminded Kerie of Bridge to Terabithia, except for the fact that Leslie died here.
Please don't die, Kerie, please don't die, she prayed.
"So, what is it?" Kerie asked after two minutes of running, her left wrist grasped by Reis's right hand.
Reis suddenly stopped, not answering - or bothering to answer - Kerie's question, as there stood what he wanted to show her.
A single, rust-covered wall stood like a sentinel, surrounded by trees that encircled it like hounds. Upon the iron was, etched in crude, faded white paint:
LOVE + PEACE = INFORMATION
"Someone must have read Hearts in Atlantis too much. What idiotic thoughts." Reis let a bird fly by. "Love should be the result, not a part of the problem."
He turned and kissed Kerie on the spot.
***
The kiss was so unexpected, but Kerie relished it, almost to the point where the soap operas would call it "romantics" - upon letting go, Kerie actually had to gasp for air. It had nearly choked her to fall for Reis. But she wanted more, and Reis evidently knew it, as he leaned over and repeated the process. Kerie's muffled "Mmm"s and "Ohh"s and "Ahh"s just provided the music.
"Oh, Reis. I . . . I loved that," Kerie stammeringly said, still gasping.
"Feels good, doesn't it?" Reis soothed, caressing her chest with a light rubbing of his hand. More music came from her lips, and he kept going.
"You bet. Ahh . . . Come here," Kerie said, pulling Reis's head closer and ruffling his short brown hair around with her own fingers. "If this is what love is, I don't know anything better."
"Now, now, Kerie. Remember that we're tweens here. This is not love at its finest. We need to wait for that."
"So, there is something better than this? Wow."
"But that is for later in life. This is the best we can do. So enjoy," Reis explained, then kissed her again. "Just enjoy."
Reis let her upper body unfurl. Kerie turned and stared at the ferrous monolith overlooking them. The inscription seemed to have faded even more for some alien reason.
"Reis, why are we here? I mean, I get the reference to this wall and the equation, but what else is there?" she asked.
Reis unhooked his arm from her shoulder and walked round the slab. "It . . . is my home. Come here, Kerie."
His arm making the gesture, Kerie obeyed, bewildered. He had seemed the type to live a successful life, but how had he become so poor as to live out here?
Turning her gaze around the wall's corner, Kerie took in the spectacle of a campfire. There lay a lifeless fire pit choked with atramental timbers, a scrunched-up sleeping bag, several grocery bags of canned food and snacks, and a makeshift blanket tent canopying it all.
"I can't go on much longer like this. It's The Hunger Games all over again," Reis said, sighing heavily and settling his rear on a log encircling the pit. He picked up a stick and excavated in the coals with it as Kerie sat with him.
"If you attribute it to that. I'm so sorry," she sympathized. "How?"
"My parents have been dead for years. I haven't kept track. But I have nothing save what I can afford. The inheritance I received was all used for other things."
"How do you afford it all then?" Kerie asked. Trying to show her understanding, she shed her butterfly earrings and inserted the heart studs, stowing the former away in her purse. All the love in the world would be needed for this one.
"Huh? I was just admiring that you cared enough to put the hearts in."
"You're welcome," Kerie replied, slightly blushing. She cleared her throat. "How do you afford it all?"
Reis twiddled the stick around in one hand, then flung it behind him, into a heap of leaves. "Loose change, favors, jobs, bets, you name it. I have to do everything I can. It's a harsh life though."
"Let's make it better then."
Reis turned his head, again hooking his arm around her neck. "You're right. Maybe I could live with you."
Kerie's eyes opened wide, and she would have toppled over had Reis not put his arm round her. "No! My mom would kill me!"
Reis raised one eyebrow. "Why? I'm not dangerous."
"Reis, I'm sorry, but Mom has strictly said that I shouldn't be in any relationships until I'm in high school. I'm really breaking the rules here to be able to feel this good, to be here with you. But if she knew about you, my name would be on a tombstone by next spring. We need this to be secret."
Kerie's harsh breathing afterwards gave him the hint that this was the truth. She seemed to wheeze gigantically after speeches, and this one went too quickly to be improvised.
Reis nodded. "That's fine. But I'd like this to be our lovespot, okay? Just you and me . . ." He started rubbing her back, and Kerie leaned closer to him.
"Fine by me. I love it here. It's so serene and quiet and peaceful. Don't you agree, Reis?" Kerie remarked, curiously eyeing a butterfly hovering above the zipper of her purse. "Hey, little butterfly. Lookin' for your children?"
Reis laughed playfully, leaning back on the log. "Kerie, you are too funny. One reason I enjoy being with you."
Kerie put her hand out to where the butterfly could land on it, and so it did. A beige sort, the lepidopteran insect flitted around and came to rest on Kerie's bracelet, clutching the width of it. Smiling, she waved her arm in the air slowly, watching the bug quiver in the stirred-up breeze.
She imagined Reis doing this to her later on and clutched him even tighter.
His skin felt like the outside of a churning volcano: too warm.
***
It would be the weekend before Kerie saw Reis again. Come Monday morning, she knew that something was wrong. So wrong that it could never be made right in her opinion.
He was sweating in fifty-degree weather.
He came to the bus with a florid face, the cheeks most flushed and noticeable. His brow was beaded with drops from his pores, and his hair was frizzled up.
Kerie rushed to his aid when she found him stumbling down the sidewalk. "Reis, my gosh! What happened to you!?"
Reis nearly tripped, but Kerie held him up. "I don't know. I feel so hot, but there haven't been any sneezes or coughs. What is it . . . ?"
Hand dangling on her chin in thought, Kerie gazed at the driver. His hand was madly waving. "It sounds so odd. I've never seen this redness unless I had a cold, and it can't be the weather because fifty is too high," she said. Her hand still scraped around, justifiably puzzled.
"We'd better get to the bus, Kerie. I think someone's getting impatient . . ." Reis pointed weakly at the driver, who had been roaring obscenities through the doors. He then fell in Kerie's arms, vellicating her body from the waist and upwards of that down with him.
Forced to kneel with her left knee propping Reis's chest up, Kerie screamed. "Wait! Mr. Freese, this boy just fainted! Get help now!" She sobbed heavily, constantly wiping her face with the front of her shirt.
Mr. Freese, the vulgar operator of the yellow clunker, jumped from the bus and dashed into the nearest house, desperately seeking a phone.
Kerie rubbed Reis's back, patting him occasionally. "It'll be okay, Reis, it'll be okay. Just wait for the ambulance. It'll be okay," she repeated, uttering the syllables in rhythm with her patting. The youths in the bus seats now leaned forward, watching inquisitively as she cared for her love. Several sighs of adoration, admiration, affection, and all of that emitted from the vehicle, but Kerie proved too fixated on the unconscious boy in her hands to heed it.
Payden and Addie soon came down the steps and helped Kerie prop Reis up, holding him up between Payden and Kerie; Addie held his lower legs up in back. Resting him on the cement a few yards away, Kerie sat with him, while the others stood at different points on the sidewalk in a sort of telephone wire that kept her updated on the ambulance and Mr. Freese.
"Thanks, guys. That means a lot to me," she said. Her familiars met it with nods and smiles. She met their gestures the same way.
Mr. Freese burst out of the house around the corner and flew across the street to another. They could only speculate on his problems.
Ten minutes or so passed before any major news. According to the bus driver, the ambulances were all either busy or in repairs. Oddly, he could not decipher why, but the end result was the same: Reis was helpless save his girlfriend and her comrades. Kerie cried now, only adjuring the heavens to rain mercy on the cursed, star-crossed lovers.
To avail or not, she could not tell. He awoke, but remained only half-attentive. He randomly hummed the tune to Satellite, the Rise Against song. Kerie recognized the last verse and sung with him:
We'll sneak out while they sleep
And sail off in the night.
We'll come clean and start over
The rest of our lives.
When we're gone, we'll stay gone;
Out of sight, out of mind . . .
It's not too late . . .
We have the rest of our lives!
She repeated this stanza in a more forceful voice as required, then recited the melody, which, to her, fit the situation perfectly:
Because we won't back down,
We won't run and hide,
Yeah, 'cause these are the things
That we can't deny.
I'm passing over you like a satellite,
So catch me if I fall . . . !
That's why we stick to your
Game plans and party lines,
But at night
We're conspiring by candlelight.
We are the orphans of
The American dream, so
Shine your light on - shine your light on me!
No, we won't back down,
We won't run and hide,
Yeah, 'cause these are the things
That we can't deny.
I'm passing over you like a satellite,
'Cause these are the things that we can't deny now.
This is a life that you can't deny us now.
Upon finishing, Kerie cried her heart out. The song had taken its toll on her, plus it had touched her heart so. If this could not make her die for Reis, she could not name another thing that could.
"Kerie, that was beautiful . . ." a voice remarked. Slowly raising her head from Reis's chest, she found that he was the speaker and hugged him tightly.
"Reis! Thank goodness! I thought I'd lost you," Kerie exasperatedly voiced, gazing relievedly into his eyes. He began to shed dewdrops from his sacs as well.
"I thought I'd lost us both. It was like I had lost existence."
"That unconscious, huh? I felt that when I fainted, y'know?" Kerie joked, trying to relate to this predicament.
"Yeah, I figured . . . Oh no," Reis exclaimed weakly, muttering maledictions afterward. Kerie looked at his hands as well, saw that they were blood-red and throbbing, and looked back to Reis's face. That was the color of Betelgeuse as well, a scarlet orb oozing with threads of fire - in this case, sweat.
"What is this!?" Kerie squealed, feeling the painful heat on her hands and knee, evident in her tense expression.
"Maybe I've loved you too much. I'm sorry, but I've brought this upon myself."
"What . . . ?" she drawled out, lost in utter disbelief.
"My heart is a fireball. When it becomes too hot, well, my master calls me, let's just say. I'm not of this world."
Kerie gawked. "Then, what are you?"
A long pause. Then he spoke, a gravelly intonation embedded in his voice.
". . . One whom love loves to hate."
Another great pause, like a rift in time and space. Kerie, at this moment, accepted the fact that he was not of this world, however silently.
"Remember. I love you, Keri Swenson. I just need to go . . ." the magmatic child said in an echo-like tone. Then he melted.
A pool of orange formed under Reis's body, making Kerie spring back with fear. Ripples of lava combed the edges like waves on a seashore, and his being slowly sunk in the vent. His clothes had disappeared, and, his features gone, a volcanic mannequin was all that remained. It took fifteen agonizing seconds until the flaming doll submerged into the subterranean earth, at which point Kerie Swenson fell over in defeat. Her last thought before hitting the darkness was that she had been loved.
It would take six years for her coma to desist.
***
~AoH
EDIT: Am I having the same problem of having no comments because it's too complex/verbose? Happened with TPOR.
Rating explanation: PG. There is kissing and a sort of relationship between tweens in this, mind you.
I present to you Book 1: Meltdown.
Mother said that she would have not one relationship until she was older.
Mother said that it was to steer her in the right direction in life.
Mother said that it was to protect her.
Mother had never said that the restriction masked a feeling so good it could melt your heart. But Kerie Lynn Swenson found out soon enough that rules are meant to be broken, to achieve these ends. She had found love, and no rule would impede her quest to clench it by the throat and strangle it until she found the bliss the novels depicted. She wanted love to herself . . .
And she was only eleven.
***
Kerie Swenson started off the fated day as a run-of-the-mill preteen girl, just being herself, coy and flirtatious, all in hopes of appearing feminine and "scoring" potential boyfriends for high school. That day, she dressed out in a light-blue, short-sleeved shirt; cuffed denim short shorts; and pink flip flops, your average "hot" outlook. Complementing this was a silver necklace dighted with a pendant bird's wing and a silver bracelet with a dangling heart on her right wrist. Up top - upon her cranium - there hung a full head of light-blonde hair, fallen to the length of her shoulder blades and all held back by a neon hairband, and argentate butterfly studs adorning her earlobes. In her green purse, slung over her left shoulder, a pair of pink-rimmed glasses rested, in reach in case they were required, plus the rest of her accessories - including her silver, heart-shaped earrings, her second most-beloved - and that Hello Kitty wallet that drives her friends up a wall in invidious envy.
All of this stacked upon her bantam body made for a girl that most boys should covet, but she had always been too young. It depressed her that she was mature in mind, but not in stature or girlhood. So, just for what she expected to be the far future, Kerie started on any plausible, promising males that she could find attractive in her eyes later on in her epoch. So far, so good, but the wait became unbearable.
Reis Scrimsher made her go giddy and happy and dizzy and almost faint in the hallway during the first passing period. He simply blew her a kiss and she fell like a house of cards in a hurricane, so captivated by his smoothness that her brain and heart exploded at once. Her purse fell to the ground with a light thud accompanied by the jangling tunes of her shaking jewelry bag and the muffled rattle of her glasses case. Kerie herself had been talking with her "best-bud", Payden Gidrey, and Payden providentially caught her - otherwise, a locker would have yelled "Hello!" to the back of her head.
"Kerie, my gosh! Are you okay?" Payden yelped, anxiously shaking her inane body. Kerie's mouth drooled, giggling asininely. Payden could swear Reis had just had a night with her, because a spastic laugh, incessant, resounded from her. Prompted by her madness, Payden slapped - lightly or not, she did not care - Kerie even more senseless. The giggles would not stop, the beatific tears would not cease their flow, and the girl in her arms would not come back to reality.
Praying that the school's bell would halt for them, Payden lay Kerie on the tile flooring and opened both lockers, gathered the apparatuses needed for mathematics, and reset the dials upon re-locking them. Laying Kerie's supplies on the floor next to their owner, Payden trotted to Mrs. Callegan's room at the end of the hall. Apparently, the Gidrey girl had just left her friend to come to her senses on her own.
Kerie came to two minutes after the tintinnabulation of the red bell above her, beckoning something she refused to comprehend.
***
Kerie slipped out of school with nothing more than lunch detention, much to her dismay, but as Payden would say it, that's the way the cat kills itself. She remained largely unfazed throughout the day, however, as the sensation she had experienced after Reis had made her swoon proved memorable. She had learned that Reis was the new boy five houses down from hers, and he conveniently shared two-thirds of each day with Kerie schedule-wise. Kerie had never fallen for someone akin to that moment, but her instincts told her that he was the one. He was the one.
They apparently rode the same bus, so Kerie, after the final bell, met Reis at the corner of the road where the yellow tarantula parked each afternoon. She figured that it was now or never, as Reis seemed the type to move on.
"Um, hello, do you remember me? I fainted in the hall because of your affections to me. Remember?" she begged, seriously comprehending dropping on one knee.
Reis turned his head towards her, simpering awkwardly. "Yeah, I remember. Kerie Swenson, was it?"
"Yes, yes! That's it!" Kerie cheered, bouncing sillily on the balls of her toes. "I never caught your name though."
"Reis Scrimsher. Don't wear it out," he coolly said, brandishing a sparrow track in his left hand and tracing a circle behind it with his thumb. "So, how have you been, fine lady?"
Kerie blushed, bringing her knees together. "Oh, you . . . Yeah, I've been great, Reis. I've just been thinking about you. Why did you make me faint?"
"Because I love you." The bus came anticlimactically, and he urged her on. "I think I'll walk today. Give you some time to think about it."
"Wait!" Kerie screamed, but Reis forced the doors on her, leaving her to go sulk in the back of the bus with a question as big as the universe on her frail mind.
***
At supper, Kerie described her day to her parents and six-year-old sister, Kyli, but intentionally left out Reis and her fainting. Her mother would smash her skull in, frankly put.
"Sounds interesting," Mom replied. "Did you study for that A+?"
Wiping her face with a fistful of napkins, Kyli shouted, "You bet!"
"Kyli, shush!" Kerie harshly said, partially gritting her teeth. Her parents were giggling, surprisingly, so Kerie added, "Ha-ha-ha." Turning to Mom, she said, "Yeah, I did. When you have a bud like Payden, it's never too hard. She is one workaholic, y'know?"
Dad rolled his eyes. "I think we know, dear. You mention that every time Payden is brought up, don't you?"
Mom looked at him funnily, then back to Kerie. "You and Payden, I just don't know. How do you get along?"
"We just help each other. What's the big deal with that?" Kerie asked.
"Nothing at all, hon. I just thought that you'd be spending time with girls like you rather . . . Oh well."
"Oh well is right. I just prefer her company because she knows what she's doing. All these other chicks are brats and goths and jerks and cats with double-pierced ears. It's depressing, y'know?"
"Kerie," Dad interrupted. "It isn't nice to judge classmates like that, but I see what you mean. My intermediate school was just like that. The boys around me were all jerks save a few."
"Oh, you have no idea. I am not kidding, Dad. I mean, Maddie Kindelfeld has two in each ear, Molli Rainier has two in each ear, Isabel Caez has two in each ear, Hope Collins has three in each ear, and freaking Sidney Kittinger has four in each ear. Honestly, what the fruit? And even though she's sorta my buddy, Addie Shatner is a month younger than me, and she has two on her lobes and a cartilage ring on the left. I do not want to hang out with those types of people. Save Addie, they're nothing but freaks who have a half-chance of ending up sixteen and pregnant in an alleyway while the lover is off playing football. Just no."
"Kerie, you seem to be done, so please go up to your room."
Kerie looked down. She had not touched her plate.
***
Locking the door of her house before striding as always to the bus stop, Kerie only thought that the "detention incidents" had only been bad luck. She denied their magnitude mainly because she had met Reis Scrimsher that same day, and apparently, that, to her, outweighed the incidents massively.
Ending her humble skip at the corner, Kerie looked up and found the same figure: a sepia shirt, blue jeans, and blue-and-white Nikes. Smiling crazily, she strolled up beside him. This smile masked the puzzling thoughts of yesterday, however.
"Hello, Miss Swenson. I assume you are grand as always?" Reis's accent mimicked an Irish brogue, polite and all, and Kerie cracked, writhing with giggles.
"Yes, kind sir, I am 'grand' . . ." she replied, curtsying. "So, about yesterday-"
"Ah-ah. Miss Swenson, I know. But your parents won't like it, will they?" Reis stared at her. "Consider that."
Kerie threw her hands up, beaming. "I don't give anything about what Mom says! I love you too!" She fell over again, this time landing in Reis's anticipant clutch. Her right shoulder now rested upon his hands. Hanging her head back, Kerie looked up at the bottom-side-up face of Reis. "I just wanna know, what do you like about me?"
Reis sputtered somewhat, then leaned his head down, still gazing at her, both dreamily stricken. "Everything. You dress cutely, your hair is beautiful, your eyes are captivating and darling, your personality is winning and funny, and to be frank, I love those butterfly earrings. They bring out your daintiness, should I say." He paused. "Wait. One's upside down . . ."
Kerie felt his soft hand work between her cheek and hair and relaxed, sighing as he rotated the butterfly. "Thank you, Reis. I love those same things about you. Plus, you're just you, a boy that I would love to be with," she said, watching his charming face.
Upon finishing, Reis looked at her eyes again. "Boyfriend?"
Kerie beamed once more. "Girlfriend?"
Reis flipped her around so that she stood upright, then said, along with Kerie, "Always." The bus rolled up to the curb subtly in the background, and they walked towards the doors, hand-in-hand.
***
Now that Kerie flew free from lunch detention, Reis joined Payden, Addie Shatner, and herself at a table. Payden was about Kerie's height, with wavy blonde hair, a green shirt, pink short shorts, and sandals. Addie seemed four inches shorter, with brown hair that fell to her high shoulder blades with the left side of her forehead slightly more showered in it, a pink blouse, short shorts like Kerie's, and silvery flip flops with glitter on the tops.
"Hi, Reis!" Kerie squealed, cheerfully waving her hand as he sat down next to her. "Girls, this is Reis Scrimsher. Payden, he's the one who made me faint in the hall."
Addie banged her hand down as a fist, standing from her chair and hunching over her lunchbox. "No way. You managed to make Kerie faint!?"
"Indeed, miss," Reis said, bowing his head. The girls giggled again. Addie offered a high-five that he gladly accepted.
Payden patted Kerie on the back. "No kidding. He's a real mate. Good find, Kerie."
Kerie stared at her awkwardly, and they both cracked. "You haven't heard the load of it. And neither have I, now that I think about it," she said, turning her head to the one she then requested to "unload it." Accepted.
Reis spent the majority of the lunch sharing his back-story. How he moved from Iowa down here to Little Rock, how his childhood was spent, how - everything, it seemed. The girls caught a fever of laughter as if it was cancer, always hugging one another for support to keep from falling off their seats. Reis sure knew how to talk with jokes, as Payden said midway through the lunch.
Towards the end, Kerie noticed that they had been holding hands the whole lunch, under the table. She nudged Reis with the same hand's shoulder, pointed with her left hand at it, and smiled warmly. Reis mirrored her, then cordially gestured towards his shoulder. Kerie patted it, but strangely, it felt unnaturally warm. Little heed was paid, unsurprisingly.
Kerie's head lay there for the rest of lunch, dreaming. She failed to register what they conversed about, but it seemed a friendly enough palaver that she was well off with disregarding. She figured that her boyfriend would relay it to her at the bus stop.
The problem: neither of them took the bus that day.
***
Reis led Kerie into the woods through a back alley instead come three o'clock, slipping through a gap in a wrought-iron, rusted fence that must have been axed down just last week - at least in Kerie's eyes, and she was perpetually blind at this moment.
"Where are we going, Reis? I've never been in this section of the woods before," Kerie asked hesitantly, partially wondering if this was a date of some sort. She enjoyed the idea, that certain.
"Well, that's where we're headed. I want to show you something." Reis's anxiety reminded Kerie of Bridge to Terabithia, except for the fact that Leslie died here.
Please don't die, Kerie, please don't die, she prayed.
"So, what is it?" Kerie asked after two minutes of running, her left wrist grasped by Reis's right hand.
Reis suddenly stopped, not answering - or bothering to answer - Kerie's question, as there stood what he wanted to show her.
A single, rust-covered wall stood like a sentinel, surrounded by trees that encircled it like hounds. Upon the iron was, etched in crude, faded white paint:
LOVE + PEACE = INFORMATION
"Someone must have read Hearts in Atlantis too much. What idiotic thoughts." Reis let a bird fly by. "Love should be the result, not a part of the problem."
He turned and kissed Kerie on the spot.
***
The kiss was so unexpected, but Kerie relished it, almost to the point where the soap operas would call it "romantics" - upon letting go, Kerie actually had to gasp for air. It had nearly choked her to fall for Reis. But she wanted more, and Reis evidently knew it, as he leaned over and repeated the process. Kerie's muffled "Mmm"s and "Ohh"s and "Ahh"s just provided the music.
"Oh, Reis. I . . . I loved that," Kerie stammeringly said, still gasping.
"Feels good, doesn't it?" Reis soothed, caressing her chest with a light rubbing of his hand. More music came from her lips, and he kept going.
"You bet. Ahh . . . Come here," Kerie said, pulling Reis's head closer and ruffling his short brown hair around with her own fingers. "If this is what love is, I don't know anything better."
"Now, now, Kerie. Remember that we're tweens here. This is not love at its finest. We need to wait for that."
"So, there is something better than this? Wow."
"But that is for later in life. This is the best we can do. So enjoy," Reis explained, then kissed her again. "Just enjoy."
Reis let her upper body unfurl. Kerie turned and stared at the ferrous monolith overlooking them. The inscription seemed to have faded even more for some alien reason.
"Reis, why are we here? I mean, I get the reference to this wall and the equation, but what else is there?" she asked.
Reis unhooked his arm from her shoulder and walked round the slab. "It . . . is my home. Come here, Kerie."
His arm making the gesture, Kerie obeyed, bewildered. He had seemed the type to live a successful life, but how had he become so poor as to live out here?
Turning her gaze around the wall's corner, Kerie took in the spectacle of a campfire. There lay a lifeless fire pit choked with atramental timbers, a scrunched-up sleeping bag, several grocery bags of canned food and snacks, and a makeshift blanket tent canopying it all.
"I can't go on much longer like this. It's The Hunger Games all over again," Reis said, sighing heavily and settling his rear on a log encircling the pit. He picked up a stick and excavated in the coals with it as Kerie sat with him.
"If you attribute it to that. I'm so sorry," she sympathized. "How?"
"My parents have been dead for years. I haven't kept track. But I have nothing save what I can afford. The inheritance I received was all used for other things."
"How do you afford it all then?" Kerie asked. Trying to show her understanding, she shed her butterfly earrings and inserted the heart studs, stowing the former away in her purse. All the love in the world would be needed for this one.
"Huh? I was just admiring that you cared enough to put the hearts in."
"You're welcome," Kerie replied, slightly blushing. She cleared her throat. "How do you afford it all?"
Reis twiddled the stick around in one hand, then flung it behind him, into a heap of leaves. "Loose change, favors, jobs, bets, you name it. I have to do everything I can. It's a harsh life though."
"Let's make it better then."
Reis turned his head, again hooking his arm around her neck. "You're right. Maybe I could live with you."
Kerie's eyes opened wide, and she would have toppled over had Reis not put his arm round her. "No! My mom would kill me!"
Reis raised one eyebrow. "Why? I'm not dangerous."
"Reis, I'm sorry, but Mom has strictly said that I shouldn't be in any relationships until I'm in high school. I'm really breaking the rules here to be able to feel this good, to be here with you. But if she knew about you, my name would be on a tombstone by next spring. We need this to be secret."
Kerie's harsh breathing afterwards gave him the hint that this was the truth. She seemed to wheeze gigantically after speeches, and this one went too quickly to be improvised.
Reis nodded. "That's fine. But I'd like this to be our lovespot, okay? Just you and me . . ." He started rubbing her back, and Kerie leaned closer to him.
"Fine by me. I love it here. It's so serene and quiet and peaceful. Don't you agree, Reis?" Kerie remarked, curiously eyeing a butterfly hovering above the zipper of her purse. "Hey, little butterfly. Lookin' for your children?"
Reis laughed playfully, leaning back on the log. "Kerie, you are too funny. One reason I enjoy being with you."
Kerie put her hand out to where the butterfly could land on it, and so it did. A beige sort, the lepidopteran insect flitted around and came to rest on Kerie's bracelet, clutching the width of it. Smiling, she waved her arm in the air slowly, watching the bug quiver in the stirred-up breeze.
She imagined Reis doing this to her later on and clutched him even tighter.
His skin felt like the outside of a churning volcano: too warm.
***
It would be the weekend before Kerie saw Reis again. Come Monday morning, she knew that something was wrong. So wrong that it could never be made right in her opinion.
He was sweating in fifty-degree weather.
He came to the bus with a florid face, the cheeks most flushed and noticeable. His brow was beaded with drops from his pores, and his hair was frizzled up.
Kerie rushed to his aid when she found him stumbling down the sidewalk. "Reis, my gosh! What happened to you!?"
Reis nearly tripped, but Kerie held him up. "I don't know. I feel so hot, but there haven't been any sneezes or coughs. What is it . . . ?"
Hand dangling on her chin in thought, Kerie gazed at the driver. His hand was madly waving. "It sounds so odd. I've never seen this redness unless I had a cold, and it can't be the weather because fifty is too high," she said. Her hand still scraped around, justifiably puzzled.
"We'd better get to the bus, Kerie. I think someone's getting impatient . . ." Reis pointed weakly at the driver, who had been roaring obscenities through the doors. He then fell in Kerie's arms, vellicating her body from the waist and upwards of that down with him.
Forced to kneel with her left knee propping Reis's chest up, Kerie screamed. "Wait! Mr. Freese, this boy just fainted! Get help now!" She sobbed heavily, constantly wiping her face with the front of her shirt.
Mr. Freese, the vulgar operator of the yellow clunker, jumped from the bus and dashed into the nearest house, desperately seeking a phone.
Kerie rubbed Reis's back, patting him occasionally. "It'll be okay, Reis, it'll be okay. Just wait for the ambulance. It'll be okay," she repeated, uttering the syllables in rhythm with her patting. The youths in the bus seats now leaned forward, watching inquisitively as she cared for her love. Several sighs of adoration, admiration, affection, and all of that emitted from the vehicle, but Kerie proved too fixated on the unconscious boy in her hands to heed it.
Payden and Addie soon came down the steps and helped Kerie prop Reis up, holding him up between Payden and Kerie; Addie held his lower legs up in back. Resting him on the cement a few yards away, Kerie sat with him, while the others stood at different points on the sidewalk in a sort of telephone wire that kept her updated on the ambulance and Mr. Freese.
"Thanks, guys. That means a lot to me," she said. Her familiars met it with nods and smiles. She met their gestures the same way.
Mr. Freese burst out of the house around the corner and flew across the street to another. They could only speculate on his problems.
Ten minutes or so passed before any major news. According to the bus driver, the ambulances were all either busy or in repairs. Oddly, he could not decipher why, but the end result was the same: Reis was helpless save his girlfriend and her comrades. Kerie cried now, only adjuring the heavens to rain mercy on the cursed, star-crossed lovers.
To avail or not, she could not tell. He awoke, but remained only half-attentive. He randomly hummed the tune to Satellite, the Rise Against song. Kerie recognized the last verse and sung with him:
We'll sneak out while they sleep
And sail off in the night.
We'll come clean and start over
The rest of our lives.
When we're gone, we'll stay gone;
Out of sight, out of mind . . .
It's not too late . . .
We have the rest of our lives!
She repeated this stanza in a more forceful voice as required, then recited the melody, which, to her, fit the situation perfectly:
Because we won't back down,
We won't run and hide,
Yeah, 'cause these are the things
That we can't deny.
I'm passing over you like a satellite,
So catch me if I fall . . . !
That's why we stick to your
Game plans and party lines,
But at night
We're conspiring by candlelight.
We are the orphans of
The American dream, so
Shine your light on - shine your light on me!
No, we won't back down,
We won't run and hide,
Yeah, 'cause these are the things
That we can't deny.
I'm passing over you like a satellite,
'Cause these are the things that we can't deny now.
This is a life that you can't deny us now.
Upon finishing, Kerie cried her heart out. The song had taken its toll on her, plus it had touched her heart so. If this could not make her die for Reis, she could not name another thing that could.
"Kerie, that was beautiful . . ." a voice remarked. Slowly raising her head from Reis's chest, she found that he was the speaker and hugged him tightly.
"Reis! Thank goodness! I thought I'd lost you," Kerie exasperatedly voiced, gazing relievedly into his eyes. He began to shed dewdrops from his sacs as well.
"I thought I'd lost us both. It was like I had lost existence."
"That unconscious, huh? I felt that when I fainted, y'know?" Kerie joked, trying to relate to this predicament.
"Yeah, I figured . . . Oh no," Reis exclaimed weakly, muttering maledictions afterward. Kerie looked at his hands as well, saw that they were blood-red and throbbing, and looked back to Reis's face. That was the color of Betelgeuse as well, a scarlet orb oozing with threads of fire - in this case, sweat.
"What is this!?" Kerie squealed, feeling the painful heat on her hands and knee, evident in her tense expression.
"Maybe I've loved you too much. I'm sorry, but I've brought this upon myself."
"What . . . ?" she drawled out, lost in utter disbelief.
"My heart is a fireball. When it becomes too hot, well, my master calls me, let's just say. I'm not of this world."
Kerie gawked. "Then, what are you?"
A long pause. Then he spoke, a gravelly intonation embedded in his voice.
". . . One whom love loves to hate."
Another great pause, like a rift in time and space. Kerie, at this moment, accepted the fact that he was not of this world, however silently.
"Remember. I love you, Keri Swenson. I just need to go . . ." the magmatic child said in an echo-like tone. Then he melted.
A pool of orange formed under Reis's body, making Kerie spring back with fear. Ripples of lava combed the edges like waves on a seashore, and his being slowly sunk in the vent. His clothes had disappeared, and, his features gone, a volcanic mannequin was all that remained. It took fifteen agonizing seconds until the flaming doll submerged into the subterranean earth, at which point Kerie Swenson fell over in defeat. Her last thought before hitting the darkness was that she had been loved.
It would take six years for her coma to desist.
***
Words: 4,303
~AoH
EDIT: Am I having the same problem of having no comments because it's too complex/verbose? Happened with TPOR.
