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elizabeth.myfastforum.org
An archive of my AB/DL stories.
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Elizabeth
Site Admin
Joined: 30 Dec 2007
Posts: 172
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 Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2007 12:17 am Post subject: 4: Kumorigachi: Rhapsody |
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verse one
Melita Elendara swallowed, reaching up with a shaking hand to brush back a long strand of red hair from her face, the other hand tightly grasping a microphone that was quickly growing slick with sweat, despite how cold Lita thought the room was. Her large, gray eyes, covered but sadly - she felt at the moment, anyway - not hidden by a pair of blue-rimmed glasses, decorated by a flower design along the earpieces, plainly showed the fear she was feeling as she looked out over all of the people staring up at her.
How had she let herself get talked into this, she wondered. She had never been this stupid before, and she had always assumed that people got smarter as they got older. She really should have known better, since she had just had a birthday, allowing her to proclaim herself as being “almost eight” now, though her small stature and tiny frame would lead a casual observer to guess she was a good deal younger, probably about half her true age, much to Lita's chagrin. Even a casual observer might also notice the oddly pointed shape of the girl's ears, however, though if they were to ask her about them, she would only blush and say that was the way they had always been.
It was those ears the fairy fluttering near the girl's shoulder was thinking about. Cynthia had been Melita's conscience for a long while now – it hadn't taken her long to figure out the truth of the girl's heritage, or half of it at any rate. Apparently it had been too difficult for her boss to realize, however, despite his being a good deal older than Cynthia's sixteen years.
Lita hadn't figure out the truth either; Cynthia had hardly expected her to. The girl had some odd notions at times, but declaring herself to be half elven was a little too strange even for her. So, obviously, it was true. Should she know? Cynthia still had no answer for that, after all this time.
Melita's other hand reached up and grabbed the microphone as she thought she felt it begin to fall. Her voice shook, quavered, and her face became even paler than before – quite a feat, really. She could feel tears welling up behind her eyes as she struggled through the words of the song, wanting nothing more than to throw down the microphone, run away, and hide for the rest of her life, or at least until everyone else was gone.
Her eyes scanned her audience again, surer than ever that they were all seconds away from laughing out loud at her. A tear began to slowly trickle down her cheek as she felt her heart stop beating. She couldn't do this anymore... She had to stop...
And then she saw one face, one that she knew would, could, never laugh at her. It even looked proud of her, beaming like a thousand suns. Lita somehow managed something close to a smile, forcing herself to stay there, to keep going, for her step-mother. Ms. Elendara was nothing like all the stories said step-parents were like, though, and she was the closest thing Lita had ever had to a real mother. Melita felt herself wishing that Adrianna was sitting out there, too, though she had wished that every day since her step-sister had gone to college, and had only gotten results once.
The music began to slow, and finally came to a stop. Melita stayed frozen until a man came up to her to take the microphone from her. She surrendered it gratefully, then dashed quickly to Ms. Elendara's side in a flurry of white fabric – dress, petticoats, and tights - shiny black Mary Jane shoes pattering against the floorboards of her church. Ms. Elendara hugged her as soon as she was in arm's reach, kissing the top of her head as she murmured on about how wonderful she had done.
Melita blushed happily at the comments as she sat down in the pew, pulling her coat on over the dress. Her arms were rather cold – the sleeves of her dress weren't made from the same fabric as the rest of it, and were thin enough to see through. While that had seemed very neat in the summertime, she was finding it less so now that it was November. Not that the sleeves would have kept her all that warm even if they were all solid and such, since they were also rather short. She probably should have listened to Ms. Elendara's advice and chosen one of her other dresses, more fitted for this time of year, but this one had seemed so perfect that she begged to be allowed to wear it until finally her mother had given in.
White was a dangerous color for her even in the best of times. She wasn't the most coordinated person; she sometimes wondered how she had made it through a month and a half of tap dance classes without breaking anything. That lack of coordination extended to her eating habits as well but the dress was worth being extra careful once church was over. Lita wasn't sure why they were having a meal at the church this time, but it didn't matter too much. There was always good desserts, and sometimes she would get to play a game of hide and seek with the other kids when they were done eating. She was good at that game, or at least the hiding part. Seeking was a bit less fun, especially when they decided to play using a base. Her short legs made running very much not a strong suit of hers, even when she could manage to keep them standing up straight.
Melita wrapped her arms around Ms. Elendara's, leaning against her side as she listened to the preacher. Cynthia smiled down at her as she landed on the back of the pew in front of the two of them, her decision still not made. Maybe she would get lucky and fate would make it for her some day soon.
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Lita held her paper plate carefully as she moved down the long table ladened with food, examining everything closely before deciding whether or not she wanted to try it. While she had enjoyed most everything she had ever had at a church lunch, she couldn't get over her nature as a picky eater. The little boy behind her bumped into her back impatiently, prompting her to leave behind a bowl of something rather unappetizing looking anyway.
“Alan! Watch where you're going!” A severe voice reprimanded the boy behind her.
Lita blushed as she turned around. “I... I'm sorry,” she said after a moment. “It's my fault for being so slow...”
The woman behind the boy smiled gently. “Nonsense, dear. You take all the time you need.” Alan didn't like the sound of this, so he quickly cut in front of Melita. “You did a wonderful job this morning.”
Melita blushed again, even though she had already been told the same thing about a hundred times already. It was still nice to hear, though. “Do you take voice lessons?” the woman asked. Lita shook her head. “Really? Maybe you should look into that.” Melita nodded politely, though she felt more like shrugging. Voice lessons had never occurred to her, and they did sound interesting, but she was already taking tap class. She didn't want Ms. Elendara to have to pay for more classes for her, especially this close after her birthday. Lita didn't like the thought of people spending money on her, after the way the first family she had lived with had acted whenever they had to buy her anything.
The woman's eyes fell onto Lita's plate, still empty despite her being halfway down the table already. “Oh, that just won't do!” she exclaimed suddenly, yanking the plate out of Melita's hands. “You simply have to try some of this... And this...” Lita tried to protest, only to be shushed and told that she would love it all.
“Feeling hungry?” Ms. Elendara raised an eyebrow as Lita set her plate down in front of the chair beside her.
“I had some... help...” Melita shrugged, pulling the chair back and hopping up onto it, surveying everything she had been given. “Can I just start with dessert?” she asked after a moment.
“I think you already know the answer to that.” The corner of Ms. Elendara's mouth curled up in a small smile at the sound of Lita's sigh at those words. “Just this once.”
Melita's eyes widened in surprise, and then she was off like a shot, before Ms. Elendara could change her mind. She returned with a piece of chocolate pie, smothered with whipped cream, which she was licking from her fingers delicately, idly wondering how she had managed to get it all over her hand in the first place.
When she returned, Alan and his mother were sitting down at the table opposite Ms. Elendara. Lita's pace slowed a bit when she saw this, but by then it was too late to go back and pretend she was still choosing between sweets. “Ah, there you are, dear!” the woman called. “I was just telling your mommy how delighted I would be to have you as one of my voice students.”
Melita glanced at Ms. Elendara, who was already glancing at her as she set her pie down next to her other plate, trying to decide if she should go ahead and have dessert, since she had permission, or pretend to be a good girl and try to eat what the woman had chosen for her, to make her happy. The woman was smiling at her, while Alan glared.
“Would you like to do that, Lita?” Ms. Elendara asked after a moment, seeing that Melita wasn't going to volunteer her thoughts, as usual.
Lita began chewing on her bottom lip nervously before shrugging. Ms. Elendara sighed. “Lita, you know you have an opinion.” Lita shrugged again, her eyes starting to show the first glimmers of fear. “I'm not going to be mad if you say yes, sweetie.”
“Are you sure?” Melita's voice was hardly above a whisper.
“Oh, Lita, of course I am,” Ms. Elendara ensured her, reaching out to stroke her daughter's arm. She hadn't seen this fear for quite a while, since Lita had broken her first pair of glasses. She had hoped she was over it. After a moment, she nodded.
“Good, good!” The woman was ecstatic, almost clapping her hands in joy. “I'm sure we'll have a wonderful time together, Melita, dear!”
Lita smiled weakly for a split second before she felt a shoe knock against her knee. “Ow!” she pouted.
“What's wrong, sweetie?” Ms. Elendara set her fork down. “Are you all right?”
“I'm fine,” Melita lied, glaring up at a smug-faced Alan. She took her fork and began pushing her food around, searching for anything that appeared to be even remotely edible, trying to ignore the pie that sat so close, tempting her. “Stupid boys,” she muttered under her breath.
verse two
Melita swung her legs back and forth boredly, resting her chin on her hands, which were in turn on her desk. School hadn't even begun yet, and already she wished it was over. That wasn't anything new, really... School was good for one thing – well, two, actually. Or three, depending on how you looked at it. She liked school because that was where she saw her friends, which she usually got to see twice a day, at lunch and recess. And there were three of them. So how would that be classified, when counting up benefits of not running away from the school bus every morning and hiding under her bed?
It was certainly more interesting trying to figure that out than watching her teacher, Mrs. Friedman, sort through all her little notes for how to torture her students that day, but Lita didn't have a chance to think about it for too long. Her attention was instead captured by one of the other girls in her class – Nina, she was pretty sure her name was – starting to hand out envelopes of some kind to the rest of the class.
Invitations, perhaps? Lita sat up a bit. While she was far from being a social butterfly, her limited experience had taught her that invitations usually led to something involving cake, and possibly ice cream. Even though she didn't know how much she wanted to spend time with the other members of her class, it might be worth it for that; Nina had always seemed nice enough. A bit quiet, and Lita saw nothing wrong with that, since she could be described that way, too.
Nina stopped when she reached the desk belonging to the Princess of Darkness, and Melita's personal arch-nemesis, Dana. Lita glared at the back of Dana's head, for no particular reason except for her existence. Dana was a grade ahead of Melita, and probably the most popular girl in the class. She always had a group of other girls hanging around her at recess. Melita sometimes wondered if the other girls had some sort of contest going to see which one of them could dislike Lita the most, and thus become Dana's new best friend. Probably.
If so, Lita's former friend Celeste had most likely almost won. Not only had she shoved Melita into a mud puddle on the day that class pictures were being taken, she had also given Lita a jar of baby food and a bib for her birthday, in the middle of the cafeteria. Lita still had those, too, since she had been too embarrassed to throw them away, sure that if she did someone she knew would see what they were and not believe her story about why she had them. They were in the bottom drawer of her dresser at home, except for when she moved them to the middle drawer because she was nervous about Ms. Elendara finding them.
Nina glanced up from Dana and directly over at Melita. Lita looked down at her desk again quickly, not wanting them to know she was watching, but not quickly enough to avoid seeing Nina and Dana giggling at something. Lita didn't return her eyes from the surface of her desk, covered with tiny drawings she had made during class the day before and forgotten to erase, until she saw Nina's shadow fall over her.
“Umm.. Hi,” Melita said shyly. Nina smirked, made sure Mrs. Friedman was sufficiently absorbed in her organizing, and moved on, Lita still completely invitationless. Dana smiled and waved from across the room, leaving Melita no choice but to stick her tongue out at her and sulk.
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“Would you really have wanted to go anyway?” Jessica tried to comfort Lita, though personally she wasn't sure why she had been so upset about it in the first place. “I mean, I'm sure Dana's going, and probably enough of her little cronies to keep Nina's parents occupied while she tortured you in their basement.”
Melita couldn't help but giggle, even though she wasn't sure how much of that had been a joke. Jessica was a bit strange – it must come with age, Lita reasoned. Jessica was also the oldest in her little group of friends, nearly twelve years old. Lita wasn't sure why she still hung out with the rest of them, but she was glad she did, since Dana was usually too scared of her to do anything too awful while she was around.
Jessica crossed her arms in front of her with a long suffering sigh, flipping her newly shoulder length black hair back behind her shoulder. “Laugh if you want. That's the sort of thing that happens when third graders have birthday parties, though.”
Courtney, who was sitting down, leaning back against the school building, reached out with one of her long dancer's legs to kick Jessica. “Don't listen to her, Lita.” Melita gladly obliged – Courtney would be more likely to know about that kind of thing, anyway, since she was currently in third grade, and Lita spent more time with her than any of the other girls, since the two of them took tap lessons together.
“Maybe I'm thinking about fourth grade,” Jessica quickly corrected herself, knowing that would keep her safe from contradictions. “Even so, I don't think Dana would let the opportunity to do -something- to do slip by that easily. Especially if it was a sleep over.”
Melita shrugged. “I guess...” Spending the night with Dana definitely didn't sound fun, and no amount of cake and ice cream could change that.
Leann giggled, one of the most likely noises to come from the second youngest (though only by a few months) of the four. “But if it was a sleep over, you wouldn't have to worry about her bugging you at all, I bet!”
“Huh?” Lita blinked. “Why not?”
“'Cause I bet she wouldn't be allowed to spend the night, 'cause I bet she wets the bed,” Leann giggled again, obviously proud of her deductions. Even if they made absolutely no sense.
“And what makes you think that?” Jessica wasn't sure she wanted to know. Some days she was sure being around these kids was going to completely fry her ability to think logically.
“Well, she's always teasing Lita about being a baby. So she prolly just is trying to keep people from thinking she's the one that's really a baby.” Leann nodded.
“I don't know about that,” Lita said, blushing a little, recalling Dana's many insults aimed towards her.
“It kind of makes sense,” Jessica shrugged, “as much as I hate to admit it.”
There was a few moments of silence before Melita began to open her mouth to say something else. She was cut off by the sound of a whistle as Mrs. Friedman signaled for her class to come inside. Lita sighed and trudged over to where her teacher was standing, already waiting for lunch time to come around.
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Melita unlocked the front door of her house happily, the sound of her key turning in the lock something she didn't get to hear nearly as often as she would have liked. Usually her babysitter, Tori, would open the door for her before she was even halfway across the lawn, but sometimes she didn't notice Lita until it was too late. Like today.
“I'm home!” Lita called, looking around for the purple haired teenager, and instead finding Ms. Elendara. “Oh! Hi!” She rushed forward and hugged her, remembering only then that Ms. Elendara had told her she would be working that night instead of during the day. Which meant that Tori would be coming later. Lita wasn't sure how much she liked that, but Tori should at least be happy that she wouldn't need to worry about making supper for her.
“Hi, sweetie,” Ms. Elendara smiled. “How was school?”
Melita wrinkled her nose, then shrugged. “It was all right.” She had been through worse.
Ms. Elendara didn't press the matter, though she knew Lita wasn't telling her something. She probably wouldn't, either, until she felt like it, so there wasn't much use pressuring her. She watched as Melita retreated to her room, throwing her backpack onto her bed, most likely getting a nasty look from her kitten, Gabriella, who had been sleeping there all afternoon, and kicking off her shoes before returning to spend some time with her mother.
Ms. Elendara took her to the living room, where she wrapped her arm around her after she had attached herself to her side. She looked down at the happy little girl beside her, giving her the last sliver of resolve she needed. “It seems like you haven't been having many problems lately,”she said delicately, not quite sure how to put it.
Lita shrugged. “Not really... Not for a few weeks now.” She tilted her head to one side, a little confused, a little hopeful. “How come?”
Ms. Elendara bent down and kissed her forehead. “You're getting to be such a grown up!” She beamed proudly.
It only took Melita a second to realize where this was going. “Does this mean I don't hafta wear Pull-Ups to bed anymore?” she asked, excitement building in her voice.
“Well, if you're not having problems with wetting it anymore, I don't see why not.” Ms. Elendara grinned as Lita jumped off the couch in her excitement, giggling happily. She had to admit she had wondered if this day would ever come, not that she would really have minded all -that- much if it hadn't. It was good to see that Lita was so glad about it, though.
“My big, grown-up girl,” she said quietly, watching as Melita dashed off to tell Gabriella her good news.
verse three
The door slammed behind Tori, making Melita nearly jump out of her seat at the kitchen table. Her pencil, which had been lightly tapping against the bridge of Lita's nose as she stared off into space, not really thinking about the math she was supposedly working on, fell to the floor.
“Jeez, are you always this jumpy at night?” Tori rolled her eyes, tossing her jacket onto the empty chair as she walked past it.
“I'm not jumpy!” Lita insisted as she hopped down from her chair, crawling underneath the table to retrieve the pencil. She gave a little squeal as her hand brushed against a spiderweb she hadn't seen, and she jerked it away as she retreated, leaving her pencil to the mercy of the insects.
“What are you doing?” Tori sighed, turning back from the door of the living room, taking a few steps to make sure Lita wasn't seriously injured. “Why are you on the floor?”
Melita blushed, clambering to her feet and dusting off the legs of her jeans. “My pencil fell under the table...”
Tori stared at her, long enough to make Lita look away, embarrassed, though she wasn't sure why. She could hear Tori mumbling something under her breath, something she was pretty sure she was glad she couldn't fully understand, though she thought the terms “helpless little brat” and “can't do anything for herself” surfaced once or twice. Finally, Tori went back into the kitchen, kneeling down in front of the table.
“Watch out!” Lita squeaked. “There's a spider under there!”
Tori backed out from the table, shoving the pencil roughly at Melita while rubbing her head where she had bumped it on the bottom of the table in surprise. “Of course there is,” she glowered. “This place is a frickin' pig pen. Don't you ever clean?”
Melita blinked as if trying to make a sudden image that had popped into her head go away, her feet instinctively starting to inch away from the older girl. “What the hell's wrong with you?” Tori growled, the pain in her head starting to grow.
Lita didn't answer, couldn't answer, wanted to get away but her feet had stopped moving now, melting their way into the kitchen floor, trapping her as she began to shake, color slowly draining from her face. Even in her angered state, Tori could tell something wasn't right. “Melita?” she asked, trying to sound like she cared about the little monster. “Hey, kid, snap out of it.”
And as rapidly as it had begun, it stopped, and Lita was back to normal, sitting down at the table, setting her pencil down on top of her math book. “Sorry,” she smiled shyly. “I... I just... don't like spiders...”
She looked away as Tori glared at her. “Maybe you should go lie down,” she said after a minute.
“No, I hafta...” Lita started, gesturing towards her homework.
“For God's sake, could you just do what I ask for once?” Lita got to her feet, bottom lip quivering as she started to apologize. “Just go!” Melita obeyed, closing her bedroom door to the sound of “Little freak,” as Tori went back to the living room to do her own homework.
“Lita, are you okay?” Cynthia was waiting anxiously for Melita to turn around after closing the door.
“I'm fine.” Lita seemed a little surprised that she was still facing the door as well, facing Cynthia almost as if she were in some kind of dream.
“No, you're not,” Cynthia flew closer to her, and she tried to back away. “You're still shaking.” Lita shrugged with a blush, flopping down on her bed. “Hon, she was just upset. She didn't mean those things she said, not really.” Cynthia wished she knew if that was the truth, though she wasn't sure what she would do if it wasn't – probably something rather unpleasant for Tori.
“I know,” Lita said quietly, rolling over, a little disappointed to see that Gabriella wasn't sleeping on her pillow anymore, but glad that she could use it herself.
Cynthia narrowed her eyes. “It's not about that, is it?”
Melita giggled a little too loudly. “What else would it be about?”
“It would be nice if you'd tell me.”
“It's nothing.” Lita wasn't getting any better at lying, though she was getting more used to it, Cynthia noted, none too pleased about it. Melita rolled over again, this time grabbing her blanket and rolling it around herself and burying her face in her pillow, putting an end to the questioning as she closed her eyes and slipped into the land of dreams, though it wasn't as much an escape as she had hoped for it to be.
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Melita was woken up by the sound of tiny claws and loud mewing outside her door. She sat up, a bit confused and disoriented for a moment or two. Something wasn't normal, but she couldn't tell what until she looked down at herself, seeing that she had thrown her blanket off, and was wearing her regular clothes.
Regular clothes which included normal panties instead of diapers masquerading as “big girl underwear” in an attempt to spare her dignity. She could feel a giggle of joy building up inside of her, but it got lost somewhere along the way to her mouth as she put her glasses back on and let Gabriella in.
For some reason, Lita found herself wandering over to her dresser, pulling open one of the drawers and staring at the half-empty package that would almost certainly have cost her all of her friends, if they had somehow found their hiding spot while they had been in her room for her birthday party. Despite Ms. Elendara and Adrianna's numerous attempts to convince her that it wasn't unusual for kids her age to have to deal with bedwetting, she had always felt like such a baby for it anyway.
A lot of it probably had to do with the Pull-Ups, she had decided at one point. While she knew she most likely would have felt mostly the same way even if she had worn Goodnites, or something of that sort, instead, at least then she would have been wearing diapers intended for seven year olds, instead of the sort intended for three year olds. There hadn't been much of a choice, however, since the smallest size of Goodnites was still too big for her, leaving her with only Pull-Ups and actual diapers for options. And even though she still felt that they were basically the same thing anyway, the Pull-Ups at least afforded her a tiny bit more dignity – those she could put on by herself, while she wasn't sure if she could say the same for regular diapers.
“What're you looking at, Lita?” Cynthia asked from behind her. Melita flushed red, closing the drawer before Cynthia could float up and look over her shoulder.
“I hafta go finish my homework,” Lita smiled sweetly.
Math was never enough to keep her fully enthralled, though, and she soon found her mind wandering again. Back to her drawer. She shook her head, annoyed that those thoughts kept popping up in her head. She should be happy never to have to think about them again!
Cynthia watched suspiciously as Lita slowly finished her homework, just in time for a much calmer Tori to come in from the living room and tell Lita it was time for her to get ready for bed, even adding something that may have been an apology. Melita was still getting sleepy, despite her little nap, so she was happy to go back to her room and pull on her pajama pants and a large pink T-shirt with little cartoon hearts all over it.
Out of habit, her hand first went to the drawer she had opened earlier, and she was halfway through getting completely undressed before her mistake registered in her mind. It seemed weird to climb into bed without the extra padding around her bottom. But nice, she told herself.
Tori and Cynthia told her goodnight, and went their separate ways, Cynthia back home and Tori to wait to go home. Gabriella curled up beside Lita and was asleep in a second or two. Melita tried to follow her example, but her eyes kept coming back open, staring up at the lightly illuminated ceiling of her room.
She squirmed a little under her covers, trying to find a comfortable spot, which was proving impossible for some reason. Everything just felt wrong... Her mind wandered to the thought of Snow White, sitting in a field of flowers. She was a little embarrassed when she realized that the image in her mind was the exact one that adorned the front of her Pull-Ups. No, not hers anymore, she told herself. She only still had them because she had told Ms. Elendara that it might be a good idea to keep them a little longer, just in case.
She smiled as she remembered Ms. Elendara's proud expression as she praised Lita's grown up reasoning, telling her that maybe she was even more of a big girl than she thought. And then her mind went back to Snow White once again. That had been the one good thing about them.
Lita sat up with a sigh. She could see the blurry outline of her dresser, calling to her silently. She couldn't believe she was even considering this... She was finally done with this!
She was on her feet before she knew it, padding across the room, opening the drawer. The Pull-Up felt so familiar in her hands, and at the same time different. Before, there had always been an element of humiliation associated with them, because of her -having- to wear them. Now it was replaced with what was almost curiosity.
No, no, no! She shoved the Pull-Up back into the drawer and skulking back over to her bed. She was just having a hard time getting used to this change, that was why she was thinking these crazy things. Curious? Ha! She knew what they were like, and she hated everything about them! Well, except for the design on the front... That was definitely cute.
She tossed and turned for another ten minutes or so, still struggling to find some way to position her body that would let her get to sleep. Finally she glanced over at her clock with a sigh. She would be awake all night at this rate if she didn't do something.
It was just for Snow White, she told herself as she drew the hideous garment up her legs, trying to ignore the fact that it didn't feel all that bad, now that she wasn't thinking about how when she woke up it would be cold and soggy and icky. Without that to worry about, they really weren't all bad, she conceded begrudgingly. Comfy, kind of, and more pajama like than her regular panties.
She pulled the covers back up to her chin, rolling her eyes at her own silliness. Only for tonight, she began to tell herself, but she was fast sleep before she got the chance to finish.
verse four
“Why don't we just throw rocks at them?” Leann shrugged boredly.
Jessica shook her head with a smile. “Well, aren't we violent today?” She gave a little chuckle as she ruffled the younger girl's hair. “But we aren't looking just to hurt them... We need to humiliate them.”
“Getting hit by rocks is humiliating,” Leann pouted, trying to smooth her hair back out.
“It's just not quite enough, I'm afraid,” Jessica sighed. “You know, if you could have just gotten into that Nina girl's party, and it was a sleepover, that would have been perfect.”
“Oh... Sorry,” Melita looked away from the kitchen door she had been staring at ever since recess had started.
“Are you getting sick?” Jessica asked suspiciously, backing away a bit.
“No... I feel fine.” Lita smiled, trying to hide inside of her coat. “Just a little... tired...”
“Hmm.” Jessica raised an eyebrow, then returned to her ranting. “Your little theory yesterday gave me an idea, Leann.”
“Are we gonna tell everyone about Dana?” Leann giggled.
“That's the problem. Everyone knows we don't like Dana, and Dana doesn't like us, so just telling them isn't going to cut it. If we had evidence of some kind, or, say, someone on the inside at a sleepover which Dana and Celeste were also attending to fake evidence, then that would be perfect.” Jessica sighed, crossing her arms. “But without that, we might as well be back at square one.”
Courtney watched in silence, letting out a relieved breath as yet another plan went up in smoke, for now at least.
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“Alan, be a good boy and go get Melita here something to drink.” Ms. Moore smiled sweetly at Lita. “How are you doing today, dear?”
“I'm fine.” Lita shrugged, glancing around a little uncomfortably. She had expected the voice lessons to be in some place kinda like her tap lessons, but instead they were at Ms. Moore's house, where it seemed like every flat surface was covered in little glass statues. She was almost afraid to speak in louder than a whisper, for fear she'd accidentally blow one of them off their perch and break it.
“Good, good. Why don't you come over here so we can begin?” Ms. Moore sat down on the piano bench, and Lita followed obediently, wondering if she should have taken off her shoes. She was pretty sure they were clean, but she nervously looked behind herself to be sure she wasn't leaving any footprints. “Now, why don't we start with some scales?” Lita stared at her blankly until she amended, “Why don't you try to match the notes I play, and we'll go from there.”
“Okay,” Lita nodded uncertainly. Ms. Moore's hands hovered over the keys of the piano for a few moments, and then they moved to Lita's chin, pushing it upwards.
“My floor doesn't need supervision, dear,” she chastised.
Alan came back in a minute or two later, holding a cup of water. He waited patiently for his mother to stop playing and Lita to stop struggling to figure out how to make her voice sound the same as the piano before shoving the cup roughly into Melita's hands, water sloshing up and over the sides of the cup onto Lita's shirt and the carpet.
“Alan!” Ms. Moore exclaimed, getting up from the bench, trying to brush the water off of Lita's shirt as Lita tried to apologize for getting water on the carpet, and Alan vanished before the wrath of his mother. “I'm sorry about that, dear,” Ms. Moore patted the seat beside her as she sat down on the bench again.
Lita sat down, carefully sipping what water was left in the cup. “You did quite well for a beginner,” Ms. Moore continued. “Now, once you're done drinking, we're going to try to determine your vocal range. Do you know what that is?”
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Tori wasn't sure if it was worth being away from Lita for parts of two afternoons per week rather than just one to have to drop the girl off and pick her back up from her lessons. It was nice to have the house completely to herself, but going back and forth was kind of annoying. Maybe she'd be able to convince Ms. Elendara to give her a raise for all the gas money she was spending. She deserved one anyway, after all the extra hours she had been working, and would be working again tonight. How could she be expected to have a social life if she was locked up in someone else's house all the time? Well, that wasn't something she had to worry about tonight, she thought with a wicked little smile.
“Hey, you wanna go out to eat tonight?” she asked as Lita got into her car, looking sort of damp for some reason. Melita shrugged; not that Tori cared all that much about her answer in the first place. It was just if she said no flat out, she doubted Ms. Elendara would be pleased with her asking her to pay for the meal afterwards. Just this once it should be worth it, though, especially since it wasn't like the kid ate all that much. “How was your lesson?” Lita shrugged; Tori wasn't paying attention to her anymore anyway.
The little Mexican restaurant's parking lot was nearly empty, so Tori pulled her car up right next to the entrance, and got a booth to sit at after just a second or two of waiting for the waiter to show up. Lita glanced over her kid's menu quickly before realizing she had no clue what anything on it was and started coloring on the back of it instead, giving a little cough every once in awhile as she got a lungful of cigarette smoke.
The waiter came around again to take their drink orders. Lita still wasn't paying attention to anything but her coloring, so Tori just ordered her a Mountain Dew – what kid didn't like caffeine? “Do you know what you want to eat yet?” Tori wasn't expecting an answer, and was already deciding on what to order for the little girl.
“I'm not hungry,” Melita mumbled, despite having only eaten some pudding at lunch that day.
“Oh, come on, you have to eat something.”
Tori's half-hearted attempt to convince her were fruitless, receiving only a “I don't feel like it.” Tori knew she shouldn't take that for an answer; she also knew she didn't feel like arguing with her. She would just have to remember to fix her something once they got back to the house.
“There you are!” Megan called from the entrance of the restaurant, waving at Tori, the other arm latched around the arm of her boyfriend. Tori waved back, telling the waiter, who had just returned with the drinks, that those were her friends at the door, and they were going to be sitting with her. Lita eyed her cup suspiciously, said something she blushingly refused to repeat to Tori, as was freakily common for her, making Tori wonder if the girl was schizophrenic or something, and then started drinking.
“Hey, we were wondering if you were going to make it.” Megan slid into the booth opposite Lita. “Oh, is this that br... Umm... Kid you've been babysitting?”
“Yeah. Lita, this is Megan and Neal.” Melita finally told them hi after Tori elbowed her to get her to look up. “She's shy,” Tori apologized.
Megan gave a sickening sweet smile in Lita's direction. “She's kinda cute.”
Tori smirked. “Try saying that after spending a week looking after her.” Lita blushed, taking another drink from her cup.
“I don't know where Steve is. He said he'd be here by now.” Megan shrugged out of her coat. “What're you having?”
“Haven't decided yet.” Tori picked up her menu again as the most gorgeous man she'd ever seen sat next to her.
“Tori, right?” he asked, flashing his sparkling teeth.
She realized her brain had frozen, and she forced it to thaw out. “Steve? It's... uh... great to meet you.” Megan winked at her, and the two of them couldn't suppress a quick giggle. This was going to be a wonderful night.
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“I wanna go home,” a tiny voice spoke up for about the millionth time, accompanied with the same annoying little cough.
Tori glared over at Melita, eyes slightly glazed over as she tore her lips away from Steve's. “God, you're a whiny runt aren't you?” She shook her head, picking her smoldering cigarette up from the ashtray, taking a deep drag from it as she turned to face Lita. “We'll go home when I'm damn good and ready, got it?”
Lita drew back further against the wall of the booth as Tori's angrily gesturing hand came a little too close to her face. The sight of the watch around her wrist caught Tori's attention. “Oh, shit.” Her face went white as she saw the time. “I have to get out of here!”
As hard as it was to peel herself away from Steve, she forced herself to, grabbing Lita by the hand and dragging her, still coughing, out to the car. “Your mom's gonna kill me,” she lamented as she threw the car into reverse, then raced through the parking lot, quickly taking another look at her watch. “She's gonna be back in like ten minu..” She stopped as she brought her eyes back up to the windshield, where she saw she was already out of the parking lot and onto the road outside. She didn't even see the car that broadsided her, smashing her front bumper, shattering one of her headlight into a million shards of glass glittering on the road before her.
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Tori was expecting a big lecture, about what was she thinking taking Melita out on a date with her, and why hadn't she been paying attention, and how dare she smoke near her, and all that other stuff. She might even have been looking forward to seeing Ms. Elendara less than seeing her own parents.
And she had been right about it all. She had gotten a frantic call from her cell phone when Ms. Elendara returned home to find it empty, and she had been at the crash site before the police, holding her ghostly white daughter as she berated Tori, finding something new to nag about every minute, or so it seemed. Tori had learned to tune that kind of thing out, especially when she already knew what the end result was.
“If you ever come near my daughter again, I swear to God, I'll break every bone in your body,” Ms. Elendara growled, predictably.
“Oh, don't worry, I'd do that myself if I ever had to be within five feet of that... that freak.” Tori smiled at the look of rage on Ms. Elendara's face, knowing she wouldn't dare to do anything here. “Good luck finding someone to replace me, though. I don't know anyone who would want to be subjected to -that-.”
Tori continued to grin as she put another cigarette into her mouth. Her hands were shaking too badly for her to light it. It was all she could do to keep from breaking down and starting to cry.
verse five
Why -had- she decided to come? Ms. Elendara had told her that if she didn't feel like it, she could stay home that day, but no, for some reason she had refused, had dragged herself out of bed that morning to endure the torture of the bus ride, and then school itself. Why?
Even Cynthia had said she thought it might not be a bad idea for Lita to rest a little longer after how badly she had been shaken up the night before. Lita insisted she was fine – she hadn't been hurt at all, really. As she had told she wasn't sure how many people since the accident.
And she was about to tell three of them again, actually, though she didn't mind it with these three as much. They all seemed so impressed with her for having made it through okay. It made her feel... special, kind of.
“I'm feeling just fine now,” she assured Leann, who was still giving her a concerned look.
“Then why aren't you eating anything?” Courtney asked. “You'd better hurry up and do it.”
Lita blushed, picking up her fork, but just so her hands had something to play with. “I'm not very hungry...”
“You weren't hungry yesterday either,” Jessica reminded her.
“So?” Lita shrugged uncomfortably. “I was in a car crash yesterday...” Jessica arched her eyebrow, accepting the subject change after a few moments.
Cynthia was slightly less happy about Melita's avoidance, however. “Melita, you stop playing around and eat right this minute, young lady.” Lita pretended not to hear her. “Lita! Did you forget our promise?” Cynthia had let Lita get away with not telling her mother she hadn't eaten supper that night if she swore to eat a big lunch the next day. As usual, she had been in a hurry that morning, with no time for breakfast.
“So neither of the cars exploded?” Leann was asking, a look of confusion on her face. “I thought cars always exploded if they hit each other.”
“Guess not.” Lita had been a bit confused by that as well, though she was glad it hadn't happened. She wasn't overly fond of loud noises or lots of fire or smoke being hear her.
“Were you scared?” Leann squeezed Lita's hand tightly.
“Uh-huh,” Melita admitted with a yawn that certainly didn't help her dramatic story. She would rather be sleeping somewhere than eating at the moment, she decided. Too bad she couldn't think of anyplace at school to take a nap, except for during classes.
At the thought of classes, Lita turned and looked over her shoulder, pouting as she saw that the rest of her classmates were nearly done eating, meaning lunchtime was probably almost over already. “I should prolly go...” she said with a sigh, ignoring the expressions on the faces of Cynthia, Jessica, and Courtney – Leann still seemed to be impressed at how brave she had been the night before.
Melita picked up her still-full tray and then stood up, only to find herself sitting right back down again, her vision reeling for a few seconds as a dizzy sensation rushed to her head. “Lita?” Jessica got to her feet quickly, rushing over to the other side of the table. “Lita, are you okay?”
“I'm fine,” Lita smiled weakly. “I just... I stood up too fast, that's all.”
Jessica narrowed her eyes. “Maybe you'd better stay here for a little longer. I can go tell your teacher...”
“No! I said I'm fine!” Lita snapped, standing back up, more slowly this time. Glaring daggers at Jessica, despite not being sure exactly why she was so angry at her, she stalked away.
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Melita stood with her arms crossed defiantly, as if daring her P.E. teacher to make her participate. In truth, it wasn't anything like that, since if Mrs. Stephenson asked her to do anything she would have done it in a second. Mrs. Stephenson was a very large, and very scary woman, and Lita doubted she would have a sliver of a chance to make her change her mind about anything.
It was more out of habit, and possibly some element of symbolic defiance, that she stood like that, waiting for the teams for the class activity of the day to be announced. While math was rather horrid, Lita could at least see the point of it at times, and if she spent enough time on it she could do decently. P.E., on the other hand, Lita absolutely abhorred, though she could see why some of the other kids liked it. In theory, it was better than the other classes because it let them get up and run around instead of sitting in their desks.
Lita held no illusions about her athletic abilities – they were just plain awful. If she had ever considered playing sports during recess, she knew she wouldn't be the last person picked, she would be the person the captains of the teams fought over, so they could force the other team to have to take her.
At least in P.E. she didn't have to worry about that, since nobody argued with the teams Mrs. Stephenson chose. They weren't the most fair teams, since most of the third graders ended up together a lot of the time, but if that was the way Mrs. Stephenson wanted it, that was the way it had to be.
While Lita didn't exactly have a favorite sport, not caring for any of them, dodge ball was near the bottom of the list; the demented offspring of it that was played in her P.E. class was even further below it. Because having one ball being thrown around wasn't enough... No, there had to be about five, which could be thrown by anyone. Melita thought she remembered Mrs. Stephenson calling it prison ball at one time, but she wasn't sure. It would make sense, though, since anyone hit by the ball had to go to “jail” behind the other team, and stay there until a ball reached them, and they used it to hit someone from the team they were now standing behind.
It was relatively safe, in theory. People seen throwing the balls too hard were forced to sit out, as were people who threw them at the heads of the other team. The rules even worked most of the time, but by the time a game was over, there would be at least five or six people who had been taken out, and Lita had found that most of them were usually disqualified for hitting her in particular. She wasn't sure if Dana had ever made it all the way through a single game; she was always on the team Lita wasn't on, somehow, and as soon as she got her hands on one of the balls, she launched it as hard as she could straight at Melita, who was normally too preoccupied watching all the chaos ensuing around her to realize she was about to get hit.
Lita was already tired of this class by the time warm ups had ended. She was still feeling a little dizzy, the dizziness seeming to have spread from her head to her stomach now, and all her body really wanted to do was lie down and doze off. However, that wasn't encouraged in this class, so she trudged off to her team's side of the gym.
She saw Dana grin at her from the other side as the game began. Last time Lita had played, she got the bright idea to run to the back of her team, in theory making herself a much harder target. Unfortunately, she forgot to watch the prisoners behind her, so that within a few minutes, she was off to her own jail. This time she decided just to stay in the middle.
Mrs. Stephenson wasn't happy unless she pretended to be participating. That was the only reason she bothered doing anything other than stand still and kick any balls that came near her away towards her other, more capable, team mates. She still stayed in one place for the most part, but she picked up and half-heartedly tossed the balls that came within her reach. A dangerous player she was not by any means – there was no reason she should be a target.
Yet she always was. Dana and her friends always made her their first victim, if they could manage it. Dana took the shot herself most of the time. Maybe she got some strange sense of satisfaction knowing that it was her own hand that caused such pain and suffering to her, or maybe she just figured Lita was one of the easiest things to hit, despite her size, never bothering to move around a lot.
And so it was this time, as well. Lita hadn't been standing there for a minute before she felt the ball slam into her stomach, pushing the air violently from her lungs. Except for the pain, Melita didn't mind. She preferred being in jail to being in the middle of the game, even if she did have to make a token effort to rejoin her team.
Her legs seemed to be weaker than normal, causing her to stumble a couple times, almost making her fall over, as she walked to the other side of the gym, pretending not to notice Dana's smug smile. She never felt particularly good after the laps they ran around the gym for warm ups, but it wasn't usually anywhere near this bad, she mused. Why was she so exhausted today? She slowed her pace, not that she had been moving at much above a snail's speed, wishing she could get her breath back the rest of the way. She felt like she was barely getting enough air to keep her standing.
Yellow began creeping along the edges of her field of vision as she stopped completely, her body swaying crazily, though she couldn't tell if that was just in her head or not. The sound of children playing grew quieter and quieter, as if she were falling down a well. The yellow light seemed to explode across her eyes, giving everything a fake looking sheen.
Maybe she wasn't there. Maybe she was just watching all of this from somewhere else.
She gave one more gasp for air as she felt the muscles in her legs liquefy, the yellow light growing brighter and brighter, the sounds moving further and further away from her until they were just a buzzing. The yellow faded to black, and that was all she knew.
verse six
“... suggest a few blood tests at your doctor, just in case,” a voice said from above Melita as her eyes opened slowly, letting cracks of light filter through the world of darkness. She quickly squeezed her eyes shut again at the brightness.
“Lita? Are you awake?” Ms. Elendara's voice asked gently.
Lita opened her eyes again with a weak smile. “Hi.”
“Hi, honey. How are you feeling?” Ms. Elendara reached out to rub Melita's hand as the little girl shrugged.
“If she stays awake this time, we can make sure she's okay to take home.” The nurse bustled around her office, busily pulling things from random drawers. Lita blinked a few times before vaguely remembering waking up earlier, while she was still in the gym, everyone staring at her...
“This is what you get for breaking your promise,” Cynthia scolded from above, though the relief in her voice was obvious.
“Do you feel sick?” Ms. Elendara was asking, but Lita ignored that as she said, “I wanna go home.”
“We're getting there, hon, I promise. Just a few minutes.” Ms. Elendara helped Lita sit up, slowly.
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It smiled as the car pulled away; its ice blue eyes would have shone with relief if they could be seen from under the black hood. The time was drawing near. It could feel that. It had been born to feel it, had been destined.
Footsteps from behind. It heard them too late, a mistake it should not have been making after all this time. It turned, cloak sweeping behind it in the shadow of the school building.
“Excuse me, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave...” the man began angrily.
It held up its hand, raising its head to look him in the eyes. “So sorry,” it said, moving forward, towards the man. The man felt his feet starting to step backwards, away, and then it was gone.
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“You're sure you don't mind me going back to work?” Ms. Elendara asked.
“No, it's okay,” Melita shrugged, not sure how much of a lie that was. If she had her way, she would keep Ms. Elendara at home with her all the time, but since that wasn't going to happen anyway, her being gone for a few hours which Lita would probably end up sleeping for most of didn't bother her too much. She had already got to spend more time with her than usual that early in the day.
“Well, all right,” Ms. Elendara said uncertainly. She didn't know if she wanted to leave Lita at home like this with the new babysitter that she hadn't even gotten a chance to meet yet. One of the other nurses from work had recommended this Michele girl quite highly, but she was still nervous about it nonetheless, especially after the disaster that was the last babysitter.
Melita watched as Ms. Elendara got up from the edge of her bed to go call her new babysitter, reaching over to pet Gabriella, who had joined her in bed as soon as she had gotten back from school. In all honesty, she was pretty sure she was feeling well enough not to have to stay in bed, but Ms. Elendara had insisted that she did, just for a while, at least. And then when she started reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Lita and Gabriella, Lita had decided that it wasn't too bad to stay in bed a bit longer. Lita was almost done with the book now – after she got through the last couple chapters, she could start on Winnie the Pooh.
It wasn't long before Melita heard the sound of a car outside the house, and then the front door opening and Ms. Elendara's voice talking to someone new. A few minutes later, a shy looking brown-haired girl with glasses almost as thick as Ms. Elendara's entered Lita's room, quietly pushing open the door a crack to make sure she was awake first.
“Hi, Melita? My name is Michele,” the girl announced with a pleasant smile. Lita couldn't help but smile back, her doubts about what this new babysitter would be like melting away. She looked like she might be a year or two older than Tori, though she was a bit shorter and a touch heavier. “How are you feeling?”
Lita never seemed to have an answer for that, so she just shrugged, as usual. She said goodbye to Ms. Elendara, who had snuck into the room at some point, then stared at Michele.
Michele glanced around the room nervously. “So... Uh... Are you still sleepy?”
Lita shrugged again, but said, “Not really.”
“Oh.” Michele seemed a bit disappointed, or perhaps just even more nervous. “So, what do you want to do?”
Melita began to shrug yet again, then spotted Alice's Adventures in Wonderland on the edge of her desk. “Would you... umm... read to me? A lil?” She didn't like asking that, because she was always afraid that the person she was asking would assume she just didn't know how to read for herself.
Michele smiled at this, her expression brightening even more as she followed Lita's gaze over to the desk. “I love this book!” she exclaimed excitedly. She had just flipped to the spot where Ms. Elendara had stopped when she was interrupted by the phone. She set the book down and hurried out to answer it.
She re-entered not long after, holding the phone. “It's for you,” she told Lita, handing her the receiver.
Melita, confused about who could possibly be calling her, took the phone suspiciously. “H'llo?”
“Hey, sweetie!” Adrianna's voice exploded from the speaker.
“Anna!” Lita's voice was equally loud and excited as she sat up straight with a bounce, earning her a very unpleased glare from Gabriella.
“How are you doing? I've heard you haven't had such a good couple days...”
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A full moon shone over the little house as the hooded figure stepped forward, his eyes fixed on one window in particular, one which was obscured by pink curtains. She was there. He could feel her.
At this time of night, all good children should be sleeping. Although he wasn't sure how much she qualified as good, she was still undeniably a child, so more than likely she wasn't awake.
Was she dreaming?
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Ms. Elendara thought she heard a bumping noise from Melita's room, but she didn't think too much of it until the following sound of crying. She leapt out of bed, running to her little girl's room, finding her sitting on the floor and rubbing her head.
“What's wrong, honey? What happened? Are you okay?” Ms. Elendara asked, kneeling down next to Lita.
“I fell out of bed,” Lita sniffled softly. “An' hit my head...”
“Awww...” Ms. Elendara kissed the top of Lita's head gently, picking her up and setting her back on her bed. “Are you going to be okay?” Lita nodded slowly, refused the offered drink of water, and then let Ms. Elendara, who was silently wondering why it felt like Lita was wearing a Pull-Up under her pajamas, go back to bed.
Melita sat in her bed, where she had spent too much of that day, she felt, staring over towards the seashell shaped cone of light emanating from one corner of her room. She wanted to go over there and unplug the night light so bad, and change into her normal, big girl panties, and stop crying every time something happened to her.
But she couldn't do any of those things, and she knew it. As much as she wanted to deny it, she needed those things, for now, anyway. It was hard enough to sleep with them – she could hardly imagine what it would be like with them gone.
She didn't really want to go back to sleep. She never did lately. Too many bad memories, dredged up in the material of her nightmares. Even if passing out had been unpleasant, especially in front of her whole class, afterwards she had been able to sleep, for a little while, without dreaming, and for that she was grateful. That wasn't something that was likely to happen again anytime soon.
Her eyes moved from the seashell across the barely illuminated wall. Her copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was still sitting on the desk, the bookmark nearly touching the back cover of the book. Michele was good at reading, though she had eventually gotten tired, so Lita had let her go work on homework while she read to Gabriella, who was probably tired of people talking at her by that point.
Her eyes kept moving, past her curtains, and then back to them as a chill ran down her spine. She wasn't sure how to describe it, but it was like she knew there was something out there, outside her window, looking back in at her. She shivered, pulling her blanket up around herself.
Her eyes stayed on the window, unable to get off of her bed and look out of it, to prove to herself that she was just paranoid. Surely there was nothing out there – who would be outside at eleven o'clock at night?
The moon shone, not unlike a seashell, over the house as the hooded man walked quietly away, leaving the little girl to eventually return to her troubled sleep.
Last edited by Elizabeth on Sat Jan 05, 2008 3:20 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Elizabeth
Site Admin
Joined: 30 Dec 2007
Posts: 172
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| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2007 12:19 am Post subject: |
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verse seven
“I'm sorry, but I don't really have a choice, Lita... Believe me, I'd much rather be reading to you than homework,” Michele smiled sadly at the little girl's tired pout as she sat next to her in the car, tap shoes on the floor above Lita's swinging feet.
“Okay,” Melita gave in finally. Really, she had homework of her own to finish, but she would much rather not do hers, either. Adrianna had always called it a necessary evil; Lita wasn't sure exactly what she meant by that, though she would certainly agree that it was evil.
Lita's bad mood didn't last for long, in the face of the partly exciting, partly frightening news she had just received, and couldn't keep to herself for any longer. “They're having auditions to be in a real play this Saturday!” she exclaimed, bouncing in her seat.
Michele glanced over, a little shocked at the sudden change, though not much. Kids seemed to be like that – indignant one moment, excited the next. “Are you going to go?” she asked, her smile turning much less sad; happy kids seemed to be infectious for her, and she had a rather difficult time not smiling when one was around.
“I dunno,” Lita blushed, suddenly shy again. She didn't really think she would be good enough to get into the play, even though Miss Hamilton had said they were just looking for background dancers for a few scenes. What if she didn't? Then the other kids in her class would make fun of her...
Then again, she was pretty sure Courtney was expecting her to be there, since she had said she was definitely going. That was easy for her – she was a good dancer. She had even been in a couple plays already, or so she had told the rest of the class, much to Lita's surprise. Maybe if Courtney was there it wouldn't be so bad. Or maybe it would be worse, since she was so much better than Lita...
“Umm... Are you... coming inside?” Michele was looking a bit worried, her face glancing in at Melita from the other side of the car door she was holding open. Lita blinked, realizing they were already back home, and she grabbed her shoes and dashed out, embarrassed.
Michele hung back at the car for a few moments longer than she really needed to, closing the door, waiting for Lita to start searching for her key so that she could unlock the house, something she seemed to enjoy immensely for whatever reason. Not that the reason mattered. It was cute anyway, and Michele wasn't about to ruin her fun by opening the door herself.
This time, however, Melita just stood there, swaying back and forth impatiently, her hands still clutching her shoes behind her back. After a moment, she turned back to Michele, who was slowly advancing, trying to figure out what was wrong, before she remembered that Lita's dance clothes didn't have pockets, and so she didn't have her key.
It was Michele's turn to blush as she opened the door, letting a slightly confused Lita inside. It was just one of those days, it seemed.
Melita stared at the pile of workbooks on her desk with a tired sigh. She knew she should get started on homework, but she just couldn't find the energy to do anything but slowly change out of her leotard and tights and into an old, slightly torn up pair of jeans that Ms. Elendara hated when Lita wanted to wear out of the house, and the sweatshirt Courtney had given her for her birthday that she hated just wearing around the house because she wanted to show it off.
She began to walk over to her desk, only to lose motivation as she passed in front of her bed, flopping down on top of it, rolling over to encompass herself in her blanket. There was a moment or two of doubt, of her telling herself, or maybe Cynthia telling her, that she should really be working, not lying there, and another moment or two where the subjects of most of her recent dreams came back. She wasn't sure, but she thought that these moments were when she took off her glasses and set them on the stand beside her bed.
These moments were not enough to keep her awake, however, and as soon as they had passed, she was fast asleep.
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Melita sniffed the air happily, the scent of the field of flowers she was standing in the middle of quite pleasant. She knelt down, remembering at the last moment to gather up her long, white skirts to keep them from getting dirty, trying to bring the smell closer to her nose.
She stood back up after a minute or two, not quite satisfied, though as much so as she was likely to get without picking every flower in the field to decorate her room with. Too bad they probably wouldn't have all fit anyway. She considered just taking one or two, or maybe a few more than that, but how would she decide which ones? They were all so beautiful...
“I would go with the tiger lilies, myself,” a voice that was rough, yet gentle at the same time, said. “But that's just me.”
Lita wasn't particularly surprised to find a cloaked man on horseback in front of her. Had he been there the second before? Did it really matter? “I dunno... Maybe.” Lita shrugged, curiously moving closer to the jet black horse, a little unsure of how to make the animal like her, though the desire to do so was quite strong.
It turned out she didn't need to do anything. When she came close enough, the horse stretched out with its neck, nuzzling her shoulder. Melita giggled, reaching up to pet the top of its head, as if it were Gabriella, only quite a bit bigger. “What's its name?”
“You already know,” the man answered.
Lita shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.”
She continued petting the horse thoughtfully, her eyes being drawn back to the flowers, which were sadly starting to fade and wilt. “Already?” she asked sadly. The man just nodded.
“She really likes you,” he said suddenly, trying to cheer Lita back up. She smiled at this, renewing her petting of the horse, who she would almost swear was purring, even though she didn't think anything but cats did that.
“It's almost...”
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“Oh, I'm sorry!” Michele apologized quickly as soon as she opened the door to find the lights out, and Melita sleeping. “I didn't mean to wake you up...”
“'sokay,” Lita mumbled, rubbing her eyes and then stretching, hand brushing against Gabriella's furry little back. “What time is it?”
“It's almost time to eat, if you're hungry.” Michele finished her sentence, having no reason to interrupt herself this time. “Or do you just want to go back to sleep? You look pretty tired.”
“No, I'm hungry,” she started to say, but stopped herself. While her dream had been a bit odd, it was still better than any other she had had for quite a stretch of time. Maybe if she was lucky, she could get back to sleep now and have another, before her nightmares realized they were missing out on a chance to torture her.
“I'm gonna go back to sleep,” she said, curling back up, eyes already starting to close again as she felt Michele's slightly chilly hand on her forehead.
“Are you feeling sick?” she asked, sounding concerned. Melita shrugged, and then she was sleeping.
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Melita sniffed the air expectantly, but the scent that reached her nose this time was less pleasant, though still not bad by any means. It was vaguely familiar despite her inability to pinpoint just what it was.
She looked down at the field of flowers under her, reaching out to touch them, only to have her hand brush against cloth, a slight crinkling sound emanating from her fingertips as she did so. She sniffed again cautiously, the smell becoming a little more recognizable, then revealing itself to be baby powder as her line of sight crossed her infantile body, where a diaper was firmly taped.
She reached up, brushing the bars of the crib with her tiny fingers, trying to remember if she was supposed to be bigger than this, or if that had all just been a strange dream. It almost felt like it, when she thought about it. She yawned and laid back down, clutching her blankie and sticking her thumb into her mouth as she curled up into a ball and began to drift off to dreamland.
A ray of bright light cut across her dimly lit sanctuary, and instinctively she raised a hand to shield her eyes, noticing that it was larger than it had been a moment ago, perhaps as large as it was in her dream of being a big girl. The door opened a crack more, enough to show a silhouette, and then the door closed again, plunging the room into darkness, even somehow draining the light from the night light in the corner.
Melita gasped loudly, pulling the blanket closer to her chest as her eyes searched the dark, trying to see anything without wanting to see what might be there. What if there was some sort of monster out there?!
She recalled the muscles in her legs, and got to her feet, reaching up to try to find the top of the crib, so that she could climb out and go somewhere safe, where she could see. Her hand touched something that felt like mesh over her head, and with a sinking feeling in her stomach, she followed it down to the rail of the crib, where it sealed her in, making her easy prey for whatever was out there, waiting.
Waiting.
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“You're finally up, sleepy head!” Ms. Elendara exclaimed with a smile, setting her newspaper down on the table as she stood up. “I was wondering if I would have to wake you up.”
Melita nodded with a yawn, hiding her surprise in finding Ms. Elendara there instead of Michele. Surely she hadn't been sleeping that long... She still felt pretty tired, though she was quite proud of herself for getting any sleep at all without the aid of Pull-Ups.
Her eyes drifted to the newspaper, over an article about a mysterious young girl stopping some sort of robbery, to the date at the top of the page. Ms. Elendara set her hand on Lita's forehead gently.
“Do you feel sick, honey?”
“I'm... I'm fine,” Melita lied through the knot in her stomach that had suddenly appeared as she saw she had slept through the entire afternoon and night, without once touching her homework for today. “Just... fine.”
verse eight
Melita pushed her tray, untouched except for the nibble she had taken from her cookie, away with her elbows, making room on the surface of the table for her to lay out her arms to rest her head on. Cynthia fluttered about overhead, probably getting angry at Lita for not eating again, probably about to come down and lecture her, ask her if she wanted to embarrass herself in front of the rest of the class again at P.E.
Jessica, though hardly conscience-like, beat her to berating the younger girl, having nothing better to talk about yet – the lunch table was unusually quiet that day for some reason. Probably the weather. It was dark and gloomy outside, and while the view of the sky was blocked by the ceiling of the cafeteria, all four of the girls had already seen it long enough at recess for it to seep into their moods.
“Are you trying to get out of the rest of your classes today again?” Jessica asked, sounding less like she was teasing than she meant to.
Melita tilted her head upwards a little, just enough to be see the bottom of Jessica's face, then shrugged. “My tummy hurts,” she said quietly.
She felt a hand stroke her hair, and after a moment Leann asked, “Do you wanna go to the nurse?”
“No,” Melita sat up again with a sigh. She left off the majority of her reply, most of which dealt with just how much she -didn't- want to have to go to the nurse's office again.
Leann withdrew her hand after another second or two, returned to her eating, like Courtney and Jessica already had. Lita thought about following suit, even going so far as to reach out and begin to pull her tray closer to herself, but as soon as her sight fell on the contents she remembered how little she wanted to eat any of it.
“I wonder if it's gonna rain today,” Courtney spoke up eventually.
“Probably,” Jessica answered pessimistically. “I hate rain... There's nothing fun to do in my house.”
Melita considered agreeing with that, but now that she had Gabriella, it was less true, though she still got rather bored on rainy days. Leann nodded as she swallowed the last of her milk.
“Carrie just got her driver's license... Maybe we can get her to take us somewhere...” Courtney suggested a bit doubtfully. Her older sister was nice enough, and she seemed to like the other girls, but she probably wouldn't like the idea of being stuck with all four of them by herself. Her mom probably wouldn't like that too much either, come to think of it.
“Ooh! We could go to the mall! They're having a sale at Limited Too!” Jessica exclaimed, excitement amplifying her voice. Before Courtney could protest that maybe they should wait until they actually found out if Carrie was interested, Jessica had turned to Leann and Lita. “You guys are gonna come too, right?”
“I think mommy'll let me if Carrie's there...” Leann began, leaving Jessica's inquisitive glare with only one target.
“Umm... I dunno...” Lita reached out and picked up her still unused fork and began playing with it so that she had something to focus her eyes on.
“Come on, it'll be fun!”
Lita could feel Jessica's glare on her despite her self-made distraction. “I don't know if Michele will let me...” she said finally. In all honesty, she wasn't sure if she felt going at all. It would probably be fun, she kept telling herself; still, she didn't feel like doing much more than sleeping.
“Oh, your babysitter! She can drive, can't she?” Courtney asked, sounding almost as excited as Jessica. Lita gave her a strange look, but nodded. Courtney grinned – that was perfect! If there was someone else there, Carrie and her mom would be a lot less likely to say no... She was sure of it! “C'mon, you hafta come!”
“I s'pose...” Melita finally caved in when Leann joined in the badgering as Cynthia grinned above. This would be good for Lita. She needed to get out of the house more.
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Melita sighed heavily, letting one arm fall from its position on her knees to trace invisible patterns on the floor beside her. It had been nice not to have to do anything during P.E. since the teacher had noticed that she was looking a bit haggard and had her sit out of the activity – basketball. Not that Lita would have been any good at it anyway, since being tall, jumping, and throwing balls accurately at something a good ways above her head weren't her strengths.
It was something to do, though. For a while, she had watched, and been amused by, Dana's attempts at the game, but once she started getting the hang of it and stopped missing the basket so often, it was less fun.
The rest of the class wasn't overly interesting to watch, either, unfortunately. For some reason there were a few missing that day, so the groups gathered around each basket were a bit uneven. Lita had been glad to see that Allison hadn't shown up that day, despite Cynthia chastising her for thinking that way without finding out if there was something wrong with her. If she had been alone, Lita would have answered that of course there was something wrong with her if she spent so much time with Dana, but since the rest of the class, that had bothered to show up that day at any rate, was there, she kept her thoughts to herself.
Suddenly, the feeling of being watched, similar to what she had felt a few nights before, washed over her. She turned around, eyes searching the wall, falling on the door nestled in one corner. It had only a tiny, smudged window, but Melita would have sworn that she saw movement outside of it. Part of her wanted to call out for the teacher, to have her deal with it.
What if she was wrong? What if there wasn't anything there, and she made a fool out of herself in front of her class? Not that she didn't do that often enough as it was. Nervously, she searched for Mrs. Stephenson, making sure she was occupied, before getting to her feet, inconspicuously heading towards the corner of the room. Nobody seemed to notice, or care about, her absence, so she moved a bit more quickly to be sure she didn't get caught before making it to her destination, and also to give whoever was watching her less time to escape.
“Where are you going, Lita?” Cynthia demanded, flying as fast as she could towards her charge. This was what she got for leaving the room for a few minutes. She should know better by now.
Lita stayed quiet and didn't slow down, only nodding towards the door, which she was almost at now. She stretched out her arm, hand brushing against the doorknob, trying to strengthen her resolve enough to turn it. The window was too high for her to be see out of, and even on tiptoe she would only have a very limited view. Cynthia might be willing to look for her, if only to keep her in the building, but she would take too long to get there and convince.
The door opened with a creak, making Lita jump at the volume of it. She spun around, looking for Mrs. Stephenson. The teacher was in the middle of trying to sort a disagreement out, but Lita was sure that any second now she was going to turn around and find her.
But she had to know.
The door opened out into an alley of sorts. It wasn't really, in the strictest sense – the school was made up of only one building. That building had been around for a good, long while, though, and an addition had been made to it. The extension could have been considered a separate building, almost, except for the hallway that connected the two at the back of the two buildings, making it look from the front like there was a slice of the school missing.
Lita's eyes flickered back to her P.E. teacher one more time, and then, without giving herself time to think about it, she hopped out of the door, pushing it closed behind her. When she finally had a chance to look around, however, there was nobody but her there. She opened her mouth to call out, then closed it again. It wasn't like there was anywhere for someone to be hiding here, so obviously if there -had- been anyone, they had run off.
What was going on? She stayed in the alley for a few minutes trying to think of the possibilities, though nothing would come to her, even as lightning started to streak across the sky, and the first raindrops began to fall around her.
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Michele picked the newspaper from that morning up from the kitchen table, folding it over on itself nervously. “I don't know, Lita. Your mom might not like me taking you somewhere without her knowing first.”
“We'll prolly be back before she get home from work,” Melita coaxed. “You can leave her a note... C'mon... Please?”
Michele forced a reminder that she was the babysitter and supposed to be responsible and sensible and all that on herself. Really, she had wanted to get some shopping done for the past few days, but between schoolwork and babysitting she hadn't had any time at all. And shopping with Melita was bound to be a blast – she was such an adorable little kid! But it wasn't Melita she needed to worry about, it was Ms. Elendara. After the last incident with a babysitter taking her daughter somewhere without her express permission, it wasn't likely that she would look fondly on this expedition.
“Pretty please?” Lita pouted.
Michele looked down at the little girl's eyes despite herself. She knew what would happen, but still she couldn't stop in time. It was the fatal mistake, one she knew the moment it happened she wouldn't be recovering from.
“Fine, we'll go. But we're only staying until five, at the very latest, okay?” Lita bounced up and gave her a hug, much happier about the trip now that she knew it was going to happen than she had been when it was just a concept at lunch. Maybe it would be a fun way to spend a rainy afternoon after all.
He had been called a creature of the night many times, though only a few of those times had been to his face. Either way, it wasn't all that true. He had been outside during the day many times, and as far as he knew he had yet to burst into flames, even if he had been pretty sure he was about to on a number of occasions. He was fairly certain he wouldn't spontaneously combust in sunlight – it could eventually just make him feel like he was about to. Even so, he liked the daytime much more than night, so he preferred to think of himself as belonging to the former rather than the latter.
People, the few that managed to get a glimpse of him at all, looked at him strangely when he walked around wearing a long, hooded cloak; however, they probably would have looked at him much more so if he didn't, and walked around screaming in pain once he had been out in the sunlight long enough. At least it was getting later in the year, when his garb was slightly less weird. He had thought about finding something less antiquated looking to wear, but it had never been a pressing enough matter for him to actually do it.
He'd been dead once. It hadn't been all that interesting, yet it was the first thing he remembered, so it was a landmark, of sorts. How long he had been dead, he wasn't sure. Myth said that it was probably only half a day or so, depending on what time death had come for him. Then again, myth had gotten just about everything else about him wrong, too, so he had no real reason to believe that other than not having anything else to go on.
Well, to tell the truth, there was one other thing he remembered, from before his death. One thing that stuck in his mind, no matter what he tried to get rid of it. An obsession, some might call it. He preferred to think of it as some sort of holy quest, something he was destined to do in his previous life, but had failed in, and now was trying to rectify that mistake, even after having been transformed by death.
Wishful thinking, all of it. It had an almost poetic ring to it, however, so he entertained the notion, at least until he could prove himself wrong. For now, he was Neil McKean, Defender of Justice, and all that good stuff. Maybe one day he'd be able to believe that was what he was.
And that was why he had been seeking the Seer, despite having only a little whisper in the back of his mind telling him to do so, which, if he really wanted to, he most likely could have blocked out with very little trouble. And now he had almost accomplished his goal, he was almost done. Or so he hoped, at least.
Redemption, from deeds he may or may not have actually committed. It was a rather cliché goal, he knew, but it was either that or striving to become some all-powerful destructive being. He'd probably get around to the latter eventually... He just felt the need to get the first out of the way beforehand.
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“Oh, these are so cute!” Michele cooed, picking up the hair clips and holding them up to Melita's head, the little purple stars attached to the front of them swinging a tiny bit from the speed with which her hand had moved in her eagerness to see what they would look like on her charge. Just as adorable as she would have imagined.
Lita blushed, glancing nervously over at her friends – the hair clips were cute, yes, but she didn't want the others to see Michele acting like this, just as she wouldn't want them to see Adrianna acting like that towards her. It made her feel like a baby, being told how sweet she would look in this new... whatever babies would be trying on in a store. Luckily, her friends weren't paying any attention to her as they all perused the spinning stand with the majority of the store's earrings. Leann, who was the only one of the three who hadn't gotten her ears pierced yet, despite her numerous attempts at begging, as retold dramatically at the lunch table, was occasionally reaching out and pushing the stand to make it spin around randomly, much to Jessica's annoyance. Which, of course, only fueled Leann to do it more often, though not too much, since she was also fantasizing about how she would look, if only somehow she could convince one of the people at the store to pierce her ears for her.
Carrie looked over at the three kids, too, as Leann sent the stand whirling again to the angry cries of the eldest of the trio and muffled giggles from her own little sister, feeling nervous that neither her or Melita's babysitter were keeping that close an eye on them. She knew the three quite well, and had babysat them quite often, though Jessica would never admit to that. They were good kids, but they were still kids. Playing with something that could probably be pushed over without a -whole- lot of effort.
Melita barely noticed Courtney's older sister walking over to Michele, who was still happily rummaging through the hair things. She glanced around quickly, taking a few steps towards her friends, then hissed upward, “Did you see someone outside?”
“I saw a lot of people outside, Lita – it's the mall,” Cynthia answered honestly, only to be given a dirty look. Lita's eyes flickered to the flocks of people flooding past the store, knowing that Cynthia was right, but not able to help feeling a bit nervous. Then again, she had been feeling that way ever since that afternoon in P.E., which was why she had opted to stay close to her babysitter rather than the people who she had come to the mall to be with in the first place.
“Lita, look at these!” Leann called, running over to Melita, holding up a pair of gold earrings in the shape of rosebuds. “Aren't these pretty?” Lita nodded, distracted though not enough to be unable to admire the jewelry she was being shown. It was almost enough to make her want to get her ears pierced, but not quite. Despite how pretty some of the earrings here, and the ones she had seen Ms. Elendara and Adrianna wear, were, getting to wear them wasn't worth having a needle jammed through her ear, at least not yet. How Leann could be so eager to have hers done, she had no clue; how Adrianna had stood to have each of hers pierced multiple times completely baffled her.
Melita allowed herself to be pulled over to the display case, too, still watching the door as closely as she could manage while being told to look at the pretty shinies every few seconds. It wasn't long before two long shadows fell over the group. “It's about time to go, okay?” Carrie smiled apologetically as they pouted, and Jessica went up to the counter to buy the earrings she had decided she couldn't live without.
Lita noticed another bag among the many that Michele had accumulated over the afternoon, most containing clothes, though not for her – she said she was doing some shopping for her little cousin's birthday. “Didja get the hair clips?” she asked, a bit more curious than she thought she would have been.
“Yep,” Michele smiled, reaching into the bag and pulling them out. “Here you go, sweetie.”
Lita blinked up at Michele, uncomprehending for a few moments. “For... For me? I thought they were for your cousin...”
“Oh, they are. I got her a pair, too. I just thought they looked too cute on you to pass up.” Michele grinned as Melita hugged her, squeaking out her thanks happily. As she pulled away, she began trying to detach them from their packaging before looking up.
When she did look, up, however, she just about dropped the newly liberated clips to the floor as her eyes began to go wide at the figure standing behind Michele.
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They say you can't take anything with you when you die. They also tend to say that you stay dead once you die, so obviously their views aren't completely accurate.
Neil hadn't taken much with him, but he had taken something. What it was, he had never been altogether certain. He just knew that it was connected with the Seer somehow, the same way he just knew that he was supposed to find this Seer. Maybe this thing was his connection to the Seer, but that didn't seem right, exactly. It had been the first thing he saw, after his resurrection, the only thing with him in his tomb.
For the moment, he was using it as a wall hanging. It functioned quite satisfactorily that way, and perhaps that was its only purpose. For the most part, it was red rope, knotted so as to hold the three gold coins embedded in it. The coins had some sort of writing inscribed in them in a language that looked very Chinese. He had tried to get it translated, once, but according to the man he had gone to for help, it wasn't really Chinese, but some kind of derivative of it.
He reached up, pulling it down gently. Somehow he knew that it would give him the answers he was seeking, if only he knew how to ask it. Or maybe the Seer would know how. He slipped it into his pocket with one hand, pulling up the hood of his cloak with the other. It was a rainy day, but the threat of the sun was always there, above the clouds. Better safe than sorry – they had been right about that, at any rate. They had a better track record with things that didn't directly involve death.
There weren't many people out and about today. He had the weather to thank for that, though it was slowly getting less and less rainy. By the time he arrived at his destination, it had almost stopped altogether, just a few raindrops splashing down onto the ground beside him every once in a while. People were starting to re-emerge from their houses, mostly children intrigued by the damp, muddy world that now greeted them.
Lucky for him, that was what he was looking for – a child. He had never been good at estimating the age of children, so he had stopped trying. However young the girl was, he hadn't expected the Seer to be so small. He had always imagined her, or him, to be much, much older than himself. It would seem that he was mistaken.
Finally he arrived at the house he had been searching for. It appeared to be empty – the car that had sat in the driveway the last time he had passed by was gone. After a moment of patience, however, he noticed the little black-haired child on the back porch, carefully taking off her sandals as she stared intently at something he couldn't see on the porch beside her.
His hand tightened around the rope and gold in his pocket, and he stepped forward to meet his destiny, whatever that may be.
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Melita's eyes narrowed in anger, her hand tightening around the plastic and cardboard that had held her new hair clips until a few moments ago. Her voice came out low, almost as the growl of some wild animal. “Celeste.”
verse ten
“Lita?” Michele turned quickly, finding only another little girl behind her. She wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but it certainly wasn't that, what with the reaction Melita was giving. “What's going on?”
The other little girl stepped backwards, eyes darting towards the sales counter, where the other three girls were giggling softly at something as Jessica paid the clerk for her earrings. Her tongue flickered over her lips nervously as she appeared to be frantically searching for something to say, while Lita just glared, eyes smoldering more ever second.
“Melita!” Michele hissed sharply, trying to get her attention without being too loud... She didn't expect embarrassing her in front of her friends would help their friendship at all. Then again, she had never seen her like this; she would have sworn that the normally quiet, gentle little girl was going to become incredibly violent towards this other child, in which case it was her duty as a babysitter to stop her. No matter what Lita thought of her afterwards.
Luckily, it wasn't three moments later that Lita's concentration was broken as a voice cried, “Celeste! You made it!”, and a flash of color flashed before her eyes, blocking her view. Celeste was still watching Lita cautiously, but she was obviously relieved to see, and be being hugged by, Courtney.
It was just as obvious that Melita was rather unhappy about this latest development, not to mention shocked. Her mouth worked furiously, words she had heard long ago but been told never to use herself springing to her mind. She very nearly said some, too – it was only the comforting hand of Leann on her arm that stopped her.
“Don't tell me you invited -her-.” Jessica shook her head disapprovingly at Courtney, who had just turned around, her expression of glee fading away almost instantly at the sight of her other friends. “What, did you tell Dana she could come, too?”
“Dana has nothing to do with this!” Courtney insisted, stamping her foot. “I told you before, it's not Celeste's fault! If you'd just listen to her...”
“I don't want to hear anything she has to say.” Jessica crossed her arms, eyes rolling towards the ceiling. “Are you planning on joining Dana's little group, too?”
“Girls! Calm down!” Michele was glad that the store they were in now was mostly empty except for them, but they were starting to get weird looks from the people walking by. At the sound of someone approaching, she turned, ready to apologize for all the commotion, only to find Carrie. “Do you know what's going on?”
Carrie shrugged. “A little. Long story.”
“Why do you have to be so stubborn?!” Courtney sighed, exasperated.
“Lita, come on... Listen to your babysitter and just tell them to calm down...” Cynthia begged. There was probably no way this was going to end well, but maybe Melita would have a chance of keeping them from saying anything they were going to regret.
“Why are you being so nice to her after what she did to me?” Melita's voice was quiet, laced with pain. “Do you like her more than me?” Leann gave Lita a quick hug, glaring daggers at Courtney.
“Melita!” Cynthia exclaimed, starting to get angry at the girl for ignoring her, and most likely making everything worse. Lita continued to pretend that Cynthia wasn't there, not wanting common sense to be interjected into her justified rage.
“No, I like all of you the same!” Courtney insisted, starting to sound just as hurt as Lita. “I wanna be around all of you, but I can't with you guys treating Celeste like this!”
“Maybe if she didn't deserve it,” Jessica retorted coldly.
“I think you guys better cool down for a while,” Michele insisted, without making any move to get them to, since she couldn't think of any that might work. Carrie started moving towards her little sister, battling with herself as to whether or not she should pull the 'Mom will be ticked when she hears about this' move, wondering how much Courtney would hate her afterwards.
“She -doesn't- deserve it! If you'd just shut up and listen to someone other than yourself for once!” Courtney pleaded. “That's why I wanted her to come! I don't wanna have to choose between her and all of you, but if...”
The air around Jessica could have frozen solid, and nobody there would have been surprised. “Too bad. Choose.” Leann looked up at Jess, more surprised than Courtney, who in all honesty was more angered by the older girls words than shocked.
Thick silence hung over the room as the Courtney and Jessica glared at each other.
“Fine, if that's how you want it.”Courtney turned away from her three former best friends, pulling Celeste along with her.
“Courtney!” She didn't even seem to heat her big sister's words as she started to walk away.
“Guys, take it easy! You know this isn't what you want...” Michele knew she wasn't convincing anyone, even before Jessica's reply of “Yes, it is,” but it was all she could think of to say. How could she be letting this happen? What kind of crappy babysitter was she?!
“Courtney, slow down!” Carrie turned from her pursuit of her sister, flustered. “Look, Michele, can you take the other girls home for me? I don't think having them and Courts in the same car right now is a great idea...”
“Umm... Sure...” Michele glanced down at her three sullen charges, a part of her wondering if maybe she should have suggested that they -should- all ride together so they could talk, and fix things up between them. Another part told her, rather wisely, that none of them were going to be in any mood to talk for a while.
“Come on,” she sighed wearily, adjusting her bags so they were a little more comfortable to carry. “Let's go home.”
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“I wondered if you were going to come,” the girl looked up at Neil, a smile across her face, extending deep into her sky blue eyes. She set her sandals, soaked and covered with mud, by the back door of her house before sitting down on the steps of her back porch, carefully smoothing out her school uniform's blue plaid skirt.
“Just wondered? I thought it was your job to know those sorts of things,” Neil hesitated at the edge of the house, glancing at the window overlooking the porch. His appearance didn't exactly give the impression that he was someone to be trusted alone with children.
The girl shrugged. “It's hard to ever really -know- anything for sure.” She scooted over a little, dangling one leg off one edge of the steps, dipping her toes into the puddle beside it. “You wanna sit down?”
Neil glanced back up at the window again, then nodded, joining the girl, though making sure to keep a good distance between them. “Isn't that cold?” he asked after a minute or two of silence, nodding towards her foot.
“A little.” The girl lifted her foot to the step again, shaking the water off. Neil noticed a silver band around one of her toes. What completely useless thing would they think of next? “You have something to show me, don't you?” Neil nodded, reaching into his pocket for the coins and rope. “Ooo... It's prettier than I thought it would be,” the girl giggled, reaching out tentatively. “Can I..?”
“Sure.” Neil wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with it anyway. Maybe she would know. She started to grab it from his hand, but he set it down on the step between them before she could.
“My name is Aurea,” she decided to announce as she lifted the thing, holding it up in front of her face and watching the coins spinning around slowly.
“Do you know who I am already?” He wasn't sure if he expected her to or not. How far did the Seers power extend? So far it just seemed like it gave her some vague idea about what was going to happen. She shook her head, still staring intently at the spinning coins. “I'm Neil.”
“Pleased to meetcha,” Aurea mumbled distractedly, reaching out a finger to touch one of the coins. As soon as her flesh made contact with it, the surface seemed to ripple, and then the pseudo-Chinese letters started to glow, one by one. Aurea gasped loudly, her hand instinctively letting go. Neil caught it before it had fallen halfway to the girl's legs. “Sorry,” she blushed meekly. “Wasn't expecting...”
“No... Neither was I...” Neil held the rope up, glancing down over the symbols. They still made the same amount of sense to him – none at all – but at least now he could be fairly certain that it actually did have something to do with the Seer. The last symbol blinked on, glowing with the same pale green light as the rest. All the rest but one, which stayed curiously dark.
“Huh...” Neil mused quietly. “That's weird.”
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Michele glanced over at Melita, still sulking in the seat beside her as she stared at the front of the glove compartment. She and Leann hadn't said a word since they had gotten into the car, and Jessica had spoken only enough to tell Michele how to get her and Leann home.
“I'm sure you'll be able to patch things up tomorrow, once you've all had a good night's rest,” Michele offered helpfully. “These little fights happen all the time. When I was your age...”
“I don't want to patch things up,” Melita said, continuing to stare at the glove compartment. “I hate her. I hate them both.” She almost could have believed it, too, if saying it didn't make her feel like bursting into tears as her heartstrings were shredded mercilessly. She couldn't tell if it was from saying she hated Courtney, or from her saying that reminding her of how Courtney abandoning her for Celeste. At the moment it hardly seemed to matter. |
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Elizabeth
Site Admin
Joined: 30 Dec 2007
Posts: 172
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| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2007 12:20 am Post subject: |
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verse eleven
Gabriella put her little paws up on Melita's chest so that she could rub her head against the bottom of the girl's chin, her purrs thundering even louder as Lita lowered a hand from her eyes to pet the kitten, who didn't seem to notice that her fur had gotten a little wet from the contact. Lita continued to pet Gabriella, which made her feel remarkably better for some reason; she even let out a little giggle as the kitten turned back to lick her hand.
Finally, the kitten grew tired, and after a few minutes of walking around on Melita and the bed, decided to curl up on Lita's lap. Lita smiled down at her and resumed the petting, which was still comforting, even without Gabriella returning her affection. She wasn't sure how long she sat there; the only thing that interrupted her was a knock on her door.
Lita gave a little jump, luckily not enough to wake Gabriella, though after her mind kicked back into gear, she almost wished it had. She didn't want to move her, because she knew that would definitely wake her up, and she would be mad at her, at least until she got back to sleep.
Not that it would have mattered that much, she told herself with a mental sigh. It would take too long to change back into her panties, and Ms. Elendara would probably get suspicious. She hadn't meant for Ms. Elendara to see her until she was under her covers, where she had been planning on going right before Gabriella demanded her attention. So much for the convenience she had been certain changing into her Pull-Up with the rest of her pajamas instead of waiting until she had been tucked in and Ms. Elendara was in her room to do it.
Sure, she had been able to sleep with one the night before, but she wasn't altogether sure that counted. After all, she had been really, really tired then, and though she was sleepy now – not that much. And, as much as she hated to admit it, sleeping in them was kind of comforting, in a way, and comfort was something she was looking for at the moment. She just hoped Ms. Elendara couldn't somehow see through her pajamas and notice the Pull-Up underneath.
“Come in,” she said finally, trying to arrange her nightshirt to cover her pajama pants a little more without disturbing Gabriella.
It took Ms. Elendara a moment to comply, probably because Lita's voice was weaker than she had thought from crying and it took Ms. Elendara that long to realize exactly what had been said. She smiled as she walked in and saw the girl and cat, unable to keep herself from commenting, “Oh, aren't you two adorable?”
Melita gave a little smile, though not much of one. As Ms. Elendara got closer, she could see the redness in Lita's eyes that could come only from crying, especially when it was combined with the damp streaks on her cheeks. Ms. Elendara sat down carefully on the edge of the bed, making sure not to disturb the kitten's sleep, reached over to brush Lita's hair from in front of her beautiful face, her fingers tracing the outline of it after tucking the stray strands of hair behind her ear.
“Michele told me what happened,” Ms. Elendara told her after a second.
“A-Are you mad at me?” Lita asked, her eyes wide and full of fear, tears starting to well up in them again before she turned away from Ms. Elendara and back down towards Gabriella.
“No, of course not, baby,” Ms. Elendara ensure her. She had been pretty certain that Lita wouldn't mind that nickname this time. She had been right. Melita lifted her face again with another half-smile. “You don't really hate Courtney, do you?”
Lita lightly bit down on her bottom lip. Even after trying to figure that out all evening, she still had no answer for that, or at least not one that she knew for sure was correct. “I dunno,” she sighed. “I... I don't think so...”
“It's confusing, isn't it?” Ms. Elendara asked gently, her heart going out to her daughter. She had almost forgotten how hard it could be to be just a normal child sometimes. She had no idea what it must be like for Lita. “I'm sorry I couldn't have been here sooner, honey. We were just swamped today and...”
“It's okay,” Melita assured her. She was glad Ms. Elendara hadn't been there to see the fight, or her right afterwards, while she was still angry. She didn't want her to ever see her like that.
Ms. Elendara reached up, petting the little girl's hair, much as the girl had just done with the kitten. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Lita shrugged. “I dunno... No, not really...”
Ms. Elendara bent over to give her a kiss on the forehead. “All right. But if you ever change your mind, I'm always willing to listen, okay?” Melita nodded, appearing at least a little less upset. “Now, I think it's about time for someone to go to sleep. You all ready?” Lita nodded, gently moving Gabriella to the pillow she normally slept on. The kitten opened its eyes and stared at Lita, a bit annoyed, but fell back asleep before she could do anything about it.
Melita stayed sitting in the same place for a moment, then she crawled over to Ms. Elendara and hugged her side, burying her face in her arm. Ms. Elendara did her best to hug her back with her other arm without moving around too much, kissing her again, this time on the top of the head. “It'll all work out, baby.” She stopped herself just short of saying “I promise,” knowing that she couldn't actually promise something like that, knowing that it might not happen. She didn't want to break any more of her promises to her little girl.
Lita nodded, pulled away eventually, then squirmed backwards across her bed, a little afraid that somehow the Pull-Up would be more obvious is she stood up. She managed to wiggle under her blankets as Ms. Elendara stood so that she could straighten the blankets back out before giving Melita her goodnight kiss. She made sure to switch on Lita's night-light before turning off the ceiling light and pulling the door closed all but a crack, so that Gabriella could get out in the middle of the night without someone having to get up and open the door for her.
Melita watched her go, curling up under her blankets as she tried to find the best position to sleep in. Gabriella's eyes opened a crack, though Lita could mostly just tell from the light reflecting off of the cat's eyes, making them appear red. “Sorry,” she whispered, freeing one of her arms from the bedding to give Gabriella another pet. Her hand brushed against something else fuzzy, yet not as much as the kitten, as she brought it back under the covers, and she grabbed it, hugging it tightly to her chest.
She was almost asleep when she felt one arm almost involuntarily break free of the embrace, moving up closer to her mouth. It seemed so... right... that she didn't question what was going on until she felt herself putting the thumb into her mouth and start sucking on it.
She put a stop to that quickly with a blush almost bright enough to be seen in the darkness of her room. What was she doing? Only babies and toddlers sucked their thumbs... What was wrong with her? It was bad enough that she was wearing training pants, why was she trying to add more to her babyish-ness?
And why had part of her not wanted to stop?
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Aurea straightened her backpack, trying to find a comfortable way to carry it. It certainly wasn't easy with all the books she had in it, but she was eventually able to find a position she could live with. Sometimes it was nice going to a private school, she mused. Other times it was just annoying. She assumed that most third graders didn't have to carry around quite as many books as things as she did. That may or may not have been true – she just liked thinking that.
“Hi Aurea!” Laura, her best friend, called, waving. Aurea smiled at her and headed over to the doorway Laura was hiding in until classes started. “What a lovely outfit! Where did you get it?” she asked with a giggled.
Aurea giggled back, tugging a little at the hem of her skirt. It wasn't really all that short, it just could feel like it sometimes, especially with all the people walking by her. That was another reason private school could sometimes be annoying. “What'd you do last night?”
Laura shrugged. “Nothing much. Math homework mostly.”
Aurea crossed her arms, shaking her head. “Why didn't you call me? You know I'd love to help!” And, sadly, it was true. She was the best math student in her grade, mostly because she simply loved to do it.
“You need help,” Laura grinned, easily ducking the punch Aurea sent her way for that comment, even though she had expected it, and would have had to be pretty stupid not to have. “I figured you were busy with the play.”
“Oh yeah.” Aurea had forgotten about that, somehow. Stupid class play. Stupid teacher deciding everyone in the class had to be in it.
“Didja do anything else yesterday?” Laura asked as she checked the clock on the opposite wall. They still had a few minutes before the first bell.
Aurea was quiet for a minute as she struggled with herself. Neil had made her swear not to tell anyone about him, but Laura was her best friend. She told her everything! And what would it matter if she knew? She sighed loudly as she contemplated, leaning against the door and following Laura's eyes, up to the clock.
“Oh, crap,” she groaned as she saw the time, forcing herself to stand back on her feet again. “I was supposed to meet Mrs. Hugo before class today!”
“Well, it's still before class...” Laura offered helpfully. Aurea stuck her tongue out at her before rushing out into the crowd of other students, trying to push through them to get to the right classroom.
It seemed like most of the kids were trying to go the other way, of course, just to make things more difficult for her. She tried to shove through, her slightly taller than normal stature for a third grader coming in handy, though not nearly enough. Mrs. Hugo was going to be so pis...
Suddenly, the crowd began to thin, as she felt the walls starts peeling away. “No, not now!” she wailed, earning strange looks from the few people she could still see, who then did their best to get around without touching her. She couldn't tell where she was being shown – most likely it wasn't the place that was important this time. A field, maybe, somewhere big and open.
More people started to fade away, until it seemed that she was completely alone. She looked around, trying to figure out what was going on, when suddenly she felt something rushing at her from the front. She gasped and spun back around, just in time to see a horse jumping over her. She yelped and squatted down, covering her head with her arms as she felt more ride past, apparently not giving her much thought.
When it felt like they were all past, she got to her feet shakily, turning to get a better look at the horses, to see if she could figure out what they were doing, why she was having this vision. There were four of them, she could see now, and there was someone on top of each. She couldn't make out anything about them, however she could feel power emanating from every one of them, enough to make her skin crawl.
A hand touched her arm, thrusting her back into the hallway of school, where she could hear the bell starting to ring. “What's going on, Aurea? You just spaced out there... I thought you had to go see Mrs. Hugo?”
Aurea tried to smile reassuringly at Laura, to pretend that nothing had happened, but she was still shaking, still confused, still scared of the four people on horseback. “I-It's nothing,” she lied, badly. “N-Nothing at all.”
verse twelve
“You don't look good,” Leann stated bluntly. Melita shrugged, in all honesty not in the mood to argue the fact, especially since she knew it was true.
If Ms. Elendara hadn't been in such a hurry that morning, Lita probably would have squeezed her pitiful condition for as much as it was worth, hopefully getting herself a day at school. After all, it wasn't fair, her getting sick so close to the weekend, so that she would probably end up just being sick Saturday and Sunday, and not having a nice, valid excuse for missing school in the middle of the week.
Today wasn't a day she particularly wanted to be at school anyway. There weren't any tests, or hard classes, but she really, really didn't want to risk running into Courtney. What if she was still mad at her, and did something mean? It wasn't like she didn't deserve it at least a little. Or what if Courtney and Jessica got into another fight? What would she do then? Would she take Jessica's side again? All in all, she just wanted to avoid the situation altogether.
However, Ms. Elendara -had- been in a big hurry. Lita knew that if she was sick enough to get out of school, whether she was adding to it in her imagination or not, Ms. Elendara would have to take the time to call around and find someone to stay with her, since for some reason she was convinced Lita wasn't old enough to stay by herself for a few hours until Michele got there from school. And then she would be in an even bigger hurry, which usually put her in a not so good mood, which would be very bad in the event that she discovered that Lita wasn't as ill as she claimed to be.
Melita turned her head away as Leann tried to put her hand across her forehead, the stars on her new hair clips dancing above her line of sight. She sighed at the slightly injured look that flashed across Leann's face and turned back towards her friend, who felt her head carefully.
“You feel kinda warm... I think...” Leann paused for a few moments, lost in thought. “Jessica, do you think Lita's head is warm?”
The older girl glanced up from the homework she was struggling to finish before the end of recess, the homework she had been too angry and upset to finish the night before. Lita's eyes shot her a long-suffering plea for help. “I'm sure she's fine, Leann.”
Leann gave a little gasp of surprise and exasperation. “But..” she began to protest, one arm reaching back up towards Lita's face, starting to point out how bad Lita looked. Jessica ignored her, getting reabsorbed into her homework suspiciously fast. Leann retracted her arm and crossed it sulkily in front of her with a huff.
Melita attempted to pacify her with a half-hearted, “I'll be fine,” only for the words to freeze on her tongue as she saw two figures walking quite a ways behind Leann. “Courtney,” she whispered. It was, too, and she was happily chatting with Celeste, just the two of them.
Leann's ears perked up at the mention of the name, twisting to get her into her line of vision. She began to wave, a bit more tentatively than she normally would have, but not enough to be noticeable by anyone who didn't know her. Behind her, Lita was doing the same, her hand a little lower and slower – she wanted Courtney to know that she wasn't shunning her completely at the same time that she didn't want her to come over, not with Jessica there.
She wasn't even completely sure she would have wanted her there even without Jessica... Pretty sure, though. Things just weren't the same without her. She couldn't explain it exactly, but it felt like there was a part of her missing, a part of her that she knew could never be replaced, no matter how many new friends she made.
Celeste seemed to have been amusing in some way, leaving Courtney in a fit of laughter. She was still trying to control the last few giggles, turning away from Celeste with a grin, afraid that looking at her would make her burst out laughing again.
She saw them. Of that, Melita was certain, for reasons beyond her comprehension. She saw them, did so without a single indication of having done so as she continued on her way, giggles growing in volume as she lost her battle. Leann and Lita's hands stayed in the air, Leann's still waving, at a snail's pace now, slim hope slipping slowly away.
Lita's was just frozen, stuck in mid-wave as she lost all will to do anything with it, or the rest of her body. It stayed there, quivering, for a handful of seconds before wilting back down beside her. All uncertainty about whether she was feeling sick vanished in a pained heartbeat as her stomach, already queasy, lurchingly twisted itself into a tight knot.
“Melita?” Leann asked quietly, reaching out to Lita's hand, which leapt up to throw itself around Leann's body.
“I don't want her to hate me!” Lita wailed, burying her face into Leann's body as the tears started cascading from her eyes. “I don't wanna lose her!” Leann returned her hug, stroking her hair like her mother always did for her when she was upset.
“I miss her, too,” she said after a minute, ignoring the dirty look Jessica gave her.
“It... hurts...” Lita sniffled, searching for words to describe her feelings somehow. “I-It feels like I'm never gonna be happy again... She's -Courtney-... She always tells me that I can do better in tap class, and will soon. She makes me -want- to do better, just to show her she's right...”
Leann's embrace tightened as she started to cry, too, Lita's words bringing up memories of everything Courtney said and did for her, that she wouldn't do again if they didn't make up. She struggled to find her voice, only managing to say, “I know,” once she had it under her control again.
“Would you two quite being such crybabies?!” Jessica slammed her math book closed, the two younger girls jumping, breaking from their hug, at the sound, and the tone of her voice. “She doesn't deserve to be our friend, if she just wants to hang out with Dana's little group! I can't believe you two are even thinking about her still!”
“You don't miss her, even a little?” Leann asked, staring up at Jessica in amazement. The older girl stared defiantly into her eyes for a second before wavering, pretending to be watching something going on in the playground beyond.
“She's not hanging out with Dana,” Melita pointed out, giving Jessica something real to look at. “See? Dana's over there... Courtney and Celeste are all the way over there... They haven't been near each other since recess started.”
Jessica's mouth worked open and closed a few times before she snatched up all of her homework and got to her feet. “How am I supposed to get anything done with you two blubbering and talking at me all the time?” She stormed away, foot narrowly missing stomping on one of Lita's hands.
“Jessica!” Lita called frantically, getting to her feet as well. In response, Jess only moved away faster. “Don't be mad,” she pleaded quietly as she sat down, knowing she wouldn't be able to catch up if Jessica didn't want her to.
“She's not,” Leann reassured her, hugging her again. “She does that sometimes if she thinks she's gonna lose an argument.”
“You're not leaving me too, are you?”
The look in Melita's eyes nearly broke Leann's heart, too, from sympathy. “Never,” she promised. “You're gonna leave me.”
“What? No, I'm not!” Lita shook her head violently.
“Yeah, you are,” Leann smiled. “Your class is going back inside now.”
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Leann took a deep breath as she finished the story, hoping she hadn't forgotten anything too important. She hadn't meant for it to be that long, it had just grown quite a bit from the original plan of saying that Lita was really upset about everything
“We're really sorry about what happened,” she added, in case Courtney hadn't figured out what the point of all this was yet.
Courtney stared at her, arms folded. “Why didn't either of you stand up for me yesterday? You didn't look too upset then.”
Leann blushed, turning her face away from Courtney. “I dunno,” she said finally. “It was just...” She trailed off into silence, not sure where she had been heading with that explanation in the first place.
“Just what?” Courtney demanded. Leann flinched, stayed quiet. “I thought you were my friend, but you didn't even try to stop her. You or Lita.”
“Lita wasn't feeling good then, either,” Leann offered, the only excuse she had for either of them.
“Look, just... Get lost, okay?” Courtney slammed her locker shut and, without even putting the books she had just extracted into her backpack, hurried off towards her next class, being sure not to accidentally catch a glimpse of Leann's hurt face as she left. If there was one thing that would break her resolve, it was that. She couldn't count the number of times she had forgiven the girl for some horrible crime, such as breaking one of her favorite little glass sculptures or telling Jessica that she had called her some awful name that was supposed to be a secret, after just one peek of that expression.
She wouldn't do that this time. No forgiveness. If they cared so little for her friendship that they couldn't stand up to Jessica, then maybe they didn't deserve it. It was an easy decision to make, if she ignored the number of times she had failed to stand up to Jessica, even when she knew she should. And she was closer in age to her than Lita and Leann...
“Courtney, wait up!” Celeste called as she struggled to match the older girl's pace. Courtney turned to smile at her one true friend, slowing her steps.
Leann was still standing in the same place, older kids that were actually allowed to use the lockers trying to shove past her. Courtney tightened her grip on her books. She had made a decision. She was going to stand by it.
Celeste caught up with her, moving across her line of vision, cutting off her view of Leann for a split second, no more. Then the sight of her returned, but this time Courtney was able to drag herself away, to turn her back on her as she continued moving the other way, towards her class, her books now clutched so tightly to her chest that she wondered if they would ever come loose.
verse thirteen
Cynthia perched on the edge of the sink, helplessly watching the little girl sitting on the floor of the bathroom, eyes, streaming tears, buried in hands clasped over her tights-clad knees. Cynthia had been trying to get her to listen to her, to believe that it would be all right, she would see, but not a word of it seemed to be getting through, or if it was, it was having no effect.
Melita's sniffling became a bit louder as she lifted her head, raising one hand to wipe her eyes, which began frantically searching the room as soon as she had finished. Cynthia got up, jumped off of the sink and let herself fall until she was at eye level with the little girl before she let her wings stop her descent.
"Lita, honey..." she started, trying to remember all the things she had tried to tell her earlier. However, Melita still seemed not to be listening.
"I told her I didn't wanna come," she whispered as she stared straight at Cynthia, eyes full of humiliation and tears. "I told her!"
"I know, hon," Cynthia assured her, wishing she was bigger so that she could hug her charge. "You can't blame her too much, though. She thought it was what was best for you..." She left off the part that might have caused Lita to hate her as well, or at the very least start ignoring her again, the part that was about how she would have done the same.
A fresh bout of tears welling up in the corners of her eyes and she wiped them away quickly as she once again insisted, "I told her!"
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"I don't wanna go," Lita pouted, tugging her blankets back up over her body, almost as eager to get back to sleep as she was to get another layer of protection from prying eyes over her Pull-Up.
"You were all excited about it a couple days ago!" Michele grinned, her smile way too wide for anybody this hour of the morning on a weekend. She tugged back the blankets again, earning a little squeak of indignation from the girl under them. "Come on, you can't sleep all day."
"Can too," Melita protested with a pout, trying to yank her covers from her babysitter's grasp. "Don't wanna go."
Michele sat down next to Lita, edge of the mattress sinking a little under her weight. "Is this about Courtney, sweetie?"
Lita shrugged, taking the opportunity to pull her comforter back around herself. She knew that some part of her reluctance was because of the fight. After all, she knew she wasn't that good of a dancer... If Courtney was still mad at her, she would certainly have no problem finding a reason to make fun of her in front of everybody. And if she did something really stupid, she wouldn't have anyone she could count on to comfort her, to not laugh at her.
"You need to patch things up with her, Lita," Michele told her. "I really doubt she's still mad at you."
"Bet she is," Lita said, though she had no way of knowing for sure. She had probably been mad the day before, anyway, what with the whole ignoring her and Leann thing and all. Leann had told her that she was going to try to talk to her after lunch, but Lita hadn't heard how that had gone, or even if it had happened at all. Maybe Jessica had found out about the plan and kidnapped Leann.
“Oh, I don't know about that,” Michele shook her head with a smile. “I doubt many people could stay mad at you for too long.”
Lita shrugged, a little suspicious of that logic. But, even if that was true, she also knew that there was another part to it. "I don't feel good," she complained. It felt good to say that to someone, better than she would have thought. She would have told Ms. Elendara the night before, and possibly gotten her to stay home from work this morning, but she had been really tired when she got done with work and just wanted to lie down. Lita hadn't had the heart to disturb her resting to tell her then, and she wasn't awake enough to do so that morning when Ms. Elendara had told her goodbye. She wasn't even sure she had been awake at all for that, except for it actually making sense and being not scary in the least, two things that set the memory apart from most of the dreams she had.
"Aww... What doesn't feel good, sweetheart?" Michele rested her hand on Melita's forehead. It was a little warm, but Michele was pretty sure it was nothing to worry about. Her suspicions were confirmed at Lita's answer. Or so she thought.
"My tummy," Lita pouted, starting to curl up again, hoping Michele would take the hint and let her go back to sleep now.
"Are you sure you're not just nervous?" Michele asked gently, not wanting to make it sound like she thought the girl was lying about not feeling well. She probably wasn't, intentionally, but Michele was confident that this illness was being caused mostly by Lita's mind. "I'm sure you'll do great, Lita. Don't even worry about Courtney. Even if by some chance she is still mad, you can't let one fight keep you from doing the things you want to do. And hey, just think – maybe you'll get to be in a play, huh? Won't that be fun?"
"Meh." Lita rolled over, closing her eyes. For an instant, she thought she had won, feeling the mattress rise back up as Michele got to her feet. Then she felt hands moving to her sides, and before she could react, she was lifted out of the bed and set down on the floor. As soon as her arms were free, she pulled her nightshirt down with a blush, not caring that it was so long that even being picked up wouldn't cause the hem to expose the top of her pajama pants, possibly ridden down far enough over the course of the night to reveal the false lace printed on the trim around the top of the Pull-Up. Despite all the claims that it looked like "big kid" underwear, Lita highly doubted it would convince Michele if she were to catch a glimpse of it somehow.
"C'mon, you'd better get dressed if you don't want to be late."
Lita watched, trying frantically to come up with another excuse to get her out of the audition, as Michele left her room, closing the door behind her. She did want to be late, honestly, but somehow she didn't think that was going to be an option. She walked over to her dresser with a sigh, pulling out her tights and throwing them over onto the bed as she hunted for the rest of her dance outfit.
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"-There- you are!" Cynthia paused to catch her breath, not used to having to fly this quickly so soon after waking up. "What are you doing up this early in the morning on a weekend? I thought you were coming to the audition."
Melita shrugged as she retied to knot holding the little skirt closed for the tenth time. "Didn't want to," she pouted. She wished Michele would have listened to her – she was feeling even worse now that she was up and about out of bed. She felt so tired and weak all over.
Cynthia smiled down at her for a moment before surveying the rest of the dance studio, which she had been in too much of a hurry to look at when she entered searching for Lita. It was much more... completely empty... than she would have expected. "Where is everyone?"
"About to audition," Lita blushed, staring down at her tap shoe encased feet as she clicked the front of one against the other.
"Melita, you aren't trying to get out of auditions by hiding out here, are you?" Cynthia narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "You march yourself right into... well, wherever the auditions are... young lady!"
"But..." Lita protested, eyes full of indignation swinging upward to stare at Cynthia, who only shook her head at them.
"Not gonna work, Melita. You're here, so I assume you told Ms. Elendara..."
"Michele," Lita interrupted quietly, her eyes back down on her shoes.
"...Michele that you were you going to be auditioning. Do you really want to make yourself into a liar?"
Melita's cheeks reddened anew, her feet still fidgeting under her watchful gaze. "No," she answered, even more quietly than her last statement.
"I didn't think so." Cynthia couldn't help but feel a little bad about using a guilt trip on the poor girl, knowing she hadn't been feeling well lately, but it was just part of her job. At least it had worked this time.
Or so she thought, for a brief, glorious second or two. It was only after that that she realized Lita wasn't making any move to go join the other little dancers. Or any move at all, except for the little fidgetting she kept doing with her feet, a little faster now than it had been before Cynthia's lecture.
"I see very little auditioning going on. Why are you still out here?"
Melita's cheeks grew even more red as she answered in a voice not even loud enough to be considered a whisper. It took two rounds of "What did you say?" from Cynthia before she spoke loudly enough for the fairy to realize that the words were "I hafta go to the bathroom."
"Ohh.." Cynthia nodded sagely.
Melita glanced nervously over at the bathroom door again, her feet, and the legs attached to them, still moving almost of their own accord. She should have known better than to try to wait until she got here to pee, but she couldn't bring herself to say no when Michele had asked her if she could wait the ten minutes it would take to get to the dance studio – she didn't want to sound like some baby who could barely keep themselves dry long enough to get their pants down.
She could feel her stomach, which already felt less than pleasant, twisting itself into weird shapes inside of her body as she waited impatiently. What if there was really nobody in the bathroom, and the door was just locked? What would she do then?
As if in answer to her silent question, the faint sound of a sink running vanished and was replaced with the sound of a doorknob beginning to turn. Lita spun around, letting herself begin to relax; she was going to make it!
Unfortunately, part of her relaxed a little bit too much. Her body felt too tired to stop it, or even alert her to the fact that something was wrong until the door to the bathroom was almost completely open, and she realized that there was a warm feeling spreading down her legs. She looked away from the door that would lead to her salvation, down at herself.
Her face turned white as she recognized what she had done, what she was too shocked to keep from continuing to do as she ran forward towards the bathroom, shoving past the girl who had been in there before her, slamming the door closed behind her. She didn't even bother trying to get free of her dance outfit so she could use the toilet like a normal seven year old should do. It was too late by now, her bladder already empty. She just sank to the floor, tears cascading down her cheeks, blurring her sight, filling her consciousness until she didn't even hear Cynthia's words anymore, and there was nothing left but her and her humiliation.
verse fourteen
She wasn't sure why she was nervous. She had done this before, a few times, and only once had she failed, the very first time. But that had been with ballet, which she had been doing for quite a while longer, and was therefore much better at. Miss Hamilton assured her that she was learning very quickly, possibly enough so that she was almost ready to advance to the next class... But did that mean she was good enough to make it into the play?
There was only one way to find out.
Courtney tried to keep her feet still, a struggle more difficult than she would have imagined. She didn't remember reacting quite like this to the other auditions, but that could very well have been because in the others, her feet hadn't made noise every time the heel or the toe touched the ground. The choreographer from the play had given her a few nasty glares before she realized that it was her making all that noise.
"Don't worry, you're gonna do great!" Stephanie smiled up at Courtney, though it was obvious that she was just as nervous as the older girl.
Courtney couldn't help but return the smile, pretending not to be scared out of her mind. "We both will," she assured Stephanie. She never could resist trying to cheer up little kids... Her maternal instincts her mother called it. Maybe that was why she had stayed with her old group of friends so long – two younger girls almost constantly needing to be reassured that Jessica was just kidding, or exagerrating, or whatever.
She shook her head; no, she wasn't thinking about them. They didn't concern her anymore. But, almost like she was purposely trying to keep that from happening, Stephanie spoke again. "How come Lita isn't here?"
Courtney shrugged, pretending she didn't care. Melita had been nervous about the whole thing from the first time she heard about it. Courtney had just about had to force her to promise to come. And now that they weren't friends anymore... Well, maybe Lita had decided that she didn't need to hold to that promise.
Just as well, Courtney told herself. Wouldn't want to have to see her at play practice every day if she got in. There was a slight twinge of pain in her chest at that thought, Leann's conversation with her the day before running through her mind. Well, if Lita wanted so bad to be her friend again, maybe she should have stuck to her promise.
Not that it would matter. No, she had made up her mind.
A girl Courtney had never seen before, around her own age, walked in, a half bemused, half confused expression on her face. Courtney wasn't too surprised by the lack of recognition, seeing as how there were a few other classes that were eligible to come to the audition. She only really noticed her out of the corner of her eye when she checked the clock above the door again, wishing that they would just get this thing started.
She wouldn't have thought about the girl too much at all if she hadn't overheard her talking to her friends. Stephanie had started rambling nervously about something or other, but Courtney just blocked her out as well as she could so she could listen to the other girl, trying to make sure she had heard her correctly.
She got lucky – one of the friends must have asked her to repeat it, or maybe she just liked telling the story, such as it was. "Yeah, I was coming out of the bathroom, and some little kid just goes running past me, crying her eyes out..."
There was more to it. Courtney could tell because the girl was still audible, though getting less so over the din of everyone else's voices as she lost her focus on just the one. Her heartbeat picked up for moment or two. Could it be...? No, it shouldn't matter. She had made a decision. She had to stick by it. Besides, she didn't even know that it was her. Well, except for the feeling in her already butterfly-filled stomach that told her it was.
She closed her eyes. It helped her to clear her mind sometimes, to think more clearly. Not that there was anything to think about.
She had made a decision.
"Melita," she whispered, and without another word she turned and hurried out of the room, ignoring the voice of Miss Hamilton and the choreographer as the auditions finally started. There were more important things to see to at the moment.
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Footsteps.
Melita twisted her head around a little, but of course all she could see was the door. That was all she had been able to see the last few times she had heard the sound of somebody approaching. The last time, they had stayed out there for a while, mercifully silent the whole time. Lita assumed it was the janitor the secretary had assured her would be coming by. She held her breath, hoping that she had just imagined it this time.
It was hard to tell anything from just the sound of footsteps, especially as far away as these, but somehow she was pretty certain that the feet making these belonged to someone much smaller than anyone else she had heard walking towards her little prison. Probably another dancer, she mused, letting out her breath in a sigh as she heard the sound of tap shoes as whoever it was moved from the carpet that covered most of the studio to the tile on the floor of the little hall outside the bathroom. Then her insides all seemed to tense up at once as a million scenarios spun through her mind at once.
What if that hadn't been the janitor out there, or what if he hadn't cleaned up her accident? What if the secretary had come back, in tap shoes this time for some reason, and had just been pretending to be all calm and soothing before, but was really angry at her, and going to make her leave the bathroom with her wet clothes so that anyone could see what a baby she was? What if somebody wanted her to let them into the bathroom?
The tapping stopped right outside her door. In her mind, she begged whoever it was to keep going, but there was no sign that they had started moving again. After a second, there was a light knock on the door.
"Go 'way!" Lita begged, with a sniffle, rubbing her eyes again.
"Melita." She froze at the sound of Courtney's voice, arm still held in front of her face. "It is you."
Lita's stomach tensed up even more as her body came unfrozen again, and she wrapped both of her arms around it. "C-Courtney?" she asked, more than a little afraid of what the older girl was there for. How had she found out? How much did she know? Was she there to make fun of her? To tell her that she had gotten what was coming to her?
She would be right, too, Lita told herself glumly. She deserved this. She was an awful friend. She probably even deserved Courtney telling everyone else in their class, letting them all know what she had done. How was she going to be able to show her face in tap class again after this?
"It's me, Lita." Courtney knelt down in front of the door, reaching out to stroke its surface. Lita sounded so scared... She wished she could hug her, to tell her everything was going to be all right. "What happened?"
Melita didn't answer, or if she did Courtney couldn't understand it; all she heard was the little girl start crying again. It was almost a minute before Courtney could make out the words "I'm sorry," through the sobs.
"Oh, Lita, it's okay... It's okay..." Courtney's hand slid down the door a little, to where it sounded like Lita's head was. "It'll be okay. What happened?"
There was still no answer. Courtney wasn't sure how much more she was going to be able to take before her heart broke in two. Poor little Lita... Why wouldn't she talk to her? As soon as she wondered that, the answer came to her, so obvious, especially since she had just been thinking about it a few minutes ago, when she almost, for a brief moment, decided against going to Lita.
Now the fight seemed like it had happened a million years ago. It all just felt so insignificant, and stupid. Leann's words haunted her for the second time that day, only this time she didn't have her resolve to protect her. How could she have been so awful to Leann? She had been her friend for longer than she could remember. And she was just going to let some fight separate them now, after Leann had practically begged her for forgiveness?
"Lita, I'm sorry... About everything... I didn't mean to get so angry the other day, it was just..." Courtney sighed, not sure how to phrase any of this. "I still want to be friends with all of you, I really do. I just wish you would at least try to be nice to Celeste..."
The sounds of Lita's pain seemed to be slowing now, giving Courtney hope that she was listening to her. "I'm really, really sorry, Lita. I shouldn't have blamed you for not standing up to Jessica. She can be pretty scary, huh?" No answer, though Courtney felt certain Lita was nodding on the other side of the door. It sounded like she was almost through crying now, finally.
"I promise, I'm not gonna make fun of you, no matter what happened. I just wanna help. Will you let me in?" She moved her hand upwards, around the doorknob. She gave Lita a little while to unlock it before she tried to open it. Still locked.
"Come on, Lita!" Courtney knocked on the door with her free hand, her good will starting to melt away a little. "I apologized, okay? It's not like I'm gonna make fun or you or anything. Just let me in!"
She tried to knob again, stomping to her feet when it refused to twist. "You're just as stubborn as she is, aren't you? Jeez, can't you even take an apology?! Fine, just stay in there the rest of your life for all I care!"
Melita listened to the sound of tap shoes stomping away. Half of her wanted to jump up, throw open the door, rush after Courtney, pray that she still meant everything she had just said. The other half, the one that told her that, no matter how much Courtney might want to be friends again, she would change her mind as soon as she saw that Lita was just a baby who couldn't even keep from peeing all over herself, was much stronger, however, so she stayed still, every footstep she heard walking away from her cutting into her heart just a little more.
verse fifteen
Melita had been embarassed before. Been humiliated before, even. There had been times, many of them, where she wished she would just disappear into thin air and never be heard from again.
Quite a few of them had occurred within the past hour.
There was the obvious, of course, the source of the rest. The second had come pretty quickly after that, once she had managed to calm her first torrent of tears, when the secretary had come to the door to ask what was wrong. The secretary was a nice lady, even if Lita didn't actually know what her name was, and she had to see her every week, to talk to her every month when she gave her the check to pay for her class.
She was kind about it, asking her if she was all right, then, once she had heard Melita's voice and figured out that it was her in there, asking if her mother was at home. It didn't even occur to Lita to say that while Ms. Elendara wasn't, Michele was, until Cynthia spoke up and reminded her, pulling the poor secretary out of the middle of a frenzy as the woman tried to figure out what she should do in this case.
In a way, that had been even more embarassing than the accident itself, knowing that the secretary knew what she had done, knowing that she would probably never think of her the same way again. She had always told Lita that she was very responsible, bringing the payment for classes in herself while most kids her age had their parents do it for them, and adorable.
Lita wasn't sure how she felt about the second, but the first always made her feel... special, somehow. More grown-up, something that had always been hard for her to achieve because of her dimunitive size. How could she feel that way next time the secretary told her that, knowing that the lady had been the one who had to call her babysitter when she wet her pants right outside the bathroom?
Both the accident and the talk with the secretary just seemed to be fate warming up, however. After Courtney's angry departure, the real humiliation started.
She had known Michele was coming. That was pretty obvious, seeing as how she had told the secretary that she would be at home for her to call. She had assumed, or at least hoped, that Michele would be bringing her clean, dry clothes. What she hadn't expected was what those clothes, or one article in particular, would be.
"I thought it would be a good idea," Michele explained apologetically. She had been rather apologetic ever since she had shown up, knocked on Lita's door, told her that it was her. If Lita had felt better, she would have been rather angry at her and would have needed all those apologies, but now they were just starting to get annoying.
"You know, just in case, since you're not feeling well," Michele continued. "I mean, it happened once... It might happen again. And once we get back home, you can take it off, okay?"
"Fine," Lita pouted, snatching away the plastic bag containing her clothes, a Pull-Up on top of the pile, the picture of Snow White staring up at her like it was mocking her supposed grown-up-ness. She should have been grateful that Michele had brought her fresh clothes, but she simply couldn't get past the fact that the older girl had been digging through her drawers, looking at her clothes, finding her Pull-Ups, and, most of all, deciding that those would be a better choice for her than normal panties.
"Melita, I'm really sorry..." Michele told her once more, for good measure. Lita shrugged and closed the bathroom door with a sigh.
"Don't you think that was kind of rude, Lita?" Cynthia asked gently.
"Don't care," she mumbled, starting to strip off her dance outfit. She hoped Michele had gone off somewhere else, and wasn't standing at the door now, trying to figure out why she was talking to herself while changing.
"Look, Lita, it's not like she knew this would happen. She was trying to do what's best for you." Cynthia fluttered upwards as Lita advanced toward her spot at the sink. Lita turned the faucet, ran the washcloth Michele had put in the bag along with her clothes under the water, and got it as soapy as she could before starting to wash all the areas of her skin that had been in contact with her wet clothes.
"I told her I was sick," she pouted. "She should've listened." Cynthia didn't have much of an answer for that – Lita was right, of course. Cynthia could see Michele's side as well, but she very much doubted Lita would be willing to accept it just yet.
Melita wrang out the wash cloth, feeling much better now, though it was weird to be standing, naked, in a place not her home. She dried off, folded the towel and set it next to the plastic bag, which she delved back into with a sigh, pulling out all of the clothes Michele had brought for her and setting them on the edge of the sink.
Her hand hovered over the pile for a few seconds. While it was undeniably weird to be naked here, it would be even weirder to be here in a Pull-Up, something she had thought, had hoped, she was done having to wear anywhere but at home. What if someone found out, somehow? What if the secretary noticed? She would think Lita was even more of a baby than she must already.
"Should prolly get these off the floor first," she mumbled, defending her actions as much to herself as to her rather quiet conscience. Delicately, she picked up her wet clothes from where she had left them after taking them off and stuck them in the bag, trying to keep from touching them as much as humanly possible while still getting them to their destination. The towel and washcloth went in on top of them before she rushed over to the sink to wash her hands, using about half of the soap left in the dispenser.
She pondered for a moment what would happen if somehow, by accident, her elbow just happened to bump into the pile of clothes, to knock the Pull-Up into the running water. But, since it was either wear that or the wet panties that were now at the bottom of the bag, she stopped herself.
There was a light knock on the door. Lita jumped, gasping, starting to grab at the pile of clothes, hoping she could get dressed before whoever was out there got too angry and broke down the door or something.
"You okay in there?" Michele asked.
"Fine," Lita growled back, leaning against the door with relief, waiting for her heart to stop pounding.
"Are you planning on getting dressed today?" Cynthia teased her, smiling when the little girl stuck out her tongue at her.
"I'm getting to it," Melita insisted, proving it by grabbing the shirt. It was one she hadn't worn for a while because of the little ketchup stain on it, but it used to be one of her favorites – a nice, bright yellow shirt with pink flower designs along the neckline and hem. Adrianna used to tease her by saying that she would be able to find her in the middle of the night if she had that shirt on, bright as it was.
Her hand paused over the clothes again as she moved on to the next item. She didn't want to put it on, but she knew she didn't have much of a choice. With a sigh, she picked up the Pull-Up and stepped into it, pulling it up her legs. She stared down at it for a moment, trying to figure out if she had it on straight, only to hear a light, muffled giggle.
Cynthia immediately forced herself to be quiet, though it was quite difficult with the supposedly menacing glare that Melita gave her that only made her look more adorable, especially now. She looked so much like a toddler that Cynthia wouldn't have believed her to be more than maybe four, at the very most, if she didn't know any better. It was one of the most adorable things Cynthia had seen in quite a while, though she would never tell Melita that to her face.
"Umm... I mean... Why do you still have those anyway? I thought you stop wetting your bed awhile ago," Cynthia covered, clearing her throat and fixing a serious expression on her face, though even after all that she was still barely winning the battle to keep from laughing.
Lita looked away, suddenly very interested in her socks. "I, uh... Thought I should keep them... Just in case." She blushed, bending down to pull on the socks.
"Well, it's a good thing you did," Cynthia quickly said when she saw how embarassed Lita was at the question, attempting to appease the girl's sense of maturity.
Melita was happy enough to nod and let the subject go as she unfolded the last piece of clothing, a pair of purple overalls with a picture of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet walking hand in hand on the front. She made sure that the shoulder straps were fastened, since she always had trouble getting them that way when she actually had the overalls on, and stepped into the overalls, pulling them up, over the Pull-Up, over her shirt.
Once she had the shoulder straps all straightened out, or as much so as she could manage, she pulled on her shoes, not bothering to, or feeling like, tying them. She grabbed the handles of the plastic bag, glad that this was finally almost over.
She stared at the door, gathering her courage. For a minute or two, she wasn't sure she could face Michele, not with her knowing what she was wearing, knowing that she must have needed them at some point, since she had them in her dresser. But the only way out of this place was with Michele, so finally she unlocked the door and stepped through, the sound of distant tapping greeting her ears.
Michele turned at the sound of the opening door and walked over to greet Melita with a smile and a hug. "I'm so sorry, Lita."
Lita tried to shrug off this apology, too, but the hug felt too good after everything she had been through already that day. "It's okay," she said quietly, earning a wider smile from Michele as she took the bag from Melita and walked her out to the car, shoelaces trailing behind.
They were both quiet on the ride home, and once they had gotten back to the house. Melita retreated to her room to change as Michele started the washing machine before heading to the kitchen, scooping out a bowl of ice cream for Lita. Every instinct she had as a babysitter told her she shouldn't, not after giving the girl a cold Pop-Tart on the ride to the dance studio for breakfast, getting lucky when it turned out that Lita actually preferred eating Pop-Tarts cold. But after what she had done to the girl, she felt she deserved it.
Melita stared into the drawer. She should be changing, she knew, and she would be if it wasn't for a nagging voice in the back of her mind, asking her what she would do if she had another accident. She wasn't feeling any better, and the red spots still hadn't gone away – they looked like they may even have spread. What if she had another accident, this time in her own house, in front of Michele? If her babysitter didn't already think of her as literally being the first part of her title, that would seal the deal.
And besides, she didn't have to use it. Just insurance, in case something happened. When she thought of it that way, and not as some punishment for being unable to control herself, it was almost...
No, no it wasn't. She shook her head. What was she thinking?
Michele called for her from the kitchen, and, after another moment of contemplation, she slammed shut her underwear drawer and obediently followed the teenager's voice, still wearing exactly what she had been when she had left the dance studio. She was rewarded with ice cream.
"Glad to see you liked the outfit I picked out," Michele grinned. "All changed?"
Lita blushed, hiding it by becoming very absorbed in the consumption of her treat. "Uh-huh." Michele nodded absentmindedly, sitting down in the chair opposite Melita, watching her eat.
She was almost halfway through the bowl when Michele noticed the red spot on her arm. She stood up, getting a little closer so that she could be sure of what she was seeing. "Hey, sweetie..." Lita looked up at her curiously. "Did you know you have chicken pox?"
Melita stared at her blankly. "But I've never met any chickens," she protested. |
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Elizabeth
Site Admin
Joined: 30 Dec 2007
Posts: 172
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| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2007 12:21 am Post subject: |
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verse sixteen
Books lay spread out on Melita's desk, many of them open, though probably no longer to the right page. Lita had wanted to do some reading earlier, but for some reason she could only get through a couple pages before she got bored and wanted to read something else – she didn't want to lost her place in the others, however, so she just set them down on her desk as she passed it on the way to her bookshelf.
The last couple hadn't even made it as far as her desk. She would have felt bad about putting books on the floor if they hadn't been coloring books, which were usually on the floor when she was using them anyway. There was a picture of a penguin half colored purple and yellow in one book, and a cat playing with a ball of string whose only color was in its tail.
As if she was trying to copy that picture, Gabriella sat beside the two coloring books, batting curiously at the stack of crayons piled on top of them, jumping back in shock when a red one rolled towards her, knocked loose by her inquisitive paw. Most of the crayons were still in their box, and Melita fully intended to get around to more coloring, or else the rest of them would be there as well.
Gabriella stalked around the crayon for another few seconds, her back arched, giving the illusion that she was twice as big as she really was, reaching out to bat at it again before she got distracted by the movement on the bed above her. She looked up at the form under the white-spotted pink comforter as it squirmed and finally turned over completely so that it was facing her.
"Hi, Gabriella," Melita said sleepily, stretching out her own hand, trying to reach her kitten's fur. Her arm was too short to make it, but Gabriella quickly made up the difference by walking up to it and licking one of the fingers. Lita giggled as she started to pet the little cat, still not used to the rough feeling of her tongue.
Gabriella rubbed up against Lita's palm, starting to purr loudly, which brought a crooked smile to Melita's red-spotted face. Both expressions of joy were rather short-lived, however; it only took a few moments for the purr to transform into a growl. Lita withdrew her hand cautiously.
"Gabriella?" she asked, pulling herself closer to the edge of the bed to see if she could figure out what was upsetting the kitten. At first, it seemed that Gabriella was just being crazy, as she was prone to do every now and again. Lita had the feeling that this time was different, though, so she carefully drew herself even closer to the edge, attempting to peek under the door.
Just as she was satisfied that Gabriella was, indeed, insane – which took all of four seconds – and Melita was beginning to drag her body up all the way back onto the surface of her bed, a shadow blocked the faint light that shone through the crack at the bottom of the door. Lita gave a quiet gasp as a wave of fear, origins unknown, washed through her. She scrambled wildly to pretend that she really had been taking a nap, blankets and sheets hindering her progress and making her struggle to get untangled, still precariously near the edge of the mattress.
But not nearly as much as the sight of the person who opened the door.
There was another gasp, this one much larger, within a moment that wiped away all thoughts but fear from Lita's mind. Including those thoughts about trying to keep herself on the bed.
Gabriella had jumped underneath the bed as soon as the door opened, luckily, or else Melita would have landed right on top of her. Most of her blankets followed her down, as she was still wrapped up in them, nearly inescapably. She was glad for them now.
"What in the world are you doing on the floor?" Dana asked, putting her hands on her hips and shaking her head.
Melita blushed, shoving the coloring books underneath her bed with Gabriella with her free arm. "Why're you here?" she answered, unable to come up with any other non-stupid reply to Dana's question.
"Oh, you know why I'm here, silly," Dana knelt down to pat Lita's head condescendingly. Melita jerked away from her touch, glaring up at her, though she felt far from threatening. "I'm your babysitter," the other girl continued, putting a pacifier into Lita's mouth when she began to protest.
After all the trouble they had given Melita, the blankets parted easily for Dana as she reached out, grabbing Lita underneath the arms. She struggled valiantly, though vainly, as her nemesis dragged her out of the protection of her blankets, revealing the thick diaper she was wearing, not at all hidden by her T-shirt, which failed to cover even her belly button. She knew she should have put a nightshirt on...
"Now, aren't you just the most precious baby ever?" Dana cooed with a smile, her grip on Lita tightening slightly. Melita wasn't sure if she was more creeped out by the words, or the fact that the smile seemed to be genuine, without a hint of malice behind it. "Yes, you are!"
Lita looked away, still fighting to get free, her eyes falling on Dana's arms. "Umm... Dana?" she would have asked, if the pacifier hadn't been blocking her speech. "Why are your arms made out of metal?"
Dana couldn't understand her of course, just continued talking at Lita. She was quiet only long enough to bend over and blow a loud raspberry on her charge's stomach. Despite the extreme oddity of the situation, Lita couldn't help but giggle at this, only because she couldn't stop herself.
Even though it didn't appear that Dana was wearing lipstick, an outline of her lips stayed behind on Melita's stomach for a little while before sinking slowly into her flesh. She could feel them move through her body, making her writhe even more violently, especially when they reached what seemed to be their destination, and she felt a pressure building in her bladder.
"Lemme go!" The pacifier blocked her words again, for all the good it probably would have done anyway. Dana's hands had vanished, become a metal bar wrapped around Lita's chest with no apparent way to get it off. She bit her bottom lip as she squirmed helplessly, just trying to keep her diaper dry, no matter what.
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"I hope she's doing okay," Leann fretted, watching the pebble she had just kicked roll over the ground.
"I'm sure she's fine," Jessica reassured her.
Leann's big eyes stared up at Jess nervously. "I... I heard it's fatal..."
Jessica sighed as she stopped walking, her younger friend coming to a stop beside her. "Didn't kill me. Or you. Or anyone you or I know."
Leann shrugged. "Well, it can be sometimes."
"Not very often." Jess was trying to be all supportive and all, and she could understand being a little worried, just because of who it was that was sick, but this was just getting ridiculous. She had been like this ever since Melita's mom had called her parents to warn them that, if they hadn't already, they might be about to come down with chicken pox. Sometimes she wished Leann would grow up; but only when she forgot that the reason she liked her so much was that she -wasn't- grown up about everything.
"How long do you think she's gonna be gone?" Leann asked after a blissful moment of silence.
Jessica sighed and rolled her eyes. She was almost ready to admit that she missed that traitor, if only because she was much more patient with answering Leann's, and Lita's when she was there, questions.
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Courtney followed Jessica and Leann's progress across the playground silently, arms wrapped tightly around herself. Celeste had made a valiant attempt to strike up conversation when recess had began – by now she knew better than to try.
"I should have known something was wrong," she mumbled.
Celeste looked up, surprised to hear her friend speak after so long. "What's that?"
"On Saturday... I should have known she wasn't just being stubborn."
Celeste gave her a quick hug. "There's no way you could've..."
"I should have known!" Courtney growled, turning away, towards the school building, not wanting to see anybody.
Celeste reached out a comforting hand, almost making it to Courtney's shoulder before she thought better of it and returned it to her side, silence falling back over the little group like a comforter, pink with white spots.
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"You awake, sweetie?" Michele felt bad about not knocking before she entered Lita's room, but she didn't really have too much of a choice, since her hands were full with the tray of tea.
There was a noise that sounded like it might have been Melita speaking from inside the room, so Michele nudged the already cracked open door, sending it into the closet door behind it with a crash. Lita sat up in her bed with a "Meep!"
"Sorry, sorry," Michele apologized as Lita freed herself from her little net of blankets. "Bad dream?" Melita shrugged; that probably meant yes. "Your stomach feeling any better?" This time she actually got a definitive answer. "All right." She carefully stepped over the coloring books on the floor so that she could set the tray on Lita's desk, only to find that it, too, was covered in books. Seeing no better option, she set the tray down there anyway. "This should help," she continued as she lifted the teapot.
Melita was pouting, her nose wrinkled, as she accepted the tea cup. Michele considered telling her that it wasn't -that- bad, but in all honesty, she wasn't fond of tea herself, and when she was seven she positively hated it. "Stop squirming or you're gonna spill it all over yourself," she scolded gently. Melita started to protest, only to have it erased with a blush.
She took a sip of the tea, her nose wrinkling up even more. "Icky," she coughed. She would have felt bad about insulting Michele's tea making skills any other time, but now she hardly cared. "Don't like tea," she added, though Michele should have already known that after she protested even the idea of having to drink it.
"Nobody likes tea, sweetie, unless they're British." Michele kissed Lita's forehead, taking the cup away from her. "How about I go find some honey for it, okay?"
Lita shrugged. "I guess."
Michele vanished into the kitchen just in time. Melita threw back her covers and jumped out of bed to start her mad dash for the bathroom. She really should have just told Michele she needed to go before she had given her the tea, but she was always too embarassed to even mention that kind of thing in front of her babysitter, or anyone for that matter.
Lita's feet hit the floor, and she started to stand up on it. The floor seemed to twist away from her foot, throwing her off balance. Her arms waved wildly, uselessly, as her legs slipped out from under her, and she landed hard on her bottom on the coloring book that hadn't just slid across the floor.
Michele was already on her way back to Lita's room when she heard the thump emanate from it; the sound of crying only quickened her pace. "What happened?" Melita just sniffled in answer from her spot on the floor. "Are you okay?"
"No," Lita pouted.
"Did you hurt your legs, sweetie?" Michele knelt down in front of the little girl, checking her over with her eyes. Nothing seemed obviously broken, though she would have been surprised if it was even possible to break a bone falling from that height. Melita shook her head, continuing to do so as Michele ran through everything she could think of that might have gotten injured.
Michele was stumped for a minute once she had made it to the end of her list of possible maladies, and was almost ready to ask Lita, fully expecting to get no more than a shrug in response, when it dawned on her. "Ohh.."
Melita blushed, sliding away from her a little. "It was just an accident," she said quietly, about to start crying full force again.
"Hey, it's okay, sweetie," Michele pulled her away from the edge of her bed, into a hug. "That's what you have them on for, right?" She was almost sure she could feel the heat from Lita's face, pressed against her chest.
Melita hadn't been overly happy when Ms. Elendara had suggested that, if she was feeling so bad, she should wear the Pull-Ups she had left in her dresser, just in case. She hadn't really been in too much of a mood to put up a fight, either, so she accepted it, earning herself a compliment for how grown up she was being about it that had all but made wearing diapers worth it.
"It's just an accident, Lita. You're not feeling well." Michele brushed Lita's hair away from her face, which didn't look to have been cheered up by her words that much. "You know, the same thing happened to me when I had chicken pox."
Melita perked up a bit at this news. "Really?"
Michele nodded. "Exact same thing." Well, not quite, but Lita probably didn't need -that- much cheering up at the moment. "So, see? No big deal."
Lita wasn't so sure about that. Still, there wasn't a lot she could do about it now, except get herself changed into a new Pull-Up, and hope that Ms. Elendara saw things the same way as Michele. She hadn't meant to actually -use- the Pull-Ups, since they -were- "just in case", and she didn't want Ms. Elendara to think that she really needed them. Because then she might start making her wear them to bed again.
And that would be bad, Lita thought with a firm nod. Somehow being made to wear them was just a whole lot worse than wearing them to help herself get to sleep. She couldn't quite explain it, but she knew it to be true.
"Come on, you'd better get changed." Michele interrupted Melita's chain of thought for an instant, helped her to her feet before retreating to the living room to give Lita some privacy as she retrieved a new Pull-Up and headed to the bathroom.
Being made to wear them, "just in case", though, with no expectation that she was so much of a baby that she needed them... She wasn't quite sure where that fit in. Hopefully Ms. Elendara would feel the same as Michele, and she would get to find out.
verse seventeen
Somewhere in the depths of the darkness, a gust of wind was born, swirling up out of nothingness.
She knew it had happened. She wasn't sure how - she hadn't seen it, certainly. She hadn't seen anything. There was only the dark, nothing more. How true that was, she didn't know. Was she just a part of the darkness? She could feel it all around her, engulfing her, washing over her.
Time was meaningless here; she watched the darkness for what could have been a second, an hour, an instant, a decade. It didn't matter, really. She watched it breathe, never knowing whether it was a single breath or a hundred that she saw.
The wind spiraled up around her, carrying her away, or so she assumed; there was only the sensation of movement to indicate that anything had changed. The darkness was always the same to her limited senses.
It began to take on shape, to pull her out of the world of stasis, bringing her back into awareness of time, of form. The wind let her down gently before blowing around and past her, leaving her alone, floating slowly downward.
As it turned out, she was separate from the darkness after all. She could feel her body reforming itself as it melted into being. Her toes faded in first - though she had no eyes yet, she saw them stretching downward. She thought she would continue floating down forever, but she was proven wrong as her toes bumped against a surface and stopped, ripples forming underneath them, gently expanding outwards.
For an instant, she thought she would fall further, sink into the water - she was sure it was water for some reason. Once again, she was mistaken. She stayed there, toes balancing on the surface as the rest of her body joined them.
The ripples continued their movement, as far as her eyes could see. They flowed peacefully, unhindered. She could have watched them for an eternity and never grown bored of it. She would have, if she had gotten the chance.
The ripples suddenly began to shake, to break up, all in one spot, as if there were something there, disturbing their progress. And there was, she saw. Or there would be shortly. There was another form out there, shimmering around the edges. She took a step towards it, water trailing from her foot.
The form was almost completely defined, almost recognizable. She took another step towards it, moving a bit more quickly now. It was another girl. She should know her. But why?
The other girl finally fully entered her world, her body balancing on the water's edge delicately. For a moment.
Then she was gone, sucked beneath the surface.
It took only the single moment of form for recognition to dawn.
"Leann!" Melita screamed, taking off in a run towards the spot where her friend had vanished. The water was becoming choppier and choppier, making it more difficult for her to move forward, but the occasional glimpse of a flailing arm drove her forward, even as the water tried to throw her back.
Leann's head appeared above the waves, her arms popping up on either side. She gasped for air, splashing wildly for something to hold on to. Lita jumped forward, reaching as far as she could.
Not far enough.
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"It's not -that- bad," Leann insisted, crossing her arms with a little huff.
Jessica backed away, hands slightly raised, trying to suppress a smile at her friend's indignation. "If you say so..."
"Well, I do." Leann stuck her tongue out before returning to the business at hand. "And it's not like we'd have to stay in my room anyway, if it's too messy for you. We could go take a walk in the woods..." She shrugged reluctantly, staring down at the floor. "You don't hafta come if you don't wanna..."
"I guess I can see if Mom can drive me over," Jessica answered quickly. She'd seen this before, and didn't want to let it get to the next stage this time. She could do without the guilt trip, thank you very much. Truthfully, it wasn't as if she didn't want to go over to Leann's house - it was fun to be the big sister every once in a while, since she never got the chance at home. She just didn't want to have to ask her mother for a favor... They weren't exactly on the best of terms today. Though maybe she would have forgotten about it by the time school let out.
"Yay!" Leann clapped her hands excitedly, giggling as she bounced up and down, not even noticing that she was doing so. A few of the other students gave their own little jumps, these of surprise. Jessica, who was used to these sudden bursts of happiness when someone gave into the little girl's demands, pretended that she didn't know the child, was just standing there by sheer coincidence.
Once the flow of people in the hall had taken most of those who had witnessed Leann's outburst far enough away, Jessica couldn't resist teasing her friend one more time before dashing off to try to get to math on time. "If we get lost in that forest of yours and die, I'm never coming to your house again." She giggled, darting out of the way as Leann swung her mostly empty backpack at her.
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The sound of a slap echoed throughout the room, immediately followed by a flash of satisfaction across her eyes.
"And I don't have a shrine built to him, like some people. And I don't hang on his every word, like some people. And I don't follow him around like some little lost dalmatian puppy without spots, like some people. But I still love him!" She insisted to the woman still lying on the floor, slowly raising her hand to the surface of the couch she had fallen against.
"You'll never have him!" she screamed, her hand suddenly reaching under the couch cushions, shoving them aside and closing her fingers around the gun hidden there. "He could never love anybody else the way he loves me, even if he hasn't realized that yet!"
"What in the world are you -watching-?" Mrs. Gibson asked, entering the living room, plate in hand.
Melita craned her neck to look around the edge of the couch so that she could actually see the woman behind her. She was nice enough, and not as old as a lot of the people that Ms. Elendara had gotten to babysit for her when she had first moved in, but there was just something about her that made Lita nervous. Maybe it was how quiet she was - she could just sneak into a room and Lita would never notice. She was fairly certain that wasn't it, though, even if it -did- make her nervous. Just not in the same way.
"I dunno," Lita shrugged, pulling her left leg up onto the couch to join the right, which had been there for the past few minutes while Lita had picked at a string she noticed hanging from the cuff of her pajama pants.
Mrs. Gibson gave her a weird look, as if to ask how she could be watching something and not know what it was. Melita glanced away with a blush, the woman's expression making her feel like she was stupid or something. She wished it was time for Michele to get out of school and come over.
"Umm... Well, there's this weird old woman, and she likes this one guy, but these other two women like him, too, so the old woman built this robot so that they would fall in love with him instead of the other guy, an' then they both did, an' now they're both fighting over which one can marry him, but the old woman..."
"Riiight," Mrs. Gibson cut her off finally, sounding even more confused than before now. "I don't think that's the kind of thing you should be watching, Melita." Lita shrugged, not caring either way, as her babysitter grabbed the remote control from beside her with her free hand, switching the channel to what appeared to be the news.
"Are you sure you don't want something else to eat?" Mrs. Gibson asked as she set the plate down beside the remote, then, on second thought, moved the remote to the other side of the couch. "Your mom said this is pretty much all you've been eating."
"I'm sure," Lita nodded as she picked up her plate and set it down on her lap after crossing her legs. She snatched up a tater tot, dipping it in the little puddle of ranch dressing before popping it into her mouth. One of the fish sticks was her next victim - she didn't particularly care for fish most of the time, because she was always afraid that she would accidentally try to swallow one of their bones, but she loved it in this form.
"How old did you say she was?" the reporter on the television asked, for what seemed like the fiftieth time since Mrs. Gibson had changed the channel. Lita wasn't sure what the answer was supposed to be; it changed every time.
"She looked like she was in maybe second or third grade," one of the other women on the screen answered quickly, cutting off the rest of the group. "She was so little, but still..."
"I don't know... She looked younger to me somehow..." a man interjected.
"No, she wasn't any younger than that," the first woman insisted. "I've seen her twice now."
Melita twirled the fish stick around in a circle, changing the ranch from a plain old puddle into a spiral, giggling, a little at her marvelous artistry, a little from guilt. She knew she wasn't supposed to play with her food, but she just couldn't resist sometimes.
Her bladder gave a little twinge of warning just as she started to take a bite. Hurriedly, she scooted the plate off of her lap and hopped down from the couch. She knew she was being a little overdramatic - she should have plenty of time to make it to the bathroom - but she wanted to make sure. Just in case. She had only had one accident since she had gotten sick, and she planned to keep it that way. Even so, she was still wearing her Pull-Ups, though most of the time she nearly forgot that she had them on.
"This car?" the reporter asked, gesturing towards the only car on the television screen. "Without touching it?"
The woman who had seen the girl twice nodded emphatically. "I can't explain how I knew it was her doing it, but it definitely was."
"I'm just saying, I think she looked younger than that," the man grumbled in the background, the sound of his complaint interrupted for a moment by the click of the bathroom door closing.
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"Come on, this way!" Leann insisted, pulling Jessica's arm, impatiently trying to get her to move faster. Jessica couldn't help but smile at her friend's enthusiasm, obligingly stepping up her pace, though just a little.
The voice of Leann's mother still echoed in her memory, widening her smile just the tiniest bit. "I'm always glad when you're with her... I know you'll keep her safe," she had said, holding Jess back for a few moments after she and Leann had promised to be careful and Leann had taken off like a shot to get her heavier jacket from the coat closet.
It was a nice feeling, knowing that somebody thought of her in that way. At home, it always seemed like nobody believed she could be responsible in the slightest - not her parents, not her older brother and sister. Nobody. But she knew she was. And so did Leann's mom. Nobody seemed to understand what it was like. Not even Melita. Though it was different with Lita, since her sister was so much older than her, and Lita was still just a kid. Jessica's siblings weren't -that- much older than her... Her brother, the oldest, was only a bit more than three years her elder. Courtney was lucky, she thought, her good mood swaying a bit at the thought of her former friend. Even though she had an older sister, too, she also had a baby sister, so at least she wasn't the youngest.
She shook her head, trying to clear it of all thoughts related to that traitor. It was a nice feeling, spending time with Leann outside of school, she told herself, attempting to bring her mind back to her former train of thought. She knew that Leann felt lonely a lot when she wasn't at school; of their little group of friends, there was just one only child - her. And, even though sometimes Jess wished she didn't have any siblings either, she could kind of understand why Leann wanted them. Just kind of, though if she lived out in the middle of nowhere, too, then she would probably be a bit more understanding.
"Whatcha thinkin' about?" Leann's voice brought her to reality again.
"I was thinking that I was surprised you hadn't asked me that yet," Jess said. "I don't think you've ever been that quiet for so long," she teased.
Leann looked like she was about to shoot back what passed for a snappy comeback to her, only to get distracted. "There it is!" she shouted, running forward. "Isn't it pretty?" she asked as Jess followed, coming to a sudden stop when she saw that the ground seemed to have done the same. Leann rolled her eyes. "Come on, you can't see it from there..."
Jessica begrudgingly moved closer to the edge of the little ledge of earth. It wasn't quite as steep, or anywhere near as tall, as she had originally thought, and it looked like it was possible to climb down it if someone wanted to, and was really careful about it. After the next step, she realized that the strange, familiar sound she had been hearing was running water.
"See? It's my own personal river!" Leann giggled.
"I think it's more of a stream..." Jessica corrected, though she wasn't sure either. Leann shrugged nonchalantly.
"You wanna go down closer? I found a lil spot over there big enough to sit on and close enough that we can dangle our feet in, and the hill's not too steep there, either..."
Jessica could tell that Leann really wanted to go, just as she knew that it probably wasn't a good idea to let her. "It's a little cold for dangling our feet, Leann."
"Well, we could just go sit." Leann was already heading that way, in the hopes that Jess would give in if she didn't wait for her.
"I don't know if that's a good idea..." Jessica started to follow anyway.
Leann beamed, pleased that her plan was working. She turned her head a bit to call back to Jess, to tell her that it wasn't far, not paying attention to where she was putting her foot. It landed on the ground, of course.
But not for long. She felt the dirt start to crumble away, felt her shoe slip out into the open air. Her other foot quickly struggled to keep her body balanced.
Not fast enough.
verse eighteen
"...time," the cloaked man said. Melita nodded idly, her gaze shifting from the jet black horse, though her hand stayed on its nose as she turned, white dress swirling around her body as if it were trying to dance with her.
Suddenly, the horse pulled its head away, an anxious look darting across its features when Melita turned to see what was going on. The man quickly dismounted, doing his best to calm the beast. Lita lifted her hand for a moment, wanting to help, then realized that she wasn't sure how.
So instead, she knelt down, carefully choosing what looked to her to be the most beautiful tiger lily there - or what she assumed was a tiger lily, as she never was very good with keeping the names of flowers straight - and plucking it. Once she was standing again, brushing her skirts off with her free hand, the horse was calm again. Even so, she approached cautiously, holding the flower up to the man with a little smile.
The man stared down at her blankly. She moved a bit closer, stretching her arm a little further. Finally, he took it, carefully keeping his hand away from hers. He kept it in his palm for a minute.
"It'll die anyway," he murmured, his voice losing a good deal of the gentle quality it had before. He started to close his fingers into a fist; Lita looked away, not sure if what she was feeling was anger or sorrow.
There was another figure coming towards them. Something was familiar in its outline, and Melita took a step towards it before stopping in her tracks as her attention was drawn to the ground around the person. A woman.
The carpet of flowers was slowly transforming into a sea of death, everything around the woman withering and dying as she passed by, an ever-increasing circle of blackness in the midst of all that beauty. As she drew closer, Lita could see that this was no ordinary woman, though what was different about her she couldn't say.
The red dress she wore was nearly as long as Melita's, short of that by only a few inches. The edge of the hem revealed only pale skin, unhindered by socks or shoes of any kind. She was wearing something strapped across her back, another similar, yet smaller, object on her hip.
"It'll all die," the man growled behind her.
But Lita's eyes remained fixated on the woman as a wind rose up around her, blowing dead plants up into the air, pushing long, brown hair back and away from the woman's neck, and she saw her ears for the first time.
In her mind she gasped, but her lungs were too frozen for the physical act. When she had the strength for words, all she could say was, "She's just like..."
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"Sweetie, you know I'd love to," Michele answered sadly. "But I've got a ton of work to do today." She handed the book back to Melita, whose eyes immediately focused on the cover and away from Michele's face. It was just as well, Michele told herself. If she saw how sad she had just made Lita, she probably would have caved in, and she just couldn't do that. Not now.
"Okay," Melita's gaze fell to the floor as she moved the book up against her chest, too close for her to see anymore. "Sorry..." Should have known better, her mind said. She never has time anymore.
"It's not your fault, Lita..." Michele started, but Lita apparently didn't hear, or listen at any rate, as she trudged back to her bedroom.
Melita's desk was still just as cluttered as ever - perhaps more so, since she had taken to putting her coloring books there, too, so she wouldn't slip on them again. She had gone through the stack of books the other day, trying to decide which ones she actually had a chance of finishing in the near future. Then she had found a bunch of new ones that looked interesting.
And she was actually getting some read now, too, though her attention span was still not quite up to par again yet. There were some weird books out there... Maybe that was where all these freaky dreams were coming from. A lot of them she couldn't remember, but even without knowing the specifics on them, she still could tell that they were awfully strange.
Sometimes her eyes just didn't feel like reading the words on the pages themselves, and wanted someone else to do it for them. Though Lita wasn't sure if in this case it was for that reason, or if she wanted to curl up next to someone and just... be...
But no, there were things to do, too many things to do. Adrianna had been busy a lot, too, although Melita couldn't recall it ever being quite this bad. If being grown up meant being so busy all the time, Lita was a bit hesitant at the concept.
But maybe... What if maybe there weren't quite as many things to do? She wondered suddenly, a string of thought popping up randomly. What if she took care of some of the things that Michele had to do? Would she had time to read to her then? Melita knew that there was no way she could do Michele's homework, but she was pretty confident in her ability to handle some of her other work.
For instance, just a few minutes ago, Lita had heard her complaining about the dishes, and how she needed to do them. That was something she could do. Sure, she didn't exactly have a ton of experience... But she had seen people do them a lot, and it seemed very simple. Why couldn't she do something like that?
Melita nodded, full of resolve towards her new mission. This would be simple. No problem. She could hear Michele in the living room, talking to herself or possibly her school books, as she slunk past, bare feet making not a sound on the carpet. The kitchen floor was generally a bit more difficult to be silent on, being linoleum, making Lita glad for her lack of shoes at the moment.
Once she had reached the sink, she was presented with the first flaw in her plan. While she could see the sink, and reach up into it - she could even turn the water on, if she got on her tiptoes a bit - she couldn't do a whole lot more than that. She couldn't even really do both of those at the same time very well, which might be a bit of a problem when trying to make sure she did a good job with cleaning.
At first she considered dragging a chair over to climb on, but she was pretty sure the noise from that would draw more attention to her than she wanted. She wasn't sure why she was trying to keep this all secret from Michele, but somehow it seemed better that way. Then she could be surprised when she saw the dishes all done.
Lita skulked around the kitchen a few times, searching high and low for something a bit lighter than a chair to stand on. There was a little step ladder in the pantry, but there was a bunch of stuff stack on top of it at the moment, and seemingly nowhere to put any of it, ot at least anywhere low enough for Lita, even with the ladder, to reach.
Just as she was about to give up, she finally came up with the painfully obvious solution, and scampered back to the bathroom to get the stool that she used while at the sink in there. It turned out to be heavier than Lita expected, and the stars carved through the two legs, while pretty, were not the most comfortable handholds ever.
They were good enough, however. Lita set the stool down in front of the kitchen sink, relieved that she hadn't accidentally dropped it somewhere along the way, glad that Michele hadn't looked up at the wrong time. She dusted her hands off with satisfaction and a giggle. Well, now that the hard part was over...
She turned on the water, just a little so that it wouldn't make too much noise, playing around with the two knobs to try to find a good temperature - it had to be warm, she could recall Ms. Elendara saying once, but not too hot or else you could burn yourself. Once she was satisfied, she reached over for the bottle of soap, flipping open the top and upending it into the water.
Unfortunately, the water wasn't exactly there. "Hey... Where'd you go?" she pouted. She watched it flow down the drain for a few moments before she decided that the soap wasn't going to help her if it kept following the water into the abyss beyond the drain, and turned the bottle back upright. She set it back in its place, her hand clumsily knocking something down into one of the pans stacked in the sink as she withdrew it.
There was a light clang noise, and Melita squatted down quickly, hoping that she wouldn't be visible from the living room if Michele tried to see what had made that racket. She couldn't remember when she had grabbed it, but the thing she had knocked down was now in her hand, and she looked it over as she waited, to be sure that she hadn't been spotted. It had a nice, familiar quality to it that she wasn't precisely sure where she had seen before, until she cautiously stood again to find the water still swirling down into the drain.
At first, the thing wouldn't quite go into the drain, though now Lita was more sure than ever that was where it belonged. She turned it a little, and it slid down, the tiny, almost blade-like protrusion at the bottom slipping into the slit it was meant for, the design of the top part blocking the holes in the drain that let the water through. Finally, the water level of the sink started to rise, and Lita flipped the bottle of soap back over and squeezed some into it.
While the water took its own sweet time filling the sink, Lita began gathering the dishes from all along the counter and stacking them as close to the edge of the sink as she could put them without being too afraid of them falling, so that she wouldn't have to go retrieve everything once she got started. By the time she was done, the water seemed to have risen enough - it was a bit hard to tell through all the bubbles that had sprang up - so she turned it back off and picked up the washcloth from where Michele had draped it on over the divider between the two sections of the sink. She would have rolled up her sleeves if she hadn't been wearing a T-shirt, but, sadly, she was.
After a few minutes, and a quick admonishment that she was there to wash dishes, not play in the bubbles, she got to work. She had stacked up the silverware on one of the plates, so that it would be all in one general area; that would be as good a place to start as any, since the dish rack's little section for silverware was closest to her anyway. She could reach about halfway across the whole rack from her spot on the stool, which might turn out to be a problem if she wanted to put something further back, but for now it didn't seem like it would be all that big of a problem at the moment.
She lifted the plate with all the silverware, setting it down in the midst of the bubbles. It sank for a little while before it hit against the other dishes in there, and finally settled down. Lita reached in, running her hand through the water for her first victim, smiling a little as she imagined the dishes swimming away from her fingers like fishies. Her illusion was deepened as she felt three little teeth starting to gnaw at her palm.
She knew it was a fork, but it took her a second to realize that she knew that, during which she jerked her hand away so that it wouldn't eat any of her fingers, seeing as how she was rather fond of them all. If she had actually been able to see into the water, she probably would have been more careful about in which direction she moved her hand to get it free of the terrible jaws of... well, she couldn't think of any particularly terrifying fish, but if there were any, that was what she was trying to get away from... instead of running the back of her hand straight across the blade of a knife.
This time, she pulled her whole arm free with a little yelp, tears already starting to form. Her arm came into contact with one of the bowls that she had put on the edge of the sink a few minutes ago, knocking it to the floor with a much larger noise than she had made last time as it shattered into a dozen pieces that slid every which way.
"What is going on in there?!" Michele sprang to her feet, spinning around faster than Lita could react this time. "Lita..?" She began to walk towards the kitchen.
"No!" Lita yelled, starting to hop down from the stool, to try and distract Michele from seeing what she had just did.
"Melita, stay there!" Michele ordered, suddenly more forceful than Lita had any idea she could be. She obeyed, of course, pulling her foot back up onto the stool from where it was positioned right over one of the broken shards of the bowl that she hadn't noticed. Michele looked around the kitchen with a sigh. She lifting the little girl off the stool and carrying her over to the safety of the carpet. "What do you think you're doing?!" she demanded, voice full of anger, born of fear, giving her a quick smack on the bottom.
Lita's gaze jumped upwards in surprise; Michele had never done anything like that to her before. Michele knew it couldn't have hurt that much, especially through the Pull-Up, but the pain in Lita's eyes was still horribly evident. Michele had a bad feeling that it wasn't so much because of her spank as what that had brought to the girl's mind.
"I-I was jus' trying to help..." Lita said quietly. "I was gonna do the dishes for you..."
Michele's heart melted as she felt even more like a monster. "Oh..."
"I'm sorry," Melita added, old habits kicking in.
"No, sweetie, I'm sorry... I shouldn't have yelled at you like that." She knelt down to give her a hug, glad to find that she was still willing to do so. "Thank you, Lita, but you don't have to do that. It's what I'm here for, remember?"
"I thought maybe if I could get them done, then you'd have time to read to me later," Lita confessed.
Michele wasn't sure what to say to that, so she just stroked the little girl's hair for a moment, until she noticed her hand. "You're hurt..." Lita looked down at her hand, just as surprised for a second; she had forgotten about that. "C'mon, let's go get you patched up, and then I can see about reading to you, okay?"
"Yay!" Lita exclaimed, giggling happily, her wound forgotten again. Michele smiled down at her as she led her off to the bathroom, where the first aid kit was. She could finish her homework tonight... There were more important things to do now.
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"Leann!" Jessica shouted, her body kicking into motion as her mind struggled to keep up. She knew she was too far away, but her legs didn't, so they kept moving, pushing her forward, towards the cliff's edge.
Leann had her arms out, struggling to keep her balance even after it was already gone. Jessica leapt forward, her fingertips brushing against those of her friend. Her hand closed, her other arm moving forward to get a better grip. She forced her legs to change directions as quickly as possible - she didn't have much space between her and the edge, and she could feel the ground starting to crumble around her already, though that may have been her imagination.
Just as her other hand closed around Leann's, her legs, confused by all this sudden switching of directions, simply did the easiest thing for them and stopped working correctly, making her fall. Luckily backwards, onto solid ground. She pulled Leann with her, the little girl landing on her stomach, which she could have done without, though she didn't mind as much just because she knew she was safe now.
Leann's fear-filled eyes stared down at her. "So... M-Maybe we shouldn't go down there today..." she smiled weakly.
"Maybe you should just stay away from water," Jessica answered, pretending to be calm, in control, though inside she was just as scared as Leann looked. "And also off of me."
"Oh, sorry," Leann blushed, scurrying off her friend and to her feet, allowing Jess to stand as well. She smiled up at her shyly, more than a little embarrassed. "Thank you," she said finally.
"Hey, what are friends for?" Jessica patted Leann's head a couple times. "I don't suppose you have anything else cool to show me?" Leann perked back up in an instant, as if the past few minutes had never happened, and she took off another way, pulling Jess along behind her.
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"How does your hand feel?" Melita shrugged at Ms. Elendara's question, more afraid of what was going to come next. She had broken one of Ms. Elendara's bowls... How mad was she going to be?
"It's okay," she said finally, when it seemed that Ms. Elendara was looking for a more substantial answer.
Ms. Elendara nodded, was quiet for a moment. A million things ran through Lita's mind, at least half of them ways to apologize. She didn't get the chance to single any out. "That was a nice thing you did today."
"It... It was?" Lita blinked, confused. This was hardly the response she had expected.
"Of course it was. It was sweet of you to try to help Michele out... But maybe next time, you should leave the knives for a grown up to wash, okay?" Melita nodded quickly; she didn't want a repeat of today, either.
"Y-You're not mad about the bowl?" she asked after a moment, shrinking a little further away, just in case.
"Well, I was a bit upset about it, but you don't have to worry about it, Lita. I'm not going to fire Michele over something like that. I know how well you two get along." Ms. Elendara smiled down at her, touched at the girl's concern for her babysitter.
Lita, on the other hand, was speechless. Why would Ms. Elendara have fired Michele for something she had done anyway? It didn't make sense... Unless...
"She's not going to be coming in tomorrow, though."
"Oh." Melita sighed, wondering who she was going to be stuck with instead. Nobody was as fun as Michele, except Adrianna, who wasn't likely to come back for college just to babysit for a day.
"I hope you don't mind, but I thought I would take over for a day," Ms. Elendara winked.
"Really?" Lita glanced up, eyes twinkling. Ms. Elendara nodded, and Lita threw herself at her with a giggle and a big hug that somehow ended up with her sitting on Ms. Elendara's lap. That was fine with her, though, so she stayed there for a while, cuddling up against her body.
After a few minutes, however, she moved away a little, staring up at Ms. Elendara, very serious. "Do I look icky with all these spots?"
Ms. Elendara wasn't sure where that question had come from, but there was definitely only one answer to it. She leaned over, kissed the little girl's forehead."No, of course not. Even all sick and spotty, you still look like an angel."
Lita's serious expression fell apart as she giggled, and Ms. Elendara kissed her forehead again, pulling her back into a hug. "My little angel," she smiled quietly.
verse nineteen
"Oh, for the love of..." Jade rolled her eyes, green as her namesake, crossed her arms in a huff. Her mother had told her probably a thousand times about how she was originally going to be named Patience, but the moment she opened her eyes, it was obvious that her name was not meant to be that.
A fact which could also be learned from anyone who spent more than two minutes with her.
"She stepped on my line -again-!" she complained, glaring longswords at the girl playing the villager. This must be what it was really like to be a queen, she thought to herself - an oasis of perfection among a sea of mediocrity. She would have to try to incorporate that emotion into her performance somehow.
Aurea was doing a fine job of acting herself, if she did say so herself. She was acting like she wasn't bothered in the least by that stuck-up monster, when in reality she was just itching to use a phrase that would probably get her suspended or some such, plus a grounding at home - If she was lucky - even though that had been where she'd heard it in the first place.
At the very least, she wanted to roll her eyes, but that would just earn her another lecture from the director on how he didn't feel that she was taking this play seriously, a fact that she was already keenly aware of. On her list of priorities, giving a good performance in a class play she was forced to be in was basically as close to the bottom as you could get other than going into the reptile house at the zoo. And perhaps even lower than that, since, despite her fears, deep down she knew that her father was telling her the truth about the snakes not being able to escape from their cases. Probably.
Being in a class play with Jade, the single most arrogant brat she had ever met, wasn't even on the list. It was about six feet below the list, somewhere underground. It wasn't like Jade was even in her class in the first place - she had just decided to grace them with her presence when she found that she liked their play better than the one her class was doing. Aurea had been hoping the director would say no to the idea, but of course he didn't. How could he turn down a national television star?
Aurea had to force her eyes to stay still, instead of rolling up towards the ceiling, at the thought. Jade had never actually been in a play before... All the acting she had ever done was in some commercial, and Aurea was positive that the person in the commercial wasn't really her, just someone that looked enough like her that she could claim it was and fool everyone in school into worshipping the ground she walked on.
Jeez, actors could be such pains...
The director was talking, most likely to her, but she wasn't paying attention, as the corner of her eye caught a glimpse of movement from backstage. Her heart started to race for a split second, before she remembered the school's policy on visitors. Namely, they didn't allow any other than family, and even then usually only if it was an emergency, in which case they wouldn't be wandering around behind the stage, or if it was parents night. And she knew it wasn't, seeing as how if it was, she would be performing the play instead of rehearsing it.
In any case, there was no way whatever she had seen would be Neil. Her heart sank at the realization; he hadn't been by to see her for a few days. If it hadn't been for that, and the stupid play, the past week would have been one of the best she could recall off the top of her head. She hadn't had a single vision... Which was probably why Neil had stopped visiting. Maybe she wasn't really the Seer after all, though she preferred to think she was. Otherwise...
No. She wasn't crazy.
"It's your line," Jade informed her snippily.
Aurea snapped out of her brief bout of depression over the potential loss of Neil, finding herself back where she had started - in the middle of a scene where she had no idea where her lines were supposed to go. She knew she was supposed to cut the queen off at one point, but she always got mixed up as to when, and what she was supposed to cut her off with.
"Well, at least you didn't step on my line this time," Jade said, just loud enough for Aurea, and not the director, to hear. She lowered her voice even further as she muttered, "Amateurs." She turned around to head back up onto the platform where her throne would eventually sit, the only set piece that was finished so far, expecting to have to redo her line yet again, twisting her neck to glare at Aurea in retribution.
Time seemed to slow down around Aurea, who immediately recognized what was going on, welcoming it with an, "Oh, crap." But this time, she wasn't taken to some strange, faraway land to be shown cryptic pictures. This time, she remained in the theater, exactly where she was a moment before.
The air seemed to quiver for a brief moment, making the room to the same, making Aurea wonder if this was what it would be like to look out at the world through a bowl of Jello. She could see vague outlines of the other people onstage with her, but the only one she could see clearly now was Jade, who was still about to step up onto the platform.
Aurea wasn't completely sure what happened. Maybe Jade didn't lift her foot high enough. Maybe she moved her foot in too close to the platform, which was still open at the bottom and a few inches off the stage because of its wheels. Whatever the cause, a second later she was falling, a cry of surprise escaping from her lips, along with a cracking sound, though most likely it wasn't her mouth making that noise.
She threw out her hands, trying to break her fall on something. Aurea just stared in shock, unsure what she should do, until she remembered that this wasn't real. Not yet.
The world quivered around her again, jolting her back to the real world. Jade was still glaring at her, lifting her foot to get up onto the platform. Aurea considered letting her fall - she deserved whatever injury she would get from it. Her conscience got the better of her at the last second, though, and she moved forward quickly, the gears of her mind still working on a plan.
Jade turned back around once she had stepped onto the platform, only to see Aurea rushing towards the spot she had been hand outstretched, and freezing, a look of puzzlement crossing her features. "Mr. Williams, she was trying to shove me!" she yelled, wondering if the barbaric brat would get thrown out of the play. It was obvious she was just jealous of her talent. It was understandable, just something she would have to get used to. It was so hard being her.
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Melita hopped off the last step of the bus, bookbag bumping against her back as she landed and knocking her off balance for a second. She managed to keep herself from falling with a couple quick steps, followed by some light giggling.
"You're certainly in a good mood," Cynthia commented as Lita practically bounced up the steps into school.
"Uh-huh!" Lita nodded, smiling brightly. She began to say more, only to notice the other students around her, so she just shrugged. It pretty much summed up all the words she could have thought up for the situation. She wasn't sure why she was so happy... It was school after all. But, on the other hand, it wasn't home, a first for the past week.
The halls were busy, buzzing with the sound of children, some still sleepy, some ungodly hyper for the time of morning. Lita usually belonged to the former group, but today she had somehow transcended into a state of pure energy. Even Dana's jabs at her on the bus hadn't bothered her; she was too busy staring out the window at everything the bus was passing to care.
She would never have believed that she could actually miss school before today. Then again, before last week, she never would have thought that not going to school for a week would be so incredibly boring.
Her enthusiasm waned for a moment as she approached the door to her homeroom. She had been able to ignore Dana on the bus, but could that last the whole day? She would only get more annoying as time went on and she saw that she was having no effect on her intended victim. She wasn't exactly looking forward to being under Mrs. Friedman's rule again, either. What if she was mad about her not being there? Ms. Elendara had told her that the school knew about her being sick, but she was still a little nervous.
"Fine, don't move then," Nina huffed, pushing past Melita and through the doorway into the classroom. Lita blushed, followed her until she reached her row, then set her bookbag down on her desk before sitting. Cautiously, she glanced towards the desk at the front of the room, wondering if Mrs. Friedman had noticed her yet.
She wasn't there. Lita blinked a few times to make sure she was seeing correctly, but there was no way she could mistake the woman at the desk for her teacher. She looked like she was quite a bit younger, and a lot prettier. And she could smile, too, as was proven when she noticed Lita staring at her.
Melita blushed again and became suddenly busy with rearranging things in her backpack, taking as long as she thought would seem believable, maybe a bit longer, turned to hang it from the back of her chair. She readjusted herself in the chair to face the front again, only to be confronted with the form of the woman, right beside her.
"You must be Melita, right?" the woman held out her hand.
Lita stared at it, confused. "Umm... Uh-huh..."
"Shake her hand!" Cynthia ordered, rolling her eyes.
"Oh!" Melita exclaimed, blushing again as she followed Cynthia's instruction. She wasn't used to shaking peoples' hands... It was kind of weird, but it was all right. The woman's hand was a little cold, but Lita was pretty sure hers was colder.
"Nice to meet you. My name is Mrs. Teller. I've been the substitute teacher for your class for the past couple days." Lita stared at her, unsure of how to answer, but that didn't seem to bother the woman too much. "I was wondering when you were going to show up. Chicken pox, huh?" Lita nodded, glad to have something she -did- know how to reply to. "I'm glad you're feeling better."
She gave Lita one more smile before returning to her desk. Melita couldn't help but find that smile mirroring itself on her own face. Today would be a good day, she told herself, resolving to do whatever it took to make sure it truly was. Her legs crossed under her desk and began to swing back and forth as the bell began to ring, and school, no longer quite as scary, got underway. |
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Elizabeth
Site Admin
Joined: 30 Dec 2007
Posts: 172
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| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2007 12:24 am Post subject: |
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verse twenty
Melita glanced around the classroom nervously, which only confirmed what she already knew – that she really was the only Melita there. There were so many other people there... It almost seemed like the class had doubled in size since she had been gone, although most likely that was because last time she was there, quite a few had been missing. Why couldn't they -still- be missing?
"I know what it is," Dana spoke up, raising her hand halfway through. Mrs. Friedman had never cared if Dana talked without doing so, but Mrs. Teller seemed to be less lenient about that sort of thing. "It's.."
"Thank you, Dana, but I would like to hear what Melita has to say." Dana crossed her arms with a pout and a glower in Lita's direction.
If there had been anyone not looking at Melita before, they certainly were now. She could feel their eyes on her, could practically hear Dana's lackeys telling her to screw up, to prove to them that she was just as stupid as their fearless leader said she was.
"Come on, you know this," Cynthia encouraged from above Lita's shoulder. She could see the girl freezing up.
"It's okay if you get it wrong, Melita. Just tell us what you think it is," Mrs. Teller smiled.
What does she want from me? Lita asked herself, unsure now if she liked this teacher better than Mrs. Friedman after all. Mrs. Friedman would never do this to her... Mrs. Friedman seemed happy enough to ignore her presence in her classroom most of the time, and Lita had no problem with that.
"Just give it a shot." Mrs. Teller didn't sound like she was getting annoyed by the extended pause, but Lita was sure she was.
Dana leaned across her desk to the girl next to her, whispering something that made them both burst into giggle. Celeste pretended to smile when the two looked over at her, then returned to watching Melita quietly.
Lita swallowed, lifting her face up to look at Mrs. Teller's. "Is it photosynthesis?"
If Mrs. Teller was at all surprised by the answer, or even the fact that Lita had answered at all, she was able to hide it with near perfection, a quick blink the only indication. "Well, the answer I was looking for was sun, but yes, that's correct, too. Good job, Melita."
Lita beamed happily; she couldn't help it. Even Dana's slightly delayed comment that anyone could have gotten it right after thinking about it that long didn't dampen her mood much, as it was followed by a reprimand from Mrs. Teller. Her spirits lifted back up to the level they had been when she had gotten off the bus that morning, and it seemed that nothing could knock them back down, not even the horrendous math, or Dana's attempt to trip her in the hallway on the way to recess.
She grinned at Mrs. Teller as she hurried off to her doorway to wait for her friends, too quickly to see more than a sliver of the smile she got in return. Mrs. Teller watched the little girl's retreating form, trying to figure out just why it was that she seemed so familiar. She knew that she hadn't seen her before, but there was still something about her that reminded her of someone else. If she could just remember who that was...
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"Aurea, come inside, sweetie. It's time to get ready for bed."
Aurea turned to look at her mother, standing framed in the doorway, trying to decide if it would be worth it to argue with her for a chance at an extension on tonight's bedtime. Her almost eight years of experience warned her not to, so instead she got up with a sigh, gathered her books, and trudged inside, the blanket she had draped over her shoulders trailing behind her.
"Don't you think it's getting a little cold out to be doing homework outside?" Her mother asked as she flipped the porch light off. Aurea shrugged, knowing that no matter what she said, her answer wouldn't make any difference. Her mom thought it was too cold, and that was all that mattered.
Not that it bothered her too much. Sure, it was nice to be outside, away from her older brother, but most of the time he wasn't -so- bad, since he was usually in his room playing games on his computer or listening to music, or doing whatever teenagers did. The main reason she had taken to sitting on the porch hadn't shown up that night, just like he had failed to do the night before, and the night before that.
It was funny... She had always thought of Neil as the kind of person that would always show up when he was needed, like some sort of superhero. But tonight more than ever she had needed him, yet there had been no sign nor sight of him.
She felt a hand pressing against her forehead, breaking her out of her depressed reverie. "Are you feeling sick, honey?"
Aurea shook her head. Her mom wouldn't understand, even if she hadn't promised Neil that she wouldn't tell anyone about him if she didn't have to. Not that she could have done anything about it, anyway. If Neil didn't want to visit her, then he wasn't going to...
Unless he really -was- like a superhero. Maybe she could make him show up after all...
She obediently let herself be trundled off to her room, plans spinning around her mind like little hurricanes. By the time she told her mother goodnight, she knew what she had to do. She laid awake, cuddled up under her covers, waiting, watching for the sliver of light under her door to disappear.
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Adrianna's pen bounced off of her notebook, the yellow form starting to blur a little from the motion and speed combined. After a minute or two, almost involuntarily, it slowed, matching the rhythm that she hadn't quite realized she had started a little better, and in a few more moments, it began to join up with the song that had been running through her head all morning, despite her best efforts to rid her mind of it.
She dropped her pencil to the desktop as if it were electrified, pretending not to notice as the people around her, those that were awake, anyway, glanced over to see what the commotion was all about, only to see Adrianna leaning over to retrieve her pencil from the floor, which it seemed to have decided looked like a more comfortable resting place than the desk. Her notebook seemed to have decided the same thing, though it was helped a bit by her elbow.
The teacher didn’t pause, or give any indication that he had noticed what was going on. Most likely he hadn’t. While the class wasn’t all that large, it still had the most students of any of Adrianna’s, and she was seated fairly close to the back. The classroom, pretty much the only one she had seen on campus so far that looked anything remotely like a college classroom on television or in movies or whatever, was also a good deal larger than any of the other ones Adrianna was regularly in.
Those two factors probably helped keep her from being noticed, of course, but she suspected that the biggest reason the teacher hadn’t so much as batted an eye at the sudden movement and noise was the fact that he was the oldest professor at the school, and almost certainly mostly senile. She didn’t know for sure how old he was, but she had heard someone say about eighty once, and that sounded about right to her.
And, as was only fitting, he was also the most boring teacher on campus by far. Adrianna would have guessed as much after the first week of classes; in case there had been any doubt in her mind, however, one of her upperclassmen friends had shown her a poll from two years ago that confirmed it. The next closest professor taught physics, and had lost by about 50 points.
She wished once again that she had just stayed in bed that morning and slept through this class. There didn’t seem to be much point in showing up on days when they didn’t have tests, since they just went over what was already in the book. And, for the most part, already in Adrianna’s head, since so far they hadn’t covered anything that she hadn’t learned in high school, or, in some cases, in middle school.
Math was never her favorite thing in the world, but she was able to get through most of it pretty easily. Getting up at 8:30 in the morning to listen to an old man drone on about it for an hour had dropped her opinion of the subject significantly. She almost regretted taking the class, except for the fact that she had to have a math class to graduate, and it was the easiest one by far.
Sleeping in class was a talent she had never managed to pick up, somehow; she had never had a reason to regret that until now. At least in high school there was the possibility that by being awake, she could hear something important that might show up on a test. Here? Not so much.
Luckily, her other classes were much more interesting, and there were even a couple that she looked forward to going to. Psychology was turning out to be quite fascinating, if a bit complex. She’d almost failed her first test in it, but she had done decently on the others so far, so she blamed the first one on the fact that she had done most of her homework for it during math, since there was generally nothing better to do then. Apparently even –trying- to do work while her math teacher was talking killed brain cells, so it was better just not to try, she had decided, resigned to her fate.
She just had to get through a couple more weeks, she assured herself. If she could survive that long, she could go home, finally, and get some rest, and be freed, for a few days at least, from the evils of math. And, best of all, she’d get to see Mom and Li-li again. She couldn’t help but feel guilty that she hadn’t been coming home on the weekends like she said she would sometimes. She had only done so once, on Lita’s birthday. She made sure to call them every week, of course, but it just wasn’t the same.
The first few weeks, Lita would always ask if she was coming home that weekend, but after being told no for so long, the question became less frequent. And now, Adrianna couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard it. She hated letting her little sister down like that, after assuring her that being at college wouldn’t be bad, that they’d see each other all the time. The drive had just been longer than she expected, and trying to make that twice in a weekend was just too much.
Even so, she couldn’t help but feel guilty every Friday afternoon she wasn’t on the road, couldn’t help but feel that she was making Lita hate her, or at least not love her as much. She would have to make it up to her somehow... She didn’t think she’d be able to forgive herself if she didn’t at least try to.
But how?
The other students started to pack up their books and file out of the room, making Adrianna realize that class was over, thus ending her free thinking time for the next few hours. As she tucked her notebook away inside her own backpack, she hoped the answer would come to her soon. Just a couple weeks left....
verse twenty-one
It wasn't raining when Aurea left. She never would have made it past the porch if that had been the case. It had been just as cloudy as it had been while she was doing her homework as she set out, but since it hadn't been raining then, she didn't expect it to start now.
Yet start it had. There hadn't been any warning, just a sudden downpour as she walked behind the light post beside the Frayns' house. She didn't think there was anybody watching her, but it still felt weird to just walk straight through a pool of light when she was trying to sneak away from home.
She had started jogging after that, not sure why – she would get soaked even if she ran all the way home from there, and she wasn't planning on heading back that way yet. She slowed back down after she slipped on the hem of her pants and narrowly avoided falling straight into one of the many puddles that had already formed. She reached around herself to pull her jacket more tightly over her shivering frame, wishing she had brought her heavier coat instead.
Where was Neil?! Surely she needed him more now than she had any of the times he'd visited her on the porch! Maybe he had forgotten about her...
She came to a stop with a sigh, her hand slowly trailing down to her pocket, where the key to her house sat, tempting her to give up her mission. Sure, she still wanted to see him, but all this wasn't worth it. She would rather still be curled up in bed, fast asleep, dry and warm.
She lifted her hand, already smiling at the feel of the little buffalo key chain, remembering the day that her brother had gotten it for her. It was from one of those machines at the front of the supermarket. She had actually wanted the unicorn one, but the only thing that would come out for him was the buffalo, so she told him it was just as good
Her hand came up streaked with red. She squinted at it, confused, until she realized that it was covered in blood, and then she shrieked and dropped the key chain, desperately trying to wipe her hands off on her jeans, only to find that they were already covered in blood. Desperately, she tried to figure out where she had gotten cut, what could have happened that she was bleeding this badly.
Her arms were bloody, too. Was she dying?
She knelt down, mind frantically searching for an explanation, a solution, anything. She couldn't die here. There was too much to be done, too much she didn't know yet.
Her eyes fell across the fallen key chain, lying stranded on the sidewalk a few feet away. Lying in its own pool of blood.
"Huh?" she asked herself quietly, trying to figure out how she had gotten so much blood all the way over there. Until she saw that there was still blood being added to the pool. She looked up at the rain of blood falling all around her.
She practically leapt to her feet, trying to pull her jacket off and brush the blood from her jeans at the same time. Somehow it was even creepier when the blood wasn't coming from her. She wanted to scream, but the thought of getting any of the blood in her mouth silenced her.
And somewhere in the distance, she could have sworn that she heard a voice say, “Soon.”
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The doorway was just as Melita remembered it. She had been vaguely worried that something about it would have changed – that it might have gotten smaller somehow, or been torn down – but once she got there, it was as if she had never been gone.
She'd been more worried that her friends might have changed, though, that a week apart had made them forget her, or realize that they didn't really need her. The sight of Leann barreling towards her put a stop to that.
Her arms wrapped around Leann, her mind flashing back to the dream she had earlier that week. All she could think of when she thought about Leann since then was her drowning... She was glad to see that she hadn't.
“Guess you're feeling better,” Jessica smiled from the edge of the doorway, only slightly surprised when the sound of her voice got her half-hugged, half-tackled by a Lita.
“Hi,” she giggled as she looked up at her older friend.
“Hey,” Jessica answered, not sure what else to say to that. There were all kinds of stories from the past week that she wanted to tell her about, or had wanted to. Now she wasn't sure where to start, even if she should start. The stories didn't seem all that interesting any more.
Lita wasn't quite sure what to say, either. While she didn't have quite as many stories, that she was willing to share with her friends anyway, she still wanted to say something. It just seemed so odd, being around them again...
When the silence was finally broken, it wasn't either of them that did it. Rather, it was Leann, no longer able to keep herself from blurting out, “I'm glad you didn't die!”
Jessica rolled her eyes. “Was I s'posed to?” Lita asked, confused.
“You might have,” Leann shrugged.
“Ah,” Lita nodded, just as confused as before, just no longer caring. She was back where she belonged, and that was all that mattered.
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"Aurea?"
She thought she had imagined it, that it was just a sound that her mind had made up to try to make all this a little less frightening. It was difficult to see the shadowy figure heading towards her through the rain of blood, but as it started to speed up, she began to recognize it.
Guess I was right after all, she told herself.
"What the hell are you doing out here?" Neil demanded, blood flowing in rivers from the folds of his cloak. "Do you have any idea what time it is? And you're soaked!"
"I... I know..." she said, trying to figure out why he didn't seem particularly bothered by exactly what it was that was falling from the heavens. As she looked up at him, however, she could see the drops of blood turning back into rain, could see it mixing with the puddles already on the ground.
A vision. Of course. What could have possibly made her think that it could be real?
"I think there's something wrong with me..." she said quietly, eyes drifting down, towards the patch of ground between her and Neil's feet. From the corner of her eye, she could see the watery blood start to wash down the storm drains, away into the sewers below.
"And it couldn't have waited until tomorrow?"
"I didn't know if you were gonna come tomorrow," she glared up at him accusingly. "You just vanished!"
Neil sighed. "I'm sorry, all right? Now can we please get you home? I'll drop by tomorrow evening, if you don't get pneumonia from all this."
He started to walk towards Aurea's house, beckoning to her to follow. She was still rooted to the same spot when he turned to see if she was. "I don't think I'm the Seer," she said quietly.
"Of course you are, Aurea."
It was nice to hear him say it, even if his sincerity was slightly masked by annoyance at the moment. Still, it wasn't enough. "I don't know... I'm... I had a vision earlier today. And it didn't come true."
Neil shrugged. "Not yet. You've said yourself that you don't usually know -when- something is going to happen."
Aurea shook her head, a few stray drops of blood falling loose at the motion. She shuddered, wishing Neil could see it, too, that -anyone- could. "This time I knew. And... And it didn't happen." She sniffled softly. "Neil, what if you were wrong? What if... What if I'm just crazy?"
She moved forward, just wanting a little hug, some kind of contact, anything. Neil stepped back out of her reach. "You're not crazy," he sighed. "Now let's get you home."
This hadn't turned out to be nearly as comforting as Aurea had expected, but by now she didn't care. "Fine. Whatever," she shrugged, starting to head home through the rain. She wanted him to hold her hand on the walk back, but she didn't bother to even suggest it. She felt even more alone than she had kneeling in the middle of the rain of blood.
Maybe she really was insane.
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"What did I do to deserve -two- Leanns today?" Jessica sighed over-dramatically, folding her arms as she stared over at her two overly bouncy and hyper companions. Once they had gotten over their initial confusion as to what to say to each other, they had gotten right back to their old selves. Only more so, as if they were trying to make up for the whole week they had been apart in one day.
"Oh, you know you love us," Melita giggled, starting to say something else, probably to tell yet another story about that weird soap opera she had been watching, when she froze in place and her eyes started to go wide.
"What's wrong?" Jessica asked quickly, starting to kneel down in front of her to feel her forehead. Was she still feeling sick? Then she saw that Leann had gotten just as still, her eyes fixed on the same spot. She turned around to see what was going on, only to end up just as shocked as the other two. It was Lita who recovered first, to finally give voice to their surprise.
"Courtney." She blinked a few times at the girl standing in front of her sanctuary, looking a bit embarrassed to be there, or at least to have been caught there. "Hi."
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