MCSKSG, Four point three
More of chapter 4. Still not the end yet. 1,762 words.
"Guido."
Mister Phanis Jonston was hovering over me when I opened my eyes. I didn't even realize I'd been falling asleep until I'd woken up.
"I'd really appreciate it if you tried to stay awake in my class. I know science is boring, but humour me."
He walked back up to the front of the room and I sank back in my chair, trying to ignore the sounds of the popular girls giggling at me. I really, really should have told Lydia that twelve-thirty was a bad time.
Thankfully, science was my last period of the day. After suffering another agonizing fifteen minutes of lecture, I was free for the weekend. Free to sleep as soon as I got home.
Chris met me outside the door. I hadn't had the chance to talk to him at lunch, which was actually fine by me because phase two of "Mission: Talk to Esperanza" could not be carried out properly in my current state.
"Man, you were seriously falling asleep in English today, bro."
"Yeah, I know."
"Something happen last night?"
"I was training."
"For what?"
We reached my locker and I pulled it open to start sorting out which books I needed to bring home for the weekend. "Seductionist stuff."
"That again?"
"I told you, I have magical boots."
"So what kind of training were you and the magical boots doing?"
"Figuring out my magic."
"What kinda magic's that?"
"Rocks." I closed my locker, spun the lock, and pulled my backpack up onto my shoulders again as I started walking.
"Rocks?"
"Yeah, I can sort of control rocks."
"Whoa, cool. Show me sometime!"
"Maybe. I'm not very good at it yet."
"Were you training with the tux guy in the robot?"
"No, it was another Seductionist."
"There's others?"
"It's an ancient secret society, of course there's others."
"What are they like?"
"I dunno, just people, I gue--"
It was at this point that I walked straight into Orion Black. I reeled back a step, looking up at him, mentally questioning what I had done to deserve something like this and why I had to be looking at the floor while I walked.
Orion Black is an Elyar, a senior, and a member of the school football team. If all the guys at our school are in love with Esperanza and all the girls want to be her, then the reverse is true about Orion Black. He's Tristram III High's definitive cool kid.
He towered over me by about a hundred feet like some sort of giant popular guy obelisk, glaring down at the cat-eared ant that I was in comparison to him. I could feel the entire school stop around us, watching in rapt anticipation to see what was going to unfold. Even Chris took a step back from me to watch from the outside.
I was going to die.
"Watch yourself," he told me, in a voice that made me think of a drill sergeant.
"S-s-sorry."
"Mm." He continued walking and the circle that had formed around us split to let him pass.
I think I nearly fainted. The wave of relief that washed over me made me feel lightheaded. Chris set a hand on my shoulder which helped anchor me back to the spot where I was standing in the hallway. "Holy cow dude, for real."
I couldn't believe what had just happened. The fact that I was still alive, mostly. The school resumed its activity around us, but I was still trying to get my head back on my shoulders.
"You okay, G?"
I nodded quickly and brushed his hand away from my shoulder. I couldn't shake this feeling like I'd stepped on a jaguar's tail and then had it spare me. I resumed walking for the exit in the hopes that the feeling would vanish by the time we got to Rayu's.
When we'd hit the front steps of the school, we'd fallen into a fairly routine conversation about which comic book hero would win in a fight and I had ceased to marvel about my close encounter with Orion Black, putting it completely out of my mind. When we arrived at The Lazy Fabre, Rayu was there at the counter, watching the news playing on the TV in the corner. He glanced up as we walked over to sit down, giving a, "Hey boys, how was the day?"
"Oh man, Guido almost died!"
Thanks Chris, I'd finally managed to forget about it. Rayu raised his eyebrows at me, waiting for an elaboration. "I walked into Orion Black."
"Who?" The name apparently did not carry the same menace to him that it did for the students of Tristram III.
"The toughest senior at our school!" Chris was so enthused about it, I just let him handle the telling. "He's killed for less!"
"Sounds pretty rough."
"Yeah man he was dazed for like hours."
"It hasn't even been an hour, Chris!"
"Either way, I'm glad you managed to survive." Rayu had this way of saying things like that, where he sounded amused and perfectly sincere at the same time. He glanced up, signaled for us to wait a moment, and walked away to handle a customer.
Chris's attention drifted to the news in the corner and mine followed. I think they were talking about the search for Rhianna again.
"Another girl went missing last night."
"From your place?"
"Yeah, sorta." Oh god. "Nobody's saying it's Mary Contrary anymore. Danny thinks it's the ghost, Mom won't let the twerps leave the apartment past nine, everyone's pretty freaked really, we thought we lived in a pretty good neighbourhood."
"The ghost didn't come for us." I was starting to believe Rayu's original assessment that the ghost was Rhianna, so I didn't have very high hopes for this second missing girl.
"I dunno, dude. It's creepy either way. She wasn't from our place but she was supposedly there when she vanished."
"Maybe it's a kidnapper?" But I didn't really believe that.
He shrugged. "They don't think so, say there's no ransom notes."
"Dangerous world out there." We looked back to Rayu, who'd finally returned. "You two be careful."
"What do you think it is?" Chris asked him.
He thought for a moment and then shrugged. "I dunno. But I think that ghost in the stairwell is Rhianna."
"Can we not talk about this?" Chris may have lived there, but he wasn't the one who'd gotten trapped in said stairwell with said ghost.
"Anyway." Rayu picked up a glass to start cleaning. "I'm going to Geffen in a couple weeks, so don't come by expecting me, okay?"
"Geffen? Why?" Chris asked it before I could.
I expected the answer he gave. "Business trip, nothing important." Same answer he always gave when he left the city for weeks at a time.
"Bring us back something!"
"Sure." He looked up from the glass, giving us a smile. "I was raised in Geffen, you know."
"I thought you were raised in Morroc." Chris said the same thing, but he ended it with Alde.
"Whichever." Rayu shrugged. "My ailing mother wants me to come visit her in the hospital."
"I thought you said it was a business trip." Chris shouldn't have sounded so confused, this kind of thing was typical Rayu.
"It is."
"Ailing moms are business?"
"Are they ever."
It was funny though, because I could remember hearing him and Mister Barozu talking about how their parents had died when they were young.
"So," sudden segue, "who wants to help me with the dishes?"
"You know I bet Mom's worried, I should get going. Later, G!"
...Thanks, Chris.
"Well, looks like it's just you and me, Guido. Come on."
With a sigh I walked behind the counter and followed him into the back to help unload and refill the dishwasher.
"You talk to Lacy yet?"
I don't know why, but the question reminded me that I'd forgotten to tell Chris about Lydia. "No."
"Esperanza?"
"I tried."
He laughed. "You sound a little frustrated."
"Yeah, well."
"What happened when you tried?"
"Lacy was there."
"Ouch."
"Yeah."
"Don't worry about it. You're fifteen, nobody ever stays with anybody at fifteen anyway."
"Right."
"My first girlfriend dropped me after a week for a movie star."
"At fifteen?"
"Fourteen. Guy had weird tastes."
"...Rayu."
"The second one was a movie star, but only in her brother's independant films for college."
"How'd she dump you?"
"Fell off a cliff in Alde during a filming."
"I thought you lived in Geffen."
"Yeah, Geffen, that's what I said. She didn't die, but she decided black cats were bad luck and dumped me after that."
I sighed. The thing about Rayu's heart-to-hearts is that I can never tell just how much of it I'm supposed to believe.
"Anyway, my point is, don't worry about it. You got your whole life ahead of you. It's just girls in high school, not the end of the world."
"Yeah, I know."
With that we'd finished, and I decided it was probably time to head home. He promised again to bring back something from Geffen ("--Morroc." "I thought you were going to Geffen." "Sure, that's what I said."), we said our good-byes, and I headed for home.
Para was coming over for dinner, my mother informed me as I walked in the door. Great. I pondered calling Chris and asking to come over for dinner again, but Mom probably would have killed me. I asked for a time frame, set my alarm for about thirty minutes before, and fell asleep within seconds.
Usually people don't dream during a two-hour nap, but I guess I was just that tired. I was with Chris in a town that kept switching between being Payon and Prontera, we kept seeing the shadow of Garm in the trees and people kept disappearing off the street, vanishing into the cement and asphalt. I ended up trapped alone in the stairwell and hearing a siren which, I realized suddenly, was actually the alarm clock.
I don't know why, but I decided as I got up that I wasn't going to leave the house tomorrow. I just wanted a break from life for a while. I was going to stay in my room all day doing nothing and it would be great.
But, I lamented with a sigh, it wasn't going to happen until tomorrow. I headed down the stairs to deal with Para for an evening. On the plus side, at least she was easier to deal with than Lydia.
"Guido."
Mister Phanis Jonston was hovering over me when I opened my eyes. I didn't even realize I'd been falling asleep until I'd woken up.
"I'd really appreciate it if you tried to stay awake in my class. I know science is boring, but humour me."
He walked back up to the front of the room and I sank back in my chair, trying to ignore the sounds of the popular girls giggling at me. I really, really should have told Lydia that twelve-thirty was a bad time.
Thankfully, science was my last period of the day. After suffering another agonizing fifteen minutes of lecture, I was free for the weekend. Free to sleep as soon as I got home.
Chris met me outside the door. I hadn't had the chance to talk to him at lunch, which was actually fine by me because phase two of "Mission: Talk to Esperanza" could not be carried out properly in my current state.
"Man, you were seriously falling asleep in English today, bro."
"Yeah, I know."
"Something happen last night?"
"I was training."
"For what?"
We reached my locker and I pulled it open to start sorting out which books I needed to bring home for the weekend. "Seductionist stuff."
"That again?"
"I told you, I have magical boots."
"So what kind of training were you and the magical boots doing?"
"Figuring out my magic."
"What kinda magic's that?"
"Rocks." I closed my locker, spun the lock, and pulled my backpack up onto my shoulders again as I started walking.
"Rocks?"
"Yeah, I can sort of control rocks."
"Whoa, cool. Show me sometime!"
"Maybe. I'm not very good at it yet."
"Were you training with the tux guy in the robot?"
"No, it was another Seductionist."
"There's others?"
"It's an ancient secret society, of course there's others."
"What are they like?"
"I dunno, just people, I gue--"
It was at this point that I walked straight into Orion Black. I reeled back a step, looking up at him, mentally questioning what I had done to deserve something like this and why I had to be looking at the floor while I walked.
Orion Black is an Elyar, a senior, and a member of the school football team. If all the guys at our school are in love with Esperanza and all the girls want to be her, then the reverse is true about Orion Black. He's Tristram III High's definitive cool kid.
He towered over me by about a hundred feet like some sort of giant popular guy obelisk, glaring down at the cat-eared ant that I was in comparison to him. I could feel the entire school stop around us, watching in rapt anticipation to see what was going to unfold. Even Chris took a step back from me to watch from the outside.
I was going to die.
"Watch yourself," he told me, in a voice that made me think of a drill sergeant.
"S-s-sorry."
"Mm." He continued walking and the circle that had formed around us split to let him pass.
I think I nearly fainted. The wave of relief that washed over me made me feel lightheaded. Chris set a hand on my shoulder which helped anchor me back to the spot where I was standing in the hallway. "Holy cow dude, for real."
I couldn't believe what had just happened. The fact that I was still alive, mostly. The school resumed its activity around us, but I was still trying to get my head back on my shoulders.
"You okay, G?"
I nodded quickly and brushed his hand away from my shoulder. I couldn't shake this feeling like I'd stepped on a jaguar's tail and then had it spare me. I resumed walking for the exit in the hopes that the feeling would vanish by the time we got to Rayu's.
When we'd hit the front steps of the school, we'd fallen into a fairly routine conversation about which comic book hero would win in a fight and I had ceased to marvel about my close encounter with Orion Black, putting it completely out of my mind. When we arrived at The Lazy Fabre, Rayu was there at the counter, watching the news playing on the TV in the corner. He glanced up as we walked over to sit down, giving a, "Hey boys, how was the day?"
"Oh man, Guido almost died!"
Thanks Chris, I'd finally managed to forget about it. Rayu raised his eyebrows at me, waiting for an elaboration. "I walked into Orion Black."
"Who?" The name apparently did not carry the same menace to him that it did for the students of Tristram III.
"The toughest senior at our school!" Chris was so enthused about it, I just let him handle the telling. "He's killed for less!"
"Sounds pretty rough."
"Yeah man he was dazed for like hours."
"It hasn't even been an hour, Chris!"
"Either way, I'm glad you managed to survive." Rayu had this way of saying things like that, where he sounded amused and perfectly sincere at the same time. He glanced up, signaled for us to wait a moment, and walked away to handle a customer.
Chris's attention drifted to the news in the corner and mine followed. I think they were talking about the search for Rhianna again.
"Another girl went missing last night."
"From your place?"
"Yeah, sorta." Oh god. "Nobody's saying it's Mary Contrary anymore. Danny thinks it's the ghost, Mom won't let the twerps leave the apartment past nine, everyone's pretty freaked really, we thought we lived in a pretty good neighbourhood."
"The ghost didn't come for us." I was starting to believe Rayu's original assessment that the ghost was Rhianna, so I didn't have very high hopes for this second missing girl.
"I dunno, dude. It's creepy either way. She wasn't from our place but she was supposedly there when she vanished."
"Maybe it's a kidnapper?" But I didn't really believe that.
He shrugged. "They don't think so, say there's no ransom notes."
"Dangerous world out there." We looked back to Rayu, who'd finally returned. "You two be careful."
"What do you think it is?" Chris asked him.
He thought for a moment and then shrugged. "I dunno. But I think that ghost in the stairwell is Rhianna."
"Can we not talk about this?" Chris may have lived there, but he wasn't the one who'd gotten trapped in said stairwell with said ghost.
"Anyway." Rayu picked up a glass to start cleaning. "I'm going to Geffen in a couple weeks, so don't come by expecting me, okay?"
"Geffen? Why?" Chris asked it before I could.
I expected the answer he gave. "Business trip, nothing important." Same answer he always gave when he left the city for weeks at a time.
"Bring us back something!"
"Sure." He looked up from the glass, giving us a smile. "I was raised in Geffen, you know."
"I thought you were raised in Morroc." Chris said the same thing, but he ended it with Alde.
"Whichever." Rayu shrugged. "My ailing mother wants me to come visit her in the hospital."
"I thought you said it was a business trip." Chris shouldn't have sounded so confused, this kind of thing was typical Rayu.
"It is."
"Ailing moms are business?"
"Are they ever."
It was funny though, because I could remember hearing him and Mister Barozu talking about how their parents had died when they were young.
"So," sudden segue, "who wants to help me with the dishes?"
"You know I bet Mom's worried, I should get going. Later, G!"
...Thanks, Chris.
"Well, looks like it's just you and me, Guido. Come on."
With a sigh I walked behind the counter and followed him into the back to help unload and refill the dishwasher.
"You talk to Lacy yet?"
I don't know why, but the question reminded me that I'd forgotten to tell Chris about Lydia. "No."
"Esperanza?"
"I tried."
He laughed. "You sound a little frustrated."
"Yeah, well."
"What happened when you tried?"
"Lacy was there."
"Ouch."
"Yeah."
"Don't worry about it. You're fifteen, nobody ever stays with anybody at fifteen anyway."
"Right."
"My first girlfriend dropped me after a week for a movie star."
"At fifteen?"
"Fourteen. Guy had weird tastes."
"...Rayu."
"The second one was a movie star, but only in her brother's independant films for college."
"How'd she dump you?"
"Fell off a cliff in Alde during a filming."
"I thought you lived in Geffen."
"Yeah, Geffen, that's what I said. She didn't die, but she decided black cats were bad luck and dumped me after that."
I sighed. The thing about Rayu's heart-to-hearts is that I can never tell just how much of it I'm supposed to believe.
"Anyway, my point is, don't worry about it. You got your whole life ahead of you. It's just girls in high school, not the end of the world."
"Yeah, I know."
With that we'd finished, and I decided it was probably time to head home. He promised again to bring back something from Geffen ("--Morroc." "I thought you were going to Geffen." "Sure, that's what I said."), we said our good-byes, and I headed for home.
Para was coming over for dinner, my mother informed me as I walked in the door. Great. I pondered calling Chris and asking to come over for dinner again, but Mom probably would have killed me. I asked for a time frame, set my alarm for about thirty minutes before, and fell asleep within seconds.
Usually people don't dream during a two-hour nap, but I guess I was just that tired. I was with Chris in a town that kept switching between being Payon and Prontera, we kept seeing the shadow of Garm in the trees and people kept disappearing off the street, vanishing into the cement and asphalt. I ended up trapped alone in the stairwell and hearing a siren which, I realized suddenly, was actually the alarm clock.
I don't know why, but I decided as I got up that I wasn't going to leave the house tomorrow. I just wanted a break from life for a while. I was going to stay in my room all day doing nothing and it would be great.
But, I lamented with a sigh, it wasn't going to happen until tomorrow. I headed down the stairs to deal with Para for an evening. On the plus side, at least she was easier to deal with than Lydia.