Wires
Chapter One
I met Gabriel on the 4th of September, in 2002. He was seventeen and I found him strange. Nancy found him perfect. I suppose that was okay, because when he spoke in his live-neutral-ground way, I couldn't reply because I was blinking too much, but Nancy would reply within a few seconds. I was too scared of finding a live wire. Nancy always found the ground.
We were sixteen, which isn't a great age. Nancy was twittering when she met him, batting her eyelashes and smoothing down the stomach of her clothes like it would make a significant difference on how the big, bad seventeen year old viewed us.
We met him because he was a family friend that we'd never laid eyes on before. I guessed he was a new, important family friend. Either that or he was an old friend that had been kept away from us in fear of tainting us. Granted, he was only seventeen, so I didn't see how he could be either.
He just looked at us and said, Hola, which is probably the only word he said for a while that I wasn't stumped by. I knew it was merely hello in Spanish. Something a smart person can identify, something that Nancy could identify. He didn't seem too strange for the first word.
Nancy got his number when he left.
I had just blinked, because it was written on a Popsicle stick, and with my experience on getting numbers, I usually received them on napkins or pieces of paper. I told her seventeen year old boys shouldn't be carrying around Popsicle sticks to write their numbers on, but Nancy was too distracted to listen to me.
Nancy and Gabriel went out again after she called the Popsicle-stick-number, but something was very different. When Nancy or I went out with boys, we usually went alone, but when their first meeting was all scheduled I went too.
Gabriel didn't make any more sense to me the second time, but he did tell me to start calling him Gabe. I thought it was too weird, though it made sense. Gabe sounded more like a person who would write their number on a Popsicle stick.
We went to the library, though I wasn't sure why. At first we sat outside on the steps while I listened to them talk. Then I went inside to leave them alone and got some books out. I still don't know why we went to the library, because neither of them went inside. I wasn't sure what type of lure library steps had either.
I read while they talked, but the wires kept distracting me from the words on the page. Gabriel confused me, and now Nancy was starting to confuse me as well. It's like I was sitting with two strangers.
Gabriel was the reason that when me and Nancy went home, she was tongue-tied and giggling like the victim she was.
Gabriel was the reason that when I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes, all I could see were thousands of different coloured wires criss-crossing in my vision. And I still didn't know where a single one of them lead.
We were sixteen, which isn't a great age. Nancy was twittering when she met him, batting her eyelashes and smoothing down the stomach of her clothes like it would make a significant difference on how the big, bad seventeen year old viewed us.
We met him because he was a family friend that we'd never laid eyes on before. I guessed he was a new, important family friend. Either that or he was an old friend that had been kept away from us in fear of tainting us. Granted, he was only seventeen, so I didn't see how he could be either.
He just looked at us and said, Hola, which is probably the only word he said for a while that I wasn't stumped by. I knew it was merely hello in Spanish. Something a smart person can identify, something that Nancy could identify. He didn't seem too strange for the first word.
Nancy got his number when he left.
I had just blinked, because it was written on a Popsicle stick, and with my experience on getting numbers, I usually received them on napkins or pieces of paper. I told her seventeen year old boys shouldn't be carrying around Popsicle sticks to write their numbers on, but Nancy was too distracted to listen to me.
Nancy and Gabriel went out again after she called the Popsicle-stick-number, but something was very different. When Nancy or I went out with boys, we usually went alone, but when their first meeting was all scheduled I went too.
Gabriel didn't make any more sense to me the second time, but he did tell me to start calling him Gabe. I thought it was too weird, though it made sense. Gabe sounded more like a person who would write their number on a Popsicle stick.
We went to the library, though I wasn't sure why. At first we sat outside on the steps while I listened to them talk. Then I went inside to leave them alone and got some books out. I still don't know why we went to the library, because neither of them went inside. I wasn't sure what type of lure library steps had either.
I read while they talked, but the wires kept distracting me from the words on the page. Gabriel confused me, and now Nancy was starting to confuse me as well. It's like I was sitting with two strangers.
Gabriel was the reason that when me and Nancy went home, she was tongue-tied and giggling like the victim she was.
Gabriel was the reason that when I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes, all I could see were thousands of different coloured wires criss-crossing in my vision. And I still didn't know where a single one of them lead.