You Fill My Sails With Your Wasted Breath

In books, do you ever get wicked peeved at the protagonist? Aren't you just dying for them to figure it out before they actually have to look up the information? Well, that's how I feel. That's why I research every book I've ever read, which ranged from stories about angels to demons to vampires to werewolves to were cats, to fricken anything. I hate when people are ignorant in books when we're in an age where there's a thing called Google and Bing. Come on, man. We've even got a Wikipedia!

You can search just about anything now a days. Not to mention everyone feels like writing a book on everything. Come on, Anne Rice wrote about vampires and not to mention stuff about Jesus. I mean, who hasn't written about crazy stuffs? I just find it annoying that protagonists in stories can't figure things out earlier. But that's alright. At least I'll never have to worry about. Well, maybe not never. With all this knowledge comes consequences. Knowledge is the fuel for recklessness, as I always say. Maybe not but that's alright. This is not a normal case. I'm not normal.

My best friend Katie and I were at the library one summer morning. It was the Friday before summer vacation ended and what better way to spend the day then sitting in an air conditioned room full of books and no parents? Then again, we did have to do a project we waited until the very end of the summer to do. It was a lot of work of course so we started early. And being two teenage girls going into junior year, we had much better things to do. "So, what are we going to do?" Katie asked me.

"I don't know. What do you want to do?" I asked her while balancing my pencil on my lips. We were sitting opposite each other on the main level of our mega awesome, wicked huge library, and Katie was doodling on her paper. Katie's blond hair was pulled high on her head, the streaks of brown popping their heads up. Her blue eyes were cast down at her paper, totally disinterested in all of this work.

"I don't know. I don't want to do this Spanish stuff. Can you believe Cortez assigned us this stuff?" She asked as she moved back. She stared at me and I shrugged.

"It's what we gotta do Katie. Nothing really you can do about it, you know?"

"Why aren't you worried?" She asked me. I shrugged and glanced her way.

"Should I be? It's only Spanish. We have text books. We can work through it."

"Then why don't we?" Inquired my friend.

"Because we're lazy and too angst ridden to do work in the summer."

"I hate that this summer has gone by so fast!" Katie groaned. I stood, fixing my jeans and headed towards the back of the library.

"I'll be back. I'm going to look for some books to read."

"Get me one too," said Katie like it was a drink that I could just get for her. I didn't know what she wanted. I walked in the back and glanced at the young adult section. What to get, what to get.

I glanced at one called Vampire Academy and shrugged. I grabbed another called Marked before heading to the table. As I walked by, my eyes caught a boy dressed in black jeans and a light blue shirt on. I watched as he rubbed the back of his head, which was covered in a fine brown layer of hair. I watched him for a moment before returning to Katie. She glanced my way and I held up the books.

"What do you think?" I asked. She gripped the books, her red painted fingers drumming against the front of them while she read the backs.

"Hm, sound interesting enough." I nodded and glanced at my Spanish work.

"Start reading and tell me if they're worth it. I'll get started on this stuffs." I said as I went to work. I busted through about 4 questions every 2 minutes and it wasn't bad. We only had 78 multiple choice and two short answers so I could get it done.

Too bad twenty minutes later Katie was already half way done with Marked and I was still stuck on number 47. "What does 'lave haste' mean?" She frowned and took the paper from me. I sighed and grabbed Vampire Academy. She could work through 31 problems for the next twenty minutes.

Both Katie and I were book connoisseurs. We literally read more than we slept. Books were our lives. Katie read everything while my taste was more in the fantasy stuffs. I had read books, as I said, from angels to vampires. From faeries to gods. It's all about escaping the world I was in now. I glanced up and found the boy walking along the isles and looking down at a piece of paper. I looked back at Katie and then at the boy. I shook my head and looked back down. It wasn't my business. So what if he was lost? It wasn't my job to help him around a library. He should know. If not then he can find a librarian.

I guess we looked like librarians.

"Excuse me," he said as he walked over to our table. Both Katie and I looked up at him. His eyes were a dark brown color that reminded me of a puppy. "I was wondering where the section on nonfiction is. I wrote down the number but these books have nothing to do what I'm looking for." I glanced at Katie, who stared for a moment and stood. I held out my hand.

"Names Ariella. I'll help you out. I'm in here more than the librarians." I said, hoping he'd laugh. He gave me a pity smile and I lead him over to one of the many computers.

"How are you wearing jeans?" he asked me. I glanced his way and rose a slender eyebrow.

"How are you?" I responded, getting a grin out of him. His face seemed a little more handsome with the grin. I logged onto the computer and searched up what he was looking for. "Oh, ok," I started. "You're on the wrong floor. This is a nonfiction book and those are upstairs."

"What is this section?" He asked, pointing over to the section where we just came from.

"Fiction and biographies."

"Why are they together?" He pondered.

"No clue. Did you already get a library card?" I asked, making him stare at me.

"Uh, no. I'll go get one." I nodded and handed him the paper.

"Upstairs there's a librarian there too. If you want to ask for a library card there that's fine but if not then that's cool. There are ones down here and in the kids center downstairs. There's a map down the stairs and it'll tell you where you need to go." He smiled and held out his hand.

"My name is Zach."

"Short for Zachariel?" I questioned, of course picking the most random name.

"Y-Yeah. How did you know?" I shrugged.

"I like that name. It's an angel's name. Actually an archangel in Catholicism. He's named in the Book of Enoch, which most people don't know about."

"You know about the Book of Enoch?" He asked. I nodded proudly.

"It was ascribed from Enoch, the great grandfather of Noah and son of Jared, who was mentioned in Genesis…."

"Five eighteen." He said softly, as if in disbelief.

"Yeah!" I said beaming. "It's supposedly a completely false text according to the Catholic church. They weren't feeling the stuff that was laid out in that book."

"Have you read the book of Enoch?" He asked me, his eyes wide. I shook my head.

"Have yet to include that into my library up here," I tapped the side of my brain. "but I'll find it eventually." He nodded and smiled a little.

"You are a very interesting person, Ms. Ariella." He said as he held out his hand to shake mine. I smiled and nodded.

"Thanks a lot, Zachariel." I said as I started away. "Nice meeting you." I said as I headed towards the table. He nodded before leaving as well.

"How'd it go?" Katie asked me as I sat down. I watched as she flipped the page of our Spanish packet. I learned that in Katie-speak, 'how'd it go' meant "Is he date worthy?".

"Meh, he was pretty cute." She smirked and looked at me.

"What did he look up?" Can anyone say 'creep'? Yeah. I can.

"Uh, something about baseball maybe? I just remember the numbers." I answered truthfully. She nodded. I was good with numbers. Not math, per say, but more so just memorizing numbers and equations and such.

"Hey, how do you cogigate 'oir' in past predicate?" She asked me, which only got a shrug and a snag from me. I stared at the packet.

"So what's his name?" Katie piped up almost an hour later. I had zipped through a few more problems and was winding down on the last few. I glanced up at her and stared. Her blue-grey eyes were analytical and that's the mode where Katie wants to put something off of her mind--in this case it was Spanish.

"The guy? Zachariel. Zach for short." I announced.

"Wow," Katie dragged out. "What a great name." Katie murmured. I frowned a little.

"I liked it." I said as I shrugged.

"How many do we have left?" She asked.

"Essays left." I said as I packed it away. "We'll do those tomorrow. Let's go! We're wasting precious moments!"

"Where to?" Katie asked.

"BEACH! BEACH! BEACH!" I chanted. Katie grinned and nodded before getting out of her seat and trying to get her shorts to stop sticking to her legs. I jumped up, a whopping 5'9 ½, and started towards the door.

"You are really stoked to go." Katie said.

"I wanna work on my tan!" I said as I used my best prep girl voice. She knew I didn't intentionally go tanning. Skin cancer and all that. I got tan by going outside and doing random things like playing games and stuff. Hey, don't judge. I still go outside and play!

"Why do you want to go then?"

"I want to swim." I said with a shrug. Katie laughed and nodded before walking out with me. As we walked out of the door, I turned around to leave it open for the next person when I ran into someone else. I turned around, ready to apologize when I saw it was Zach.

"Hello again." He said casually. I narrowed my eyes.

"Are you stalking me?" I blurted out. Oh, awesome. Didn't mean to say that.

"Excuse me?" I needed to say something so I could cover up the awkwardness.

"In books, usually, there’s the girl and if the guy has some sort of interest in supernatural things, then the guy starts following the girl." I said as I nodded. "And then we'll end up seeing each other everywhere and it'll be nuts." Katie put her hand on my arm and shook her head.

"This isn't a book, Ariella." Katie said as she patted my arm. "I'll go get the car. Fix this." She whispered before leaving. I nodded and glanced back at Zach, who was somehow closer to me than I realized. I stared at him and tried to figure out what was going to happen. What happened in the books?

"Did you end up finding the book?" I asked, trying to sound casual.

"Yeah, it was right where you said. The librarians up there had to help me out a bit. I got my library card too." He smiled and I couldn't help but grin. It was a nice smile. My cheeks began to heat and I knew it wasn't because it was 92 degrees outside.

"I'm glad you got it." I muttered.

"Uh," he said softly. "Where are you two heading?"

"The beach." I said, suddenly more animated. "We're going to go swimming!"

"It would be nice to go swimming. I never knew how to swim." He said shamefaced. I chuckled a little and pouted.

"I'm sorry. It's a skill you should learn. Maybe I'll teach you sometime." He smiled as well.

"Thanks. It's been kind of hard making new friends. This is my first summer here and the school year only produced so many friends. None of which want to go swimming." My mind didn't really catch the things about swimming. What it did notice was that he moved here last year.

"You moved here last year?" I inquired.

"Yeah, my parents passed away last year and my next of kin lived here." He said glancing around. Great. Now I felt like a jerk for thinking he was here because of some supernatural thingy.

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that." He nodded and offered a small smile.

"I'm sure they're happy wherever they are." His eyes seemed sadder than his smile though.

"Are you an only child?" I asked.

"No," he said with a laugh that suggested the question was much a lot more ridiculous than he thought it was.

"How many do you have?" He paused for a moment.

"3," said the boy slowly.

"I would have guessed 6." I said, again trying to be casual.

"I did have 6 but my brothers passed away a long time ago." I nodded and though I should have felt sad, I felt more intrigued.

"What are your brother's names?" I asked softly. Another group of people tried to get out of the door and I moved out of their way and consequentially closer to Zach. He had a blush on his cheeks as he moved back as well.

"Uh, Michael, Ralph, Donatello, Cameron, Barbus and Sebastian. I'm the youngest." I nodded and tried to figure out what the hell kind of names those were. Michael was also and archangel name but the others weren't anything I could think of. Well, Barbus was a type of fish…

"That's an odd number of children for this day and age." I commented.

"My parents were old fashioned." He defended quickly, though he tried to make his tone casual.

"Which of your brothers do you live with?" I asked.

"Sebastian, Donnie and Cameron." I nodded and bit my lip. I couldn't put my finger on it but I knew they had something to do with supernatural stuff. I just knew it. I probably should have been gentler with all this but I wasn't. Of course I wasn't.

"Donatello, isn't that a ninja turtle?" I asked.

"Yeah," Zach said laughing. "My parents had an interesting sense of humor." I nodded and glanced at the car where Katie sat.

"I have to get going." I said as I waved to Katie. She smiled and when Zach glanced her way and waved as well, she waved back. "I'll see you around." I said as I started away. He didn't say anything. He didn't ask for my number or my screen name. He just….left.

"Ariella!" Katie snapped. "Invite him!" I glanced back to see Zach sitting on the bench, staring at his phone. He did look a bit pathetic.

"Why?" I asked her. "What if he's got plans?"

"No. Go ask him if he wants to go."

"Why don't you?" I asked her, to which she shrugged and got out of the car.

"Hey Zach, want to come to the beach with us?" Katie asked. I ducked my head and shook it a little.

"Katie, just get in the car. He's probably busy!" I whispered harshly.

"Sorry, thanks for the offer though. I have to meet my brothers." I grinned.

"See? Busy. Let's go." Katie got into the car and shook her head.

"Fine. You're so rude." She said. I stuck out my tongue and stared out the window. The sun was still high enough in the sky we could drive down to the beach and get some good swim time. My mind couldn't wrap around what to think though. I mean, I wasn't sure which question to answer or how to even hypothesis about this guy. Was he really an angel? Were his brothers? There were 7 but he said 4 of them died. None of them were had the same names as angels aside from Zach. He didn't look like an angel. When I think of angels, I think of people with distinct features. Bright pure blue eyes, either really dark or really light hair, maybe even an older person. I wouldn't expect a teenager. Maybe that's why it was so hard for me to grasp everything. Because he was my age and he wasn't someone out of the ordinary.