Holiday From Real

I guess I should start at the beginning; it'd make more sense than just coming straight out with, "So here we are, chillin' around a basilisk that might be dead, we're not really sure. I stabbed it a few times, but I think it knocked itself out when it thrashed itself against the wall behind it."

My name is Karma Kinzek, and I'd love to tell you that I come from an average, magical family. Actually, I'd love to tell you that I come from an average family in general. I'd love to tell you that I'm tall, or that my beauty stunned those around me, but I can't. I'm on the short side, and I guess I'm pretty; my step-dad always tells me that I'm ugly, but to Hell with him. I come from the muggle world, excuse me; I come from your world. I come from the states; more specifically, I come from the projects. I won't bother telling you which project since they're all the same, but there are some things you should probably know about my surroundings.

I'm the oldest out of two; my little brother, Nalo, is the reason why I stay alive. I am the lovechild of my mother, Lucille, and one of her teenage boyfriends. Nalo, however, is the child of mom and her eleven-year boyfriend, Charlie. Charlie loves Nalo, but he's never really around. He's always off doing something with his friends; it's usually gambling or cheating on my mom. My mom used to be a fun woman, she used to be full of life and energy, but ever since she learned that Charlie cheats on her, she's been alternating between depression and being drunk.

Nalo and I share a room in our trashy apartment, his half of the room is the right side, leaving me the half with the door and the window; he's always wanted to trade sides, but I never felt comfortable with him sleeping on that side; our neighborhood has way too much crime for me to feel okay with him by the window. True, we are on the twelfth floor, but I don't care. I never take chances like that, even about things that are unlikely to prove my fears right, with Nalo. Even if there isn't something going on in the streets, Charlie and my mom often have late night fights. Sometimes Charlie wanders in, angry and drunk, and I refuse to let Nalo be near him when this happens; I gladly take the blows for Nalo.

I'm close to seventeen, and Nalo is ten years old. he has short but shaggy, brown hair, and blue eyes. He spends a lot of time outside, so he's rather tan, too. He attends the elementary school that is about ten minutes away from the high school I go to. By finding a lot of scholarships, and negotiating payment plans, Nalo goes to a cheap private school, but it's still a lot better than the public schools around here. I take him school shopping the week before school starts every year; he's very active, so he often ruins his pants. I usually just stitch them back up, or use a patch from very similar cloth, but when the school year comes around, I buy him new clothes. After I make sure he has all the supplies he needs, I take him shopping with me for my stuff. I spend whatever's left on my clothes; thanks to working on holidays, summers, and weekends, I usually get a pretty good amount left over. We both end up getting a lot of things, mostly because I've learned how to haggle, and because I've figured out where the best deals are. And now that I'm more comfortable with night driving, I don't mind going out of the way to go to the clothing outlets on the outskirts of the city. It's amazing how much clothing prices drop once Macy's and other department stores don't want a certain style anymore.

After school, I pick him up from his last class and drop him off at a daycare near my work. It's not the best daycare, it's not a fancy one or anything, but I'd rather him be safe and close than back at home. I never know what's going to happen there, so I'm not going to let Nalo stay there without someone who will actually protect him. After I drop Nalo off at daycare, I work; I work after school, on weekends, most holidays, and full time during summer; I work at the bookstore at the rich side of the city. The only time I don't work is when I stay home to take care of Nalo when he's sick, and when I have a sports or band related field trip. I was very lucky to get the job; the owners recently decided that they needed a young face in the front, hoping that one young face would bring in more. To all of our surprises, it actually did. I'm a fast learner, and when it comes to work, I'm a very pleasant and helpful, people person. I stared off with earning seven dollars an hour, but now I'm making fifteen dollars an hour. Mostly because the owners like me, I fix the computer programs when they're acting oddly, I help out the younger people who go in there, and I do a lot of the manual labor. When I work on weekends and holidays, I get paid eighteen dollars an hour; I asked the owners of the store to not take any money out for retirement, because I need the money as I earn it, and I'm only going to work there until college, anyway. Every two weeks I go to Bank of America and put my check in my account. I put half of this money in a "Stuff for Me" account, and then I put the other half in a "General" account, which is actually just code for paying some bills and taking care of Nalo.

When my shift is over, I pick him up right after work and we go to a local supermarket. I often can't spend too much money here, so Nalo begs me to get him chips, but I usually buy cheap, healthy things, like the foods needed for different types of salads. Every Wednesday I buy chicken, or a different meat, and every Friday, Nalo and I buy things for sandwiches, like turkey breast, small bottles of mustard and mayonnaise, strawberry jam, and creamy peanut butter. I do my best to make sure that we eat as healthy as possible as often as possible.

My friends and I grew up in the same building, practically on the same floor. We all go to the same high school, so we pack ourselves into my blue Oldsmobile and head out to school. Including Nalo and I, we're a group of eight. We're usually pretty crowded, but Oldsmobile's are pretty big, at least mine is. If I were to compare it to any other vehicle, I'd say a tank. I always dropped Nalo off first, and I'd watch to make sure he got to his class okay. Then, I'd drive us to our high school.

We all took band and choir since middle school, so now, in our junior year, we are in the advanced band and choir. Some of us are better in the arts, and some of us, like me, are better in academics. I, along with my male best friend, Buenaventura Torres, take the college level, also known as "AP", or advance placement, history, English, and science course. Our school makes us stay for eight periods, so the rest of our schedule is pretty relaxing. We take trigonometry during different periods; I take Spanish III, and he takes Spanish III for Native Speakers. Besides band/choir, we don't take any other classes, so we often get most of our homework done by mid seventh period. Our band teacher, Mr. Roho Bozzi, lets us go in his class whenever we're done with the rest of school day. By the begging of eigth period, most of us are in there. Mr. Bozzi, and my history teacher, Mr. Lamar Abar, makes us practice music until the whole boxing team is there.

What! Boxing?

Yeah, boxing.

When I was in seventh grade I was beat up pretty bad; that's one of the reasons why I pay for Nalo to go to a private school. At the time, Mr. Bozzi was a band teacher there, and he ended up taking me under his wing. In his less serious, youthful years, Mr. Bozzi was a frequent visitor of underground fight clubs; he loved the adrenaline, and the pure, physical contact. He had to stop attending them during the scheduled school days, though, because his bruises and other injuries were starting to scare the children. When he saw a nice student of his, me, get roughed up, he ran out and got rid of the kids for me. It didn't take him long to start training me to be a boxer, or get my friends and some of his other students into it. Once he had twenty kids, he went to the school board and persuaded them to allow our school to have a team, why not us? Numerous schools in the county, and in near by counties have boxing teams.

A group of underclassmen make up the Jr. Varsity team, while my friends, some other kids, and I make up the varsity team. The Jr. Varsity team trains two hours after school, and sometimes during Saturdays. We train once everyone is in the band room, three evenings a week, and every Saturday and Sunday evening. Buenaventura and I are the two best boxers on the team, so Mr. Bozzi and Mr. Abar create the training schedule around when we have to work.

Buenaventura is gorgeous to say the least; he's tall, has green eyes and light brown hair, a perfect profile, and the lightly tanned skin, showing off his Spaniard blood. He's also gay, which is why he joined the team. Older kids in our neighborhood would mercilessly beat him when they found out that he's gay, so he was quick to jump at the chance to become a boxer. He's now very fast, and very muscular; he hasn't been roughed up in a few years.

My female best friend, Jane Homes, is a tall tomboy. She has an older brother, he's about twenty-three, and he lives across the hall from me. She moved in with him at the age of five when their single father died. Jane is about five foot eight, she too, boxes, and she's in a punk-rock band with her older brother, Trevor. The nights that Nalo spends at his friend's homes, I pretend to be their roadie so that I can get into the basements of bars to watch them, and other punk bands play. Jane's artistic ability stretches far past the guitar and writing lyrics; she's an amazing painter, she can sketch like a professional, and she loves making things in ceramics and jewelry class. Most of my jewelry comes from Jane's work in her third period class.

A friend of mine that I met in my third grade class, Jeffery O'Neil, is also an artist and boxer. A group of kids on his floor used to trash his pictures and paintings; soon after he joined boxing, they left him alone. At five eight, he's only a few inches taller than me. He has dirty blonde, curly hair, and bright blue eyes. His nose is a little bit crooked, and his lips are on the thin side. He often supplies our group with comedic relief; he's very sarcastic, and very mentally quick. Jeff has a girlfriend, Kayla Slayton. She's thin, and very pale; she stands at five feet and seven inches, and is from the rich side of town. Kayla and Jeff met in one of his art classes in freshmen year, and by the beginning of sophomore year, the poor artist was dating the rich ballet dancer.

Doug Johnson is Jeff's best friend. Doug is six feet tall, has some olive undertones, and has medium brown hair and eyes. He joined boxing mainly because Jeff joined; Doug is an average, pretty funny, and somewhat quiet guy. He reads a lot, so he's not usually in the path of any of our neighborhood bullies. However, he still has his hardships; his mom is single, and he's the youngest child out of three boys, all of which are in their teen years. He lives exactly one apartment above the one where I live. His oldest brother is gang affiliated, while the middle son just doesn't really care for any rules but his own. Doug's close friend, T'uan McSweeny, lives in the apartment to the right of his. T'uan lives with his aunt, Tami, and his cousin, Leonard "Lazy Legs" Blattberg.

I'm not too fond of T'uan; he's often very rude or just plain stupid and weird in his attempts to be funny. He's six foot three, and boxing has made him very buff, so no one really messes with him, except, of course, for us. He's rather dark, his dad was African-American, and it shows on T'uan. He often mocks us for getting sun burnt in the summer, even though he occasionally gets burned, too. Regardless of that, though, we're actually pretty jealous of his dark skin. At least, Jane and I are; we're barely whiter than a sheet of computer paper, we often get sunburnt.

Then there's Leonard, or as we like to call him, Lazy Legs. Leonard is four times as dark as his cousin, T'uan, and stands at six foot five. We call him Lazy Legs because his right knee often pops in and out of place when we're running down hill as a part of our training. Other than that, he's an amazing athlete. He's fast, he's strong, and he's double jointed. Like me, he has brown eyes, black hair, and green eyes.

Actually, I have one green eye; with little hints of copper, and my other eye is a weird, brown, almost blue color. I have shoulder length, black, wavy hair, and I'm five foot four, almost five foot three. I'm pretty muscular, too; don't get the wrong idea about me, I'm not like a female body builder or anything, I'm still curvy, but boxing has put me into amazing shape. Allowing me to slide into size three pants; in some stores I'm a size five, in very few stores I'm a size two, and in most stores, I'm a size three.

It was the last two weeks of summer when Mr. Bozzi told us that the advanced band class has been offered to play as an opening for a small symphony in New York. It turns out that Mr. Bozzi recorded the sessions of music we played during the school year, picked the best, and sent them off. Just as he was deciding that his efforts achieved nothing, he received a letter in his mail about the opportunity. He immediately called them after he read the letter, and told us about it at the end of the next boxing practice. He helped most of us pay; we weren't taking from him though, we may be poor, but we're honest. We all set up payment plans with Mr. Bozzi and Mr. Abar so that we would fully repay them over the course of a year. I could have afforded the trip completely on my own, but that would leave Nalo with no money, so I too am doing a payment plan.

Our trip was amazing; we practiced every day for hours on end after Mr. Bozzi told us about the trip. We even learned and practiced the instruments that us as individuals don't need to know. Mr. Bozzi said that there would be nothing worse than getting there, and all of the sudden, someone, for whatever reason, couldn't play an instrument; we were all back ups for everyone. We even learned how to play instruments that we had no use of, at all. Mr. Bozzi wanted us to know how to play every instrument he could get a hold of; at first it was a "just in case" sort of thing, but after a while, it became a mixture of enjoyment, and for well roundedness.

During these summer days, I dropped Nalo off at the homes of his friends; it's cheaper than daycare, obviously safer than leaving him in our trashy apartment, and he enjoys it a lot more. Since he goes to a private school, his friends are mostly upper middle class; a few of them are rich. Over the last few years, I've embedded manners into his everyday behavior. When our mom was still our mom, she taught me well. She taught me how to work hard, and how to behave. Even though we lived in such a shitty area, she made the best of it. She would talk to me about the crime rates and the way things are happening around us, and she would tell me that it was my job to get me out of here. She said that I don't need to end up rich, but I need to end up out of areas like this. When we were in private, she'd make examples out of the kids that kept going back and forth from juvie, she'd tell me that if I worked hard in school, and if I took all the opportunities that I could, I'd end up alright, and I'd end up out of here. I taught these same things to Nalo.

On the last day I'd be in town before the trip, I picked him up from the home of one of his rich friends. The mother opened the door, but Nalo rocketed out, narrowly missing her side, and squeezed me. "Karma! Karma! Guess what!"

I smiled politely at Mrs. Mackey while lovingly patting the top of Nalo's head; he came up to my mid stomach. "What?"

He let go of me so I could bend down and hug him. I looked into his big, child eyes while he told me, "The Mackey's have a big piano!"

"A grand piano?"

He smiled and excitedly nodded his head up and down.

Mrs. Mackey smiled down at us, "Would you like to come inside, Karma? We'd love to hear your play the piano. Nalo has told us that you've been practicing the piano for a few weeks now."

"Amongst other instruments." We laughed, I've told her about Mr. Bozzi's practices.

She scooted to the side and extended her left arm behind her, "Please, come in. We'd love to hear you play."

I blushed; I was hardly dressed for this. I got ready for Jane's concert before coming to pick up Nalo, because I knew that it'd take me too long to drive here, drop him off at our aunt's house, and then drive back to Lane's Liquor Store's basement for the concert. The lead singer and Trevor got into a big fight last week, so Jane has made me practice with them. I am now their lead singer, at least, until Spencer comes back. That could be tonight, that could be two weeks, or it could be two months. Hell, it could be never; once Spencer sets his mind on something, it is forever like that.

I slowly walked into the Mackey home; it was large and beautifully decorated. I, on the other hand, straightened and teased my hair, and then put it up into a faux-mohawk. I was wearing a pair of brown pants that used to be my moms when she was a teenager; they're old, and they show it. It fit me well, however, if it's not cut up in one way or another, patches of the old, underground punk bands and rappers she used to listen to cover it. I couldn't tell you the type or brand of the shoes I was wearing. I bought them on my last trip to the flea market with Nalo; they're black and old, but in good condition, and they reminded me of Peter Pan. My black shirt wasn't old, but it wasn't classy. It's pretty much a girl version of a muscle shirt; it gets hot in the basement; if you're in the crowd, there's no personal space and a lot of pogoing and moshing. If you're on the stage, there's a lot of pogoing under intense lights.

Nalo pulled my hand while running in front of me so we could get to the piano. Mrs. Mackey asked me to play her what I've been practicing with the school band; the last song I played was Nalo's current favorite song, "Annie Use Your Telescope" by Jacks Mannequin. Every once in a while I would gently nuzzle the top of Nalo's head – he was sitting in between my legs to watch how I played – with my chin. I ended up replacing the name "Annie" with "Nalo", and I ad-libbed a few lyrics. When I was done, Nalo begged me to play another, but I told him,

"I can't Nalo, we have to leave now or we'll be late for aunties house."

Nalo pouted, but didn't whine. Mrs. Mackey then said, "That was wonderful, Karma, your high school band will make Mr. Bozzi a very proud man."

I got up and shook her hand, "Thank you, Mrs. Mackey." I then looked down at her hip and saw her shy son, Marshall. I smiled at him and he slowly smiled back up at me. Nalo grabbed his things while I talked with Mrs. Mackey and thanked her for letting Nalo stay and allowing me to play her piano.

"Oh," she gently slapped air, "It's no problem, honey. Nalo is a great little boy, and your musical talent is amazing."

"Thank you," I saw Nalo come into the room and said, "we have to get going now, but I hope to see you again soon."

"Me too, stop by any time."

I thanked her and walked out of her house with Nalo by my side, tightly holding my right hand.

-----------

When we got there, we sounded fantastic; we didn't receive a standing ovation or anything, but the people clapped loudly and for a long time. Mr. Abar and Mr. Bozzi treated us to a wonderful dinner afterwards. We protested at first, but Mr. Abar said that we were already dressed classy, and we deserved it after such a great performance. We stayed in the restaurant for hours, mostly just talking and enjoying our fifteen minutes of fame. We had to leave the next day, our plane was scheduled to leave at nine, which meant we had to be completely packed and on the road to the airport at seven thirty.

Our flight was supposed to be a straight shot back to Chicago, but some plane official felt that the plane needed some sort of quick repair, so our flight was delayed an hour. We had to wait around in the airport, so Jane, Buenaventura, and I bought ourselves breakfast burritos. When we came back to the chairs where the group is, Karen was still flipping through an empty, old diary, and her friend, Jael was going through her luggage to make sure she brought all her things. Karen was annoying and rather slow, to say the least, but she could play any wind instrument, at any time, for any song. Jael, on the other hand, was bright, and my God could she play the violin, but she was always worried.

I locked eye contact with Jane and whispered through my teeth, "Don't make eye contact with Karen, she'll take it as an invitation."

Jane fought back a laugh and whispered back, "Okay."

I then did the following with Buenaventura, but I didn't realize until it was too late that he was in a mood to mess with me. "Hey, Karen!"

She immediately walked over, "Hey man! Did you see this thing?"

"No," he smirked at me, "what is it?"

"I don't know," Karen said while turning the book upside down, as if there was a cheat sheet to analyzing the thing.

I drew in a deep breath while Jane rolled her eyes. Karen has been looking at that ratty thing since we started talking about getting a breakfast burrito.

"It looks like an old diary,"

Jane looked over at me and whispered, "Naaaw."

I let out a small, silent chuckle; the only way you could tell that I chuckled was because I smiled and simultaneously heaved my chest.

Karen held it closer to Buenaventura, "There's a weird hole in it; I can't imagine what did that."

I didn't want to get sucked into a conversation about weird holes, so I winked at Jane. Not sexually, but in the "watch what I'm gonna do" way. I smirked at Buenaventura and said, "Aye, Baby Bueno,"

His eyes instantly shot over to me; he hates it when anyone calls him that.

"Jane and I are going to go back to our chairs and luggage. We'll see you once you and Karen figure out the purpose of that ratty, old thing."

He breathed out slowly, but angrily, "Alright, I'll see you in a bit then."

Jane and I were silent until we reached our chairs. Once we sat down, we made eye contact and howled with laughter. If we weren't laughing, we were eating our burritos. I was about two thirds of the way done with my burrito before I started to feel a bit queasy. I looked at Jane and said, "I don't feel very well."

She looked at me, "I don't either."

I rubbed my stomach with my right hand, "Do you think these burritos have made us sick?"

Jane leaned into her chair, tilted her head up towards the ceiling, and then sighed loudly. "God, I hope not. I'd hate to have the shits on the plane."

I laughed, "Everyone would hate it if you have the shits on the plane."

She then laughed, but stopped and focused on the ceiling. "Hey, Karma…"

"Yeah?" I gave her a worried look.

"Is the airport a little… dark to you?"

I started to look around with actual focus, everyone in our group was. Even Mr. Bozzi and Mr. Abar stopped debating over nothing to look around.

Before anyone could say anything, Karen shouted out, "What have you done?"

We all looked over at them.

"I didn't do anything!" He shouted and tossed the last half of his burrito down onto the floor, "You're the one who wrote in it!"

We all gasped as she moved a bit and the diary was in our view. It had a blue and yellow glow around it; the glow quickly turned into a powerful light. The pages started to quickly flip themselves, as if hurricane winds were making the pages move. We all leaned away from it; Karen tried to drop it, but it didn't fall to the floor. Instead of falling, it hovered in place and spun counter-clockwise. The pages stopped flipping, allowing a large blue and yellow beam to shine out of it. Before anyone could do anything, the area our group took up started to quickly and violently spin. Our things were sucked into the beam almost as soon as the beam itself appeared, and it didn't take us long to be sucked in, too.