Immortal Child

It was October once again; my favorite month. I felt an odd freedom whenever this month came at last. This year was no different. “Clear! Move your ass!” yelled an annoying but loving voice. I grab my bag and rushed downstairs where my best friend waited leaning against the wall at the foot of the stairs.

“Good morning love” I greeted her. “Bye Gran!” I called out to my grandmother who was in the kitchen sipping her coffee and reading the newspaper (I swear she was almost too predictable).

“Bye Clear” I heard as I dashed out the door and to my car, a glossy black and chrome sixties convertible that I loved more than my own life. Cassie started shuffling through my small CD collection as I pulled out of the driveway. She didn’t find one to play until we reached the end of Riverton Avenue. “Helena” filled the car instantly.

Cassie and I always stay clear of the rumor mill; always have since we heard a person calling our mom’s the Sanesville Witches. It irked us that just because they were different than every bimbo in their school people have to ostracize them even when one of them is six feet under the ground. They have no shame. So instead of spending the drive to school gossiping we usually talk about other stuff.

“By the way I talked to Gran and she says I can spend Halloween night at your place.” I said sugar coating the hell out of it. In all truth and honesty all I said was ‘can I sleep over at Cassie’s on Halloween night?’ and she flat out said ‘yes’. I swear if I didn’t come home she’d be the happiest woman on the planet.

“Sweet, then we can stake out my new neighbors together” she said excitedly.

“Neighbors? Every house on your street is occupied except for Blayne Manor. What are we ghost hunting?” I chuckled.

“No…the new occupants of the Manor are still living” I was greatful for the red light making me hit the brake. I turned to Cassie incredulously. “You heard me, living.”

“I’ll bring grandpa’s bird watching binoculars.” We were silent the rest of the drive. Cassie was busy with her own thoughts while I was having a tough time trying to swallow the fact that someone actually moved into Blayne ‘Slaughter House’ Manor. No one dared cross that threshold, not after what happened there fifty years ago. Legend goes that a girl no older than thirteen lost her mind and using a steak knife from the kitchen she chopped her family apart bit by bit before slicing her own throat open. Many believe they’re still there, afraid of the young girl with a now exposed jugular.

The school lot was pretty full by the time we got there. There was only one good spot and Bubba Coln had his dead set on it.Oh no not today! I hit the gas slightly and shimmied my way passed the line of traffic pulling to a stop once I was in the spot and being glared at by a pissed off Bubba who was forced to pull into the spot by the dumpsters. I smile with glee as Cassie and I climb out of my car. “Dude Bubba looks like he’s gonna cut someone.”

“Of course, by the time he gets out of school his precious gas guzzler is gonna be covered in half eaten sloppy joes and coke bottles” I laughed. Knowing Bubba was screwed to hell had made my day but the day was only just starting, I hadn’t the slightest idea what I would find inside Harker Voore High.

Well I did expect one thing: Ashlee and her idiot dumb-shit friends talking crap. What I wasn’t expecting was that they weren’t talking about us. “Did you see how much make-up he was wearing? God how hideous must he really be in order to have to cover himself up like that?”

“Actually he was kind of cute.”

“Shut up Korra.” Korra was a Japanese girl from northern Cali. She looked like an anime girl and outside of school was pretty rad but since her parents are up her ass about fitting in and doing well in school she must wear a costume (or as Ashlee calls it, clothes) and act like she gave a damn about fitting in (she’s a great actress that way).

Dumbstruck Cassie and I made our way to our lockers. I froze mid-step when I saw that my locker had someone digging through it. “What the hell?” I approached the figure ready to tell him or her off. “Hey what makes you think you can just dig through my crap?” He looked at me and took down the hood of his black sweatshirt.

“This is my locker too, Sweet Pea.” Cocky much?

“Your locker? --------- Stupid broke ass school!” I hissed. “Sorry.”

“No biggie.” He smirked. “I’m Aaron.”

“Clear.” We shook hands awkwardly. “And don’t call me Sweet Pea.” He smirked and I knew he wasn’t giving up so easy.

“And who are you cutie?” He turned his attention to Cassie.

“I wouldn’t ever use that word around her again if I were you” I warned him.

“Why?”

“Because call me cutie again and it’s your balls, got it?”

“Whoa! Feisty aren’t we…um?”

“Cassandra, call me Cassie or Cas, but never in hell call me cutie!” She caused him to back up into our locker looking a bit frightened, as he should be.

“Leave him be Cas, just leave him be.” I said pulling her slightly away.

“Thanks.”

“I didn’t do it for you stud, if she gets into another fight it’s her ass.” He nodded in understanding. “So, we cool here?” I asked looking from Cas to Aaron.

“Yep.”

“Sure, just watch it okay?” Aaron nodded again.

“And drop the whole flirting thing it’s getting you nowhere” I added brushing passed him to shove my heavy as hell Geometry book in our locker.

“So where’d you move from?”

“Albuquerque.”

“You must miss your friends, were they all as awesomely Goth as you are?” Cassie asked twirling her finger around his pirate’s earring.

“Actually I didn’t have any friends. We move around a lot so there’s really no point” he looked a little morose then.

“Sounds miserable” I felt sorry for him, even though I don’t know him so well. Cassie and I have been in one place all our lives and we’ve never been able to befriend anyone else. I can only imagine how much harder it was for him.

“Yeah” he looked me in the eye with his insanely blue, eye-lined, eyes. I swear I thought when I fully learned what true beauty was I had the basic idea: that it’s simply a myth. But when I looked into Aaron’s eyes I saw a wholly other level of beauty that just couldn’t exist. It couldn’t be real…yet here it stood in the form of a friendless Goth boy.

It was the sound of the bell, more like annoying buzzer, that jolted me from my daze. “Well it was nice meeting you but we’ve got to book it.” I grabbed Cassie by the arm and started walking as fast as I could to my first period English class.

“What the fuck was that?” Cassie laughed as we flew down the hall.

“Shut up!”

“You should’ve seen yourself you looked totally oblivious to everything except his crystal blue peepers.”

“Say it louder they didn’t hear you in Russia.” I don’t why he had that effect on me and I hope to god it was just for this one time.

Once in class I went to my seat in the back and rested my head in my arms. I was nearly asleep when someone knocked on my desk at the same time saying nonchalantly: “Knock, knock.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me” I muttered. “Can’t you go bug someone else?”

“Everyone else isn’t worth my time” he smirked slipping into the seat next to me.

“And I am?”

“Oh definitely” I was just about to ask him what he meant when Mr. Barclay, the teacher, called the class to order. We were starting on Macbeth today and as a brief intro to the play Mr. Barclay played a clip from a performance he recorded in New York. Oh brother, I thought. I opened my sketchbook to the drawing I was working on and was about to get started when a piece of folded notebook paper landed in front of me.

“So tell me about yourself.” It said.

“You don’t give up do you?” I wrote and tossed it back.

“Not when something, or in your case someone, is vital to my future.” That took me aback. This guy
didn’t know me from eve and he suddenly thinks I’m important for his future. Who the hell is this psycho?

“What do you want from me?”

“A promise to not run screaming when you start seeing me everywhere.”

“You want permission to stalk me? Are you insane?”

“Very but that has nothing to do with this.”

“How vital am I to your future?”

“You die, I die. Simple as that.”

“You’re a weird one Aaron Maddox.” I smirked in his direction. His name was pretty cool; I almost couldn’t believe it when Mr. Barclay announced it at the beginning of class.

“I know, you’re pretty freaky yourself.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Good.”

“You know you look kind of familiar…I wonder why that is?” he frowned at the note as though what I said is something he didn’t want to hear at all.

“I guess I just have one of those faces.”

“You’re probably right.”

I let it go. I know that if something someone was saying was bugging the ever living hell out of me I wouldn’t want to hear any more so I focused on my sketchbook.

Class went by faster than usual and before I knew it so did my second period Art class and third period Biology class. As I ventured down the halls, searching for Cas, I stumbled upon someone.Damn can this day get any worse?, I thought as I stared into the green demented eyes of Ashlee. “Watch it you stupid witch you nearly got your muddy lipstick all over my new shirt” I would’ve corrected her in saying my lipstick was actually black mixed with burgundy but that would’ve been a royal waste of my time.

“Maybe if you stopped sexting your horn-dog boyfriend you’d see when someone is walking towards you.” I hissed at her.

“At least I’m with him.”

“Is that where your STD came from?” Ashlee’s minions gasped and looked at her. “You forget, my Gran is a nurse for Dr. Klergian.”

“If she’s a nurse then why’d she let your whore mother die?” That did it. I grabbed her by the shoulders and shoved her really hard against the lockers.

“The hell is your problem?!?!” Caytlyn, Ashlee’s second in command, screamed at me.

“You” I whispered nearly snarling. When a crowd began to form I let Ashlee go, no way was I getting suspended because of her. “Watch out Ash, you’re not always gonna be this safe and when that day comes you’ll pay.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“How stupid of you.” I chuckled walking away from her and her friends who now had a fearful look in their eyes.

Nobody talks about my mother that way… nobody.

~*~

Later that day Cas and I locked ourselves in my room. Gran and Pop were out working so I had the place to myself. Once our homework was done Cas went downstairs to grab us a snack. Aaron and I shared a few more classes and by the end of the day he weaseled his number into my phone. I was thinking about him when something caught my eye.

Poking out from underneath my bed was one of my old sketchbooks. I picked it up and started flipping through it. Something inside me, I don’t what, told me to go to a specific page. After flipping page after page I finally settled on one sketch. It was dated August 13th, 2002, a week before my twelfth birthday. In it were three boys.

One of them, clearly the oldest, was semi-muscular and had black spikey hair. His skin was pale white (almost porcelain) and he had dark eyes, well the make up on his eyes was dark but his actual eyes were a beautiful shade of blue. Next to him was a cocky looking guy with black spikey hair like the other one; he had a nice smile, almost dazzling. He was more punk rock. Next to him, rolling his eyes at the other two was…Aaron. I gasped and looked closely at the figure. Short black hair, strikingly beautiful face, crystal blue eyes… holy shit.

I must have been white as a ghost when Cas came back to my room (bowl of chips and a couple of cokes in her hands) because she immediately asked me if something was wrong. I lifted the sketchbook to show her.

“Obsessed much? You don’t even know the guy…ooh whose the guy with the hundred-watt smile?” She smirked at the strange boy next to Aaron.

“Look at the date.” I whispered afraid if I spoke any louder I’ll go into a major freak out.

“How’s that possible?” Now Cas looked as freaked out as I was.

“I don’t know…” One thing was certain, whether I remember it or not, Aaron and I have met before.
And like today, it seems as though it was inevitable that we’d befriend one-another. Like one sick twisted destiny that I have yet to figure out.

My phone beeps, it’s a text from Aaron.

‘C u tomorrow Sweet Pea :)’