~
A black cloud of dread hung over Cal’s head as she walked to school that morning. Phil had always seemed irritated by her presence in the house, but now there was something else; something much worse than mere annoyance. She had absolutely no idea what she should do about it.
She walked past the condominium complex, coming to a place where the sidewalk ended and chain link fencing replaced the tidy wood pickets of suburbia. The houses started to look older, with peeling paint and weed-overgrown yards. Old washing machines rusted alongside broken-down cars up on blocks.
A sudden barrage of vicious barking startled her, and she looked over her shoulder to see a muscular brindle-colored dog come tearing up a driveway straight towards her. She stood her ground, turning to face it, reaching to her hip reflexively for the knife that was not there. The dog jerked to a halt with a strangled yelp when it reached the end of a nylon rope.
“Aww,” she crooned as she approached it, feeling sorry for the poor creature. She sent it a soothing blast of lavender, and the dog sat down, panting from its exertion. By the time she reached it, the beast had rolled onto its back with a whimper.
“There’s a good boy,” she crooned, giving it a belly rub.
“Hey!” someone called from the house. Cal looked up, surprised to see the motorcyclist from the bus station appear on the porch. When he started walking towards her she bolted up and raced away down the street as fast as her ill-fitting shoes could take her.
By the time she reached the high school she realized just how completely out of place she was. All of the other teens seemed to be wearing a uniform that consisted of brand new blue jeans worn with snug t-shirts or hooded sweatshirts; everything was printed with designer logos. The girls that did wear dresses wore them short, with chunky wedge heels that looked ridiculously hard to walk in.
Everyone carried phones and walked about the campus with their heads down, reading whatever was on the tiny screens. It’s a wonder they don’t run into each other constantly, Cal thought. She kept her head down too, avoiding eye contact as much as possible.
She didn’t want them to see.
Oh, and the colors they gave off! So many teenagers in close proximity created a witch’s brew of emotions; she tasted intense hatred, fear, envy and anxiety in the time it took her to find her first class. The riot of vivid colors blended together into a sensory overload that made it difficult for her to focus.
There was plenty of love in the air–sickeningly sweet blood-red infatuation so powerful that it was amazing its victims could function at all. An incredibly alienated boy made her catch her breath with his bitter hateful thoughts, and sad, lonely kids haunted the halls in blue mists, beaten down and defeated by life. Like her, they slipped quietly through the hallways, trying their best to disappear.
She navigated the labyrinth of high school in a haze of bluish purple misery, sitting in the back of her classes, nodding with her head down when her teachers introduced her as a new addition. She could see curious eyes size her up, take note of her unfashionable clothes, and dismiss her.
She’d expected school to be something out of “Little House on the Prairie,” but she couldn’t have been more wrong. The classes were undisciplined, the teachers harried with overwork or disinterested. The ones who put in an effort mostly played to the front row, and a late entrant who didn’t look up or speak up did little to attract their attention.
No one spoke to her at the lunch hour, and she couldn’t bring herself to go into the cafeteria. Her head ached from all of the falseness, and she wandered around the school grounds aimlessly, ending up in the back of the complex by the dumpsters.
She rounded a corner and stumbled across a boy kissing a girl passionately up against the wall. She had her hands buried in his shaggy black hair, pulling his face down to hers. He was grinding into her body, his hands up under her skirt. Cal stopped in her tracks, shocked.
The boy had a sleeveless shirt on, and she could see that a swirling black pattern had been tattooed on his shoulder, winding down past his bicep to cover half his arm. She couldn’t stop staring, thinking of Queequeg from Moby Dick. The way he was working over the girl’s face he might as well have been a cannibal.
The girl glanced up and saw her. “What are you lookin’ at?” she snarled. The boy turned around and, once again, she found she’d run into the bus station biker. She bolted away, listening to the girl’s cackling laughter trail after her.
The rest of her day was filled with worry and wonder, and by the time the final bell rang she was exhausted. She walked home slowly, giving motorcycle boy’s house a wide berth. She was relieved to see her aunt was home when she walked in the door. Phil didn’t look up from the basketball game he was watching.
“How was your first day at school?” Angie asked, calling to her from the stove where she was cooking.
Cal came closer. “Fine, thanks.” The food smelled good, and she realized she hadn’t eaten all day.
“When’s it gonna be ready?” Phil grunted from the other room.
Angie got back to work, responding, “About a half an hour or so.”
“Can I help?” Cal asked her aunt.
“No thanks,” Angie smiled. “I’m the only one who knows how to make it the way Phil likes it.”
Cal nodded, retreating to her room and busying herself with a reading assignment, trying to ignore her growling stomach. After a while there was a knock on the door and Angie poked her head in.
“I’m leaving for work now. The mac and cheese is in the oven. Why don’t you come down and have dinner with Phil?”
“Um, sure … thanks.”
Her aunt paused for a moment. “So school went all right? You got there okay and everything?”
“Yes, just fine. … Um, Angie?” She asked her casually, “Do you know who lives in that house up the street with all the motorcycles?”
“The one with the pit bull out front?”
“Yes.”
“What a dump! Stay away from that place–they’re a bunch of biker losers. Cops get called out there every weekend.”
“What for?”
“Loud music, dope … who knows? Those people are trash–they outta lock ’em all up and throw away the key.”
“Oh.” Cal was confused, wondering how people could be garbage.
“Gotta run … I’m closing up tonight, so I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Cal stayed in her room, waiting and listening, as the sky outside her window darkened. She heard Phil come up the stairs and tensed up, relaxing when his bedroom door clicked shut. After an hour or so had passed she slipped down into the kitchen and made herself a plate of food, standing in front of the microwave and watching it spin around in circles. She still couldn’t get over the miraculous device.
“Need some help with that?” Phil said, startling her. He came in to stand right behind her in the small kitchen.
“N-no thanks,” she stammered.
He reached in the refrigerator and pulled out a beer, patting Cal’s rear end with his other hand just as the timer went off. She jumped.
“Want one?” he asked, holding it out to her.
“No. thanks,” she repeated, beating a hasty retreat.
She started eating in her room, going out of her way to avoid crossing paths with Phil. When Angie was around she could relax, but her aunt worked nights, and that was when Phil started drinking. He was overly friendly when he was drinking, always trying to get her to talk or join him for a beer.
One night, after hunger drove her from her room, Phil insisted that she sit and watch television with him. She perched on the edge of the couch nervously while he put a movie on. Within a few minutes everyone on the screen was naked and on top of each other.
Cal jumped up in shock, and Phil reached out and grabbed her wrist.
“Stay and watch it with me,” he pulled her towards him, radiating a deep maroon lust.
She wrenched her arm away and bolted for t
he stairs. He followed her halfway up. “Hey! Lighten up–I was only kidding around!”
From then on, whenever Angie wasn’t around Cal went to great lengths to avoid Phil, keeping her knife at the ready. The more she shied away from him, the more he seemed to like it, and she could feel his eyes following her constantly. She told her aunt what had happened, but Angie brushed it off, saying that Phil was just a big jokester and meant nothing by it.
Cal started wandering the neighborhood at night, loath to be alone in the house with her aunt’s creepy boyfriend. She considered running away, but she was afraid. She had no money, and no place to run to. She felt trapped, tied to her aunt’s house almost like the poor pit bull that stood guard at the decrepit place down the street.
She passed by the dog’s house nightly, stopping to visit with him on the occasional times she found the poor animal left outside. Sometimes they huddled together for comfort, two creatures at the mercy of forces they had no control over.
Her favorite place to go was an old cemetery a few blocks away, a secluded spot on a hill alongside a wooded area. The old gravesites did not frighten her, and it was nice and quiet there, away from the road. She was drawn to the small wild space, haunting the dark woods as silently as an owl. She rarely came across anyone else, and it was the closest thing to home she could find.
One moonlit night she heard footsteps approaching and slipped into the bushes, pulling the hood of her sweatshirt over her light hair and holding perfectly still. A lone figure entered the cemetery, pacing nervously in an anxious cloud of greenish fear. It was the boy from school–the motorcycle rider that shared her name–and she watched him from the shadows with interest, wondering what on earth he was doing in the cemetery at night.
Three men approached from the opposite direction and he straightened up in anticipation. His color went silvery white with tension, and a little shiver of bitter fear ran down her spine. She could hear them speak when they met, and she strained to listen to what they were saying to each other.
A harsh voice asked, “Where’s Jarod?”
“He’s out of town. He asked me to do the drop.”
“Who the hell are you?” the man asked him, looking around suspiciously.
“I’m his brother.” Cal reached in his jacket to hand over a thick manila envelope. “He says it’s all there,” he said.
The man took the package, shoving it into his coat. “It better be.”
The first one said, “I want you to give Jarod a message for me.”
“Yeah?” Cal asked.
The other men went bright crimson red with excitement, ready to spring. In the blink of an eye they set upon him, pinning his arms behind his back despite the furious fight he put up. Cal gasped in the shadows, covering her mouth.
When they had him immobilized, the first man came close, drawing back to punch him hard on the jaw. She saw his head snap back, and he slumped in their arms as the man began to pummel his torso with blows. The dull, soggy thuds were sickening; Cal had never seen anything so brutal.
She stepped out from the shadows, shrieking, “Stop it! You’re going to kill him!”
The three thugs looked up with shocked faces. “What the …”
The punching man stopped in mid-swing and charged at her. She tried to run back into the tree line, but was thrown to the ground with a flying tackle, and dragged by her ankles into the clearing. She kicked and fought, twisting and clawing at the turf, unable to break free. Her hood slipped down and a mass of curly blonde hair spilled out.
“Let go of me!” she screamed, remembering the last time a killer tried to drag her away.
The man lunged on top of her, straddling her and pinning her arms to the ground over her head.
“Shut up bitch, or I’ll shut you up,” he grunted from the exertion. The other two men stood looking down at her as she struggled futilely to get away.
“Here to save your boyfriend?” one of them asked, making the other one laugh.
“Help!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. The man on top of her released one of her arms to slap her hard across the cheek, and it was all the opening she needed.
With a well-practiced grab, she drew her hunting knife from its sheath on her belt and pressed it to his side, ready to plunge it in. He looked down in horror and reeled back from the long blade, allowing her to push him over onto his back and spring to her feet in one swift move. She crouched above him, poised to plunge it into his belly.
“I swear I’ll gut him!” she yelled, her eyes flashing at the men who stood frozen. “Get back,” she growled through gritted teeth, trying her hardest to send them all an icy blue blast of fear.
It seemed to work, because the man lying on the ground called out, “Do what she says.” His eyes were wide in the moonlight, locked onto the gleaming silver blade.
“Back off,” she yelled again, watching the others as they slowly moved away. She kept the knife raised with both hands, shaking from the rush of adrenalin. A police siren wailed in the distance and the two men looked over their shoulders nervously.
“Take it easy, Blondie,” the one on the ground said. “We were just leaving.”
Cal slowly backed away, keeping her knife at the ready. She glowed a fiery orange red, fully prepared to dive on him and stick it deep into his belly without hesitation. The man scrambled backwards, finally rising to join the others. He brushed himself off, trying to regain his dignity, and signaled for them to leave. She watched the three of them disappear back into the shadows they’d come from.
Satisfied that they were really going, she turned her attention to the beaten boy.
Cal had crawled to his knees and witnessed the whole scene, and he looked up with bleary eyes to see the girl standing over him, her golden hair reflecting the moonlight like the halo of a guardian angel. The police siren grew louder on the road beneath the hill, passing them by and fading away into the distance.
She bent down to offer him a hand, and he took it, focusing on the two raised scars that ran down the length of her forearm. She pulled him to his feet and he stood wavering, rubbing his sore jaw. It hurt to breathe, and he wondered if they had broken a rib.
He watched in a daze as she slipped her knife back into its sheath, pulling her oversized sweatshirt down to conceal it. She pushed her sleeves down over her arms and flipped the hood back up to cover her glowing mane of hair. It occurred to him that she might be a ghost.
“You need to get out of here before they come back,” she said.
“Where did you come from?” he choked out, looking back the way the men left. “Who are you?”
When he turned around she was gone.
~
Chapter Four
NOTICED
The Athena Effect Page 7