Strangers in Vienna

by Angela L.

  By the time both Noelle and I had climbed down to the other side, Jacob was still groaning.

  “It’s only a scratched elbow. Toughen up,” I said.

  “No…I wish it was a scratched elbow.” He groaned and pointed his finger down at his crotch and then over at the wire that stuck out from the fence.

  Wow. Out of all the chances, Jacob just so happened to bump his crotch on that wire.

  “It hurts,” Jacob groaned.

  “No,” Benji said sarcastically and started laughing.

  “I don’t think I’m going to be able to have kids, man,” Jacob whimpered.

  “Does it matter? From the looks of you, your kids are going to come out retarded anyway.”

  After a while of mocking Jacob as he held himself like his life depended on it, we dragged him up and proceeded down the dirt road.

  The road led us deeper into the woods. Our feet crunched on fallen branches and leaves so often that it sounded like a bad rhythm conducted by a fourth-grade marching band. At one point, the road separated into two roads. Donna wanted to go on the left road while I wanted to go on the right, but in the end, after dozens of coin tosses, we decided to go right. Plus, the sky was getting darker and each minute we argued meant more walking in the cold.

  “Should we keep walking?” Jacob asked. “We can come back tomorrow.”

  “It’s still light out, though,” Noelle said.

  “What if we get lost?” Donna asked.

  “What if we don’t?” Benji said and began to walk again.

  With each step, the forest swallowed us a little more until we had no idea where we were going. Or, at least, I had no idea where we were going.

  It had rained last night, so all the leaves were glistening with water droplets. It was pretty and all, until the branches started hitting my face. The air was moist, and for the first time, I could actually hear the nature. I’d never understood what those people meant when they said, “Listen to the trees.” I’d always thought those hippies were hallucinating. But now I got it.

  It wasn’t just us in the forest. Everything was alive. The trees were shaking along with the wind. Squirrels scurried along the dirt and the birds flapped their wings as they got ready for takeoff. Even the rocks seemed to be breathing with the moss on their backs. Everything was in perfect sync, as the organisms formed their own soundtrack of nature.

  We finally reached this shallow stream with small boulders and redwood trees near it. Jacob walked over to the shade under the trees, even though it was already pretty cool.

  Squirrels scurried away hastily as we approached the trees.

  “You think we can drink that?” Benji asked and jumped toward the stream, lowering his head down at the water. He was so close that you could see the tip of his hair getting damp.

  “Sure, if you want to die,” said Donna.

  The water did look like it could be used for drinking. It was crystal clear and you could see the tiny fish so clearly, swimming around. But then again, fish pooped and other animals had dipped their mouths, or even bodies, into this stream.

  “I think we’ve all established that Benji has done worse things in the past that could have killed him,” said Noelle. “Let’s face it, he’s a professional at cheating death.”

  Benji took off his shoes and began to roll up his jeans. He rapidly stepped into the water and screamed so loudly that he managed to scare a flock of birds a few feet away.

  “Shut up, you scream like a little girl.” I laughed and threw a rock into the water. I wanted it to skip a few times, but I sucked at skipping rocks so it just sunk down to the bottom.

  “It’s cold.” Benji shivered from head to toe. The water was exceptionally shallow, only reaching a little below his knee.

  After taking off our shoes, Jacob and I dipped our feet in. The water was deadly cold.

  “You know, we can actually live out here,” Jacob said, sitting on the dirt near the edge of the stream as he looked up into the sky above us.

  “Are you crazy?” Donna said and rolled her eyes.

  “Think about it. For food, there are animals to hunt. There’s water right here in the stream. We can go to the bathroom wherever we want. As for shelter, those boulders over there seem nice,” Jacob said. I looked over at the boulders. They were pretty pathetic. The only thing those boulders could shelter would probably be a family of raccoons by blocking the wind for them.

  “I wonder how long that’ll last though,” Donna said, making her point.

  “Doesn’t matter. I think we found our safe haven,” Noelle said.

  ****

  We got most of the resources that we needed to build the house from the school’s wood shop. Apparently, we weren’t allowed to take wood from there unless it was for school use. Noelle miraculously got the key to the wood shop room and sneaked in there during lunchtime when the teachers were all gone. Getting in was easy. The hard part was sneaking out yards of wood and finding a place to hide them.

  We didn’t think it through. There we were, Noelle, Jacob, and I standing in the middle of the supply room, dazed at what we should do next. I didn’t know if it was just luck or that the teachers patrolling the hallways were stupid, but we managed to carry out four yards of wood each time, through the hallways and out into the school yard where we hid them behind a bush without getting the teachers to notice.

  Honestly, I thought the teachers just chose to ignore us. Jacob and I probably dropped the wood a dozen times. No one bothered to look.

  Sadly, when it was time to work on the tree house, our numbers had dwindled. Not surprisingly, Benji got detention on the second week of school. Donna had a shift at the grill so it was just the three of us working on the tree house. Jacob, Noelle, and I set out first thing after lunch on Saturday with the sun blazing down upon us.

  “Hey, just wondering, but has anyone ever built anything?” Noelle asked.

  Jacob and I looked at each other. “Well…I glued pieces of wood together when I was little,” Jacob said.

  “And I glued paper.” Noelle rolled her eyes. “I mean, like, has any one of you actually used a saw, cut wood, and nailed it together to create something?”

  Jacob and I looked at each other again. I was sort of expecting him to say yes considering that he lived with his dad, who was one of those stereotypical guys who fished and drove trucks and grilled burgers over the weekends. They must have had some father-son time with him helping out his dad with woodwork. I also knew his dad had built the small shed in his yard that their dog now used.

  “Nope.”

  “Not even a simple bird house?” Noelle asked.

  We continued to shake out heads.

  “Well, there’s a first time for everything, guys,” Noelle said and we all each picked up a piece of wood, knowing that one of us would eventually screw something up.

  The blueprint that Noelle and I designed was hammered onto the tree so it was easy for all of us to follow.

  The tree house was simple, consisting of one room, a door on the bottom, and two empty windows on opposite sides.

  We took longer than I expected, bickering over two trees in which we could construct the tree house. Jacob kept insisting on this tiny tree near the stream, but I thought the gap in between the branches wasn’t big enough. Noelle picked another tree a little farther away from the stream, but Jacob kept on saying we should pick one near the stream for a prettier view. Noelle then insisted that the tree she picked still had a view of the stream, plus the gap in between the branches was huge.

  I kind of just stood there, watching them fight like an old married couple until he finally gave in.

  We first constructed the floor of the tree house. I admit, we screwed up badly in the beginning. I think all of us almost fell off at some point, and I basically made a hole in the floor after realizing it wasn’t screwed in properly.

  “Jacob, can you pass me that hammer?” Noelle said as she stood in the corner with a nail in her hand.

&
nbsp; “Can’t. It’s too far,” he replied.

  “Seriously? The hammer is literally three feet away from you. Get up, fatty.”

  “What’s the magic word?” Jacob smiled.

  “Please.” Noelle trailed it out and made it all sweet, but you could tell it was just phony.

  “Here,” he said and passed it to her.

  “You just burned one calorie from moving a foot. You’re welcome."

  “I’m feeling sexy already.” Jacob grinned as he raised his arm to flex. There wasn’t much to flex, though. Unlike Benji who is pretty buff, Jacob’s arm was like a stick, just like the rest of his body.

  “I’m so hungry,” Noelle groaned along with her stomach. She lay on the floor with the hammer still in her hands. Looking at her made me tired, so I joined her. We all needed a break anyway.

  Jacob joined, and we all just lay on the floor as we looked up into the dark blue sky. There wasn’t a single cloud that drifted by, and I could feel the night air starting to creep up behind us.

  “Maybe we can get some food out here next time.” I rubbed my eyes. I was suddenly feeling so drowsy and I could feel my eyelids getting heavy.

  “I’ll go through my kitchen to see if I have anything,” Jacob said. “Probably only got some dried nuts. Is that alright?”

  “Yeah, it’s better than nothing,” said Noelle.

  Chapter Seventeen

  (August 21, 1992, in Missouri)

  Every year, our town hosted the annual Cherry Festival, where people from nearby towns came to eat the cherry pies, cherry cake, cherry salad, basically just anything that involved cherries.

  After I turned eleven, I stopped going, but since this was our last year in high school, my friends dragged me out.

  Our town had a good percentage of farmers and their main supply was cherries. As for me, I was sick of them. I thought everyone in this town could go through the rest of their lives without having another taste.

  Jacob and I held homemade popsicles in our hands as we strolled from street to street. Even though it was pretty windy, I could still feel the heat flooding over me. We were stuck between herds of people, and we had lost Noelle and the others a while back at the coin toss booth. There were these kids spraying each other with water guns, and I desperately wanted them to dump all their water onto my head. Sweat stuck to my skin like glue.

  “You want cotton candy?” Jacob asked me, and pointed at a small stand where an old lady in a neon orange apron was handing out giant sticks of cotton candy.

  “No, I’m too full,” I said. I had already eaten two hot dogs, a bucket of ice cream, two full bags of popcorn, and part of an ice pop that, at the moment, was dripping down my hands.

  “That looks like fun,” said Jacob. We watched as four people walked out of the pie-eating booth with cream all over their faces.

  “Oh, great, now I want pie.” I sighed. It was always sad when I wanted to stuff all the food in my sight into my mouth but at the same time my stomach was unable to hold anything else.

  “We could go buy one over there.” He pointed at the pie-eating booth.

  “No. Later,” I said. I didn’t want to carry an entire pie around for the rest of the day. Also, I was intensely full. I guess I was just going to have to wait a while for the food to digest.

  “Hey, let’s check that out,” Jacob said and turned my attention to a big red-and-white-striped tent. A sign said, “The Past. The Present. The Future,” with poorly painted tarot cards scattered in the white background.

  “You believe in this stuff?” I asked, wiping the cherry stickiness off my fingertips with the ends of my shirt.

  Jacob shrugged. “It’s fun.”

  We lifted the curtains to the sides and a mixture of different aromas surrounded us. Jasmine, vanilla, it was hard to tell because it felt like my nose was getting attacked by flowers. Different-shaped crystal balls lined two shelves to our left while the other shelf to our right was stacked with various fancy candles of different colors. Some were lit while some rested there unused like decorations.

  I turned my focus to the woman in front of us, who was kneeling behind a low wooden desk.

  Every one of her fingers had a silver ring on them except for her left fourth finger, where a tattoo of a tribal pattern was displayed. She had dark makeup with her lips redder than cherry pie. She looked at us and smiled. “Welcome.” Her voice was so harmonious and calm that I felt peace just by listening to that one word.

  “Hi,” Jacob and I said at the same time in sync. We knelt down in front of her desk.

  “What can I help you guys with?” The way her eyes looked at us sent shivers through every nerve in my body.

  “How much do you charge for a reading?” Jacob asked straight away.

  “A dollar for reading the past and either future or present. Two dollars for reading all three,” she said. From where I was sitting, I could make out a tattoo of a tiny bird with the name Stefan on the left side of her neck.

  Jacob took two dollars out from his pocket.

  The lady got out her tarot cards and shuffled them repeatedly. She was handling the cards so delicately that you would think they were her own child.

  “Pick six cards,” she said serenely and laid all of them in front of Jacob on the table.

  Jacob’s hands hesitated each time he chose a card. The lady set down the six cards in a particular way then swiftly turned each of them over. She composedly stared at them, trying to make sense of the random pictures that lay before her.

  “You’re… different.” She suddenly looked at Jacob with a mischievous smile. “You’ve been hiding yourself for quite a long time.”

  I could feel Jacob getting uncomfortable as he wiggled around in his seat.

  “It’s okay, darling. Love is love.” She subtly laughed. “In the future, don’t do anything reckless. If you accept who you are, you won’t be stuck in the sticky situations that I see you getting into in the near future.” She paused and looked at another card.

  “One of your close friends will face the darkness soon,” she said with a worried expression. “It’s impossible to help that person.”

  “Who is it?” Jacob asked.

  “I’m not sure. All I know is that he or she is a close friend of yours,” she said.

  Jacob looked at me. I mouthed, “It’s probably just nothing.”

  “Your life in general is pretty calm. Family’s okay. School’s fine. You’re not particularly worried about your future but…I sense that even though you know who you are, you deny it. Am I correct?” she asked him.

  Jacob was speechless. He responded with a gentle nod of his head.

  “You feel…shameful…sometimes confused. Embarrassed, yes?” She went on. “No. You’re scared,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You're afraid of what the people around you might think,” she clarified. Jacob continued to squirm in his seat.

  “How—?”

  “Shush,” she said the word so fiercely that Jacob immediately shut his trap without even a single breath in between.

  “All I can say is, you have to let it out, darling,” she advised him.

  Jacob nodded slightly with a mixture of astonishment and disturbance across his face.

  “Good. We’re done,” she said and took the cards, placing them back into the deck. “Do you want a reading, too?” She turned to me.

  I nodded. “Sure, why not?” I said and gave her two dollars.

  I realized Jacob’s face turned a little bit whiter. I didn’t know if the fortuneteller knew he was gay or if she was just lucky, but she certainly got him on his toes.

  After I picked out the six cards, I realized I didn’t want to know the future. The present was depressing enough already.

  “What does it say?” I asked after she took a long time looking at them. I wondered if she was trying to figure out the meaning of the cards or was just trying to come up with a bogus story for me to fall for.

  “You’re in
love, darling,” she finally said.

  I felt my cheeks go warm. I imagined they were as bright red as cherries. Love. It was weird hearing that word, especially for me, Demi, myself in love.

  “I’m positive,” she nodded. “You’ll be with your true love soon,” she said.

  “You sure about that?” I asked. I didn’t even know where Alaric was. He’d probably already forgotten about me, let alone even thought of me for the past months.

  Plus…his time was running low.

  “You will meet the love of your life sooner or later. Patience, darling.”

  “Love of my life?” I said. That was a big step. The love of my life. Wow. I knew I shouldn’t believe in fortunetellers. I heard almost all of them were fake, but part of me wanted to believe her. Her words provided a shred of hope. Unfortunately, it was misleading hope. That possibility of me seeing Alaric again made my heart race faster, but the chances of that happening were slim to none.

  She nodded. “One of your friends will also face the darkness soon.” She stared at me. The look in her eyes made me quiver and for a minute, I believed her. “He or she will be impossible to save. I’m sorry, but there is nothing that you can do.”

  “What else do my cards say?” I asked.

  “Mmm-hmm… Another death?”

  “What?”

  “There’s another life, close to you, that seems to have death coming for him or her. But not exactly death, near death. The good news is that it could be prevented.”

  “Let me guess. Nothing that I can do?”

  She nodded. “There’s nothing that you can do, but strangely enough, his or her near death experience will save your life.”

  “That’s…random,” I said.

  “You.” She pointed at me with her long bony fingers. She was so close that I felt like her nails were going to pierce through my face. “You may be caged now, but a bird with a voice can never be tamed.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “The bars will open if you allow your mind to do so as well. All you need is a little push,” she said, making it even more confusing. “Don’t worry, darling.”