by Emma Glass
The rest of us didn’t have to suffer long. At the next stop, she hopped off, taking a pack of shoppers with her. It was early, which meant that the crowds were headed to the shopping spots, not from, and space rapidly opened up on the bus. I eagerly snagged one of the empty seats, perching myself near the window.
Once we’d gotten moving again, I turned to face the street, watching us flit past the crowd of casual shoppers on the pavement.
Someone sat down next to me.
“Sorry, got tired of standing.”
I turned back to see Skateboard Guy, who had tucked his board in front of his knees. He looked at me with a smile as he drummed out a rhythm with his fingertips, along the top of the seatback.
“Oh. No problem.” I noted with a quick look that there were a few booths still fully empty.
“I’m Clyde,” he grinned politely.
“Clara.”
“Cool. That’s a cool name.” His sheepish voice was kind of adorable, and he came off as a little sweet in his blatant shyness. “Couldn’t help but notice that you looked frustrated earlier, yeah.”
“Yeah,” I sighed at my own foolishness. “Fell asleep on the bus on the way here and missed my stop. Now I’ve gotta ride all the way back.”
“Sucks,” he shook his head sympathetically. “Where you going? Is it far?”
I gave him a look, gesturing to my clothes. “I’m wearing an Evanshire Academy uniform, genius. Where do you think I’m going?”
“Oh yeah,” Clyde smiled. “That’s a long way.”
My brow creased. “Right.”
We sat in silence for a few moments.
“What about you?” I asked.
He chuckled nervously. “I was gonna get off a few stops down, but…” Clyde side-eyed me, lifting his eyebrow slyly. “I’m kinda wanting to see where things are going with you first.”
“With me?” I was taken by surprise.
“You’re cute,” he admitted. At my skeptical look, he quickly threw his palms up in surrender. “Sorry if that’s a bit strong, but… I can’t help it. It’s just hard to keep my eyes off of you.”
It was… adorable? I guess?
Now that we were sitting side by side, I could see telltale signs that he was older than I’d first thought: the stubble of his chin, the small creases that had aged around his eyes, even the slightly mature octave of his voice started painting me a picture that I didn’t like.
“What’s your age?” I asked him.
“My age?” Clyde smiled. “Age is just a number, right? What does my age matter?”
Now the red flags really started to go off. “It couldn’t be any more obvious that I’m a student,” I pointed out apprehensively. After enduring that dream another long night, I was too tired for this right now. “If you’re gonna try and hit on me… at least tell me how old you are.”
Clyde glanced around the bus. Anxiously, he licked his lips. “I’m twenty.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You’re lying.”
“No, really!”
I crossed my arms and looked away.
“Okay, okay,” Clyde looked over my shoulder at me. “You’ve got me. I’m twenty-seven.”
“Twenty– You’re twenty-seven years old?!” I was so stunned that I could barely speak. “Even if I were in my last year of secondary school, that’d still be a nine year gap! Ew!”
“Sorry!” He replied guiltily. “Just thought that you could take a compliment…”
I gave him a scathing look of total disdain. “A compliment? Is that what this is supposed to be? This is you complimenting me?”
“Can’t help but think that you’re beautiful.”
Typical. Just two minutes and Clyde here had reversed any adorable thought I’d had about him. His shifty behavior made me regret ever smiling at him at the stop. Now, this guy just came off like a creep, or a lot worse…
As he stroked his hand over my bare kneecap, ‘or a lot worse’ happened sooner than later. I opted to brusquely yank my leg away from him.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Hey, don’t be like that,” he chuckled.
I glared bullets at him. “I mean it.”
The older skateboarder’s nervous little smile slowly died away. What was left in its place was a threatening, hungry expression as he placed his hand back over my knee.
“Or what, Little Miss Evanshire Academy?”
My patience met its limit. Eager to keep this situation from going any further, I quickly socked him straight in his face.
“Hey!” The predatory creep recoiled in pain. “You punched me? We’re just having some fun!”
My hand slapped down on the stop button.
I could already see a small red trail dribbling down from under his cupped fingers. “My nose!” He groaned. “I think you broke my bloody nose!”
As I shoved past him, the driver bellowed out from in front. “Oi! What’s going on back there?”
“Nothing!” I grunted in complete disgust.
Brushing past the others on the bus, I could see how they were quietly trying to avoid meeting my gaze. Typical, I growled to myself. They’re all the same. Nobody ever wants to lift a finger. They’d rather ignore it than get involved…
“I thought I told you to keep out of trouble!” The driver’s voice roared from the front. “That’s it. Grab your things and get off my bus!”
With a defiant glare, I stared down the creep from my place in the bus departure zone.
“Don’t you worry,” I snapped as I proudly watched Clyde cover his broken, bleeding nose. The driver angrily pulled us over to the next bus stop, reaching for the lever to fold the doors open again. “Guess I’ll try my luck with the next one.”
If only I’d realized how those nine little words would change my life forever…
3
Clara
Spoiler alert, that luck ran out.
It didn’t help that, in my hurry to get away from the creep on the bus, I forgot to grab my bag. In the resulting panic, I quickly realized that all I had left on me was my cell phone.
Spread out over the hour, I tried the next four buses. None of the other bus drivers would let me hop onboard without my fare, no matter what I told them. Either every bus operator in England was telepathically connected, or I’d had the poor fortune of finding the only decent one on the same trip as that disgusting pervert.
Defeated, I walked around to clear my head. My little adventure had only brought me three stops closer to school. If I was going to make it there today, I still had a long way to go.
I pulled my phone out to call a taxi.
At least I could find my way back home, attempt to dig up more change, and try this whole thing again. Harold would be furious, because I’d have to ask him to pay for the ride back...
For a moment, I considered just skipping.
But I couldn’t risk them calling home, making everything even worse for me. That and, after this morning’s misadventures, what I wanted most was to see Peter’s cute, smiling face again. Even if our friends were wrong all along, it didn’t hurt to stoke the embers of my old crush.
No, I complained. I have to make it there.
Thanks to having to get Harold home fairly often after his sloppier nights on the town, I was familiar with the local cab company. I rang them a few times, but the line stayed busy.
“Of course,” I grumbled to myself.
I gave it a few minutes longer and let myself stroll further away from the center of town. I’d never even heard of this place. It was quite a bit further up the bus line from where we lived, and I hadn’t had a reason to ever come this way.
But something felt oddly right about it.
It was a quiet little town – quaint, even. The more that I paid attention, the older the buildings seemed. This place was clearly from an era a few decades back or more, with architecture that spoke of a simpler time. To my surprise, despite the ever-rising sun in the sky, the place seemed more or less deserte
d.
Idly, my feet took me down one small street after another. Oh, I realized as I ambled further along. Had the disrepair not been so obvious, I’d have thought this town rather beautiful. Boarded up storefronts and rampant ‘For Sale’ signs told me that the business had been suffering for a long while now. The closer areas to public transit had kept up a strong façade, but the truth was plain to see. All of these little shops were shutting down, one after another, like a series of falling dominos.
Guess it’s no wonder then why there aren’t any people about, I thought to myself. This town is on stumbling its last legs…
Turning a corner, I was suddenly confronted with the open, ivy-claimed gate to a town park. My eyes glanced at the half-hanging sign; it was crookedly dangling off of broken supports.
Broadmoor Park
All friends to nature welcome!
“Cute,” I muttered to myself.
I tried the phone again.
“Arbor Taxi,” the bored voice on the other end of the line groaned into the phone.
Thank God. “Calling for pickup, please.”
Faintly, I heard the tapping of keyboard keys. “Right,” he finally replied. “Where’s the pickup?”
I glanced back at the sign.
“Broadmoor Park. Is that in your zone?”
He sighed. “Yeah, but I ain’t got cars that far out. It’s gonna take a bit. And it’ll cost you extra.”
“That’s fine,” I told him uneasily.
He grunted a response, then started tapping away at the keyboard again for a few seconds.
“Alright. Where’re you headed?”
I gave him my address, knowing there was no way they didn’t have it on file. Harold’s nights out could single-handedly keep this cabbie afloat, I snickered to myself as I waited patiently.
He didn’t respond.
“H-Hello?”
Nothing.
I pulled my phone from my ear and realized it was dead. Oh no, I remembered bitterly. I forgot to leave it plugged in on the charger last night… It was a testament to my patience that I didn’t hurl it as hard as I could against the brick wall.
Glancing up from the latest disappointment of my morning, my eyes caught the park sign. Out of either commiseration or spite, the sign finally snapped off of its final support. The worn sheet of metal uselessly clunked to the pavement and fell flat on its face.
The sight made me bitterly chuckle.
“Yeah, that kind of sums my day up, too…”
Something about the pathetic way that it laid there on the pathway plucked at my heartstrings. My thoughts went back to all the people on the bus, unwilling to offer even the slightest help or acknowledgment. I knew it was stupid to think, but I could tell at a glance that it would be days – possibly weeks – before anyone bothered to notice this facedown, fallen sign and did anything about it. Nobody ever wants to lift a finger. They’d rather ignore it than get involved…
How a broken sign dropping to the concrete had anything to do with my derailing experience on the bus was beyond me. But the parallel felt unavoidable to me, as soon as I thought it up.
“You’ve gone mad, Clara. Now you’re being empathic for a sign,” I sternly told myself. “I know I’m tired, but this is ridiculous…”
After a moment’s hesitation, I rolled my eyes. Fine. Guess it’s not the craziest thing I’ve ever done. I walked over to the aged metal and lifted it from the debris. Blowing off the dust, I gingerly hooked it back onto its supports. They were clearly not going to hold out for much longer, but nothing else was around to properly secure them. For all I knew, this thing was going to just drop off the iron fence as soon as it left my sight.
My hand paused at my hair. One of my very favorite strips of fabric was woven into it, meant for Peter to see. I hated the idea of parting with it. While I wasn’t that superstitious, I liked to think of it as my lucky ribbon. I’d been wearing it for my first kiss, my first party…
Pulling my ribbon free, I let my hair fall down around my shoulders. I studied the fence before reaching over and wrapping the sign up against it, careful to not cover any of the text.
“I hope you appreciate this,” I muttered to it.
Giving it a few quick jerks, it seemed that the park sign wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Satisfied, I stepped back. It didn’t look awful.
Out of curiosity, I looked around it and into the park. A thin and obligatory chain was looped through the gate, but untreated rust had allowed it to fall into disrepair. The entrance had been left nearly wide open for anyone to come and go.
“Nothing better to do,” I reasoned, taking my first few steps onto the trail. “I might as well see if all that fuss was worth it.”
I like to think back on that moment.
I had been so naïve, so sheltered.
With that strange, random act of kindness – if you could even call it that – I sealed my own fate. Soon, I would be utterly surrounded by incredible things, plunged feet first into powerful conflicts, and facing dangers beyond my comprehension…
To think – it all started with a ribbon, a pinch of empathy, and a sad little sign.
The park was just as defeated and overgrown as I had expected. But in its disarray, I saw its beauty.
Shadows darkly abounded from the canopy of branches above, blotting out the sun’s rays. Thick, powerful trees broke apart the cracked walkways with their rising roots, fracturing the paths in their quest to reclaim their home.
I wondered how long it’d been since anyone had walked along these broken trails. It was clear to me that nobody bothered to maintain the forgotten Broadmoor Park anymore; thick grass grew rampantly, abandoned hedges twisted in a complete mess, and an endless sea of dead, fallen branches were practically begging to be plucked out from the weeds.
The sight of it all saddened me.
It was after twenty minutes of wandering the lost paths that I came to the edge of a large lake. A trail of tall, overgrown grass surrounded it on all sides, disrupted by old pavement that had mostly survived the assault of the bordering trees.
Out on the lake was a wooden dock.
Instead of turning back, I decided to walk out towards it. I made my way onto the pathway and trailed the edge of the water, tracing the edges of lily pads and thick, watery brush as I walked.
It was gorgeous, in its own, untouched way.
A few minutes more of walking, I made it to the first stairs of the raised dock. Cautiously, I tested the strength of the floorboards with a few steps. They groaned with protest, but I trusted them to not shatter beneath my feet.
Once up on the main level, I walked out onto the bridge. It extended out over the lake’s surface less than a quarter kilometer; despite the visible lack of maintenance, I thought nothing of taking a stroll down the creaking wooden boards.
It was peaceful out here. The serenity almost made the frustrations of my morning worth it.
Soon, I realized that I wasn’t alone here after all. Not even halfway down the dock’s walkway was the quiet, hunched figure of another person.
As I approached, I saw that it was a woman. She seemed to be quietly muttering to herself in strange and foreign syllables. The woman was wrapped in lavish robes, the color of rich red wine; her deft hands moved around in bizarre and intimidating motions as she kept knelt down along the edge of the dock.
Tension built up as I stared at her.
Something inside me told me to turn back.
I didn’t need much convincing. Following the sound advice of my gut instinct, I spun around and stared heading back the way that I came. But then my foot stepped on a particularly creaky floorboard, and a crack ran across it.
My heart froze in my chest.
“What?” Her voice snapped. “Who are you?”
I whirled around.
The stranger rose to her bare feet, facing me. I could see now that she was an elderly woman as she took a few advances towards me. Her strange, mismatched eyes scrutini
zed me in powerful curiosity; the left eye was forest green, and the other was a deadened milky white.
I felt terror grasp at my throat. Something about this strange, robed woman set off every last alarm inside me; I struggled to stay calm, but my shoes felt glued to the spot.
The old woman spoke with a hoarse, gravelly tone as she jutted a long, withered finger at me.
“You’re not supposed to be here, child.”
I started slowly backing up.
Her whitened eye widened with anger as she took a few more harrowing steps towards me. Before I could turn and run, her gaze froze as she drew a powerful stride closer. The woman’s face curled with astonishment and blind rage.
“No, it can’t be!” She menacingly shouted, her finger trembling. “All my hard work, spoiled!” Her voice cracked: “You’ve ruined everything!”
Whatever she was rambling about, I knew I didn’t want to stick around to ask questions.
“Leave me alone!” I turned and ran.
My shoes only took me a few seconds away before I felt a powerful grip on my wrist, cold and clammy. The yellowing nails of the woman’s hand scratched my skin as she yanked me around in a nimble motion.
Venomous eyes intently glared into me; I felt every last drop of her wrath. The disgusting smell of rot from insider her robes started to choke me.
I gasped for air. “Let go of me!”
That face, wrinkled like a gnarled tree, pulled itself closer to me. Biting nails dug deeper into my wrist as her lips parted, revealing blackened teeth and another fresh wave of retching reek. It was so disgusting that I thought I’d be sick.
“Years, I have spent in preparation for this,” she growled menacingly. “Countless nights, I’ve followed the old rituals! The sacrifices I’ve made! The distance I’ve traveled! Toiling away at this lake, the closest place I could reach! And then, on the day that I’ve so painstakingly prepared, who should be here but one of you?!”
“Whoever you are, you can keep your stupid lake!” My words crawled out between disgusted, gagging breaths. “Just let me leave!”