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Shallow Depths
By Ace Work
She was a
country girl shielded from the ways and evils of the world. He was the
most two-faced boy to ever walk the surface of planet Earth. So what
happens when the rural country-folk meets the devious big-city metro
boy?
Chapter 1: Urban Suburbs
She walked through the bustling streets, dragging a medium sized suitcase and a lion cage containing a monster of a rabbit. She wore a large sunhat that extended to two feet in diameter, a skirt that reached down to two inches above her ankle, a hand knit sweater, and a worn-out pair of leather loafers. Everywhere she set foot, people turned their heads to examine the oddity of her apparel and to ponder her origins.
She plodded forward for another eight lengthy blocks (about two and a half miles) before she came to a stop in front of a decently sized yellow house with a lot size of about a little over an acre. She looked up at the looming house before her, took out a key from the pocket of her skirt, walked to the door, unlocked it, and towed her belongings inside.
Gaelen West was a sixteen-year-old girl who had been brought up in the countryside for the first sixteen years of her life. Due to some unfortunate circumstances related to the death of her great-great-grandmother who had miraculously lived fifty-seven years past her life-expectancy, Gaelen found herself in possession of a two-story colonial home situated at the heart of a fairly populated suburb.
Gaelen placed her rabbit cage next to the door and strolled about to admire the modern renovations of her new home. She spent twenty minutes exploring the house thoroughly and then went back to the door to grab the cage and heave it upstairs to the smallest room of the house.
“Well, I guess this is home now, Jaws,” she said to the rabbit presently chewing on a block of wood.
The house was left the way it had been when great-great-grandmother Edma had occupied it, so no surplus furniture was necessary. Each of the four bedrooms contained a well maintained bed with a hand carved dresser and mirror. It was an old house with carpeting throughout, excluding the bathrooms and the kitchen. It was an old house, but it had a loving, warm feel to it and Gaelen felt herself attached to it almost immediately.
“You know Jaws, I’m nervous about my new school. I mean the city is really nice and all, but then what if I can’t make friends? You’ll always be my best friend of course, but I need to make human friends, too, you know? It’s not that I’m not satisfied with you, cause I am. I’m just really freaked out right now.”
She continued to converse with the rabbit. “Well even so, but I’m excited. I’ve never been in a school before, you know?”
The rabbit continued to chew.
“They said that I couldn’t bring animals along, so you’ll have to stay here.”
The rabbit twitched a bit and turned its head towards her.
“Okay I’m going to unpack and then make some dinner for us.” Gaelen took off her sun hat and threw it on top of the dresser. With one last glance at the snowy rabbit, she walked out of the bedroom to grab what was left of her luggage.
“Damien! Good job!” girls shouted to him from the sidelines. He turned towards them, revealing a pair of deep blue eyes and shot them a dazzling white smile.
Damien Haides sighed as he reclined against the bench. He was the guy that every male admired, and every girl craved. Why wouldn’t they? There was nobody who had ever beaten him in anything. Incompetent, he thought. The whole damned school was incompetent—just a bunch of useless idiots. Damien snapped out of his thoughts as a guy on his team came up to him. What was his name again? Fred? Frank? Ah, whatever, he thought. Knowing the guy’s name wasn’t going to benefit him anyways.
“That was amazing Damien! Your kick owned.”
Damien laughed mentally. Of course his kick owned. That Fred or Frank guy, on the other hand, should have seriously quit soccer. He himself could probably play better blindfolded with both hands tied behind his back. He had an urge to tell him so, but instead, he gave the idiot another one of his brilliantly dazzling smiles.
“Nah…what was truly amazing was your assist back there.” The guy brightened up visibly at the compliment. Damien did a mental eye roll. The assist had been horrendous. If it had not been for him sprinting at full speed to receive it, there was no way that the pass would have ever reached him.
“Well I’m going to go change now. Good game guys.”
“Oh I think I’m going to get changed, too.”
“Yeah, same here.”
“Me, too!”
The team ended up tagging along behind him, a train attached to its engine. To Damien, they were just a group of immature brats thrust upon him as charity work. It was babysitting sans the insufficient pay.
One of his team mates jogged up to him and attempted to strike up a conversation. “Damien, you are totally awesome, man…You’re captain of varsity soccer, basketball, and tennis, yet you’re not arrogant at all.”
“That’s not true…”
“It is! You’re really perfect…”
The guy continued to list his virtues until they split up in the changing room.
Upon reaching his locker, Damien let out a small satisfied chuckle.
Life was too good, just too good.
“Um.. Sir...,” she began awkwardly. “Do you know how to get to Kellis High?”
He stopped looking at his watch to take in her peculiar appearance with obvious bewilderment.
“Go three blocks down, make a left on Maple Street, turn right onto Leslie Avenue, then make another left onto School Road. It’s a big school so you’ll probably see it once you get onto Leslie,” he said, after a moment’s pause.
She thanked him with the most gracious smiles, and before she took off running again, she asked for the time.
“It’s around seven-ten now,” the man said, looking down at his expensive Rolex watch.
Hearing this, Gaelen began to panic again. School began at seven-forty-five, and according to what the man had told her, thirty-five minutes didn’t exactly allow her to leisurely walk there. She ran off at full speed, following the man’s directions. As he had mentioned, once she turned onto Leslie Avenue, she was able to see the top of the school building. She was tired from all that sprinting, but since she had no idea what time it was, she had no choice but to continue.
Just a little more,she told herself. She was so focused on catching her breath that she didn’t notice when she ran head on into someone. She collided into him with such impact, that she bounced back, landed on the ground, and rolled back several feet. The impact didn’t have that big of an effect on the other person, but he was slightly pushed forward and was forced to take several seconds of his life to regain his balance. Once he did, he turned around to see what idiot had run into him.
Gaelen winced as she stood up. She looked up at the person she had run into and apologized. He was looking her up and down with the same reaction as the man she had asked for directions from.
“I am really sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
“Don’t worry about it. Are you alright?” He smiled at her, revealing a row of perfectly straight teeth.
“Yes. I am fine. Did you get hurt anywhere? I have adhesive bandages.”
“I’m okay. Well, see you then.” He gave her another smile and then turned around to leave.
After dusting herself off, Gaelen resumed running. She couldn’t help smiling to herself. The boy she had run into seemed like such a nice guy.
Damien watched her take off with one eyebrow raised. The girl had looked as if she had been raised on a farm. When she had bumped into him, he had expected to see one of his female fans in an avid attempt to grab his attention, but what he didn't expect, was some hillbilly sprawled across the concrete. He didn’t get to have a good look at her face since he was too busy studying her fashion-suicide, but he imagined that someone who dressed like that probably had a face to match the horror of her outfit. It was either that or just plain average.
He shrugged, and continued on his way.
She managed to get to her designated classroom on time. She had walked through the halls, staring in awe at the female fashions in the city—short denim skirts, skin tight tanks, and overabundances of unnecessary, revealed flesh. From where she had grown up, skirts went below the knee, socks were a hundred percent cotton, and spandex was a mere legend.
When she walked in, people stared at her, very likely taking a second or two to mentally confirm that they were indeed in the twenty-first century.
She moved to the back of the room and placed her belongings on an unoccupied desk next to another unoccupied desk. She did not sit down just in case the seat actually did belong to someone else. She stood in that spot, silent, awkward, and slightly intimidated until a girl approached her.
“Are you new?” the girl questioned.
“Yes.”
“Where are you from?”
“A little south of this city,” the girl looked puzzled, so Gaelen continued to speak, “the countryside.” The other girl just nodded and turned away, back to her former conversation.
The homeroom bell rung and after no one came to claim the seat she stood at, she figured that it was safe to sit down. As the teacher took attendance, Gaelen raised her hand.
“Umm…I am new here.”
“Oh right. They told me this morning. Sorry, I didn’t quite get your name.”
“Gaelen West.”
“Okay.” Gaelen put her hand back down. The day had barely begun and she was already missing Jaws dearly. When she woke up that morning, Jaws had been sleeping and was unable to see her off. It made her feel slightly lonely, but knowing that she would see him in the afternoon made her brighten up.
Just then, the door swung open, and she looked up.
“Damien you’re late,” the teacher informed.
“I’m sorry. A girl ran into me this morning, then another girl dropped her books on the stairs.”
“It’s okay. That’s very nice of you to help them.” The boy smiled at the teacher, and Gaelen’s face filled with recognition. It was the same smile that had beamed at her that morning. It was a stunning smile with all of its warm brilliance, but for some reason, a cold and unwelcome shiver ran down her spine.
If you can not tell by now, it’s about a really two-faced guy and a girl who’s old-fashioned to the extreme. She knows nothing about the city and the modern world, and is pretty much pure. Since I just transferred to another school, I know how first days are. (Especially when you transfer in the middle of year in the middle of highschool.) It’s really not easy to make friends and I’m actually a really social person. As the experience is still fresh (and still in the process), I’m going to write about it. I’ll use this experience to make this story more believable. Yeah, I know that this chapter is short as hell (unlike my usual endless chapters,) but I want something short and sweet just enough to catch reader attention.
This is EeeNAce here and I hope that this has caught your interest. Look forward to the next chapter by Da Vinci at Work.
DelaA (EeenAce) haha I’m used to signing my chapters as DelaA so if you’re new to my chapters or whatever, get used to the DelaA signature.
I’m lonely TT.
Author’s Note 2:
Tis me. Da Vinci at Work. (I know. What author makes TWO author’s notes in one chapter?)
(EeeNAce…Da Vinci at Work…Get it? Ace Work?) Yay for collaborated accounts! This is how this collab story works. EeeNAce writes one chapter, then I edit and revise. Then I write the next chapter, and she edits and revises. Simple as that.
Oh, and I’m just here to remind you all, REVIEW! If you have any questions, comments, and encouragement (a lot of it), but no flames, review. We want to know how well you think we write. It’s like a barter system. You get the story, we get the reviews. Haha. I learned something from history class.
Anyhow, remember to click the button on your lower left hand corner before you exit out from this page, and the internet, come to think of it. REVIEW!
-Da Vinci at Work
