FictionPress.com - let the words flow| FictionPress.com - let the words flow |
| Home Just In Communities Forums Beta Readers Dictionary Search | Login Register Extras |
Hey. I started a new story, even though I have another one going. I hope people like this, it sort of showed up in my head without my permission.
“Your aunt sure lives in the middle of nowhere,” says the social worker. She's driving. “So you know her?”
“I spent the summer here,” I murmur. I never much liked the summers here: too long, too hot, too slow and lazy. Summer hasn't started yet, though Winter is long dead, and we're stuck in the middle of the space between the two. “I know her.”
My aunt's house is painted bright orange. It stands out against the oak trees. “It'll be nice to live in a house,” the social worker —Evita, just call me Evita— says as she pulls up in the wide gravel driveway, scattered with metallic cars. There are other houses that make a semi-circle around it, each painted another garish colour.
I don't remember much about the people that live in them. I think there were a couple of kids my age, somewhere.
My aunt is sitting on the porch. She waves at the blue sedan, pushing her orange tabby cat off her lap and running down the stairs to meet us. “Noah,” she calls, wrapping her arms around me when she's close enough. “You've gotten so big.”
My aunt Rhiannon looks the same. Her eyes are still blue. Her hair is still mousy brown. Her skin is still sun stained. “It's nice to see you again,” I tell her, resisting the urge to tack 'ma'am' on the end of it.
Aunt Rhiannon never took kindly to that.
“I'm Evita,” Evita says. “It's wonderful to meet you.”
Rhiannon smiles and shakes Evita's outstretched hand. Their hands look strange in contact with each other: Rhiannon's are cut up from weeds and stained with dirt, Evita's has manicured nails done in fuchsia. Evta yanks her hand away first.
“Good to meet you too,” Rhiannon says. “Well, it was wonderful of you to drive Noah here.”
Evita smiles and shakes her head. “It was nothing,” she tells my aunt.
The three hour drive was nearly silent. Evita smiled and laughed and talked, sometimes to me and sometimes to the radio. She fixed her hair in the mirror, over and over again, and now I can see the annoyance in her face when the wind messes it up again.
“We'll be back to check on you later in the month,” Evita tells me, wobbling over the gravel in her black high heels. “You'll be fine.” She waves when she gets into the sedan and then she's gone, peeling out of the little cul-de-sac and leaving me alone in front of that bright orange house.
Six in the morning, and Rhiannon isn't yet awake. I slip into my shoes and start down the stairs. They creak with age and I try to memorize which ones make so much noise, but they all do. I push through the unlocked door and out onto the front porch.
The spring rain has left everything soggy. I start down the path behind the houses at a dead run, leaping over puddles without hesitation. There are sounds other than the highway here. Birds. Animals. Out in the distance somewhere, human voices.
Later, sunflowers. Those are maintained in staggered, haphazard rows. Maybe maintained is a loose term.
“Hey!” calls a voice from behind me. “You! Running!”
I am running, but then I stop, turn. “Yeah?” Walking backwards, I'm face to face with a boy about my age. “Who're you?”
“Aren't you Rhiannon's nephew?” he asks. His eyes are wide and brown, examining me carefully. He has his hand wrapped around a shovel. “Noah?”
I nod. “Yeah.” I splash through a puddle and he laughs. I stop walking. “Who's asking.”
“I remember you used to come here every summer.” He has his hands planted on his slender hips. “My name is Zen. Like the philosophy. Zen Mizra Shirazi.” His hair is black and curls in all directions. There are sunflower petals strewn through the locks of it, a sharp yellow against the uniform black. “Keeper of sunflowers.” With an arched eyebrow, he throws his arms out wide and tilts back his head.
“That's nice.” I take another step back. “Um, I was running, so I'm going to go...”
“Oh, stay a while.” He picks a sunflower petal out of his hair and throws it up in the air, blowing it out of his face and into the damp wind. “It's not every day we get someone new around here.” His eyes, trained on me, are unusual. They aren't hollow. They just don't stop where they should.
I look away.
“I really have to go.” My skin is prickling in my stillness. The blood in my veins has slowed.
“I'll join you?” he offers.
“Um...if you can keep up.”
Zen takes his shoes off and throws them beside the road. “Okay,” he says, “try me.”
We take off running. The wind blows his hair back in thick ropes, brushing the gold petals into the sky. He seems unperturbed by my speed and keeps up, jumping sharp rocks and deep puddles. The day feels like it is asleep. The sun is barely up, and the air is still cold.
“So,” he breathes, “I heard you went to boarding school.”
“Military school.”
He wrinkles his nose. “With the yes-sir and the no-sir?” He shakes his head. “That sounds—” he leaps over a log, “—so soul crushing. I could never do it.” The path winds around a span of oak trees and firs. “So why are you living here?”
“My dad died.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
I'm not sure if I'm sorry or not.
There are fields at the end of the path. Dozens of them. Some have flowers, some have trees. I see squashes in the distance. There are tomatoes near my feet: round, red bulbs glistening with dew. Tired looking people in their bright tie-dye shirts are working the fields.
“The grow-op,” Zen says, when we've come to a halt. “I'm supposed to meet my mum. I'll catch you around, Noah.” He takes off, long legged and fast, down one of the overgrown rows of lemon trees.
I turn around and start down the path again.
“Military school, huh?” Rhiannon points at me with her fork. “See, that's the problem with people these days. Shipping our children off to be warriors when we already don't have enough peacemakers.”
She's a hippie. I'm eating hippie food from her garden for lunch. Nothing she's wearing is pressed: I don't even think she owns an iron. She slept in until ten thirty, which makes this an early lunch.
“I liked it,” I tell her. “It was very orderly.”
She rolls her eyes. “It's not healthy for you,” she tells me. “Being so orderly. Next you'll tell me that you don't like gardening. And don't, if you don't. It'll kill me.”
“We had a garden at Fort Sanders.”
Rhiannon takes another bite of her bright yellow curry. “Well. It'll be good for you to work in the fields,” she says. “Maybe you'll make friends. We're going to introduce you to the people that live around here after breakfast. There are a couple of kids your age.”
“I know. I ran into one earlier.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Which one?”
“Zen something. His name sounded really foreign after that.” I take a tentative bite of the food. Food really shouldn't be a colour like this. It reminds me of the sunflower fields.
“Zen Mirza Shirazi. The second part is Iranian." She nibbles on her pita bread. "He's your age. Didn't you two know each other?”
I shake my head. I'd remember someone like that. I wouldn't have stopped when he called my name, if I had known him.
“That's right. His mother moved here about four years ago.” She shrugs and gesticulates with the end of her spoon. “I think you two will be great friends.”
Taking another bite, I shake my head. “I don't really think so.”
Rhiannon shrugs. “Shame,” says she. “He's such a nice boy. Wash your plate when you're done.”
She gets up form the table and leaves me there, looking out the far window at the glowing day.
Hallo. Can has hippie commune?
I don't know if this will go anywhere. I'd really LOVE feedback, so reviews are super awesome.
