Daring Hearts: Fearless Fourteen Boxed Set

by Box Set

  I wasn’t lazy when it came to drawing—then again I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. Sketching would wake me from a dead slumber. I could spend hours and hours on end sketching until my hands were covered with black smudges and my stomach was begging me to give it what it craved. Of late, my focus, or their focus, whoever they were, had been landscapes, but I could draw anything—anytime. In fact, it was more like an obsession.

  If by obsession, I meant raw compelling voices telling me what to draw.

  “What’s the problem, Fasta? Don’t you agree with the four D’s?” She pointed to the poster on the wall. It had her picture on it, pointing to the four D’s of the graduate program at Dosher High School: Drive, Determination, Dedication, and Demand. It looked like she had it made and laminated at Office Depot. There was no way an actual poster company sold and distributed those things.

  I hated the way she said my name. I hated my name in general, but the way she pronounced it, it sounded like the street version of Faster. Once we went on a field trip to The Aquarium of the Americas as freshman. I’d been scribbling in my notebook, waiting for the rest of the students to file into the bus. It wasn’t like I could control it. I had to spend every waking moment I could getting the images out of my head and still they would come. Not paying attention, I almost missed the bus. She called out to me, “Come on, Fasta!” I didn’t know if she meant my name or to move in more of a hurry. It was nothing compared to the constant jeering form the other kids at school because of my name.

  I stared at the poster a moment longer. It was really the epitome of ridiculous.

  “I agree with them Ms. Alice.” She insisted on us calling her by her first name. “But I just don’t have them.”

  “Which one?” she stood and smiled at the picture of herself.

  “All of them.” I rolled my eyes and returned to my book. My fingers rubbed the corners of the worn pages, itching to draw—to get the images out of my head.

  “I think a good deal of time in detention would cure you lack of motivation.”

  That got my nose out of the book. “What are you going to write on the slip, ‘doesn’t agree with my poster’?”

  That was probably pushing my luck one tick past her limit. In fact, I knew it was since the tips of her rounded ears emblazoned with anger. For the tiniest of moments, she closed her glamour eye-lined eyes and tucked an invisible stray hair behind her ears. I’d seen the trilogy before—red ears, closed eyes, hair tuck. I was about to be on the receiving end of a week’s worth of detention.

  “Maybe three days in detention will give you ample time to think about your future and about your attitude towards those who are trying desperately to help you.”

  Since when was poster pointing considered desperate helping? I shrugged at her—it would afford me more time to draw—which would, in turn, afford me a little more sleep. I slammed my book into my bag at the sound of the bell, which interrupted her extended speech on how much she was attempting to help me have a future.

  I had a future whether I planned it or not, lady.

  I just knew it wouldn’t be anything worth having.

  Walking down the hall with my bag on my shoulder and a crisp detention slip in my hand, I went to my locker. I got out my Calculus book and in its place put my English text. I wished my school was one of those high tech schools that handed out iPads with the textbooks already downloaded. My textbooks weighed more than me.

  “Oh baby, Fasta, Fasta!” Rick Elkins hollered my way as he passed with the other members of the football team, dry humping the air as they walked. Even the air was offended by him. Slamming my locker door, I bit into my top lip in a great effort not to react. Reacting would only fuel them on. That comment was the least of the jeers I received at school. I’d never claimed to be innocent. I’d given them a good deal of fueling on. Plus, I was always spacing out. The images were always there. They always danced in the back of my consciousness. I caught a glance of myself in the bathroom mirror on the back of the girls’ bathroom door as someone came out of it. Maybe if I didn’t give them so much kindling to begin with, the fire would never start.

  I straightened my V-necked white t-shirt and looked down at my Chucks, barely visible beneath the bells of my too-long jeans. I dressed like a boy. I wore what was comfortable. My hair was kept in a messy nest on top of my head at all times. More than once, by good natured foster parents, I’d been told my blond tresses were too pretty to be kept up, but I always disagreed.

  The desire to be ultra-feminine had never been in me—at least not at school.

  My sneakers squeaked as I entered the newly waxed library, after school, it was called detention. I always wondered why our school library was the only one I knew of that didn’t have carpeted floors. Carpeted floors would make more sense, especially since there were people like me around with loud shoes.

  I handed the librarian my slip. She read the note from Mrs. Alice. She curtailed a smile by curling her lips between her teeth. Ticking her head in the direction of the tables, she wadded the slip up and threw it in the trash. That was librarian speak for, today is your only day, regardless of what that stupid paper says. I sat a table in the very back where the sunlight shone directly onto the table through one of the last non-cracked windows in the whole school. It was perfect for drawing.

  And I needed to draw. The images were flitting through my mind at a pace even I couldn’t keep up with, even though I’d been plagued with them since I was a toddler. The most prominent image was always the boy—always the boy with the deep brown hair and the killer green eyes that bore into me as though they were drills instead of a fleeting picture. The images were always so real to me. It was more than just a one dimensional. I could feel his warm, calloused hands beneath my fingertips. If I closed my eyes, I could smell him, the perfect mix of male and pine trees.

  He always made my stomach tighten.

  He made everything pull taut.

  He made my brain mush.

  The worst part was—I didn’t even know who in the hell he was.

  This was more than a lame obsession with art. It always had been.

  I was an automatic artist—but a more tempered sort. I wasn’t the kind of psychic artist who had no control over when and where the drawings came from. I could hold them in until I was ready for them—or at least in far distance from my peers. I had enough to deal with without them knowing about the drawing. Most of my foster parents thought I was just a defiant child—fixated on having things my own way. Two years ago, when I’d been settled with the Nelsons, I realized my luck. They were hippies of the contemporary kind. They believed in anything that was the teensiest bit spiritual and maintained a live and let live attitude.

  Coming out to them was a breeze. I’d shared what I could do only three weeks after I’d moved in. Though, it didn’t help my reputation being known as the hippies’ daughter. And the only advice Moira, my foster mother, offered me, was to kill them with kindness and hugs.

  That would mean actually touching them and—no.

  The entire time I thought over these things, my right hand swished and stroked over the opened sketch pad. Moira made monthly trips to the art store with me in tow, buying large, heavy sketch pads for use at home and smaller, more compact ones for toting around at school. She never mussed or fussed about the process. It had become as habit as buying groceries.

  I grinned at the picture that had taken shape under my unwillingly skillful hand. I had no clue where most of my drawings came from, but this one in particular was weird. He was there, the boy with no name, and yet he was different, as though he was from another time. He stood in front of a hearth, enormous, and made of stones. Smoke rose from the cauldron, the fire danced, though the drawing was still life. It was perfect. The thing was, it wasn’t really me. I mean, it was my hand and my fingers, but the drawings drew themselves. The sketches I attempted on my own were never quite as grand.

  The images were given to me—by whom or by
what, I had no idea.

  I’d never asked either.

  The only question I ever asked was, ‘Who is he?’

  A dinging sound blasted from the front of the library. The librarian rang the bell signaling my sentence was finished. I was relieved to find that my gift had allowed my time in detention to pass like a breeze.

  By the time I got to my Bronco, the parking lot of the high school was mostly empty. I got in, started her up and began to take off when I noticed something under one of the windshield wipers. A cream piece of tissue paper fluttered about in the wind. No, it was a handkerchief. In a huff, I got out and ripped the nuisance from its holding cell. Tossing it into the passenger’s seat, I shifted into gear and made my way home.

  My foster parents were both authors. They kept odd hours and often napped throughout the day instead of getting a solid stint of true sleep. It fit my lifestyle well, since some nights, my drawing kept me up at my desk, looking out of the window of our shared office. I’d never forget the weekend after we discussed my gift. I’d woken up that Saturday morning to a special breakfast followed by the revealing of a desk, a drafting table, complete with its own lamp, sandwiched between their own working desks.

  It was the first time I didn’t feel like a freak.

  Moira and Ren, his real name was Lawrence, didn’t care for school. They’d even attempted to homeschool me at one point, having done extensive research on un-schooling, but the system wouldn’t let them do it. Technically, I still belonged to the system. Only for three more weeks, and then my eighteenth birthday would set me free of being another record in their file cabinets.

  “My darling girl, you are home.” Moira greeted me through an open window as I walked through the garden towards the side door.

  Her voice was elven in nature. Even when she was perturbed, she kept it in check, never letting an intonation betray her. After going in and closing the door behind me, I hooked my bag on the back of a kitchen chair and went to claim a bottle of cranberry juice and grab a tiny bag of pre-sliced apples from the fridge.

  “How was school?” she asked cheerfully. It felt bad to tell her how horrible school was when she was this chipper.

  “It was okay. I got some good drawing time in.”

  “Hmmm…that means you got detention. For your moxie, no doubt. Schools don’t understand—sheep didn’t build empires or change society.” She patted my shoulder. “Women with moxie did.”

  “I like sheep,” I taunted her.

  “See? Moxie! Guess what? I have a surprise tonight. You’re never going to guess. But try anyway.”

  “What,” I put my juice and apples down excited about a surprise. I wouldn’t guess at all. It would ruin it. I loved surprises. I felt like I’d lived a thousand lives through my drawings, so surprises were life’s way of reminding me that I didn’t know everything.

  “JoAnna has opened a palm reading, future telling shop at the flea market. She’s having a grand opening tonight and we are going to be there.”

  I let my head bob and slumped against the refrigerator while feigning snoring sounds.

  “Oh, you naughty girl. It won’t be boring. Trust me. Maybe she can tell you your future—your love future.” She drug out the ‘o’ on love.

  “Fine. But if she sees anything other than a picture of me and Dave Franco, I’m out.”

  That threw her into a fit of laughter. “Okay, Mrs. Franco. We will leave at seven and can we manage a dress—for me?”

  “You’re pushing your luck, woman.” Ren entered the kitchen with an empty coffee cup, looking for a refill.

  “He’s right. But, just for you, I will wear a dress. Anyway, it’s too humid at night for jeans.”

  My submission to her request fell on deaf ears. She and Ren were caught up in the beginnings of a make-out fest. I could already tell. They could turn anything into an innuendo. They did that a lot—spur of the moment making out. I drummed it up to Moira writing Viking romances. Maybe it was all that herbal tea.

  “Oh, I’ll fill up your coffee cup alright,” she cooed at him.

  Ick.

  By the time I got to my room, a thousand worries were barreling through my mind. Ms. Alice’s words and determination on my future were unsettling, despite her execution. The thing about my future was—I didn’t have one. I could barely get through school without having to take a break and draw whatever the spirits or whoever it was that told me to draw. I spent lunch breaks, recess breaks, study hall and every moment in between sneaking in drawing time. I even skipped classes to squat on toilets in the girls’ bathroom to draw. Some days were better than others. I’d run up my allotment of unexcused absences in my first semester alone. I hardly ever slept well—I was constantly preoccupied with the images.

  Sometimes I hated them.

  Okay, a lot of the time I hated my ‘gift’ as Moira called it.

  Most of the time they consumed me—though I would never admit that to another soul. Even then, looking around my room that resembled a post-hurricane disaster and piles of homework and studying to complete, the only thing I could even consider was trotting back downstairs to my desk and letting it all out.

  So that’s what I did.

  As I sat at the maple desk set to the incline that best suited me, I growled at the image presenting itself the loudest. It was an angry man with long hair cut close shaven on the sides. The scowl that marred his brow, the wrinkles above his head, and even his downturned mouth shouted his level of anger at me. The charcoal skirted along the paper. It detailed his jaw that seemed to be hand carved by a higher power. My hand slowed as it began the strokes building his eyes. They were the only feature present that didn’t scream detest. They sucked me in, telling me of sadness and lonely thoughts. Soon, I was finished and my hands ripped the page from the innocent sketch book, and unceremoniously passed the page to the letter box where finished drawings were kept and moved on to the next one, a lonely cabin in the woods with a girl hanging by a noose from a nearby Cypress tree.

  It was him—the boy I’d been drawing since I was a child. My then foster mother thought my first drawing was of dusk on the bayou.

  When in fact, it was him, his face camouflaged into the branches of the trees and the hanging moss.

  It was always him—in fact, I’d never drawn a boy that wasn’t him.

  I continued to shuffle through the other papers to put that particular picture back on the top of the stack. His eyes penetrated me—called me where I sat and demanded I pay attention.

  Even after I’d drawn him, the urge never ceased.

  Some drawings were better than others. Another reason I hid my drawings from others and never ever took an art class. I’d be expelled for some of the things I was compelled to draw.

  You don’t want to know.

  Time passed and before long a hand patted my shoulder, halting my drawing hand and breaking me free of what I’d named the trance.

  “It’s six-thirty, Fasta. Time to get ready, if you’re going.”

  “Run, Fasta, run! There’s still time!” Ren fell to his knees, faking a Scottish accent.

  “You’re nuts, Ren. Get up, you goof.” Moira said, offering him a hand.

  There was never a dull moment, even without my madness.

  I never understood why these two would choose to take in a kid. They weren’t like some couples who’d decided to take in a stray because they needed a feel-good project or had gotten bored. Life was never boring around here. They never made me feel like the third wheel, but that’s what I was.

  I swept past them, going up to my room to change. Moira had given me a purple tie-dye maxi dress for Christmas with crochet straps and a V-shaped neckline. I slipped it on and then pulled the matching strappy sandals on afterwards.

  I could’ve passed for her daughter.

  The dress felt a little too—open—to be comfortable, but I didn’t want to disappoint.

  “Here, let me braid it.” My almost mother offered from the doorway. She came t
o my right side and fumbled with my hair until it contained some tiny braids around the crown of my head that all met in a conjoining braid over my shoulder.

  “Thank you,” I said, grabbing my white cross-body purse. I didn’t own make-up.

  “We should stop for something to eat on the way. You missed dinner again. I tried to call for you, but you were in it deep this time.”

  She talked about it normally, like I’d been deep into a book or deep in thought about my ever tardy Calculus homework.

  But I knew it wasn’t normal. And despite Moira and Ren’s fervent attempts to make me feel at home at their house—it felt like my corners were still rubbing against the circular edges around me. I fit, but it wasn’t a secure fit. There were still holes that made me feel empty.

  There was something missing from me.

  A piece dislodged.

  A door unhinged.

  A bone out of place.

  “Yeah, let’s stop and get a Big Mac,” I tested her.

  She gagged, noiselessly and with the motion I had my answer. No meat for Fasta.

  * * *

  The Flea Market wasn’t what I expected at all. Not naïve enough to expect actual fleas, I had expected mildewed vintage odors and older women over-prepared with battery operated calculators, reading their fabric covered smut novels while they waited for customers to be baited by one of their treasures.

  Instead I found Cirque du Soleil meets the most upscale swap meet ever. The place was darkened a bit and colored lights flooded the place making it look like laser beams shot from ceiling to floor. Gauzy scarves of every color imaginable floated, tethered here and there across the room. It was gypsy meets wonderland. I’d officially fallen down the hole.

  “I’m going to browse,” I whispered to Moira.

  “Okay, but be at the booth in the far corner at seven. You only have a few minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  I perused the shops from the center walkway. There was no need to go in and get interested in something when I was on a short leash. One booth specialized in Reggae items. The t-shirts boasted Bob and Ziggy Marley with red, green and yellow everything imaginable. Another booth seemed to be a glorified garage sale, a hodge-podge of items, none of which anyone would generally be looking for. One older man in a booth lined with creepy, Victorian dolls, was particularly aggressive—asking me what kind of little girl didn’t like dolls after I turned down his initial invitation to shop there.