Poppies for Christmas
Page 1
Table of Contents
POPPIES FOR CHRISTMAS
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
POPPIES FOR CHRISTMAS
STACY RENÉE KEYWELL
SOUL MATE PUBLISHING
New York
POPPIES FOR CHRISTMAS
Copyright©2016
STACY RENÉE KEYWELL
Cover Design by Melody A. Pond
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Published in the United States of America by
Soul Mate Publishing
P.O. Box 24
Macedon, New York, 14502
ISBN: 978-1-68291-267-6
www.SoulMatePublishing.com
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
This book is dedicated to those special people in my life who are human beings, filled with flaws, yet still brave enough to stand up and face the world.
This book is dedicated to those special people in my life who need me to be brave and stand by their side. I will stand by your side, and provide nothing but love, love without labels.
This book is dedicated to anyone who has that special person in their life, or is that special person who needs brave love.
This book is for you, this book is for me, and this book is for them, because it’s easy to be brave with true love by your side.
This book is a celebration of love and life without labels.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my parents for being my biggest supporters, and always believing in me. You encourage me to push myself, and follow my dreams. To my sweetest angels, my two beautiful daughters. You are my biggest fans, and never stop bragging about your mother. I love you so much! A huge thanks to my husband. You keep me thinking positive, and never mind when my kooky Stacyness roams free. Finally, thank you so very much to Samantha and to Soul Mate Publishing for helping me share this special message with the world, and helping me shine a positive light on young adults in the ASD community who have a strong desire to date, find love, and live happily ever after.
Chapter 1
The Science of Baking
I read somewhere once that cooking is an art. It takes imagination and flare. But baking? Baking is a science. It takes exactitude and precision. It requires patience. It requires dedication. It requires love. A whole lot of love. And well . . . that’s what I’ve got . . . love . . . love for a girl, a special one, one who deserves dedication. So what do I choose to prove my love? I choose baking.
Lenn
Deep inside my tote, my hand grazed against my faithful sketchbook before I removed it. The metal spirals comforted my fingers as I dragged them across the row of sharp-edged rings. Firmly gripping the book, I flipped it open to a blank page near the middle. I smoothed out the slightly texturized, eggshell white page. I bent down and buried my nose in the crease, inhaling the faint lead pencil scent. It calmed me, readying me to add another chapter to my visual saga.
Spreading my tools around me, hard and soft pencils, a ruler, several firm erasers, and a small metal sharpener, I steadied my hand and cleared my mind, inviting in only the most blissful images of my fantasy. With a soft lead pencil, I constructed an oval blank for the face. Art classes definitely assisted in perfecting the technique, but dedication and talent trumped instruction.
I used the ruler to estimate the proper dimensions. I added eyes, a nose, some crazy-hot lips, all his beautiful features. I gave him expressive brows. I sketched his glossy dark brown hair, shaggy bangs flopping over to the side, covering his ear, exposing that sarcastic, twisted grin on his lips, the same way he looked when he joked around with his friends in the corner of the library during study hall.
A trusty eraser mopped up all of the stray, miscellaneous marks. I blew away a couple gummy shreds before I shaded in his taut jawline. I wiped up the last scattered pieces left behind on the page before I started on adding myself to the portrait. Duplicating the process, I gave myself a hipper, manga-esque look, allowing for a more whimsical likeness of myself.
Poppy and Kit sat at the same long, wooden table, on the opposite side of me. Kit swiped through the pages on her tablet, desperately trying to find the right page number, since she had neglected to tap the bookmark before closing out her chapter the previous night. Nervous oohs and aahs escaped her lips. Poppy, sitting with her legs crossed, jiggled her feet beneath her chair, shaking the table, creating a rattling earthquake under my artwork.
I shot a glare in her direction. “Would you please stop? The both of you! You are driving me crazy, and ruining my picture.”
Poppy and Kit stopped suddenly. They looked at each other, wide-eyed and innocent, two does in the midst of a meadow. Unaware! Clueless! Oblivious!
“I can’t think when you moan that way,” I snapped, addressing Kit. She squirmed underneath her oversized flannel shirt and baggy jeans.
“And, you,” I turned to Poppy. “You are going to smudge my drawing with all of that wild motion going on underneath the table. Can it!”
Their jaws dropped. They both stared at me, wordless.
“Please.” I hugged my journal protectively. Softening my voice, I turned to Poppy and asked her again. “Please?”
“Sorry,” they announced in simulcast, sighing, shrugging their shoulders, lost together in the great woods of their minds.
They looked back down at their own musings. I continued to draw.
In this picture, the two of us relaxed together on a chaise lounge, him with his large, bulbous headphones, and me with my skull and crossbones ear buds. Our eyes drifted in the opposite direction, lids almost closed, in a sleepy trance. My arm draped across his chest until our fingers entwined, intimately
. We zoned out to his simpatico beats.
Dare I say heaven? Total reverie? Dare I label it? Give it a title like Lost Together, or Technotransing it, or D-lightful?
I absolutely planned on scanning my image when I returned home, possibly even uploading it to his fan page, once I swallowed a dose of bravery and forced myself to take that leap of frightening faith. My mouth dried up like a petrified prune, and puckered at the thought of posting my reveries.
I stopped for a moment. I wet my lips, and placed my pencil in my mouth. I chewed on it, adding several new lumpy divots to the already choppy surface. Bits of wood flaked off the pencil in my mouth. They covered my tongue like sawdust. I brushed a couple yellow slivers off my lips.
I pondered my options. I wondered if I should post my pic on his official site for all to see, exposing my secret crush. Or, should I upload it on my own fan page, my silent homage to his genius? Should I post it anonymously, or create some sort of hip username, like Skullgrrl, Techbonz, or LennX? No, LennX would give it away, instantaneously. My pits moistened from the heat which blasted from the dusty ceiling fans.
I looked off into the distance, dreamily. Outside the library, the chipped green linoleum floor stretched out for miles. The lime colored classroom doors worked as mile markers down the expressway of higher learning. Some of the black room numbers hung on for dear life, while others had fallen off ages ago, making it difficult for a new student to navigate around the school.
My eyes landed on a ripped sheet of paper stuck to a pole in the corridor. It hung on for dear life by a sad, peeling piece of black duct tape with white musical notes. The rips ran up and down on either side, curling the paper slightly, ready to be torn off by some random, jerky kid. I could just barely make out the bold print words from here. The Hall.
“There. Finally. Phew!” Kit exhausted her breath in relief, breaking me away from my trance. “I found the page I was looking for. I thought I would have to restart this entire book all over again. Now, I can finish my report, and delete this dang thing once and for all. Thank goodness!”
Poppy smiled at her warmly. She patted Kit on the shoulder, weirdly maternal, yet filled with genuine affection. Fluttering heavily mascaraed lashes, Poppy added, “That’s so great, Kit. I’m so happy for you.”
Gosh! Poppy! She consistently painted her face with way, way, way, way too much makeup. I was surprised no one had ridiculed her for that yet, and changed her nickname to Clowny or Painty Poppy instead of other insultingly diminutive monikers. Grossed out, I looked away, ignoring the tarantulas that crawled up her lids.
Still slighted tempted to speak up, I burned to tell her that just because she hung out with the alleged ‘sophisticated crowd’ outside of school didn’t mean she had to bury her face under globs and blobs of gook to try to look older. Not wanting to offend my friend, I extinguished my yearning, held back my comments, put a lid on my boiling pot of hurtful oil to resume more important matters.
“Anyways, guys,” I redirected their attention back to me. “I wanted to show you my latest sketches, and get your opinion on some things.”
“Oh, positively perfect!” gushed Poppy, so gleefully that she sounded like she narrated some peppy children’s programing, or being totes sarcastic. But she wasn’t, she was being sincere. That’s just how she talked.
“Okay, sure,” added Kit, not quite as bubbly as her counterpart. She scratched her leg through a shredded, stringy hole in her pants.
I closed up my sketchpad. I took a deep breath. I reset back to the beginning of the book, so they could taste the flavor of my theme, get a feel for the big picture that I was trying to convey. I started to flip through the pages, going fast at first.
There he was, looking pensive. Then another sketch of him alone, playing his music, surrounded by turntables and a soundboard. Another one of him, looking into the distance, in a trance-like state, concentrating on his mixing.
As I flipped through the pages, I slowed down as images of me began to appear, sprouting up naturally, as if we belonged together on the same sheet of paper. There I was, listening to him spin, off to the side, in a crowd of people. Here I danced to his hypnotic tunes, arms swaying to the beat.
Following the first section of drawings, the images turned more intimate. The two of us, almost kissing, lips about to touch, so close you could barely fit a stray pencil mark, yet still not making physical contact. An image of him embracing me from behind with one arm, while his other hand stroked my face from my jawbone up to my cheek. He stood above me, our eyes locked, wicked with passion, meeting each other halfway as a rainbow poured from a white cloud over our heads, making our feelings for each other clear. A drawing of us, entangled on a loveseat, clothed in black, of course in an uncompromising position, our limbs twisted together in a pretzel shape, forming a heart. A sketch of the two of us, chest to chest, arms locked behind my back, lips poised, wearing sheepish grins, waiting to taste our first kiss. And, obviously, the current image, which I’d finished moments earlier. My heart pounded so furiously from this tour de force my ears throbbed.
Poppy’s cheeks reddened to a deep maroon, intensifying her already overly blushed visage. She averted her eyes in embarrassment. She looked away, quickly darting her eyes off to the side, to avoid my ‘offensive imagery’.
“Now, what’s wrong, Poppy?” I demanded, lashing out angrily.
“Is that you and Dexx?” Kit questioned, putting her fingertips on my drawing.
Uber-protective of my story, I swiftly pulled my book away to remove any possibilities of smudges left from the oil on her hands, or the risk of fingerprints ruining my drawings.
“Really . . . Kit? You know it is,” I answered, annoyed by her audacity.
She knew it was him. She knew how I felt.
“Have you actually even spoken to him, in person, IRL? In real life?” she challenged.
“Well . . . almost,” I mumbled. I was working my way up to talking to Dexx, but my body froze every time I got too near him.
“So, are you just, like, one of his fans?” Kit questioned.
“No! Absolutely not! I am more than a fan. Way, way, way, way more than a fan,” I huffed, slightly offended.
“Okay, prove it.”
“I will, don’t worry.”
“Okay. When?”
“Next weekend, when he plays at The Hall. You are both coming, right?”
“Oh!” Poppy responded in a tiny, faraway voice.
She still looked off to the side in case my ‘indecent’ pictures were still out in plain sight.
But, ‘Oh’ was not much of an answer from her, more like a clue that meant I would have to do a lot of pleading and convincing to pry her away from her prim plans.
“Next week,” I reinforced to Kit. “Definitely next week, at his gig, in between sets. I intend to approach him, so we can finally hit it off, together.”
“You are totally going to hit it off, IRL, and really mesh together. Just look at the deets in this pic,” Kit gushed, free of sarcasm, with surprising confidence.
Kit exuded the kind of confidence that came from a good friend. She smiled, took back the book, and flipped through the pages.
“You two have so much in common, such chemistry. It’s so obvious you two are perfect for each other. Like, your styles, they match. They totally complement each other. Sort of Harajuku meets Hipster. Plus, and I don’t have to tell you this, I love the way you guys look together. So supes hot.”
“Gee,” Poppy piped in, “your pictures are really quite risqué, and um, graphic?” Still flustered, she blushed profusely.
“It’s not like she is really doing those things, Poppy,” Kit interjected, her fingers springing up in air quotes. “Besides, you are the one with the ‘official’ boyfriend.”
“Yeah, you are dating an ‘older’ man. Y
ou should be used to things like this. You’ve probably already done stuff like this,” I emphasized. “You are the one with all of the ‘experience!’”
Poppy shook her head. She was never one for talking too much about herself, or providing any salacious details. She preferred to leave her image proper and polished.
Truthfully, neither of us had even ever met her ‘boyfriend.’ We’d only heard about Declan Davies in little bits, here and there. Most of his dealings and whereabouts were left a mystery, except for his extremely pronounced, and highly publicized digital footprint, not to mention his pervasive images in print.
I never understood exactly why Poppy didn’t constantly talk about Declan. If he had been my boyfriend, I would have bragged about him to the point of annoyance. Completely rubbed it in everyone’s face. But, instead, Poppy did the opposite. She preferred to chat about the minute details of life, which was even more annoying than barraging people with boastful tales.
Besides, I bet when no one was looking, Poppy and her man were all over each other. Why wouldn’t they be? He was four years older. He was gorgeous. And she, well, she was Poppy, the girl who attracted a rather chic crowd, people who were way, way, way, way more worldly than most of the shallow, closed-minded kids that attended this school.
That’s why I developed such a fascination with Dexx. I read all of his blogs, listened to every track he uploaded to his page, memorized every detail he revealed. He planned on spinning, traveling, and exploring the world. And, I was his biggest supporter, anxious to stand by his side, once he realized how alike we were. How perfect we would fit together.
“Hey, Lenn,” Kit tapped her finger on the table. “Earth to Lenn. Do you hear me?” Kit pulled me back from the inner recesses of my mind. “I’m totally in on that ‘Hall’ thing. I bet Poppy’s up for dancing too. Aren’t ya, Poppy?”