He nodded to himself in the mirror. Yes, if he had to guess, he would put money on that being the reason. He sighed again as he opened the door and quickly ducked down the hall and back into his room. He shook his head, muttering to himself as he dug through his dresser and then his closet to find clothes. He decided to go casual today with jeans and a t-shirt.
Why were parents always so complicated? Why couldn’t they understand what kids his age were going through? They went through it themselves, he figured, so why not be more understanding?
The logic or illogic of that argument was ignored as he finished getting dressed and then steeling himself for heading out into the rest of the house. Unless his mother had decided to suddenly go out (and he had not heard the car starting or driving away) then he was going to have to face her when he made his own breakfast. He had already decided that cereal was the way to go this morning.
He walked down the hall. In his mind he was already going over all of the possible things his mother might say and was trying to come up with clever ways to counter them. He headed into the kitchen and grabbed the box of cereal, a bowl, and a spoon, poured the cereal, added milk before heading into the living room.
His mother was sitting on the couch. In front of her was a tray table that she used when she wanted to eat while watching TV. She was in her pajamas and a white bathrobe. Her hair was flat against her back and neck and sticking up in a few places. Jimmy noticed, with a stabbing pang of guilt, that her eyes appeared red-rimmed. She turned her head to look at him, her head turning slowly as if on rusty hinges. She did not smile and she said nothing, just seemed to register that he was there, and then turned her head on those same rusty hinges back towards the television.
Jimmy sat down in an easy chair across the room from her, lifted the bowl to his chin and spooned some of the cereal into his mouth. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She appeared to be staring at the television without really seeing it.
“Good morning,” he said quietly and cautiously.
“Mmm,” his mother said.
Jimmy frowned. He turned his concentration on to eating his cereal for a moment. He concentrated on moving the spoon around the bowl, getting the perfect amount of cereal and milk, and then carefully getting it to his mouth without spilling. It was amazing, he found, how fascinating you could find the most mundane things when you knew your mother was furious at you.
“So did you sleep out here all night?” he asked around a mouth filled with cornflakes.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“I see,” Jimmy whispered.
Spoon into bowl, spoon around bowl, spoon up to mouth and chew. Swallow. Repeat.
“Why?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Not sure at this point. Doesn’t seem like it matters anymore.”
Jimmy sighed. The dam was breaking. He could feel it. The question he had was why was he chipping away at it? He knew the answer, though. If he didn’t chip away, his mother would repress her feelings and then, suddenly, when Jimmy least expected it, that pressure would explode, and it would explode in grand fashion, possibly in a public place. It was best to try and cause a few controlled avalanches to save the rest of the snow lodge, in other words.
“Mom,” Jimmy said, “I love you. I still respect you. I know you think that because I went out to see Sapphire last night you think I don’t, but that’s not true. I just think that, with this particular thing, you should let me decide. Why are you still overreacting so much to all of this? I don’t understand it. It’s not like you.”
“What does it matter?” his mother said. “You say you respect me, but then you go out and spend the entire night outside with some strange girl after I strictly forbid you not to. You say you listen to me, and when I talk to you about this whole incident and how strange it is, you just shrug it off like it’s nothing. You aren’t like this, Jimmy. You’ve always been a good boy and listened to me, without question. Suddenly you aren’t the same boy I sent to that dance the other night. You’re somebody different and I don’t understand it. You have to trust me, Jimmy, about this. I know things that you don’t.”
She turned away from the television to stare at Jimmy. The intensity in her eyes surprised Jimmy, and he actually recoiled a bit.
“What did you two do last night?”
Jimmy stammered. “W-we met down by the river. We went for a walk and talked. That’s it.”
“You walked along that filthy river?” his mother asked with incredulity. “That filthy river that is really nothing more than run-off water and God knows what else? Jesus, Jimmy, what kind of a date is that? What kind of girl would actually want to do that?”
“Stop it,” Jimmy said. “What is wrong with you? Look, I asked her about her background. She said that there were things about her life that she just couldn’t explain to me right now.”
“And what sense does that make? None! What more do you need to prove to you that this girl is bad news,” his mother said. Her voice was rising. Jimmy could sense the outright hysteria that was brewing beneath her exterior. The avalanche was going to happen and his attempts to diffuse it were not working. “Jimmy, this is not a girl that you should be hanging out with. What are you doing all night with this girl? Jimmy, you’re a smart boy—why can’t you see that this whole thing seems like some kind of scam? Maybe those kids that you always say are picking on you put this girl up to this for some reason. At the very least, any girl who meets young boys in the middle of the night, at the side of the road, and walks along a poisoned river is not a good girl. You’re meant for better things than this. You’re a good boy who comes home at night and doesn’t sneak out when his mother has told him to stay home. You’re smart and you’re the kind of kid that is going to college and getting away from this. You are not the kind who stays out all night with trashy girls!”
“I said stop it!” Jimmy yelled. He stood up and stormed into the kitchen pouring the remaining bits of his cereal into the sink. He stood there and watched the fingers of milk from the bowl run across the bottom of the sink and into the drain. “Do you have any idea of how lonely I am?”
He heard nothing from the living room for a time. Then, after what seemed like half an hour but was probably just a few seconds, he heard the sound of his mother getting to her feet and shuffling into the kitchen. He kept his hands on the counter, and stared down into the sink.
“Do you know what it’s like to never have any of the girls look at you?” he said. “To never be asked out or go on a date? Do you know what it’s like to have feelings for girls and know, deep in your heart, that they would never, not in a million years, give you the time of day? To watch other people meet and fall in love and date and do all of the things you wish you could do?”
He finally stood up straight and turned to face his mother. She stood near the kitchen doorway. Her features had softened somewhat, but there was still anger burning in her eyes.
“It’s fine to be smart and have a goal of going to college,” he said, “but at what cost? Do I have to give up everything to make that happen? Do I have to be picked on and beat up and tortured by bullies and ignored by girls who all think that I’m a load of garbage? Is that what you want, so that you can brag to your friends and family that you have a son that went to college?”
With those words, the anger disappeared and was replaced by outright hurt. He could see the moment in her face when his words went from pleading to stinging, and it was as if he struck her across the face.
“How can you say those things to me?” she whispered. “Look what she’s already turning you into. Can’t you see what this is? Can’t you see that this girl just wants to disrupt your entire life? She’s already doing it. She’s bad news, Jimmy. Those same people you say bully you could have easily put this girl up to doing this just to humiliate you.”
She walked forward. The hurt was still evident on her face. Jimmy backed up until the cool enamel of the fridge was against his back.
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��You’ll be out of this school before too long,” she said. “You’ll finally bloom into the young man I know you are destined to be. All of this awkwardness that you have now will vanish, and you’ll head off to college confident and handsome. Whole new worlds will open up for you there, Jimmy. You have to trust me on this. You’ll meet people from all over the country and maybe all over the world. You’ll find the right girl and you’ll experience things that are nothing like this nonsense you’ve been dabbling in right now. Trust me.”
“Trust you?” he asked. “You ask me to continue to be a freak when Sapphire makes me feel like you just described. Only she makes me feel like that right now, while you say I’ll somehow turn into that down the road somewhere. What if I don’t, Mom? Then what happens to me? Do I go on to college and just start over there being as awkward and miserable as I am here? Do I spend the rest of my life alone?”
His mother approached him again, extending her hand. He realized she intended to touch him, perhaps to offer comfort, and he decided that it was the last thing he wanted. He stepped back. She lowered her hand and her eyes.
“Everything seems like the end of the world to you now,” she said. “That’s how it is at your age. I’m telling you that things change. Nothing that you experience now will be the same in just a few years.”
“You never went through this,” Jimmy said. “From what I remember, you were a popular girl in school. You and Dad both were popular. And you didn’t go to college. How am I supposed to trust anything you say right now when you don’t know the first thing about what I’m going through?”
A tear escaped his mother’s eye. She seemed to sink into herself, and leaned against the kitchen counter.
“Do what you want,” she said tiredly. “Do what you want and throw everything away on this nonsense, then. I guess you’re so grown up now that you don’t need to listen to your mother.”
Jimmy felt as if he should say something else. He opened his mouth and then closed it and then did it again, trying to find the words. This had not gone the way he had hoped. He had wanted to make things better and to make her see. Instead, the gulf between them seemed wider than ever. How had it gotten there in the first place? How had things gotten so bad and why did his mother continue to act this way? Nothing made sense to him right now, from why Sapphire insisted on being beside a bridge, or walking beside a muddy river, to why his mother was acting the way she was or why his best friend suddenly seemed to hate him.
“I’m going to go see George,” he said quietly.
He turned and walked out of the kitchen. He did not turn back, and she said nothing else. He walked through the garage door and slammed it shut behind him.
In the garage, Jimmy angrily punched the wall. This was immediately followed by intense pain in his hand, and he cursed himself for being so stupid. He sighed and grabbed his bicycle, rolled it out of the garage and sat on it for a time not going anywhere. He looked up into the crystal blue sky. It wasn’t quite as intense as a sapphire, but it was blue enough to remind him of her. He smiled to himself and then shook his head because everything seemed to remind him of her. What would she say if she knew about the argument that he had just had with his mother? She would probably scold Jimmy.
The sky was beautiful and the air warm. There was a steady breeze, and it blew across the field across the street from Jimmy’s home. The trees beyond that rustled in the wind. Somewhere far above him, he could hear the roar of a jet engine. When he looked up, he could see the contrail from the plane scrawling across the blue sky. It amazed him that the engines were loud enough—and the world was currently quiet enough—that he could hear the soft sound of the engine. How far up is that plane? he wondered. What would it be it like to fly at forty thousand feet?
He started to pedal. He was soon on the road, and his mind did what it always did when he was riding his bike. His brain sometimes seemed the most active and willing to think about things during the time when he should have been paying the most attention. As the cars whizzed past him at speeds that would probably seem suicidal for people who had not grown up in the area, he let his mind drift.
He thought about her eyes and the words she had said the night before. Everything that he experienced with Sapphire was now so surreal and strange in his imagination, the way dreams sometimes felt, no matter how vivid they were at the time. It was as if Sapphire herself was surrounded by a glow. Even the touch of her hand seemed like something out of a half-remembered dream.
He reached the bridge where they met the night before and slowed to a stop. Just as he did, a semi truck rushed past, leaving a small hurricane of wind and dust in its wake. Jimmy barely noticed. He paused and looked over the bridge, and he gasped at what he saw.
The place looked nothing like what he recalled from the night before. The water was low and nearly stagnant and the smell from it wafted all the way up to where he stood. He could see dead fish floating in the water, and garbage and debris, as well. The banks of the river looked like mud rather than sand, and the weeds and overgrowth wound all the way down the embankment and nearly into the water. It would have been nearly impossible for anyone to walk along that bank without tripping and falling down.
Jimmy wrinkled his brow. He looked around and checked to make sure that he was in the right spot. Indeed, he was. Overhead the sun beat down, heating the day. He looked back down over the bridge. Again, it was more like a swamp than a romantic river.
Jimmy moved his bike to a spot just below the surface of the bridge. Another car came roaring past, ruffling his hair and making his nose itch from the dust. He slowly climbed down the embankment. The brush and plant life that comprised the hill was thick. How had he managed to climb down this thing last night with Sapphire in tow?
He reached the bottom and stood in the mud. His shoes began to sink into the muck. He grimaced and lifted his foot. The mud made a thick sucking noise like a living thing when he removed it. He looked around and saw that it stretched out in all directions. When there wasn’t mud there were trees and bushes. But the trees and bushes looked strange and twisted, as if they had been mutated. Nothing about the spot was in the least bit romantic. Finally, killing the last bit of hope he had that the previous night had happened outside of his imagination, there were the bugs.
They were small and barely noticeable, but they buzzed around his ears and flew into his eyes. Jimmy waved his hands, trying to chase them away, but they just returned. He felt them trying to fly up his nose. He blew through his nose and out his mouth. He saw them land on his arms, tiny black dots like pepper, and then fly away.
Jimmy could stand it for about four seconds and then it was too much. It was like his head was completely covered in a cloud of the tiny insects. He could hear their wings buzzing in his ear like tiny dive-bombers. He waved his hands furiously and then climbed back up the embankment to the road. He grabbed his bike and situated it back on the road. He slapped at his face, hands, arms, and head to get rid of the sensation of bugs all over him. Then he shook his head and spared one more glance down toward the river. It was still a swamp.
More puzzled than ever, he started pedaling. He shook his head again. What the hell had happened last night? Had anything happened? Had he imagined it all? He hoped he could talk to George about it when he got to his house.
The rest of the ride was uneventful, at least to the outside world; internally, Jimmy was still raging and debating. He had, in his estimation, gone over every moment of his date with Sapphire. Nothing about it made any sense in the light of day. He had this very sad, sinking feeling that his mother and George were right Sapphire was either an elaborate joke with a punch line he could not fathom, or he had completely lost his mind and was suffering from vivid hallucinations.
George’s family was not any better off than Jimmy’s. However, George’s house was in a slightly better part of the neighborhood than where Jimmy and his mother lived. Soon Jimmy was riding across smooth streets an and well-groomed lawns and bushes. Ge
orge’s family had inherited this house from his grandfather when he had died. The entire thing was paid for. How they afforded the property taxes and utilities Jimmy had no idea, and he didn’t ask.
He pulled up George’s driveway. George was in the backyard washing his car, which perched at the end of the driveway which extended well into the back of the house. He saw Jimmy and then turned back to the washing. Great, Jimmy thought to himself, this is probably going to go as well as the conversation between my mother and me.
“Hey, George,” he said as he pulled to a stop near the wall of the house. He leaned his bike up against wall and walked over to where George was currently manning a hose.
“Hello,” George said.
What followed was what felt like hours of tortured silence. In fact, it was probably just a few seconds.
“You were right,” Jimmy said quietly.
George looked sideways at him and then, very dramatically, turned off the hose and leaned against his car.
“What did you just say?” he asked.
“Don’t make this a bigger deal than it is,” Jimmy said.
“Give me a break,” George said. “You were the one who was all dramatic about this. I just want you to repeat what you said.”
“I said that you were right,” he repeated. “Look, that doesn’t mean I’m not seeing her again, but it does mean that even I have to acknowledge that everything about her and this whole situation has been weird.”
“And you are prepared to be murdered tomorrow at school?” George said.
Jimmy shrugged. “I may at least put up a fight.”
George smiled. “Well, we’ll see about that. So tell me what the hell you did last night and what brought you around to sanity now?”
Sapphire: A Paranormal Romance Page 7
