irl
by
Maxwell Coffie
Copyright 2013 Maxwell Coffie
Table of Contents
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
Epilogue
About the author
Special Thanks
Special thanks to the lovely Afua Sika, my editor. Also, thanks to Jamone22, who designed the cover page for this digital edition.
I.
I was thirteen when I first met Her.
She was standing in the yard in front of my house, staring up the old gnarly oak. Dark skin. Blond hair, styled into a very precise bowl-cut. She looked about my height. It was the middle of October, and it must have been nippy out. Yet, her tiny frame was draped in nothing more than a thin, translucent nightgown.
I had caught sight of her through the kitchen window. It was six twenty am on a Saturday, and I was pouring myself a bowl of cereal. I threw a wistful look back at the living room. The Dexter’s Lab marathon started in ten minutes.
I put down my cereal bowl, grabbed my crutches, and went outside.
I regretted my decision as soon as I opened the door. The air was cold, and I wished I’d thought to bring my jacket with me. I crunched through the fallen leaves as I made my way over to the girl. I assumed she could hear me coming. She didn’t turn.
As I stood next to her, I noticed that she was barefoot. Chocolate feet, amongst grades of copper and pumpkin colored leaves. It was…aesthetic.
She noticed me looking, and curled her toes.
“Good morning,” I said.
She looked at me; her grey eyes looked into me. There was an odd sort of white pebble, smack in the middle of her broad forehead. I also noticed for the first time that she was wearing a silver circlet around her neck.
She narrowed her eyes at me, and returned to staring up the tree.
“Do you live around here? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before,” I said.
She opened her mouth, as if about to say something. She settled for pointing.
“Did your cat get stuck?” I asked. I tried to see if I could spot any felines between the branches. Nothing.
She gave me a look.
“What?” I laughed. “You want me to climb up and check?” I expected her to remark on my disability…or at least, to stare at the withered excuse I had for a left foot. I was wearing flip-flops so she could see my feet if she bothered to look.
She just stared into my face.
“I can’t climb,” I said, in case she still hadn’t put the pieces together.
She cocked her head at me.
I was incredulous. “I am not going to climb this tree.”
She stared.
I looked up again at the tree, and mumbled an uncertain, “Okay.”
I dropped my crutches and hopped over to the lowest branch. Then, I proceeded with my attempt to scale the oak. I grunted and panted a lot, as I climbed, relying on my upper body strength. I surprised myself when I reached the highest branches. I secretly hoped that she was impressed. But she seemed determined to stay silent, even when I climbed upon the topmost branch and sat on it.
“There’s nothing here,” I yelled down to her.
She cocked her head. Still, she said nothing.
I swung my feet in a very ‘hm, what shall we do now’ sort of way as I thought of what to do next. After a few awkward minutes had passed, I finally sighed and prepared to climb back down.
That was when I felt something fuzzy brush up against my leg. I yelped, lurched backwards, and lost my balance.
I hit the ground hard. Hard enough to break bones. But after a flash of darkness, I opened my eyes to find that, save for a strange tingling sensation in my left leg, I was fine.
The girl was standing over me, and there was a mound of snow-white fur in her arms. The mound had red beady eyes. She was hugging it pretty tightly.
“Th-that’s your cat?” I panted.
It was the strangest cat I had ever seen. There was so much hair, I couldn’t make out any ears. Or mouth. Or nose. Or legs. Or tail. I assumed it was an exotic breed of some sort.
“I would not call it a cat,” she said, her first words alarming me a bit.
Her voice was soft, and echoing. It also seemed a little out of sync with the way her lips moved.
I sat up. “What would you call it then?”
“Obi. For that is her name.” She threw a glance back at my house and asked, “Is this your home?”
“Yeah,” I said, wanting to ask her why she talked funny.
“Could I trouble you for a medium-sized receptacle?”
I furrowed my brow. “You mean, like a bucket?”
“Filled with water,” she added.
“Sure, I can do that. Could you hand me my crutches please?”
She was kind enough to oblige. As I led her to the old barn, I said, “My name is Peter. What’s your name?”
“Meow,” I heard her say.
I raised my brows. “Like a cat?”
“What is like a cat?”
“Your name.”
“My name is a breed of cat?”
“No,” I said, “I mean, come on, don’t you hear it? Meow? Like what cats say?”
The girl sounded confused. “Terran cats say Mi-Yao?”
I frowned. “Mi-Yao?”
“Yes?”
“No, no. I thought your name was like the sound cats make. But it’s two words, right? Like Chinese or something. You don’t look Chinese though.”
“You have a curious obsession with cats.”
“No, I don’t. I just thought—“ I sighed. “Never mind. You have a weird name is all.”
“Is it?” She cocked her head. “Yet, you are named after the carnivorous mollusks of Wrar.” And she blinked a dozen times in a row.
We got a metal bucket from the barn and went around it to the garden tap. Mi-Yao watched as the bucket started to fill up with water.
I stared at the creature in her arms. It was writhing.
“Why is it trying so hard to get away from you?” I asked.
Her eyes widened. “I tried to drown it a total of three times. The third time it got away.”
I stared at her, aghast. “Wait, is that why we’re getting all this water?”
Back to narrow eyes. “I jest.”
“Really?” I was disgusted. “That’s not funny. You’re not supposed to be mean to animals.”
“I am not mean to Obi,” she said, petting the creature. “Am I, Obi?”
The fur ball writhed.
“She needs a bath but the pressure washer in my pod is broken,” she said.
Pod? I thought.
She reached out to shut the tap, and my eyes fell on her fingers. They were so spindly, and I couldn’t see any fingernails. Instead, her top knuckles to her fingertips were covered in a glossy sort of glass sheath.
I was getting an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach now.
“Where did you say you come from again?” I mumbled.
She narrowed her eyes at me, and then kneeled by the bucket. Obi writhed harder; she hugged tighter.
I swallowed and watched.
She reached behind her ear, and produced a vial of blue liquid. After emptying the vial into the bucket, she said, “Stir please.”
I got on my knees and obeyed.
After five or so seconds, the water started to fizz, and a rich layer of lather started to form. Bubbles rose out of the foam and into the air. Bubbles like I’d never seen before: large, rainbow tinged, sparkling.
“In you go, Obi,” she said, shoving her pet into the bucket.
The creature shuddered and wriggled and shook, but her grip must have been iron tight.
“Don’t you think you should give it a little air,” I said, over the loud splashes and sloshes.
“Obi can breathe underwater,” she said.
I was sure she was making that up. “Stop it,” I said. “You’re hurting it!”
She didn’t listen, and so I smacked her across her slender hand. She gasped and lost her grip. Obi flew right out of her hands.
I watched, incredulous, as the sopping mass of hair floated right up over our heads and at least a hundred feet into the sky. It soared for a little bit, and then touched down in the middle of the meadow.
Mi-Yao bared her teeth at me. They were small and milk white, no canines. “Look at what you have done.”
“I-I’m sorry,” I stammered.
Obi was floating into the sky again, heading towards the woods.
“My chaperones will be displeased indeed,” Mi-Yao said, taking my hand. “We must catch her before she disappears.”
And so hand in hand, we headed out into the meadow, following the trail of shimmering bubbles floating down from the sky. At first, we took small steps. I had my left crutch with me, and it was easy to keep up with Mi-Yao. But then, she started to move faster, and faster.
“Slow down,” I said.
Mi-Yao ignored me. She only moved faster.
I stumbled and lost my flip-flops. Mi-Yao moved even faster.
“I said slow down,” I panted. “I can’t keep up.”
But even as I uttered those words, I felt the tingle in my left leg grow stronger. And suddenly, my steps were easier to make,
Summer Girl Page 1
