Beautiful Souls
by
Sarah Mullanix
Beautiful Souls
Sarah Mullanix
All rights reserved.
Copyright© 2013 by Sarah Mullanix
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters
to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
The Author holds exclusive rights to this work.
Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.
No part of this book can be reproduced in any form
or by electronic or mechanical means including information
storage and retrieval systems, without the permission in
writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer
who may quote short excerpts in a review.
For information: http://sarahmmullanix.blogspot.com
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Cover Design: Sarah Mullanix
Photo: Stock from stock.xchng
To Onita,
For without your enthusiastic love of stories and books,
this book may have never been written. Thank you.
-Preface-
This is what life is like --- what a real life should be like --- perhaps. A life full of adventure, terror, joy, secrets, and of course family. I knew that this world, which I still had not fully processed or accepted, was what I had been waiting and hoping for all my life. Still a burden, certainly, but one that I now carry willingly; for this is my family and my legacy, without which I would be nothing.
Beloved Lydia, thou art gone,
Thy conflicts and thy toils are o’er;
And I am left to sadly mourn,
For one I’ll meet on earth no more.
Dear Lydia, now I deeply feel,
Thy lofs, for thou wast mild and pure;
No earthly joys the wound can heal,
But Christ can all our sorrows cure.
He’s promised we shall meet again,
Beyond these realms of sin and woe;
Where pain and death can never reign,
And life’s pure stream forever flow.
A few more days and we will meet,
In that celestial land above;
Our blood-washed spirits take their seat,
To singWhy should I tremble then to lay,
Why should I tremble then to lay,
Thy lifeless clay beneath the sod;
For guardian angels will convey,
Thy spirit home to dwell with God.
-Lewisburg, June 1856
W. Paine (selected & changed)
Chapter 1.
Old & New
old
/old/
Adjective
1. Having lived for a long time; no longer young.
2. Made or built long ago.
It was just there.
They had always just been there when I woke. They arrived with no warning, no sound, no messenger or deliveryman. And only during the night.
“Crazy,” I mumbled.
I read over the letter a second time, brushed my fingertips over the indentations left by the sharp point of the pen, then wadded the parchment-type paper into a ball and tossed it sideways into my trashcan. The letter swirled around the rim, hung in mid-air for a second, then finally landed with a soft crunch at the bottom of the metal basket.
The lines swam through my mind: ‘I so miss my heart’s desire’, ‘why did you have to leave me alone so soon?’, and the most cryptic of all: ‘even if it takes one hundred years, I will find you my love’.
Can you say, stalker?
“I truly have crazy friends,” I mumbled to myself. Apparently, friends with way too much time on their hands.
The letters had been coming once per month for a few months now. The one that sat at the bottom of my trashcan was the third. They were all similar, made to look old, and all a little off-kilter in the love department. The letters miraculously appeared on my dresser, left lying there, drawing me in like a magnet when I woke. I never saved one, and I never spoke a word of there existence to anyone. Heaven forbid I take them seriously and become the laughing stock of my tiny little town. I simply chalked up their appearances to teenage hijinks.
I shook the words from my memory, continuing with my morning routine. I put on a final touch of blush as I looked at myself in the dresser mirror. A small stroke of faint, pink powder rested on each of my cheeks as I admired my reflection in the same mirror that my mother had used when she was my age.
The antique cream-colored dresser and mirror that had been given to my mother as a child by her mother, was now my bedroom dresser and mirror which I looked into every morning while I readied myself for school, somehow always admiring and disapproving at the same time.
I resembled my mother --- very much so, in fact --- with my tall 5’9” and still growing frame, long legs, the same mahogany colored hair only mine was cut in a shorter layered style, tanned olive skin from a long summer of swim team and life guarding at the city pool, and bow-shaped cherry lips. Even though I resembled my beautiful mom, I still couldn’t quite come to grips with being able to consider myself as anything more than just ordinary.
“Becca?” I heard my mom call from downstairs.
“I’m just putting on my shoes,” I called back.
Even though I was completely dressed and packed for school, I just needed an extra moment to mentally prepare myself for another day at Sycamore High School. Another day of the same old everyday routine in this small town. Fairview, Indiana was not unlike your typical small-town USA, but I still needed the extra moment to ready myself for the upcoming inconsequential events of the coming day: the roll call in homeroom, trying to look interested as the teachers spoke of whatever lesson plans they would attempt to teach that day, and the lunchroom with its barely edible food and incessant chatter bouncing off the walls making it sound as if there were a thousand students crammed inside its cinder-block walls instead of just the mere three hundred fifty-two that made up the student body.
Simply playing the part of a normal, well-adjusted seventeen-year-old girl --- young woman --- whatever this intense and confusing age was called, was so completely exhausting in and of itself. I needed the few additional moments to mentally prepare myself for more of the same daily goings-on that I’ve known my entire life.
I took a deep breath, as I contemplated all of my racing thoughts, then sighed as I wished so desperately for today to be different than every other day. Even if that meant the only variation was that the cafeteria served cheeseburgers on spaghetti day, then that was fine with me. Just something, anything different.
“Becca!” I heard my mom call for me again, a little more anxious this time.
“I’m coming down right now, Mom,” I answered quickly, shaking off my reverie.
I knew that this second warning would be the last before my mom would go into complete panic mode. I pulled myself up off the edge of my bed, grabbed my school bag, neglected a final look in the mirror, and headed out of my perfectly appropriate teal and green teenage girl bedroom --- decorated by my mom, of course, because she lives for that sort of thing --- and quickly made my way down the hall toward the stairs.
I hit the top of the staircase and smelled the coffee brewing from our kitchen below. The same coffee that my mother drank two cups of every morning with an extraordinary amount of cream, and the very same coffee that I’d grown to enjoy on occasion myself. We had a tradition of passing things through our family: the dresser and mirror, our love for coffee heavy on the cream, and the mahogany tint in our hair among many other shared family traits and possessions.
By this time my mom had become so desperate by my tardiness that she had resorted to
waiting for me at the base of the staircase and held a glass of juice with her “hurry up you’re gonna be late” expression. I took the juice from her as I passed and we both walked into the kitchen.
Today, like most mornings, I grabbed a pack of Pop-Tarts from the pantry, dropped them into the toaster, and sipped my apple juice as I stared out through the kitchen window. I gazed beyond the neighbors’ houses to the thick woods just a short distance away.
The expansive wooded area behind our house had always been a peaceful retreat for me. There was something special about the quiet noise from the breeze, the birds, and whatever other sounds existed there that contributed to the elaborate choir of peacefulness that made this woods feel like a kindred spirit of sorts and a second home. I loved to watch the sunset from just inside the tree line, and even --- which most people found a little strange or slightly disturbing --- found it serene to observe the bats as they would begin to come out at dusk for their evening feedings and flights.
Although the distance to the front line of trees, which had begun the entrance to the woods, was not a great stretch from my home, it was still far enough away to add an element of eeriness and mystery which for me only added to the intrigue of the forest.
I broke my stare, ending yet another early morning daydream, and looked down from the kitchen window to the toaster. I pulled my Pop-Tarts from their heated slots and laid them out on a paper towel, wrapped them up, and made my way to the back door.
“Bye, Mom. See ya later.”
“Bye, hon. Love you,” my mom responded as she did each and every morning. She followed behind me, passing through the back door out to our gravel drive, climbed into her minivan, and headed off to her shop.
I crossed over the damp, dew-drenched lawn toward my car. As I approached the driver’s side door, I checked my hair one last time in the reflection on the window. The red paint job on my convertible 1976 Volkswagen Beetle --- the car my father and I had bought rusted and rundown, then fixed up together --- had always made my lips appear entirely too cherry-colored than they actually were.
I never really liked that.
My Bug was a gift. It happened to be the gift for my sixteenth birthday a little over a year ago. My dad and I had worked tirelessly --- he more than I --- until just recently when we finally deemed it to be road-worthy. The car wasn’t perfect by any standard, but the character and personality is what I loved most about it, not to mention that much of my father’s sweat and tears were wrapped up in her.
I threw my bag over to the passenger seat and climbed in behind the steering wheel. The stiff, vintage leather on the seats had always creaked and cracked with the slightest touch on chilly autumn mornings like this. I started the engine, gave it a couple seconds to warm up and come to life, put the gears in reverse, then backed out of the driveway toward the country road that would lead me to school.
I’d always enjoyed my drive to school. It was an opportunity to have a few final minutes of peace where I found solitude --- listening to a bit of background music from whatever my favorite CD happened to be at the time --- and I enjoyed and admired the views of golden cornfields plowed down to just their stalks. White farmhouses littered the fields along the way, beaming in the early morning glow of sunshine. Rows and patches of flame-colored trees flew past in blurs while the intense, yet somehow still soft, rays of the rising sun shone through the gaps in the leaves and glared off my windshield as I drove onward.
Ten minutes later I pulled into the school parking lot, and I drove slowly to my normal parking space in the back row. When you lived in a small town like Fairview and attended a small-town high school like Sycamore, there were regular parking places for each student and teacher. Routine was the way of the world in these parts.
I put my car in park and turned of the ignition. I checked my reflection again in the rear view mirror, wanting to make certain that the added cherry-tint to my lips I had seen earlier was really the effects of my red car and not actuality. I was relieved. I reached for my bag from the seat next to me, the leather creaking in relief from its weight, and reluctantly made my way out of the car. Before I was even able to shut my door, I heard footsteps approach.
“Hey, Leo,” I said without even looking up.
I didn’t need to look. Every single day since I had gotten my license and been driving myself to school, Leo McMyllin had met me at my car and walked with me inside the school to our lockers. Even before I obtained a driver’s license, Leo used to pick me up at my house and drive me to school. We’d been neighbors and best friends our entire lives; however, lately I had been picking up a vibe from him that I couldn’t quite explain. At least, I thought the strange vibe was coming from him.
The two of us knew more stories and history about the other than we’d ever care to admit. There were countless times we got in trouble for playing down in the gravel pits about a mile from our homes. The gravel pits were completely off limits --- demanded by both sets of parents --- but as kids do, we still rode off on our bikes on occasion, heading toward the pits to get a closer look at the river. The solitude was addicting and we were never able to resist its pull. Leo and I spent an immeasurable amount of time talking, napping, daydreaming, skipping rocks, and simply growing up together down by the river. It was like another world --- our world.
I remember one particular day that we slipped away on our bikes to the pits, up and over the mounds of rocks we rode, then down to the river’s edge. Leo, being the outgoing, athletic, show-off that he was and still is, wanted to see if he could make it all the way across the river by jumping from rock to rock. He even bet me a month’s worth of allowance that he could accomplish this insane task.
As it turned out, Leo was too confident for his own good. He'd leapt the slightest bit too far over one of the large rocks, causing his foot to slip off the far side. Leo had hit the back of his head on the way down and had fallen limply into the rushing water.
I barely remembered running into the river. I vividly recalled the feeling of terror as my mind wondered if I could even hold my own balance, and I prayed every step of the way across the river that I would not get swept away by the sucking current. It took almost all my strength to make my way out to him, fighting and splashing through the sweeping river.
Leo had been lying there for what seemed like an eternity, water gurgling and spitting off the rock around his head still propped halfway up on the hard slab. Thank goodness the river’s water level was low at the end of summer; we would have both been swept away, no telling what would have become of the two of us.
When I finally reached Leo, still lying unconscious in the river, I'd grown woozy from the sight of his gashed head with blood seeping out over the hard stone. I took a deep breath full of thick humid air, and tried to avoid passing out when I saw his blood trickling down the edge of immovable rock, mixing with the murky water as it became deluded and streaked through the ripples and sprays of the traveling river.
The sound of my voice screaming his name had brought him somewhat back to consciousness, because it was enough to get him to his knees while I lifted and balanced him to a standing position. I was his crutch as we'd painstakingly fought our way back across the flowing waters to the bank where we had previously abandoned our bikes.
Leo and I walked our bikes most of the way home that day in almost complete silence. Even at our young ages we had both fully understood the gravity of that day’s events. Luckily, Leo’s hair was long enough to cover his gash, and our parents never found out about his accident that day.
I remembered being so worried that following week that Leo might slip into a coma while sleeping, like I had seen on a TV show. I was completely petrified. For the entire next week I'd walked across the road and field to his house each morning when I had woken up, tapped on his bedroom window and checked that he had made it safely through the night coma-free. Leo’s parents were none the wiser, and mine just thought I had headed out early each morning to explore the woods, as I so oft
en did back then.
Our history was full of stories and memories like that one. The river incident among a thousand others, that we’d been through together over the years, were the reasons that Leo will always and forever be my best friend. I knew he felt the same about me when he took time away from hanging out with the guys and walked me to my locker each morning.
Leo and I walked through the double doors together and into the front hall, headed toward our lockers, and chatted casually for a few more minutes. Leo’s eyes fell on me and held their gaze for a second longer than normal, and I thought I felt a strange warmth that caressed my body. What was that? The warning bell sounded a moment later, and we agreed to meet up at lunch before we headed off our own ways.
My Homeroom was with Mr. Stanley, my absolute favorite teacher. He had dark hair streaked thinly with gray strands around the tops of his ears and temples, wore thick-rimmed black reading glasses, and was a smidgen on the dorky side because of his dry sense of humor and jokes; he clearly loved teaching and honestly cared for his students, so he was my favorite teacher nonetheless.
I'd approached Mr. Stanley’s classroom, and through the doorway I heard chatter bouncing off the walls and out into the hallway from the twenty-three other students in my Homeroom. The voice of one particular person floated above all the others and was undeniable. Emmy.
More accurately her name is Emily, but for those of us that were near and dear we lovingly called her Emmy. She was my best girlfriend, undoubtedly and unarguably the most popular girl in school. She's beautiful and looked like she should belong along the beaches of southern California’s surf community instead of a small farming community in mid-America.
Emmy’s of average height for a seventeen-year-old girl, unlike me who usually stood an entire head taller than all of my other female schoolmates. She had long sandy-blonde hair that held a natural wave, tiny streaks of strawberry highlights that shined when the sun hit them at just the right angle, and wide eyes so deep blue that they almost appeared to be violet. I’d never seen anything like them, and when Emmy looked at me they are the kindest and sweetest eyes; I could see straight through to her light hearted, gentle soul.
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