To say that Kerass had been enraptured all week didn’t even begin to describe how full his heart felt. Progress. There was progress and with progress came more and more progress and Kerass couldn’t even hold it in. He belly laughed, almost a cackle. He felt alive for the first time in months. He was alone on the field before practice. He sprinted across the field waving his hands in the air totally carefree. As he hit the 20-yard line, he tripped. When he looked behind, he saw that a sprinkler was out. It must have been faulty. None of the other sprinklers were on. He lay on the ground contemplating who he should tell about the faulty sprinkler for a minute.
The rest of the sprinklers came on which only made Kerass even more ecstatic. He giddily ran through the sprinklers soaking himself. Oddly enough as he ran through the sprinklers, his mother wasn’t the woman he was thinking of. Cadence came to mind. He missed her smile, her compassion. His mind transported him back to the beginning, the day they first met.
“I bet we have the same question…” he mumbled to himself.
He heard her laugh. For a few seconds he couldn’t tell if it was real or if he had imagined it. Then he saw her walking through the sprinklers over to him.
“Reminiscing are we?” she asked.
Kerass nodded smiling. He admitted it was random. “I’m not exactly sure where that came from.”
“Memories can be fickle like that,” she began. She continued saying that rarely do we ask for them to come back to mind. “It’s kind of unexplainable. They just sort of do.”
“Hey, guess what!” Kerass said jumping up and down.
“I’ve never seen you like this, so happy, so excited.”
“My mom was responsive when I visited her last week.”
Kerass looked at her eyes as they drifted down to the grass. It wasn’t the reaction he was expecting. He thought she would jump into his arms telling him how great that all was.
“I just don’t want you to get your hopes up, Kerass,” Cadence said looking back up at him.
Kerass couldn’t believe it. He had had this very same conversation with his father. He bit his tongue. He didn’t want to punish her because despite how insensitive she was in the moment, she was at least trying.
“Let’s not ruin the moment,” he finally said and with that everything was dropped.
They ran through the sprinklers again just before they were turned off.
Julia walked down Main Street heading to nowhere in particular. She wasn’t even aware that she had walked past Main Street and by the time she realized where she was again, she was at the water tower. Yellow caution tape had been spread all around the legs of the tower. There was a wooden sign right next to the tower that said that a new water tower would be up and fully functional in three months time. Tear down date was the very next day.
They had finally gotten enough money to replace the rickety old water tower. It’s about damn time, Julia thought to herself. She heard stifled sniffling.
“What on earth?” she uttered aloud embarrassed when she realized she was talking to herself.
She walked towards the forest where she thought she had initially heard the sniffling. She rolled her eyes and mouthed ‘kill me now’ when she saw that it was Lyra.
“They can’t tear it down, they just can’t,” she heard Lyra mutter to herself.
Lyra was sitting Indian style and swaying back and forth. Her head visibly shook uncontrollably at times. In that instant Julia began to hate herself, for she had started to pity Lyra. She felt bad for her because there was something clearly wrong with her.
“Do you want to do something about it?” Julia asked.
Lyra gasped turning around and looking at Julia. She could barely talk. She mixed up a few words before she said anything even close to a cohesive sentence. “I think we should do a demonstration and sit in front of the tower to ensure that our town’s historic monument doesn’t go to waste, doesn’t get washed away by something unnecessary and offensive to the souls of our town’s past.”
Julia didn’t even want to begin attempting to grasp what she meant by being offensive to some non-existent ghosts, but it was just whatever. Lyra needed companionship and if she needed a friend or two to come along protecting the town from some weird ghost superstition, then that was fine. It’d make an excellent diary entry that’s for sure.
Lyra began to cry again. “But we don’t have any people to help us,” she wailed.
Julia told Lyra not to worry. “I’ve got someone in mind who I’m convinced will join us.”
The bell jingled as Cadence walked into the comic book store. The clearance sale sign that stated that everything needed to be sold only solidified what she had heard while sitting on the park bench. Gus smiled raising one eyebrow at her. She wanted to laugh, have fun with him, but she just didn’t feel like it.
“You usually visit on Wednesdays. How come you missed? I haven’t seen you in here in nearly 2 weeks,” Gus said pep coloring his voice.
She had to say something, but she didn’t know what. He was avoiding the reality of the store closing. Had she not eavesdropped, she wouldn’t feel so tense. She wasn’t sure how to be honest with him, or even if she wanted to be.
“Something came up,” Cadence said tritely.
“Ok,” Gus said without a care.
Cadence found herself getting upset. She asked him why he didn’t ask her further questions. “Don’t you know how to follow the rules of subtlety?”
“You didn’t want to talk about it. I wasn’t going to force you,” Gus said his voice bearing confidence again.
“It’s nothing, really,” Cadence said avoiding eye contact.
Gus shook his head. “You’re not being honest,” he paused. “Talk,” he emphasized. “Now,” he commanded.
“Fine,” Cadence caved in. She began talking about Lyra’s weird plan to protest the tearing down of the old water tower. She said they would just sit in front of it. “Although I’m not convinced it’ll do any good.”
“Let me stop you right there. You’re not seriously considering joining in on this, are you?”
“I was sort of hoping that you would join…” Cadence mumbled.
“Don’t be foolish.”
Cadence didn’t reply. The more Gus talked about it though, the more Lyra’s crazy idea sounded horrible.
Gus scratched his head and said, “I don’t want to see that water tower torn down any more than the next person does, but I know I can’t do anything about it. You’ll get in serious trouble if you join. I’m telling you don’t do it.”
“You don’t have to be protective of me,” Cadence said rolling her eyes at him.
“I’m not. I’m just being smart, logical if you will. Promise me you won’t risk getting arrested over some stupid protest that won’t affect this change in any way. It’d only slow down the inevitable by what about 10 minutes?”
“Fine,” Cadence whispered.
Gus stroked her chin. “Good. I’m proud of you.”
Quickly saying she had to go, Cadence left without another word. She didn’t want to over think anything, which was an impossibility. She was beginning to wonder if the awkwardness she felt around Gus meant more than simply just seeing him be emotionally vulnerable with the store manager. Without saying it out loud she had sorta made a pact with Lyra not to date any boys for a year. She had told Kerass verbally, but Kerass was a big boy. He'd get over it, hopefully. Making this promise to Gus not to join Lyra wasn’t as big of a promise, but it gave her pause. It was much more important to her to keep a promise to Gus than it was to keep a pact with Lyra, or follow up on her word with Kerass.
“I don’t think Cadence is going to make it,” Lyra responded to Jay.
Jay shook his head and muttered, “Figures.”
Why had he agreed to this? Julia had guilt tripped him into it. He liked Julia, he admitted bitterly. She always got what she wanted and that was a quality that he admired. He wanted to emulate her, but he didn’t exactly want to be close to her. It seemed like it would be a mistake.
Lyra sat Indian style in front of the water tower. Perhaps she was meditating, but it didn’t look like any legit form of meditation that Jay knew of.
“We need to be one with nature,” Lyra said somewhat singing the same note. “The ground will protect the tower,” she said jumping up an octave on the word tower.
Jay pointed out that the water tower wasn’t nature. “It’s man made,” he added exasperatedly.
Seeing Lyra’s face droop so suddenly, he immediately regretted saying what he felt out loud.
He looked over at Julia who was sitting behind Lyra. She was asleep. You could even hear the faintest sound of a snore pass between her lips. Jay started to chuckle under his breath, but the harder he tried to hold it in, the harder it became to not bust out laughing.
Lyra turned around glaring at him, which instantly made him shut up. Her eyes bugged out when they heard a stick snap. A flashlight turned on and the red and blue lights highlighted the forest behind them.
“RUN!” Lyra yelled in a hoarse whisper.
They both got up running away from the tower straight into the forest off the trail. They waited in silence sitting behind trees for 10 minutes before they heard the sirens move away from them. Jay and Lyra locked eyes with each other and both burst out laughing. Maybe Lyra could be fun after all. It was a lot of fun ditching the authorities, that was for sure. The night was a major success. He felt completely relieved from pressure, which color guard gave him. For the first time since he had received the restraining order from his birth mother, he felt alive.
“Wait, where’s Julia?” Lyra asked crashing him down.
Jay gasped.
Thursday had come around again and that meant there was another Christian group meeting after school. Jay was counting down the minutes on the clock. He was so excited he barely took any notes all day in any of his classes. He even ran into the guy who he had met just before last week’s meeting on the walk to lunch.
“Hey! Jay, right?”
Jay was impressed that he remembered his name, but at the same time he felt bad for not remembering his.
“It’s Jeremy. We met at the Christian group last week,” the guy added.
Jay had forgotten to acknowledge that Jeremy had gotten his name correct. Trying to rectify awkwardly standing there he said, “Sorry, yeah, you’re right, my name’s Jay. My brain farted and I guess I forgot how to talk for a minute.”
Jeremy laughed telling Jay that he was so funny. “Will I be seeing you after school today for this week’s meeting?”
“Definitely,” Jay said smiling.
“Awesome man,” Jeremy said giving him a high five and walked away.
Jay realized then that he had forgotten his lunch bag in the band room. Mr. Martin was going to murder him. He quickly turned around and walked into the storage room where his lunch bag was sitting in his storage locker, which evidently wasn’t locked. The band was full of good guys though, so they wouldn’t screw around with him like that. He unzipped his lunch bag and surely enough everything was in tact. He felt bad for even having a sliver of a doubt that his teammates wouldn’t treat him with respect.
As he began to walk out he heard Julia’s voice. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Martin. I don’t know what happened. I must have fallen asleep, but I’m telling you I wasn’t the only one there.”
“Who else was there?” he heard Mr. Martin ask.
He sat down on the floor not wanting to be seen, but not wanting to leave. He had to know what was going to happen with Julia, whether she would rat him out. Apparently Julia remained silent.
“I’m sorry Julia, but an illegal protest like this that resulted in your arrest is unacceptable. As long as you keep quiet I’m going to have to ask you to refrain from all team practices and competitions.”
“But Mr. Martin, it’s my senior year!” Julia emphasized. She continued asking him not to take the team away from her.
“I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do,” was all he said in response.
Jay waited a minute before opening the storage room door to walk out of the band room. Julia had already been suspended for 3 days and now her punishment was continuing. He felt very lucky that he had not been the one to be caught. He also felt guilty because he was part of the reason that she did get caught. Although it was her idea to ask him there and he really hadn’t wanted to go in the first place, so basically it was all her fault.
Right before he left the band room, he caught eyes with Julia. She stared straight at him with a piercing sorrow. He looked away hoping that she wouldn’t still be looking at him when he finally left. He turned around as he walked out the door and saw that she definitely was still glaring at him.
Kerass was running down the football field in an attempt to make an interception during practice. He caught the ball, just as he thought he would and instantly started running. One of his teammates tackled him from the side. His head hit the faulty sprinkler. He felt a warm liquid in the grass surrounding his head. Everything went black.
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