Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten (23 page)

I was considering what to say to her, when a thought hit me, sort of puzzling me. 
Had they all really waited for me?  Had they waited all this time, so this girl could introduce herself to me?  Wasn’t that kind of elaborate, maybe a little much?  Why would they wait almost two hours after school?  Why not do all of this tomorrow during nutrition or lunch?  Why the secrecy?  Why had they wanted this to happen with no one else around?  Wasn’t all the scheming just a little too weird?

I never got the chance to answer that question properly.

{ ¹
The Cubs: were a professional baseball team from Chicago }.

{ ²Ringling Brothers Circus: was an
American
circus
company billed as
The Greatest Show on Earth. }

{ ³Madonna: born Madonna Louise Ciccone, August 16, 1958.  Was an American singer-songwriter, actress, director, dancer and entrepreneur of great renown in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. }

{
4
Jergen’s: Beauty enhancement, Hand Cream. }

~~~~~~~~~~~~♦~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Fall – 2017)

Ramona

I was no more than ten feet from this mystery girl when I heard Leda yell at the top of her lungs.  “JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP, SANDRA!!!”

I turned back in time to see Leda stalk off over the breezeway toward the Boy’s Gymnasium and the Football field below.  Sandy gazed after her with her back to me just shaking her head in consternation.  Their little argument had definitely boiled over.  I wished it was me they were fighting over, because it would serve Leda right.

I chuckled and swung around and almost slammed right into her.  She must have heard the commotion, saw me and came to explain why one of her friends had gone ape-shit.

It was plausible, right?

“Oh shit, I’m sorry,” I said in a rush as I pulled back before I squashed into her breasts.  My brain instantly
recorded them as large for a girl her age.

“It’s my fault really,” she spoke, her voice was rich and melodic.  “I have a bad habit of getting too close to people, into their personal space or whatever.”

Because of her three-inch heels, I could stare directly into her eyes without looking down. 
She was tall for a girl
, I thought, looking into her gray-blue eyes, noticing the flecks of black.  Instantly, I was enraptured.  They were very, very rare for a Latina.  Her face was full, her make-up was impeccable, showing off her miraculous eyes and rounded out her thin lips.  Her nose was of medium size, but thin from top to bottom.  Her hair tended toward dark brown, but was highlighted with lighter shades, lustrous and bounced when she moved.

I eased a step back, so she wouldn’t feel like I was crowding her.  I extended my arms outward, palms facing up – the universal gesture for apologizing.  “No, no, really, I should be more careful. I was just a little distracted by your friends.”

She stared at me for a second or two, letting a smile creep across her face, and when it reached her eyes – she blossomed.  She was even prettier than before.  She was downright captivating.  “Ah crap, I’m sorry for Leda.  She can get pretty loud when she wants to, and, unfortunately, she seems to be getting loud more often nowadays than she had in the past.  She just pops-off sometimes, which is so embarrassing at times…” she trailed off her smile waning.  “She wasn’t always like that, though. And, she’s getting worse too - much worse - especially since she started going out with that stupid boyfriend of hers.  He’s been really fucking around with her head, telling her she’s cheating on him, that she’s ugly or fat.  You know, real grammar school shit.  The worst of it, though, is the fact she doesn’t blame him for any of the shit he is putting her through.  Instead, she blames every
other
guy out there like all the rest of you guys have anything to do with her twisted relationship.  She completely overlooks that asshole’s behavior.  No matter how much Sandy and I try, she just ignores the truth and usually storms off like you just saw.  Pretty pathetic, if you ask me.”  She seemed surprised she had said so much, so soon.

“Hmm,” I hummed, taking a quick glance back where the other girls had stood.
They were both gone now.  I felt her light touch on my arm and my eyes returned to hers.

“Sorry about all of the theatrics, I just wanted to meet you in more… uh, more… well, in a different way than I usually meet guys.”  She clasped both hands before her waist, her shoulders coming together slightly.  “It was kind of important to me, although I’m not quite sure why yet.”  She giggled suddenly.  I realized she was very nervous.  Her eyes were wide and she was breathing deeply, but her hand did
not
move from my arm.

“So, what’s this all about then?”

“I just wanted to meet you that’s all,” she waivered, but didn’t crack.  Her dazzling smile was back in all of its glory.

“Cool,” was all I said as I extended my hand to her.  “I am Estefan Ernando.”

She took my hand with the hand she had resting on my forearm, gripping me delicately with a series of squeezes, repeating every time our hands reached the apex of each shake.  “And I’m Ramona Cervantes.”  Her eyes were boring into me.  She held onto me even when the greeting commenced.  “You must think I’m stupid, right?  Or, do you think I’m a bit of a weirdo for doing all of this, huh?”

“Stupid?”  I answered with a question, “Naw, just formal or traditional, but not stupid.  Pretty, maybe; stupid, no.”  I figured the truth was the only way to go with this girl.

Her smile turned a little devilish.  Her eyes narrowed with mock suspicion.  “I heard you were real slick with the chicks, but no one said your slickness was more like smooth.  You tell that to all the girls you meet, tell them they’re pretty, huh?”

Oh, so now you’ve heard some things about me.
  I jerked my head, taken aback, shaking my head in the negative.

Her eyes narrowed even more.  “Yeah, I bet you do,” she concluded, taking a step backward, abruptly looking me up and down, while she bit her lower lips – a thing she always did when she was being mischievous.  The entire time, our hands remained clasped together.  “You’re too smooth to
not
have done this kind of thing on more than one occasion.  Am I right, Mr. Track Star?  You’ve had lots of practice with the girls, right?”  She was smiling again, sarcasm dripping from her words in torrents.

Mr. Track Star?
I asked myself. 
So, someone had been doing a little research on little ole me…
  I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not, but when it was a knockout like Ramona most guys really wouldn’t give a fuck.  Pathetically, I was one of them.

“I don’t actually, well
, not a lot as you’re implying.  I might from time to time,” I began as the incredulous look in her eyes remained on me.  I could see she didn’t believe me for one second.  “I don’t!” I repeated louder than before, but her look did not change.  “But, I don’t lie unless I absolutely have too, so why start now.  You are pretty, so let the truth be known…”

“Ah, I see, you tell it likes it is.”  She had a sage-like expression on her face.  “I get that, but I still don’t completely believe you,” she replied thoughtfully, squaring her shoulders with mine, still holding my hand.

I merely shrugged, looking down but up through my eyebrows at her, trying to negate the half-smile trying desperately to erupt about my lips.  I really wasn’t a ladies’ man like she was making out, though I couldn’t help but feel flattered by her comments.  It was the crushing weight of self-consciousness that was making me grin like an idiot.

It has always been tremendously hard to hide my feelings from Ramona.  On that day, she proved no different, she saw my struggle and figured it out at once.  “I’m making you nervous, huh?”

I shrugged again, but forced myself to look in her eyes more directly.

“I’m right.”  It was not a question this time.  She stated it
as fact.  Then, out of the blue, she pulled me toward her with the hand that held mine.  I tried to hide my surprise, suddenly wondering if I was in over my head with this girl.  I came within a step of her.  I could smell the perfume she was wearing, Vera Wang Princess¹.  I will never forget the playful blend of floral, fruity, and bakeshop smells.  I looked over her face uncertain of what she going to do.

She ignored everything that was undoubtedly raging across my face.  “I was just playing, Estefan.  I’ve wanted to meet you for a while now, but you were always with that tiny girlfriend of yours.  So
, I just asked around about you in the meantime, to see what people thought about you.  I was hoping, if I was lucky, you guys would break up, so I could get to know you…

“
I noticed in the past few weeks, you’ve been making your rounds around campus alone or with your friends, so I figured this would be a good time to make my move.  You know, before you hooked up with some other girl.  I wanted to approach you in a way that would stick out in your mind, because I didn’t want to fuck it up or get it wrong.  But when you told me so quickly I was pretty, I just remembered what some of the girls said about you, that’s all.  I promise.”

I was suddenly curious.  “And what was that, exactly?”

“They said, if you liked a girl, you could be very charming, almost irresistible and that you always seemed to find a way to say the right thing at the right time.  A few even said they’d have messed up on their boyfriends, if you’d’ve asked them to be with you.”  She grimaced for me to understand.  “I was just unsure if you were using your ‘powers’ on me, that’s all I’m saying.”  All the play had disappeared from her tone.  She was serious.

They would’ve let me screw them!  Really?  Who the fuck had said that!?!
  Then, the import of her words sunk in and I pulled my mind from the dregs. 
The girls had said
that
about
me
?!?
  I had never considered myself in that manner.  I didn’t go out of my way to get laid like a lot of the other guys I knew did.  I always felt they came on too hard, I’d look less in the eyes of the girls they came onto.  I mean, sure, I got my share of the pussy walking around campus over the years, but I didn’t recall trolling around looking for every loose scrap of tale that crossed my path.  That wasn’t me; I was not like that… was I?

“My powers?”  The words bubbled up to the
surface, didn’t make sense.  I spoke before I knew I had done so.

Ramona smiled with an accompanying chuckle.  “That’s what they called them, your ‘powers’.”

“My ‘powers’, really?”  I was shaking my head in disbelief.  “But, like I said before, I’m not the type of guy who wants a whole bunch of notches on his belt, you know.  I want a few… well, maybe more than a few, but they’re making me sound like some kind of sex maniac or something.”

“Actually, they said you never came across like that.  Rather, they said you just knew what you were doing and you did it well.  They weren’t bad mouthing you or anything, don’t get me wrong,
but
that intrigued me.  I guess I was just looking too hard for it and jumped the gun.”  She breathed out explosively for some reason.

“What is it?” I asked, bewildered by her strange reaction.

“I bet my friends told you I was acting weird.  I bet they said I was suddenly incapable of talking on my own, that I’ve become uncharacteristically shy.”

I nodded in affirmation, Leda’s comment about Ramona becoming suddenly shy registered.

“Well, they’re right; I am acting like a ‘tard.  I’m usually comfortable around guys, maybe even a little forward, you know?  I’m not afraid to put myself out there.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a total bitch.  I don’t go messing around with every boy.  I just don’t act like those little miss prissy girls do around boys.  I’m myself, you know?”  I nodded again.  I was beginning to wonder where she was going with this.  I could feel my brow furl.  Ramona noticed at once.  “I don’t hurt people’s feelings either.  If I like a guy and he’s taken, I don’t go for it anyway, uncaring if I hurt the other girl’s feelings.  I’m not like that, I can wait.”  She stopped, her eyes darting about my face.  “Crap, I’m not making any sense, am I?”  She let go of my hand and rotated from me, softly stomping the heel of her pump on the concrete we were standing on.

“I’m just not sure what you are trying to tell me,” I prompted, hoping she could get her thoughts straight.

“I know! I sound like a
pendeja
!” she turned back with a pained look on her face.

I mouthed the word, “no”, indicating she wasn
’t a
pendeja
.  She definitely wasn’t a stupid girl.

“Well, you’re just being nice, because I know what a
pendeja
sounds like.”  She laughed ruefully, craning her neck toward the sky.  She stayed that way for a time before she gathered herself and went on.  “This is all going wrong.  I wanted this to be perfect.  I just don’t know what is wrong with me.  I can go with the flow if I have to.  I can be crazy-fake fatal and shit, if I want things to go my way.  I can play games with the best of them, but I didn’t want any of that shit with you…  So, why is this so fucking hard for me to tell you!?”

“What
are
you trying to tell me?”  I asked with a degree of urgency I wasn’t sure I should be feeling. 
What the fuck was she talking about?

“Well,” she began.  I could see that this was a matter of some substance for her.  “I wanted introduce myself and tell you that… umm… that I like you,” she blurted it out louder than anything she had said previously.  Yet before I could respond or even think a clear thought she continued.  “I usually don’t just go around telling boys I like them, either!  I let it marinate for a while, you know, but I didn’t want to this chance slip away.  I didn’t want you to go after some other girl before you knew how I felt, especially since all the girls bemoan of your ‘powers’.

“Dammit, I sound like such a fucking moron!” she exclaimed and made as if to leave.

“Wait, Ramona,” I implored.

She stopped after half a step and turned to look back at me, the vestiges of moisture in her eyes.

Shit, this really means a lot to her
, I thought understanding for the first time she really did like me – deeply - which suddenly explained her strange behavior.