Solstice - Of The Heart (15 page)

It was hard for me to get my head
wrapped around speaking Spanish. Coming from Minnesota, I don’t
have an ear for it and I couldn’t remember ever hearing it spoken
out on the streets. A few words in movies and on TV made up the
extent of my exposure to the Spanish language.

The news of Aaron landing the role of
Romeo didn’t help with my concentration in Spanish class. It could
only mean he would be kissing another girl in the not too distant
future.

I know I’m overacting. After all, this
is just a play. But somehow it still feels as though someone
punched me in the gut, and it wasn’t Cherrie.

I looked up to see Mr. Albom eyeing me
with concern. I’m sure I’m looking rather off-color. I smile with
the intent to let him know I’m okay. Another visit to the front
office and I’m sure they’re going to send me straight to
counseling. I dove into the assignment. The end of class couldn’t
come soon enough.

Phys. Ed. allowed me to physically
vent, and vent I did. As I said, indoor hockey isn’t my specialty,
especially since it does not require ice or roller skates. But I
made ham-work out of the drama-queen’s team. Thirteen scores in
all. Finally Ms. Wroblewski substituted in Ann Widebody, Widebody
being the name most of us gave Ann in tribute to...well, yes, her
wide body. Not that she was all that obese. She came from Irish
stock—short and stout and nearly as wide as she was
tall.

“You sure were on fire,” Ms.
Wroblewskie said, as she handed me the score chart.

I was flabbergasted to see only three
scores behind my name.

“I’m feeling spunky today, Ms. Wrob.
Didn’t I score more than this?”

“You were off sides on a number of
them.”

“Ten of them?”

“Let me see.” Ms. Wroblewski took the
chart. “Ann must have missed some scores.” She handed the chart
back to me without making any modifications.

“That means I only get
three?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll grade you
accordingly.”

“Okay.”

I eyed wide-body Ann with contempt.
There was no avenging her oversight, though, as I could see she was
not going to score, and even if, by happenstance, she did, I didn’t
think I had it in me to short her the way she shorted me. What was
I going to do? Overlook her one possible point?

Courtesy of wide-body Ann’s inability
to move up and down the floor with any measurable speed and the
rest of my teams’ brown nosing, the drama queen’s team walked away
with another win—22 to 17.

Wednesday, hump day, fast became a
dump day—as in dump snow and dump on Julissa. Last I heard, ten
inches of snow had accumulated. Guesses for the mountain ranged
from one to five feet. Five feet! Wishful thinking from Jason and
his snowboarder friends, I presumed.

I wasn’t at all looking forward to
math class. It didn’t disappoint. Our teacher, Mrs. A.
Carlisle-Steinberg, AKA Mrs. Aces, sprung a quiz on us.

I hadn’t
exactly had my mind on math the past week other than one female
plus one male equals a couple. Fortunately some of what was covered
in the quiz I remembered from my freshman year at White Bear Lake.
Others,
like the girl who walks along the
edge of a high cliff at a meter per second and the ship down below
that keeps even with her and what is the average value of the
distance from girl to ship over the duration of her stroll?
confounded me.

We don’t have cliffs in Minnesota and,
as for ships, the largest I had seen was a wake-boarding boat on
Goose Lake in White Bear Lake. Not that any of that mattered to
Mrs. Aces. She thought in pure analytical math terms. I’d rather be
the girl walking along the shore while Aaron, piloting the sea
going vessel, followed my every move. No amount of calculation
could sum up the stimulation derived from my day-dream of being
stalked by Aaron.

I really didn’t know what to do at
lunch. Aaron was on chore duty, home shoveling snow from the drive
way. Cherrie was off running errands. I wasn’t about to sit on the
wall in the quad and be pummeled by snowballs. So I joined the
two-hundred or so students roaming the halls.

I had never seen so many
get so excited over a little bit of snow. I looked out the windows
as I strolled and saw the snow showers tapering off. The dark
bellied clouds passed on. Light started to break through. I fully
expected to see sun by school’s end. This didn’t dissuade the snow
worshipers from partying on, however.

I felt the energy building
as I pressed my way through the crowds of party goers. I saw chaos
at its best, in the form of two-hundred hyped up teenagers,
mingling and moving about. Despite the full contingent of hall
monitors on patrol, a snowball or two made its way into the
building. Then I saw something that made me stop in my
tracks.

Way down the hall I saw Aaron,
Beaumont, and Belmont. They walked, spread apart in near division,
strolling through the revelers.

My first emotion was disappointment.
Why hadn’t Aaron told me he was available for lunch? Or better yet,
why had he lied and said he was going home to shovel snow? Then
another emotion took hold; one of curiosity.

From afar, I saw the trio
bumping into the masses. Nothing strange about their action, given
the bedlam in progress, however, I sensed a design to the Delmon’s
wanderings. They were reaching out, touching as many students as
possible. A placing of the hand here, a shoulder bent there, skin
to skin contact. Again, nothing unusual about the physical push
since that is what it took to maneuver through the agitated crowd.
It’s what followed that piqued my interest to the
extreme.

As the Delmon’s swept by,
hands touching skin, those who came in contact with Aaron,
Beaumont, and Belmont, quieted to the point of sloth. They acted
like sprinters, who in the last ten meters came to a faltering stop
when their energy ran out. I moved off to the side, away and out of
sight of the approaching trio.

A snowball came from out of nowhere
behind me. I watched it as it honed in on Aaron’s face. I expected
him to duck, swat it away—do something! He didn’t flinch. Just as
the snowball was about to smash into his beautiful face, it burst
apart as if it had slammed into a wall. For an instant, I saw
Aaron’s features mirrored in the snow shower. And then it fell
away, his face untouched.

I watched the Delmons from my hiding
place as they passed. Fear took hold of me. What was Aaron doing?
What had Cherrie said? They’re like addicts siphoning off energy
from human beings.

To do what?

Why did Aaron need energy beyond what
his body could produce? Was this their secret? Harnessing energy
from others so they could perform super human feats? Like pulling
the LC tank off the side of the mountain? Or, for a second, causing
a dead pig’s eyes to open and its heart to beat? And was it
possible for them, as I felt this morning when Aaron took my hand,
to transfer vigor to another and give them the ability to stand
erect and tall on ice?

As the bell sounded and the revelers
cleared, I found myself standing alone, deep in thought. A hall
monitor came out of nowhere.

“You okay?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Better get off to class
then.”

Great, I thought as I sat down and
turned my attention to the English class discussion on Romeo and
Juliet. To say I was confused as to whether I’d be okay with Aaron
kissing some Juliet other than me was an understatement. If he
could cause someone to wilt just by touching them with his finger,
what could he do with his lips?

Suck the life out of them?

I pretty much stayed under my halo of
discussion within my head the whole forty-five minutes of English
class. The drama queens scored all the points during this session
and rightfully took home the day’s award for the
Q&A.

We were held over in English class to
await an announcement. As the seconds ticked by we all took to
staring at the speaker on the wall. We heard a clearing of the
throat. We recognized the voice as belonging to the school
nurse.

“We’ve had an unusual number of
students reporting in with symptoms of fatigue. If you are feeling
weak, disoriented, and nauseated please report to the nurse’s
office.”

I wondered. Had they diagnosed it as
Delmon Fever?

I found sanctuary in Art class. Joe
Leach, ever the stabilizing force in a world of turmoil, put our
fears at ease. (Or at least the rest of the class’s
fright)

“Probably just over
exertion at the smell of summer snow,” he said.

Poetic, too, he is.

We moved on from scribbling on paper
to molding clay. When he asked for volunteers to help him stack
bricks for the kiln out back, I was quick to raise my hand. I had
enough of play-doh as a child. The thought of the smell made me
want to puke. Joe picked Kevin Staufer, Linsay’s boyfriend. Linsay,
of course, had her hand up too, but Joe picked me.

After Joe instructed the students on
what they were to do in his absence, the three of us, Joe, Kevin,
and I, bundled up for our excursion outside.

By now, snowflakes gave way to light
rain. The kiln site sat under a tin roof with open walls. It
remained cold out, but not wet. The snow, under the onslaught of
warm rain, was disappearing at an alarming rate. Not by my
standard’s, but Jason and his boarding friends certainly would
think so.

Joe instructed us on how to stack the
bricks. It seemed fairly straight forward, a simple stacking of
blocks, something we had all done as children.

I crouched down next to Joe and mostly
was tasked with retrieving and handing him the stacking
blocks.

Kevin assisted on the other
side.

We soon had a rhythmic flow going and
the walls of the kiln rose.

According to Joe, you could buy bricks
in any shape or form and just about build a kiln in any shape or
form. Joe preferred to buy straight bricks, because as he said,
“They’re cheaper.” That meant if you needed to build an arch for a
peep-hole, you had to cut the brick.

Joe sent Kevin back in to retrieve the
saw.

That’s when it happened. I don’t know
why, but it did.

Joe was stacking bricks. I was beside
him, crouched down. We were close. Too close, obviously. As I
handed him a brick I leaned in. I could smell his breath. It
smelled flavorful, spiked with a bit of coffee aroma and a
lingering of spearmint gum tang.

The urge took hold of me to kiss
him.

I don’t know why. Maybe it had to do
with Aaron’s deceit and his destiny as Romeo. Or just because the
whole day had been a bit on the traumatic side and Joe was Joe, the
stabilizer.

Joe turned toward me. For a brief
second we stared into each other’s eyes. We came together, lips
touching. Not an all-out kiss. Just a quick touching of skin on
skin. More like a daughter kissing her father goodbye, but wanting
it to be more than a brush of cheeks.

I looked to see Kevin standing in the
doorway. He gave no clue as to whether he had witnessed our
discretion.

Joe was quick to cover up our deed. He
handed Kevin two bricks, penned a line, and asked Kevin to do the
honors of splitting the fire stone.

I at once felt diminished. For some
reason, the urge to kiss Joe prior to the actual event had meaning.
Once it was done, I felt empty as though Joe had sucked the life
out of me. The fear this feeling would be replicated the next time
I kissed a man on the lips grew in my mind.

“Joe,” I said, “I’m feeling a little
light headed. I need to go back inside and sit down.”

“Sure. Kevin and I can finish up
here.”

I looked at Kevin. “That okay with
you?”

“Yeah.”

He gave no hint he knew why I felt
sick.

And Joe gave no hint he had
participated.

The world went on.

I went on. To my next class and
Aaron.

“Hey,” Aaron said, as I sat down next
to him.

He debagged our pig. He laid it out
and readied it for our operation.

“Hey, yourself.”

Mr. Omes was at his comedic best,
which isn’t saying much.

“Why wouldn’t the sow let her piglets
play with toads?”

No one, even if they knew the answer,
replied. It would be way too embarrassing.

“She didn’t want them to grow into
Hogwarts.”

Mr. Omes got a few laughs off of his
joke. It surprised me to hear Aaron chuckle as well.

“You’re in good spirits,” I
said.

“You got to admit. It was ingenious
the way he turned that around, wart hogs to Hogwarts.”

“Yeah. I guess so.

In the background I heard Mr. Omes
telling us we would be working on the stomach and digestive tract
of the pig today.

I had sympathy for the pig. The day’s
events had my internals distressed to the point where I felt one
more knife cut would lay me open.