Different and Cool (2017)

Wednesday

D&C

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*****
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WEDNESDAY

Outside Starlight Jr. High, there was a lot of activity going on next to the new gymnasium. All over the sports field and black top, students were not only playing soccer and basketball, but various hodgepodge games combined from all those sports. This was partly due to Mr. Clark's assignment, which was encouraging many to stand up and create their own variant on their favorite games. It was encouraging creativity, and it seemed to be a good thing.

Inside Starlight Jr. High was another story.

"No one's gonna even see us comin'," a muffled voice whispered through the hallway, snickering with uncontrollable mirth. "Man, this is gonna be so sweet."

"Shut up," a second voice hissed back. "Your voice carries."

Justin and Slick had managed to give the P.E. teacher the slip, and had entered the gymnasium unannounced without anyone missing them. Keeping away from the boys' basketball practice on the court, they slipped and skulked through the small hallways of the complex, adopting the air of ninja assassins. Soon, they had arrived at the girls' locker room, a relatively new addition built to accommodate their own basketball team. And the place where actual girls were going to be showering off very soon.

Moving as a pair, the two slipped next to the locker room door and put their ears to it. Upon hearing female voices, they moved a step back from the door, and leaned up against the wall. "Think this is gonna work, dude?" Slick said, folding his arms and peering at the boy through the part in his hair.

"We took care of everything beforehand, remember?" Justin admonished his friend. "All we have to do now is wait."

Thanks to the donations Justin's father had made to the school, the duo had been granted after-hours access to the school last night on the flimsy premise of grabbing some schoolbooks they had left behind. With a little elbow grease and a pilfered diagram of the school's safety systems, they had rigged one of the shower knobs to instead trigger the sprinkler system in the locker room. Another hour's work resulted in the hot water heater supplying heat to the sprinkler system. It was the longest, and most ambitious project the boys had ever undertaken.

And when that fateful girl turned on that knob...

"All wet, all hot!" Slick practically sang, meshing himself against the wall like a streamer of slime dripping down. He sighed, ready for all those lovely beauties to pour from the locker room, soaked shirts and screaming their lungs out. "Think they'll be wearing something other than sports bras?" he suggested.

"Could be." Justin smiled to himself, already starting to fantasize. "I know those two exchange students haven't gotten theirs in yet."

"Oooh, yeah!" The blond boy cheered, pumping his fist in premature victory. "Lacy, white goodness!"

"Yup." Justin smiled again, letting the peak on one canine tooth slip beyond his lip.

The two made themselves a bit more comfortable on the wall, arcing their backs so that the painted brick didn't dig into their skin. "I can't wait to see all those wet, slippery girls," Slick moaned. "Mari..."

"Janey..." Justin joined in lustily, a bit more husky than his friend.

"Carol..." Slick continued, a rivulet of drool falling off his lip. Then, a strange twitch formed in his cheek. "Hey, isn't Tarah going to be there, too?" he asked, raising his one visible eyebrow.

After letting the image slip into their heads, the two turned to each other and made a face. "Eeewww!!!"

Once they had gotten their mutual disgust out of their systems, the two boys resumed waiting for their plan to come to fruition. Nervous and anticipant, they began to grow impatient as well, tapping their fingers against their arms in repetitive motion. The hubbub of the basketball team became like white noise in a psychologist's office; subtle yet droning. The wall felt hard against their backs, grating against their spines hard enough to make them wonder if some permanent back injury was in the offing.

It was Slick who first broke the silence. "Uh, isn't this taking too long?" he said, gritting his teeth and quickly looking back to the locker room door.

Justin remained focused on the door for a little longer, before turning to Slick. "Yeah, a little bit," he responded, his face starting to lose the patience it held before.

They both stood waiting a moment more with twin expressions of screwed malcontent. A sterile silence took over the hall, cold and frosty like a hospital waiting room.

"Ya know," Slick started, a disappointed scowl coming to his face. "I bet they're not even in there at all."

"They couldn't have left, dolt," Justin snapped, antsy with the impending failure. "We were at the door the entire time." He put his ear up to the wall once again, and Slick followed suit. The voices from the girl's locker room had now been replaced by a biting, vacant hiss, as if it were empty the whole while.

Slick pulled away from the wall. "Let's go in," he whispered, stretching his hand towards the handle of the door. "I gotta see this for myself."

"Idiot, wait!" Justin hissed out, snatching at the boy's shirt. "You'll get us caught!" But Slick moved forward as if he hadn't heard him, and pulled open the door to the girl's shower room. He slipped inside the crack of the door, as a cool wave of sanitized air made its way out. Left with little else to do, Justin went in after his friend, gritting his teeth with irritance.

The two boys steadily made their way across the cold, tiled floor, peering about the eerily empty bath hall. Their silent footfalls were the only sounds in the shower room; not even a drip of water could be heard toppling onto the sinks and shower floors. It was like nobody had stepped in for years, save Justin and Slick.

Slick quickly glanced back and forth, a low growl coming from his lip. Then, he pounded his fist against the wall in disgust. "This is bogus," he complained, snorting derisively into the cold, shower room air. "There ain't any more hot babes here than at a sci-fi dork convention!"

"I don't get it." Justin seemed to be talking to himself rather than his friend. "The girls are supposed to enter the shower room at 11:30 sharp."

"But if we're going to wrangle a couple of pervs, we come in later," a third voice suddenly broke out from the silence, light and airy even in the echo of the acoustics-driving room.

"...huh?" Slick suddenly squeaked out. A sweatdrop rolled down his chilled temple, the cold caress of dread taking its bony hand unto his heart.

The voice seemed to smile in the darkness. "Get 'em!"

From beyond the corners and in the stalls, a dozen teenaged girls suddenly poured onto the duo, their intent anything but friendly. They slammed into Justin and Slick and separated them, pushing them to opposite corners of the room. Six girls detained Justin by forcing his arms up against the wall, and another six did the same for Slick. In about seven seconds, the boys were completely unable to move, pinned like crucifix victims from the dark ages of the world.

Justin valiantly struggled against the bonds of feminine flesh, succeeding only in hurting his wrists. "What...the heck...!?" he growled out, looking back and forth between the pretty, yet devilish-looking faces.

Slick offered less resistance than his friend, glancing at the girls with a weak smile pasted on his face. "Y'know, this might qualify as one of my fantasies if I didn't think I was about to die," he said, a nervous chuckle escaping his nonchalant facade.

"Well, you're not going to die." The same light voice spoke out from the other side of the room. "Just a little chill."

Justin and Slick both looked up from their bound positions to see the thirteenth girl exit one of the shower stalls, taking easy steps despite all the tension. Her long, green hair was clinging to her shoulders in large swaths. "Maru Mari?" Justin said, his eyebrow cocking upwards. "This was you?"

Mari smiled, oddly pleasant despite her dark aura. "One of the girls from your 5th Period class yesterday heard your plan," she explained, folding her arms. "Amy just wanted to tell the teacher, but I thought this would be much more fun." The devil-may-care grin on her face seemed to imply that she really thought it so; it wasn't just veiled anger.

"Uh..." Slick piped up semi-shyly, grinning a doomed man's grin. "What's 'this?'"

"This this," Mari replied. Then, she turned to the shower room door. "Bring it, Fiona!" she called out, putting a cupped hand to her mouth.

"Right, Captain!" A voice responded, sounding a bit faint.

Justin and Slick's eyes followed the wave of sound to the door, which was beginning to pull open. Soon, a brown-haired girl came forth from outside the shower room, holding a long garden hose. Their hearts were filled with dread as they saw their plan being turned against them, with Fiona handing the hose to Mari as if it were an executioner's axe. "Like see-through shirts and peep shows, do you?" Mari said with a wide smile. "I think you kids are wet behind the ears!"

"She's evil," Justin pondered to himself, staring transfixed at the gleaming hose nozzle.

"She's crazy!" Slick added, also making no bid for freedom.

"No, no." An unearthly spark was alight in Mari's eye as she gripped the hose like a blunderbuss. "She's gonna have loads of fun!"

All the girls save the green-haired one had backed away from the duo, leaving Justin and Slick's hands firmly bound with twine connected to wall hangers. A good thing for the girls, since a large bulge was already starting to force its way through the length of the hose. Justin grit his teeth in anticipation of the frigid blast, following the bulge like a blood clot to his heart. Slick was practically hyperventilating, stretching his hands against the twine hard enough to carve notches into his wrists.

"Hope you brought a change of clothes," Mari crooned, bringing the hose up to bear as the pressure reached the nozzle.

"Not my beautiful hair!" Slick whined one last time, cringing.

And then a bolt of ice-cold water exploded from the nozzle, jetting out like a geyser. "AhhhHHHH...!" Justin and Slick screamed as they met the leviathan torrent, their calls echoing harmlessly inside the walls of the girls' shower room.

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*****
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"I don't know if I can really do this," Andy said slightly to himself, cringing away from the door like a monster was behind it.

"You already made the appointment with her," Mary reminded him, gently pushing the boy towards the door. "You've got to fulfill it."

Sweat was forming on his forehead, and goose bumps covered his arms from the shoulders down. "Maybe you guys can just say I'm not feeling well or something," he tried hopefully, turning to his aunt and uncle with a slightly abashed smile on his face.

The doorbell rang a second time, jarring Andy's nerves like plucked piano wires.

"We're not going to make excuses for you, Andy," Noah said adamantly, folding his brawny arms. "Now get going and let that girl in!"

Andy sighed, defeated. He turned away from his unhelpful family and proceeded towards the door, putting his hand on the knob. He had already looked through the peephole when the doorbell first rang, so there was no point in delaying the inevitable. He turned the knob and wrenched the door open, trying to stomach his nervousness so that he wouldn't offend his guest.

From the other side of the door, Tarah's smile greeted him like an insurance agent on a holiday: unwelcome yet irrefutable. "Hi, Andrew!" she said, her face increasingly gleeful every moment. "Did I arrive on time?"

"Y-yeah, right on time..." Andy responded, remembering himself just in time for politeness. He took in her appearance: a green tank top with a pair of cargo shorts smeared with grass stains. In her arms were a collection of bug jars containing a wide variety of bouncing insects. All in all, she looked like she stepped out of a public television nature show.

Time for contemplating this was minimal, as the girl was making her way through the door. Andy stepped aside to make room for her and, just like that, Terrible Tarah was in the house, as if she was a family friend stopping for a visit.

It was weird.

"I was catching bugs in the evening," Tarah told him, handing over a jar. "I wanted to show them to you when I came over, since we're gonna have lots of time together!"

"Er herm..." Andy responded laconically, taking the jar and looking at it with wide eyes. Most of the things inside had frightened him as a young child, and still gave him quivers today.

"All the interesting bugs come out when it's late, so I tried to catch them real quick," Tarah added, nodding her head as if in affirmation. She resumed taking in her surrounding, looking around the room like a curious monkey. Soon, she turned towards Mary and Noah, who were waiting at the entrance to the den. "Are those your parents?" she asked, pointing a finger out at them.

"Um, yeah, kinda." Andy snapped back to attention, putting the jar under his arm. "This is my Aunt Mary and Uncle Noah. I'm...staying with them now," he said, gesturing towards the two.

"It's very nice to meet you, Tarah." Mary took the initiative for pleasantries with a gentle smile.

"Uh huh." Tarah nodded enthusiastically, walking up to them and extending her hand. "Me too!"

While the girl was busy shaking their hands like some sort of room worker, Andy took a moment to get used to the idea of the school nerd in his house. Nothing's gonna happen, he told himself, idly rocking back and forth. Everything's fine.

Repeating the mantra in his head, he meandered on over to the cheerful trio, where Tarah was shaking Noah's hand. "So...you wanna start working now?" he asked, trying not to lay too much eye contact on her.

"Sure," she said, walking over to him with an eager smile and staring him in the face. The pigtailed girl quickly brought another one of the glass jars up to bear. "I think we could study these neat bugs," she said, holding it up for him to inspect. "See if they act on free-will."

Andy almost had to suppress a laugh. It was clear where Tarah's brain currently was: right in the middle of that same public television nature show. "I...don't think that's what Mr. Clark had in mind," he said lightly, pushing the jar away.

"Are you sure?" Tarah asked, thrusting the jar to his nose again. "They're really cool."

Before Andy could debate on what was to be considered "cool," she was already going into specifics. "See this big one?" she bubbled, pointing out a rather grody looking creature. "It only comes out at night, when it's time to eat mealybugs, but those are in another jar. And this one, it dies just after it reproduces. That's a hard life!"

The boy quietly tolerated the diatribe as Tarah continued to babble away. Another thing was happening too: every time she span the jar to draw attention to another bug, she was unconsciously unscrewing the cap that kept them all safely trapped inside.

"And here's a little tick I found in the yard," she added in, pointing to the little green one hovering around at the top of the jar. "They burrow under your skin real good."

"There are ticks in the yard?" Mary piped up, an extremely anxious expression coming to her face. "And now one's in the house?"

"Don't worry." She smiled cheerfully. "It's safe inside the glass...oh, there it goes!" she suddenly cried out, her eyes widening slightly as a small speck darted out from the half-opened jar and started springing all over the place.

"ACK!" Mary suddenly shrilled, jumping about a foot in the air. "KillitkllitKILL IT!"

"I got this one," Noah said in a manly sort of voice, clenching his fists as if to smash the creature into dust.

"Wait, it's a living creature!" Tarah hollered out, waving her arms around in a panic. "It's name is Sir Digory!"

"It's name is Devil Spawn," the man insisted, moving over to the tick’s current position and throwing punches at it. “And it's time to exorcise!”

Andy put his hand on his head in quiet disbelief. "Is this Murphy's Law?" he supposed for a moment, as the chaos around him continued to swell and boil.

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*****
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Time passed and floodwaters subsided. Andy was now up in his room with Tarah, figuring they'd get their work done better in solitude. The room wasn't exceptionally large, but it was enough for two people to work in it comfortably. With the door closed, it made for a cozy little hovel for the two teens to curl themselves up in. So cozy that Andy was glad that his friends weren't witnessing how close the two of them were tonight.

Placing her hand on the electric globe, Tarah marveled how the lightning streams flew to her fingertips. "This is neato!" she cheered, rapping her fingertips against the glass. "High voltage discharges!"

"Uh, right," Andy responded, trying his best to humor her. "I got that at a science exhibit two years back."

"That was the Neo Aviania exhibit, right?" she queried, straightening her glasses on the bridge of her nose. "I liked that."

"Yeah, it was pretty cool." Andy smiled, genuine humor in his voice now.

Tarah smiled back and proceeded to the bed Andy was lying on, carrying her lukewarm linguini with her. Against Mary's judgment, they had opted to bring their meals upstairs, so they could work while they ate. She placed her food on a small end table, and sat down on the bed next to him. "Now what?" she asked, looking down at the boy's flash of sea-green hair.

Andy brought his pen to his lip, studying the blank page before him. "I guess we start on this free-will thing," he started up, glancing towards the girl from the corner of his eye. "Do you have anything on this, because I'm drawing a blank."

Her response to this question was brief. "No, I can't write very well."

The boy jerked at this, and raised himself on his elbows. "But you're supposed to be smart," he protested. "I mean, don't you get good grades in everything?"

"Oh, I only get Cs in humanities," Tarah explained, shaking her head. "I thought everybody knew that."

"Huh, and I thought you were supposed to help me," he groused somewhat bitterly. He sighed and looked down at his hands. "I've been swinging and missing all week with this assignment."

The girl seemed to come to a revelation. "Did you want to talk to Maru Mari yesterday?" she asked, looking at him apologetically. "I'm sorry if I messed it up."

Andy looked at Tarah in surprise, wondering how she had made the connection. But he soon shook it off with a slight chuckle. "That's okay," he told her, offering her a brief smile. "I think Mr. Clark's going to give me a 'D' no matter what, anyhow."

"The professor won't get mad if you just turn in what you did, you know," she pointed out. "He's really nice when he's had his coffee, when it's not decaffeinated."

"I...don't want to just blow it off," he admitted, shaking his head in disdain. "I want to get somewhere in this assignment. It's confusing me, and I want to conquer it."

At that, a cheerful smile warmed Tarah's lips. "That's neat," she said, cocking her head slightly to the side. "It's just like when I'm trying to track the migration patterns of the junebugs."

Andy turned towards the braided girl, a strange expression on his face. With Tarah's bright demeanor imploring him, he stared straight through her spectacles, and got what was perhaps his first good look at her eyes. They were a calming, pure blue, and Andy could see himself reflected inside, his image framed perfectly within her irises. They showed no pretense or conceit and simply illuminated her regard for him.

Their eyes remained locked for a moment more before Andy suddenly broke the contact with a quick jerk of his head. "So...uh, what do you want to get out of this assignment?" he asked her, scratching his skull and trying to get rid of that strange feeling. “You know…free-will and all that.”

"Oh, I don't believe in free-will," Tarah responded offhandedly.

Andy reared up slightly at this unexpected answer. "You...don't?" he pressed, a bit jarred by Tarah's cavalier attitude towards what he felt was heavy subject matter.

"Yeah, it's a combination of outward stimuli and the inward reaction to it," she explained, flopping down lightly on the bed. "When we study the bugs, we can see that life is cause and effect. We're not any different from bugs, because we all play off each other in patterns." Tarah stared into the whirling fan above, the blades seeming to churn her eyes as they struggled to keep up with them. "It's not like you have to blame organisms for what they do. Life's still real interesting, even if your favorite bug gets eaten sometimes."

Andy gaped at the girl as if she had suddenly switched languages. The words she spoke seemed as random and incomprehensible at the rest of her, yet it was clear that there was something more behind them. Where was all this coming from? And why was it bothering him so much?

It was becoming clear that this assignment was going to take him to some strange places within his mind.

The boy was so deep in thought that he scarcely heard Tarah when she had gotten off his bed. Still, Andy looked up when he saw her staring down at him. "Andrew, can we rest for a little while?" she asked. "I'm feeling tired."

"Um, alright," Andy consented, looking at her cautiously.

She nodded her thanks, and set about wandering the room, absently picking at the various knickknacks again. A moment of silence passed between the two, during which Andy was thinking very hard about voicing the errant thought that had just come to his head. With a maudlin mood weighing him down, he reached his decision fairly easily. "Why don't we do something fun for a little while?" he asked her, bolting off the bed.

Tarah turned slowly towards him, a surprised look on her face. "O-okay!" she finally responded, her excited smile flying out at him.

Andy smiled in turn, a slightly abashed look on his face. "That's good," he responded, putting a hand on the back of his head and running it through his hair.

Another brief moment of silence. "So what do you want to do?" she asked eagerly, moving a bit closer to Andy.

He gulped slightly at her close proximity, and looked away. "Well, we have something in the living room that’s kinda fun, if a bit weird," Andy said, his hand still within his hair.

She blinked a few times. "A videogame?" she asked.

At this, the boy peeked back at her with a small, almost mischievous smile. "It's a little more weird than that..."

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*****
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The karaoke machine's loud reverberation rocked the small living room like a car on hydraulics. Its pulsating rhythm sought to control the audience's heartbeat, pushing them into the proper mood: unabashed enthusiasm.

"I still can't believe you purchased that infernal device." Uncle Noah was grumbling to Mary, his hands practically crumpling the newspaper he held in front of him. "It's caused us nothing but pain."

"Hush," the woman admonished him, taking short sips of her Puar tea. "It was Andy's 11th birthday present, and he's gotten so much enjoyment from it." She put down her cup, and folded her arms in defiance. If one were to look close, though, they could see small streak marks where she had gripped the cup too tightly.

The two adults, stress wrinkles in their eyes, did their best to endure the mind-numbing song from the high-tech device. Not to mention its overenthusiastic singer.

"WIDE WIDE WORLD, LET ME TAKE YOUR HEART!" Tarah squealed into the microphone, holding it close to her warbling mouth. "ONLY YOU CAN SOOTHE MY SOULLLLL!"

Andy sat on the sofa between his aunt and uncle and stared transfixed at the bespectacled girl, who had transformed from a school oddball into some sort of karaoke demon. Politely, he refrained from covering his ears from the high-pitched siren that made death by shipwreck seem more appealing. Instead, he regarded her with curiosity, strangely entranced by her. She's really getting into it!

The song mercifully ended a second or two before the Champion family's eardrums burst. Setting the microphone on top of the machine, Tarah skipped back towards the sofa with a spring in her step. "Was that good, Andrew?" Tarah asked eagerly, smiling widely at the boy before her.

"Uh...it was nice," he lied, conjuring up a false smile for the girl's benefit. "Very...enthusiastic."

She showed no acknowledgment of his duplicity. "Thanks!" she said, twirling her right braid with her finger.

Andy grinned in return, his pleasant mask suddenly becoming his real face. For some reason, the situation was simply too feel-good to even worry about the condition of your ears.

Taking a large breath and wiping her forehead, Tarah moved aside, leaving a clear path to the karaoke machine. "It's your turn!" she said cheerily, making a motion towards it.

Andy nodded briefly, then left the sofa to proceed towards the bulky device. Picking up the microphone from where the girl had left it, he tapped his finger against the head a couple of times, and was rewarded with a few straggled clucks. A somewhat silly expression overtook the facial features of Andrew Champion, and he turned towards his audience with a faux-debonair look on his face. "Ladies and gentleman, we are now taking requests," he crooned into the microphone. "Andrew Champion will make all your dreams come true."

"I like ‘Talk to Her Heart!’" Tarah called loudly, though they were only a few feet apart.

Andy cocked an eyebrow at the suggestion, though it did not completely squelch his zeal. 'Talk to Her Heart' was a song performed by the bubblegum band Toxic Crayon that was popular enough when he was seven, but relatively reviled now. "Are you sure?" he asked her, cradling the mike lightly in his grip. "It's pretty old."

"Uh huh!" she said eagerly, pumping her fists. "I can even dance to it!"

Well, if she was willing to dance to it, he was willing to sing it. Committed to his decision, he plugged the appropriate code into the machine, while Tarah moved to the front of the room beside him. During the brief time before the song started up, the boy and girl took the time to rearrange some of the furniture so that Tarah would have room to dance. Soon, everything was prepared, and the song was about to start.

The music began with the bumping bop of drum machines, followed by a flurry of computerized brass hits. The pigtailed girl began bouncing back and forth to the beats, her pigtails like pendulums in grandfather clocks. A bead of sweat rolled down Andy's temple, as he fought to maintain a halfway calm expression. At least a guy could sing this one without feeling like a total boyband wannabee, unlike some other Toxic Crayon hits.

As he started singing, Tarah began swinging back and forth, making small circular motions with her arms and hands. Her eyes were half closed, and there was a ghost of a smile on her face. She performed a twirl that sent her braids flying like propeller blades, which caused the boy to blink as the hair got a little too close to his eye. But Andy nevertheless kept his eye on the girl's form, rocking and rolling with the best of them.

She danced a lot better than she sang. And she was nicer than he would've ever imagined.

"Three-fourths time, Andrew, and synchronized vocals!" the girl bubbled, twirling about in a flurry of pigtails. "It's a real neat beat!"

"Got it, Taraaah!" Andy sang out, still in tune with the melody.

The music continued onward, and the song got no better because of it. Yet Andy's mood had improved so much that he could now sing the song with a straight face. Tarah finished an impressive spin and took a brief look at the boy, smiling brightly for him. And he just smiled back, with thoughts of the project, his friends, and even Maru Mari floating away like a note just played...

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*****
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"I didn't know you were such a good dancer," Andy said, taking a small sip from his juice box.

"My mom made me take dancing classes," Tarah said, a blush of pride radiating from her cheeks. "You're real good at singing," she added, spreading the warm feeling around like strawberry jam.

"I kinda have a lot of practice..." he said, smiling in spite of himself.

The two fell into a comfortable silence, sipping from their juice boxes. They were sitting up in a dilapidated tree fort in the middle of the backyard. Tarah had complained at first, claiming that the nails and extra weight hurt the oak tree it was built in. Still, he had managed to persuade her to come up, saying that the time outside would be relaxing after blasting their ears out indoors.

With his feet dangling over the side of the tree house, Andy looked over to where the girl was sitting, and then chuckled slightly. Tarah's attention had fallen back to the small caterpillar on the window; she had told him earlier it was a rare specimen. When she caught his eye, she simply smiled up at him, unabashed by his staring. And the boy just smiled back.

"It's going to pupate in about two days, you see," she informed him with a smile, pointing at the inching insectoid. "Then it'll be able to fly around the flowers, with bright blue wings. But I think it's great now, too."

"Just from watching it go up the wall, huh?" Andy peered at her though the corner of his eye. Maybe he was feeling a bit lightheaded tonight, but he thought he had actually understood that.

Tarah just smiled and nodded. "Oh, it's really neat!" she cheered. "It's always trying to get ready for the next stage of development. Even if you can't fly, you can always run!"

He grinned, ignoring the impulse to brush off the odd metaphor. The caterpillar really was wobbling forth with all its might, just to reach a leaf that snuck in through the cracks in the tree house boards.

"I think you're like a caterpillar too, Andrew!" Tarah added, taking a moment to straighten her glasses.

"Think so?" Andy turned to her. wondering where she was taking this.

"Yeah, you're full of a lot of good stuff that's gonna make you something great," she responded. "Plus, you're green."

He didn't know exactly what he was laughing at, but he let loose all the same. "Can't forget that!" he chuckled, running a hand through his green locks.

Suddenly, Tarah straightened up. "My mom's probably coming soon," she said, a slight trace of disappointment in her voice. "I need to get ready to go."

Andy nodded, smiling serenely. "We didn't get a lotta work done, did we?" he said, with laughter still in his voice.

The girl giggled in response to this. "So, are your mom and dad coming home?" she asked, turning her head to face him directly. "Maybe I can convince Mom to let me stay a little longer, so I can meet them too!"

And then Andy's face darkened just a little bit, and he stared straight up at the roof of the tree fort. "They're not coming home," he said softly, his voice deceptively neutral. "They died...car accident."

"Oh..." Tarah squeaked out, her eyes widening for a second. "...I'm sorry."

Andy turned to the girl with a strained grin. "It's alright," he said, trying to wave off her concern. "It happened a long time ago."

Tarah stared down at her feet intently. "But your aunt and uncle seem pretty nice, right?" she attempted, her brow scrunching up.

"Yeah..." he responded, nodding his head. The boy looked back towards the roof again and began to slowly lean back onto the floor. "Aunt Mary and Uncle Noah were living in a small house before the accident," he continued, drawing strength from Tarah's goodwill. "A week later, they moved into our old house so that I could stay at home. After a little while, Grandpa Moses came in too from his apartment, so I'm never really alone. The guys've been real great to me for these past four years."

"I know they're really great, too!" Tarah agreed, smiling for him. "Even if they don't like bugs!"

"Yeah," he replied, stiffing a laugh under his hand. "It's just..." An unreadable expression overtook Andy's face, and he sat up again to peer at Tarah. "I was always real close to my mother. You know, talking to her about everything, things like that."

He stared off into the distant trees beyond the backyard fence, watching them sway with the slight breeze. "Mom and I used to go on our own adventures together, and I felt a lot more...brave I guess, when she was still here. You'd probably like her; she was like some kind of warrior-princess. And sometimes. I can hear her voice late at night, telling me to keep moving forward. So whenever I'm in trouble, I try and think about what she might tell me."

The boy suddenly felt a light, moist sensation on his cheek, the telltale twitter of bangs against his face. Reacting strongly to the kiss, he quickly whirled back towards its source, a look of amazement on his face. Tarah was radiant, with a small blush tinging her cheeks, yet still smiling. Her eyes twinkled lightly within their glass containment, which seemed to reflect his own shocked expression almost perfectly.

The two continued to stare at each other.

"Tarah, your mother is here." ...and a projected voice burst out from the back porch, all but destroying the mood which had accumulated in the tree fort.

"W-wha...?" the girl burbled out, her eyes widening as if she had seen a ghost. Jerking back and forth in a panic, Tarah eventually lost her place on the wooden floor, and began to slip off and out of the tree. "Whoooaaa!" she cried, flailing her arms as she fell. Only Andy's quick hand and thinking saved her from a bumpy rendezvous with the cold, hard ground.

Dangling by the arm, Tarah looked upwards at the boy, who was straining heavily to hold her light, but still considerable human weight. She smiled a goofy sort of smile. "Whoops!" she chirped, sticking out her tongue. "That's a drop!"

Andy grunted a bit, putting another arm to use in keeping her up. "Yeah," he responded, a strained smile coming to his face.

Scooting forward slightly, the boy carefully lowered Tarah onto the ground. Once accomplished, he backed up a bit and stared down at the girl, a curiously hollow expression on his face. They looked at each other a moment more, feeling more and more awkward.

"Well, uh, I'm going back home," she said, glancing to the side for a brief moment before turning her eyes to Andy once again.

"Um...yeah," he managed, blinking a few times.

They both hesitated a moment, struggling to find something to say. "Hey, I bet I'll see you in school tomorrow!" Tarah bubbled, a small flash of excitement in her eyes.

"O-okay," Andy replied somewhat laconically, staring wide-eyed at her.

The girl stood silent for a moment more, still locked in some sort of strange staring match with him. Then, she slowly turned into a jog towards the house, where Aunt Mary was holding a door open for her. Clearing the lawn in a scant few seconds, she arrived at the porch and entered the door. And then, with her fingers gripping the door frame, Tarah spared a smile and a wave for the boy as she disappeared into the house, towards her ride home and normal life.

Andy sat silently for about half a minute after the back door swung shut, like a statue of cold stone. Then, he flopped onto his back, the sharp hardness of the wood feeling somewhat refreshing. His eyes were unfocused, seeming to stare off into another world. Maybe he had been in another world, a moment ago.

He slowly placed his hand against his cheek where Tarah's lips had grazed it. "What...just happened?" he wondered to himself, his voice wavering slightly in the brisk breeze.

Only the crickets answered.