Guardians of the Earth

Guardians of the Earth

I could hear my heart pounding so loud it scared me. What had I seen? Something about my mum and her friends, I think they were running from someone. They were definitely in the woods though, and we live in an apartment six stories up, the closest thing we have a forest is a small park.
My alarm sounded with the familiar ring that starts my mornings. Funny how I always seem to wake up from my dreams minutes before it goes off. It's a high pitched ring that works by being so annoying it forces you up.
I would have stopped using an alarm by now, but mom won't let me. Apparently I'll "never" end up making it out of bed without it, which is half true, I spend most of my night doing homework and like to enjoy a few hours of blissful nothingness before I sleep. This usually means I wake up angry and exhausted, but like everyone says, patterns are important. Same old routine every morning; get up, go to the bathroom, mess around with my hair until I feel it resembles something cute.
I like watching hair tutorials, and I always say I'll try them in the morning, but it just ends up with me saying "another day." Today's looking like a not so good day; between the slightly greasy hair, and having the skin tone of an albino, I'll just admit defeat and continue on.
"Good morning sweetie, didn't want to take a shower again I see" "Ha mum, you know I'm busy, beauty comes after education. You're the parent; you're the one who should be encouraging me." I said.
"I don't like to think of myself as your mom, I think I'm more of a cool friend." I sighed and lightly punched her shoulder. "See? What kind of daughter punches their mom?"
"The kind that doesn't like being pelted with stupid jokes at seven in the morning, I said.
I grabbed a banana and peeled it, making faces at my mum and thinking of witty things to say in response to her jokes. I took a bite of the banana and was assaulted by the flavor, "great, the bananas aren't even ripe."
Mum raised her eyebrow, "I'm sorry, was I supposed to magically ripen them? You do realize how ridiculous you sound."
"Yeah yeah whatever, just saying a heads up could have been nice." I said. "I'm going to go now; I need to arrive a little bit early to meet with my math teacher."
"Is everything going fine?" she said.
"Yeah its fine I just need a little bit of extra help no biggy."
"Okay, I'll see you later mom," I closed the door, muffling her reply. I only have today to get through, and then I have two days off. Friday, the day of the parties, will be spent eating Cheetos under a blanket with my books. Sounds rough to some, but I've always been a little different.
My poor sleep and freaky dream had put me in a bad mood for the day. Things that were normal everyday occurrences made me feel annoyed and frustrated. In all of my classes, I couldn't think straight, I just kept thinking about the dream I had. The problem was that every second I wasn't thinking about it, the more the details alluded me, until finally, I could remember almost nothing. The time I did spend thinking about it meant I wasn't paying attention in class, and teachers always seem to pick on the kids staring into space. More than a couple times I was asked questions only to answer with a blank stare followed by a disapproving look.
Finally at lunch I got to see Haley, my partner in crime. Although being in a terrible school could be depressing, having Haley by my side made me think each day had some promise, even if that turned out to be wrong.
"Hey Elle, want to hang out tonight?" She asked.
"That depends, is snotball going to be there?"
"Oh stop being like that, he's not that bad. And you know it bothers me when you call Leon snotball. I get you don't like him, but I do, and sorry, but this isn't a three way relationship you know." She said with a smirk.
"You think you're funny, now that is humor. And sorry but I don't know if tonight is the night i want to third wheel with you two." I said.
"What else were you planning on doing that's more exciting? If there was anything better to do than hang out in a park, trust me, I’d be all over it. Besides, it's not like when you hang out with us we completely ignore you. We hardly even kiss!"
While is it true that i don't get completely ignored, I’d much rather hang out with Haley one on one, without her sleaze of a boyfriend mouth breathing over us. "Fine, I’ll go out with you guys, but just for a couple hours, there are a couple shows I've been meaning to catch up on."
"Fan fucking tastic, i got the hermit out of her house."
"Bite me."
"Gladly, but maybe not in front of Leon, he can get a little jealous, and you never know how he'd respond to some girl on girl action you know?"
The rest of the day went by in a blur; my last two classes had poor attendance and therefore didn't cover anything of meaning. That's fairly common at my school. People go home Friday at lunch, and even the teachers don't want to do anything. Friday is basically a half day but my mom would kill me if I ever skipped classes.
"Mom I’m home. Haley invited me out with her and Leon, so I’ll only be home for a couple hours." I shouted.
"Ohh look at that, my daughter going out on a Friday night. You guys going to go vandalize some abandoned buildings? Or maybe pay someone to get you some alcohol?" She yelled down.
I walked to my room, not wanting to engage in anymore conversation. All i had to do now was listen to some music and wait until Haley texted me to come outside my apartment. It was supposed to be a good night to go out. There had been a lot of rain lately, but the sky was clear and cool today, and the nights were just starting to become that perfect September chilly, sweater weather.
The buzz from my phone woke me up; I hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but a little catch up wouldn’t do me any harm. I thought I had shaken off the afternoon drowsiness, but I guess it crept up on me again. Like I expected, the buzz was from Haley telling me to come outside. After quickly grabbing my little handbag, and saying goodbye to my mom, I left the room and started towards the elevator. We're six stories up, and although my mom's always encouraging me to "take the stairs" I never do. I'm not overweight, and even if i was, it's not like I have someone to watch my weight for.
In the lobby I could see Haley stranding outside close to the smokers; she liked to stand near them and cough, she thought it was funny, but my neighbours always gave me a hard time about it. When i finally reached her, she seemed hyper, like she had a few cups of coffee before she came to see me.
"Let’s go let’s go already, I’m starving and I want to get some food before we meet Leon."
"You're still not eating in front of him? You've been dating for three months already!" I said.
"You don't understand, he's really finicky, he gets turned off by food super easily, and I don't want him to judge me. I know I’m not the prettiest eater"
It was true; Haley could eat something as simple as macaroni and cheese and still make a huge mess. Partly it was because she was always doing everything to fast, and she really didn't care how she looked eating; most of the time it least. Leon had a nice habit of subtlety hinting to Haley when he didn't like something, and this would result in Haley going out of her way to change herself. Haley always chose dirt for boyfriends, so this is like, her punishment for having terrible judgment towards guys.
We ended up grabbing fries from a street vendor while on the way to the park. As we entered I could tell I made a mistake coming out with them. I could see Leon smoking under an oak tree, but he wasn’t smoking cigarettes. The scent of marijuana carried down towards us.
I don’t smoke weed at all, but Haley and Leon both do. On her own, Haley is mellow and pleasant enough to be around. But when she’s with Leon all they do is get high, stare into each other’s eyes and talk about how much they love each other. Usually they forget that I’m even there and i end up slipping off to go home.
“Hey guys, what took you long? I saved some bud for you Haley.” Leon said.
I could see that Haley was reluctant to smoke, probably because she knew i didn’t like it. But she said nothing, gave Leon a smile, and sat next to him to finish what Leon had brought.
It was surprisingly quiet for a Friday night. Even though we’re in a small suburb outside of Toronto, there are normally enough people to make Haley and Leon wary about smoking publicly. Without any strangers to make them cautious, they quickly became high, and the routine of me being ignored began once again.
Although i normally would have left the minute they started with their googly eyes, I felt it nearly irresistible to stay outside. I was warm, wrapped in my XL sweater, and the night lights of the city were coming on. You could see the glow from kilometers away, and since the park was up high, it allowed me a full view.
Once it began to get to dark, I whispered in Haley’s ear that I was leaving. I was rewarded with a wave of her hand and brief eye contact from Leon. Wanting to be able to watch a couple movies once at home before I passed out, I started off at a brisk pace. My apartment complex was only a few blocks away, but the wind was picking up and it hurt to walk into. I had to shield my face with my jacket, but eventually even that was unbearable and I was forced to duck into a corner store. We probably have a hundred corner stores from my house to the park, but I definitely made the right choice going into this one.
It was completely empty except for a tall boy at the back of the store. He didn’t look like the kind of boy you would see on the streets though, more like at an anime convention. He had silver hair, and gray eyes, and best of all is when he saw me, he smiled. I didn’t want to seem like a wimp so I pretended I was in there for food and grabbed a chocolate bar. The cashier was somewhere in the back, but there was a little bell you could ring at the front. Of course, the bell was broken, so I left a five on the counter, slid the bell on top of it so it wouldn't blow away, and grabbed a bag of chips on my way out.
I wanted to talk to that boy, but I didn’t have Haley here, and I don’t operate alone, so I decided to finish my walk back home, but out of the corner of my eye I could see that he was still watching me, with almost a bemused grin on his face.