Yesterday and today's combined word count: 3,349 words
Running total: 48, 403
Summary: The gang prepares to hold a séance to help their mysterious client and Kenneth gets summer work done.
Also, there is a gay love story on Kenneth and Chase's summer reading list.
impressed.
I sit down on the bed, briefly marveling over the fact that the linens aren’t Batman-themed or something. He sits in a comfortable-looking leather swivel chair and turns to face me.
“So… Scarlett told me you think you’re possessed?”
For some reason, I’m feeling angry and impatient with Chase. I just walked in but I already feel like he doesn’t believe me. He really thinks I’m crazy. And I wish he had the guts to look at me, God damn it.
“Chase,” I say, gritting my teeth. His head is pointing at me, but I see his eyes looking well past my forehead. “Look at me in the eye when you’re talking to me.”
He tries. I’ll give him that, he really does try. I can see the pained look on his face as he tries to bring his eyes to mine. He continues talking. “All right, but I need to—“ He suddenly looks away. “—I’m sorry. I can’t do it. I’m squeamish, and I know it doesn’t help you at all… but I just…” He sighs and half swivels away from me. “It brings up bad memories. Stuff I’ve tried to keep hidden for a long time. Stuff I don’t like to think about.”
“Like what?” Don't turn this into a sob story for yourself. Can you even imagine how I feel?
“I don’t talk about it,” he said indignantly. “Now—“
“’Now’ nothing,” I insist, standing up. “What is it that’s so horrible in your life that you can’t even bare to think about?”
“Don’t belittle me!” He yells. “You have no idea what—“
“You think you have it bad!? What ever happened to you, you…”
“You what?” He thinks he has an advantage over me or something. “You overprivelidged piece of shit? I could have said the same thing about you up until your little accident. And trust me, you have way more privelidges than I do. You’re smart, you have parents that love you and dote on you, and you have charisma if not good looks. I mean, Scarlett still prefers you over me. Do you know how much that means, if nothing else?”
He’s condescending and I can’t stand that, but he does have a point. I breathe heavily, trying to control my anger. He does the same, and now he’s looking me in the eye. Eventually I step down and return to the bed. Chase only continues looking at me for a few more moments, then turns away suddenly.
Eventually I speak. “Yeah, I’ve been hearing a voice. It’s always the same one talking to me. It’s telling me that it can restore my looks—make me the way I was before the fire. Only I have to kill for it to be able to do so.”
“Hmmm.” He says. Then he spins around in his chair twice. I’m not really sure what he’s doing, but I don’t say anything. Eventually he stops spinning and asks me, “What does the voice sound like?” A pause, as if he’s taking instructions from some invisible force. Well, Scarlett did say he had a voice in his head too, right? “Male or female?”
“Male,” I say. “It’s pretty deep but smooth. Almost seductive, if I was gay.”
Chase gives me a strange look but doesn’t say anything. He then glances up at the ceiling, as if listening to someone only he can hear. Eventually, he looks back at me with a stupid grin on his face. “Good news!” he says. “Now, there is a chance that you may just be schizophrenic—it tends to show up in guys sooner than in girls, after all—but Alistair—he’s the ghost that sort of possesses me, you see—Alistair says that your particular spirit may match something he’s covered.”
That’s pretty good news. I smile. “Glad to hear it,” I say. “Now… um…”
Almost as if he read my mind, Chase responds, “I don’t know exactly what ghost is possessing you or how to get rid of it just yet. And we’ll need to confirm you’re possessed in the first place. If you can give me a little time, we’ll be able to confirm all this stuff, the news casting club and I. You have Scarlett’s number and mine, right?”
“Yeah.”
He nods. “We’ll keep you updated. Expect to hear back from us in a few days.” He smiles.
It seems like we’re done talking. I stand up. “All right, then. I better get going…”
“Ah, and Dean?”
I stop and turn around in the doorway. Chase looks at the floor as he addresses me. “I’m… sorry. About everything. Sorry about the fire, sorry I can’t treat you like you’re normal…”
I still don’t like Chase very much. But I will say this about him: It amazes me how much he wants me to like him. That I don’t mind at all. I force a small smile. “Don’t worry about it, Chase. I’ll see you around.”
“See ya.”
---------------------------------------------------------------
Scene XVI
Now We’re Getting into the Hardcore Ghost Hunting Stuff
Kenneth
I get a phone call at about 9:30 in the morning from an overly excited Ashley.
“Hi, Kenneth!” She yells into the earpiece. I hold the phone away from my head as she continues. “Are you hungry!?”
“Uh…” I look at a calendar in the kitchen. It’s July 12—the second week of the month. It’s only been two week since I last ate. “A… little? I—“
“Great!” She cuts me off. “All right, are you doing anything tonight?”
“…No?” It’s too early for my brain to function properly.
“Even better!” she says. “Do you know the way to my house?”
“…I’ve never been to your house.”
“Ohhhh.” It looks like that puts a wrench in her plans. There’s a short period of silence on the phone as she scribbles something down. “I don’t know the way to your house, either, so I’ll give you the address and you can look it up online, okay?”
I’m going to regret replying to this in the affirmative later, but for the time being I just say, “Yeah, all right. Give me a sec.” I find a scrap of paper and write down the address Ashley gives to me. Then I repeat it back for Ashley for confirmation.
“Yeah, that’s all right… um, wait! It’s six four seven, not six five seven. But it’s right otherwise.”
I make the correction. “All right. So… why am I going over to your house, again?”
“Ohhhh, I forgot to tell you, didn’t I? I’m so silly!” God, how can someone be this awake at 9:30!? “We’re holding a séance. The club is. Someone’s come to us because they think they’re possessed and we’re going to exorcize the spirit! If there is a spirit…”
Hmm. That last part sounded bad. But I do my best to ignore it and ask, “So I get a free meal out of this?” Never mind the ignoring. “If it all goes according to plan?”
“Yep!” Ashley chirps. “So, are you in?”
“Yeah, I’ll be there. What time?”
“Seven o’ clock tonight.”
“All right.” I write that down on the scrap paper, along with the word EXORCISM. “See you then.”
“See you!”
And with that I hang up. For a minute or two I sit on the center island of our kitchen (brand new; my mom and I have been doing do-it-yourself home improvement since I trashed the place that one night) trying to absorb everything that Ashley said. Not that it was a particularly heavy subject that needed hours to be absorbed; but I am really tired. I eventually tell myself screw it and almost head back up to bed when my mom walks in the kitchen, smiling as she flits about, preparing some sort of breakfast for herself.
“You’re up early, Kenny.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, I guess so… got a phone call from one of my friends.”
“Did you? And what did they say?”
“Séance tonight.” I smile wearily. I reach for the piece of scrap paper to refresh my memory. “Seven o’ clock, at this address….” I hand the piece of paper to my mom. She looks at it carefully, nods. “I’m sorry, I said yes before getting your—
“It’s all right, Kenny. I’m off on Tuesdays, and I don’t have anything planned.” She hands the paper back to me. “I can take you there.”
I smile at her. “Thanks, Mom.”
She moves over to one corner of the kitchen. “I’m making coffee, do you want any? It will—“ I look at her sadly, although I manage to keep a smile on my face like it’s some kind of joke. Ha ha ha, I can’t drink any coffee! Isn’t that funny? “Sorry.”
“It’s all right. I think I’ll just go back up to my room and try to get some more sleep.” I slide off the kitchen counter and head towards the staircase. On my way there, though, I feel my mom grab me and pull me towards her.
“I love you, Kenny, no matter who you are.” She kisses me on my cheek. I’m just about as tall as her now. Funny, I don’t know when I got so tall. I’m surprised she doesn’t comment on this, but she doesn’t. She knows when it’s worth saying something and when it’s not.
“I love you, too.”
We stand there and hug for a few more precious moments. Finally her hold loosens and she pats my shoulder. “Okay. You can run off to bed now. You need to be ready for that séance tonight.”
And so I do. And three hours of sleep were just what I needed.
~~~
When I wake up, the first thing my mom tells me is that Chase called while I was sleeping.
“He told me it wasn’t urgent, he just wanted to talk,” she tells me. “I didn’t want to wake you for that.”
“Thanks for that,” I tell her. “Did he say when I could call him back?”
She shrugs. “Whenever, he said. Didn’t sound particularly busy.”
“All right, I’ll call him up now… wonder what he wants?” I don’t know why I wonder aloud. Maybe I’m still partially asleep. Gee, I really wish I could drink coffee or at least consume some sort of caffeine. Maybe I can? I’ll need to ask Chase about that, or maybe that ghost that’s possessing him. What was his name again? Allison?
I call Chase on my cell, because I’ve forgotten his number, but he is in my contact list. It only rings twice before he picks up.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Chase. It’s Kenny.”
“Good to hear from you, Kenny. You know about the séance tonight?”
“…Yeah, why?”
“Just making sure. I wasn’t calling about that. Right now I’m more worried about our summer assignments. I’ve been so into this ghost stuff that I’ve barely even glanced sideways at our reading. Have you?”
“…Crap!”
“I guess that’s a no…”
He’s guessed right. As busy as he might have been with the ghost hunting stuff, I’ve been even busier worrying whether or not I’ll be able to eat and not hurt someone.
“Well, yeah. I was thinking maybe we could work on it together today and maybe get some stuff accomplished. What do you think?”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” I say. “Let me ask my mom…”
“Okay, sure—wait, do you want to come over here, or…?”
“Ahh…” I look around. We have a few rooms completely or mostly repaired but the house is still largely a mess. “I think that would be best. I’d invite you over, but we still haven’t completely fixed it up yet… it’s not that comfortable.”
“Okay, that’s fine with me. I just need to make sure with my parents that it’s okay, too. Completely spaced on asking them before.” I hear him snort air into the phone: a bizarre sort of laugh.
I put the phone down, covering the mouthpiece and find my mom in the family room (the other room we actually got around to fixing). “Hey, mom, Chase wants me to come over to his house to work on summer assignments. Is that okay with you?”
She looks a bit skeptical. “Can he take you to straight to Ashley’s house, then?”
I look at her blankly for a few seconds, and then say “I’ll ask.” I hold the phone back up to my head and say, “Chase?”
No immediate answer. After a minute or two, I finally get a response. “You there, Kenneth?”
“Yeah.”
“All right. My parents are okay with you coming over, as long as you don’t cause any trouble. Whatever that means.”
“I won’t. Um… hey, my mom would prefer it if you could take me straight to Ashley’s place. Can you do that?”
“Yeah, we can even walk. Her house is like a block down from mine.”
I look over at my mom and mouth “yes, he can take me.” She nods in approval.
“Okay. I got the go-ahead from my mom.”
“Great. I’ll see you soon.”
“See you!” I end the call. “Call time: 03:08” flashes on my screen for a few brief seconds before I close the phone again.
“So are you leaving immediately?” my mom asks.
“That was the plan.”
“All right. Now, Chase is the one with the blond hair, short but a bit spiky, right?”
“That’s him. I’ve been over to his house before.”
She nods. “I know. I’m just making sure that I don’t take you to someone else’s house.”
“So you remember the way?”
She smiles. “I do. Get what you need and then come down. I’ll get ready too. It’s warm outside so you shouldn’t even need a jacket.”
Ah, warmth! That was the thing I missed most about Florida. Minnesota could have some nice days, but it was never quite as hot as Florida and it was often dreary and much, much colder than it ever got in the South. I got a new jacket when I moved to Minnesota—it’s faux leather but for that it’s still very nice (and I’m not harming any animals by wearing it—take that, PETA!). I’ve kind of grown accustomed to wearing it everywhere. But today I can get away with just wearing a t-shirt. It’s a nice change of pace.
I put a few of my summer reading books in a book bag with a few worksheets that our teacher wanted us to fill out and I head back downstairs and into our garage. My mom is already waiting in the driver’s seat as I sit down next to her.
“Are you sure you have everything you need?”
“I’m sure,” I say, smiling at her. She returns the expression.
“Okay, then. Off we go!”
~~~
“Do your parents not like me or something?”
We’re working together on some sort of vocabulary packet. We’ve come to a bit of a lull in between “ingratiate” and “gargantuan,” and this is something that’s been bothering me for a while. Whenever I go to Chase’s house they always look at me as if I have murdered babies and eaten their flesh in front of their parents. I mean, I do eat souls, but only the mean ones who would have done the whole kill and eat babies shtick. I’m protecting small children.
“What, them? Don’t worry about it. They’re like that with all of my friends. They’re paranoid.”
I can’t help by wonder more about what Chase is trying to tell me here. “Like, paranoid paranoid or just not trusting of others?”
He shrugs. “Honestly, I think there’s something certifiably wrong with them but I don’t know for certain. I’ve told them to go see a doctor about it but they don’t listen to me. They just say that I’m the crazy one for even suggesting it…” he sighs, waits. “Do you want to go onto the next vocab word or do you want to hear me talk more about my incredibly boring life?”
“Chase, your life isn’t boring.
“It kind of is, but if you want me to keep talking…” He turns away from his ultra-slick computer towards me. “They weren’t always like that. We used to be a family, all of us. We used to do fun stuff together. Go places.”
“…What happened?” Certainly this story is going in that direction.
He’s quiet for a while. Finally, he asks, “did you know I moved here from out of town, too?”
“No, I didn’t. You did?” Count me shocked.
“Yeah, I did. We used to live in Chicago.” He shifts his weight in his chair. “There was… someone close to us all was murdered. We wanted to get away from it all. That’s when they started acting weird. We moved to Minnesota; said that they’d be able to refocus their life here… away from the crime associated with Chicago… but it only got worse as they grew older. They take it out on me a lot.”
“…Physically?”
“What, no, no, they’ve never done anything like that. They’ve just gotten more and more strict. And we don’t really vacation anymore, either. They’re too scared to go anywhere, I guess. The only see the evil in people.” He sighs again. “Things would be different if…”
He stops himself quite suddenly. I can tell he’s already told more than he’s ever wanted to me.
“I’m sorry,” I say quickly.
“It’s all right. Thanks for listening and stuff. I’ve never told anyone even that much…” He makes some funny sarcastic gestures as he says, “I’ve studied a little psychology and stuff, and they always say that you have to tell your feelings about dramatic events or whatever if you ever want to ‘get better.’”
“But you’re still not ready to tell the whole story?” Chase looks surprised, but come on. There’s obviously more you aren’t telling me, Chase.
“…No, I guess I’m not. Sorry if that disappoints you.”
“Hey, hey, it’s all right. We all have our personal demons.” I force a small smile why I think about my own.
“Why, you want to talk about yours now?”
“…No, not really.”
He looks at me intently. I return the gaze. Eventually, he throws up his arms and turns back to the computer. “Well! That’s okay with me. You want to move on to the next word, then?”
I’m glad he doesn’t press any more. It’s not something I really want to discuss with anyone. Maybe one day I’ll open up like Chase did for me, but until then, I’d rather stay quiet.
“It’s gargantuan.”
“Gargantuan… right. Can you spell that for me?”
~~~
By the time we finish the last of the worksheets, it’s time for us to head over to Ashley’s house. At least that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about. Good—now I can focus on reading books which will most likely be painfully dull. Although I’m not quite sure if that’s better or worse than when I visited Chase today.
He seems pretty happy, though. “Hey, did you know one of our books is a gay romance novel?”
I raise an eyebrow at him as we walk out his front door. His mom yells after him to stay safe and come home as soon as we’re finished. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. It’s that A Separate Peace thing. The main characters are gay for each other.”
“Maybe they’re just good friends.”
He shakes his head. “No, I was reading about the book online. They’re definitely gay for each other. The author’s even said so in some of his interviews.”
I chuckle. “Seriously?”
He nods and grins. “Seriously.”
“And we still read it in school?”
“Apparently the teachers haven’t caught on that they’re gay, so… yeah.”
“Wow.” What more is there to say about that? “You’ve read about any of are other books?”
“Well, there’s The Scarlet Letter… it’s by this one guy who’s apparently pretty big, but I’ve yet to meet anyone who isn’t an English teacher and who likes the guy. Or any of his work. No luck there, I guess.”
“And what about As I Lay Dying?”
He shrugs. “I’ve heard that Faulkner—that’s the author—I’ve heard he’s an amazing writer but he’s also really hard to ‘get.’ Your mileage may vary and all that. But hey—you’re better with all this
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