My Soul to Keep

CHAPTER 6



The rest of the neighborhood school-aged kids and I trudged toward the dreaded halls of James Underwood High School, Cedar Hills Middle, and Robyn J. Faust Elementary. Growing up in rural Pennsylvania had its advantages and disadvantages. Having all three schools right next door to each other definitely fell in the disadvantage category. You don't feel much different going to elementary, middle, and high school when all three are in the same damn place. Silently, I cursed the town’s founding fathers.

“Bye, loser!” A car passed by, carrying none other than my charming sister.

I silently hoped they got a flat. I’m a sophomore and I walk to school. My sister’s a stinking freshman and she gets picked up by her friends. I needed older friends. I couldn’t get my license for another year, and with the way my parents were strapped for cash, I might get a car by the time I graduated. College.

The sound of a horn honking behind me snapped me out of my transportation woes. I turned and looked. A pink Beetle pulled alongside the curb and an angry looking blonde sat behind the wheel glaring at me. I didn’t recognize her at all. I intended to ignore her and continuing my dismal trek to school when her eyes began glowing red.

“Clarisse?”

“Get in, worm. You’re going to make me late.” I didn’t need to be asked twice. I opened the door and slid into the seat next to her.

“Thanks?”

“Don’t mention it. Here, you left this in my car.” She handed me an empty fast food drink cup. I reached for it and she slapped me in the head. "Don't forget it again."

After training yesterday, we'd gone for pretzels. Once we finished, we talked in the mall parking lot for a while before Clarisse dropped me off back at home. I went upstairs and passed out completely, not waking up until my alarm clock blared obscenities in my ear at seven AM.

“I was going to drop it off to you last night in case you needed it, but I figured you went home and went to bed.”

“How did you know?” Clarisse pulled away from the curb and headed toward the school. “I like your hair by the way. Why did you dye it?”

“I know because your body is changing. We can’t snap our fingers and make you a Fallen. It has to come slowly. The wings and the eyes are about the only instantaneous change. You’ll notice a bunch of different ones as time goes on. You’ll start to get stronger and faster. Your hair will grow unusually fast and might change color. You’ll start to get hair in strange places.”

“Excuse me?”

“I couldn’t resist, I'm just kidding.”

“Thank God.”

“You might want to avoid using that expression from now on.”

“Why?”

“The Chosen, if they hear you, they might pick a fight.”

“Seriously?”

“Very.” She pulled into the senior parking lot of the school. I kind of hoped she would use the regular lot. I wanted Caelyn to see I didn't walk to school, and her friend was only a junior.

“You never told me why you dyed your hair,” I said, remembering my previous question.

“I didn’t. I change it every day before school. Last time I lived in the area and went to this school I had red hair. You know how it goes, people are nosey. Every yearbook for the last hundred years or so is in the library. Kids like to look through them and make fun of the old hairstyles and fashions. I couldn’t chance anyone recognizing me from my picture.”

“How long ago?”

“Fifty years or so.” I sat there with my mouth open and stared while she got out of the car. “You need a ride home?”

“Um, sure. Thanks for the ride.”

I got out of the car and rushed to catch up, slinging my backpack over my shoulder as I walked quickly. More than a few people stopped and stared at the sophomore, hitching a ride with the hot senior. I was intruding into their secret realm. More than one football player squinted at me wondering if the world was about to end. One of the geekier seniors gave me a thumbs up. I flashed a little smile.

“Just meet me out here after school and try not to talk to anybody. I’m sure I’ll get a thousand questions as to why I’m bringing you to school. I’m going to tell them you’re a charity case, so don’t say anything.”

“Whatever, Clarisse.”

“Uh uh. Claire. Claire Awl is my name here, worm. Keep it straight.”

“Claire Awl?”

“Yeah, when I registered for school the lady behind the desk had a huge can of pink hairspray sitting on her desk. It’s the first thing that popped into my head.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Claire Awl, Clairol hair care products. If you laugh, I’ll stab you in the face. By the way, you’re going to see some strange shit with your new eyes. Try not to gawk. If the vampires and werewolves realize you can see them, they might try to eat you.”

“Will you quit joking around?”

“I’m not.”

* * *

It took me until I got into my homeroom to see Claire really wasn’t. I had no less than two vampires in my class. Jenny Warburn and Elizabeth Keating were the last two people on earth I would have expected to sell their souls to become one of the walking undead.

Looking at them sort of hurt my eyes. I saw them as they sat in the room with their blood red eyes and elongated teeth, pale skin, and quick inhuman-like movements. Superimposed over that, I could see them as they've always looked.

Jenny focused in on me and caught me staring. Her right eyebrow raised in a good impersonation of Mr. Spock.

I pretended nothing was wrong and gave her a quick smile. I tried not to laugh when she made a disgusted face and turned back toward Beth, completely ignoring me. I guess it was better she thought I liked her than thought she was a vampire. I don’t think she’d eat me for finding her attractive. More like she’d eat me if she found me attractive. Sometimes plain can be good.

I shuddered at the thought of why anyone would want to be a vampire and the answer hit me. People were afraid to die. I wished to be one of The Fallen, but it had been an attempt to save my soul. I don't know if it actually worked. I may not end up being a dead human working for them, but I still ended up working as one of them. The Chosen sounded like a severe band of a*sholes. I just hope I picked the right team.

Mr. Parker, our lovely principal, came over the loudspeaker to read the morning announcements and say the pledge of allegiance. I kind of zoned out on both ends. I remember standing and vaguely muttering something that might have been the pledge, but I couldn’t say with any certainty. I might have declared my undying love for the Soviet Union and not have known.

The one thing that did catch my attention was Mr. Parker calling my name and telling me to report to the office. The entire class, in unison, said, “Ooooh.”

I blushed furiously and tried to think of a reason I would be called to the office. I drew a blank. I gathered my backpack and headed out the door without so much as a nod from Mrs. Flack, my homeroom and literature teacher.

About halfway down the hall, the bell for first period rang and the rest of the students of Underwood High exited through every door and made their way to class. I had algebra first period, so whatever I did, I hoped it took at least an hour to straighten out. I utterly loathed it in all its various forms. I also sucked at it and had been forced to take pre-algebra as a freshman. I considered it a two year sentence with no chance of parole. The fact that I had been doing algebra homework when I got into this whole Fallen mess made me hate it just that much more.

I pushed my way through the mob and made my way to the stairwell. I managed not to let anyone shove me down the stairs as I traversed them, too slowly for my tastes. The sound of hundreds of pairs of feet striking the linoleum simultaneously echoed through the stairs and halls. Thank God there were only about four-hundred students. Anymore and the building might have been shaken apart under the onslaught. Rickety didn’t begin to describe the brick and mortar hundred and fifty year old building. My family moved to the area within the last few years. Otherwise my grandparent’s grandparents might have once walked the halls.

I opened the glass door leading to the front desk of the school. The receptionist, Mrs. Rhodes, stood behind the counter filling out tardy slips for the ones not lucky enough to have been picked up by a pink Beetle. She usually had a somewhat perky personality. Filling out a line full of tardy slips made her look a little angry. I took a seat on one of the two benches in the waiting area while she finished.

I looked over on the other couch and caught my breath. A girl around my age sat quietly wearing a pair of sunglasses. I figured she might be hung-over until I saw the collapsible white cane next to her on the couch, neatly folded up. She was beyond cute. My heart started to beat a little faster as I looked at her. She wore a flowered dress. It looked simple, but beautiful on her. I imagined she would be beautiful in anything. Or nothing. I mentally slapped myself. 9:30 in the morning was a little early for perving.

Her hair hung over her shoulders in waves of red. Not gaudy, fake looking, or the color of an apple, but auburn. The fluorescent lights above us made it shine perfectly. I wondered if her eyes would be green to match. I figured it would be impolite to ask. Her skin looked like cream without a hint of freckles like you would expect. For someone in her young teens, she didn’t have one blemish either. She looked, for lack of a better word, perfect, except for her eyes. Maybe God made her too perfect and taken away her sight to balance her out. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, guilt made my heart hurt.

“Hi, I’m Jessica.” It took me a few seconds and a quick look around the room to realize she was talking to me.

“Hi, I’m Connor. Haven’t seen you around school, are you new?”

“Yup, my dad and I just moved here. I begged him to let me stay home and start school on a Monday, but he figured the sooner the better. What are you in for?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. The principal called me down.”

“Well, good luck with that. I’ll see you around.”

I gave a little smile at her choice of words, knowing she couldn’t see me. I sat there feeling a little weird because she still faced me with her head tilted to the side as if listening to everything. Just before I built up enough nerve to strike up another conversation with her Mrs. Rhodes called me up to the counter. I gathered my bag off the floor and walked up with a confused look on my face.

“Come on through, Connor. Principal Parker’s waiting for you in his office.

I nodded meekly and let her open the gate separating the admin offices from the waiting room. I walked through and she let it go, letting it creak slowly back in place with a little click. I turned and walked down the hallway fighting down the panic that seized me every time I made this trip. Fear of my parents kept me from getting into too much trouble. I hadn’t done anything I knew of, but life wasn’t always fair.

I peered around the doorway to Mr. Parker’s office and saw him sitting there typing something on a very archaic looking computer. The one we shared at home looked light years ahead of the cream colored beast he worked on. Cedar Hills didn’t have a lot of money, and it looked like county education budgets had gone from a trickle to a stop. I knocked lightly on the doorframe. He looked up from his screen and gave me a somewhat angry glare.

“Come in, Connor. Have a seat and I’ll be right with you.”

I nodded and slid into the green leather chair in front of his desk. I gently set my book bag down on the floor in front of me and waited. I tried not to stare at Mr. Parker, but I couldn’t help it. He wasn’t fat, but he wasn’t skinny either. I figured he was about the same age as my parents, but Mr. Parker had one huge thing that severely tarnished his reputation with the students of Underwood High. Mr. Parker had the absolute, quintessential, no margin for comparison, take every last award, worst comb-over in the history of mankind. He looked like he took the hair growing out of his neck, combed it upward, and forced it to spiral around the top of his head several times. Very few could look at him or have a conversation with him and not laugh. I tended to concentrate on his caterpillar like eyebrows. It helped.

“So, Mr. Sullivan, do you know why I called you down here?”

“No, sir. I haven’t got a clue. Did I do something?” I tried my best to look innocent, which in this case I was, or at least I thought so.

“I personally took your mother’s call yesterday morning letting me know you were home sick. I tend to have lunch at the mall, so you can imagine my shock when I saw you having lunch with a girl...”

Time stopped, my mind stopped, my heart stopped, and I managed to croak out an, “Oh.”

“That’s exactly what I said when I saw you, Mr. Sullivan. Now how do you think your poor mother is going to react when I tell her I saw you yesterday on a date? Do you think she’s going to be happy?”

I could only imagine how my mother would react. My father would probably high-five me when he found out I had lunch with a girl while ditching school. Mom was sure to go thermonuclear. I meant to tell Mr. Parker that it wasn’t me he saw at the mall. My mouth opened and I said, “It wasn’t a date.”

“I don’t care if it was a bar mitzvah. The point is, young man, you were supposed to be in school. What do you think I should do with you?” I could tell he was getting angry, because the amount of saliva spritzing me the farther we got into the conversation increased rapidly.

I looked up and pretended like I was really considering what he should do to me. I love it when grownups ask us moronic questions. They know we’re going say something like, “Let me go,” or “Forget the whole thing.” Why on earth they would expect us to say, “Punish me to the full extent of the law and your power,” is beyond me.

I did however say something that shocked the hell out of me. “She’s my girlfriend, sir. We had a little pregnancy scare, so we met at the mall to get a test from the drug store inside …”