"Saint Marcus Day Insanity"
Okay, soo... This is my first one-shot EVER! I JUST got to this part in the book myself today (September 30, 2008), and I am NOT reading any farther till I get this out of my head. Hence the fact I'm writing this in 7th Period Study Hall right now. anime sweatdrop
DISCLAIMER: Any characters used in this one-shot belong to Stephenie Meyer. I just own this look at the events of chapter 20 of "New Moon" and the person seeing it. Let's hope the Green Barrette my dad's letting me wear for Hat Day of Spirit Week isn't messing with my brain right now. glance to side with sweatdrop on head
"Okay. I'll see you in a few. 'Bye." I hung up my phone and replaced it inside my crimson messenger bag that draped across my black shirt.
Saint Marcus Day was such a great time of year. Everyone in and around the city of Volterra came out to celebrate the day when Father Marcus drove all vampires from the city. Everywhere I looked, I could see crimson or red -- shirts, hats, scarves, dresses, etc. -- as people walked around the city, enjoying the happy and entertaining atmosphere. Personally, I loved all the vampiric trinkets vendors sold cheaply for tourists and townsfolk alike. My favorite were the plastic vampire teeth, especially the ones that glowed in the dark. OOH! Speaking of which...
"One set of vampire teeth, please. Ones that glow in the dark if possible," I asked of an old man as I stopped at one of the many vendors in the Palazzo dei Priori.
"Of course, miss." He reached behind him and grabbed my requested item. I was thankful he knew English. But, I knew a little Italian.
"Grazie," I replied as I handed him the money. That's right. I -- a 19-year-old girl visiting, with my aunt, uncle, and older cousin, my aunt's family in Italy -- could not resist the childish toys known as plastic vampire teeth -- glow in the dark nonetheless.
Oh, right. Saint Marcus Day. Though I usually did not like this much red in my daily eye-diet, I happily shoved that dislike into the far reaches of my mind for today. Though, the sight of a brown-haired girl not wearing the festive color was equally welcome.
Wait! Why was she running? Was there someone hurt and no one else noticed? I quickly looked about me, only to see too much red making it impossible for me to see if anyone was hurt.
'What the heck is wrong with her?' I thought, casting a look around to try and find her again as I made my way to sit next to the fountain in the center of the square. That was when I spotted her again, splashing straight through the fountain itself, running to the other side. That's also when I noticed she was racing towards the clock tower. What was there? Someone she had to meet and she was late doing so?
"Yes. That has to be it," I mumbled to myself as I watched the strange girl use the far edge of the fountain like a springboard, propelling herself into the crowd. "Girl's crazy." I shook my head.
As I went to look away and watch for my relatives in the large crowd, I saw Miss Insanity heading straight for a family of four, the two little girls adorable in their matching crimson dresses and ribbons tying their dark hair back.
'Is she NUTZ!?' I thought, staring at the unintentional show across the fountain in bewildered shock. 'She's gonna crash into them!'
She swerved around the father as he clutched the youngest girl out of the way.
'Hmm. Agile.' I still couldn't believe her. That's when -- above all the noise of the hustle and bustle around me -- I heard her voice.
"Edward, no!" she screamed.
With a quirked eyebrow, I wondered who Edward was, shaking my head when I realized it was probably who she was late in meeting and he must be leaving thinking that she forgot about him.
Once again, I went to look away, only to see her slam into a boy -- a shirtless boy, might I add -- that I only just noticed was hidden in a dark alleyway on the right of the clock tower. I berated myself, mentally, for watching something that was most likely private.
Just then, the boy's face flickered from one expression to another before he spun the girl inside the alleyway, his back to her as he faced two men in smoky gray cloaks that reached to the ground and undulated in the wind, his arms spread wide for some reason.
Quickly, I opened my messenger bag, pulled out a -- ironically enough -- red notebook and red uni-ball Vision Elite pen and began writing down my thoughts, glancing at the group gathered about the small alleyway inconspicuously. I did this just in case the cloaked men suddenly looked at me and caught me staring, thinking I was some sort of trouble-maker or something.
I watched as the cloaked men advanced on the still shirtless boy, moving to either side of him. It looked as if they meant to force him deeper into the alleyway.
'NO!' Some insane and super stupid part of me wanted to continue watching the scene of entertainment I had picked out of all the things going on around me. My eyebrows knit together in suspicion as I saw, from the slight space in between the cloaked men, the boy suddenly whip his head around to look behind him. Were there more cloaked men closing him and the brunette girl in from the other side of the alley? No; it was another female, a very beautiful female who looked to be around the age of the boy and girl in the alley.
I caught sight of the cloaks the two men wore swirling in the wind that managed to blow through the tiny space in the alley. It was then that I realized how thankful I was to have tied my normally fly-away black hair up in a tight ballerina bun this morning; none could block my view of the scene everyone else seemed to be ignorant of. Well, everyone but the little family of four, the one with the two adorably-dressed girls, that is.
I quickly realized I should still look and act like I wasn't paying them any heed and was just randomly writing when one of the cloaked men looked at the small family and the father went and tapped one of many red-blazered men on the shoulder. I went right back to writing my thoughts, glancing up at the scene that had my interests and attention while seeming to still be looking at my notebook. Good thing I did that so often or my writing would be slanting off the lines.
As I continued to watch, six men, also red-blazered, joined the family in watching the scene, anxiety evident in their body language. But as the two gray-cloaked men suddenly relaxed and stepped back from their offensive postures to melt into the shadows, I realized no one needed to fear any fights today. That, and that something had happened to cause them to do so.
I glanced down at my writing quickly to see that my hand produce my next thought before I even thought it: 'But what could have happened?'. As I glanced back up, I saw the group that had captivated my attention moving down the alley, away from my line of vision. I just managed to catch a glimpse of a short figure in an almost black cloak leading them away before I lost them.
'Well,' I thought as the men in red dispersed and the small family left in some unimportant direction, 'I guess I'll never know what that was all about.' I glanced once again at my notebook and laughed. There, upon the last line of the page I had filled, were my last thoughts, the ones I had just thought to myself. Guess my hand could not stop writing until I looked down.
"What are you laughing about now, Carla?"
I looked up as I closed my notebook, seeing my aunt, uncle, and cousin looking at me with smiles on their faces and questioning in their eyes.
"Nothing," I replied, slipping the red notebook and pen back inside my crimson messenger bag. "Just a thought that there should be some sort of activity for the kids involving ripe, red tomatoes and black-bull's-eyed targets."
"You and your silly ideas," my cousin laughed as she shook her head at me.
"Come on, you two. Let's go get something to eat," suggested my aunt as she, too, laughed at my excuse I had made up on the spot.
My uncle said something about pasta and gelato as we headed off, me glancing back to the small alleyway to the right of the clock tower with my long crimson skirt blowing in the wind.
"Carla! Hurry up or we're leaving you behind!" I heard my cousin call teasingly.
"Coming!" I called back. With one last glance at the alleyway, I turned and ran to catch up with my relatives, my crimson skirt flowing around my legs as I did so, my thoughts being about how strange it was that I could have heard the crazy girl's words over everything else a few minutes ago and how my hearing and eyesight can be really crazy to me sometimes.
So? What do you think? Should I keep trying my hand at one-shots? Should I never try one-shots again? Should I stick to just reading fanfictions and wish I could write as well as people like dantesdarkqueen and AmazonTurk? Tell me in a review, please! Oh! And for those who don't know, gelato is Italian ice-cream and has twice the sugar of American ice-cream. Watch Disney's "The Lizzy McGuire Movie" to see if I'm lying.
Also, Carla's aunt, uncle, and cousin are all loosely based on my own aunt, uncle, and cousin -- on my dad's side -- who live out in California. My uncle, if you want to get technical, is really my half-uncle seeing as he and my dad are half-siblings (my dad being the youngest), but we still consider him to be a full-fledged uncle. My uncle's wife, my aunt, really does have family in Italy; she's Italian herself. Just... make sure that if you yourself go to Italy for college and stay with a host family that at least ONE of your parents speaks the language if you're not that much of an eater! There was this funny little incident that happened to my cousin about 1 or 2 years ago while she was going to college over in Italy and, well... let's just say she had to call my aunt and my aunt had to explain to my cousin's host-mother that she wasn't that much of an eater. sweatdrop Yeah... it was kinda funny to hear about when I first heard it. XD
KitaraStrife
P.S. The name of "Carla" I sorta took from the TV show "Scrubs" that is now being shown on TVLand. In that show, Carla is a black woman who is a nurse at Sacred Heart Hospital in... I DON'T KNOW WHERE! (XD) But, anyways, I just really liked her and her name, so I just used that. I use names that begin with "K's" and "A's" too much in other stuff that I have yet to get up on here.