Author's Notice: My writing has been stolen twice by someone who tried to pass it off as their own. If you recognize my writing anywhere please contact me immediately.
Mellie rested her head on the frame of the car door, closing her eyes against the warm summer breeze rushing past her face through the open window. She loved these trips, a brief escape from the home. Be it a simple run to the market or official social worker business she was always grateful Jessie allowed her to come along.
"Jess I've heard real awful things at school from the kids who live near the Reed farm." she sighed, leaning her head back against the headrest and away from the wind tunnel.
"Like what? You better throw that nasty thing out before we get there and the sheriff catches sight of you." she warned, looking disapprovingly at the lit cancer stick in Mellie's hand.
"I don't like to spread gossip." she began, pausing to take a long drag. "But they say he's retarded, some say deformed physically instead of mentally. They talk about him like he's Dr. Frankenstein's monster. They think they know it all and then some." she scowled around a stream of exhaled smoke, flicking an ash out the window.
"And what do you think?" Jessie asked, snatching the cigarette from her hand to take a quick forbidden inhale before sending it sailing out the window as the car approached the driveway leading to the Reed farm.
"I think I'll keep an open mind and a shut mouth until I meet the kid myself. And I think you're gonna pitch a fit when I say I'm not letting you go in there without me." she stated, observing the cop cars and nosey neighbors circled around the front lawn.
Mellie was up and out of the car before Jessie could argue. With a deep sigh the older woman followed the stubborn sundress clad girl, knowing arguing with anything she wanted was a waste of breath. After a brief rundown of what they already knew along with mentions of the boy being a dirty family secret from Sheriff Branum they proceeded to enter the notorious Reed farmhouse. Until the Sheriff realized Mellie intended to follow them inside.
"I won't spook him, I'll stay quiet and out of the way. You wanna catch a fish you gotta use bate. What better bate you got to lure a boy out than a pretty girl Sheriff?" she argued when ordered to wait outside.
"She's got a point." Deputy Duncan hollered from his chicken shit place behind his open cruiser door.
"I tell ya to get out and ya get out. You hear?" the Sheriff finally relented when she persisted.
The inside looked like a typical farm house, not the house of horrors kids at school had painted it out to be. The only thing out of the ordinary being an unusual array of lightning rods perched on the roof.
"Where's he at?" Jessie whispered, peeking around corners here and there as the Sheriff lead them through the house towards the kitchen.
Mellie sidestepped a broken coffee mug, a pang of sorrow shooting through her as she realized she was most likely standing in the spot where Mr. Reed had died.
"There." Branum replied, pointing towards an cellar door in the wooden floor.
He could hear them up there moving around again. Feel the fear and anxiety coming off almost all of them. There was even some faint hatred wafting from somewhere outside. But he knew people feared the unknown, hated what they couldn't understand.
As the floorboards creaked from above he caught wind of two new beings, one with fear and sympathy warring inside it. Another brimming with excitement and curiosity, a beam of sunshine in what had been a day filled with gloomy clouds of other people's negative emotions.
That is until that particular set of footsteps reached the kitchen and a strong wave of grief overcame the creature above. Just as quickly hope and optimism replaced those emotions in the person as the door to his sanctuary was opened and the fear and anxiety from outside became his own.
With shouts of bringing someone to talk to him from the Sheriff and soft words from Jessie being called out she figured she would hang back unless they needed her, clearing the steps only as Jessie inquired about turning on a light. As she was moving closer to inspect a mechanical contraption on a nearby desk she heard it. A meek voice declaring its owner's lack of fear.
As she peered through the spaces of a bookcase separating what must have been a bedroom from the workspace she was standing in she got her first glimpse of the Reed phantom. Just a vague gray outline in the musty darkness of the basement where skin wasn't covered by clothing. The name he gave Jessie made Mellie snort at its irony before she clamped a hand over her mouth as his head darted in her direction at the sound.
His muttered recount of his grandfather's death made her emerge from her hiding spot, rounding the bookcase to peek around Sheriff Branum's shoulder. When Jessie reassured him what no one would do him harm and requested his hand she could see him hesitate as though he were afraid of pain, keeping his limb restrained just beyond the edge of light streaking in through the cellar windows. Then she saw just how ironic that cruel nickname really was. He was white as the driven snow.
Her gasp slipped out without her even realizing it, making her turn red with embarrassment when his equally crimson eyes fell on her. Until she mentally compared him to an adorable pet albino mouse she had when she was a little girl he looked as though he was going to shrink back into the darkness at her surprised noise.
"So what do people who aren't assholes call you?" she inquired as he rose from the bed and let Jessie's hand slip from his.
He looked confused at her use of profanity before he replied with his birth given name. As he spoke it her eyes focused on his slightly full lips, the only part of his exposed skin with any kind of pigment. They were peachy compared to the rest of his alabaster complexion. She wondered fleetingly how soft those pink lips were before she let his name roll off her tongue and her eyes wander elsewhere. Away from the creamy expanse of farm work toned chest his tank top showed off, to the rows upon rows of books lining his walls.
Rays of light filtered in through a ground level window, illuminating dust particles in the air and making the girl's box yellow hair shine as she moved around the room, her threadbare faded flower dotted dress shifting as she moved. As much as regular boys his age would have been staring at the curves the thin material held he was captivated by the hair hanging about her shoulders, down her back, falling in her face. It was everywhere and it was nothing like he'd ever seen before, his grandparents having curly gray hair for as long as he could remember. It didn't help that she played with it, running her fingers through it, twisting a piece around her finger as her mind wandered elsewhere.
Until her voice cut through the silence, its slightly raspy tenor making the name he preferred sound drawn out and sweet.
"Jeremy I have to admit I am jealous of your collection here, ya see the library at the boys home is just about as big as the two books I have stashed away under my bed." she trailed off, caressing the spine of various volumes here and there as she walked the length of each wall and browsed.
Her crystal eyes held his near violet ones a moment before she continued on, humming lightly as she looked and he looked as well. Purely, equally curious. She'd rather be examining him but that wouldn't do, she couldn't act like that, wouldn't treat him like that.
"Mellie don't be rude!" Jessie scolded her after the Sheriff was sent to fetch food and she was caught reaching for Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet on a top shelf.
"I'm sorry, do you mind?" she asked, retracting her hand as though the book was going to scald her if she touched it without his permission.
Jeremy shook his head quickly, eyes innocently taking in more tan skin as the weathered lace edge of her cotton dress inched a bit higher when she reached for her selection again.
He was a bit taken aback when she strode across the room and flopped down on his bed comfortably, cracking the tome open carefully to its first page. The scent of cigarettes and sweet dried flowers or grass hit him as she passed, making him think of the slim sticks his grandma used to smoke and the vases of fresh cut wildflowers she would set on the kitchen table.
Mellie thought nothing of it when the strange boy sat down on the edge of his bed beside her legs, already sucked into the pages in front of her face. She heard mutterings from Jessie along with a question directed to the boy. Only the sound of a sniffle made her un-bury her nose.
"Where are your manners." Jessie hissed as Mellie watched tears run down the boy's face.
"Must have gone right out the window along with my cigarette." she grumbled as she closed the book and set it aside on his nightstand already piled high with others like it.
"I'm..I'm sorry about your grandpa." she murmured, her hand hesitating an inch above his shoulder after she sat up to try her hand at consoling someone.
"I've never lost anyone myself because my parents dumped me on the state home doorstep, but I bet it hurts horribly." she added, grimacing when she felt his frame shake harder under her palm.
She was aspiring to be a social worker like Jessie after she graduated high school that year and so far she was shit at making people feel better. After a silent plea for help that involved her making desperate noiseless faces at Jessie, what the boy had said about his grandparents telling him people would come to take him away one day while she was in a Shakespearian fog came to her.
"I hope you're not worked up over moving to the boys home. I mean I've lived there all my life and I turned out alright…kind of." she offered, smiling when she at least succeeded in making his tremors stop.
"But you're a girl." he puzzled quietly, looking at her after he dried his tears on the corner of his flannel shirt.
"Yeah last time I checked." she laughed, maneuvering her legs around so she could sit up next to him.
"The state officials made and exception for me since I've been there pretty much since birth and only cause minimal problems." she explained, swinging her cracked and aged western boots back and fourth.
"You call that fire at school minimal?" Jessie scoffed, crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes at Mellie.
"Jessie don't start again I told you I didn't do it." she huffed, mirroring Jessie's cross-armed pose.
Mellie jumped not because Jeremy lightly placed his rather large hand around her wrist but because of the intense tingling sensation she got when he did so. As though the entire area where their skin met had fallen asleep.
"She didn't do it." he agreed softly as he lifted his palm from her flesh, looking from her confused face to Jessie's slightly worried one.
Jessie loved the idea of Mellie making an actual friend, a moral male to be her ally in the never ending battle she faced from being the sole female occupant at Wheaton Hall. But if he could be so easily swayed in Mellie's favor she worried about how strong an influence she might have over him.
"Well aren't you lucky, you're not missing out on anything." Mellie assured him when the subject of him having never attended school was breached.
When he demonstrated his knowledge of Moby Dick she immediately chose a page from the book she'd gone back to reading when his lunch had arrived. Her jaw just about dropped to the floor when he recited it word for word with beautiful pronunciation.
She was just thinking how she could listen to that voice read to her until it went hoarse when Jeremy let out a small quiet laugh and the Sheriff announced it was time for their departure. The girl's thoughts of never wanting to leave his basement and the slight dread that overtook her made Jeremy's confidence in her reassurance about his new home-to-be falter. And as he packed what he could in a suitcase he wondered what made her so strongly long to stay in the home of a stranger rather than the place she'd lived all her life.