I'm back! Sorry it took so dang-flangin' long for a rather boring chapter. No, I'm not a doom and gloom kind of writer usually, but it has been very hard getting this one done. Thing is, I know where I'm going with the story eventually but the hard part is getting there. We must walk the fine line between boring everyone, and rushing to a destination before anyone has time to really connect with the characters. All that to say, this is a little bit of an establishment chapter. But I digress. On to thanking my wonderful super-awesome reviewers!
Starxx: First review! YAY! Thanks a million! You really should have seen the squirrely little hop-up-and-down dance I did when I read this. Thank you! I'll try not to disappoint!
Hope Diamond: You don't know how I love waking up to reviews. You rock for giving me a chance. Thanks a mil. ;-)
Also, before we move on I should warn you that I am an obsessive music freak, and like to start my chapters with the lyrics of songs that inspire me or remind me of the story. If that bothers you...I'm terribly sorry, just skip the bits that are in italics. If it doesn't, I might go as far as to suggest you listen to some of the songs. They put me in the mood to write, and just might give you the feeling I was going for. Now I've written a book. Moving on!
Chapter Two: Summer Rain
"Even though the moment passed me by, I still can't turn away.
All the dreams you never thought you'd lose got tossed along the way...
Now we're grown up orphans that never knew their names.
We don't belong to no one, that's a shame.
You could hide beside me, maybe for awhile?" - Name, The Goo Goo Dolls, 1995.
The wind had picked up by the time Lorelei made it home. Shivering in the oddly-cool air, she banged the screen door into the two story house set-back in the woods, walking in to pizza on the bar in the kitchen, and Jason, her brother watching a MST3K on the livingroom couch.
"Hey, where have you been? Dad almost made me go out and look for you." He complained caustically upon her arrival.
"So why didn't he?" She asked irritably, tossing her hat onto the table and grabbing a coke from the fridge. The whole way home, every step she took away from the tennis court, she had had to convince herself that what had just happened was real. She just couldn't make sense of it. A boy with scissorhands, living alone in a castle...he runs from the castle because of intruders, and ends up in a tennis court behind her house. It didn't answer a half of the questions she came up with on the short walk back. How on earth did his hands get that way? What was he eating? And where were his family?
"I told him you said you were going to Wal-Mart." Said Jason casually.
"But I didn't say that."
No reply, but the sound of the show droning on.
"Oh, you are such a jerk. What if I'd gotten murdered or raped or kidnapped?" She asked as she punched the magic pizza-thawing numbers into the microwave.
"Well, you didn't."
"OK. Sure. But what if I had been? What if I had gotten murdered?" She demanded, a tone of frustration inching it's way into her voice. True, the boy...Edward...hadn't harmed her, but he had been at perfect liberty too and her frayed emotions still insisted it was a near-death experience.
"Well somebody's in a macabre mood tonight." Said her father from behind her, making her jump slightly. "What did you go to Wal-mart for?"
Lorelei glared at her step-brother, before replying. "Nothing really. Where are the girls at?"
"They'll be at Grandmom and Grandad's till Monday. We decided it would be better they just stay the weekend. Riley's behind on her math."
Lorelei nodded. Her four little sisters, ages 4 to 12, were rarely at home these days. It had been her mother's dream to homeschool all of them, and she had been brilliant at it. Since her death the burden was taken on by her maternal grandparents who lived an hour away, meaning the family was split five days out of the week. Lorelei was old enough to handle whatever school didn't come from her two-day a week co-op at home herself. Consequently, since Jason and her dad both worked the same hours, she was alone at the house the majority of the day.
She ate her pizza, watched the end of the movie with her Dad, and then wished them goodnight before taking a shower and gratefully slumping into bed.
That night she lay awake, images of the mansion, the only time it had ever made an impression on her, clouding her mind. It had been near Christmas, and she was at her best friend Alison's quaint suburban home for a sleepover. It was very late, and they had been watching a movie, when Alison's little brother had run downstairs excitedly yelling that it was snowing for the first time that year. Sure enough, when they threw open the basement window the yard in view was a swirling white vision of crystalline ice. Beyond it, twinkling in the light of the festive decorations, the castle stood black and ominous against the moonlit sky.
They had sat there for a long time, taking in the still beautiful scene, before Alison spoke.
"Hey...do you remember my grandmom Kim?" She had asked quietly.
"Of course."
"Well, when I was really little, she used to tell me this weird story about the castle."
Lorelei had scoffed. "My brother told me that story. I doesn't scare me anymore."
"No, not the one about the clown. This one was about a guy who had...I don't remember...scissor for fingers or hands or something, because of an inventor who made him. And he made the snow by carving ice sculptures. I used to really love to listen to her tell that story, now I barely remember it. But grandmom was always really serious about it. I remember she used to tear up at the ending."
"Why? What happened in the end?"
"Well, he got chased out of town for some reason or other. And then the girl he loved...in the story it was grandma, when she was young...had to leave him there to protect him and pretend he was dead. 'And she never saw him again.' I remember that was exactly what she said. When I was little, I always wondered if maybe I could go up there and meet him."
Both girls had been about nine, and Lorelei remembered the uncomfortable silence settling in to end the conversation. Alison's beloved grandmother had passed away only months before, and even though there were no tears in her voice, Lorelei didn't want to stir the caldron of emotions by talking about her. Little had she known anything about grief, back then.
Called back into the present by the sound of a summer rainstorm's fury hitting her window, Lorelei gazed out at the lashing wind. That boy –Edward- would be soaked to the skin tonight.
She slid under the covers, trying hard to forget about him and his plight for the moment. Trying hard to forget about the confusion Alison's old words had elicited in her mind. There was no possible way that Edward could be the same boy from the legend...and yet, it wasn't even conceivable as a coincidence. Her tired mind refused to dwell, finally letting sleep overtake her.
She awoke from a dream about snow to her father shaking her shoulder gently. Groaning, she rolled over to catch sight of the clock.
"Dad, it's Saturday and I'm on Summer break. Go away."
"I know that princess. We're gonna go play tennis together, come on."
She was about to refute this statement, when the events of yesterday evening returned to her.
"Tennis? Why? I mean...why this early?"
"I have to go to Huston later. C'mon, Jason found your shoes behind the couch."
Groaning, Lorelei reluctantly removed herself from bed, and kicked her father out of the room. Her hair, having been slept on wet, was a spiky matted mess of purple and black. She decided to leave it, doubting there was anyone she cared to make an impression on at the local civic center. Throwing on a black tee and black and white striped skort along with her shoes, she managed the time to eat a bowl of cold cereal before rushing out after her dad.
As they pulled through the newer portion of the small-town recreational park, past the elementary school, various playgrounds, and a basket ball court, nearing the more dilapidated forgotten section that bordered what was now a camping ground, Lorelei kept her eyes peeled for Edward. She didn't see him, but she no longer had to convince herself of his existence.
The day was warmer than it had been, and puddles of rainwater had gathered in the cracks of the disintegrating court floor. In the quiet of the morning the sound that their shoes made against the shale seemed to echo into the surrounding woods. Lorelei was usually a decent player, not incredibly graceful or coordinated but with good sharp eyes and lots of practice. Today however, there was no game to be had from her as she brought up the rear, and her eyes were instantly glued to the rec- room merely yards away. It was attributed to lack of sleep then, the third time the ball hit her unguarded body instead of her racket.
"Geez Lori, wake up." Jason griped at her as she idly tossed the ball to him, only to have it returned.
"It's your serve. You're the back, remember? Cause you wanted the back? Like two minutes ago?"
"All right, I get it."
"3-6. This is game point." Said her Dad perkily.
"Shut up." Said Jason.
"Well if you didn't force me to play at this ungodly hour of the morning..." Lorelei grumbled, half-handedly serving, and immediately glancing back to gaze attentively at the decaying structure. Sumac devoured it slowly but surely, and the wooden framework blended well with the woods except for two dark staring windows which faced the court. It was at these that all of Lorelei's attention was focused, and it wasn't long before she was rewarded with the unmistakable flash of movement somewhere in the darkness. It seemed as though Edward were used to stealth.
The ball clanged the fence behind her, making her jump.
"Oh yeah! Nice try. I win."
Jason muttered something unintelligible and dropped the racket.
"Who's up for a another game?" Asked her Dad.
"Not a snowball's chance in hell." Said Jason.
"I'm hungry." Said Lorelei. "Sorry Dad. Can't we go out for breakfast before you leave?"
Despite the temptation to use her distractedness to his advantage, her father agreed, and the nearby waffle-house became their breakfast table. Lorelei was better away from the court, but after eating half the food on her plate hungrily she took to staring at the four uneaten waffles with an absence. Edward, after all, would have had nothing to eat this morning, or last night for that matter. She asked for a box in the end, just as her father was being summoned via cell phone to an even more premature emergency. It was hard not to convict him for being too tied up in work, but Lorelei knew he did it on purpose. Work was his escape, just as hers was...she wasn't sure, but she knew she needed one.
"Your aunt will be over to help organize things later, but she can't make it till about three. Will you OK until then?" Her father was in the process of dropping her off at home.
"Get serious dad. I'm by myself like all day normally."
"Yeah, I know we need to do something about that. You need more time with your friends."
Lorelei was silent. In a way, she had come to enjoy the long days home alone. The house was quiet and complacent and calming, alone with her music and the means to record her feelings. Still, it was a dull unsatisfied way of living, even if it suited her.
Her father and brother gone, Lorelei was faced with the task of finishing her math on her own. Math and her were not expressly bosom companions, in fact, their relationship was more one of mutual malicious abhorrence. Today, especially, there was no compromise to be had from the unforgiving sheet of problems. Two hours later with her head slumping against her pillow where she had chosen to fight the battle this hour, Lorelei caught sight of both the clock, which told her there was still at least five hours left to finish that accursed duty called education, and her forgotten box of uneaten waffles. Again, thoughts and questions from last night's encounter swamped her mind, banishing any chance of concentrating on the problems at hand. Why couldn't she simply stop thinking about him? She had considered long and hard telling her father that morning, but somehow, for some reason, something stopped her. It was a completely inexplicable barrier she seemed to have drawn between the fantasy-like reality and...reality, and she felt the overwhelming urge to keep 'Edward' to herself, at least for now. Perhaps she was just going mad.
With a sudden decision having been made in her distracted subconscious mind, she hopped from bed, threw on a black sweater, stuffed her cell into her jean's pocket, grabbed the box of waffles and sped out the front door.
There were people playing in the playgrounds and the park, and even though the court and wreck house were set too far back in the road to be seen from them, Lorlelei felt oddly in the open coming here in the daytime. The fact that she was dressed completely in black and carrying a Styrofoam box of leftovers didn't help, and she got a few looks from some concerned mothers.
It was not surprising Edward was not to be found in the tennis court, in the open, as that would be incredibly unwise. Instead, Lorelei found herself stomping unhappily through the undergrowth in order to reach the skeletal remains of his hideaway, booted feet seven inches into sumac that god-knows-what was living in. Oh, the price of benevolence. She reached the window, not planning on attempting to find an entrance, and called inside in a hoarse whisper before she could stop to think about it.
"Edward?"
There was no answer for a moment. A bird fluttered out of the undergrowth by her feet, startling her, and a slight cold chill went up her spine. Stop it. She told herself. If he didn't kill you last night, he won't kill you now.
"Edward!" She called again, louder.
"I'm here." His small voice came back from the far corner of absolute darkness.
"It's me, the girl from last night. Will you come out here?" No matter how nice and innocent he seemed, Lorelei was not going into a dark abandoned building alone with any scissor-wielding teenager.
There was a pause, some rustling noises, and then the distinctive sound of cracking vines as a rotted wooden door was forced open on the other side. Finally Edward made his appearance. In the daytime, he was somehow both more and less menacing. Firstly, he was only about a few inches taller than her, whereas last night he had seemed looming. His hair gave that impression, a knotted mass of what might have been curly black locks had piled itself atop his head, and pieces hung down in spirals around his face. What she noticed in the sunlight that she had failed to at night was the criss-crossing labyrinth of painful white scars that were etched across his face.
For a moment she studied him up and down again, much less intimidated in the muggy air with crickets chirping around them. Finally she spoke.
"Hi." She said inelegantly, but with confidence.
"Hi." He said back.
"Deja vu." She smiled, her smile resembled more of a smirk. He smiled as well, an oddly pleasant expression that lit up his eyes like fireworks. "I uhm...saw you this morning when I came to play tennis."
He nodded, smile fading slightly.
"And uhm...I thought about, you know, I thought that you might not have had breakfast yet. So I brought you something. Are you hungry?"
Again, he nods. Lorelei noticed the way his hair bounced around when he did so, and had to suppress a smile. She turned towards the tennis court.
"Well, I hope you like waffles then. Let's get out of this sumac." She shuffled forward a ways, and noticed Edward wasn't following.
"What's wrong?"
"I shouldn't...there are probably people around." He said hesitantly, scissors snipping nervously against one another.
She was silent for a minute, wondering what must have happened to him to make him afraid of people...or them afraid of him. "Well, there's no one at the court, you can see it from here." She said, surprised at the fact that she was already talking to him as though they knew each other. "Besides, if anyone does come I'll say you're with me." She added with her best reassuring smile. Edward made no reply to this, but the apprehensively drawn up hands lowered, and his eyes under those bruised looking pupils seemed to relax. Lorelei studied these signs before continuing on, Edward following obediently.
In the shady corner of the court again, the waffles lay in their open box on the ground as Edward, sitting uncomfortably Indian style, attempted to catch the floppy things on his sharp hands. Not knowing where else to put them Lorelei had set them on the ground, and although Edward seemed reluctant to eat in front of her, he eventually followed suite. It was obvious he was starving. Among the trials he faced were the fact that the soggy sirup-soaked food stuffs kept sliding his finger down as soon as it neared his mouth, and also the Styrofoam box continued to get stuck when he tried to stab a bit of waffle. Nevertheless he persevered on as Lorelei, leaning against the fence, watched in a mix of fascination and pity.
"You get wet last night?" She asked after awhile, an attempt to relieve the awkward silence.
Edward, having just lost a piece of pancake which crumbled and slid to the ground a fraction of an inch from his mouth, lowered his scissors gently to reply to her. "A little." He said lamely, face blank. In truth he had spent much of the night trying to find a dry spot in the rotted remains of a building. In truth he was eternally grateful to this girl for the waffles, regardless of how hard they were to eat. But somehow, he couldn't find the words to say so.
"That's not much of a place to live, you know." She jerked a thumb towards the rec-room, despite Edward's concentration being focused on the waffle, which he had finally discovered could be balanced whole in both hands and eaten that way. They were gone in a matter of minutes.
"I should have brought more than that." Lorelei said sympathetically.
Guilt washed over Edward at his terrible manners. "Thank you." He said shyly, unsure of how to rectify the situation.
She furrowed her brow. "For what?"
"The food. It was enough." His scissors scraped against each other as he skillfully pulled himself to his feet, and stabbed the box in order to pick it up. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with it, but it didn't seem right to leave it there.
"Here, I'll take that." Said Lorelei, grabbing it off the end of his finger. He was taken by the fact that unlike last night, she seemed entirely unafraid of his hands as she did so. "Look, Edward- can I ask you a question?"
He nodded, eyes staying level with hers.
"What's your plan? I mean you can't live out here forever. There's no food or water, or even shelter really."
"There's a water fountain that way." Edward interjected timidly, pointing a finger in the direction of the wooden playground.
Lorelei sighed slightly. "Touche. How long have you been out here anyway?"
"Since last night." She stared for a minute until he continued. "The people came in the morning. I hid until it was dark, and then I came here."
There was silence for a few more minutes. Lorelei cleared her throat, breaking it. "So...no long term plan then huh?"
No reply, except what was possibly a nod from Edward.
"Well uh...just so I don't worry about you, how would it be if I brought you food for a while? We usually just eat out anyways, and there's always plenty of leftovers."
No reply, once again, as Edward raised his head and seemed to search her eyes with his brilliant brown orbs.
"Look, if you're worried about taking charity, don't. It'll just be for a while until we can figure out somewhere for you stay. Really, I'd like to help. I wanna be friends." She furthered, smiling endearingly.
Edward smiled too. It was, really, a lovely expression on him. Lighting up his odd features until he looked almost normal. Almost.
"Thank you." He said gently, and the words radiated sincerity.
"Don't mention it." She returned ardently. Suddenly both jumped as her cell phone buzzed loudly in her pocket.
She flipped it open, irritated, to find a text from her aunt.
'I'm at the house. Where are you?'
Lorelei inhaled a rounded breath through her teeth. "Oh crap." She muttered. "She wasn't supposed to be here till later. Crap."
"Are you OK?" Asked Edward from behind her shoulder, making her jump.
"Yeah. My aunt's looking for me, I'd better go." She found Edward's eyes again with her own. He didn't look entirely convinced the situation was a normal one, and she smiled to ease him up a bit. Man, but he was strange. "I'll be by later tonight if I can. Will you be all right till then?"
He nodded, solemn expression permeating once more. Lorelei flashed him a lopsided smile, before slipping out the back way and booking it towards home.
When she was out of sight, Edward noticed the forgotten take-out box she had neglected to dispose of. Sticking the longest of his fingers into the lid, he noticed the way it sliced evenly and precisely. Satisfied, he balanced it on one finger and took it back to his new dwelling. He'd need something to do for the rest of the day, at least until she returned. He paused for a moment, reveling in the promise. How long had it been since he'd gone a day expecting someone's company?
Lorelei slowed her pace as she neared her house. Cursing her luck, she realized as the same questions that had haunted her last night and this morning came flooding back, she hadn't managed to find answers to any of them today. Whatever had happened to Edward in the past, he didn't seem keen on talking about it. As a matter of fact, talking wasn't his strong suite. He'd obviously lived alone for a long time...but he seemed to know enough about people to realize they would be afraid of him.
She shook her head as though it would rid herself of the questions. She'd be back tonight, after all. And tomorrow. The thought that she had something to look forward to during the day was a sweetly missed one, and gave her the strength to handle both her aunt and her school that evening.
You may have noticed Lorelei's home life is a little complicated and weird. That's because it's the same as mine, or the way mine is going to be as soon as vacation ends. Aside from that, Lorelei seems to have taken on a personality of her own (which is wonderful, cause' I normally have problems with that) but it's certainly not mine. Now, once again, I beg for your reviews. Your likes, your hates, your constructive criticisms, anything. Especially, if anyone has any suggestions on how to write Edward better? He's a very hard character to capture on paper, as most of his personality and emotions is shown through facial expression instead of words. Thanks for reading. God Bless!