November Happenings
By Infinite Analeigh
-A Dream of Soccer.
That
night, like almost every night, I dreamt a montage of events leading
up to the
takeover. Well, it wasn't so much of a 'takeover',
more of an 'infiltration'. At first we hadn't even noticed that
our parents weren't our parents anymore. We recognized small
changes, but there wasn't even anything major for us too
recognize. Our little sister Lilly stopped being late for school,
even though my mother had brought her late her whole first grade
career. And then, my dad stopped writing, stopped drinking coffee,
and stopped wearing his robe all day.
Honestly, May and I both thought these were good things. Then, one day Lilly brought her friends over, and instead of playing dolls or house like usual they sat around our kitchen table and talked with our mom. Throughout the day whenever I would enter the kitchen they would all fall silent and look at me with solemn faces. Frankly, I was a bit creeped out by all the serious little six year olds staring at me.
That same night May and I stayed out later then we were allowed to at our best friend's house. I vividly remember sitting on Emilee's bedroom floor. As usual they were talking about Everitt, the "cutest" boy at our school, while I read in the corner of her room. At that time, well actually my whole 6th grade year, I had had a crush on a tall, fellow bookworm, named Levi, but I was too embarrassed to tell them.
Emilee's mom had always been eccentric. She had never made us milk and cookies and often wore overalls, with nothing underneath them, while she painted. I can still hear the sound of Emilee's door squeak open when her mom came in. She was wearing a flowered print dress, a light smattering of make up, and her hair was perfect. May and I looked at each other with surprise at the new Mrs. Avery as Emilee grimaced.
"Emilee, I think its time for May and Novel to go home, their mother just called."
"Did she sound mad?" I asked with worry. We both new we had stayed out past our curfew but we had delayed going home as long as we could.
"Oh, no. Of course not dear." That, more than anything else, is what shocked me the most.
Emilee didn't reply, just glared at her mom until she meekly closed the door and left. When she was sure her mom was out of hearing distance she finally spoke, "yesterday, she threw all of her paints away. And when I took them out of the trash and splattered them all over our living room wall, she didn't even get angry. All she did was smile and ask if I was 'irritated' about something." And here Emilee began to cry, "I don't even know who she is anymore. She is always having these creepily polite women over, and they are always calling each other these weird names. It's like some kind of cult or something."
May and I shared an uneasy glance, the same exact thing had been happening at home. May voiced our concerns, "The same thing has happened at our house. My dad has stopped writing and my mom is always on time everywhere." To anyone else but our best friend those would have sounded like nothing, but Emilee had been our best friend since kindergarten and she knew what a big part of their character those things had been.
That night we went home two hours past our curfew and didn't get in trouble. I am perfectly convinced that May and I would have been turned into parasites right along with our little sister and our parents if Emilee hadn't woken us up that night. Emilee tapped on our window near my bed until I let her in.
"Emilee! What are you doing here?" I exclaimed sleepily.
I saw May sit up on the other side of room.
"I've figured it out! I was watching Invasion of the Body Snatchers, you know I love old horror movies—"
"I thought your mom took them all?" I cut in.
"She did, but I hid a few, anyway, our parents have been taken over by aliens! And it's not just our parents but also our teachers, and your little sister Lilly! We've all seen how grown up she's been acting!" she was speaking very quickly with the light of a new conspiracy in her eyes.
May spoke up, "Emilee…this cant be, this isn't another one of your conspiracy theories. This is our family you're talking about."
When Emilee sighs, suddenly I realize that she doesn't have the usual glint of adventure in her eyes when mentioning something out of the ordinary. I notice with anxiety that she is trembling and trying to hold back tears. "Novel…May…we have to get out of here. Before they change us."
"Whose they?" I ask.
"I don't even know, maybe the government?"
I start thinking. Thinking about all the ways that almost everyone around me has changed. When I look at May I see that she is thinking the same thing. We hop up, suddenly not tired anymore and begin to pack—"
I'm jolted awake by a sharp jab in my shoulder.
"Rise and shine, sunshine!"
I feel accosted by May's singing this early in the morning. I lay my head back down on my pillow and wipe the tears out of my eyes. I'm surprised to see them on the back of my hand—it's been a while since my dreams have brought me to tears. May sees them too and looks worried. Before she can ask about them I distract her, "what's for breakfast?"
"I'm not sure yet, but some of the others have already gone to the mess hall. I slowly rise to a standing position and stretch. I hadn't bothered to change into my pj's and I feel a little grimy. "Where's the bathroom?" I ask May.
"I saw a few people heading that way," she points the way we came through, it appears to be the only exit, "carrying their tooth brush's and what not."
As we head toward what we think is the bathroom I feel a bit of May's excitement rubbing off on me. We finally find the bathroom after three sets of directions and fifteen minutes of being lost, it appears to be a huge room with a river running through it. We both take our pajama bottoms off and sit on the edge of the river with our feet sliding through the water. This makes it easier for us to brush our teeth and wash our faces. When we finish with the necessities we braid our hair into pigtails and get dressed. We hadn't only picked out our outfits in advance for last night, but also for today and tomorrow. We weren't going to leave anything to chance.
Today, I'm wearing jeans, green low top converse that are a bit too big for me (Burns found them for me in a raid a few months back), and an old vintage Beatles T-shirt that used to be my mom's. I feel a pang of sorrow at the thought of my mother, but I quickly suppress it. I chuckle in surprise when I see May wearing an old leather belt of my dads. These are the only two articles of clothing that still fit us from when we first ran away.
"Missing the fam, huh?" I ask her.
She takes my hand and gives it a tight squeeze, "yeah. How could you tell?"
"Maybe it's the fact that we are both wearing something we hadn't planned on wearing, and that they both have memories of our parents." We laugh, even though we don't find anything remotely funny.
She sighs, "Well, ready to go hit the town?"
"Fo sho, homie." I joke.
We can hear the mess hall before we see it. The sounds of spoons hitting bowls and laughter scatter all of our previous thoughts. As I enter the mess hall I almost collide with one of the little children but manage to dodge him.
"Yumm oatmeal." I say with a smile.
I spot Burns in line for the food and make my way over to him.
"G'mornin, Burns!"
" 'Morning, Novel. Sleep well?"
"Yeah, I slept okay."
"No you didn't. I've never seen anyone toss and turn so much in my life."
I grimace and mumble something random, trying to distract him.
"What's that? You have nightmares? You tried to crawl in bed with me in the middle of the night?" he questions as if I were the one saying this absurd things.
I gasp. "I did not!"
"Oh, yes you did. I woke up with a hot little Novel body clinging to me. And mumbling something about how I'm your hero and you want to be just like me and…"
I smack his arm before he can go any further. "Dream on, buster." And then I blush. What kind of a moron still says buster? And then I wonder why am I blushing?
He just laughs and rubs his arm pretending to be hurt.
"Do you think they have brown sugar?" I inquire.
"Hopefully, I've heard its quite good with oatmeal."
"Good? Man its great."
When we actually reach the food I see that they not only have brown sugar but also butter! This is going to be one heck of a breakfast. When we both have our food Burns asks me if I want to sit with him and Wanderer. I'm a little taken aback because I just figured that we would sit together like usual, but all I do is nod. I follow him to Wanderer's table and sit next to Burns. I am introduced to three people I hadn't met before. A boy, Jamie, who looks to be about fourteen, his sister Melanie, in her early twenties, and a man named Jarred, who looks around 30. When we are done with the introductions and everyone resumes eating and making small talk Burns leans over and whispers in my ear, "Melanie was Wanderer's host body. Wanderer said that the whole time she was in there she could literally hear her yelling at her, and that sometimes she had even taken over her body completely."
"Is that normal?" I whisper back.
He puts his arm across my shoulders for easier access to my ear when he answers me and I shiver. "Not at all. She said it's rare and that it only happens with adults, never children. Ever since she told me last night I've been trying to get in touch with Evan, my host body, but I cant find him. I've never felt his presence. She even told me that she fell in love with Jarred because not only Melanie's thoughts, but also her body, were in love with him."
I munch on a piece of toast as a think about this and not his arm across my shoulders. "I thought she loved Ian."
"She does now. I guess their love overcame Melanie's and Jared's. And when she found a new host body she wasn't plagued by thoughts of Jarred anymore. At least that's what she says."
"Is your body in love with someone I don't know about?"
He smiles mysteriously. "Even if it were I wouldn't tell you Miss Nosey."
"Hey! I am not nosey. I'm just curious." But now I'm stuck wondering if he is in love with somebody. It might not even be anyone in our group; it could be some random girl out there in the world he doesn't even know. And he'll never be able to love anyone but her. Unless he finds another body. But then he wouldn't be my Burns whose 6'2' and has fiery red hair that stands straight up on his head. I unconsciously narrow my eyes as I think about him loving some stupid girl who's probably a parasite.
"What's wrong with you?" I jump at May's question. I hadn't heard her approach. "Oh…nothing." I glance at Burns to see if he noticed my obvious distress and see him looking at me with an odd expression. I quickly look away before I can analyze myself too much and I can only hope that he doesn't analyze my strange behavior at all. But what am I afraid he's going to find?
I snap out of my inner musings as I notice that everyone is starting to deposit their dishes into a giant sink. I follow behind everyone and scrape the rest of my oatmeal into a colossal bag and put my bowl and spoon in the sink.
As almost everyone else heads out the door with a purpose I realize that I'm the only one who doesn't know what's going on. "Where are we going?" I whisper to May whose talking to Heidi and Trudy beside me.
"Didn't you hear Jeb? We're all going to go to the game room."
"They have games?" I imagine all fifty-nine of us sitting around in a huge circle playing duck duck goose.
"Yeah, I heard Jamie yelling something about soccer to Ian and his brother Kyle." Answers Trudy.
I feel dumb. Of course we would be playing a type of sport. Not a stupid kindergarten game.
When we reach the game room (which is also the room that we all slept in) the first thing I notice is that all of our bedding has been rolled and stacked against the far wall. Then I notice two makeshift goal posts on either side of the room. Soccer. I haven't played soccer since the 6th grade. And even then I wasn't on my school team I just played around with a few of my buddies.
I turn to May and find a matching look of terror on her face. I have a suspicious feeling that if we had ever made it to high school she would have been a cheerleader, but neither of us would have played soccer.
As everyone heads toward Jeb and Nate who are standing in the middle of the room they start to explain the rules. We'll split into two teams, the object of the game is to kick the ball into the goal, there will be a captain from each group of people, yadda, yadda, yadda. Everyone from Jeb's Set (as I began calling them in my head) voted Ian as a captain and everyone from my set voted Rachel as captain, which was perfect…she hates nothing more then losing.
And then the worse part…the part I hated most about school, the picking of the players.
Ian calls out, "Kyle'"
Then Rachel, "Nate"
"Wanderer"
"Melanie"
"Burns"
"Gabe"
"Trudy"
…
"The twin in the Beatles shirt." I finally get called. Third to last. The only people left are Jamie, whose three years younger than me, and a really mean looking woman named Sharon. I trot over to Ian who's the one that called me and give him a smile of gratitude. At least I wasn't last and I silently thank him that I'm on the same team as Burns. Although, now I have to play against May (who got called like, five billion spots before me).
When the whistle is blown and the game begins I'm almost paralyzed with fear. I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing. I vaguely remember Ian saying something to me (or to someone around me) about defense so I head back towards the goal. When I'm thirty feet from it I stop and turn around to watch the game. Ian and Kyle are like some type of whirlwind force. I stand in aw as they kick the ball back and forth and do a whole bunch of cool foot maneuvers that I only ever remember seeing on TV. But then Brandt steals the ball from Ian and passes it to Nate and I almost cheer for joy until I realize that they're on the opposite team and are coming right towards me. I look around for anyone who can stop him instead of me in a panic. But of course, there is no one.
Nate is dribbling the ball as he runs towards me and I subconsciously start to back away. His expression is fierce. But then I hear everyone on my team calling "Novel! Get it Novel!" and I feel a burst of adrenaline in my veins. I jump forward at the last minute and kick the ball out from between his feet. I'm sure the only reason I was even able to do that was because he would never have expected me to go for the ball. I do a little jump for joy until I realize that I had kicked the ball right to May. Where the heck is my team??
May stands there for a half second with her foot on the ball and looks panicked. I grimace because I know that just a few seconds ago I must have had the same exact look on my face. As I run towards her trying to make a strategy in my brain of how I'm going to get the ball from my sister I feel some huge force sweep by me. As soon as I realize that its Nate he's already a good five feet ahead of me, rescuing May from the horror of having the ball herself.
He was able to successfully turn around with the ball and he's running towards me again. Come on. Where is my team? Obviously this is "lets watch Novel as she makes a fool of herself in from of everyone" day. I quickly run towards Nate and try to get the ball from him again hopefully I can distract him with the element of surprise again. No such luck. Right when I try to kick the mall he rolls it a few inches from where it was a second ago and my foot kicks through air. I'm just about to fly into the air and land really really hard on my back when I feel two pairs of hands catch me. Burns and Wanderer are on either side of me holding onto my arms.
But only for a second, then in a flash Burns has taken the ball from Nate and is practically flying across the field. Wanderer is running along beside him trying to get the ball from him at every moment. Meanwhile I'm bending over with my hands on my knees, panting. I can't even remember the last time I ran. I can't even remember the last time I had enough space to run.
I hear a loud amount of cheering and look up just in time to see Burns make a goal. "Yeah!" he literally jumps up with his fist in the air. I can see his smile even from across the field. He lands on the ground with his knees slightly bent and as he straightens he looks at me and smiles. Right into my heart.
A/N ah! What do you think of it?? I wanted to do a bit more background. And don't think that this is just a "Burns and Novel romance" nothing is that easy. Bahahah.
So do you like it? Hate it? Was this chapter weak? Please review. I love constructive critism.
And thank you SO much to my four reviewers. It means so much :
