Kuruk here with an update!
GASP! Kuruk UPDATING something! Too unreal! I know, I know... but this story has enraptured me with its writing snare and I couldn't procrastinate like I usually do with all my other updates...
Well, hope you enjoy this update! Disclaimers unfortunately still apply.
Chapter One: The Others
And just like that, the three of us were inseparable.
Or maybe a better definition of what our relationship consisted of would be that I clung to them. Well, not them, but Hugh.
Hugh was... well, everything that I was expected to me. For that, I both admired and envied him. My father expected me to be just like Hugh; strong, athletic, proud, confident and obedient. I found myself wishing that I could be Hugh and he me so that then I could please my father...
But despite all the emotions I felt towards Hugh, I found myself enjoying him. Soon Hugh became my planet, I just the moon that revolved around him. At the dinner table I'd talk about Hugh nonstop, when I wasn't with him I longed to be...
Hugh, in such a short time, had already become my best friend.
And Kate? Well, Kate was more complicated...
Kate, even at that young age, was prone to mood swings. She would often storm off, leaving Hugh and I bewildered and sometimes hurt. Our boyish perceptions of the world supplied us with the assurance that Kate was a girl, and therefore strange and bad. Or at least Hugh thought that.
I thought that Kate was... just... normal. I think that provoked Hugh's surprise more than anything else. I was already a mystery to him, not like him and yet not completely like a girl either. It was during the Winter that he came to his conclusion about me.
"I think you're a girl," Hugh blurted. We were alone; Kate had been in trouble earlier that day and confined to her room by her mother. Hugh and I were lying in the grass, flat on our backs, watching the clouds go by.
My face heated. "Am not," I retorted.
Hugh flipped over until he was right next to me and on his side so that he looked down at me. I blushed harder then, looking at his deep blue eyes and his golden hair that captivated me. "But you don't like getting dirty... or running, or-," he was out of breath already, his little cheeks puffing out.
"I'm not a girl!" I insisted, my voice rising, tears coming to my eyes.
"Don't cry," he said, his index finger brushing away the tears that were falling down my already puffy cheeks, "I mean... being a girl isn't... bad..."
I hiccuped pathetically, not even realizing that I missed the feel of his finger on my skin. "R-really...?"
He nodded. "Yeah... th-that means... we can," he averted his eyes from mine, blushing a scarlet so deep that it looked my hair, "hold hands..."
My eyes widened, and he looked back at me, young eyes a mix of excitement and fear. "Y-yeah... like my mom and dad... you know... they hold hands..."
Thoughts of 'moms and dads' brought other activities to mind, and I squirmed a bit, thinking how disgusting it would be if I had to put my lips on...
"So...?" Hugh drawled.
"Huh?" I replied, drawing out that one word as much as humanly possible.
"W-wanna do it?" he stuttered, the scarlet deepening.
I considered, my seven-year old mind struggling with the implications of what would happen if I held hands with Hugh. I couldn't get cooties and he wouldn't either 'cause, well, I was a boy, no matter what he said. That was the only bad thing that could come of it, I supposed, so I nodded hesitantly.
His eyes widened and he nodded back at me. He hesitated, and when I met his eyes in confusion he seemed to panic a bit, and his hand crept over to where mine was. Quicker than I thought possible, Hugh's hand grabbed mine tight, and I think I gasped at the feel of it.
It was rough; not as rough as my father's, but rough. I mean, it was still soft, like a child's was, but it felt so rough to me... rougher than mom's and Kate's and definitely much rougher than mine. It was alien, and foreign... but it felt good.
"You're soft," Hugh whispered, loosening his grip on my own and tentatively running his thumb across the back of my hand.
I was blushing. "You're... rough..."
He almost broke the contact. If I hadn't tightened my own grip to prevent that he would've gotten away. "I-is... that bad?" he asked, voice desperate and nervous.
"No!" I yelled, tightening my grip on his hand to emphasize my words, "I-I... like it..."
He blushed, and I did too. We were two seven year olds experiencing something they have not the knowledge to understand, but too wonderful and at the prelude to something even more so.
"Well look-e here!" came a shrill, horrible voice, "Two girls holding hands!"
Hugh wrenched his hand out of my grasp, making me gasp at the loss. Standing before us, arms crossed over their chests, were Lucy, Stella and Stephen.
Even though it may seem so, Hugh, Kate and I were not the only children in the Valley. Not only did my mom and my father get married, but the other people their age got married. Yeah... my aunt Muffy married her boss, Griffin around a season after my parents did. They had one kid... my cousin Lucy.
Lucy looks every bit like my aunt, but she's nothing like her at the same time. My Aunt Muffy is kind and good and really smart, maybe even as smart as my mom. But Lucy... she's mean and two-faced and she's smart too, but in a bad way... like she uses her smarts to do bad things like pranks and get other people in trouble. It never ceased to amaze me how unlike her parents Lucy was... and it always made me sad that Aunt Muffy and Uncle Griffin had to live with that.
Well... Marlin and Celia, both farmers at my father's rival farm, got married a few weeks before my parents did. No sooner than a year into their marriage Celia got pregnant with twins, no less. Stephen and Stella, complete with matching names, are only a year older than me and the others but they love to flout that... or at least Stella does.
Celia, who is so kind and generous, and Marlin, who is sometimes grouchy and antisocial. Again, genetics surprised everyone. Stella, who looks a lot more like Celia than her dad, the only differences being jet black hair and a more angular face, has the grouchy part of her dad's character with a more Lucy-like twist. She's cruel and mean, but unlike Lucy she makes no move to hide it. At least with Stella you know what to expect.
Stephen, on the other hand, reminds me more of, well, me... He looks like Marlin, except that he doesn't have an Elvis-style do, his face is more round like his mother's and his hair is a light shade of brown. Yeah... Stephen does remind me of me. He's quiet and very shy, never talking to anyone. He only tags along with Lucy and Stella because the latter is his twin and no one else is his friend... so... in that, he seems to be a lot like me...
The three of them are the closest things that you get to bullies here in the Valley. Of course, they always seemed to have been more cautious when Kate was around. Namely because Kate was a girl and could beat up the three of them without getting into too much trouble...
But Kate wasn't here today... so...
"Shut up, Lucy..." Hugh muttered, sitting up, the blush already fading from his cheeks.
Lucy giggled cruelly and Stella joined in moments later. Stephen just stood where he was, rocking back and forth on his heels, looking down at the grass. "You know, Izzie," Lucy said, turning her attention to me and using the nickname I hated so much, "If I told Uncle Jack about this, I wonder what he'd think..."
Stella nodded, a wicked smile on her face. "He'd think that Isaac was a girl, just like you and me," she supplied, twirling her hair with one finger.
I blanched. If dad found out what I just did...
"He'd think you were a liar, liar pants on fire!" Hugh cut in, sticking up for me like he always did, "I mean, if you wanna lie to Jack about something that never happened then I'll go ahead and tell your mom that you're the stealer that stole Landon's magnifying glass, not Kate!"
It was Lucy's turn to blanch. Her already pale skin looked lifeless as her green eyes widened in shock, then narrowed in angry surrender. "My mommy will never believe you," she spat, hoping that he'd back down.
Hugh stood up and like usual, I cowered behind him as he stood up to my cousin. "Oh yeah?" Hugh asked, arms crossed, "You wanna bet? How 'bout when I tell your mom that I know where you hid it?"
Lucy looked livid-- her skin turned even whiter with fury, her emerald eyes flashed in her anger. "Y-you..."
Hugh stood his ground until Lucy's temper shrunk. Her skin regained the little color it had, her eyes reverted to the innocent-looking childish mask she always used. "Whatever," Lucy said, shrugging as if it didn't matter to her, "Little nerdy Landon doesn't need to know about it and neither does my mommy," she shot a venomous glance at me. I glared back, feigning courage, "And I guess Uncle Jack and Aunt Nami don't need to know about this either..."
I sighed in relief and Hugh relaxed a little at her words. Lucy and Stella glared at us one last time then left, Stephen tailing behind them, looking back at us once or twice with an emotion I couldn't place. Beside me, Hugh stuck his tongue out at him.
When they were out of sight, Hugh let out a sigh and looked at me with a smile. "See?" he said, proud, "We don't need Kate here to kick their butts out of here."
I giggled despite myself and nodded.
Later that night, as I lay in bed, I stared at my hand, imagining that Hugh's rough one was wrapped around it... reassuring me that everything was okay.
A/N: Pardon if everything looks a bit retarded. I'm not using AOL anymore since whenever I got an IM through AIM, AOL would crash. I'm using Firefox now, and everything looks a bit different than it does when I use AOL... I hope it doesn't throw anyone off or make it harder to read...
Well. There was a teeny bit of Isaac/Hugh. But meh, they're kids. Nothing big's gonna happen until they're teenagers, and when the teenage stuff comes along things get angsty, dramatic, a bit more humorous with the whole love-square thing, and stuff. Next chapter will still be fluffy. The others... not so much.
How'd you guys like Lucy? XD I hate her myself. I just need an antagonist. And the whole cousin thing is the following-- they aren't actually related, Muffy and Griffin are just really good friends with Jack and Nami, so the whole aunt-uncle-cousin thing is adopted.
Next chapter you meet the other kids and another rather fluffy chapter... with a tinge of tragedy. Just a tinge. No deaths, just injuries, non-life threatening. Well, hope you enjoyed it. Please review!
