Hey, everyone! So, it's Saturday, and I really love Saturday. And one of the things I love doing on Saturday is writing. So, here I am, with the third chapter for EaHatA!
Told you I almost had it done ;)
Chapter 3:
Angel in Disguise
Stuart decided that the number one way to be a friend to little Xia would be to give her back what she had lost. He didn't know why her guitar was destroyed, he didn't know why she kept it outside in that clearing, and he didn't know why she played it all the time, but he did know that from the look on her face earlier, she'd probably really appreciate it if she had it back. But since the guitar was in no condition to ever be repaired, he'd have to find a way to get her a new one.
But simply getting a new one wouldn't do. She obviously had a connection to that guitar specifically, she even burned her favorite food into the side of it. You don't simply write your favorite food onto something you don't love dearly.
So, in hopes of finding an identical replacement, he took the three pieces of the guitar with the burnt in letters on them, and set off to the local thrift shop to find a guitar that looked like the old one. And after an entire day of shopping around for the perfect guitar, he finally found one that looked almost identical to hers, only it was a little darker of a color than the other. He decided it would have to do, it was still a beautiful guitar, he even bought a nice guitar case to go along with it, and on the way home, he also picked up a little wood burning kit.
He spent at least three hours, yes three hours, painstakingly copying the exact font from the pieces he had into the guitar he had bought. He wanted it to look identical to hers, in every way possible. Of course, in order for the time spent on his little project to be able to amount the three hours, he took a break after every letter to play a round of Cloppy Horse on his phone. Damn that tempting little pixelized pony.
Once he was sure that it would do, he set the guitar down by the door so that he'd remember it tomorrow when he left.
His tired eyes shut hard the moment he hit his bed, and right before he drifted off into sleep, he smiled, because he felt like he really did something good today.
The next day, he woke up bright and early, and felt amazing, like he had slept a million hours and finally felt fully refreshed. Then he looked at the clock and realized he had overslept and it was already 2:00PM.
He let out a curse and fell back into the bed, feeling awful, like he just wasted the entire day sleeping. Granted, orientation classes don't end until 5:00, so he still had the chance to get in there and get at least a few hours in, but Xia always left at 12:00 or 1:00, so no matter what, he already missed her.
He decided to get up anyway, hours were important, and he had to get as many as possible in that room. He got dressed, ate a quick meal, and went out the door, bringing the guitar with him so he could at the very least place it by that tree before tomorrow.
But then he realized tomorrow was Saturday.
Neither of them would be there tomorrow.
Dangit.
Either way, he put the guitar in the car and headed for the AEC, and much to his surprise, when he got there and pulled in to the parking lot, there was Xia, sitting down by the fence she jumped over each day.
Upon seeing her, he seemed to have totally forgotten about class, and instead decided to head towards her, making each step slower than he usually walked so he could gradually figure out from a distance what she was doing over here instead of being back at home like normal. She did have a home, didn't she?
Once he was around 10 feet away, she looked up at him and seemed almost startled, like she really didn't notice him coming towards her. She rubbed at her eyes and stood up, her little black bag hanging off her shoulder loosely and her head leaning towards the ground as she tried to avoid too much eye contact with him.
"Ey, yew alrigh'?"
"I'm fine. I just wanted to know why you didn't come in today, it was odd." Wait, did she really care about why he wasn't in today?
"Oh, slept late, dang alarm clock didn' wake meh up."
"Good, just making sure you weren't dead." She seriously thought he was dead?
"Oh, well tha' was nice of yew, luv." There seemed to be an awkward silence between them at that point, if all she wanted to do was make sure he was okay, then why was she still here?
"Aren't you going to go to class now?"
"Well, I'm makin' sure yewr alrigh', yew know? Yew're typically gone by now, luv. Yew didn' really 'ang aroun' jus' the see if a bloke lioke me was still alive, did yew?"
"So what if I did?" She turned red, not so much as with embarrassment, but with anger. But perhaps the anger was just there to hide the embarrassment.
"'Ey now, lil luv, it jus' seems like theirs somefink more, maybe, idunno, bu' I wanna know if I kin 'elp yew out wit' anyfink."
"Don't be so nosy with my life."
"I'm no' tryin' to be nosy, luv. I jus' wanna know, are yew alrigh'?" She walked right up to him so that they were literally toe to toe. She lifted her heels as high as they'd go so that she was as close to his face as possible, then she placed a hand on his shoulder, and used her other hand to pull up her bangs to reveal a black bruise under her left eye.
And with a stern voice, she whispered to him, "I'm fine." before switching back to her original position, holding her little black purse closer to her side, and walking away from him, going towards the parking lot.
That's not the way she went home, she always went through the forest. Maybe there was another way to get to her house, or maybe she just didn't want him seeing where she went to go home. Either way, he decided to go back to his car, grab the guitar which was in the guitar case, and go into the clearing where she always was and leave it by the tree.
As he placed down the big black leather object against the trunk of the tree, he swore that he heard a faint cry coming from the distance. It was getting closer and closer, just as he remembered walking through the forest and hearing the guitar strumming get louder and louder as he got nearer to the source. And same as last time, the sound he was hearing was most certainly from Xia.
Before the crying got too close, he jumped over to the tree that he usually hid behind while watching her play, and decided to wait and see if she noticed the guitar, and if so, what she thought about it.
He saw her come through the brush, her face red from tears and her knees shaking as she leaned down against the tree and covered her face in her hands, entirely ignoring the guitar case that was right next to her on the other side of the tree.
The guitar case fell from the place it was leaning on onto the ground below, giving out a startling thunk which snapped the girl out of her tears and into a state of confusion as she saw the object laying there by her.
She looked up, perhaps to see if there were any hidden cameras that would capture the moment when she opened the case and got hit in the face with a pie for laughs, but she soon allowed her paranoid side to perish and she took another look at the case before opening it up to reveal a beautiful brown acoustic guitar, with "Noodle" written on the bottom, in the exact way her other one had. She covered her mouth, and looked around again, wondering who in the world left this here. For a split second she thought maybe an angel had taken pity on her and left this as a sign for her to keep playing music, because maybe, just maybe, that angel knew that music was her only escape from this horrible, horrible existence she had come to know as life.
And maybe she was right, because as she picked up the guitar and began to play it the way she had with the old one, that angel, her angel, was smiling at her, not from a cloud in the sky as most angels would, but from behind a tree a few feet away from her.
I know I've only written three, but this is my favorite so far :)
I feel like it reads a little too fast, it is much shorter than the other two, but I also feel like it gets the job done, so I like that.
R&R, and stay tuned for another chapter!
