23. laugh

A Peek into the Mind of the Fairy King

Sabrina doesn't think that I have a brain, but for her information, my brain is very large, and very active. So maybe I don't like reading, or writing, or any of that stuff, but who does? I bet I think about more stuff that Grimm ever does. I bet she's the one with an empty head. After all, she never thinks before she acts, while I think out everything I do.

* * * * *

Grimm poked my arm roughly. "Hey! Wake up before the teacher comes," she hissed, jabbing my cheek.

I lifted my head off the desk and glowered at her. "Can't you see I'm trying to get some sleep?" Geez. She had eyes, didn't she?

Sabrina rolled her eyes. "Which you're not suppose to do. You'll get detention again, and I need a ride home."

It was my turn to roll my eyes. "Whatever." Just as I was about to fall back asleep, Dr. Stem walked into the classroom. He scanned the room and noticed my head resting on the desk.

"Robin, if you're not dead or dying, get your head off the desk," he said. I sighed.

Dr. Stem was actually my favorite teacher. He was everyone's favorite teacher. He was always cracking jokes or giving strange facts that people really didn't want to know. The only reason I listened to a word he said was because I actually enjoyed his Biology class.

"Who wants to know a true fact about chocolate?" Dr. Stem asked, grinning like the Cheshire Cat.

Sabrina wrinkled her nose. "This is not going to be good," she groaned.

I snickered. "Go ahead, doc!" I exclaimed, twisting in my seat so my back was leaning against the black tabletop.

He glanced around the room, noting the eager, and cautious, faces of his students. "Did you guys know that the average chocolate bar in the United States contains at least eight pieces of an insect in it? Harvesting of the cacao beans occurs in the tropical countries of South America with low sanitation levels. Cacao tree beans are cut and piled in the farmer's field where they ferment for 6 days. During this process, children and adults walk over the piles; insects, rodents, small animals and other living things make their nests in the piles. Actually the U. S. Department of Health publishes a book entitled "The Food Defect Action Levels" in which they list unavoidable defects in food. Insect, rodents, and those type of things are all allowed by FDA."

The disgusted looks on the faces of the students was enough to make me burst into laughter. Sabrina groaned again. "It's even worse than I thought." She looked as if she were about to puke. "I had a chocolate bar this morning."

"Don't be such a puss, Grimm," I teased. Sabrina glared at me.

"Only you would think eating a bug isn't gross," she muttered. I shrugged. She was right.

"Now, I want you guys to turn to your partner and discuss the topics on this," he held up a piece of paper. "I was thinking of the idea last week, and decided to go with it." That was vague. I noticed a bunch of people were staring at Dr. Stem in confusion. "It's more of something that I think should keep you guys busy." That explained a lot. "These are like 'I think' ideas that are suppose to stimulate your thought processes and open up your mind." I yawned pointedly, staring at Sabrina's glossy blond hair. I've always been fascinated by her hair, for some strange reason.

Ew… That was a random thought…

When we had out paper, Sabrina stared at it. "Er…Is this a joke?" She continued to stare at the paper as if the words would jump out and eat her at any moment.

"What?" I asked, pulling the paper out of her hand. She continued to frown at her empty hand. I read over the topics. "Doors. What the heck?" I muttered. How were we suppose to discuss doors. So, how 'bout them doors?

I glanced around and saw most of the class crowding around Dr. Stem, bombarding him with questions.

I turned back to Sabrina with a shrug. "Whatever. Let's start." I'll just make up some crap.

"How are we suppose to discuss doors?" Sabrina demanded, completely flummoxed.

A random thought popped into my head. "I never understood the concept of a 'front door'," I began.

Sabrina gave me a strange look. "What are you-"

"The front door is the most important door in the house. It's the most decorated door in the house and an entryway into the main area where people enter and exit a house," I continued. "It's the main door. The front door. The number one door. And no one uses it. Most homeowners have forgotten whether their front doors even still open anymore. People use the 'back door' to enter the home, or the 'side door' or the 'door that comes in from the garage.' Those doors are put in as afterthoughts, awkwardly stuck on the side of houses, and lead into whatever room happened to be there at the time."

Sabrina just gave me her famous "he's gone insane" look. "Um…"

"I think it's silly," I said. "Don't you? I mean, really. Why even bother to have a front door if you won't use it? I don't use the front door. I climb through the window, so would that be considered a 'door'?" I scrawled down my answer on the paper.

"Wow," Sabrina said. "Are you sure Everafters don't get colds?" She pressed the back of her hand against my forehead.

"Ha ha," I sneered. "I was just saying. And you thought I didn't think enough."

* * * * *

I stretched onto the sofa, watching a marathon of CSI. I heard Sabrina throw herself onto the loveseat beside me. "Las Vegas?" She asked, staring at the TV. I nodded mutely. This, along with NCIS, was our favorite series. It was something we actually had in common. Amazing, isn't it?

"Well, which episode?" She demanded.

"Viva Las Vegas," I mumbled. A few minutes later, Sabrina yawned. "Sleepy?"

"Kind of. I spent all day finishing the Calculus project." She yawned again. Was it just me, or did she look like a little kitten when she yawned. Oh, god. Where did that thought come from?

Ugh. Gross. That thought was almost as gross as the food in the cafeteria. Speaking of cafeterias… "I think cafeterias serve bad food on purpose." Sabrina, who was almost on the verge of dozing off, raised a brow.

"How so?" She mumbled.

"It's all part of their sinister plot to destroy the human race. I think there's one guy with a name like 'Pilford J. Spruts' - all important rich people have 'J' for a middle initial- who discovered that if he sold food that cost thirty cents less than anybody else's, people wouldn't care if it tasted like muddy socks, and they'd buy it anyway."

"What the freak, Puck?" Sabrina chortled. "I think you're the one who needs some sleep."

I waved a hand. "You asked for it," I said. "Anyway, he-Pilford J. Spruts- started selling cheap, yucky food to captive audiences at schools and hospitals and so forth in the hopes that, given enough time, the food would wear away at our enthusiasm for eating, effectively reverse training our instinctive drive to eat via negative reinforcement." Who knew I had such a huge vocabulary? "Sometime in the near future, he's going to blow up every fast food joint on the planet, and the heck if we're going to feel like working any harder for sustenance. We'll all starve to death with apathetic expressions on our faces."

I glanced at Sabrina and pouted. "Gee. Thanks, Grimm." She had fallen asleep. So much for my rant. Now I'll have to take revenge on her by painting her face blue…

* * * * *

Grimm and I stared at the two matching coffins slowly being lowered into the large hole in the ground. Sabrina rested her head on my shoulder and I patted her back awkwardly. It wasn't everyday that Grimm and I were this close. It felt sort of awkward with her crying all over my shoulder. Okay… So maybe she wasn't crying, but it was still bizarre.

I sighed as everybody started to wander off in different directions. I began pulling Sabrina towards the forest (Has anyone noticed that the entire town is surrounded by the crazy forest?). "Come on, Grimm."

Sabrina stumbled after me, glancing behind her one more time. We walked a bit further into the woods and I stopped in a little clearing. A few moments later, both of us were lying on our stomachs, fingering the smooth blades of grass. "You're being awfully nice today," Grimm noted. "Is there something disgusting waiting for me in my room?"

I pretended to be hurt. "What? I can be nice when I feel like it."

Sabrina rolled her eyes. She glanced at the cloudy sky and sighed. "I just can't believe they died. I knew Tom was old, but he looked so healthy. This may sound weird, but I expected Cindy to join him." She shook her head.

"You're such a flibbertigibbet," I said. "They're gone. No need to mope about it."

Sabrina scowled at me. "Can you be any more cold-hearted?" She glared at the tree across the clearing. "Why did we come here anyway?"

I shrugged. "It was so depressing back there." Grimm's sad expression was getting to me. God. I was turning into such a softie. I had to stop spending time with Marshmallow. She was rubbing off on me. I needed to cheer Grimm up (Not for her, but for my own sanity).

"You want to know something?" I asked, bluntly changing the subject.

"Is it another one of your crazy thoughts?" Sabrina asked.

"Of course," I replied, grinning cheekily. She shrugged. "You know how, if you listen to a music CD enough, one song ends, and you start humming the next one before it starts? This fits right in with my theory that humans are actually trained by space beings."

"How did you come up with that?" Sabrina inquired, genuinely looking interested.

"See, animals are trained by causing something unpleasant to happen when they do something undesirable and causing something pleasant to happen when they do something desirable. In effect, you're establishing an illogical cause and effect in their minds. Bark. Get scolded. Heel. Get food. Music CDs illustrate how humans are prone to this kind of arbitrary cause-and-effect training. One song plays, and we expect another to follow -- so much so that our subconscious knows what's going to play next, no matter how much music it's heard before. So I think humans are not only trainable but have been trained...by (who else?) space aliens.

"I mean, why else would polite society frown so disdainfully if the dessert fork is placed on the left side of the salad fork? Isn't that a downright silly thing when you think about it? I bet if you asked, no one could tell you why it's bad if a dessert fork is placed on the left side of a salad fork. But I know why. It's because a long time ago, space aliens used to zap us with hypertransturbo ray guns whenever we put the dessert fork on the left and tossed us chocolate éclairs when we put it on the right. I think we should fight this. The next time someone says to me, "But tails are not proper attire for luncheon," I'll look all snooty and say, "At least I'm not the mindless slave of a space alien." I bet that'll shut him up." I grinned at her.

Sabrina snorted. "What the heck is a hypertrans-whatchamacallit?"

"I made it up," I replied. Sabrina cracked a small smile.

I glanced down at my outfit and realized something else. "Ties are all wrong. Who thought it would be a formal, classy, dress-up kind of thing for a man to wear a tie? It serves no practical purpose. It does not cover parts of the body. It does not provide shelter from the atmosphere. It's a noose, the other way around. It's a leash for women to yank. Purely in the interests of fairness, I think that, for every occasion formal enough to require men to wear ties, women should be required to wear bungee cords that hang off the shoulder."

Grimm bursted into laughter. "Is that really what you come up with in your spare time?" She giggled. "Okay. What other thoughts do you have?"

I scratched my chin for a moment. "I think health foods are a bad idea. Eating is healthy for us, not just physically but psychologically as well." I nodded sagely. "If all we eat are low fat cupcakes, we're not going to get the required level of satisfaction from eating them, and each time we take a bite, the subconscious irritation builds a little more until finally we suffer nervous breakdowns and open fire in school yards.

"The synthetic fat product Olestra is ushering in a whole new danger. Olestra is kind of an inverse fat -- since its molecular structure is the inverse of that of regular fat, your taste buds can't detect much of a difference, but your body can't ingest it, and it comes out pretty much the same way it went in. Is this the start of a new trend? Are we going to see products on the shelves with all sorts of inverse proteins in them? If so, I predict everyone will starve to death. We'll be eating all these things, but our bodies won't absorb them.

"We'll get no nourishment from eating. We'll die. But it won't be a painful death -- our stomachs will have inverse food in them. We'll drop dead from starvation without even realizing we were hungry."

"How do you know about Olestra?" Sabrina laughed.

I gave a small shrug. "Dr. Stem. He was talking about it one day."

"Thanks for making me feel better, fairy boy," she said. "I guess you're not as brainless as I thought you were."

I frowned. "Geez. Thanks a lot."

Sabrina giggled and leaned forward. She kept on moving closer and closer, until I could smell the peanut butter sandwich she ate for lunch. My eyes, which apparently had a mind of their own, decided to betray me by glancing at her pink lips that were turned up in a grin. Did I actually want to kiss Grimm, the girl whom I loved to badger and bother?

Heck yeah!

Her hand shot out and yanked me down by my tie, causing me to choke on air. She ducked out of the way right as my lips brushed against hers. Even that little bit of contact was enough to make my face heat up. "What the heck?" I exclaimed, glaring at Sabrina. She was rolling around in the grass, convulsing with laughter.

"Aw! You looked so shocked!" She snickered. "That was just the funniest darn thing in the world!"

I am definitely going to paint her face blue.

Aw. Poor Puck. He was so close to getting that kiss. So, I got the 'thoughts' of Puck from Rink works. It's a HILARIOUS website. I just wrote this because I realized I have been neglecting my stories. It may make no sense. Heck, you may think I'm psychotic.

I learned some very interesting stuff:

1. "Come hither" is a funny thing to say.
2. Chocolate has bugs in it.
3. A female praying mantis will eat a male praying mantis's head when mating.
4. A davenport is a large couch.

Yes. You may be thinking, What the heck were you doing to find these things? The answer: I don't know.
Doesn't Puck sound so philosophical, though? Who knew he had it in him?

Farewell for now ~ LN