Chapter V
Eric knew where he was going; he had locked the house
so his parents weren't going to be TOO mad if they came home and found the
house deserted, but he HAD to talk to Sarah.
It took awhile, about 30 minutes, to get there when
Eric realized that Sarah wasn't exactly a morning person, but still he had to
try. Sarah's parent's weren't home either; a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses spent
nearly 15 hours a week in church, and Sarah's dad nearly died of fever before
Eric forced antibiotics down his throat. Sarah hadn't seen her dad for a good
48 hours because he was, "fasting to remove the impurities the poison Eric
gave him," Sarah's mom said angrily, and it had gotten the Terminham's and
the Shroud's in a bitter rivalry, but that hadn't stopped Eric from buying a
ladder to sneak into Sarah's home when her parents weren't there. Like Eric,
Sarah shared nonreligious beliefs realizing that, had Eric not been there to
stuff the Tylenol down Mr. Terminham's maw, he probably would have died. She was
also slightly older than Eric was, at sixteen, a year and a half older than
Eric was.
Eric clunked the ladder to the side of Sarah's house
and looked in through the window. Sarah walked in through the hallway wearing a
bathrobe. "Huh? I thought you weren't coming," She muttered. "I
need to tell you something really weird." Her voice started normal, but
edged downward so that the last word was barely more than a whisper. Sarah was
a good head shorter than Eric was, standing at 5'6, with medium-long brown hair
and dark brown eyes. She had (to Eric) a nice, beautiful face, smooth with
faint freckles, although you had to look hard to notice them. She never went
very hard on the makeup, which Eric silently blessed every time he played
Ocarina of Time and flinched at the gallons of it on Impa and Nabooru. Sarah
was also an unbelievable archer shot, often putting Eric's developed skills to
shame.
"How ironic, I'm here for the same reason."
Eric said shakily.
"I was waking up in the morning to go to the
bathroom, when I found-" She pulled out something from her bathrobe
"-these." In her hand, were a pair of mirror shades.
Eric fell off the ladder. Coughing through a mouthful
of leaves and twigs, he got up, embarrassed, while trying to decide whether his
butt was broken or it just really, really hurt, while Sarah forgot her
nervousness and collapsed into laughter. "What's so wrong!" she
giggled. It's just a pair of sunglasses! It's just how I got them!"
"Yeah, remind me to duct tape your mouth shut,"
Eric muttered grumpily. After what he'd seen in his room...and the fact that he
could remember what he'd heard, going from awake to fantasyland to awake...was
just insanity-inducing. Eric explained what had happened while a grin was
produced around Sarah's lips.
"You think I'm joking!" Eric barked, at
Sarah's disbelief phase. "Alright, I'll prove it to you! I'm going to put
these shades on and I'm going to vanish and appear on top of a mountain with
freaky triceratops dudes."
Sarah just sat back, letting Eric's insanity vent. He
was always under a lot of stress, mainly about his chosen exile, but she
couldn't just abandon him, she just couldn't.
Eric focused on what happened 45 minutes ago. He put
the shades on- and nothing happened. No wisps of smoke, no, "blue
screen," that had appeared just before the transportation, nothing. Eric
yanked the shades off while a smile was playing around Sarah's lips.
Sarah said gently, trying not to cackle hysterically,
"Were you thinking of anything when you put them on?" She said,
playing her moms role as psychiatrist.
Eric stopped for a moment. Yes, he realized, he was
partially thinking about SFA, staring at his poster on the ceiling when he put
them on. Maybe if he thought of SFA...
"Yes. I was. I was looking at my SFA poster on
the ceiling and thinking about that, sorta..."
Without stopping to think for another answer, he put
the shades on, concentrating on his SFA poster.
Sure enough, the smoke appeared, vision blurred, and Sarah's
astonished face appeared. Taking the shades off before vanishing completely,
Eric grinned triumphantly. "Convinced yet?"
