*Little author's note thingy: There's a bad word in this chapter, just one, though. Guess who uses it. Go on. Guess!
Delia and Murasaki sat across the table from each other. The room was filled with chattering children, with only a few individual voices reaching above the rest. Delia and Murasaki both sat in silence and erratically ate food from their plate, casually looking up at each other. Their sitting together seemed more of an arrangement than a friendship, but it was an arrangement they both enjoyed. It was better than sitting alone. Only this day the silence was beginning to get to Delia. She had been thinking long and hard about why she's so different in school than she is at home.
"What's your last name?" Delia asked Murasaki. Murasaki looked up at her.
"Kasshoku," Murasaki told her shyly. Delia smiled.
"That's pretty. Does it mean anything?" Delia asked her. Murasaki nodded smiling.
"It means 'brown,'" Murasaki said. Delia's smile widened and she looked back down at her food.
"You've had all year to think about it, how can you not know what you're going to be for Halloween?" Jig demanded from Ephram as she stood in his room. Ephram was almost fully engulfed in his closet, which, despite its recent creation, was a mess. Ephram was almost positive something was living in there. It had already eaten one of his favorite shirts.
"I had other things on my mind," Ephram told her. Jig looked at the ground with a slight frown taking over her face before she responded.
"Well, let's go over every anime first," Jig said looking around his room at the posters, for inspiration.
"How about Tuxedo Mask?" she asked him as the idea came to her without the aid of a poster.
"With no Usagi? No," Ephram told her. Jig thought about it a little. She then snapped her fingers when the epiphany came.
"Ranma! You can be boy Ranma and I can be girl Ranma!" Jig said. Ephram sighed angrily.
"No one here would get it."
"I bet Desi would," Jig said with a grin. Ephram turned his head to see her grinning at him, scoffed, and turned back into the closet.
"Not Ranma. Besides I'm- uh, here it is," Ephram said grabbing something. As he stood up and turned around, a black and white cloak flew around him as he tied it around his neck. Jig's face turned into a giant smile when she saw it. The cloak went down to his ankles with the black side out and the satiny white side against his back. Jig clapped her hands together.
"That's great! But what can we do with it?" she asked him. Ephram walked over to his dresser, opened the top drawer, and pulled something out. It was a white mask that he pressed against his face, covering his eyes and forehead. Jig clapped her hands together again.
"The Phantom of the Opera, that's perfect Ephram. It's not anime, but it's great."
"Yea, my mom thought so. That's what I was last year," Ephram said taking the mask off and looking at it in his hand. Jig frowned worriedly.
"Maybe we should pick something else…" she suggested. Ephram shook his head.
"No, you were right before, it is perfect," Ephram said setting the mask on his dresser. Jig sighed and forced a smile on her face.
"I bet you can play all of the music from it too," Jig said. Ephram smiled.
"From memory."
"There they are. It's uncanny how fast they grow, isn't it?" Dr. Abbott asked. He turned his face away from the sonogram to the mother of the twins he had been looking at. The woman smiled, her hands entangled with that of the very tall, very built Black man standing next to her. Dr. Abbott had to smile at how happy the couple was. No matter how many times they saw their twins on the screen they were always in perfect bliss. Dr. Abbott was happy for them. He knew how long they had been trying to have children, and now they were having twins. One boy and one girl. Every time they came in to see him, they brought a new list of names. This time the main names were Haines and Haleigh.
"They're beautiful," Earl, the father, said. Tionè, the mother, moved her hands quickly in front of her.
"Whoa, whoa, slow down," Earl told her. She smiled and repeated the same movements, only slower this time. Earl laughed.
"Yea, I guess they do have my eyes," he said, "especially the boy," he added pointing to a spot on the screen. Dr. Abbott looked where Earl was pointing and cleared his throat as he looked back at Earl.
"That's the girl," Dr. Abbott told him.
"Oh…" Earl said embarrassed slightly. Tionè's smile widened like she wanted to laugh.
"Oh! And you'll definitely need some of these!" the bleached blonde, twenty something, girl in a red vest said as she threw some orange lights into the cart Dr. Brown was pushing. The cart was filled near to the brim with orange and black decorations, nearly everything with a pumpkin or black cat on it. No ghosts, that's what Dr. Brown had pledged to himself. Things living after death wasn't an idea he wanted his children living around at this time. Plus he was pretty sure Delia was scared of ghosts. The girl who was leading him stopped and turned around to face him. She pointed to what looked like a cloth witch who had flown into the wall, hanging next to several of the same.
"Now these are very popular this year. But I suggest, that since you already have the blow-up Frankenstein Monster, I suggest not going with these witches unless who have just fallen in love with them," the girl told him. Dr. Brown shook his head with a smile.
"That shouldn't be a problem," he said.
"Good. Now to me you look a lot like a skeleton man, so let me introduce you to aisle number four!" she said leading him around the corner into another aisle. Every aisle had been done up extravagantly, but aisle four looked and felt like a mausoleum. Dr. Brown took a moment to cringe before wheeling his cart into the aisle.
Delia sat on the living room couch, homework in her lap. Division, oh how she loathed division. She had a horrible enough job with it, but now she was only increasingly troubled with it because of the hammering her father was doing outside. He had never put up decorations before, of any sort, so the hammering was erratic and had an interval of minor yells of pain and distemper. If the hammering weren't such a nuisance, Delia would almost laugh.
Ephram and Jig walked side by side down the sidewalk to his house. The Ayashi no Ceres DVD Jig had been saving for and ordered had finally come in. Only there wasn't a DVD player at Jig's house, and Ephram never refused the chance to watch a new anime. Besides, when he was young he had a Japanese babysitter who told him the legend the anime was based on. She's probably why he ever got interested in anime. Ephram and Jig both stopped walking when they came upon 2179 Deerborn St. Dr. Brown was at the top of a ladder, nailing in a crooked jack o' lantern to the porch. Ephram sighed not so much in aggravation as in embarrassment. Dr. Brown stepped down off of the ladder and looked over his work.
"It's crooked," Ephram told him. Dr. Brown sighed.
"I know, and it's staying that way," Dr. Brown said, hinting at a battle he had fought long with the jack o' lantern but ultimately lost.
"The rest of them look nice though, Dr. Brown," Jig said. Dr. Brown smiled.
"Why thank you Jig. Nina brought some cookies over, they're on the kitchen counter, if either of you would like one," he told them.
"Yea, thanks Dad," Ephram said walking quickly into the house.
Once inside Ephram's room he closed the door and they placed their book bags on the floor. Ephram walked over to take the DVD from Jig's hand but she retracted it just as he was about to grab it. He looked at her confused.
"What?" he asked her.
"You should be nicer to your dad," she answered. Ephram scoffed annoyed and turned away from her.
"Not you too," he said. Jig's expression turned slightly to an annoyed degree.
"One of these days you're going to tell me why you act like this," she told him. He turned around and looked at her in surprise.
"Act like what?"
"Like you're some pitiful little thing! You act like the world dealt you the worst of all possible hands!" she told him.
"And whose to say it didn't? Huh? Whose to say the world didn't deal me the worst hand?" he demanded from her, his voice rising as he did so. She simply stared at him for a few moments before responding.
"I am," was all she responded. Ephram paused this time. He then scoffed and turned his back to her again.
"Don't turn your back on me Ephram Brown!" she shouted, causing him to immediately turn around, "all of my life people have been turning their back on me! I don't like it! You are going to listen to everything I have to say! You are the luckiest person I have ever met Ephram! You grew up in wealth, in this fabulous apartment with two parents who love you so much their hearts hurt! With a little sister who is pretty sure that if you're not God, you're damn near it! You grew up with nothing but privilege! And now the only thing you complain about is the fact that your father loves you enough not to give up on you, and a girl who is torn between you, who she's known for two months or so, and the guy she's loved since she was five! You are damn lucky Ephram Brown, and it's past time someone told you!"
"If I'm so lucky, then why is my mother dead?" Ephram asked through his teeth. Throughout Jig's speech Ephram had been growing more and more angry.
"The same reason my m-, my father is dead. It just fucking happens…" she told him. Ephram fell silent by that.
"Just go away," he finally told her, turning his back to her for a third time.
"No! I'm not going to let you push me away! You push everyone away!" she said walking over to him. He turned back around to face her; a little surprised by her new closeness.
"I tried to let someone get close to me. Do you remember what happened there Jig, do you? She pushed me away Jig!" he told her.
"Well what did you expect for her to do? Drop everything just because you have a crush on her?"
"No! Because I love her!" Ephram yelled very near her face. He leaned away and breathed heavily as she stared at him, a near emotionless expression on her face.
"Love is not enough, Ephram," she told him.
"You don't know that."
"Yes I do, and you know it too. Love wasn't enough to stop the bomb that killed my father, love wasn't enough to stop the car that killed your mom, and it's not enough now," Jig told him now more sympathetically then angrily. That's the way he heard it, too. Ephram sighed now, an understanding finally reaching him.
"You want me to be nice and get to know my dad, because you never got the chance to know yours, right?" he asked her, straying back to the original topic. She nodded simply. Ephram reached over and grabbed the DVD from her hand, and they watched it.
