Poof.
Lauren stood in her own bedroom. The digital alarm clock was blaring a commercial for Toyotas. She crossed to the nightstand and turned it off. What was I doing ? Sleepwalking ? The bed had not been slept in.
On the desk lay a pile of loose leaf notebook paper; the story of Captain Jack Sparrow and how he fell in love with her. Lauren grabbed the pages and crumpled them in disgust. She had never intended to post them; it had just seemed something fun to write, and fantasize about. Ugh. What a Mary Sue, she thought, throwing the story in the trash.
"Lauren, you awake ?" called her mother through the door.
"Yeah, I'm up. Getting dressed now," she called back automatically. Her eyes felt gritty. She didn't feel as though she had gotten any sleep.
The day did not get better. Lauren got off the afternoon bus and strolled up the street. She loitered on purpose. It did no good. Shari and her little clique of friends were waiting for her on Shari's front stoop. "Gothic freak."
She ignored them, the hair on the back of her neck prickling as she walked away. "Loser." Their familiar taunts followed her up the street.
Reaching the townhouse, Lauren fumbled at her neckline, then in her pocket. Oh, no. She searched each compartment of her backpack, knowing it was useless. The house key, on the chain she normally wore around her neck, lay on her bedside table. Aaah. Could this day get any worse ?
Lauren sat cross legged on the stoop, math book on her lap. She wasn't making any progress. Skateboard wheels rumbled along the sidewalk. She ignored them. They rumbled past again in the other direction, then again. With a bang, the rumbling stopped. Lauren looked up through her bangs. A dark-haired boy her own age stood on the sidewalk, skateboard propped on end against his leg.
"Hey, whassup ?"
What's his name...Leon, Leroy ?
Whatever. "Nothing. Math homework."
"You in Ms Rhodes class ?" He rocked the skateboard back and forth, turning in half circles.
"Um, yeah." Go away, 'skater boi'. I am not in the mood for chit-chat.
"Me too, fifth period. I'm pretty good at math..." She ignored him, pretending to be intent on copying the problems from the book. "Fine, then. Whatever." Thankfully, the wheels rumbled away and did not return.
Ugh. This is impossible ! Fractions. Lauren's thoughts returned to the disturbing dream of the night before. You'd think I could at least do something right in a freakin' dream, she thought, disgustedly. Still, it was strange. She was sure she hadn't been asleep. She remembered the pirate captain spreading his fingers and saying "poof". Lauren giggled. Hmm, I wonder. Nah, don't be a dork.
Captain Jack Sparrow sat at the table in his cabin, alone, drinking a glass of rum. The moonlight spilled through the windows, almost negating the need for the candles on the table. It was late; wax drippings hung in sheets from the brass candlesticks. Jack wasn't drunk, nor did he intend to get drunk. Just a glass or two of rum to soften the edges a bit.
Thud.
Jack startled and swept the cabin with wide eyes, looking for the source of the soft, abrupt sound. A young girl sat cross-legged on his berth. Wide blue eyes stared into his from under long blond bangs. Jack looked away, into his glass. The rum in its depths provided him with no inspiration. I am definitely not drunk. Then his mind turned to a half-remembered dream from a week ago. He swirled the rum in his glass. A sea of rum...and a girl in his berth.
"Uh, hello. Am I interrupting anything ?" Jack raised his eyes. The girl in his berth was standing in front of him. He leaned back, assessing the problem. If he stood, the top of her head would come up to his chin, he thought. She wore an odd, tight-fitting black shirt of some clingy material. Baggy black canvas pants. Black, silver, and red hoops ringed her forearms; some sort of bracelets. Her face was rounded, still immature. She would be pretty, in a few more years, he decided.
"Hello. Yer my dream, are ye ?" he greeted her. A name, there was something about a name...Lassie, Laurie...
"I'm Lauren. And you really are Captain Jack Sparrow, aren't you," she said, wonderingly.
"Aye." He nodded, pleased with her use of his title. "And what might bring ye here, Lauren ?" I am not drunk. I am not asleep.
She blushed. "Um, I don't really know. I wanted to see if I could, kind of. You know, on purpose." He cocked his head, questioning. She went on in a rush. "You remember, you said maybe I could just poof, you know, and go home. And I did. It wasn't a dream. And just now, I was locked out of my house, so I thought, well, I'd give it a try..."
The flow of words stopped. The Girl looked embarrassed. Jack recalled tears. Let's try to avoid that, shall we ? "So, yer sayin' that yer not dreamin', and I'm not dreamin', so here ye are. Lauren." He tried a smile. "Welcome aboard the Black Pearl." She stood there, awkwardly. Jack pushed a chair in her direction with his foot. "Here, love, have yerself a seat."
Lauren plopped down gracelessly, putting the textbook down on the table. "I can't believe you're real," she commented. "In my world, you're a movie character."
"In my world, I'm real," he said, indicating himself with a wave of his hand. My world. Funny, that was. The Black Pearl was his world. It amused the pirate to think of the whole world belonging to him. "Wot's that ? Movie," he added, when she looked blank.
"Oh, a movie. It's like," she hesitated, groping for the right words. "Like a story, you know, with pictures. Only the pictures move, on a big screen, so it looks real."
"Ah." There didn't seem to be much to say to that. They sat in silence for a minute, Jack eyeing the bracelets on her arms. The slender hoops looked soft, rubbery. His fingers stretched, spider like, toward them, then retreated. The silence stretched, uncomfortably. Jack spider-walked his fingers across to Lauren's book, pulled it to him. "Wot's this ? Picture book ?" He wondered, briefly, if this book from another world would reveal a picture of himself, or of the Pearl.
"Nah. Math," said the girl, disgustedly. "I hate it. In my world, see, I have to go to school, like, eight hours a day. I'm in the eighth grade. It is so stupid ! Tons of stuff that I will never use in the real world, like civics and home ec and crap. And people calling you freak, loser, worse even, just because they're jocks and cheerleaders and popular kids, they just can't leave a person alone..."
Jack let the torrent of her words wash over him, uncomprehending. The girl was hurt and angry; that was what it all meant. The phrase 'real world' caught his imagination. Her world, or me own ?
Idly, he flipped open the textbook. A pencil held the spot. He picked it up and spun it in his fingers. Smooth white paper with thin blue lines lay between the opened pages. The pencil swooped and hovered over the numbers there. Almost without thinking, he noted the error. Jack scratched a line through Lauren's first answer, corrected it, began to write more.
Lauren stopped in mid-rant, watching in surprise as the pirate off-handedly completed the first line of problems in her homework assignment. "Hey, how did you do that ?"
Jack leaned back, frowned slightly. "It's basic arithmetic, love," he replied.
"You're a pirate. Pirates don't have to know math !"
"Pirate Captain," he corrected her, pointedly. "And I do have to know arith...math. Navigation, savvy ? How I'm to get me ship from here to there without gettin' lost ?" As Jack spoke he sketched a circle in the air with the pencil, jabbed two points, connected them with a curving line.
Obviously the thought had never occurred to her. "Show me how you did that," she demanded. "I understand the first part, but then I get confused."
"Here," the pencil flew across the page as he showed her the process. Then, solemnly, he handed her the writing implement. For the next ten minutes there was no sound in the cabin except the scratching of the pencil and the occasional comment or correction from Jack. "No, reduce it. That's right."
The angry girl crowed in delight, causing Jack to start back from her in alarm. "Woo ! I get it !" She grinned at Jack. "Thank you !"
"Any time, love." Oh, that was definitely the wrong thing to say. He really didn't want to encourage her. That poof thing she did was disturbing. "Er, listen, love, it's late. Don't ye have a mother or someone who might be worryin' about ye ?"
Lauren's eyes widened. "Mom ! How long have I been here, do you think ? Oh man, if she comes home and I'm not there, that would not be cool." She jumped up abruptly, gathering her things. "Uh, look, thanks, and all, I think I'd better-"
Poof.
This time, Captain Jack Sparrow merely flinched. Handled that rather well, I did. He didn't even bother to look around the room; the angry girl was gone. He could feel her absence, somehow. Instead, he turned to his glass, refilling it from the bottle nearby. He hadn't meant to get drunk this night, but under the circumstances, it seemed like a good thing to do.
