Chapter 66
As the Kanker girls were continuing their trek back to Peach Creek, Eddy had made his way back to the cul-de-sac. The small Ed boy had stopped at the Candy store to pick up a box of cookies and cream flavored fudge to present to Lee as an apology gift. The delicacy was Lee's absolute favorite desert, to the point of borderline addiction; Eddy knew that there was no way she could resist the call of the sweet treat.
Eddy made his way down the cross street in a stealthy manner, eventually reaching the entrance to the lane. Upon reaching the inlet, he walked down the narrow alleyway to the Kankers yard, where he proceeded to scale the wooden fence, and drop onto the well maintained grass lining the yard.
The stout boy tiptoed across the yard towards the back patio, a modest sized concrete surface containing a few articles of outdoor furniture. Above the patio was an overhang, which acted as a shield from the hot sun in the summer months; this overhang was supported by metal framework on it's right and left side, in the design of a garden trellis, perfect as a habitat for climbing vines and, unintentionally, for climbing humans.
Eddy stopped for a few moments as he approached the trellis, staring upward at the small double hung window mounted above the patio overhang; the sole window leading into Lee's bedroom. The curtains were partially closed, covering the perimeter of the window while allowing a small amount of light to peek through.
Eddy took a deep breath, at which point he placed the box of fudge into his jeans pocket, and scaled the trellis. Once on the patio roof, he took a few steps across the aluminum structure, and slowly approached Lee's window.
Prior to attempting to open the window, the short boy peered through the small space between the curtains; while the room was well lit, he was not able to make out the details. Nevertheless, Eddy was quite surprised that Lee was nowhere to be found.
"Wow," said Eddy to himself, "I guess she went out with the family. Probably for the best, it will definitely help her calm down and make this a little easier on me."
Eddy reached down into his right pocket, and removed the box of fudge he had stored there moments earlier. He cradled the box in his hand for a few seconds, contemplating heavily as he stared at the ornate wrapper. Suddenly, an idea popped into his head, causing him to simultaneously adopt a smile.
"Time to break out a little bit of the Eddy magic." said Eddy, "I'll sneak this in, leave it on her bed, and write her a sweet note to surprise her when she get's home. Perfect!"
At that point, Eddy grabbed the bottom of Lee's window with both of his hands, and slowly moved it up into a position large enough for him to fit through. He placed his right leg over the wall and into the room, after which he ducked down while bringing the remainder of his body through the portal. Once inside the room, he proceeded to close the window, in an effort to minimize the impact to the houses internal temperature from the bitter winter air.
As Eddy turned around to face the interior of the room, an expression of shock and surprise filled his face; Lee's bedroom was barely recognizable in it's current state. It appeared as though a nuclear bomb had gone off inside. The door leading to the closet was wide open, and all of the clothes usually kept within were strewn around the room, hanging from strange places such as the ceiling fan and the vanity in a disorganized fashion. The books usually sitting neatly on Lee's desk were no longer there, instead they had been scattered around the room as well. The entire mattress had been uprooted, and thrown against the wall, leaving no place for Eddy to place his chocolates as a surprise for Lee. The floor was littered with what seemed like many pages of math and chemical equations, torn out of notebooks and thrown around in a violent manner, along with pens and pencils. It was quite obvious that Lee had uprooted her entire room in a violent rage prior to escaping to the church with her mother's car.
"What the hell happened here?" asked Eddy as he glanced around the room, "Damn, she's a lot more pissed than I realized."
As Eddy made his way over towards the area of Lee's dresser, something particular began to catch his eye. On top of the vanity, amidst the torn up school papers and disheveled bottles of perfume and nail polish was a notebook spared from destruction, neatly placed on top of the wooden surface. The book was placed directly above an open drawer, the only drawer to Lee's vanity that required a key to open; the drawer that contained all of the most personal items belonging to the tall red-head.
Unfortunately, with her thoughts clouded by the chaotic events that occurred earlier that day, Lee had tried to calm herself down by glancing through her old memories with her best friend. However, the violent storm within her mind became too much for the girl to handle, and against her better judgement, she rushed out of the house, leaving all of her personal belonging open and exposed.
Eddy curiously made his way over to the vanity, and gazed upon the marble note book sitting on top. A pink crayon had been used to label the book; the text appeared to have been written by a small child, and read:
The Fabulous Life of LeeLee! (A Smiley face with ponytails was drawn next to the text)
"LeeLee?" asked Eddy, "She broke my balls when I called her LeeLee earlier this month, and here she is labeling her own book with it."
Eddy giggled slightly as he grabbed the book in his hands.
"She'll probably kill me if she ever found out about this," said Eddy as he opened the book, "But let's just see what cute widdle Wee was like when she was a whittle girl."
Eddy giggled at his own joke as he glanced upon the first page. The book was structured as a journal of sorts, and while the text within was written by a five year old, the eloquence and penmanship of the words were well beyond her years. Slowly but surely, Eddy began reading with a sly grin.
Dear Journal!
September 7
Annalee here and welcome to my fabulous life! Now that I started Kindergarten I wanted to document the fun I am going to have learning all sorts of new things, playing with my little sisters, and my new special friend!
Today was my first day in school, and I was SOO excited about learning new things! I can't wait to start learning math and science, and get on my way to being a teacher when I grow up! However, I was also scared, and so were my sisters about making friends with all of the other kids.
I decided to be brave, and introduce myself to a girl sitting on the bench. Her name is Lindsay Stazorewski, at least I think that is how you spell it, and she is very nice, smart and pretty. She doesn't like running around and playing as much as I do, because she says she's not allowed to and her knees and back hurt when she does, but that was okay because everybody's different. She likes painting her nails, and playing with dolls and she's really good at it. She told me she'd show me how to do mine just like hers. She can also bend her fingers in all kinds of weird ways, which I think is really really cool, but she thinks it's strange. It was so fun playing with her, we even came up with special names for eachother. I'm LeeLee and she is Lizzy.
We played together all day, and we became fast friends. I'm so excited to go back to school tomorrow and play with her some more.
I'll let you know what we do tommorow!
Eddy did a proverbial double take as he read the words on the page; what was simple curiosity about his girlfriends childhood years had transformed into true intrigue. The boy remained completely silent, in shock at what he had just read for a few moments, after which he decided to turn forward a few pages.
October 5
Today was an amazing day!
Me and Lizzy spent coloring time making a poster for our future business, L&L designs. Lizzy told me she wants to be a business woman when she grows up, and I think she would be very good at it. All of the kids in the class love her, and when we play store she can sell everything! She is also really good at counting money, and working with percentages. She said her Daddy used to take her to work with him, but her mother stopped her from going because she thinks girls should only focus on beauty. That's really stupid, and I told Lizzy that she should do what she wants and we can work together to bring her love of fashion and hairstyling together in business. We're going to be awesome.
She also complemented me on my hair, which made me feel really good. Nobody ever noticed before, but I knew I could count on Lizzy. She's my best friend after all. We made a pinky promise to each other today to always be friends, and everyday when we leave school, we lock pinkies and say "Best Friends Forever" to each other.
Lizzy is coming over my house after school tomorrow to show me how to do my nails like her. I can't wait. I'm also going to ask her to sleep over my Daddy's house, we can stay up all night and work on our designs.
At that point, Eddy slowly placed the book back onto the vanity, staring down at it in utter shock.
"No way..." said Eddy to himself in a drawn out fashion. As he turned his head downward, the unlocked and open drawer caught his eye, at which point the small Ed boy could not resist taking a peek inside.
Eddy gazed at the contents of the drawer. Inside, up against the sidewall sat the golden trophy that Lee had won in the winter talent show. Adjacent to the trophy was what appeared to be a bright blue girls headband, adorned with a rather large bow of the same color.
However, the most interesting contents from Eddy's perspective were a pack of photographs tucked into the back corner of the drawer. Without hesitation, Eddy reached for the envelope, picked it up, and opened it to examine the contents.
Eddy remained in shock as he scanned through the large pile of photographs, depicting countless photographs of Lee and Lindsay as little girls. In contrast to the bitter personas they exhibited around each other in the present day, both girls seemed to be smiling from ear-to-ear with joy in every last photograph. Within the pile were pictures depicting Lee and Lindsay drawing together, doing manicures, running their lemonade stand, giving each other tight hugs, and sharing their "best friends forever" pinky promise. As Eddy observed the photographs, he noted that the blue bow worn by Lindsay in the pictures was in fact the same one contained within the drawer.
After a few moments of sifting through the pictures, Eddy's curiosity brought him back to Lee's journal. He grabbed the pages one by one, turning through them with a curious expression. The stout boy eventually found what he was looking for on the last documented page.
Nov 21
This will be my last journal entry. I have lost the will to write.
I had the worst day of my life today. Me and Lizzy are not friends anymore. She didn't say why, but yesterday her mommy caught her with us and said she couldn't play with me anymore. She called me trash, and said that Lizzy was too good to play with me. Lizzy tried to tell her she liked playing with me, but her mommy grabbed her and drug her home by her arm. That probably hurt her, because she has a lot of problems with her joints, and I felt really bad for her. Even though her mommy was mad, I knew she would never break the promise we made to each other.
I was wrong. I tried to cheer Lizzy up today and she wouldn't talk to me. Then she tore up our best friends forever picture, and told me we are not friends anymore. I was so sad, I cried all day. She is my best friend, and I love playing with her, I don't want that to go away.
I know Lizzy hasn't changed. She is still the nice person she always is, I can feel it. I don't know what her mommy did to her to change her so much, but she's acting like a totally different person now and it hurts me. I know this isn't her, but I don't know how to help her.
I will never give up on Lizzy, she's my friend and I love her, and I'll figure out some way to help her be herself again. Until then, I'll just have to keep fighting with her, at least we can still talk that way, and I won't loose her completely.
I have no reason to continue writing, because I am too sad. Bye Journal.
Eddy paused for a few moments, absorbing the words that he had just read, after which he noticed a block of black handwriting showing through from the next page. He proceeded to turn the page, at which point he came across a paragraph of new penmanship; this paragraph seemed to be added by Lee earlier that summer, and was written much neater than the previous text and in the cursive style.
Eddy read the new text to himself, after which he looked up towards the ceiling in shock, while seeming to have an "ah-ha!" moment. The young boy slowly closed the journal, placed his hand over his mouth, and took a seat in Lee's office chair. He placed his elbows on his knees, and rested his cheeks on his palms with wide eyes. In a manner of minutes, Eddy had learned the entire backstory of Lee and Lindsay's relationship, and now completely understood why it was so tumultuous. He was quite overwhelmed by the knowledge, and was beginning to feel quite horrible regarding the manner in which he treated Lee earlier that day.
As Eddy pondered the last page of the journal, he was suddenly reminded of the situation he observed the night of the talent show, in which he witnessed Edyta screaming at Lindsay for losing to Lee. Thinking Lindsay was just a jerk, he welcomed Edyta's outburst, and was quite glad to see Lindsay being treated the way she seemed to treat everyone else. However, he now knew that there was more to the situation than meets the eye. As he pondered Edyta and Lindsay's relationship, he was reminded of something quite similar; something that quickly brought a tear to his eye.
It was at that moment that Eddy was struck with inspiration. After briefly observing the time on his cell phone, he quickly laid out all of the photographs of Lee and Lindsay on the table, and used his camera phone to take a picture of each one. In addition, he also took a picture of Lee's half of their " best friends forever drawing", saving it into his photo database for an unknown purpose.
After completing his task, Eddy proceeded to carefully place all of the belongings just where Lee had left them, in an effort to prevent Lee's keen eye from recognizing a tamper. He then proceeded to silently make his way back out of the window, and climb down the trellis into the backyard.
As Eddy made his way back to the fence leading to the lane, he paused for a few moments, at which point he glanced toward the sky and uttered a few simple words.
"Lord," said Eddy, "I'm not a religious man, but I seriously need you right now. For whatever reason, you have not allowed any of my plans to work in the past, good or bad. Please, if you are ever going to pick one to allow to succeed, please let it be this one."
