LOOSE ENDS
Presenting chapter 2! Believe it or not, these characters are actually supposed to be horses. That's the way they are in the original comic, anyway. But I wondered what it would be like if those "horses" were human beings, and I decided to try it out. I made sure to ask Michelle first before I did anything, and she agreed, and happily so.
Chapter 2
Startled, Pierce immediately jammed on the brakes, while steering sharply to the left at the exact same time. With a noisy, earsplitting screech of tires, the car swerved around in a wide arc, sideswiping the auburn-haired girl and knocking her right off her feet. It all happened so fast that the girl didn't even know what was coming, until it was too late.
The car spun around once in a full circle, before jerking to a halt.
Together Pierce and Aerynne sat in stunned silence, breathing harshly, Aerynne clutching at her heart with one hand as one suffering a cardiac arrest, Pierce clutching the steering wheel so fiercely that his knuckles gleamed solid white. The two siblings exchanged terrified looks with one another, and then they looked around and found the girl they'd nearly run over sprawled on the ground a short distance away, unmoving. Aerynne was the first to detach her seatbelt and launch out of the car. As she ran toward the motionless girl, Pierce was right behind her.
"Are you all right?" Aerynne cried out to the brunette.
The very moment she reached the girl, she dropped to her knees on the hot asphalt at her side. Pierce crouched down on the girl's other side, his face white with anxiety and fear. Touching the girl gently on the shoulder, Aerynne repeated desperately, "Are you all right?"
The question had barely sprung from her lips, however, when the girl began to move. She rose very slowly to a sitting position, looking positively shaken, but otherwise unharmed.
She looked to be considerably younger than Aerynne and Pierce—probably no more than sixteen or seventeen. She wore a neat lavender-colored T-shirt over a pair of khaki pants, and white tennis shoes. Her thick hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail, and she wore a little heart-shaped locket around her neck.
"What…what just happened?" she asked breathlessly.
Seeing that she was alive, Aerynne and Pierce both dared to breathe freely again. "Oh, man," Pierce sighed, laying a delicate hand over his chest.
"Oh, thank God," Aerynne added at the same time. She repeated her question to the girl a third time: "Are you all right?"
"I think so," said the girl.
Checking her over, Aerynne saw that, aside from slightly skinned elbows and a very bad fright, the girl appeared unscathed. "Oh, man, we are so sorry," Aerynne didn't hesitate to apologize. "We didn't mean to hit you. Please forgive us."
"That's all right," the girl answered kindly. "I should have been paying more attention to where I was going."
"And we should have paid better attention to the road," Aerynne said, glaring over rather fiercely at Pierce.
At a loss for words, Pierce could only hang his head and look ashamed.
"Don't worry about it," said the girl. "Is your car okay?"
"The car is nothing," said Aerynne. "You are the one who matters."
"I'm fine, really," the girl insisted. "You just scared me, is all. All my body parts are still in working condition."
While Aerynne helped her to her feet, Pierce went to retrieve the girl's book, which had flown out of her hands when she was knocked over. The girl's legs wobbled slightly beneath her as she stood, but she was able to maintain her balance well enough. "Thanks," she said, when Pierce gave her book back to her. "I guess I'll be going, now."
"Wait a minute," Aerynne said, before she could leave. "We ought to do something nice for you, to make up for what we almost did to you." Then she had an idea. "I know—why don't you come and have breakfast with us? We were just on our way down to the Pancake Parlor. Why don't you come with us? We'll pay for everything."
The girl hesitated. "I…I don't know…"
Pierce opened his mouth to object, but Aerynne cut her brother off. "Oh, come on, we insist," she cajoled. "It's the least we can do for you. The very, very least."
"Well," said the girl slowly, after giving it some thought, "I never did have breakfast yet, and I am a little hungry."
"That settles it," Aerynne said.
"Now, hold on a minute!" Pierce blurted out. "I thought it was going to be just you and me today, Aerynne."
"Don't be silly, Pierce," Aerynne told him. "We can afford to pay for three meals. Having this girl with us on our little breakfast date won't do anyone any harm. You and I can hang out together any old time. Besides, the more, the merrier!" And so saying, she slipped an arm around the brunette's thin shoulders and guided her gently to the car, which was still idling.
Pierce stayed where he was and watched the two young women for just a moment, looking dumbfounded. Then he heaved out an enormous sigh, threw his hands up into the air as much as to say "what's the use?", and followed.
When they got to the car, Aerynne had the girl take her seat in the front next to Pierce, and she herself climbed into the back. "Thank you very much," said the girl appreciatively, once they were all inside and buckled up. "My name is Brooke, by the way."
"Nice to meet you, Brooke," Aerynne smiled. "I'm Aerynne. And this is my brother, Pierce."
"Pleasure," Pierce answered, but with very little enthusiasm.
At the Pancake Parlor, Brooke sat across from Aerynne and Pierce at a private booth by one of the big glass windows. The air was rich with the smells of frying bacon and fresh coffee. It was mostly quiet, save for the mild clinking of silverware and the idle talk of the people, and the music that played softly over the intercom.
Brooke and Aerynne and Pierce placed their orders, and their waitress brought their food to them within ten minutes. For drinks, Aerynne and Brooke both chose orange juice, while Pierce voted for coffee. No sooner had their food arrived than they dug right in.
It was all delicious.
"So, Brooke," said Aerynne at length, just to make conversation, "tell us a little about yourself. What is your family like?"
"I don't have a family," said Brooke very quietly, as she absentmindedly pushed her scrambled eggs around, jabbing at them with the tines of her fork.
"Oh, come on," Aerynne chided, "everybody's got to have a family. What about your parents, Brooke? What about your mother?"
Brooke looked down dejectedly at her plate. "My mother is no longer alive."
Aerynne was taken aback at first, and then she felt her heart melt. "Oh," she said in a hushed voice, reaching out and placing her hand sympathetically over Brooke's, "we're…we're sorry to hear that."
Pierce said nothing to this, but he closed his eyes and turned his face away from the girls, lifting a single hand to his forehead.
"What about your father?" Aerynne questioned, taking no notice of her brother.
"I hardly knew him," Brooke said. "He walked out on us when I was about seven, or eight."
"Really?" said Aerynne in surprise. "Our father walked out on us, too!"
At once Pierce opened his eyes again, and he looked up from his hand, looking surprised as well. Brooke appeared equally astonished at this coincidence.
"Where do you live?" Aerynne pressed on. "Who looks after you?"
"I look after myself," explained Brooke. "I live alone in a small apartment just on the other side of town—courtesy of my landlady, Mrs. Garcia. In a way, she's like a second mother to me. She took me in after my mother died and the mortgage to my house was foreclosed, and helped me get a job. As for school, I take online courses at the public library."
"Don't you have any siblings?" Aerynne queried. "Isn't there anyone left in your family? Anyone at all?"
Brooke looked away for just a moment, her expression contemplative. "Well," she said, somewhat tentatively, "I did have a brother and a sister, at one time. But I hardly ever saw either of them; and one day, when I was twelve or so, they left home and never came back."
Pierce, who at that time was drinking his coffee, immediately spat the liquid back into his cup; and Aerynne choked on her food and had to take a swig of juice.
"What?!" Pierce blurted, speaking vocally for the first time.
"Did you say a brother and a sister?" Aerynne sputtered.
Brooke nodded nostalgically. "I remember my brother was constantly getting into mischief—my mother always said he managed to get himself into more trouble than three kids put together—and I remember my sister was very sweet, and very beautiful. And I especially remember that my brother and my sister stuck to each other like glue. They did just about everything together. I barely knew them, but how I longed to be with them, to join them on their adventures. But they're both gone, now, and I don't know where in all the world they can be."
Aerynne could feel her heart beating faster as she gazed into Brooke's face.
Now that she really took the time to seriously look at Brooke, and study her over, there was something oddly familiar about her…
"What was your mother's name, Brooke?"
"Savannah," she replied. "Savannah Walker, to be exact."
That was the name of Aerynne and Pierce's mother! Aerynne even proclaimed so, out loud. When Brooke heard this, her eyes got so incredibly big that, were they any bigger, they would stretch clear to the moon. Now her own heart rate was beginning to accelerate; shivers were racing up and down her backbone, and her palms were starting to perspire.
All of a sudden, she found she wasn't so hungry anymore.
"Do…do you know what this means?" she barely managed to gasp.
"This can lead to only one conclusion," Aerynne said, in the same hushed tone. "You're our…our…"
"Your sister!" Brooke filled in the rest of the sentence for her.
It was as though a bolt of lightning had struck. Both Pierce and Aerynne sat utterly stone-still in their seats, looking like they'd just been shot. Brooke was every bit as motionless as they were, and appeared every last bit as dumbfounded as they did—if not more so.
No one knew what to say.
And then at long last, Aerynne's entire face positively glowed, like the sun shining at midday.
"I knew it!" she cried triumphantly. Reaching out eagerly across the table and seizing both of Brooke's hands in hers and squeezing them like a pair of wet sponges, she gushed on, "I knew we had at least one other sibling in the family! I knew I wasn't the only girl, aside from my mother! Oh, Brooke—oh, Brooke, this is—this is wonderful! It's—incredible!"
"I can't believe it!" Brooke whispered, pure disbelief and pure ecstasy represented prominently in her every feature.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa—hold on just one minute!" Pierce broke in, raising his large hands as if surrendering at gunpoint. "Rewind, and freeze!" To Brooke, he demanded sharply, "You expect me to believe that you're our sister? You actually expect me to believe that you—a girl that Aerynne and I barely know, have never been in touch with, or even seen before in our lives—are part of our family?"
"Well…" Brooke faltered, at a loss for proper words.
"Well, I've got news for you, little missy!" Pierce fumed at her. "I'm not falling for this! I haven't the faintest idea of who you are, but I don't buy that kind of story from you!" His voice rose significantly in volume and intensity with every word he spoke; and pretty soon, others in the restaurant were beginning to take notice of them.
"Hey, Pierce, calm down!" Aerynne urged him in a low-toned voice.
But Pierce would not calm down.
"I'm out of here," he said, propelling himself straightaway to his feet. Just before he left, he whipped out his wallet, fished out some money, and slapped it all onto the tabletop. "Here is the money for the meal. Tell them to keep the change."
And then he stormed off without another word, leaving Aerynne and Brooke alone together.
Another long, stunned silence followed his departure.
Brooke looked at Aerynne, unsure of what to say, or even what to think.
"Well," said Aerynne, somewhat lamely, "I think Pierce took that…rather well."
Characters © boribaby (Michelle Walker)
Story © unicorn-skydancer08
All rights reserved.