This is a loooooong chapter. I hope this is a good story; personally, I like it :) enjoy! --Mandy
Dreaming was a pleasure for Andromeda that night. During it she befriended the trailer boy and they were roaming the woods together, hand-in-hand. Eventually the dream progressed to a different setting; her house, her room, her bed, where she sat watching as he approached her slowly, a smile of desire on his angelic face. Strong arms pinned her to the bed while his thin muscular body covered hers, and as his lovely lips came but a finger's breadth from her own, she was forcibly wrenched from her dream by Perseus calling up the stairs, "Breakfast!"
Groaning, she rolled onto her stomach and shook the tangled blond curls from her sleepy eyes. What a dream, she thought with a scoff. The more affectionate half of her was currently in battle against the sinful side, arguing endlessly about the ratio of potential love versus lust. Their results were making her head hurt.
She disregarded it, crawled out of bed, and gathered fresh clothes for after her shower.
On her way out of her room, something caught her eye. Lying in a heap near her work desk was the sweatshirt she'd removed at Ezekiel's trailer, and a grimy crumpled napkin lay beside it with a nearly-illegible pen-written message.
"You left this at my place," it read, "thought I'd be nice and return it. Leave it again and I'm not gonna be such a gentleman, so remember your stuff next time, stupid." It wasn't signed, but she knew, of course, who it was. Which means, she thought in astonishment, he left his trailer. And more importantly, he came into my house… into my room… At first she considered that perhaps her dream hadn't just been a dream, but she knew she would've woken up. How he'd gotten in, she had no idea; she must've left the door unlocked when she returned. Still, she couldn't help feeling good about everything she'd accomplished with him in the past week.
Andromeda showered, dressed, and went to eat a breakfast of pancakes and pork sausage.
As she was eating, Perseus smothered his own pancakes in a puddle of syrup and shoveled a forkful into his mouth. He still had two days on crutches, but he was already walking around without them.
"So Andy," he said through his chewed pancake wad, "are you still hanging out with Gabriel?"
A wave of anger washed over her. "Kind of. Why?"
"He called while you were in the shower and he mentioned you."
Andromeda stopped eating. Even if Gabriel had said something about Ezekiel, she wasn't going to confront him again. She was mad enough at him.
"What'd he say?" she asked, only half-interested.
"He told me you're a little upset with him."
"Hmm, I wonder why he'd think that," she said, bitterly sarcastic.
"Are you?"
"Mmhmm," was her apathetic reply.
"Why?"
"Because."
"Because why?"
"Because he can't keep his mouth shut to save his life."
Perseus frowned. "What do you mean?"
"If I tell him a secret, he spews it to the whole town."
"What kind of secrets?"
She sighed in exasperation. "Just stuff I thought he might like to know. He's just a bigmouth."
"Maybe you should consult him about it."
"No, I already did." She stabbed her pancake, affronted, and took a resentful bite. "He's being a stupid stubborn jackass."
He stared at her incredulously. He'd never seen his sister so frustrated, especially over a good friend. Even at a young age, Gabriel and Andromeda would have childish fights over juvenile issues, but those were always resolved by apologies and a hug over some snacks and juice. Their issue now must have been serious for her to be this perturbed.
"Do you want me to talk to him?" he offered.
"No, Percy, just stay out of it." She went to place her dishes beside the sink. "I'm going out shopping. Do you need anything?"
"Just the basics: milk, eggs, bread, some chips, and whatever else you want. But make sure you save some money for the trip in a few weeks."
Then she left.
The sun was hot above the town and the wind was swift. Trees in the sidewalk planters bent respectively to the breeze that flowed between the buildings. A few clouds overhead were quickly blown away for other ones, which followed like an assembly line.
Andromeda pushed her fluttering curls inside her sweatshirt hood. The air was how but the wind was warm, almost cool, so she was stuck in a debate whether to remove the sweatshirt or keep it on. Her mind strayed, though, and focused on her dream. Whenever she thought about it, a heat like the temperature blazed in her chest. She was eager to visit the trailer again.
At the grocery store, while she was browsing the snack section, she received a text message. Flipping her phone open, she saw it was from Gabriel.
"Sorry i was a jerk. i just miss you hanging out with me. wanna come over? i rented a new movie."
In a pang of quilt and remorse, she set down her grocery basket to reply, "Ok i forgive you. i will come over when im done shopping."
--
After dropping off the groceries at home, Andromeda braved the wind to Gabriel's house. It was a larger house, not as big as hers, but average size for middle class, with tan siding and a wrap-around porch over-decorated by potted plants, courtesy of his mother. They used to be a richer family until his mother quit her job in real estate while his dad remained a successful businessman.
Gabriel was waiting for her on his porch when she appeared in his front yard. Wearing his baggy gray "I'm allergic to idiots" t-shirt and blue basketball shorts, he looked more ready to head to the gym than watch a movie with his female best friend.
"Hey, Chuck Norris," she teased as she hopped up the porch steps.
He smiled. His gaze was all over her body—a fitting purple t-shirt and boot-cut jeans framed her figure nicely.
"Hi, Andy. Uh… I rented Ice Age 3." He frantically smoothed his messy sand-colored hair.
"Cool. Listen, Gabe, I know you're sorry, so can you keep my secrets from now on? I want to trust you again."
"Yeah, definitely. I was just being stupid. Maybe it was some kind of guy-menstruation thing."
She smiled, "I wouldn't doubt that. Let's go watch that movie."
--
The basement of Gabriel's house was large enough to fit a locomotive engine. He had a whole section of it resembling a movie theater—large flat-screen television, four recliners and two beanbag chairs, surround-sound speakers, and a popcorn maker he bought cheap from a friend who worked at the actual theaters in town.
Andromeda had made herself comfortable on one of the cozy chairs and laid there almost completely silent for the whole movie, except when she laughed at humorous scenes. Once the first movie was over, he suggested they watch another, and she kindly agreed.
Four hours had gone by when Andromeda finally stood up, stiff and drowsy. "I should get home. It's about suppertime."
Gabriel brushed spilled popcorn off his lap. "You wanna stay here for supper?"
"No, I don't want to be a bother." She laughed softly at him; he'd fallen asleep during the movie Finding Nemo and his popcorn had been knocked over on him. Hastily he shook his shirt of popped kernels, embarrassed. "Besides," she said, "I need to fix something for Perseus to eat. I don't like the fact that he's walking around on that leg before he's supposed to. If he falls, the cut could split open again."
"Yeah, you're right." He sighed quietly. "You gonna visit What's-His-Face tonight? The wo-- trailer-boy?"
"Probably after Percy goes to bed. Why?"
"Just wondering. Be careful, okay?"
"He's a nice guy, Gabe, he'd--"
"No, I'm not worried about him. It's that gang. If they attacked Perseus, they'd go get you for sure, only it'd be worse because you're a girl."
"I haven't seen them since that day we first went there, and even if I do now, Ezekiel could scare them off again somehow." She once more thought of her dream.
"Well, don't count on him for everything. He won't always be there when you need him. But you know that I will."
"Thanks, Gabe. I'll remember that." She smiled gratefully at him. He was so different around her than he used to be in school, or when he was around his friends. Instead of being a loud girl-ogling moron, he was almost a gentleman with her. She considered it an improvement from his preteen days of eating spaghetti with his hands, farting when they were in the same place during hide-and-seek, or poking her repeatedly on the shoulder in math class so she'd turn around a hundred times with a harsh "What?" so he could sit and giggle and say, "Nothing".
As angry as she had been at him for his immaturity about Ezekiel, she could forgive him for it because he cared, truly cared for her. If she had someone she deeply cared for like that, she'd probably act the same way.
"So… I guess you ought to get going, huh?" Gabriel mumbled.
"Yes. Thank you for this, it made me feel better."
He perked up a bit. "That's good. Let's do it again sometime."
"Okay."
They made their way to the front door, where he stopped while she moved out onto the porch. His shirt billowed across his torso from the still-blowing wind, showing off his slender chest and abdomen. His tawny hair swept wildly to the direction the gusts were going. All this she noticed randomly.
"Bye," she said, peeling the fluttering blond hair from her cheek. "Or rather, good night."
"Night." He watched pensively after her as she strolled down his yard path and away down the street.
--
Perseus fell asleep around eleven o' clock once his TV shows ended, and he lay snoozing deeply on the sofa. At this time, Andromeda silently snuck out of the house with a backpack. The wind persisted, much cooler now due to its being night. With her sweatshirt tightly clung to her body, she walked onward under an inky, starry sky.
The trailer sat like a great metallic white beacon among the dancing trees. The absence of light made it appear somewhat haunting.
Halfway down the deserted highway, Andromeda paused. She could've sworn she'd heard something… a tapping of shoe on pavement, a faint whispering…
A gust of wind swirled around her, chilly and foreboding. It made the leaves flutter with thin crisp papery sounds. Assuming what she heard had been the breeze, she continued walking without looking back.
The trailer steps creaked their usual greeting to her as she went to knock. Typical as usual, she heard his irritable "get lost!" and addressed him in her soft melodious voice. He recognized her, unlocked the door, and let her inside.
"Good evening, Ezekiel," she joyously said.
"Did you bring me cupcakes this time?"
"I didn't have time today. I was over at my friend's house watching movies for four hours."
"I see how it is," he growled, pretending to be offended.
"But I brought something else for us to do today." She dropped the backpack beside the door and bent to fish out its contents.
Ezekiel curiously leaned forward in attempt to see whatever it was.
When she turned around, he saw her arms full of supplies: furniture polish, Febreze, a couple big trash bags, rubber gloves, rags, scrubbing brushes, sponges, a stain-removing chemical, and paper towels.
He shook his head but didn't take his gaze off her. "You can't be serious."
"I'm dead serious." She put on some rubber gloves and threw a sponge at him. "Let's get to work."
For the next few hours, they spent their time cleaning the trailer's main room. Ezekiel reluctantly scooped the trash into one of the large garbage bags—the cereal boxes, the half-eaten food items, the empty cans and snack wrappers—while Andromeda piled the filthy laundry into the far room corner where she'd deal with it later. In the meantime she polished the coffee table she never knew was there, swiped the dust off the shelves and out of cupboards, wiped the counter clean. However, she wasn't sure how to clean the dishes, since Ezekiel had no running water. For the time being, she decided to leave them alone, though they gave off a rather foul odor.
She was scrubbing the carpet of its stains when a massive spider skittered past her hand. Alarmed, she jumped back with a shrill yelp.
Ezekiel, who'd been picking apathetically at a hole in the wall, whirled around. "What?"
"There's a huge spider…" she whispered shakily. "…right there, on the floor." Her shaking finger pointed to the motionless brown arachnid.
Normally she didn't mind spiders. But this one, with its legs, was about as large as the rim of a coffee mug. It seemed to be staring her down as she cowered against the wall.
Ezekiel rolled his eyes, "Wow…" He lifted a leg, his shoe looking particularly large in the dark, and brought it down hard, but he missed the spider, which crawled swiftly off across the now-empty carpet.
Then, at a speed faster than Andromeda had ever seen a human move, he jumped over four feet to the wall where the creature had fled. It scurried away, toward Andromeda, who stood with her back to one of the boarded windows.
He leaped again, landing not far from her or the spider, but he knocked down a stool with a small box on top. At least a dozen or so beetles evacuated the box and made a mad dash for a hole in the wall.
This was too much. Andromeda screamed bloody murder, just as Ezekiel caught the spider under his enormous shoe; its slimy innards gushed onto the floor.
She grimaced.
So did he. He raised his foot to observe the sludge sticking from his shoe to the linoleum of the kitchen. "Yuck…" he grunted.
"Oh, my gosh," she sighed. "Thank you so much…"
"Yeah, yeah," he was grumbling as he used the sponge to clean the goo.
"You see now what's been thriving here? Do you know how gross it is?"
"Hey, it doesn't bother me." He swiped up the remnants of spider with a paper towel.
Andromeda ran her fingers uneasily through her long spirals of hair. What if more spiders lurked in the other parts of the trailer like Ezekiel's room, she thought as she got up.
Ooh, Ezekiel's room…
Suddenly the board on the window she was near dropped from its position and landed with a loud thud behind her. She cried out, frightened, lunging toward him.
"Chill out, you blonde, you just knocked a board loose," he said, prying her off him.
"I thought someone fired a gun at me."
"It would've been a lot louder." He flinched, maybe idled a moment, to let his senses sharpen.
"It still sc--"
"Shh!" He put a slender finger to his voluptuous lips. At first she thought he was aggravated, but she detected tension in his gesture. He was rooted on the spot, his skeptical expression looking as though it had been slapped on his face.
She mouthed the words, "What is it?"
He simply tapped his lips before he was stationary once more.
She listened.
At first there was nothing, just the sound of the wind flowing around the trailer. Then she heard it—the faintest sound of footsteps scraping twigs.
He whispered, so quietly she almost didn't hear it, "There's someone outside."
"What do we do?" she asked shakily.
Swiftly yet silently he glided across the room to her. He took her hand, led her to the opposite corner, and shoved her down into the pile of clothes. Once she was sitting among the laundry, he crawled over her, laying his body on top of her own, and proceeded to cover them with the clothes.
"What're you doing?" she hissed.
"Shh!" he snarled. "We're hiding." He caught sight of a round shadow on the wall through a gap in the pile. He lowered his head right beside hers so she could feel the tickling sensation of his ear sweeping her hair.
The sound came again, and a dark figure appeared outside the window. They were peering inside, shifting as another shape rose next to it.
"Stay still and keep quiet," Ezekiel murmured on her earring.
Andromeda honestly couldn't think of any reason why she wouldn't obey his command. She was quite pleased. Her pulse hammered fiercely in her veins; she knew he could feel it against his own ribcage, for she could feel his heartbeat—slow, steady, like a drumbeat—pounding through his chest and into hers. His arms were guarding her on both sides, his legs the same way. She knew how close their hips were, and the thought made her cheeks burn and her spine tingle.
There was a noise outside, like muttering, as the shapes moved away from the window.
Ezekiel lifted himself slightly.
A knock on the door came next, and he leaned back down.
More silence, followed by another knock, then quiet again.
Andromeda heard Ezekiel swallow above her and she met his anxious gaze. His mouth tightly formed a line. His warm body made her feel secure there under the heap of laundry, hiding from whoever was outside. The sound of her own breathing filled her ears like a fast-forwarded ocean tide.
There was a third knock, more quiet talking, and then the door made a cracking noise.
Both hiding teens froze. Even their hearts seemed to stop beating.
"…if you're scared," a voice was saying.
"I don't think we should be here…"
"Shut up! You want the wolf-boy to hear us?"
Under the clothes pile, Ezekiel took a sharp breath through his nostrils. Andromeda did, too, but the smell of the laundry was a bit offensive to her. She pressed her nose into his hard shoulder and sniffed the faintly sweet scent of cologne in his shirt. He only glanced at her as he tuned into the conversation.
"This place smells gross," complained the first person, a man.
"We shouldn't be breaking in. We could get in big trouble."
"I told you 'shut up', man. There's not even anyone home."
"It's creeping me out…" This voice was more boyish, but still an older male. It was vaguely familiar to Andromeda. "If no one's home, we should go."
"Not until we find her."
Ezekiel whispered to her. "I need to get them out of here."
"No!" she snapped, holding onto him.
"I have a plan; don't worry." He slowly began to stand up. "But stay hidden."
She nodded as the warmth of his body faded away.
Then in a low, grumbling, ominous voice, he growled, "Get out."
The two boys jumped at the sound and stared at Ezekiel climbing out of the laundry pile.
"Who's there?" asked the older-sounding man.
"I said, 'get out'!" Ezekiel turned to face them, though Andromeda could still see his face, and she had to admit, he looked terrifying. His eyes were rolled back so only the whites were showing; his jaw was loosely hanging with a string of drool dribbling off his chin; his tensed hands clawed with twitching fingers that appeared to want to grab and crumple anything they touched. He looked so… dangerous.
The boys who she couldn't see yelled loud with fright.
"He's possessed!" cried the older man.
"He has rabies!" yelped the younger one.
Ezekiel's head fell back, the veins in his neck were clearly visible under his sallow skin, and his mouth jaggedly opened so more saliva dripped down onto his shirt, his colorless eyes made even more haunting by the absence of light. His hands clawed at the air as his chest lurched forward grotesquely, incoherent gurgling snarls emitting from his throat.
"Holy shit! I'm leaving!" The younger man slipped on the carpet, got up quickly, and stumbled down the steps of the trailer.
"Dude, come back!" The older male stood his ground. He wanted to reach for a weapon, but there wasn't one nearby.
Ezekiel shakily straightened himself. He hesitated like there was another part to his plan, but he couldn't improvise anymore.
Thinking fast, Andromeda drew the knife from her belt and fitted the handle into his hand.
He seemed like his plan was regenerated, and, holding the knife high, he spoke in a gritty tone, "Leave. Now. You don't belong here."
"I'm… not afraid of you…" the man said, though his words were uncertainly quavering.
"You will be." Ezekiel then released a growling noise so threatening that Andromeda could imagine horns and wings on him and he could pass for a dragon. He raised the knife again, behind his head, like a pitcher winding up for an impending strikeout. He swung, the blade left his hand, and it flew, spinning, toward the door.
Andromeda closed her eyes.
There was a clink, a crunch, a yell, and she peeked out through the pile at the person.
Ezekiel had struck the door not far from the stranger's head. The handle protruded from the wood, far enough in so the blade stuck.
In a blur Ezekiel made another inhuman leap from his location to the man's, where he stood for only a second before he shoved the guy clear of the steps and into the grass. Following this he slammed the door so fiercely that the knife fell out and dust spewed from the wooden doorframe, and he slid the chain lock into place. After all this was accomplished, he turned his head to her, a devilish grin on his immeasurably handsome face.
"I don't know who they were," he said, "but I scared the shit out of them."
Wiggling her way out from under the clothes, Andromeda got to her feet and brushed herself off. "What'd they look like?"
"The one I shoved was really big and blond and gross."
His description rang a faint bell for her. She frowned, processing the information.
"And…" He thought for a moment. "The other kid was a punk. He had gauged ears and looked like a total freak."
There was a rush of anger building inside her at the realization of who he'd seen.
It had been Carson and Gabriel. They'd been spying on her. But there was no shock at the news that it was Carson, but Gabriel.
"That little pinhead!" she yelled. "He promised to stay out of my freaking business! Oh, I'm gonna get him for this!"
"It really sucks now because they know someone lives here." Ezekiel picked up the knife. His voice was nonchalant, unfazed.
"Gabe already knew that. He was here the day my brother got jumped," she said as he handed her the blade.
"Well, the other dude didn't. And now he knows what I look like, so that just makes things worse." He spat a vicious wad of saliva into the sink.
"They won't do anything. But after that performance, they probably think you need medical help. Or an exorcist."
He scowled. He looked like he wanted to say something but whatever it was wouldn't come out correctly. His hands twitched at his sides, but then he shrugged. "Where were we before you flipped shit over that spider?"
"Cleaning your house," she informed him.
They resumed with the sanitizing (for the most part, anyway) of Ezekiel's trailer. Andromeda cleaned what she could of the mud stains in the carpet, while Ezekiel lingered near the window to repair the fallen board. A few more hours went by before she found the place semi-presentable.
She glanced at her phone, "Well, I think we did good all in one night."
His expression tightened as he was pushing a dining chair into place. "What time is it now?"
"Six o-three," she said, yawning, "and I'm really tired. I should get home or Perseus will wake up and see me walk in."
"Yeah, you better go." He sounded hurried. "Thanks for cleaning up around here. It looks nice."
"No problem." She yawned again. "Will tomorrow night be cool, too?"
"Sure, dude, but you should go. I don't want you getting in trouble because of me." He unlocked and tugged the door open for her. "Good night."
"Good… night," she stuttered, on her way onto the steps.
Ezekiel anxiously poked his head out to see the sky. Above them the stars glittered on a navy-blue canvas of space. Far off to the east was the faint glow of the impending sunrise.
Andromeda moved hesitantly, wanting so badly to kiss those tantalizing red lips of his. She was exhausted, though, and she needed to get home before Perseus figured out she'd never left. Swallowing her desire, she smiled at him.
"See you later," she murmured sleepily.
"Yeah, see you." And he abruptly shut the door; the lock clicked from the inside. But she was too tired to care.
She could've fallen over on the side of the road and slept like a baby. But the recurrent thought of Perseus waking and checking her room to find her gone kept her feet going, almost on autopilot, so to speak.
Once home, she quietly unlocked the door, stepped inside, shut it and relocked it, strolled dazedly up the stairs to her room, and she dropped like a shot deer onto her bed.