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The first thing Charli did when she got up the next morning was pick up the phone and order Chinese food. It was just one of those days.
The next thing she did was check in on her parents, who had gotten home after three in the morning. They were sound asleep, sprawled on top of each other and the piles of clothes heaped on their bed. They were still fully clothed, the miasma of alcohol hanging in the air, burning her eyes. Closing them, Charli shut the door, careful to be quiet, even though she knew that it would take no less than a heard of stampeding giraffes to wake them up.
The next stop for her morning rounds was in front of her own bedroom door. She stood there for fifteen minutes before she had mustered enough courage to knock gently on the door. Not waiting for a reply, she slowly turned the knob and let the door swing open just a crack. All the time she had spent stealing herself didn't matter, though; Ivan was still sleeping, and she wasn't going to wake him up, no matter how badly she wanted her answers. He needed to recover.
Not knowing what to do with herself, she picked at the mess scattered across almost every flat surface in the house. Soon her picking became fussing, and then that became a full out cleaning spree. She placed all of the dirty dishes in the sink, gathered all of the trash, organized the mail into different piles, and then took all of the extra stuff and shoved it into one the of various junk drawers located at different points in the house. When the counters and tables, and even floors, were passably clear, she took out an over-sized feather duster and began to rid her house of the many months of grime and dirt that had accumulated over time. She opened the windows, despite the chill in the air, and turned on the radio she had discovered under a pile of dirty laundry.
Flipping through the channels, she quickly discovered a jazz station, and she turned up the volume, not concerned that she would wake anyone because they were all out like lights.
Charli loved jazz. She had ever since she was little, and she hoarded cassette tapes and Cd's, and sometimes even records if she could find them. She knew all of the giants of the jazz industry, and she desperately wished she could sing, so that she too could serenade with them about lost loves and late nights and the little things we all take for granted.
As she filled up a bucket with soapy water and carted it around, washing the crusted food off of the counters, a Billie Holiday song came on, one that she particularly liked. It was up beat, and she found herself scrubbing in time to the fast tempo. Soon she was humming under her breath. Then she was singing. Loudly. Louder.
She was having so much fun, more fun than she had had in years. It was exhilarating to just let go, to set aside all of her inhibitions and do what she wanted for once. Charli thought it was important to find the little moments to enjoy, but she rarely took full advantage of them. Not like she was now. And she was proving to herself that maybe she should do this more often.
By the time the song ended, she had the biggest, goofiest grin on her face. She looked down at herself and saw that her clothes were damp. Her hair hung in wet strands in front of her face. Maybe she had been a little too enthusiastic with the water; she had splashed it around without any reservations. She turned around to go get a towel from the linen closet. But she didn't get that far.
He clapped. She blushed. How long had Ivan been standing there? Had he seen the whole display, or just the end of it? Charli should feel embarrassed, but she didn't. And she couldn't seem to wipe the grin off of her face. She was happy to see him, and it just added to her good mood. "You're up."
He was smiling too when he said, "Yeah. Just in time to see your performance. You have a good voice."
Charli snorted, "Right. And you're the queen of England."
A devilish glint came into his eyes. "Fine, fine. You got me. You're terrible, but you have potential. Is that better?"
"Yes, I'll take that." She looked at him. He was still wearing her dad's clothes, but now they were rumbled and bunched up. His hair was ruffled and sticking up at altitudes Mt. Everest would envy. His eyes were still misty with drowsiness, and his face was a little puffy, as if he was still nestled in the land of sleep. All together, he looked adorable and vulnerable, and very much like a little boy, with the muscles in his body still relaxed. "Did you sleep well?"
He nodded and yawned.
A thought suddenly occurred to her, and she frowned. "Wait, why are you out of bed? You shouldn't be walking, it will just make your injury worse. And besides, what if my parents had seen you?"
"They wouldn't have because they are currently passed out in their bedroom."
Raising her eyebrows, Charli accused, "You looked in on them!"
Ivan shrugged. "Yeah. I had to make sure I wasn't going to be walking right into the middle of their breakfast. That would have been hard to explain."
Again, she frowned. "You shouldn't be walking at all."
Annoyed, he said, "I'm feeling much better. I can't stay cooped up all day; I need to move around. I'll go crazy if I don't."
"I don't know..."
"Charli, I know how to take care of myself."
It was the way he said her name. That's what shut her up. He said it so soft and warmly, with the familiarity of someone who had known her all of her life, who was past and beyond the formalities, and on to teasing her. He kind of smiled when he said it, and it made something lumpy turn over in her stomach, leaving her incapable of speech, with only the power to nod and clutch her abdomen.
He was looking at her again, in that way he did. It was disconcerting, exciting, and she was opening her mouth to say something really stupid to him, like how he made her feel when he stared like that, when the door bell rang. She jerked back to reality, and changed the words that had been forming in her mouth to, "Are you hungry?"
He nodded, still staring.
"Good, because I ordered some food." Charli left the room to answer the door.
She payed and thanked the delivery boy, and took the bags of food from his arms, rushing them to the counters, which were still wet. Cursing, she ran out of the room to grab some towels, pushing past Ivan as she did. She keenly felt it as their shoulders accidentally brushed.
When Charli came back, she tossed a towel to him and said, "If you want to be up, you can make yourself useful." She quickly sopped up all of the water underneath the bags of food, and then moved on to the rest of the counter. Ivan started at the other end, and they met in the middle.
He reached out for her towel, and asked, "Where do these go?"
Surprised she said, "In the laundry shoot in the linen closet." He started to turn away. She continued, "That's the one down the hall and to the--"
"I know."
She was perplexed as he left the room, and still so when he came back. But she didn't ask; she had bigger fish to fry. In the mean time, she laid out all of the food, took down two plates, handing one to Ivan. They piled the everything on their plates and then removed themselves from the kitchen to go sit at the dining room table.
There was little conversation as they ate, but it wasn't awkward. Sometimes you needed silences, and Charli felt comfortable enough with him to not have to talk. This fact surprised her, but it was true nonetheless.
She finished before him, and waited patiently as he went back for seconds and thirds. Holy crap, she thought, I wonder when the last time he ate was. It was yet another thing to add to the list of questions that were growing in her mind. He was about to go back for fourths, even though by now he looked absolutely stuffed, and that was when she realized that he was stalling.
Indignantly, she cleared her throat.
He looked up at her, and discovered he was found out. Sighing, he pushed his plate aside and clasped his hands together. "Alright. What do you want to know?"
She laughed. "Oh, everything."
A pensive look took over his features. "Fine, but I offer an exchange. I give you answers that you want, and you give me answers that I want."
"Answers? About what?"
"You."
"Me?" She was completely baffled.
He nodded.
Wow. This guy was amazing. Again he was proving his curiosity extended just past her as his rescuer, which is what she had come to convince herself was the main reason for his interest. Why he would have any other interest, besides that, she didn't know. But it appeared, like it had countless times since they had met, that there was other interest, and he was expressing it now. She couldn't understand his reasoning, but it both terrified and enthralled her in equal parts. She couldn't wait to question him about this further.
He was waiting for her answer, and as much as she wanted this to be a one way interrogation, she finally said, "Okay. I'll answer your questions too."
Pacified, Ivan sat back in his chair and rested his elbows on the arms. He looked completely at ease slumped down like that. She wondered if that was really the way he felt.
Charli took a deep breath. She licked her lips. She fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. She pulled at her hair. After a few minutes of her doing this, an impatient sound came from Ivan, and she looked up, meeting his gaze. "What?"
"You just made it seem like you had all of these questions, and now you can't think of any."
"Yes I can! There are just so many, I can't chose what to ask first."
He rolled his eyes. "Then start off easy. If you don't ask a question soon, I'll ask one first."
She frowned, annoyed at his impatience. "How old are you?"
Keeping his eyes on her face, he said, "Sixteen, almost seventeen. You?"
"Sixteen."
He nodded. "Next."
Chewing her lip, she asked, "Why aren't you in school?"
He snorted. "You mean besides the stab wound in my side?"
Blushing, she nodded.
He sighed. "I stopped going to school last year. It was boring for me. So I decided to take classes over the summer to graduate early."
Charli was pretty sure her jaw dropped. "And I thought I was smart."
It was his turn to blush. "I'm not that smart."
"Bull. If you could teach yourself the correct number of classes for the credits you would need to graduate, all in you sophomore year, then you are a freaking genius."
Ivan shuffled uncomfortably. "Actually, I was a senior. I skipped a couple grades."
Charli didn't say anything. She just sat there, staring at him. Finally, words popped into her head, and she said them before considering how stupid they sounded. "I am in the midst of a god. A giant-brained one."
He laughed, now forgetting to be uncomfortable. "Okay, okay. Can we move on please?"
"You're not from here, are you? I've never seen you around."
He shook his head. "No. Where is here anyway? I'm not even sure. All I know is that I'm from the city, and well, this obviously isn't the city."
She looked incredulous. "You're from the city? Don't tell me you were stabbed there."
"Yeah, actually. I was." He looked down uncomfortably.
Charli shook her head, unbelieving. "Then how did you get all the way over here, without anyone noticing?"
"Um...I know how to blend in?"
She studied him for a long time. It was time to ask. "Tell me how you were stabbed."
He sighed, getting this far away look in his eyes. "Are you sure you want to know? It's a long story."
"Really?"
"Well, kind of. It's a lot to get into this early in the morning."
No way. She wasn't going to let him back out now. "You promised."
Ivan focused his eyes on her, directly into her eyes, and he held them. "I'm not going to break my promise. I just need to know that you'll be able to handle it."
She didn't avert her eyes. Every second that she spent with him, she became more comfortable, more confident. "I'll be fine. I want to know. I need to know."
He held her gaze for a few more seconds, then nodded. Fidgeting nervously with his shirt sleeves, Ivan took a deep breath and began a story that he didn't really want to tell.
"I'll try to explain as best I can. I...I was in a coffee shop one afternoon. It was a normal kind of day, you know. A lot of people running around on the streets, kind of sunny, a lot of noise. I was really tired because...well, that's not important. But I decided to stop into a cafe to get some caffeine. I thought it might help.
"This place was cozy. It was the kind of shop that made you feel warm and the rich smells all combined in a scent I like to call 'Christmas Incarnate'. It felt even more so this day because it was just starting to get cold outside. So I went up to order, and I noticed the barrista looked sad. It made me sad to see someone so sad in such a happy place, and I tried to cheer her up." He paused shifting his eyes from her to the table. Then he continued. "I was still doing that when some crazy guy came into the shop. He was obviously on some kind of drug--maybe crack?--and he had a knife. Shouting, he tried to rob the place, telling everyone to get down and shut up. Then he saw the girl behind the counter I was talking with, and he lunged for her.
"I don't know why I did it. Maybe because I had just been having such a normal conversation with her. Maybe because she looked so sad. Or maybe it was just a reflex; I don't know. But I jumped in his way, and he stabbed me instead, taking my wallet and running. I was so stunned, I chased him."
"You chased him?!" Charli interrupted.
"Yes," he said. "I really didn't want to loose my wallet."
"Well, did you get it back?"
"No. I lost him. But then I realized something else. Someone was chasing me. I freaked out and ran. They chased me for a long time, but finally I gave them the slip. I didn't stop, though. I kept going, until I found a place I could hide, if only a couple minutes. A train. It was stopped, and no one was around, so I hid in one of the compartments. But so much running and my injury and the days of exhaustion I had been suffering finally caught up with me, and I fell asleep. When I woke up, I wasn't in the city anymore."
"Why did you run? What if the person chasing you was the police?"
He looked at her for a moment, then shrugged. "It didn't feel like the police. Wouldn't they have said something?"
It was Charli's turn to shrug.
"Anyway, even if it was the police, they might of thought that I was the one who had tried to rob that place. I didn't want that. So when the train took me here, I didn't go to a hospital. I didn't want who ever was after me to find out I was here. I just wandered, until I couldn't anymore, and that's when you showed up."
He blushed, and she raised her eyebrows, wondering what thoughts had set off the pooling red in his cheeks.
She sat back, and folded her hands on her lap. Looking at him from under her eyelashes, she asked, "So that's it?"
He frowned. "Isn't that enough?"
Charli sighed. It wasn't. Ivan's story made a lot of sense, and it answered a lot of questions. But something about it felt off to her...like he was keeping something back. It might have been the way he kept fidgeting, or possibly how he explained certain parts, and the way he looked when he said them. Something didn't add up, and she was disappointed that he wasn't being honest.
Looking him in the eyes, she finally said, "I'm not going to push you, at least not right now. But I know there's something you're not telling me, Ivan."
He looked down and made no response to her statement.
Continuing, she said, "I don't know what you're involved in; maybe it's better if you don't involve me. But I wish you trusted me enough to at least admit you're keeping something to yourself."
At this, he did look up, and his eyes looked tortured. "I do trust you. I trust you with my life. You did save it, after all. But it isn't something people generally understand."
She nodded. "Okay. That's fine. I'll let it go." She paused. "So...what's your favorite color?"
He smiled a little. "Green. A dark, emerald green. Not the annoying, lime kind."
Charli laughed. "Yeah, I think that shade is annoying too. I almost never use it in my paintings, unless I want you to feel agitated when you look at the picture."
His eyes lit up with curiosity. "You paint?"
She blushed. "Yes. I also sketch and sculpt. Basically any type of art form you could think of."
He was intrigued. Leaning forward, bracing his forearms on his knees, he was giving her his full attention. "And what do you paint, Charli?"
She looked down at her lap. "Oh, you know. Anything I feel like."
"Anything? There's nothing specific?"
She raised her eyes to his face, frowning. Why did he want to know? Why did he even care in the first place? "Ivan, why are you so fascinated with me?"
There was silence. She had said it. And he was looking at her, yet again. His disconcertingly intense stare, that made her fall and keep tumbling down, further and further, like her catapulting stomach would never stop being in flight. Before she knew it, he was leaning on the table, sliding his hand across it, to where hers lay. He was moving his on top of hers, tracing her fingers, enveloping them in his cupped palm. He closed his eyes, sitting like that for a while.
When he opened them, a decision had been made, and he now looked at her with determination. There was a sharp flip somewhere in her middle. What was he about to tell her? Did she want to know? He opened his mouth and said, "Charli..."
She opened her mouth at the same time to say, "Wait," when a noise startled them both, and they leaned back far in their chairs. What had just happened?
Someone was walking in the hallway, the floorboards creaking under their feet. They both froze. Suddenly, Ivan stood up, looking around until his eyes fell on a closet by the back door. He turned toward it, and started walking.
"What are you doing?" Charli called, and he stopped, turning around.
"I'm hiding. Your parents will see me."
"But--" Was that really so bad? Quickly, she thought about it.
Her parents didn't care about her. She got perfect grades, won several of academic contests a year, had a GPA of 4.1. She was never a bad girl, never stayed out late, never got herself into any trouble, made a point to do everything perfectly, so that they might take the time to praise her for her good work. But none of this paid off, and in one sharp moment of clarity, Charli realized that it never would. It was the way they were; they wouldn't reward good behavior, because they saw no point in it themselves. That's what made her decision.
Ivan was waiting for her to finish what she had started to say, but she could tell that he was getting impatient. Gulping, she told him what had been running through her mind in the past two seconds. "I don't want you to hide."
He looked at her as if she were crazy. "What do you mean, you don't want me to hide!"
She took a deep breath. "I'm tired of being ignored. I want them to notice me, and I'll do whatever it takes for that to happen. Even if it means making them think I'm having boys stay over."
Again, he gave her that incredulous look. This time it was even more desperate. "What if they kick me out? Then what will happen?"
She frowned. "I don't think they'll do that. My parents aren't ones for rules, and they certainly can't judge."
He looked panicked. "I don't know about this..."
The footsteps were approaching, getting louder by the second.
"Please?" She clasped her hands in front of her, begging.
He looked at her for a moment longer, contemplating. They both knew that he didn't have much time to decide.
"Pleeeeease?" She walked closer to him, imploring with her eyes.
Ivan let out a sharp breath. "Fine. But if it doesn't work out, you're paying for my hotel room."
She nodded quickly and pushed him toward an over-sized, super-stuffed recliner. Pushing him down, she quickly arranged herself on his lap. "Is this okay?" She didn't want to hurt him.
He was flushed, but he nodded, keeping his eyes away from her face. She felt guilty for making him feel uncomfortable, but she wanted to make it clear to anyone who walked in that he wasn't just a friend. But she did reach over and turn the television on, so that he would have something to focus on besides her. It made the situation less awkward. Leaning back onto his shoulder, she too looked at the TV screen, but she didn't watch. She was waiting for the unidentified person to walk into the room.
Just before they entered the room, Ivan snaked his arms around her waist, humoring her and her plan. She relaxed into him.
Her father entered the room, rumbled, dark circles under his eyes. His long, pale hair hung in his face, and he walked with a hunched gait. Yep, definately hung-over. Immediately his eyes zeroed in on his daughter, and after a few seconds of staring, he rubbed at his eyes with balled up fists. It didn't make a difference in the picture he was seeing.
Clearing his throat he said, "Charli. What are you doing?"
She didn't really know what she was doing herself, but she was tired of doing nothing at all. Still... she wasn't sure that her plan was the greatest of ideas. She should have never dragged Ivan into this...
The next thing she did was check in on her parents, who had gotten home after three in the morning. They were sound asleep, sprawled on top of each other and the piles of clothes heaped on their bed. They were still fully clothed, the miasma of alcohol hanging in the air, burning her eyes. Closing them, Charli shut the door, careful to be quiet, even though she knew that it would take no less than a heard of stampeding giraffes to wake them up.
The next stop for her morning rounds was in front of her own bedroom door. She stood there for fifteen minutes before she had mustered enough courage to knock gently on the door. Not waiting for a reply, she slowly turned the knob and let the door swing open just a crack. All the time she had spent stealing herself didn't matter, though; Ivan was still sleeping, and she wasn't going to wake him up, no matter how badly she wanted her answers. He needed to recover.
Not knowing what to do with herself, she picked at the mess scattered across almost every flat surface in the house. Soon her picking became fussing, and then that became a full out cleaning spree. She placed all of the dirty dishes in the sink, gathered all of the trash, organized the mail into different piles, and then took all of the extra stuff and shoved it into one the of various junk drawers located at different points in the house. When the counters and tables, and even floors, were passably clear, she took out an over-sized feather duster and began to rid her house of the many months of grime and dirt that had accumulated over time. She opened the windows, despite the chill in the air, and turned on the radio she had discovered under a pile of dirty laundry.
Flipping through the channels, she quickly discovered a jazz station, and she turned up the volume, not concerned that she would wake anyone because they were all out like lights.
Charli loved jazz. She had ever since she was little, and she hoarded cassette tapes and Cd's, and sometimes even records if she could find them. She knew all of the giants of the jazz industry, and she desperately wished she could sing, so that she too could serenade with them about lost loves and late nights and the little things we all take for granted.
As she filled up a bucket with soapy water and carted it around, washing the crusted food off of the counters, a Billie Holiday song came on, one that she particularly liked. It was up beat, and she found herself scrubbing in time to the fast tempo. Soon she was humming under her breath. Then she was singing. Loudly. Louder.
She was having so much fun, more fun than she had had in years. It was exhilarating to just let go, to set aside all of her inhibitions and do what she wanted for once. Charli thought it was important to find the little moments to enjoy, but she rarely took full advantage of them. Not like she was now. And she was proving to herself that maybe she should do this more often.
By the time the song ended, she had the biggest, goofiest grin on her face. She looked down at herself and saw that her clothes were damp. Her hair hung in wet strands in front of her face. Maybe she had been a little too enthusiastic with the water; she had splashed it around without any reservations. She turned around to go get a towel from the linen closet. But she didn't get that far.
He clapped. She blushed. How long had Ivan been standing there? Had he seen the whole display, or just the end of it? Charli should feel embarrassed, but she didn't. And she couldn't seem to wipe the grin off of her face. She was happy to see him, and it just added to her good mood. "You're up."
He was smiling too when he said, "Yeah. Just in time to see your performance. You have a good voice."
Charli snorted, "Right. And you're the queen of England."
A devilish glint came into his eyes. "Fine, fine. You got me. You're terrible, but you have potential. Is that better?"
"Yes, I'll take that." She looked at him. He was still wearing her dad's clothes, but now they were rumbled and bunched up. His hair was ruffled and sticking up at altitudes Mt. Everest would envy. His eyes were still misty with drowsiness, and his face was a little puffy, as if he was still nestled in the land of sleep. All together, he looked adorable and vulnerable, and very much like a little boy, with the muscles in his body still relaxed. "Did you sleep well?"
He nodded and yawned.
A thought suddenly occurred to her, and she frowned. "Wait, why are you out of bed? You shouldn't be walking, it will just make your injury worse. And besides, what if my parents had seen you?"
"They wouldn't have because they are currently passed out in their bedroom."
Raising her eyebrows, Charli accused, "You looked in on them!"
Ivan shrugged. "Yeah. I had to make sure I wasn't going to be walking right into the middle of their breakfast. That would have been hard to explain."
Again, she frowned. "You shouldn't be walking at all."
Annoyed, he said, "I'm feeling much better. I can't stay cooped up all day; I need to move around. I'll go crazy if I don't."
"I don't know..."
"Charli, I know how to take care of myself."
It was the way he said her name. That's what shut her up. He said it so soft and warmly, with the familiarity of someone who had known her all of her life, who was past and beyond the formalities, and on to teasing her. He kind of smiled when he said it, and it made something lumpy turn over in her stomach, leaving her incapable of speech, with only the power to nod and clutch her abdomen.
He was looking at her again, in that way he did. It was disconcerting, exciting, and she was opening her mouth to say something really stupid to him, like how he made her feel when he stared like that, when the door bell rang. She jerked back to reality, and changed the words that had been forming in her mouth to, "Are you hungry?"
He nodded, still staring.
"Good, because I ordered some food." Charli left the room to answer the door.
She payed and thanked the delivery boy, and took the bags of food from his arms, rushing them to the counters, which were still wet. Cursing, she ran out of the room to grab some towels, pushing past Ivan as she did. She keenly felt it as their shoulders accidentally brushed.
When Charli came back, she tossed a towel to him and said, "If you want to be up, you can make yourself useful." She quickly sopped up all of the water underneath the bags of food, and then moved on to the rest of the counter. Ivan started at the other end, and they met in the middle.
He reached out for her towel, and asked, "Where do these go?"
Surprised she said, "In the laundry shoot in the linen closet." He started to turn away. She continued, "That's the one down the hall and to the--"
"I know."
She was perplexed as he left the room, and still so when he came back. But she didn't ask; she had bigger fish to fry. In the mean time, she laid out all of the food, took down two plates, handing one to Ivan. They piled the everything on their plates and then removed themselves from the kitchen to go sit at the dining room table.
There was little conversation as they ate, but it wasn't awkward. Sometimes you needed silences, and Charli felt comfortable enough with him to not have to talk. This fact surprised her, but it was true nonetheless.
She finished before him, and waited patiently as he went back for seconds and thirds. Holy crap, she thought, I wonder when the last time he ate was. It was yet another thing to add to the list of questions that were growing in her mind. He was about to go back for fourths, even though by now he looked absolutely stuffed, and that was when she realized that he was stalling.
Indignantly, she cleared her throat.
He looked up at her, and discovered he was found out. Sighing, he pushed his plate aside and clasped his hands together. "Alright. What do you want to know?"
She laughed. "Oh, everything."
A pensive look took over his features. "Fine, but I offer an exchange. I give you answers that you want, and you give me answers that I want."
"Answers? About what?"
"You."
"Me?" She was completely baffled.
He nodded.
Wow. This guy was amazing. Again he was proving his curiosity extended just past her as his rescuer, which is what she had come to convince herself was the main reason for his interest. Why he would have any other interest, besides that, she didn't know. But it appeared, like it had countless times since they had met, that there was other interest, and he was expressing it now. She couldn't understand his reasoning, but it both terrified and enthralled her in equal parts. She couldn't wait to question him about this further.
He was waiting for her answer, and as much as she wanted this to be a one way interrogation, she finally said, "Okay. I'll answer your questions too."
Pacified, Ivan sat back in his chair and rested his elbows on the arms. He looked completely at ease slumped down like that. She wondered if that was really the way he felt.
Charli took a deep breath. She licked her lips. She fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. She pulled at her hair. After a few minutes of her doing this, an impatient sound came from Ivan, and she looked up, meeting his gaze. "What?"
"You just made it seem like you had all of these questions, and now you can't think of any."
"Yes I can! There are just so many, I can't chose what to ask first."
He rolled his eyes. "Then start off easy. If you don't ask a question soon, I'll ask one first."
She frowned, annoyed at his impatience. "How old are you?"
Keeping his eyes on her face, he said, "Sixteen, almost seventeen. You?"
"Sixteen."
He nodded. "Next."
Chewing her lip, she asked, "Why aren't you in school?"
He snorted. "You mean besides the stab wound in my side?"
Blushing, she nodded.
He sighed. "I stopped going to school last year. It was boring for me. So I decided to take classes over the summer to graduate early."
Charli was pretty sure her jaw dropped. "And I thought I was smart."
It was his turn to blush. "I'm not that smart."
"Bull. If you could teach yourself the correct number of classes for the credits you would need to graduate, all in you sophomore year, then you are a freaking genius."
Ivan shuffled uncomfortably. "Actually, I was a senior. I skipped a couple grades."
Charli didn't say anything. She just sat there, staring at him. Finally, words popped into her head, and she said them before considering how stupid they sounded. "I am in the midst of a god. A giant-brained one."
He laughed, now forgetting to be uncomfortable. "Okay, okay. Can we move on please?"
"You're not from here, are you? I've never seen you around."
He shook his head. "No. Where is here anyway? I'm not even sure. All I know is that I'm from the city, and well, this obviously isn't the city."
She looked incredulous. "You're from the city? Don't tell me you were stabbed there."
"Yeah, actually. I was." He looked down uncomfortably.
Charli shook her head, unbelieving. "Then how did you get all the way over here, without anyone noticing?"
"Um...I know how to blend in?"
She studied him for a long time. It was time to ask. "Tell me how you were stabbed."
He sighed, getting this far away look in his eyes. "Are you sure you want to know? It's a long story."
"Really?"
"Well, kind of. It's a lot to get into this early in the morning."
No way. She wasn't going to let him back out now. "You promised."
Ivan focused his eyes on her, directly into her eyes, and he held them. "I'm not going to break my promise. I just need to know that you'll be able to handle it."
She didn't avert her eyes. Every second that she spent with him, she became more comfortable, more confident. "I'll be fine. I want to know. I need to know."
He held her gaze for a few more seconds, then nodded. Fidgeting nervously with his shirt sleeves, Ivan took a deep breath and began a story that he didn't really want to tell.
"I'll try to explain as best I can. I...I was in a coffee shop one afternoon. It was a normal kind of day, you know. A lot of people running around on the streets, kind of sunny, a lot of noise. I was really tired because...well, that's not important. But I decided to stop into a cafe to get some caffeine. I thought it might help.
"This place was cozy. It was the kind of shop that made you feel warm and the rich smells all combined in a scent I like to call 'Christmas Incarnate'. It felt even more so this day because it was just starting to get cold outside. So I went up to order, and I noticed the barrista looked sad. It made me sad to see someone so sad in such a happy place, and I tried to cheer her up." He paused shifting his eyes from her to the table. Then he continued. "I was still doing that when some crazy guy came into the shop. He was obviously on some kind of drug--maybe crack?--and he had a knife. Shouting, he tried to rob the place, telling everyone to get down and shut up. Then he saw the girl behind the counter I was talking with, and he lunged for her.
"I don't know why I did it. Maybe because I had just been having such a normal conversation with her. Maybe because she looked so sad. Or maybe it was just a reflex; I don't know. But I jumped in his way, and he stabbed me instead, taking my wallet and running. I was so stunned, I chased him."
"You chased him?!" Charli interrupted.
"Yes," he said. "I really didn't want to loose my wallet."
"Well, did you get it back?"
"No. I lost him. But then I realized something else. Someone was chasing me. I freaked out and ran. They chased me for a long time, but finally I gave them the slip. I didn't stop, though. I kept going, until I found a place I could hide, if only a couple minutes. A train. It was stopped, and no one was around, so I hid in one of the compartments. But so much running and my injury and the days of exhaustion I had been suffering finally caught up with me, and I fell asleep. When I woke up, I wasn't in the city anymore."
"Why did you run? What if the person chasing you was the police?"
He looked at her for a moment, then shrugged. "It didn't feel like the police. Wouldn't they have said something?"
It was Charli's turn to shrug.
"Anyway, even if it was the police, they might of thought that I was the one who had tried to rob that place. I didn't want that. So when the train took me here, I didn't go to a hospital. I didn't want who ever was after me to find out I was here. I just wandered, until I couldn't anymore, and that's when you showed up."
He blushed, and she raised her eyebrows, wondering what thoughts had set off the pooling red in his cheeks.
She sat back, and folded her hands on her lap. Looking at him from under her eyelashes, she asked, "So that's it?"
He frowned. "Isn't that enough?"
Charli sighed. It wasn't. Ivan's story made a lot of sense, and it answered a lot of questions. But something about it felt off to her...like he was keeping something back. It might have been the way he kept fidgeting, or possibly how he explained certain parts, and the way he looked when he said them. Something didn't add up, and she was disappointed that he wasn't being honest.
Looking him in the eyes, she finally said, "I'm not going to push you, at least not right now. But I know there's something you're not telling me, Ivan."
He looked down and made no response to her statement.
Continuing, she said, "I don't know what you're involved in; maybe it's better if you don't involve me. But I wish you trusted me enough to at least admit you're keeping something to yourself."
At this, he did look up, and his eyes looked tortured. "I do trust you. I trust you with my life. You did save it, after all. But it isn't something people generally understand."
She nodded. "Okay. That's fine. I'll let it go." She paused. "So...what's your favorite color?"
He smiled a little. "Green. A dark, emerald green. Not the annoying, lime kind."
Charli laughed. "Yeah, I think that shade is annoying too. I almost never use it in my paintings, unless I want you to feel agitated when you look at the picture."
His eyes lit up with curiosity. "You paint?"
She blushed. "Yes. I also sketch and sculpt. Basically any type of art form you could think of."
He was intrigued. Leaning forward, bracing his forearms on his knees, he was giving her his full attention. "And what do you paint, Charli?"
She looked down at her lap. "Oh, you know. Anything I feel like."
"Anything? There's nothing specific?"
She raised her eyes to his face, frowning. Why did he want to know? Why did he even care in the first place? "Ivan, why are you so fascinated with me?"
There was silence. She had said it. And he was looking at her, yet again. His disconcertingly intense stare, that made her fall and keep tumbling down, further and further, like her catapulting stomach would never stop being in flight. Before she knew it, he was leaning on the table, sliding his hand across it, to where hers lay. He was moving his on top of hers, tracing her fingers, enveloping them in his cupped palm. He closed his eyes, sitting like that for a while.
When he opened them, a decision had been made, and he now looked at her with determination. There was a sharp flip somewhere in her middle. What was he about to tell her? Did she want to know? He opened his mouth and said, "Charli..."
She opened her mouth at the same time to say, "Wait," when a noise startled them both, and they leaned back far in their chairs. What had just happened?
Someone was walking in the hallway, the floorboards creaking under their feet. They both froze. Suddenly, Ivan stood up, looking around until his eyes fell on a closet by the back door. He turned toward it, and started walking.
"What are you doing?" Charli called, and he stopped, turning around.
"I'm hiding. Your parents will see me."
"But--" Was that really so bad? Quickly, she thought about it.
Her parents didn't care about her. She got perfect grades, won several of academic contests a year, had a GPA of 4.1. She was never a bad girl, never stayed out late, never got herself into any trouble, made a point to do everything perfectly, so that they might take the time to praise her for her good work. But none of this paid off, and in one sharp moment of clarity, Charli realized that it never would. It was the way they were; they wouldn't reward good behavior, because they saw no point in it themselves. That's what made her decision.
Ivan was waiting for her to finish what she had started to say, but she could tell that he was getting impatient. Gulping, she told him what had been running through her mind in the past two seconds. "I don't want you to hide."
He looked at her as if she were crazy. "What do you mean, you don't want me to hide!"
She took a deep breath. "I'm tired of being ignored. I want them to notice me, and I'll do whatever it takes for that to happen. Even if it means making them think I'm having boys stay over."
Again, he gave her that incredulous look. This time it was even more desperate. "What if they kick me out? Then what will happen?"
She frowned. "I don't think they'll do that. My parents aren't ones for rules, and they certainly can't judge."
He looked panicked. "I don't know about this..."
The footsteps were approaching, getting louder by the second.
"Please?" She clasped her hands in front of her, begging.
He looked at her for a moment longer, contemplating. They both knew that he didn't have much time to decide.
"Pleeeeease?" She walked closer to him, imploring with her eyes.
Ivan let out a sharp breath. "Fine. But if it doesn't work out, you're paying for my hotel room."
She nodded quickly and pushed him toward an over-sized, super-stuffed recliner. Pushing him down, she quickly arranged herself on his lap. "Is this okay?" She didn't want to hurt him.
He was flushed, but he nodded, keeping his eyes away from her face. She felt guilty for making him feel uncomfortable, but she wanted to make it clear to anyone who walked in that he wasn't just a friend. But she did reach over and turn the television on, so that he would have something to focus on besides her. It made the situation less awkward. Leaning back onto his shoulder, she too looked at the TV screen, but she didn't watch. She was waiting for the unidentified person to walk into the room.
Just before they entered the room, Ivan snaked his arms around her waist, humoring her and her plan. She relaxed into him.
Her father entered the room, rumbled, dark circles under his eyes. His long, pale hair hung in his face, and he walked with a hunched gait. Yep, definately hung-over. Immediately his eyes zeroed in on his daughter, and after a few seconds of staring, he rubbed at his eyes with balled up fists. It didn't make a difference in the picture he was seeing.
Clearing his throat he said, "Charli. What are you doing?"
She didn't really know what she was doing herself, but she was tired of doing nothing at all. Still... she wasn't sure that her plan was the greatest of ideas. She should have never dragged Ivan into this...
.............................
Thanks for reading!
--Kacie Renn
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