Mundahlia (The Mundahlian Era, #1) (13 page)

I looked to Sarah who eyed me with a look of pure confusion. “Yeah,” I said.

“Well, then come out your back door, I’m here already,” I could hear him speak through a smile.

“All right. We’ll be out in like two-seconds.”

“Cool.”

I hung up the phone and looked back to Sarah. “Well?” she asked.

“He’s here already, come on.”

“Yay!”

We headed outside with our towels and greeted Jett—who was already dressed in nothing but red swimming trunks. Sarah introduced herself to Jett, only after I’m sure that she had pushed all of the dirty thoughts in her mind away.

“I hope his brothers look like him, because he is hot!” Sarah whispered to me, as we followed behind him. “If not—we share, yes? I’ll take Mondays thru Sundays until 11:59 pm and you can have the rest.”
I hope he didn’t hear her.

“Oh, shut up,” I teased.

The lake appeared inviting as we approached, after nearly dying of the long journey to it. Still greenish water reflected the sun’s light as a gleam in my eye. Stale water and moss, the very essence of the summers spent back home at Lake Amistad, filled the area surrounding the shore. Hovering ever so lightly above the lake, a large wooden dock—to which I assumed they used as a base to jump off of, rocked, sending minuscule waves in an aura around it. The rest of the family was already enjoying the brisk coolness of the water, or inside, getting ready for it. All except one—Max. I spotted him, back against a tree and “April” in his lap, a good distance away. He was dressed to swim—in a black T-shirt and blue Hawaiian flower printed swimming trunks that seemed to match Sarah’s, just not in the water. Odd.

Del and Mark were sitting on the shore holding Kaylee as they let her feel the water in her tiny hands. “Hey there,” Del shifted her gaze from the baby to Sarah and I and gave a short wave, “Who’s this?”

“This is Sarah,” I introduced my new best friend practically glued to my side.

“Nice to meet you.”

“You too!” Sarah replied.

After we kicked our sandals off by a tree, Jett led us to the edge of the dock where the water was deep and dark. A mysterious abyss that appeared as though it could gobble you whole.

“I hope you’re not scared of the depth of it,” he said, eyeing me as I curiously peered over the edge.

“Me? Heck no!” I scoffed. “Like I told you before, I used
to be called a fish.”

“Good,” he grabbed for my arm, “then I hope you don’t mind if I do
this
!”

“Aah!”
I barely had enough time to hold my breath before I felt the cool water engulf me after he’d sent me over. Immediately, the temperature change shot to my head, making me cringe at the sudden brain cramp.

Underneath the opaque, murky water, I looked below to the pebble and algae lined ground about thirty feet below. I was floating in the open water—feeling light as a feather, or a plastic bag, gently descending from the sky. It was almost as deep as the lake back home. The golden light beams diffusing in the water—almost angelic, surrounded me in an aura of sheer illumination. I was hit with the sudden urge to make it to the bottom and take a peek at the top of the water like I’d do back home. I let my breath escape my body in the form of air bubbles so I could sink faster. Once grounded, I whipped my head up and looked at the flat water above me. Like the separation between the two worlds. Distorted faces leant over the dock. They probably thought I was drowning.

I squatted—knees bent, and kicked off of the tiny small rocks and other debris, scaring a few fish away. I imagine flying is like rising to the surface. Feeling the water travel around your body in a rush and feeling completely weightless. Right before I hit the surface, a small reflection of myself appeared. It was as if I were going to crash into myself until—
Gasp!
At the surface, I took a deep breath and wiped away the dripping water from my eyes and mouth, then faced my offender. A wide, sly grin was etched on his face as he said, “Surprised at how deep it is?”

“What the hell was that for?” I asked, not really offended. I was going to get wet anyway. I just wished it hadn’t been one of those
Oh-crap-I’m-going-to-die!
moments.

“For fun,” he laughed. “You should have seen your face.”

I pretended that I didn’t notice Sarah, inching behind him slowly and swiftly. A lion to its prey.

“Sorry buddy, but that’s my girl you just threw in,” she said, then charged toward him, arms spread out to toss him in. In a quick movement,
“What?”
she was caught by surprise as he ducked under her arm, tossing her in as well. I had to swim out of the way to avoid getting squashed.

When Sarah surfaced, eyes hidden under her wet messy hair, she gave a small clap, “Bravo, my friend. Bravo!”

Martin and Ray appeared on the deck alongside Jett. We watched as dick-head Ray leant over and examined us in a less than tasteful way, licking his lips before saying with a perverted smile, “
Psh.
They’re not even here for ten minutes and you already got them all wet.
Nice
.” He blew an air kiss to me and winked. “Sup,
mami
?”

Smack!
Martin hit him over the head with an open hand.
“Manners!”

“
Ey!
What the Fu-” Ray backed away, not noticing that he was shimmying off the edge. He stumbled over, gripping onto Jett’s arm for support, but they both lost balance. We watched as they teetered over the edge, until Martin gave a shove to send them both over. Martin, as the last on the dock, stretched and took a few steps back.

“Oh boy!” Jett started swimming over to me. “Watch out, he’s going to cannonball,” Jett pushed me behind him—forming a barrier with his broad back.

“Come on
chica
, I got you covered.” Ray swam to Sarah, who looked petrified. Poor Sarah. I felt bad that she got the short end of the deal. The short, perverted, disgusting, and foul-mouthed end of the deal.

I highly doubted it, but sure enough, Sarah and I watched as our substitute teacher—a man who reads classic novels for fun and speaks properly—childishly dashed off the dock, curling into a ball.

“Cannonba-”
Splash!

The whole family, along with Sarah and I, cheered.

“Your right, maybe I will have fun after all,” Sarah whispered to me once Jett had gotten distracted and looked lost in his thoughts about something in the forest in front of us. I thought I heard a rustling, but I figured it was just the rude wolf that had ditched me the other day. “I just got to say, so far so good on the brothers—except for that weird one with the computer over there. Talk about being a creeper and loner.”

“So girls, what do you think?” Jett shook away whatever had distracted him and interrupted our whispered side conversation.

“It’s great,” I smiled.
No, my best friend wasn’t bashing your unsocial brother just now.
“I like it.”

...

The once yellow sky was now a deep gold and pink when we got done—sunset.

Sarah and I sat on the dock, our feet dangling in the water. We tried to pretend we weren’t secretly watching Jett try and convince Max to put April inside and come join us, even though we had already finished swimming and were now just drying off.

Max lifted his head and saw us staring when Jett pointed over to us. I felt my ears grow warm and quickly shifted my gaze to the tiny fish surrounding our feet. The slippery grey fish circled around my foot, trying to suck on my toes. I tried to shoo them away, but they persisted like a swarm of bees, tickling me.

“Check it out, Rini,” Sarah said pointing with her chin to the water. I followed her gaze and watched as she teased the small persistent expert swimmers by moving her toe around, watching them all squirm as they tried to follow it.

I laughed, then shook my head. “So, did you have fun?”

She paused, licked the bottom of her lip, then said, “Surprisingly, yeah. I guess I did.”

A few moments passed until we heard two heavy sets of footsteps making their way down the dock. Max inched his way down, sitting a couple of feet away from Sarah, as if she had just been diagnosed with cooties or some other type of fictional disease. Jett plopped himself down next to me. He made sounds of elation as he stuck his feet into the water. The fish that were hovering by my feet, immediately swam over to his.
Little jerks.
Jett brought his hands behind his head and lowered himself into a laying position across the wood—shutting his eyes and swishing his feet.

Shy Max remained staring into the water, quietly twiddling his fingers and humming a song to himself. Poor thing. I nudged Sarah with my elbow. She twitched then gave me a
what-the-hell?
look. I motioned for her to talk to him and she shook her head.
No!
I pictured her saying.

After seconds of fighting with quiet stares and motions, she shrugged and leant over to say, “Hey there, I’m Sarah.”

Max stared at her hand for a while, then switched to her eyes. “I’m Max, and hey,” he said shyly.

“And I’m the girl that was just here a few days ago,” I waved.

“Oh—yeah, I remember you,” he spoke softly. “Um—hey.”

Beside me, Jett cleared his throat. He had propped himself on his side and was now resting his head on his upright hand. “So Rini,” he said. “How about we give them some time to talk.”

Sarah’s hand grazed mine and squeezed it—hard. She gave me a
don’t-you-dare-leave-me-alone
look when I stared for her reasoning for incapacitating my hand that was throbbing in her talon-like grip.

“Oh, um I think they’re fine,” I smiled awkwardly, trying not to sound rude for declining his offer to abandon my friend with his brother.

“But, I want to show you something.” I couldn’t deny noticing the broken hope spread across his face. He got to his feet and extended his hand to me. “Come on, I promise it’s cool.”

The hand around mine tightened even more.
Geez, Sarah!
I wanted to scream. I began, “Um, I’m sure it is, but-”

Before I could finish, Jett moved past me and over to Sarah. Kneeling beside her, he asked, “Do you think I can borrow her for a little while?”

S
arah, hiding her obvious discomfort with a smile, released my hand. “As long as you promise to give her back,” she joked.

Jett chortled, eyes wrinkling at the corners. It was a full-bodied laugh. The kind that shook his whole body and made his lengthy hair bounce as he did it. “Indeed.” He grabbed my newly freed hand that was still trying to inhale after being nearly suffocated, and brought me to my feet.

I flashed a glance over to Sarah and mouthed,
I’m sorry
. For a second, she looked as if she were about to cry—a child saying goodbye to their parents after being dropped off for their first day of kindergarten.

She swallowed and mouthed, “
It’s okay.”

Jett

9

“Well, what did you want to show me?”

We were in the dark, windowless bedroom I shared with Ray and Max. Twice the size of a normal room to fit the three of us comfortably in our own sections only big enough for a queen sized bed each, and a few other things. I patted the walls in search of the light switch and flicked it on. My area was by the door. A small but comfortable space. I got the closet. Max got the wall directly across the door. His side of the wall had posters of comics and a troop of action figures guarding the real comic books on shelves. Ray, however, got the very back of the room. Easily definable by pieces of trash speckled across the floor, and multiple posters of women in bikinis plastered on the wall behind his bed. Mine, on the other hand, had neither of those things. My area was plain. Just a black sheeted bed with matching pillows on a metal frame, and a small bedside table with a collection of my old CDs—a few cracks riddled on some of their cases.

“You wanted to show me your room?”

I didn’t have much to show her, so obviously that wasn’t my intentions. “No, I just wanted to give them some time alone. You were making Max nervous.” I opened the closet and dug through piles of clothes and more CDs.

“Me?” she sounded offended.

“I’m kidding,” I teased, “about the making him nervous part.”

I pulled my storage box from underneath a tower of CDs. They threatened to tumble, but I gently shoved them back into place. I usually had them stored in a plastic crate, but Mark needed it to stuff some of his
ancient
records into—thus leaving my many music albums on the floor.

I turned and found her sitting on the bed, studying the small arrangement of the albums I had on my bedside table. The selected few out of the rest—my favorites—that I had set in a different area where I could reach them when I wanted to listen to them. “You like them?” I asked.

“Oh. I’ve never heard of some of these bands or singers before.” She picked one I particularly favored up. “But, they
do
look interesting.” She traced the edges of the case with her fingers as though she were trying to place the band in her mind, then returned it to the empty slot in the small library. I usually didn’t like people touching my things, but she was different.

“Yeah, some of them are older than the music you probably like.”
I hope she didn’t take it offensively.

Instead, she smiled and said, “Yeah, you’re probably right. What’s
that
?” she eyed the scuffed up brown storage box in my hands.

I’ve had it for years. Keeping small treasures I found inside ever since I was younger. I set it on the bed and flipped open the top, shifting the contents inside. I picked up a small rock, imprinted with the fossilized image of a small prehistoric looking fish. “Remember that conversation over the phone we had a few days back?”

“Yeah,” she said, remembering a particular conversation of the many we’d had over the past few days before bed where I told her I was a collector. The next night we rambled on for hours about nonsense. That was the same night she’d told me about her parents. From the description she’d given of them, they seemed distant. Raised most of her life by her cousin and grandmother. It was like her parents weren’t there to begin with. I’d strayed away and changed the topic when she brought up my parents. It was too hard for me to go back to that dark night. Too painful to even try to remember.

“Well, I wasn’t joking when I said I like to collect things,” I told her, then passed the fossil over. “Check this out.”

She took the cement colored rock and fingered the gaps in between the raised ribs. “Cool,” she said. “Where’d you find it?”

“Last summer. I was digging in the bottom of the lake and found it under the dirt. I think it’s a baby alligator gar.” She seemed interested, or at least if she wasn’t, pulled it off. I picked up an old yo-yo I’d found in the backwoods of our old home in another state, and stuck my finger in the loop of the string.

“Aren’t you a little too old to be playing with toys?” she asked with a cocked eyebrow, setting the fossil back in the box.

“Probably.” The yo-yo whirled as it bounced up and down. The rest of the contents in the storage box were small trinkets such as: other small fossils and rocks, a wedding ring, a few coins from the civil war era, and a few other things I thought looked interesting. No matter what, I couldn’t get rid of any of them. I didn’t like things leaving me—or being out of my possession for long. It was rare that I let anyone even see them, but something about her told me that she wasn’t just anybody. She was just—something else.

Separation Anxiety
is what Mark tries to tell me I have. And that
that
is why I get emotionally attached to things really fast and then can’t let them go once I do. He thinks it developed after I suffered a traumatic experience when my mom left me behind when I was younger, but I think it’s just a big pile of crap. He isn’t a doctor. And I sure as hell am not going to pay hundreds of dollars just to get told I have something I know I don’t.

“So you
really
have yourself a little collection of random things, huh?” she said.

“Told you. I’m a collector.”

“Yeah, but I thought more of like a comic book, coin, or trading card collector. You know,
those
kinds of collectors.”

“Me?
Nah!
Those are materialistic collectors. Too mainstream for me. I only collect significant things.”

She curled her eyebrows, “What do you mean?”

I scoured the box in search of the rock that I cherished the most. My very first collectable. I’d found it that night she left—my mother. Sticking out from the mud as though wanting to be found. A stone the size of a baby’s fist and in the shape of an almost formed heart. Streaked with the bright colors of neon blue and purple. “Look at this rock,” I instructed, holding my hand out to hers so I could place it on her palm. “This was the very first thing I ever collected.”

“
Okay?
”

“Well, it means a lot to me. Sure there may be more of these types of rocks, but this-”I pointed to the stone in her palm “-is the only one that will ever be shaped
exactl
y like this. The stripes may be a different shade of blue or purple, and the shape may be less round and more square. But
this
rock—is perfect to me. And I knew, the very moment I saw it, that I had to make it mine and keep it with me—” My eyes gazed into hers, and hers did the same. “—
always
.” For a moment, there was that brief subtlety as our sight stayed locked on each other. Silent, as we wondered what to do next. Then, an infectious smile spread widely across her face. I couldn’t help but do the same—like yawning after seeing someone else yawn. But her smile was short lived, and disappeared with the flash of her tongue, swiping across the surface of her bottom lip and leaving a sheen behind.

“So,” I asked. “Want something to drink?”

She nodded. “Yes, thank you.”