Red and Blue [working title] Ch 11: The Quiet Things

Chapter 11: The Quiet Things1

[Music: Sia – Colour the Small One – “Breathe Me”]2

Pyrena3

Friday night came, and I threw some clothes and my hairbrush (and my toothbrush, upon my mom’s adamant reminding) into a bag and left the house.4

“Hey Pyrena! Come on in,” Jade’s mother said, hurrying to open the front door after two rings of the doorbell.5

“Hey!” I greeted.6

“How are you?” she asked me7

“Good, thanks. And you?”8

“Same.”9

“How’s Jade doing?” I asked, wiping my feet on the doormat before I stepped onto an orange, brown, gold, and dark blue rug covering the wood floor. Directly in front of me were some white-carpeted stairs leading upstairs, and to the left and right the doorways led to other rooms.10

“She’s doing really good, she’s finally off all those meds I had to give her.” Jade had come down with pneumonia a few weeks earlier, and we’d joked that it had been a relapse of her sickness after falling into the lake--falling for me--back in November. She was almost over the pneumonia now, though not over me of course.11

I heard footsteps, and Jade appeared from the stairs.12

“Yay, I thought you were here!” she said, hopping down the last step. “E.S.P.” She nodded.13

“Jade, what do you girls want on your pizza?” Jade’s mom asked.14

“Where are you gettin’ it at?” I asked.15

“Hungry Howie’s.”16

“Yes, they’re the best!” I cheered.17

“Really?” her mom asked.18

“Yeah. Do you know where Gus’s is yet?”19

“Yeah, there’s one on Grand River, right?”20

“Yeah, they have the best breadsticks.”21

“Well maybe I can stop by there and get some on my way there,” her mom suggested. “So what do you like on your pizza?”22

“I’ll go for anything, I’ll eat anything as long as it’s food,” I replied. “Jade?”23

“Anything’s fine, Mom,” Jade said. “Just get pepperoni and ham or something.”24

“With butter garlic crust.”25

“Will do,” her mom said.26

“You’re going now?” Jade asked.27

“Yeah, it’s quarter to six.”28

“Oh.”29

“Heh, nice, Jade,” I said.30

“Well I just woke up…I’m kinda out of it.”31

“Well I’m gonna go, I’ll be back in twenty or thirty minutes.” Her mom slung a purse onto her arm and disappeared back into one of the rooms.32

“So, what do you wanna do? …Oh, I could take you on a tour of the house!” Jade suggested.33

“Sure.”34

“Oh, just drop your stuff by the door, we’ll take it up to my room later,” Jade added as I took off my shoes. She headed toward the room to the left as I followed.35

“This is the dining room,” she said as I glanced over at the wood table and chairs. The floor was carpet here. “Come on, the best part of the house is here…” She passed through the only other doorway in the room. “Kitchen!!” she sang.36

The kitchen was very large and commodious and had wood flooring. The countertops were smooth marble.37

“Holy crap, it’s huge,” I said. “Bigger than ours. You must have a giant fridge or pantry too.”38

Jade laughed and opened a double fold-out door, revealing a walk-in pantry loaded with chips, candy, crackers, soup, bread, and all kinds of stuff.39

Jade nudged a wrapper. “The candy’s old though, don’t eat it. ’S from two Halloweens ago.”40

“Aw, and there’s Reese’s, too,” I lamented.41

She showed me the huge living room with a vaulted ceiling, as well as the finer points of the bathroom, which had a frog theme going on in there. Then we descended to the downstairs, which was carpeted with Berber and had two large, open rooms; one with a big screen T.V. and a couch and armchairs, the other with an air hockey, foosball, and ping-pong tables. There was also a bar thing down there, and a bathroom with heated tiles. (I hadn’t believed her that such a thing existed or was possible, until she turned it on and showed me.) There was also a dark bedroom that Jade briefly explained as her brother’s. I remembered that she’d told me before that he was younger, ten or eleven I think.42

We went back upstairs and grabbed my bag before going up to the other stairs toward her room. There was a long hallway, and to the immediate right was her parent’s room. Down the hallway was another bathroom and a spare bedroom on either side of the hall (they were both guest rooms, Jade said, but at one time there had only been one up here because her brother had the other room before he moved downstairs). At the end of the hall was Jade’s room.43

Her room was huge. The walls were dark purple, and she had some awesome band and movie posters covering two of them, as well as around fifty of those CD booklet things that come with CD’s when you buy the actual thing and don’t download of burn it from a friends’. She had a full-sized bed, a T.V., a computer, and a forty-gallon aquarium filled with fish and glowing plastic fluorescent plants.44

“I’ve got some fish, snails, crabs, and I think a few ghost shrimp in there still,” Jade explained, pointing.45

I went over to look. “Your room’s so cool,” I said, awed. “Mine’s small and I don’t have a computer or a phone or anything in it.”46

“I don’t have a phone at least,” Jade pointed out, chuckling.47

I gazed around the room. She had a desk with some pencils and notebooks strewn across it, as well as a closet--not a walk-in--and two dressers and a mirror. The taller dresser had a collection of random trinkets and figurines, as well as a jewelry box thing and a bunch of earring and necklaces scattered across it. The long dresser with the large mirror attached to it had a finger optic thing on it, as well as some more figurines--dolphins, fish, sea turtles, a raven, and a mother deer--as well as some shells, amethysts, cracked-open geodes, and some stuffed animals. She had a Rubik’s cube, a CD player, and some wooden board thing.48

“Is that a ouija board?” I asked, interested. Jay had shown me hers before, but we hadn’t done anything with it.49

“…Oh, yeah.”50

“Have you used it before?”51

“Yep.”52

“What’s it like? How’s it work?” I asked.53

She briefly explained it to me. “I’ve mostly just gotten garbled stuff, and maybe a few short messages but not much…I lost the planchette.” Neither of us said anything. Then she suggested, “Hey, wanna see something?”54

“Yeah, what?”55

“Not with the ouija board,” she corrected. “Something else, nothing to do with that.”56

“What?” I asked curiously.57

“Come here,” she told me, sitting on the edge of her bed and bouncing a little. I followed her and sat down next to her, nervous and excited but also curious. She wiggled her butt around to get into a solid position on the bed, and she extended her right arm. 58

“What are you doing?” I asked, definitely baffled now.59

“Watch my hand,” Jade instructed. “I hope I can do it, I really wanna show you…” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She held her breath, squeezing her eyes closed with effort, then exhaled several times. It looked like she had to shit or something, but I knew that she wasn’t joking around or anything. I watched her with fascination, then looked back at her hand. Then as I watched, I saw a flicker of movement by her hand, like a bug beating its wings. I was suddenly struck by a memory of some far-off incident that had occurred at Oceanside Psychiatric Community.60

I stared, open-mouthed. Jade stopped doing her weird breathing thing and tipped her head forward, opening her eyes. “How’d you do that?” I demanded.61

“Did I do it?” Jade asked.62

“Yeah, how’d you move your hand so fast? It didn’t even look like it moved. That could come in real handy when playing video games or something.”63

“My hand wasn’t moving,” Jade corrected. “It was staying still.”64

I paused, trying to work that one out. “Then what’d you do?”65

Jade’s lips moved but didn’t say anything right away, trying to find the right words. “I made like an energy field.”66

I didn’t know much about energy. In science class it just went in one ear and out the other. Or eye. “…What kind of energy field?”67

“I don’t really know…”68

I stared, knowing that there was more. “But what was it? Tell me.”69

“I guess you can compare it to separating oneself. The blurry thing that was moving was like my soul…’Cause souls aren’t actual things, just like chemicals and energies and whatever. That was the energy of my soul.”70

She let it sink in. I sat thinking. “I guess that kinda makes sense…I haven’t really thought about what souls really are before.”71

“Yeah.” She nodded.72

“But how’d you do that? Like make the energy thing…? I can’t do that, not that I know of.”73

“It takes a ton of practice,” Jade said.74

“I’ll bet,” I commented. I was still kind of having difficulty comprehending what it was.75

“…Anyway, what time is it?” she asked, moving on from the subject and bouncing off her bed.76

I looked for the clock. “I dunno where your clock is, it’s your room silly.”77

“I know, but I have a bajillion clocks in here because my brother steals them.”78

“What for?” I laughed.79

“It started when his broke and I had to give him my old one, and now he just takes ’em to piss me off, so I have to keep getting new ones ’cause he claims he loses them,” Jade explained, rolling her eyes.80

“It sucks to have a little brother?”81

“Fuck yes,” she answered. “I wish I had an older brother like you do.”82

“You can have him,” I said instantly. “He can be a pain in the ass and he bitches at me and tells me what to do a lot. Or, he used to when we were younger. He’s pretty okay now that he’s off to college…”83

“Yeah, but older brother’s are cool ’cause they’ll look out for you and you can talk to them and they know more about stuff,” Jade argued.84

I shrugged. “Brothers are probably pains in the asses whatever age they are.”85

“Maybe. Oh, here’s my watch! Yay, he didn’t get it yet,” Jade said triumphantly, pulling a black watch out of a dresser drawer. “Five-thirty,” she said. “…It’s six-thirty then, it hasn’t been reset since Daylight Savings.”86

“Your mom should be back soon.”87

“Yeah, let’s go see, I’m starving.” Jade quickly kiss/licked my cheek, grabbed my hand, and pulled me downstairs.88

#89

Through the breath in our lungs we breathed. I can’t remember how long we breathed each other, but it was for so long that the air became so hot it was piercing cold, so that I no longer needed the fresh cold air. I just needed her. We needed each other; if one of us failed, the other would die as well. We were drowning together beneath the blankets.90

At some point, the burning sea--roiling, methodic, repetitive--subsided, and our breaths and bodies parted, though remained tangled, sleeping.91

I just hadn’t expected her to be so aggressive and take the top.92

We each drifted in and out of sleep during the night, sometimes waking up at the same time and gazing at each other. Watching silently.93

I woke up again to her pushing her head up against my shoulder, whimpering quietly. “What’s wrong?” I whispered, instinctively pulling my arms around her and drawing her body closer.94

“It hurts…” she whispered, voice high-pitched and cracking.95

“What does?” My aroused concern brought me into full wakefulness. I shifted and sat up, propping my head up on my fist.96

“The--thing--again.”97

“What?” I could see her hazy form in the dark.98

“You know, didn’t I show you it earlier?”99

I’d completely forgotten about it, but I did remember. “Yeah…”100

“It’s that. It’s been happening a lot lately, but it usually doesn’t--” She let out a yelp, and I hugged her tight, kissing her face and feeling horrible in my helplessness.101

“But what is it? Why does it hurt you?? Is it like a cancer!? Or-or an epileptic seizure or something??” Maybe I could help her.102

“No,” she answered, voice muffled against my body. I looked at her intently, but she didn’t continue.103

“What is it, then?” I repeated, frustrated. She needed to tell me so I could help!104

“I told you…It separates sometimes. And it hurts. Usually it doesn’t hurt though, it’s usually really euphoric and peaceful…It’s like astral travel, like flying outside of your body, but now, when I’m not even trying to do it, I feel myself just like slipping away…” Jade shuddered once, and the movement sent shivers of worry through my body. “And I keep having blank spots in my memory…”105

I searched her face for meaning in the dark, then hugged her and kissed her forehead. “Well let’s hope that the times when you do remember, you’ll wake up and be in my arms.”106

She purred contentedly.107

#108