literature

JW: Intrepidity

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Jeremie was, in general, afraid of everything. Not like some people were afraid of spiders or heights. Just… quietly, because he didn't do anything loudly. He worried about nuclear war and the meaning of life. Having to dive off the high board and Portugese Man-o-wars. Would a comet strike earth and cause another ice age? Would he get head lice or foot fungus from using the communal showers after gym?

As such, he never ventured far from Kadic's reassuring brick buildings. You couldn't get a decent wireless connection out in the forest, after all, and the only reason most boys his age went out there was to find a good spot to kiss their girlfriend. Jeremie did not have a girlfriend, and, though most of him was okay with that, some part of his mind whispered that he would always be alone because no girl in her right mind would ever want to look at him, naked or otherwise.

The nice thing about spending time with Aelita was that that voice finally shut up. Time with Aelita was too precious to spend being insecure.

Not that their version of spending time together was really what other people would call it. It was more like they were alone in the same place. Every weekend morning, they would sit at the same table in the courtyard, greeting each other politely—perhaps even with an inquiry about their respective weeks. Jeremie did homework or coded his video game; Aelita read. (He had yet to see her with the same book two days in a row.) They spoke to each other now and then: Jeremie would haltingly ask her what she was reading and what she thought of it; Aelita would ask him what homework he had or if she could look at the sprites for the next level of his game. But mostly they sat and did things near each other that they would have done far from each other.

Jeremie wished that he could initiate an actual conversation. There were plenty of things he would ask her if he could. Are your parents really dead? Do you dye your hair? Why do you hang out with me when everyone else likes you so much?

But the words always froze on his tongue, because looking at her he was confronted with just how much he didn't know, and he felt ashamed of the way he thought about her, his wish to run his hands through her hair or rest them on her cheeks.

***

Jeremie never went into the forest unless he had to. Other kids told stories about all sorts of things you could find out there if you walked long enough—an abandoned factory, haunted bluffs, fallen trees. Jeremie was not very interested in this. He could see the whole world on Google Earth, and ghost stories were just stupid. He didn't like bugs, and he had never quite trusted grass or leaves.

Jeremie didn't think Aelita was quite the same way, but she had never shown much interest in the forest, either. It might be because she was used to it; a rumor around school said she had grown up somewhere in the area, and so she might have toddled through the forest as a child with her parents. The thought made Jeremie smile until he remembered that her parents, whoever they had been, were dead and gone.

***

Three weeks after the first time she sat with him, he noticed something was different than usual. When reading, Aelita sat stiller than a statue; she didn't move to brush hair out of her eyes or swat away a fly. Turning the page was accomplished with the barest of movements, as though anything stronger would distract her from whatever knowledge she was trying to gain or the pictures in her mind. (Jeremie liked to watch her when she read, especially because, if she noticed his gaze, she had never told him to stop.)

This particular Saturday, however, her endless, perfect concentration seemed to have deserted her; though she sat as still as ever, the pages turned much  more slowly than usual, and she kept glancing at his notebook, as though to track his progress in his homework. When he finished—curiousity was not enough to keep him from being a good student—he closed his textbook and looked her in the face. "Is something wrong, Aelita?" Her name felt strange but delicious on his tongue, like German chocolate.

She looked at her book, blushing, and Jeremie was about to retract the question when she closed her book with a sharp snap and got to her feet. Though her motions were decisive, there was a sort of desperation in her eyes. "Come with me?" she said.

He swept all of his stuff into his bag with none of his usual care because he was afraid if he lingered too long she would rescind her offer. He wanted to ask her where they were going, but she stood patiently as he gathered his things and walked around to her, and so for some reason it felt impolite. Wasn't it more important to ask why she had sat with him in the first place?

He did want to ask, but people weren't like rainbows: they did not become more beautiful once you knew all their secrets. The things we keep from other people are usually the ugly parts, the parts we are afraid of.

***

They walked through the forest; it was the first time he didn't mind the smell of grass crushing underfoot and walking over uneven, unstable ground. She did not take him by the neat asphalt paths or even by the bare dirt paths beaten by dozens of students taking the same short-cut. She walked straight into the tall grass, through a path only she seemed to know.

She took him to a place set back, so far back he was sure they were off the grounds—which was worth a week's detention, but a week's detention was worth the strange look on her face and wondering what it meant, if she would tell him. It was a two-story cottage with a rotten fence keeping the rest of the forest at bay. A little sign on the front said it was called The Hermitage.

Aelita just stood in front of the gate, looking at that sign, for so long that Jeremie moved from slightly behind her to next to her. "…Aelita?" She didn't look at him. "Is something wrong?"

There was something he could not name in her eyes as she reached out and stroked the hand-carved sign. It had been weathered by years of rain and snow; the paint was chipped and peeling. He hoped she wouldn't get a splinter. "This is my cottage," she said quietly. She reached under her pink puffball sweatshirt and produced a pair of keys on a long silver chain. The first one was old-fashioned and heavy; the second was more delicate, but it didn't look any newer. She unlocked the heavy chain around the gate and let it and the padlock fall to the ground, but she didn't step inside.

She looked… lost. Jeremie had been watching her for three years now—she had moved here around the same time he did—and he had never seen her like this. Whatever she did, she did it with purpose. He wanted to put his arm around her shoulders to show her he was still there, but he spoke instead. "What do you mean?"

Aelita pushed open the gate and stepped lightly over the chain, gesturing for him to follow. Her eyes were fixed on the front door, but there was no mistaking she was speaking to him, that she wanted him to listen. "This isn't where I grew up—it's where my parents used to come for their vacation. Two weeks out of every year, we left the city and came here. It was like my own little paradise. Daddy didn't bring his computer with him, so he spent all his time with me and Mom. And then it was just me and him. We went out to eat, or he tried to cook." She laughed softly and stopped just before she could step onto the front porch. "It never worked because he always had to read a book while he was doing it, and he'd forget and let something burn."

"Aelita—" She looked at the beat-up, unloved cottage with such softness in her eyes. When she looked at him, the softness was still there, but she also looked like she was about to cry. He wanted to ask her why she was telling him this, if she had told anyone else—but he didn't. The need in her eyes made him, briefly, fearless, and he closed his fingers around hers.

Aelita turned to him and pressed her face into his chest, and then she started to cry.

***

They walked back to the school much more slowly than they had walked to the Hermitage. (Jeremie was already thinking of it that way, just as he was thinking of how nice it would look with fresh paint, a new front door, fresh boards in the porch and the front gate. Even though he had never picked up a hammer in his life and probably couldn't lift one if he tried.)

"I'm sorry I sort of—" Aelita laughed. They weren't quite walking shoulder-to-shoulder, and he wasn't sure if she was holding his hand because she hadn't noticed or because she wanted to—or if she just needed the contact to remember someone else was really there. He was starting to hate his constant inability to take a good thing as it came. She looked at him. Her eyes were a bit red from crying, and her mascara was streaked, but other than that, she looked all right. "I really sprang that on you, didn't I?"

He smiled back. Aelita was always laughing and joking with her other friends—well, she did hang out with Odd when she hung out with people, so that might explain it—but nevertheless, he wanted to be the kind of person she could laugh and joke with. Even if he didn't think he was that funny. He could learn. "I didn't mind." She looked at him, surprised, and he squeezed her fingers, because he was already holding them and he didn't think she wanted him to let go. "Really. I just…" Apparently, today was a day for bravery—albeit bravery accompanied by endless second-guessing—so he continued. "It was—it was nice to learn more about you."

He realized immediately that nice was not the thing to say when you just learned all the bad rumors about someone like Aelita were true.

But she didn't flinch, didn't demur; their hands swung between them like the pendulum of a clock, counting off her thoughts. "I never told anybody about that place," she said quietly. "I think that's why I cried." Her voice went even softer. "I didn't cry when I told the others. I thought I would be okay." She moved a little closer to him, so their shoulders brushed and their hands were pressed together between their hips.

He didn't know what to say to that, so he squeezed her hand again, and the way she smiled at him said it was enough.
Day 1: [link]

Day 2: [link]

Day 4: [link]

Day 5: [link]

Day 6: [link]

Day 7: [link]

AN: Getting this version of Aelita to talk is like pulling teeth. Don't ask me why. =/ Oh, well. She'll be louder in the next one, I think.

Also, I wasted about half an hour Googling the French age of inheritance (without success) for a conversation that didn't happen. Fail.
© 2011 - 2024 SkysongMA
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Aslan1's avatar
This fic was just....exellent, i love how in character you made Jeremie and Aelita, i can fully see them acting like this if the super computer weren't involved.

I hope to see more from you soon, i LOVE this fic.