Ch.2-Someting New

    Finally Erika realized that the only way she was going to get something cold to sooth her burns, was to go back outside to the pond.
    She walked out of her kitchen very cautiously, leaned against the wall for support and balance. As she reeled down the hallway she left a long, thick, trail of blood on the wall. She cursed and wailed in pain as the wall crumbled and left splinters in her injured hand. Once she reached the front door she yelled out at the  sight of her hand, it was a bloody mess. "I have to cover it so it doesn't get infected" she thought out loud. At last finding the small part of herself that had some common sense, she turned on her heels and slowly strutted back down the hall to the bathroom. As she's walking her vision gets blurry, as if the room is filled with fog, the objects in the room starting spinning and jumping out at her. She lifted her hand from the wall to rub her eyes, thinking she was hallucinating the whole time. With her next step her legs gave out, her only support of the wall was gone, she hit the wall and slid to the floor. Erika was out cold but she could still hear everything, with her fall she knocked down two picture frames from the wall, they shattered to the ground beside her.
    The next half hour is silent, peaceful, this reassures her that she is safe inside her own home. That is until she woke up.
    Erika's eyes shook violently left, down, up, right, left again, struggling to find enough power to open them. At last she gathered all her strength and slowly opened her eyes. She jumped at the startling sight of a boy's eyes about a foot away from her own. Her leap to safety failed when she smacked her forehead against the boy's, "Ouuuuuch!" they murmur simultaneously. Erika fell back to the floor but quickly bolted backwards and sat up to examine the boy. He sat there with a curious look, hands content in his lap, his eyes were a miraculous emerald color with long brown eyelashes, his lips were a soft peachy-tan hue, his long dark brown hair shimmered with bronze and amber highlights, fell over his dreamy eyes, his skin was a sandy tan shade, he was wearing blue jeans, an old, large red t-shirt, and black converse. He turned his head and she could barely see a flash of white, Erika looked closer and noticed his ears were pierced with diamond studs. The boy returned his gaze on Erika, he smiled and his cheeks started to turn a rosy pink, Erika blushed and looked at the ground, she didn't want him to notice. He tilted his head to see her face and lifted her chin towards him, "My names Jared, you can call me Jay if you want." He was smiling from ear to ear, Erika found enough courage to whisper "You...Your so handsome, your  smile, it's the most beautiful thing I've seen in a long time." She was happy she finally met somebody her age, somebody who might finally understand her.
    A few hours past and they just sat there talking, Erika told him what had been happening to her and he said he could help. He stood and held out his hand to help Erika up, then it dawned on him that it would put her through severe pain to put hat much pressure on her burned hand or cut and splintered hand. So he crouched down and picked her up like a baby. She burried her face in his shirt and thanked him, she looked up, gently stroked his hair out of his eyes and kissed him. He stopped, his eyes widened then squinted closed and kissed her back. Just like that they were slammed into the wall by what appeared to be wind. Erika screamed and cried and Jared held her in his lap on the floor, he was shaking and frightend but didn't show it, "It's gunna be alright." he said petting the tangles out of her hair and letting her cry in his chest.
    Three minutes passed while the two were curled up with eachother against the wall, protecting each other. Then Jared sees her hands the burn, the gash, the nasty infection from splinters. Erika gasps at the disgusting sight of herself and tells the boy why they look like that and he stands up with her in his arms and finally carries her to the bathroom to fix her up. She helps him look for tweezers to pull out the microscopic pieces of wood. It took an hour of screaming, crying and apologizing before they were sure all the splinters were gone, but now she was covered in her own blood. They walked out to her backyard to clean up in the pond meaning it was the only water source she had now, to her surprise the pond was the clear and had a nice scent to it although there wasn't any fish in it, it still wasn't the gory bloody koi fish mess she had left there.
    Kneeling on the ground over the pond Erika sways her bloody hand in the pond and scrubs the inside of her wound. She hadn't realized that Jared had left until she heard footsteps coming towards her she briskly dried her hand on her pant leg, seized the hatchet from inside her jacket, and sprung into a battle stance. Jay put his hands up in fear and then they just stood there and giggles about it. She asked curiously where he had disappeared to and he snatched up her hand is his own and pulled out some sort of greenery and stuffed it in the gash, she grimaced in pain and asked what it was and it turned out it was moss. Supposedly it helps heal cuts faster, Erika believed every word he said. "And as for your burn..." Jared reached inside his shirt and pulled out a tiny glass bottle on a cord around his neck, rubbed his hands together until they were warm, uncorked the tiny bottle and poured the orange liquidy content into his hands, clapped and smoothly rubbed the liquid into her burn. She didn't bother to ask what it was because he looked like he knew what he was doing. Then he bent over pulled his big red shirt off from the bottom of his back up over his head, he ripped it in half as if it was paper, entwined her hands in each half, pulled a tin container out of his pocket popped something from it in his mouth moisten it pulled it back out of his mouth split it in two rubbed it into the cloth and pushed on it, this made it stick. This glue like substance turned out to be tobacco.
    Erika didn't know why Jared had tobacco in his pocket when he was the same age as her, 14. This isn't what she was focused on though, sitting there wide-eyed at his chest and torso. It took him a minute to realize she had been staring at him, but it took him longer to realize she had been staring at his cuts, scars, and tattoos. "Prison toughs you up...Real good." He explained the meanings of each tattoo and showed her the ones on his back, he had double lightning bolts on his chest for a violent act against a minority by the wearer, a swastika and S.W.P. inbetween the bolts on his back for supreme white power, a blue spiderweb on his elbow for severely injuring or killing his opponent, 2 black tears under one eye one under the other and a red one under the right corner of his lower lip the two tears represent how many years he was imprisoned the other tear is for the number of lives he's taken and the red one is for a friend who was killed that was part of the gang, a spider on his neck for protecting one of the gang members, on his left shoulder blade there was a line with the same length line underneath and above the lines were 3 dots goings across horizontally for making it to prison, on his forearm there was SO. Cal. for south side with 5 dots in the O for "I will not forget prison", and around his bicep there was a barbed wire for attempting to escape. Erika didn't understand how he had all these tattoos but yet he was so gentle and nice to her. This was something she didn't dare ask Jay although all of this was new to her.