2. Macho Macho Man

I chuckled to myself as I stepped down from the bus and started up my driveway. The trees behind my house were losing their fire-colored leaves and the wind was attacking me - threatening to carry me away. Seriously, I felt like I could fly for a second there. Then the gust died down and I lost all my magical powers. Drats.

So, anyway. I was chuckling. “Time travel. That’d be awesome.” But if it ever did become possible, wouldn’t we have known by now? Someone from the future would’ve come back and visited us throughout history, and since that obviously hadn‘t happened, time travel obviously never becomes possible.

I stepped up the steep, narrow steps of my front porch and opened the old wooden door. It looked like it would shatter any day now, but…well, it hadn’t yet. The same could go for pretty much the rest of the house, really. I mean, this place was old - like, 1700’s old - and probably hadn’t been fixed up since. The paint was chipped, the wood of the front porch was splintered and cracked with crevices as thick as my thumb (which is probably as thick as the average pinky), and the planks creaked and sank beneath my feet whenever I took a step. 

Appearances were better on the inside - nothing was chipped or cracked - but the floor still sunk and groaned at every step I took. So my feet stepped lightly through the threshold and my hands carefully closed the door behind me, using some force to shut it all the way. I then lifted my backpack from my shoulder and lowered it to the ground, kicking my shoes off beside it. Now, there was something I wanted to do when I got here, I thought.

“Couldn’t have been homework,” mumbled my Captain-Obvious-alter ego. My lips curled in a sheepish grin, my eyebrows slowly narrowing into a shallow V. “What was it I wanted to do, though - Oh! Youtube! Duh!” The railings of the staircase to the far left of the living room (the living room being the open quarter to the direct left of the front door) vibrated at this outburst, and shook evermore at another:

“Quisnam illic est?” shouted a voice I’d never heard before.

My eyebrows went back to their V. “…Parker?” I called. Maybe he was home instead of at work? And trying to learn Spanish on the computer? And…shouting it? With a very non-American accent? 

Yeah, that didn’t seem very likely to me, either. 

With stampede-like-sounding stomps I quick-footedly jogged up the staircase, the floor-boards outright wailing in agony and screaming for mercy as I went. Just across the hallway at the wall opposite of the staircase was the oak door to Geneene and Parker’s room, open just a crack. Even though I knew deep down I wouldn’t find anyone in there, I peeked inside anyway.

Queen-sized bed - still made. Teeny bookshelf at the corner. Pretty off-white curtains over the window. Clear vanity. Desk. The desk wasn’t anything much. It was just a little table with a drawer, really. And a computer, which was off, and that was really all I wanted to check.

“…Maybe it was the TV,” I murmured, only to realize that if it were the TV, I would’ve still heard it. “…It spasmed, on and off. Because they could do that, right?” I was good with science and technology. I’d know if something like this was possible, usually. But for some reason, that moment had me thinking and saying the most stupid, scientifically impossible things. I later looked back at this memory and wished for that knee-cap-shooting nail-gun I mentioned earlier.

With the corners of my mouth turned down at Muppet-like angles, I closed the door to my parents’ room and turned to the right, down the hallway and to my own room. I don’t know why - I don’t think I knew then, either - but for some reason I felt the need to be very stealthy. Pressing myself against the wall in a very spy-like action, I shuffled my way down the hallway until I reached my own oak door, slowly twisting the knob and pushing around the hinges.

If my house weren’t 300 years old, the door might not have moaned obnoxiously, and he might not have heard. Before I could even look inside, I heard and felt a harsh thud against the door, and the wood cracked slightly. “Whoa, what the hell?” I shouted.

Then the voice said more. I couldn’t understand a word, though; the accent was too weird, and he spoke too quickly. His voice was a low and rumbling kind - the kind you’d expect to find within the throat of a large football player with all muscle and no brains. But no, I suppose that’s not the best description - he didn’t sound like an idiot, his voice was just that low. To me he sounded more like a priest. …A very nervous priest, doubting his safety and chanting a quick-tongued prayer to God above for protection. So this guy behind my door, whoever he was, was a scared foreigner.

 Maybe I should be nice, I thought at 100 MPH. But then another thought immediately shoved that one back to its corner: No, but why should he be afraid? HE’S the stranger in MY house - not the other way around!

“Okay, okay, stop, stop - stop!” I yelled over his mumbles, “Slow down!” 

There was a pause. And then, “Ego rumex sum…vix sum…” The words slipped out slowly enough for me to hear and remember them. At that moment, all I concluded was that this was not Spanish. As far as I knew, “ego” meant “I” in Latin. …But who in the world spoke Latin nowadays besides priests?

I sighed, hand gripping my doorknob harder than what I would’ve liked. “Okay. You’re in my room. I’m going to come in now, so whatever it was you threw at the door before…just don’t do that again.” So what if he didn’t know English? Maybe he would recognize some cognates and know what I was saying, or hear in my tone of voice that I wasn’t going to strangle him with the telephone wire in my room, and so feel a little reassured. Who knew?

This said, I pushed open the door slowly - painstakingly. I figured that even he grew impatient when I felt it open suddenly without any resistance. When I saw him on the other side with his hand on the knob, I figured he had something to do with it.

Actually, now that I think about it, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to figure anything - my mind went completely blank. Like, I used to have stuff in there, like blood, veins, and a brain, but now there was nothing but air and maybe a happy hyperactive monkey with cymbals. 

I was staring. I knew it wasn’t nice to stare at people who were different, and I usually didn’t do things like that, but this guy wasn’t simply different - he was just all-out out there. I couldn’t help it. I mean, usually when people wanted to be different and non-conformist, they’d dress like Zeke; they didn’t dress like…this guy. This guy who stood a good foot taller than me, with muscles larger than my face, and wore nothing but a lion-cloth around his lower half, leather sandals, and a gold locket-like necklace around his neck.

“Ego, uh, mea induviae per meum iter itineris perdita erant,” he mumbled, lowering his gaze.

To this I responded with something intelligent like, “…Uh?”

He then looked back up at me, his large brown eyes locking with mine. His head, however, remained lowered, and I detected a hint of pink beneath the filth on his face. What, was he embarrassed? …Well, I supposed I would be, too, if I were mostly naked and caught nosing around in someone’s bedroom.

I coughed. “So,” I began in as lighthearted a tone I could muster, “who are you and what are you doing in my room?”

“…Ego rumex sum. Ego operor ignoro quis vos es sententia.”

I stared at him for a few seconds more. “…Yeah, sorry, I have no idea what you just said.”

He sighed through his nose, looking up at the ceiling as he ran his dirt-coated fingers through the dark-brown curly locks of his hair.

“Alright,” I told myself, staring off into nothing, “Okay, let’s try and start with something simple. It worked with Tarzan and Jane, right? ‘I’m Jane, you’re Tarzan?’” My eyes focused back on the macho-Tarzan before me, and he stared me down with a raised eyebrow. I grimaced. “Okay,” I murmured.

“Ego etiam operor non agnosco quis vos narro.”

“Still don’t know what you’re saying,” I replied, “Anyway!” I pointed at myself in a slow exaggerated motion. “I am Jasmine.” I pointed at him and started him off with, “You are…?”

His eyebrows narrowed, and a slight smile played across his lips. “Ego memor is,” he whispered. With a low rumble of a chuckle he pointed to himself. “You are Amadeus.”

Wow, he was fast! I laughed in a baffled response. English sounded so strange coming from him! He mimicked it so perfectly it was weird! I mean, who cared if his grammar was a little bit off - it was better than what Tarzan did on his first try! “Close enough!" I exclaimed, "Not bad, though, Amadeus.”

With a brow clear of  curious wrinkles he smiled sheepishly, and I knew that if I were any other girl I would’ve melted at this point. But I didn’t. I was not so easily won.