Two: Carmella

*I know all your dirty little secrets. But you also know mine*

I was always taught to never start the beginning of a passage with my name. I'm going to stand by that teaching and proceed with the following factoids. My name is Carmella Adelaide Velazquez, although the school system of Melody Hills High School has me in their records as simply "Carmella Velazquez." When I was born, my mother was weak, and very, very young. She'd been so weak and so young, that as her last breath left her, she whispered a single word in my ear. I think that, sadly, it was the only word she could have said at the moment of her impending doom.

"Fighter."

That moment, I was pried from her cold, dead fingers and dropped into a basket. Even with newborn eyes, I could still pick everything out. The ridiculously huge people in the room scattered around me. The even more ridiculously smaller babies to my side and about me, who cried at the top of their day old lungs. I hated it. And I wanted to get out so bad, but I couldn't; because I was weak. And from that moment forward, as my intelligent baby brain sparked and turned at the wonderful plan, I registered that one word that always whispers in the back of my mind whenever I felt weak.

Fighter.

I, Carmella Adelaide Velazquez, was going to be a fighter. And a fighter I became indeed. 

-_*_- 

When I was two, my father left the city of Raleigh, NC to live in Melody Hills, just beyond the coastal plains of North Carolina. He'd packed up his old junkyard Beetle Volkswagen BMW circa 1974 with the vintage red coating and vinyl seating, the tiny German Shepard puppy named Nomi, and a single, diaper clad toddler with paisley printed pajamas and a ratty old blanket.

To this day, I still don't understand why he didn't just throw that scrap of crap fabric in the trash. He'd always put it off, saying one day he'd tell me. I always figured it was something important and/or special since I'd always felt attached to it. There were nights when it sat in the corner, collecting dust for hours and then collecting more dust the next night. Then there were nights where I felt weak, like I wasn't the fighter I vowed to be, and washed the dust from it, holding it tight to my chest while I slept that night, dreaming of a woman with long brown hair and multi-colored eyes. Papa always said it was because mom had eyes like that. They would change color depending on her mood, the sun or light hitting them at a certain time of day, even the temperature. He always told me that the day I was born, I look straight into my mother's eyes and a single spark flew between us, like two people were separated from each other only to be connected tightly in the soul the instant we became two different identities.

I don't know anymore. Papa never told me to throw out the ratty thing. I never took the initiative either. It just sat in my room, collecting dust or sleeping by my pillow. It never went away, so I never got rid of it.

When I was four, I sat in pre-kindergarten with pigtails placed at the top of my head and a giant 64 pack of Crayola brand crayons with the coveted sharpener in the back of the box. Needless to say, I was the highlight of Pre-K that year. In my Cookie Monster backpack was a stack of Dr. Seuss books I'd been reading all summer, because thanks to my dad, I needed to be the biggest over-achiever in Pre-K. While I was the life of the party in Mrs. Atherby's preschool class, I was also the weirdest kid to ever walk the halls of the Melody Hills School Plantation.

Instead of playing outside with the other kids, swinging on swings until I could swear I touched the sky, I opted for the cool, stale air of books and laminated wooden desks of the school library. Instead of learning ABCs like the rest of my classmates, I was working on my adding and writing skills in the corner, pretending like I wasn't in school, but in my house with Papa, learning multiplication and whatnot.

In other words, I was the overachiever of Melody Hills, NC.

In the second grade, I was the only kid in class who was turning five, while the rest were turning six and seven. I had skipped a grade and I had no clue why my classmates were twice my height (Okay, maybe that last one was an exaggeration. Yes, they were indeed taller than me, but no, they were not twice my height. They just look like they were). It was quite a knockout for worst periods of my life. That's where I met Kaden Clyde. 

-_*_- 

Kaden Clyde, at the time of second grade, had been a scrawny little thing. He was five inches taller than most kids in our grade, and wore big, round bifocal spectacles that covered half his face. His arms were long and bony, and the same for his legs. He was also smart, but not smarter than me. Unlike me, he was in the right grade. While I was turning five in second grade, he was turning six.

The day I met Kaden Clyde, we became best friends. It was also the day I first kicked Meyer Gotherman's a*s. This single debacle of second grade was simply the beginning of a long chain of events that led to catastrophic lab explosions, cars burning in the parking lot, several broken body parts, and eventually, the murders of the Melody Hills High students.

Meyer Gotherman was a short, stocky kid with gold-blonde hair and puke green eyes. And while most argued that his eyes were actually moss green, I stood by my statement of his eyes. They were the color of green stomach fluids returned to the surface and they were going to stay that way. He was a stereotypical Sears catalog kid with khaki pants and polo shirts. This also marked the beginning of his crap fashion trend which also led to his mediocre tennis career at Melody Hills.

Meyer Gotherman had a habit of spreading his tennis credentials all over town, rubbing them in everyone's faces. Most of us rolled our eyes; the rest surrounded him with glassy-eyed admiration. He also had a habit of picking on the weak. Every day it was someone different, always a different punishment for making Meyer Gotherman feel like a fool. There were plenty of us that made a fool of him. He just never found out about the majority.

Kaden Clyde was of that majority, until he suddenly got a case of word vomit.

"Hey, take that back!"

"Why should I," Kaden screamed back. "I'm not the one who went to first grade twice 'cause I couldn't read." Kaden was feisty, that much I knew. I also knew the definition of "feisty." Despite his scrawny appearance, dorky attitude and shy voice, he was a monster waiting to happen. Still, no one could save him from the wrath of Meyer Gotherman's raging face ramification appointment. These meetings were always sporadic, never put into a special appointment book. They just happened, whenever they need happen. It seemed, that day that Kaden was spontaneously set up for a meeting with the plastic surgeon. If I looked back on it now, Meyer Gotherman wasn't a very good plastic surgeon.

Kaden was pushed to the ground within seconds. At the time he'd been awkward and gangly limbs, so as he touched the ground with his body, he reached a position that made him look like he was playing Twister with himself. I cringed at the angle of his ankle. Even then, I knew what a broken joint looked like.

"You're gonna take that back, Kaden Clyde!" Did I also mention Meyer Gotherman had a disgustingly annoying habit of spouting a person's full name while he was in one of his blind white rages? No? Well, yeah, he kind of has that habit, too.

He brought his boots down on Kaden's stomach. That's when I snapped.

"Leave him alone, Meyer Gotherman!"

He turned around to stare at me. Even his raging glares didn't scare me. Nothing Meyer Gotherman did scared me.

"What did ya say, Carmella?"

I huffed and crossed my arms over my chest. "I said," my voice spat, "leave him alone."

"Or what," he seethed. I smiled. And at the tender age of five, I lifted my tiny fist, and socked him in the nose.

"Or I do that."

Kaden Clyde wore a cast for four months. Meyer Gotherman got thirteen stitches in his nose. I got suspended. It wasn't a big deal. 

-_*_- 

Years passed. I slacked in my work, yet always managed to pull through with straight As. Kaden never understood this. Neither did I. We managed. We dealt. Especially him; I always did his homework.

In fourth grade, Kaden and I shared the same class, sitting in the back of the room, throwing wads of paper at each other. We got sent to the principal a lot that year.

In seventh grade, I discovered my pyromaniac tendencies. To test my urges out, I snuck out of third period computers class with a wary Kaden at my side and a box of matches in my back pocket. We snuck into the woods between the school and the field. I lit a match. The woods blew up in flames. I got suspended for a month. Kaden got detention. It was awesome.

In eighth grade, Kaden and I egged Mr. Matthew's car for failing us in class the semester before because we were late in the door once. We were too busy throwing eggs to notice the school security guard standing behind us. We got cuffed. Two weeks suspension was our punishment. Kaden glared at me for hours. I laughed. It was a good year.

In tenth grade, I nearly blew up the science hall during Chemistry I. I mixed the wrong chemicals when Kaden told me not to. I didn't listen. I washed soot and chemicals out of my hair for days. I got suspended for a week. Kaden got detention. The teacher quit. The principal didn't know what to do with me. My dad? He just laughed. All in all, Kaden and I were becoming very good at causing trouble. Or more, I was becoming good at causing trouble. Kaden was just good at being the innocent bystander blamed for all of it.

It was a weird friendship. Neither of us minded. We were good. It was really all we needed. 

-_*_- 

I could see from three blocks down (even with all the trees in my way) that there was something big going on. There were news vans parked several streets down from the school due to limited space in Melody Hills and reporters walking in cheap heels and expensive haircuts from the 90s. Students were crowding around the school quad of our average sized school. Kaden was amongst them, hiding in a sea of tears and quivers and bad death jokes. Ha, the Biebs probably died from a heart attack, finding out he was gay and all...

I raced down the sidewalk to Kaden, weaving through administrators and students. The reporters didn't dare go anywhere near me as I knocked over a couple of reckless freshmen. They yelled at me, but they got my finger in return as I skidded to a stop in front of my best friend.

Kaden had definitely gotten bigger, and filled out more. He was no longer the scrawny six-year old with big spectacles on his face and a crazy height chart. Yes, my friend was still twice my height (and yes, I do still exaggerate his height because I am still freakishly short and he just keeps growing extra inches), but he had reached an all new high in body structure.

His muscles had come in eighth grade, lanky and lean. Then as summer rolled around, he'd begun working at his grandfather's farm, rebuilding old barns and milking cows. He hated that entire summer, but he couldn't deny that he'd gained a lot. To put it in simpler terms, he was this big, hulking teenage boy with sweet abs and an even sweeter personality. His skin was mocha latte brown and smooth with no blemishes. His teeth were so white; they looked like they'd been dropped in bleach. Oh, and there was also the fact that he was also very, very, very gay. Though he still acted like a straight man, he had is flaming moments of homosexuality.

Today wasn't one of those days where he spontaneously burst into flames. He was quiet when I reached him, but he still acknowledged me. How could he not, when my skateboard came wheeling down the pavement like that. My skirt billowed in the wind, the lavender flowery print coordinating with his purple tee. We did that sometimes, coordinated without even knowing.

"Hey, Mushu, what's up?" I smiled at him, but he didn't really say anything. He just kept looking at me. I don't think he noticed the way his mouth gaped and closed like a fish.

Mushu. I remember the story so well. We'd been eight and nine respectively, sitting in my living room, when I pulled out my Disney Princesses movie collection. He'd scowled at me and refused to watch any. I'd begged and begged, telling him that it was my childhood at risk, to not fully engage in the joy of the Disney Princess stage would ruin all my normality. He'd finally agreed to watch only one: Mulan. Why? Because he thought the dragon was cool. Since then, I called him Mushu and nothing else.

He gave me a fake smile. But I saw right through his lovely bullshit. I called his bluffs too much. He never understood how I did it. Never understood how I always knew he was lying. I didn't either, but hey, it was funny. I threw my hands on my hips and gave him a stern gaze of annoyance. I sighed.

"Ok, who died," I asked.

If only I knew.