Valid: Chapter 1

George gets a blast from the past, and one from the future.

Chapter 1: Helena of Troy, that other crazy chick, and the puke that ended up on my pants

I looked at her face, it was so beautiful, and beautiful was an understatement. I knew the story of Helena of Troy, a story of the world’s most beautiful woman, her feuding lovers, and a war started for her, but even the famous Helena was nothing compared to her. Or maybe she was the reincarnated Helena of Troy. She was angel-like, and maybe World War 3 would be started over her.

          She had long, brown hair, but it wasn’t like hair you usually see, it was like silk, and fell perfectly. Her eyes were a dark brown color, and were round, they were like the bottom of a Hershey’s * Kiss. Her skin was tan and flawless, her cheeks were peachy and glowing. Her mouth was in a small, shy, smile, I immediately liked that smile.  She was wearing a short purple dress, and silver hoop earrings. She radiated warmth and kindness, I wanted to feel that warmth, and I wondered if my mouth was hanging open. I said to myself as I saw her, thinking of Helena of Troy, “I would start a war for her, anything for her.”

          I was suddenly glad I went to that previously stupid party with Ron that Friday night. I usually hated parties, being a self-declared wallflower, but not society- declared wallflower was strange. Unfortunately, lots of people paid me a lot of attention that night, when all I wanted to do was watch that Girl. So I just avoided large groups of people, and kept my eyes locked on that Girl.

          I wanted to know about her, I wanted to know what her favorite song was so I could sing it to her. A person’s favorite song revels a lot about themselves, especially with girls, few people just chose a song because it sounds nice, they also choose it because the lyrics mean something to them, sometimes a song explains everything a person wishes they could say, but can’t, I know how that feels. I wanted to know what her favorite food was, so I could make it for her, and epically fail at that, but just know that I was doing it for her. I wanted to know her Best Friend, her Mother, her whole family; I wanted to know everything about her. I wanted to know her power. And I wanted to be something about her.

As I was watching that Girl, a tiny girl ran straight into my chest, even though she was tiny it hurt, so I guess she was sprinting purposely into me. Memories of the time I saw her cutting, cutting my name into her flesh, a sight that reminds me of how truly twisted a human can be.

“Oh, George, I didn’t see you there,” she said in a voice sounding like Paris Hilton almost, “I was trying to get to that cute Asian guy over there.”

“I hope I’m not keeping you from him, excuse me,” I said, trying to move around her.

“Wait, wait, wait. Since we just bumped into each other, like the fate or destiny, like it was meant to happen. How do you think I look?” she asked, touching my arm.

If that was destiny to have Marinette Lydia Crone, smash into me at a party, someone up there must really hate me. She was wearing a super short, super tight, white dress that looked like it was meant for a toddler to wear “Okay,” I answered simply.

“You always were a man of few words, George, what have you been doing?” she asked.

“Not a lot,” I answered.

“Not a lot since we broke up, or did we even break up? Or are we just on a break. Because I think we’ve been on a long enough break.” She said, getting closer to my face.

“I don’t like to think that we ever dated,” I said, turning, and trying to stay away from her snake-like eyes.

“Is that because it’s too painful to live without me, or should I say us? We were so perfect together, so pure, so fantastic, so vivid, my magic was never stronger,” she said, stroking my face with her cold hands.

“No. I think its better, I’m sorry if I hurt you. I just wish we could be friends,” I said, closing my eyes.

                        “Friends? George, we were meant to be together. We were meant to become one,” she said, clasping her fragile hands with the long, pointy nails  together in front of my face, I could smell her breath, it smelled like bleach, “Don’t you love me?”

          “Not like that,” I said, wondering where the bleach came from.

“I’m the only one who knows you, I know your soul. Just kiss me, KISS ME!”  she said, closing her eyes and puffing out her lips.

I wanted to scream at her to leave me alone; I didn’t want to always be scared of saying the wrong thing, and tipping Marinette off her delicate mental balance. “Marinette, not now,” I whispered.

“Then when? I’ll wait my whole life for you,” she said as she finally walked off.

“Oh god,” I repeated over and over as I rubbed my head. How could she say that she was waiting for me, when she dated just about any guy she could pointy nailed, bleach smelling, twisted, obsessive self with? When we first started dating, months and months ago, she had regular blondish brown hair, clean, short nails, she smelled like cucumber, she was pretty. She always smiled, and she laughed at almost everything, I thought it was cute at the beginning. I didn’t know a lot about her when she asked me out, but I just told myself that I would learn about her as we dated, so I said yes. For the first few days, it was okay. Then she started following me around, and it just got worse from there. When I finally ended it with her, she gave me these suicidal poems, and it really freaked me out. Then a few days later, she invited me over to her house, saying she wanted to apologize for the poems, when I got there, I found her in her room, cutting my name into her arm.

I kept rubbing my forehead until I heard a female voice that sounded musical almost like a bird’s, “Marinette can be a bit intense.”

 I uncovered my eyes to find Hershey Kiss eyes looking right into mine. But not only were they brown, they had gold and green flecks in them too. And they sparkled like fireworks. I stared into them for what must have been a long time, because she asked me if I was okay.

“Yes, yes, terrific,” I stuttered.

“Good,” she said, “Did Marinette do something, well, something that Marinette would do?”

“Yes, she’s my ex,” I mumbled wishing we weren’t talking about Marinette.

“We all make mistakes, I know I do, we all have skeletons in our closets. I think Marinette likes being a skeleton though,” she said, giving me a shy smile.     

I didn’t know what to say, so I just gave her a smile too, the one I think looks crooked. Then I said, “So what’s your ability?”

At Beet High School, we call our superpowers, our “abilities.” That’s how our teachers told us to call them since preschool, so we do it out of habit.

“I have supersonic screech, I call it banshee scream, and really strong instincts,” she said, “Sadly, my instincts can get really blurred; people blame it on my age.”

“I have kind of the stereotypical superhero power, when someone needs to be saved, I have to help them, in any way I can. It’s uncontrollable, it gives me things like super speed, when I need it,” I said, trying to show off.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked.

I blushed and asked, “Why?” attempting to be cool and leaning up against the wall.

“Because with a power like that, you’d think you’d always be dating girls to save them for whatever reasons,” she said.

That only happened once and it was with Marinette, I almost went out with Marinette a second time because she was in a very bad place a few weeks ago, but I just decided to keep an extra large distance from her instead of telling her I really didn’t want to be her boyfriend. “Anything you need saving from?” I asked.

“Yes, but what’s your name, superhero?” she asked.

“George,” I said.

“Dani,” she returned.

That was all she had to say, life stood completely still the second the name “Dani” came out of her mouth. All I could think about was getting her name tattooed on my arm, and spending the rest of my life with her. Superheroes were known for being shallow, and only caring about fame and fortune, but that’s because Superheroes spend a lot of time saving regular humans, so having love relationships with them was hard. But to our own kind, we can love better than regular humans, because we have powers, not just emotions. Everything about us is stronger and more powerful, our brains, our bodies, our love, even our sadness and hatred. So I guess in some ways we’re luckier and less lucky than regular people.

          Dani and I kept talking for a long time after that, about random things like teachers and music, sadly Marinette came up in conversation again.

          “What’s Marinette’s ability?” she asked, when you know someone’s ability, it’s a lot easier to understand someone.

          “She can contort her body in strange ways, but she likes to believe she can control weather and the future and stuff like that. She can’t, at least it hasn’t been proven,” I answered, wanting to change the subject.

          “What happened between you two? If you don’t want to tell me, that it’s okay,” she said, clearly trying to not be pushy like the girl she was talking about.

          “It was just a mistake from the very beginning,” I said, trying to sum up the horrors of that relationship best I could.

          “I know how that is,” she said.

          I wondered why we both got so general and impersonal suddenly. We were leaving out so much, it made me sad for some reason. Before she had been so open, and she shared stories, even ones that were embarrassing, she still shared them, making it less awkward by making jokes about them and laughing. I tried to not talk about myself at all, I always thought I was a boring person, and I would make her immediately get bored talking to me, so I listened to her, and made jokes occasionally. She laughed at all of them, even the immature ones.

          “Why don’t you tell me something about yourself?” Dani asked.

          “No, thank you,” I said, trying not to meet her gaze.

          “Why not?” she asked, she seemed upset about me being so aloof.

          “I’m pretty boring, not a lot happens in my life,” I said, “I make sure to always turn in my homework. Sure sign of having a boring life.”

          My self-decrapating humour, never really bothered anyone else, but it irritated Dani.

          “Why would you say that?” she demanded.

          “It’s the truth,” I answered, I said casting my eyes down, trying not to look at her, but that was hard because she was at least a foot shorter than me.

          I was hoping that I wasn’t pissing her off too much because of my complete lack of self confidence. Truthfully, I kind of liked that she thought I was interesting enough and worth enough to argue about me being boring or not. But I pretty much just appreciated her communicating with me at all.

          “Do not say that!” she said, “don’t believe that for a second. You are a Super Hero for god’s sake. Act like one. Maybe you need to save yourself.”

          I don’t usually think of myself as a Super hero, people always expect us to be heroes in the most obvious way. The kind of hero who saves babies from burning buildings and returns purses to old ladies, but that never seemed like me.

          I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to be, so saying I didn’t want the gadgets, the cape, and the whole nine yards, would seem premature to most people. I was more interested in working behind the scenes, maybe making the gadgets for the A-list Super heroes. That would seem like wasting my gift to most people. And I had a hard time letting people down.

          “So what else have you decided about me, Dani?” I asked, with a sudden air of what seemed almost like me being charming.

          “You are smart, funny, and interesting. No matter what you say. Because I’ve been told that I have very good instincts,” she said, moving her face closer to mine.

          She smelled like cinnamon and citrus fruits. I think I started to move my face closer to hers when a loud voice interrupted us.

          “Hey Dani Mani, and you,” the skinny boy said pointing to me.

          “This is my boyfriend Jay, George,” Dani said, barely audible.

          “You forgot to add sexy to that,” Jay said, smelling like beer, “I’m Dani’s sexy Boyfriend.”

          “Pleasure to meet you,” I said mumbling, trying to sound smarter than Dani’s gorilla of a boyfriend.

          “See Dani, I pleasure people even without even touching them, I’m sexy,” Jay yelled, as he yelled he was also pulling Dani’s hair.     

          “Yeah,” Dani and I said at the exact same time.

I turned from Jay and looked her straight in her big eyes, and she was doing the same. I finally understood what “my heart jumped out of my throat” felt like. But it wasn’t like I was scared, it was that I had so much I wanted to say to that sweet Girl. I wanted to tell her that she should break up with her stupid boyfriend. I wanted to tell her that I would be the best boyfriend that ever existed. I wanted her to understand, and I wanted her to feel the same. But I kept quiet as I usually do.

          Then Jay threw up on me. But that wasn’t the worst, the worst was when Dani helped drunken Jay to the bathroom, and left me standing there with puke on my clothes.

          And once again, I hated that party.

Author's Note

Tell me what you think, and I'll post more chapters.