Marionette

Chapter 6: Mac

     "Do I have to?"

     "Posy," her mom said, giving her a stern look. "Of course you have to. it would be rude otherwise."

     She knew it would be, but if there was a way out, Posy would take it. Under any other circumstances, having dinner with a world famous rockstar and her favourite poet would have been awesome: she could bombard them with questions and be friends and maybe even get some advice. But I ruined it. I told her who Mac was, and now she had to pretend she didn't know. I told her one of them was her soulmate, and now she had to figure it out. And because I'm evil, she'd probably have to break one of their hearts before the end of the book!

     Of course, having an evil puppet master control your destiny was not an excuse that would play well with her mom, so Posy went with her family to dinner at the Wilsons's.

     Dinner started off okay. Gus and Mac kept trying to start conversations with her, but Jamie would be the one to speak with them. They seemed to like him, too. And after it was over, the adults stayed and talked and the boys went to play video games. Posy excused herself and escaped to her barn. 

     The days were long so the sun was still going down. Posy leaned against the warm wooden side and soaked it in. Then, using the last of the day's light, she took out her notebook and began working on her poetry.

     It was there that Mac found her.

     "Watcha doin'?" he asked.

     Posy froze. There was no way she'd tell this handsome, young, world-renowned poet that she was writing poetry. No. Way.

      "Writing," Posy said quickly.

     What the heck? Posy cursed herself silently. That was the best she could come up with on the spot? That was stupid! Because naturally, his follow-up question would be

     "What are you writing?"

     Posy sighed, letting her shoulders slump in defeat. "Poetry."

     "You write poetry?" Mac asked as he took a seat beside her. "Me too! Don't worry, I won't ask to read it. I know how personal poetry can be."

     He said it as if complete strangers around the world didn't read his poetry every day. Posy didn't know what to think about that. 

     "You can read this one," she said, offering him her notebook. "It's just a limerick."

     "You're sure?"

     She nodded, so he took the notebook and read it out loud.

Though I'm not one for singing

I must be entertaining

If I'm not

I'll die and rot

A marionette without stringing.

     Mac looked up at her with an eyebrow raised. "Well it certainly makes an impact," he said, handing back the notebook.

     "Thanks," Posy said, looking at it again, trying to see how he saw it. "Do you think 'stringing' was a bit of a stretch?"

     "Well it's a word, if that's what you mean."

     It wasn't, but Posy let it go.

     "Wow," Mac said, looking at the sunset. It was at the colourful part, before everything went blue again. The skye was a rainbow above the fields and the sun was just behind the mountains. "My parents chose a great location. Does every sunset look like this?"

     Posy couldn't help but smile.

     "In the summer it does," Posy told him. "When the skies are clear. You should see it when there are big clouds and it's raining just enough to be called rain. The light hits the clouds and they go bright orange even when the sky is still blue, and the water throws light everywhere so it looks like everything's glowing, and there'll be a rainbow or two. It usually happens in the summer. It's amazing. The sky looks like a painting."

     Posy was suddenly aware that Mac had looked away from the beautiful sunset and was looking at her.

     "I can see it already," he said.

     Posy met his gaze. It would be so easy, she thought, to just lean forward and close the distance between their lips. They sat against the sun-warmed wood of the barn, the wheat rippling across the flat fields that stretched in front of them for miles until they hit the mountains, so majestic as they stood tall, holding back the sun to welcome the night. It would be a perfect setting for her first kiss.

     Don't do it, Posy. Not yet.

     Posy froze, hearing my words. She had forgotten again. Mac had no idea, but she had just been ripped from the safety of suspended disbelief and into the plane of mutual reality. Mac was nothing but a potential love interest, Posy a protagonist, and the sunset nothing but words on a poetic page.