Hunting the Fairy Tale

Chapter 86 - The Birds

Declan

"Wanna get some coffee and call Ro?" I ask Tanner.

We've been silent for a while, listening to me brother and Candice sleeping. It's not much to listen to, and I'm starting to feel sleepy meself. Tomorrow night, I have to be wide awake until at least dawn, making sure the gobdaws I go to school with don't get out of hand and do stupid things... Stupider things than usual.

Why the hell did they make me head boy or even a member of the student council?! I want to be one of the feckers acting the maggot on the beach until dawn, not the one looking after the muppets!

I really want to go to sleep now, which proves that I'm getting old; it's not even late yet! Problem is, I don't want Tan to leave, but he is clearly not planning on staying over. He'd already cleaned up the carpet area twice, a sure sign that he's about to say goodbye, and I'm running out of ways to stall him.

He is not really showing what he's feeling, as usual, but I want to talk about the awful things Candy said to him and that statement he made about being garbage and not wanting to be garbage anymore. He seems to be at some kind of crossroads in life and needs someone to nudge him onto the right branch. If we don't talk about it, he is going to take the wrong one and just keep on believing that he's not worth anything.

It's important to grab this opportunity now while he's going through this mental wrestling match he seems to be having, but I'm not sure how to get him to talk about it. Tan is not big on sharing his feelings or talking about what he has on his mind, which is part of the reason why he always ends up in hot water. He tends to bury things and let them fester and eat him alive from the inside.

He nods and gets to his feet, bringing an armload of garbage with him and I follow him from the room, closing the door behind us.

In the kitchen, Tanner dumps the snack wrappers and empty cans in the appropriate bins and dutifully takes up the task of making our coffee. I'm always told that I make savage coffee, and it's probably true - I sure like it - but it's a nice treat to have someone make me some for a change, and Tan's coffee-making skills fall in the same category as his cooking skills.

I dial Ronan's number and put the phone on speaker, placing it in a convenient position on the kitchen table. While it rings, I find us a couple of mugs.

"What's up, Dex?!" Ronan's cheerful voice finally stops the ringing that was heading towards voicemail territory.

"Howya, Ro." I can barely hear the lad speaking; deafening music is blaring from the phone, competing with the sounds of screaming and laughter.

"Where the hell are you?" Tanner frowns, and Ronan tries to answer, but when we keep asking him to repeat himself, he tells us to hang on for a bit, which we do. After a few seconds, there are squeaks and bangs coming from the phone, conjuring up images of Ronan crawling into a rusted bucket and closing the lid, and then the noise becomes slightly muffled, with the emphasis on slightly.

"I'm at Thunder Ridge High. They're having their pre-exam bash, and it's turned into a weird-ass version of La Tomatina or something, except they're using figs..."

"Figs?!" Tan and I share an amused look.

"Yeah, over-ripe ones. It's kinda gross and really sticky," Ronan laughs.

"What is La Tomatina?" Tan wants to know, trying to picture Ronan's experience but not having the reference material he needs to do so.

"A food fight festival in Buñol in Spain, where people throw tomatoes at each other for about an hour," I explain. Ro and I watched a movie a while ago that had a scene based on that festival.