Spark | A Chat Noir Love Story

Chapter | 9 | "We were together. I forget the rest."

 "And this class, is a Moon Jellyfish." The class around me awed as we stared at a 8 feet x 8 feet photo of a pink-blue jellyfish. The museum curator flashed his 100 € smile at my class. Standing proudly before the photograph, he began to explain the life of the curious creature.

"Moon Jellyfish are one of the most common sea jellyfish that we know of today. As you all seem to now already, they are famous for their brilliant composition of color, and their delicate structural integrity..." As he trailed off into the depths of the Moon Jellyfish's behavior patterns, I found myself distracted. Looking around him and at the bottom right hand corner of the enlarged photograph, I spotted a name that I had not seen or used in ages.

"Cedrus..." I whispered. In small white cursive handwriting, the name Cedrus Aspen Beaumont, initialed by the letters C.A.B., held my attention over the large high-definition photograph. While the class stared intently at the stunning image, his name captured my attention. He was, in fact, the one that had taken the picture.

He was a photographer.

He was a marine biologist, fascinated with the wonders of the ocean and continually inspired by what his job brought to the world.

He was especially pleased to make the museum happy with the many specimens he would study and enthrall them with when he returned.

He was the top of his class, and loved by everyone.

He was, my brother.

✯

The bus pulled up to the front of the school and came to a rough stop. The other kids around me were at the noiset they have ever been, and I could see Ms. Mendeleiev running out of patience. Her ears were a bright red and she looked about ready to explode.

"I will not ask you all again to quiet down!" The class begrudgingly sat down, but remained at the peak of its conversation. I kept my head down as Ms. Mendeleiev began a rant at how 'disrespectful' the class was being, and tried to close my eyes to soothe my pounding head.

I had totally forgotten about the field trip today, and I was totally unprepared to visit the Jellyfish Studies Area. That had been quite a rude awakening out of my hope for a day of normality.

Stepping off the bus, I quickly shuffled to my locker. After all, hopefully some coffee would make things better. Twisting open the lock, I quickly stacked the appropriate books inside and pulled out the ones I would need later for studying. As I was about to shut my locker door, I quickly caught sight of a flash of pink in the back of my locker. As I stared at it for a moment, it finally hit me.

"Oh no...." I quickly slammed my locker door shut and spun around, already looking for the fastest way out of the school. The pink calendar in my locker kindly reminded me that today was my turn to pick up Lily from school. With a quick glance at the clock on the wall, I noticed that it was 14:15, or around two-fifteen p.m. Lily's school got out in exactly one hour, at 15:15.

The only problem was, my date- er, my meeting- my meet-up! was at 15:00, fifteen minutes before Lily was due to be out of school. Unless Chat was looking forward to a quick meet-up, I hardly doubted that I would be able to be in two places at once. Lily's school was pretty far off from my school, and it took me a solid twenty-minutes to walk all the way there to get there.

Pushing past those in the hallway who were stopping to talk and discuss the days events, I finally made my way out of school. I quickly jogged down to my apartment, hastily throwing open the door before locking it behind me. Scurrying upstairs, I finally set my stuff down at my desk and ran to my closet, staring at all the outfits before me.