A Symphony in Shorts

Save Me! [Part 2]

Present day . . .

"Look! A penny!" Heather Reynolds, my cheer leading friend, screeched. She launched herself at it at the same time Brooke did. They smashed heads and crashed to the ground.

"My brain!" Brooke cried. She rubbed her head.

"The penny's mine!" Heather followed her statement with a taunting laugh as she shook the penny in Brooke's face. I laughed as I pulled them off the ground.

"You two have issues," I informed.

When we were kids and my mom drove us around town, she would always have the catholic radio on, and one day it started stating common beliefs about guardian angels. One particular one caught our attention, or at least mine. They said that when you find a penny, it's a sign that your guardian angel missed you. Heather and I still believe it, but obviously, Brooke dismissed the idea as nonsense.

"I just wanted the penny. The last time I found pocket change was like three years ago," Brooke moaned. She took a picture of her head with her ever present camera and studied the picture. Brooke now went to the School of Arts. She was specializing in photography.

"Face it; you're just jealous that Bacon sent me three pennies this week. My guardian angel loves me!" Heather chirped. She dramatically kissed the penny and shoved it in her pocket.

"Shut up!" Brooke exclaimed. She almost chucked her two thousand dollar camera at her, but she thought better of it and threw her shoe instead. Heather caught the shoe effortlessly and dangled it over a sewer drain. Brooke tackled her to the ground.

"Moving on," Heather laughed, thrusting Brooke off of her. "Tell us about your budding relationship with Ham!"

"Who's Ham?" I asked.

Brooke fake gagged. "You don't know who Ham is?" She shot a look of disgust at Heather, made a hasty good-bye to me, and stormed off to the upper-middle class neighborhood in which she lived. Heather gave me an apologetic smile then chased after her, yelling her apologies the whole way.

I caught the words, "stupid", "clueless", and "not trustworthy" from Brooke. And Heather choked out a few sentences that sounded like "I'm so SORRY!!!", "I FORGOT!!!" and "But at least she knows about Ham now, right?" I would have laughed if I didn't feel so bad.

I trudged home, feeling awful for starting another fight between my two best friends.

At home, I crept upstairs to my bedroom. Clothes were thrown on the ground and vases and pottery were tipped over, threatening to fall and shatter. In the middle of it all was my younger brother, Turner, who was ripping through my closet and tossing things behind him while he searched for whatever it was that he was looking for. As if sensing my presence, he slowly turned around with pure terror in his eyes.

"Oh, uh, Raizel. I didn't know you were home. I was going to put everything back before you got here, I swear!"

And with those two simple sentences, my fury burst from me in a flood of words I totally didn't mean to say.

"Mom!" Turner screamed when I hurled my one-of-a-kind ceramic vase at him. My mom flew into the room, dodging another vase that was aimed at Turner's head (but as you can see, I'm not a very good shot). "Raizel was cussing me out!"

Mom pulled Turner into his bedroom and condemned me to an hour of being grounded to my messed up room.

I flopped onto my bed and started on my homework, disregarding the untidiness. After about fifteen minutes, I got tired of doing that, so I stared out the window. I had a beautiful view of the sea from my window. The water lapped at the sand and filled the air with salty freshness and peaceful calm. The water make me think of those beautiful pictures of water animals. The mindless fish darting from left to right, the fat whales living in symbiosis with the clusters of barnacles, and the kelp planted firmly to their rocks. Those pictures always made me jealous. I've always longed for that kind of simplicity.