Sapphire: A Paranormal Romance (10 page)

She turned away
from the television to stare at Jimmy.  The intensity in her eyes surprised
Jimmy, and he actually recoiled a bit.

“What did you two
do last night?”

Jimmy stammered. 
“W-we met down by the river.  We went for a walk and talked.  That’s it.”

“You walked along
that filthy river?” his mother asked with incredulity.  “That filthy river that
is really nothing more than run-off water and God knows what else?  Jesus,
Jimmy, what kind of a date is that?  What kind of girl would actually want to
do that?”

“Stop it,” Jimmy
said.  “What is wrong with you?  Look, I asked her about her background.  She
said that there were things about her life that she just couldn’t explain to me
right now.”

“And what sense
does that make?  None!  What more do you need to prove to you that this girl is
bad news,” his mother said.  Her voice was rising.  Jimmy could sense the
outright hysteria that was brewing beneath her exterior.  The avalanche was
going to happen and his attempts to diffuse it were not working.  “Jimmy, this
is not a girl that you should be hanging out with.  What are you doing all
night with this girl?  Jimmy, you’re a smart boy—why can’t you see that this
whole thing seems like some kind of scam?  Maybe those kids that you always say
are picking on you put this girl up to this for some reason.  At the very
least, any girl who meets young boys in the middle of the night, at the side of
the road, and walks along a poisoned river is not a good girl.  You’re meant
for better things than this.  You’re a good boy who comes home at night and
doesn’t sneak out when his mother has told him to stay home.  You’re smart and
you’re the kind of kid that is going to college and getting away from this. 
You are not the kind who stays out all night with trashy girls!”

“I said stop it!”
Jimmy yelled.  He stood up and stormed into the kitchen pouring the remaining
bits of his cereal into the sink.  He stood there and watched the fingers of
milk from the bowl run across the bottom of the sink and into the drain.  “Do
you have any idea of how lonely I am?”

He heard nothing
from the living room for a time.  Then, after what seemed like half an hour but
was probably just a few seconds, he heard the sound of his mother getting to
her feet and shuffling into the kitchen.  He kept his hands on the counter, and
stared down into the sink.

“Do you know what
it’s like to never have any of the girls look at you?” he said.  “To never be
asked out or go on a date?  Do you know what it’s like to have feelings for
girls and know, deep in your heart, that they would never, not in a million
years, give you the time of day?  To watch other people meet and fall in love
and date and do all of the things you wish you could do?”

He finally stood
up straight and turned to face his mother.  She stood near the kitchen
doorway.  Her features had softened somewhat, but there was still anger burning
in her eyes.

“It’s fine to be
smart and have a goal of going to college,” he said, “but at what cost?  Do I
have to give up everything to make that happen?  Do I have to be picked on and
beat up and tortured by bullies and ignored by girls who all think that I’m a
load of garbage?  Is that what you want, so that you can brag to your friends
and family that you have a son that went to college?”

With those words,
the anger disappeared and was replaced by outright hurt.  He could see the
moment in her face when his words went from pleading to stinging, and it was as
if he struck her across the face. 

“How can you say
those things to me?” she whispered.  “Look what she’s already turning you
into.  Can’t you see what this is?  Can’t you see that this girl just wants to
disrupt your entire life?  She’s already doing it.  She’s bad news, Jimmy. 
Those same people you say bully you could have easily put this girl up to doing
this just to humiliate you.”

She walked
forward.  The hurt was still evident on her face.  Jimmy backed up until the
cool enamel of the fridge was against his back.

“You’ll be out of
this school before too long,” she said.  “You’ll finally bloom into the young
man I know you are destined to be.  All of this awkwardness that you have now
will vanish, and you’ll head off to college confident and handsome.  Whole new
worlds will open up for you there, Jimmy.  You have to trust me on this. 
You’ll meet people from all over the country and maybe all over the world. 
You’ll find the right girl and you’ll experience things that are nothing like this
nonsense you’ve been dabbling in right now.  Trust me.”

“Trust you?” he
asked.  “You ask me to continue to be a freak when Sapphire makes me feel like
you just described.  Only she makes me feel like that right now, while you say
I’ll somehow turn into that down the road somewhere.  What if I don’t, Mom? 
Then what happens to me?  Do I go on to college and just start over there being
as awkward and miserable as I am here?  Do I spend the rest of my life alone?”

His mother
approached him again, extending her hand.  He realized she intended to touch
him, perhaps to offer comfort, and he decided that it was the last thing he
wanted.  He stepped back. She lowered her hand and her eyes.

“Everything seems
like the end of the world to you now,” she said.  “That’s how it is at your
age.  I’m telling you that things change.  Nothing that you experience now will
be the same in just a few years.”

“You never went
through this,” Jimmy said.  “From what I remember, you were a popular girl in
school.  You and Dad both were popular.  And you didn’t go to college.  How am
I supposed to trust anything you say right now when you don’t know the first
thing about what I’m going through?”

A tear escaped his
mother’s eye.  She seemed to sink into herself, and leaned against the kitchen
counter.

“Do what you
want,” she said tiredly.  “Do what you want and throw everything away on this
nonsense, then.  I guess you’re so grown up now that you don’t need to listen
to your mother.”

 Jimmy felt as if
he should say something else.  He opened his mouth and then closed it and then
did it again, trying to find the words.  This had not gone the way he had
hoped.  He had wanted to make things better and to make her see.  Instead, the
gulf between them seemed wider than ever.  How had it gotten there in the first
place?  How had things gotten so bad and why did his mother continue to act
this way?  Nothing made sense to him right now, from why Sapphire insisted on
being beside a bridge, or walking beside a muddy river, to why his mother was
acting the way she was or why his best friend suddenly seemed to hate him.

“I’m going to go
see George,” he said quietly.

He turned and
walked out of the kitchen.  He did not turn back, and she said nothing else. 
He walked through the garage door and slammed it shut behind him.

In
the garage, Jimmy angrily punched the wall.  This was immediately followed by
intense pain in his hand, and he cursed himself for being so stupid.  He sighed
and grabbed his bicycle, rolled it out of the garage and sat on it for a time
not going anywhere.  He looked up into the crystal blue sky.  It wasn’t quite
as intense as a sapphire, but it was blue enough to remind him of her.  He
smiled to himself and then shook his head because everything seemed to remind
him of her.  What would she say if she knew about the argument that he had just
had with his mother?  She would probably scold Jimmy.

The sky was
beautiful and the air warm.  There was a steady breeze, and it blew across the
field across the street from Jimmy’s home.  The trees beyond that rustled in
the wind.  Somewhere far above him, he could hear the roar of a jet engine. 
When he looked up, he could see the contrail from the plane scrawling across
the blue sky.  It amazed him that the engines were loud enough—and the world
was currently quiet enough—that he could hear the soft sound of the engine. 
How
far up is that plane?
he wondered.  What would it be it like to fly at
forty thousand feet? 

He started to
pedal.  He was soon on the road, and his mind did what it always did when he
was riding his bike.  His brain sometimes seemed the most active and willing to
think about things during the time when he should have been paying the most
attention.  As the cars whizzed past him at speeds that would probably seem
suicidal for people who had not grown up in the area, he let his mind drift.

He thought about
her eyes and the words she had said the night before.  Everything that he
experienced with Sapphire was now so surreal and strange in his imagination,
the way dreams sometimes felt, no matter how vivid they were at the time.  It
was as if Sapphire herself was surrounded by a glow.  Even the touch of her
hand seemed like something out of a half-remembered dream.

He reached the
bridge where they met the night before and slowed to a stop.  Just as he did, a
semi truck rushed past, leaving a small hurricane of wind and dust in its
wake.  Jimmy barely noticed.  He paused and looked over the bridge, and he
gasped at what he saw.

The place looked
nothing like what he recalled from the night before.  The water was low and
nearly stagnant and the smell from it wafted all the way up to where he stood. 
He could see dead fish floating in the water, and garbage and debris, as well. 
The banks of the river looked like mud rather than sand, and the weeds and
overgrowth wound all the way down the embankment and nearly into the water.  It
would have been nearly impossible for anyone to walk along that bank without
tripping and falling down.

Jimmy wrinkled his
brow.  He looked around and checked to make sure that he was in the right
spot.  Indeed, he was.  Overhead the sun beat down, heating the day.  He looked
back down over the bridge.  Again, it was more like a swamp than a romantic
river.

Jimmy moved his
bike to a spot just below the surface of the bridge.  Another car came roaring
past, ruffling his hair and making his nose itch from the dust.  He slowly
climbed down the embankment.  The brush and plant life that comprised the hill
was thick.  How had he managed to climb down this thing last night with
Sapphire in tow?

He reached the
bottom and stood in the mud.  His shoes began to sink into the muck.  He
grimaced and lifted his foot.  The mud made a thick sucking noise like a living
thing when he removed it.  He looked around and saw that it stretched out in
all directions.  When there wasn’t mud there were trees and bushes.  But the
trees and bushes looked strange and twisted, as if they had been mutated. 
Nothing about the spot was in the least bit romantic.  Finally, killing the
last bit of hope he had that the previous night had happened outside of his
imagination, there were the bugs.

They were small
and barely noticeable, but they buzzed around his ears and flew into his eyes. 
Jimmy waved his hands, trying to chase them away, but they just returned.  He
felt them trying to fly up his nose.  He blew through his nose and out his
mouth.  He saw them land on his arms, tiny black dots like pepper, and then fly
away. 

Jimmy could stand
it for about four seconds and then it was too much.  It was like his head was
completely covered in a cloud of the tiny insects.  He could hear their wings
buzzing in his ear like tiny dive-bombers.  He waved his hands furiously and
then climbed back up the embankment to the road.  He grabbed his bike and situated
it back on the road.  He slapped at his face, hands, arms, and head to get rid
of the sensation of bugs all over him.  Then he shook his head and spared one
more glance down toward the river.  It was still a swamp.

More puzzled than
ever, he started pedaling.  He shook his head again.  What the hell had
happened last night?  Had anything happened?  Had he imagined it all?  He hoped
he could talk to George about it when he got to his house.

The rest of the
ride was uneventful, at least to the outside world; internally, Jimmy was still
raging and debating.  He had, in his estimation, gone over every moment of his
date with Sapphire.  Nothing about it made any sense in the light of day.  He
had this very sad, sinking feeling that his mother and George were right
Sapphire was either an elaborate joke with a punch line he could not fathom, or
he had completely lost his mind and was suffering from vivid hallucinations. 

George’s family
was not any better off than Jimmy’s.  However, George’s house was in a slightly
better part of the neighborhood than where Jimmy and his mother lived.  Soon
Jimmy was riding across smooth streets an and well-groomed lawns and bushes. 
George’s family had inherited this house from his grandfather when he had
died.  The entire thing was paid for.  How they afforded the property taxes and
utilities Jimmy had no idea, and he didn’t ask.

He pulled up
George’s driveway.  George was in the backyard washing his car, which perched
at the end of the driveway which extended well into the back of the house.  He
saw Jimmy and then turned back to the washing. 
Great
, Jimmy thought to
himself,
this is probably going to go as well as the conversation between my
mother and me
.

“Hey, George,” he
said as he pulled to a stop near the wall of the house.  He leaned his bike up
against wall and walked over to where George was currently manning a hose.