Book of Curses (The Renning Chronicles) (4 page)

“Yeah and pigs will learn how to fly.” I rolled my eyes, let out a sigh, and then went down the stairs with him next to me.  

***
**

Tom laughed as we made it out of the doors of our new prison, I kept walking and noticed when he fell back for a moment, shaking my head I didn't bother stopping for him and just kept walking up the street. I heard him come running with his bag pulled in front of his body.

I really didn't want to ask why he was carrying it like that. Instead, I just stared at him for a moment, arching my eyebrow as I waited for him to catch his breath enough to start walking again.

“So tell me Tom, what's it like getting detention on your first day of school?” I asked aloud. I decided to take a look back at him and notice the look on his face.

His bright green eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw a flash of his normal wildness in them and then saw the goofy smile that slapped itself across his face as he began to talk. “Well, Miss. Lowman kind
of pissed
me off in a major way, so, I say it's the most amazing experience in the world to get that honor.”

I shook my head at him; I didn't understand him sometimes. I truly didn't. “Tell me, what did you do this time?”

“Stuffed a fake rat in her drawer, and set a bucket of water on the rafter right above her chair, then tied a string from it to the chair. When she opened the drawer and sat up screaming she pulled the string, and down came the water,” He paused, seeming to gaze off into the nothingness in front of him before speaking again. “Best wet shirt ever.”

“You’re horrible Tom.” I rolled my eyes at him and yawned almost right after.

“Ah but you love me.” He retorted, smiling brightly towards me and sticking out his tongue.

“Where did you even find a bucket?” I decided to ask, then thought about it and added onto that question. “Or the fake rat!”

“The rat was in my bag, you know I never leave without my school things.” He winked at me, and then started laughing. “The bucket was in the storage room outside her class.”

Shaking my head again, I rolled my eyes once more. Walking a bit faster as we quickly met the busy traffic area of downtown New York City. I began to rock myself on the heels of my shoes as I waited for the cross walk light to light up so that we could finally move. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Tom was looking at me, and when I looked at him, he grinned brightly.

“I’ll race you across.” He beamed, moving his body back and forth as if he was full of energy that he just had to get rid of right then, or he'd die.

Honestly, yeah we were turning eighteen in about a day, that was true enough, but sometimes being childish was the best thing in the world for the two of us. It made us forget the stupid stuff that we dealt with every
day.

I felt the tug of a grin on my lips. I couldn't resist this challenge. I watched for the light to change, and when it finally did I raced Tom across. He beat me by one tiny step. He stuck his tongue out at me like a little five-year-old as he basked in his victory.

“Just wait Tom, I’ll beat you.” I told him as I caught my breath, making a promise to both, him and myself.

“Yeah, sure.” He laughed at me; I just shrugged my shoulders as we both rounded the corner to our new place. “I’ll always win you know.”

“You’re six foot two Tom; your legs are hellishly long. I’m five foot four, and you’ll only win because you have longer strides.” I glared at him for a long moment, and then let out a sigh.

“Height has nothing to do with how fast you are.” He retorted, letting out a bit of a snort as we continued to walk.

Looking up at our home I wanted to turn around and run away as fast as I could. It was just another reminder that we were never going to have a home to keep. It was yet again a temporary place to live, not something I wanted or cared about. We lasted four years in our last place, and god only knew how long our mom was going to decide this place was suitable.

“Hmm, thinking what I am?” Tom asked pulling me away from my thoughts. I looked at him and saw him scanning the doors to the building, then it hit me what he meant.

“I’ll beat you.” I started, smiling from ear to ear as I eyed him.

“Doubt it, on three. One.” He started, smiling brightly as he put his arms through the straps of his bag, attaching it to his chest like a total moron.

My smiled turned as dark as possible as I pulled my messenger bag up onto my shoulder snugly and looked at the building. “Two.”

“Three.”

Both of us took off at the same time, running full speed towards the building and shoving open the doors. We ran straight through the lobby, ignoring the stares of the various people who were in there, and raced to the stairs that sat off to the side of the room.

All I could see was out of the corner of my eye, when Tom somehow managed to lose his balance and fall back a bit, that's when I took advantage and started to run faster, getting as far ahead of him as I could.

My advantage lasted less than a minute though, he was right back up and beside me, with both of us taking two steps at a time, trying to get the top before the other. Soon enough we reached the door to the apartment and started shoving each other away from the door, trying to be the one to get it open first. As I reached to open it though, it swung open.

Our mother stood on the other side of the door, and I went tumbling forward, landing at her feet. When I looked up, she was scowling down at me, and I'd swear to god, she was  cursing my very existence. It wouldn't surprise me though, she never really did like us when we were around, and this just showed that even more. 

Chapter 2

_______________________

“I guess you won.” Tom announced, between his extremely loud laughs, I wanted to reach over and smack him so hard.

“You two are pathetic, grow up before it’s too late, or before you make me look bad.” Our mother hissed through her teeth; her eyes looked so cold I thought she was just going to off us both right then and there.

“I’ll be back next Friday, nine pm sharp.” She added quickly, before storming out of the door. Of course, she had managed to step on my leg in the process, and that didn't exactly feel good.

She was the only Barbie I personally knew, breast jobs, bleached out hair, caked on makeup, size two waist, always wearing designer clothes. She screamed fake more than anyone I'd ever seen. I had thought about getting a pin and popping those fake things she had on her chest, wondering if they'd deflate on the spot or not.

“Love you too mom.” I groaned, as I got up and started to rub my leg where her heel had pressed down into the flesh. It really was sore. I was going to go through her closet and break all those damn things for sure, tonight, not like she couldn't buy more though… 

“Thanks for wishing us a happy birthday!” Tom yelled as loud as he could, before rolling his eyes and walking over to me frowning at me rubbing my leg.  “And the best mom award goes to…”

I shook my head slowly and sadly at that statement before I managed to get out a simple.  “
Definitely
not her.” I set my bag down by the counter and looked around for our dog before limping into the living room a bit.

“Mazy!” I called out,
and then
heard a loud thump and clawing across the floor before the marble-coated sheltie came running into view. I rubbed her ears and petted her for a moment, before letting her run over to Tom.

“Hiya Mazy baby.” Tom said, and then walked over to the couch. I followed him sitting on the opposite end of it before Tom cleared his throat and set his bag down between his legs. He tapped the top of it a few times and looked suspicious.

“So um, want a cat? You’d take better care of it.” He said quickly, looking away as if he said the worst thing in the world and was embarrassed, then started to mess with his bag again.

“It? What?” I started, stumbling over my words as I eyed him.  “We don’t have a cat. Do we?” I looked him over questioningly, and all he did was shrug. He smiled in an odd way towards me as I started to narrow my eyes at him, waiting for him to explain what he was talking about.

“You didn’t…”

“Um here.” Tom unzipped his bag and pulled out a tiny white kitten with dirt caked on its paws. He set it on the couch next to me, petting its little head a few times. It let out a small meow and rubbed against his hand and then against my leg looking up at me with big blue eyes.

“Tom, she’ll kill you!” I yelled at him, petting the little kitten and grimacing at the same time. It was too cute; I couldn't help it, but I knew it was bad, if mom saw she'd murder us both. No she'd skin us. She resented cats more than anything in the world; it was hard enough convincing her to let us have Mazy originally.

“Let her, she’s barely home, we always are.” Tom grinned evilly towards me, and shrugged his shoulders as if he could not care less what she thought about anything.  “I was going to name him Gabriel, up to you though.”

“Gabriel works.” I couldn't help but smile, as I leaned towards the kitten and started smoothing back it's fur. It let out a small meow again and leaned into my hand.  “So, what’s on the agenda, are you going to veg?” I looked up at Tom, asking him.

“We’re going to veg, order some pizza, and invite Christie over and watch horror movies all night.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.”

“Good, then you get the movies; I’ll order the pizza and call Christie.” Tom hopped up from his seat and started to make his way into the kitchen, picked up the phone without missing a beat and started dialing.  

I got up leisurely, yawning a little as I started towards the enormous collection of DVDs we owned. I started flipping through them slowly until I found the horror section. Thanks to me and Tom the section was bigger than any of the others that we had. There were a few new ones, but it was really mainly the
classics
that we found.

Wes Craven gained a double look from me, but I passed on it; we had just recently watched all his horror movies, and I seriously needed something new to watch. Freddy needed to stay in his boiler room a bit longer, and I was not in the mood to see Jason's ugly face at the moment either. I mean I loved them both, but for once I just needed to get a break from their movies, so I continued on with my scanning until I saw Stephen King and the infinite collection of movies from him.

I grabbed the movies I saw first, The Shining, Dreamcatcher, IT, and a few other movies, afterwards I walked back over to the couch
placing
them on the small stand that sat in the middle of the room. Sitting down on the couch once more I looked towards the kitchen to see Tom hanging up the phone.

“Christie and the pizza will be here in about fifteen minutes. She's bringing it over since she has to drive right by the place.” Tom announced and then grabbed a bag of chips from the counter; he opened them and pulled out a few.