Winter of Discontent (Four Seasons Book 1) (2 page)

Chapter Two – The New Girl

Erik

‘I’m telling you, Dad, there is something really odd about the new girl.’

‘Sit down and eat your breakfast,’ was the only response I got, before Dad sat down opposite me and picked up the morning paper.

I hadn’t been able to get the new girl out of my head the night before and had barely slept. I didn’t know what it was but there was just something. You know what I mean, you meet someone for the first time or see them at a distance and you form an instant impression. I guess sometimes instinct isn’t right and they turn out to be perfectly normal but sometimes, just now and then, your instinct is spot on. This, I felt, was one of those times.

‘What’s this about a weird girl then, E?’ laughed Jared, my older brother, as he pushed me jokingly by the side of the head.

Jared was four years older than me. A lot of siblings can be a bit competitive or a bit resentful of each other but not me and Jared; he wasn’t just my brother, he was my best friend.

‘I don’t know what it is, J, there’s just something.’

‘Good looking?’

‘Not sure really. Too busy trying work out what it was that unnerved me about her.’

‘Unnerved you?’ said Dad putting down the morning paper. ‘What do you mean unnerved?’

‘I don’t know. I just felt unnerved, like something was gonna happen.’

‘Unnerved? Or do you mean horny?’

‘Jared!’ said Dad quite harshly.

I smiled and raised my eyebrows in a ‘trust you’ kind of way. I had to wonder whether he might be right, though; she was kind of cute.

‘Come on then, get a move on. Jared, if you want a lift in, you’d better be ready in five minutes, and you, young man, you need to make sure you don’t miss the school bus.’

I nodded briefly as I stood up and took my cereal bowl to the sink and without saying anything further went into the hall, collected my jacket from the hook on the wall by the door, picked up my books, and headed off to school.

I’ve always enjoyed school. I know most folks think I’m a bit of a geek, a bookworm, study wart, but that was OK by me. I’d never felt the need to seek the approval of others but then with a family like mine why would I. My dad, Logan, was a successful lawyer. We weren’t really rich but we certainly weren’t poor. My brother had graduated from Carterbrook three years earlier and was due to graduate from The University of Texas in a few months’ time. As for me, I had the next few years all mapped out. I’d decided I would go on to college after high school and then on to University and I certainly didn’t need any distractions.

As I strolled down the lane that led to the main road, I tried hard to get the new girl out of my head; I figured I’d spent enough time thinking about her. Maybe Jared was right, maybe it was my age, my hormones. Perhaps I was attracted to her and underneath it all I just wanted to screw her. I’d steered clear of having sex with girls my own age, and girls from the same school district were definitely off the menu. The more I thought of this possibility the better I felt – if it was just attraction, I knew I could shrug it off. I knew how my life was gonna go and no girl was gonna get in the way of that. Most guys at school will have thought I was still a virgin and as I didn’t give a damn what others thought about me it wasn’t an issue. But I got enough mocking for being a geek as it was, so I could do without being mocked for being a virgin geek as well. I did find the geek tag a bit annoying sometimes; although the rest of the school viewed me like that, I knew that wasn’t the case. Underneath the geeky shirt, the geeky jumper, and behind the geeky glasses was an extremely fit and capable sixteen-year-old boy who could hold his own in any football tackle, in any wrestling match for that matter. I had my reasons for staying to the shadows and I was sticking to them. I was a good student, I didn’t come top in my class, though I’m sure I could have, that was just another area I needed to be ‘just good enough’. Good enough to go unnoticed but good enough to get the grades I needed for college.

I’d just about got my head on straight when the school bus turned up. My stop was about as far from school as it got so I had my pick of the seats, always the same one, six rows up on the right next to the window. Stop after stop the bus started to fill up. It wasn’t until two stops from school that anyone would sit down next to me; by then there were only the aisle seats left, so people had no choice. They would lean across the back of the seat or out into the aisle to speak to the people they actually wanted to sit next to. Sometimes, if it was a girl I liked or felt sorry for I would offer up my seat and swap with her friend so they could sit next to each other; this didn’t happen often and it didn’t happen today. The bus pulled up outside the school grounds at around 8.20. I had to be over the other side of the campus for my first lesson, English Lit, so I took a steady stroll over. I felt much better now than I had when I set out forty minutes ago. I hadn’t thought about the new girl since I boarded the bus and I was looking forward to the drama review in class. We’d been studying Shakespeare,
Richard III
; it had been a bit heavy going for some of the students but I loved it. All that “Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York”. For me this was as close to family betrayal as I ever wanted to get but I found it fascinating. Did the author really believe what he was writing, was it how he believed he would have felt had he ever had siblings, was he really the most genius genius of his generation? I certainly felt so. If I had a time machine he would be the first and last person I would ever choose to meet. First because there hadn’t been before or since a mind like his, and last because I couldn’t imagine there being another human being that could possibly make me feel as humble as he surely would. All of this was rattling around in my head when I was bought back to earth with a bump. As I turned the last corner before the entrance to the far campus I saw her; the new girl, standing over by the far wall laughing and joking with her new friends. I felt weak, all of sudden I felt very weak. I can barely explain what it was, like fire meeting ice, joy meeting sorrow. The inability to understand the way I felt was almost as unnerving as how I actually felt. You know how it feels when you are in the middle of a dream and you’re naked in front of everyone you ever knew? Well, multiply that by ten and that’s kind of how I felt. As I walked almost sheepishly passed her and into the hall I felt her gaze fall on me. Just for a second, a brief moment I raised my eyes to meet hers. She smiled but my expression remained unchanged. I’m not sure if that was me trying to fake confidence, whether it was just confusion on my part for how she made me feel or simply just nerves. Either way, I tried to remain as visibly unmoved and unaffected as I could. Inwardly I knew I had failed at this deception but I just prayed that outwardly she was convinced.

As I thought it would be, English Lit was pretty great. Unfortunately it was over too soon and it was off to meet up with friends for lunch. Simon Jenkins was a geek. I don’t mean the kind of geek people thought I was but a genuine 24 carat, 100 per cent geek. Head of the electronics, math, and science club the guy was Einstein for the 21
st
Century. Hanging around with him might not have been the most exciting chapter in my life but he was a good guy. You could hold a conversation with him that didn’t come down to Salma Hayek’s bra size, who was leading the NFL, or whether McDonalds were better than Burger King; as such he wasn’t as mind numbingly boring as the jocks tended to be. We had sat down for less than a minute when ‘she’ walked in with Kacey and her ‘pet dogs’ – so called as they nodded at her every word like the nodding dogs you used to get in the back of cars. I determined I wouldn’t catch her gaze. This proved easier said than done as they sat at the only free table in the canteen; the one next to ours. I kept my head down and just ate my lunch. I ached to look up every time I heard her laugh, speak, or cough. I wanted to know what was so amusing, wanted to know what she was saying and I wanted to join in, but I didn’t. In the end I just blocked out the sound of her voice and talked to the guys.

Twenty minutes later the bell rang for the end of recess. Now the hard work began. Phys. Ed. I loved sport but I couldn’t excel at it. I had to stay invisible, remain the geek. Sports classes were hard for me. I wanted to show what I could do but how could I? It was like cheating and I was no cheat. My father, my brother, and I worked hard to be ‘normal’ so self control was a must. I could never allow myself to be the dark horse. I was more than capable of handling myself under do-or-die fourth down and goal, last play of the game pressure. It would have been too easy to score a touchdown, make that basket from halfway down the court, hit a home run first ball in, but would it be fair, would it be normal? No, it wouldn’t. Although I wanted to be, I wasn’t normal.

I was a Warlock.

Chapter Three – Nurture Over Nature

Erik

Being born into a family of Warlocks was pretty cool; being born into a family of Warlocks that wanted to be normal however wasn’t quite so cool.

Dad made the decision that we would live a normal human life many years ago. I was never really happy about it but I loved him very much and I would never go against him. It certainly wasn’t easy though, I think the difficulties that came with it were one of the reasons why Jared and I were so close. There were so many times when we wanted to get involved in school activities but weren’t able to because of our physical advantages. We would often sit up for hours discussing how fantastic it would be to stick it to the jocks who mocked us as geeks but of course we never did. After one particular, disappointingly long week of sporting activities Dad took us on a trip out to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. He had hired a secluded log cabin by a lakeside where Jared and I could swim and dive to our hearts content. We would run for hours at speeds that would have had Usain Bolt stuck in the starting blocks. It was great. Dad knew it was hard on us and I know he was proud of how we coped with things. I got a bit frustrated sometimes though when Dad wouldn’t use magic for anything at all. I remember one time, we spent the whole evening in darkness when a power surge blew out all the bulbs. It was too late to get into town for replacements and he wouldn’t use just the simplest of notions to fix them. I didn’t get it. It wasn’t like there was anyone around to see him. We lived away from close neighbours and had no one overlooking our property, but no, he wouldn’t do it and just insisted that we deal with it like any other normal family.

Phys. Ed should really have been reclassified under the heading of Drama for me. I can’t tell you how many times I allowed myself to be convincingly fouled, to turn in last over the line and the odd ‘trip up’ over my own feet. Just once I would love to have been first but I had to resign myself to knowing that although I would win, I never could win. Today was basketball. Ryan Enders was captain of the squad and a real dick. I so wanted to smack him up a bit. He had slept with more senior girls than the rest of the squad put together and then bragged about it to anyone that would listen. I hated that. It wasn’t a Warlock thing to dislike his behaviour it was a family thing; there was nothing wrong with wanting a lot of sex but slagging the girls off afterwards wasn’t on. Nurture over nature you might say. Anyway, by the time we had warmed up and each had two quarters it was time to head home.

As I walked back toward my locker, I sensed her again. Before I’d even turned the corner into the hallway I knew she was there. And she was. I’d spent most of Phys. Ed sidelined following a foul by one of the jocks and therefore sat brooding on the bench thinking how I’d love to have pushed him back, and when I wasn’t thinking about that I was thinking about her. I’d come to a decision. I was gonna smile back, speak even. I had to find out what it was about her that made me feel uneasy and I wasn’t gonna do that if I didn’t at least acknowledge her.

I can’t really describe how this sense of heightened anxiety left me feeling. Sick to my stomach doesn’t really cover it, I’d never broken a sweat inside of school before but I could feel the back of my neck sticking to my shirt and it felt really uncomfortable.
Relax, relax
I repeated over and over to myself. This was alien territory for me. I may play the geek for the sake of camouflage but I wasn’t that person underneath. I was confident and assured; so why didn’t I feel like that? As I got closer to her I saw her turn toward me. She had beautiful long dark brown hair, almost to her waist. It had the tiniest hint of a wave and it bounced when she turned around quickly. She was hot! My realisation that that was my opinion made me think that perhaps Jared had been right; maybe I just had a hard-on for her. I’d never given any real thought to who I had sex with before so maybe feeling like this meant I had a crush on her. The possibility that it might be as simple as that was strangely reassuring.

My locker was just over to the left from hers. As I unlocked the door and took out my books I purposely looked in her direction. I was gutted. She was stood with her back to me now and at such an angle, unless she moved, I wouldn’t be able to make eye contact. In my frustration, I slammed the door to the locker shut. The noise it made when it closed shocked most of the students into silence as they turned round to see what it was all about.

‘Oops. Don’t know my own strength,’ I said trying to laugh it off.

You can imagine the comments that bought. ‘Yeah right, Mr Puniverse’ was the loudest and got the most laughs! She wasn’t laughing though. Kacey and the rest of her pets were roaring for all they were worth but not her. She looked quite sorry for me, like she didn’t approve of the mockery. I didn’t let this throw me though; I grabbed the moment and smiled at her, just briefly. Unfortunately it wasn’t brief enough and Kacey caught my look and grabbed her sharply by the arm.

‘No flirting with the geeks, Trent,’ she snapped sharply.

‘I wasn’t,’ came her reply. ‘He was the one smiling, not me. I was laughing, not smiling back,’ she stammered as she turned her face away from me.

It confused me as to how disappointed I felt in her. I had no right to feel like that. I didn’t even know her name for Christ’s sake so how could I feel disappointment? I tried to shrug it off as I headed out of school but it hung over me like a lead weight. Oh well, yet another sleepless night ahead, I thought, as I boarded the bus for home.