The Revealing

After the first 10 minutes of detention, I was ready to die. I didn’t like it at all. This was my first time ever to get detention, and the torment of listening to Damian butcher a song he was listening to on his iPod was getting to me. I think the song was something old. Finally, after 10 minutes of him singing and Car sleeping, I had had enough. I was about to explode on Damian, but when I turned around to tell him, “Shut the hell up!” he stopped singing. I relaxed my tense shoulders as I turned back around.

I started to drift off. I figured I might as well get a nap in during this unused time. It was not as if the teacher would ever show up. She had arrived in the beginning of class, said she would keep an eye on us and then left. There was a camera in the detention room, probably installed after the ditchers constantly escaped from detention. As I was on the brink of sleep, I felt a presence right behind me, and as soon as I detected that he was there, Damian blurted in my ear, “Who let the dogs out?”

I jumped in my seat, lost my balance and fell off the chair, all while giving a startled squeak. Damian doubled over in laughter and almost fell off the desk he was sitting on. His laughter woke Car. He got out of his startled daze and pushed Damian, who was still laughing and sitting on his desk. When Damian landed with a thud on the ground, he finally stopped laughing.

“That’s no way to treat your brother, Car. Don’t you agree with me, Bunny?” He winked at me.

Jerk.

Car looked at me quizzically. “Bunny?” His eyebrows rose.

Damian looked as if he couldn’t wait to explain the creation of my nickname to his brother. “She reminds me of a little bunny.”

He shrugged, Car laughed and I sulked. I was never going to shake that nickname. I sighed. Damian looked at me and smiled.

“Come on, Bunny. Laugh a little. It will make detention go by so much faster.” He nudged my shoulder. I refused to respond and glared at him.

“Okay, I give up. You win. I won’t talk to you,” he said.

I looked up at him, curious, as he turned to Car and said, “So what’s up with you and that Cindy chick? I heard what she did with the batting glove. Is she for real?” He laughed. “Talk about desperate.”

Car pretended to look insulted and said, “I, for one, love it when a girl sticks her butt at me and puts filthy gloves in her mouth to get my attention. Shame on you for speaking badly about my little Cindy.”

His voice sounded posh; he had thrown in an English accent. I didn’t know that Car could be like that. Well, he was related to Damian, so he must have had at least a little bit of Damian’s attitude rub off on him. They spent the next hour in playful banter, and I found it kind of comforting. I didn’t know why. Sometime during that hour, I fell asleep. I could still hear Car and Damian talking, but the conversation was just a low mumbling sound, something that I found soothing. Something sparked my attention, though.

“Is she sleeping?” That was Car.

“Told you she looks like a bunny.” That was Damian. I heard a smile in his voice.

“We can’t do this, Damian.”

“Of course we can. She is one of them. Aren’t we supposed to keep them safe at all costs? She isn’t safe with only him.”

What the heck were they talking about? Whom were they talking about, and what did they mean by “one of them” and “keep them safe”? And who was the him they were talking about? This conversation was making me feel uneasy, so I made myself move.

“I think she is waking up. Shut up, Damian.”

I let my eye lids flutter as if I were just awaking from a dream. They bought it. I looked first at Car, who was wearing a strained smile on his face, and then I turned my gaze toward Damian, who was wearing a forced scowl.

“What time is it?” I jumped in my seat, pretending to be surprised.

“You were asleep for quite a while,” said Damian

I hit my hand to my forehead as I looked at the clock on the wall. It was 3:55, five minutes till the end of hell. Gee, I was sleeping for a long time. I had fallen asleep at about 3:15, and for most of detention, I had been completely unconscious. I wondered if I’d snored. I probably hadn’t. Mason always said he mistook me for being dead when I was sleeping, so I definitely didn’t snore. Thank God.

Right when it was four o’clock, Car bolted out of the room as if in a hurry to do God knew what—probably feed the homeless. It seemed like something he would do. I got up and slowly packed the playbook I had acquired during English into my bag. My pencil rolled off my desk, and as I reached to grab it, I instead grabbed Damian’s hand, since he had reached to catch it too. I pulled away first, blushing. I looked up, and in his dark green eyes, I saw a glimmer of something—I didn’t know what—before he turned his head away. He bent over, picked up the pencil, placed it on my desk and stalked out of the room. What a weirdo.

I decided that I wanted to visit the library while I was there. I figured I might as well check out the stock that they had. I sighed, left the detention room and walked down the hallway. I was lost in a minute; however, I didn’t mind, mostly because almost everyone was already gone. There were only a few stragglers around the school and in the hallways. As I walked, I became annoyed. Trying to find the library in the school seemed frustratingly impossible. Suddenly, someone down the hallway caught my attention as he passed a sign on the wall for the library.

The reason this character got my attention was because he was probably one of the most attractive guys I had ever seen. Jeez, what is up with this school? Do they raise models around here or something? He was tall, which was no surprise, given the people I had encountered in the hallways. It was as if the school were full of descendants of the Amazons. He had floppy golden hair like a lion’s and tan skin. He seemed anxious and worried. Clearly, he had a lot on his mind. If I saw him in the library and got the chance, I would have to thank him for being in the right spot and helping me find my way to the library. I stepped inside and inhaled a deep breath. This was my sanctuary. I loved the smell of books on the shelves, and I was practically the only one there, which made everything better.

“So you like the library?” A voice came from my right.

My head turned at the sound. It was the boy who’d helped me find this place. Good, now I don’t have to break the ice with my needless gratitude. “Yes, I love the library. My name is Obsidian, and you are?”

The boy eyed me suspiciously, as if I were going use his name for something wicked. I cocked a brow, but he ignored that and said, “Well, I love the library too; it’s the only place I can disappear from my adoring crowds.” Then he winked at me.

Great, just what I need.

“So do you want to learn a magic trick?” he said, changing the subject. I still hadn’t even gotten his name.

I continued with my business and walked into the library, toward the shelves that would be home to some of my favourite stories. I stepped forward, and he stepped in front of me, a little too close for comfort. I looked at him and saw something in his eyes—maybe a plan or something, and I didn’t think I would enjoy it.

“You do realize I still don’t even know your name, which makes you a little too close for a stranger.” I smiled at him, and he stepped back, kindly answering my awkward need for personal space. I especially needed space when someone as good looking as him was too close for my liking. He put his hands up in surrender.

“Look, I don’t give my name out to just anyone. Obsidian, was it? That’s a little private. When someone has your name, they can do so much damage. It’s more fun to remain strangers, at least for now.”

I rolled my eyes and stepped around him. I didn’t have time for these games. The librarian had a sign posted saying that she did not do any loans after school hours. Darn, I thought, but I might as well check out what they have while I am here.

I stepped into one of the aisles and scanned the shelves for titles that were familiar to me. I pulled one of the books off the shelf. On the cover was a woman with a crown and a man with a bow and arrow aimed at her back. I turned it over and read the summary on the back. It was a story of betrayal, deception, love and mystery.

As I inspected the cover art, I heard a sound in front of me. I looked up, and the boy was on the other side of the shelf, staring at me through the books, scaring the life out of me. His large light brown eyes watched me, and he smiled. He raised his hands and split the books in the middle, separating them. He leaned into the shelf, once again close to me.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he whispered. I exhaled and raised both my eyebrows, waiting for him to give me his pitch. “I will tell you my name if you figure out the magic trick and learn it on your own.” He smiled a brilliant white smile with charm and experience glued to its shape. It was a contagious smile that forced my lips to stretch into one that imitated his.

“All right, fine. Show me the trick,” I said.

He grinned at my submission to his deal. “Okay, but you have to come around into my aisle first.”

I nodded, set my bag on the floor and walked into his aisle. Then I stopped. He’d disappeared. I walked down a little farther into the other aisle, and he wasn’t there either. Was this the trick? I turned around to go grab my backpack, and as soon as I turned, my face bumped into a body. His hands held my shoulders and balanced me. I looked up at him, a little dazed and confused. How had he made it around me so quietly?

“That’s the trick. Now, when you learn how to be invisible, then I will tell you my name.”

Invisible? I blinked, and he disappeared. The warmth of his hands on my shoulders began to cool. I looked left and then right and panicked a little but told myself, He is probably just a master magician. I went down the aisle and grabbed my bag, and as I spun to leave the library, I once again bumped into something solid. This time, I was impressed, and he laughed at my expression.

He said, “I’ll give you a hint. All you have to do is picture yourself as a window or something transparent, and—”

He disappeared, but his voice rang in the air from the same space. “Presto! You’re invisible!” He tapped my shoulder from behind. I rotated, and he was right there, smiling. I slung my backpack strap over my shoulder and smiled, nodding a good-bye.

“It was interesting meeting you, but I have to go,” I said.

He lunged forward before I left and gripped my shoulder loosely but with some urgency. “Promise me you will learn the trick!”

I nodded jokingly and smiled. “Yeah, sure, I will learn how to be invisible.”

His eyes hardened a little, and his grip tightened slightly. “Promise.”

I stared at this strange boy. He was acting as if this were a matter of life and death, so I humoured him and played along. “I promise,” I answered seriously.

I moved my shoulder uncomfortably, and he dropped the seriousness as well as his hand. He nodded kindly and smiled his charming grin, and I let it go.

“Have a nice day, Princess,” he said, and he turned around and went somewhere into the library.

“Princess?” I whispered under my breath. What is up with these nicknames today?

It was finally time to go home. I smiled to myself as I got my keys out of my bag and walked toward the front of the school, which I remembered the route to. I walked out of the school and froze in my tracks; someone had broken into my car. I ran over to inspect the damage—a broken window and a big ole mess inside. Almost all the papers in my car, which I’d neatly organized, were now scattered across the back seat. All the CDs I owned were either scratched or broken in two. I frowned as I looked at my tire, which was flat. Who the hell could have done this? No one in this town fit the bill as an enraged person out to destroy an old Toyota. Great. This wasn’t even my car; this was Mason’s. He had warned me not to even put a scratch on his baby. And now look at it. I was in some deep cow poop. I didn’t think I could even drive it out of the parking spot.

I sighed as I pulled out my cellphone. After a long argument over the phone, Mason drove the second car to come get me and stood beside me. Mason’s hair was just the right type of messy; it was a bronzed colour with darkness in all the right spots. His eyes were chocolate brown, not like mine, which were the colour of bark. He had full lips, but they weren’t puffy, and he had a thin nose. His face was angular, and his eyes were always expressive. His face was blank as he stared at his mutilated baby. I swore he looked as if he were about to cry.

“What do you think the person was looking for?” he finally said, turning his head down at an angle.

I dropped my jaw. Compared to my imagination, his voice sounded as calm as possible. He was even showing a glint of a smile. So much for his baby! “Um, what?”

I guess he understood my train of thought, because he said, “Well, I know that I will really miss this car, but it’s kind of obvious that the person who ransacked this car was looking for something, probably something of yours. So I’m glad you’re safe and unharmed.”

He smiled and pulled me in for a hug. Mason had always been overprotective. He was like my older brother. I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t have Mason interfering in my life. If I ever had a crush on anyone, he had to know about it and approve; it got to be annoying, but I never felt that I was in danger. I remembered when I’d first met Mason.

“This is Mason, sweetie. He is an approved friend.”

My mother had mentioned before that she and my father were to pick all of my friends, and this was the first person ever, other than close family, to walk through the front doors of our house. I eyed the boy carefully. Just because they approved didn’t mean I had to, though this was the only chance I’d had to talk to someone near my age in years. Mason looked as if he were a year or two older than I, maybe even three. I was 6, and he looked 9. He was tall and thin, but it looked as if he had muscle starting to develop. He was a lot taller than I was, and the reason I thought he was 9 was because of his baby face. I felt he couldn’t be 10 or older, no matter how tall he was. Everyone was looking at me expectantly, so I took the lollipop I had been consuming out of my mouth and said, “Hi.” Mason awkwardly waved at me in response.

I eyed him suspiciously, wondering what made him so special that my parents approved of him. I didn’t know at the time, but I knew I would find out soon. I walked to my room, and he followed me, keeping his distance. He was kind of cute, and it wasn’t just because he was the first boy I had made contact with. I saw boys on TV who were not as attractive as he was.

I turned abruptly, stopping him before I entered my room, and said, “I don’t know if you should come in.”

He looked at me with one eyebrow raised, put his hand on my head, moved me over and walked into my room. I turned toward him, ready to blow a gasket.

“Hey!”

I was about to chase after him, when I bumped right into his back. Embarrassed, I forgot to be mad. I looked up at him after a long time, and he was still staring at the room. My family members usually reacted the same way. I was an artistic child, so my parents let me have two walls where I could hang my paintings and drawings or draw on the wall. The on-the-wall drawings had to be perfect to make it to the wall. On the other walls, I’d hung scenes of a pond and a park.

“Wow,” he said.

“Oh, so you can talk. I did not like how you shoved me to get into my room. That was very rude. And I don’t think you can be my friend.”

He looked at me and laughed. “Is that so?”

My statement didn’t faze him; if anything, it made him more determined to annoy me. He reached over and tousled my pixie haircut. I shoved his hand off and pouted. He jumped onto my bunk bed, which was just the top.

“Why just the top? Didn’t come with a bottom?”

“I like sleeping closer to the stars.”

He looked at me, questioning my sanity probably, due to the ceiling being just four feet above his head.

“If you look carefully, you can see little greenish-white stars all over the ceiling,” I said.

He didn’t buy it. I sighed, walked over to the light and turned off the light. Instantly, he gasped, for all over the ceiling I had placed, in perfect order to give the illusion of distance away from my bed, stars. The ceiling wasn’t as close as it was with the lights on.

“This is really nice.” His voice sounded genuine.

I softened my voice a little. After all, maybe my father and mother had the least bit of sense, though I missed Carson. I thought the real reason I loved stars so much was because that was our thing; Carson and I would sit in a tree and watch the stars. He was the only person I knew who ever really loved my drawings and paintings other than my parents. As I recalled the steps to Carson’s disappearance, I sighed and came back to reality at the perfect time. Mason had grown bored of my stars and had walked over to my wall of pictures. He was squinting because of the dark.

“Hey, that looks like me,” he said.

My brain did not process what he had said, as I was still daydreaming. My head regained conscious thought when Mason shoved my arm, causing me to fall over. I did not like this kid.

“Does your brain even work? I’m asking you a question, you little space cadet.”

Space cadet? I didn’t know whether to take that as a compliment or an insult.

I remembered how much I’d hated him when I’d first met him. But my parents’ intentions had been perfect if their aim had been to get me a potential guardian as a child. He fit his role perfectly. He was always being pushy and interfering in every part of my life, but he was a great bodyguard.

“So what now?” I looked at him, and he smiled.

“I drive you home.”

What a wonderful school day it had been: I’d gotten tripped, had an argument with my teacher, gotten detention and had my way of transportation brutally abused. I sighed as Mason got into my destroyed car. I waited, leaning on Mason’s temporary car, which he was planning on using until I was done with school. As I leaned on his car, waiting for him to finish rummaging through the remains, I heard him murmur curses as he looked through the scratched CD section. Pulling himself out of the car, he bumped his head on the roof of the car and let out a colourful word from his vocabulary. I couldn’t help but laugh. I must have been tired, because I couldn’t stop laughing. Maybe all the stress was getting to me. Mason stood there awkwardly rubbing the bump on his head as I laughed myself to tears.

Finally, I stopped laughing and wiped my eyes. Mason got into the driver’s seat after he called a tow truck, put the only surviving CD into the CD player and locked the doors—with me on the outside. I walked around the car to the driver’s door and hit the window. He looked up at me, smiled, pointed to his ears and mouthed, “I can’t hear you.” I guessed he was a little bit upset about his baby, but it wasn’t my fault for being a target, and I felt he shouldn’t take it out on me. Finally, he let me in, likely not because of the kindness of his heart but because I was threatening to break the car window. I sat down in the passenger seat and sighed. He looked at me and then turned his head and started the car. The engine purred to life. After the tow truck arrived, Mason paid the driver and told him where his favourite garage was. We would have to go get the car tomorrow afternoon. We got into the second car and drove out of the school parking lot in silence.

I looked over at him. “Mason, I’m sorry about your car.”

He looked at the road, then at me and then back at the road, and he smiled. “It’s all right. I told you—it’s just a car. I’m just glad you’re okay. Don’t worry about it, okay? This stuff happens.”

Something in his voice made me overthink what he had told me. It seemed as if he thought there was a motive for this break-in other than something shiny in a car, so I asked him, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I know it was nothing. Don’t worry about this. I’ll take care of it. It was probably some teenagers looking for something to pocket, and when they didn’t find anything good, they had a temper tantrum and slashed my tires. Jerks.”

I shrugged and let go of his tone; this situation had probably shaken him up a little, causing the shaking in his voice from time to time. The car was his baby, after all.

“What about the car? I’m definitely not walking to school.”

“Well, that does cause a problem for us, doesn’t it? I know.”

I did not like the tone in his voice.

“You are going to ride the yellow bus. I will schedule you in tonight, and you will ride it Monday morning.”

I moaned in disapproval but sighed in agreement. There was no changing of minds when it came to the most stubborn person in the world: Mason. I sat quietly during the ride home—well, at least the first half. I liked the quiet, and it was a decent break, but of course, following the role of a perfect guardian, Mason had to be in my business. That was why my parents had chosen him to be my legal guardian if anything ever happened to them.

“So how was your first day?” He looked over at me just long enough to see a glimpse of me rolling my eyes. “Hey, I wasn’t the one who suggested that you go to school, okay? It was always your father’s idea to keep you away from people, but you wanted to go, so now you’re going to get the questions.”

I heaved an exaggerated sigh and then started with first period. “Well, I have English class first period.”

“Go on.”

“It was like every other high school class I have been to and most likely like all of yours, so why are you asking? We both know you don’t want to know about my classes.”

“You’re right. I want to know about the people in them.”

This was the part I always dreaded—if there were any remotely cute guys in my class, Mason had to know about them. “It’s for your safety,” he would say, but I didn’t understand why I was in so much danger. I had asked Mason before, but he always refused to answer, thinking the less I knew the better.

“Well, there was this boy in my first perio—”

“I knew it! That is why you were so late after school. You two were probably eating each other’s faces in the bathrooms, an—”

“Hey! You of all people should know I would never, ever do that, first of all, and I wasn’t done.”

He exhaled and nodded for me to continue.

“As I was saying before you rudely interrupted, there were actually two boys who stood out.”

I decided not to tell Mason about the boy in the library. I didn’t think I would ever see him again, and besides, I saw that Mason’s jaw was starting to clench, so telling him about a third boy would not be ideal. I paused to let him calm down before I continued.

“One of them had a really weird eye colour. It was violet. I have never seen that before. It was really strange, but they were beautiful. He was also super nice, and I didn’t notice it as a difference after a while. He’s my baking partner.”

This was the part where Mason usually would burst out laughing. No one ever believed that Carson was there, mostly because I was the only one who could see him. But today Mason had a different reaction. He seemed a bit frustrated, but I didn’t let that faze me as I went on.

“Anyway, the other one was really rude and irritating. He seemed to get on my nerves so perfectly. Oh! I made a friend of the female variety today. You would be so proud of me. Well, I sort of made a friend—she kind of befriended me.”

I continued talking about the rest of my day numbly but with some tone changes to make it seem as if I were interested in what I was saying. However, I was really focusing on Mason’s reactions. They were really out of the ordinary today.

“You talked back to the teacher?” he said.

We were at the last light before the turnoff to our residence. It was a red light, and Mason had his hand rubbing into his forehead. “You are so much trouble.”

The light turned green, and off we went. It was only about five more minutes till our destination, so I continued talking about my day. By the end of the ride, my cheeks were exhausted; I was tired of all the questions, and I just wanted to relax for a little bit. I grabbed my bag, and without another word to Mason, I stepped out of the car. I walked straight to the house that my parents used to live in before they died. It was true that I didn’t have parents any longer, but I was not adopted, as I told people.

For a while, my uncle had taken custody of me; however, when Mason was old enough, my uncle dumped me on him. I wanted to move away as soon as he got to be my guardian, since I couldn’t stand the house, so we moved. Mason didn’t sell this house, though; he rented out to a friend of his. I was homeschooled up until I decided I wanted to go to this high school, because my parents thought it was unsafe for me to attend school. I hated thinking about life when my parents were still alive, as it just reminded me that they were both gone.

I pushed the thought of my parents out of my mind and used the trick window leading directly to the stairs to my room. Mason hated it when I went in this way, which basically gave away how to break into our house, but I didn’t care; he was taking too long, and I needed to rest. The trick was to put just the right amount of pressure on the right side of the window, and it would open just like a door. When I was old enough to learn how to put hinges on that window, I did. I hated being cooped up in our house all the time.

I got inside and opened the front door before Mason could get his keys out of his pocket. I smiled, and he frowned, shaking his head and locking the front door behind him. “What am I going to do with you?”

I didn’t respond, because I didn’t know. Mason was stuck with me, and I never knew why. Sometimes I imagined he was like a bodyguard, and I was like a special and important person who needed protection. But then reality hit, and I saw that he was just some old family friend my parents had trusted so much that they’d dumped me on him when they’d died.

I walked past him and went to my room. It looked just as it had when I was a child, but with far more pictures. My parents had told me as a child not to throw any of my pictures out.

I hopped onto my bunk and stretched out. The only other thing that had changed in this room was the size of my bed, and there was now another bed in there as well—Mason’s bed. The only problem with my new roommate was that he snored.

I decided I didn’t want to think anymore, so I took out my iPod, put in my headphones and zoned out to my favourite album. I listened to classical music. It soothed me, and most of the time, it helped me sleep. The violins, cellos, harps and pianos would all hit me in the head and knock me out. My eyes were about to shut, when Mason loudly announced his presence by stomping into the room and tramping around in his big boots. I jumped off of my bed and hit him.

“Ow! What’s your problem, Obsidian?” he asked while rubbing his shoulder, which would probably bruise later on that day.

“You woke me up.”

He looked at me, smiled, bowed and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, Sleeping Beauty. I just came in here to look for something I printed. I left it in here before you called me today.”

I looked at the floor and felt a little bad for his car. “Okay, fine. I’m sorry about your arm.”

He said nothing, grabbed the sheet, tousled my hair and left the room.