It was Pfiefer who was the one now in a trance. Stuck still, staring back into the narrowness of Trelle Street while Tyler flailed his arms about; shouting at her from a foreign place at a close distance.
“PFIEFER? FIFE? UNI? Pfiefer, I am not kidding anymore.” He tightened.
But Pfiefer couldn’t hear him. Somehow, there was darkness when not ten seconds before there had been light. There were stars obscuring the neatly trimmed houses that once were and there was a life amongst the emptiness that she saw before her, tugging on her soul strings and Pfiefer begged him to turn the sun back on so that she could prove it.
It was only until she felt the warmth of Tyler’s fingers against hers; pulling her closer towards the shadow she had been watching, watch her. Only then did the houses return. Only then did she recover. Exhaling her first breath in a myriad of minutes. Stuck still, staring at proof move like said minutes in the direction of her Ash tree.
“Did you feel him too, Ty?
“Feel who?”
“You saw the darkness too?”
“You know I didn’t, Pfiefer.”
“Then where are we going?”
“Towards it…him.” He quickly corrected.
“Why?”
“Because you know there will be no peace
until…” He trailed.
“Until WHAT?”
He had seen that look on her, time and again, and it always came down to her witchcraft. Her feelings, auras, was usually something she would always shrug off at first but it would nag at her, slowly gnawing away on her pit, on her conscious until she solved it. Sometimes, these feelings lasted for weeks and she wasn’t the same until they went away. No peace until the paranoia in her head exposed. And because the paranoia was usually legitimate, there was never any peace in Tyler’s head either.
He contemplated returning the shrapnel she had recently ejected, but opted against it, knowing it was a war he was not prepared to fight just then. He thought instead to keep his silence on the subject, and a close eye on her, until she broke it.
“It was dark.”
“Dark?”
“Like night.”
“It was night?”
“Yes, and I was floating.”
“Did you see him?”
“When you touched me, everything came back. I am not really certain what he was but he was this big blur of black.”
“How did you know it was a he?” Tyler asked after some hesitation.
“Because I could feel him in my soul.”
Pfiefer woke, as if returning from the dead and tried something else instead. Hoping complete sentences would, somehow, make things clearer. “I heard these sounds before you came outside, then they went away, and just now everything went dark. There was nothing. It was all black.” Pfiefer paused, “Tyler, I felt something pulling me from the inside. I felt him tugging.”
“I warned you about that sausage girl, but you insisted. Don’t think getting the runs will get you out of our first day.” Tyler joked lightly, hoping to soften the mood.
“You know? Nobody really likes you. We’re all just pretending.” Pfiefer stated dramatically before exploding with laughter. “Seriously, no one.” She managed to get out; by now Tyler joining in on the laughter as well.
It had run its course when he tightened his composure, “last chance to turn back Fife. I am not going to hear about your regrets all day. Seriously, I will find a new friend this year.”
“Don’t threaten me. Where else are you going to find another more brilliant than I?” She said half-dramatically. Tyler contemplated her accuracy before accepting it and maintained the subject.
“Who was he Pfiefer?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Well let’s go find out.”
“He is gone Tyler, drop it!”
And just like that it was left, in the air, in silence, as they often had done and they resumed their walk. Towards the only thing, Tyler often wondered if they had in common; usually after moments like these. He shrugged off the thought and the others that crept behind it keeping a close eye on her. The peace in his head weakening with each glance as their monstrous goal suddenly came into focus.
If someone were to take a scoop out of a slab of ice cream, turn it upside down, level a bit off the top and then build a town upon it, that would be what Blisst resembled; at least that is how it is usually described by the locals. A small town atop a mountain encased by mountains. A secret society comprising of one city park, a mini mall, two schools, and a housing tract snuggled between a rocky embrace.
SubAequeus High is a lavishly large building and the latest addition to the quaint town. Although that isn’t saying much, as the last thing to have been erected before it was the city itself. Prior to its erection, grades 9-12 were bussed into Canyon High located in the next town over. That is, until Subjourner Aequeus’ heirs decided to put their bickering over his money aside and complete their late grandfather's work; finishing the construction as it stipulated in his will.
The mountainous monstrosity located within the mountainous muscles of Blisst is positioned in the upper region of town below a housing tract of seven cul de sacs collectively known as The Edens. Affixed upon a source of geothermal energy, it has been plagued with strange occurrences ever since its construction. From the rubber soles of the builders’ boots melting if they stood in one position for too long, to things spontaneously combusting in flames in the Science lab, it was only appropriate the school’s mascot was the salamander.
Dreamed up by the late billionaire himself, much like the rest of the town, it is unique in its design. Its hexagonal shape conveniently houses six triangular shaped buildings within it with a hallway between each angle; so that none of the slices of the pie actually touch. The four main subjects taught, English, History, Math, and Science, each have their own slice and corresponding color to distinguish them from one another.
Math (red), and Science (green) form the first diamond within the hexagon and English (blue) and History (yellow), form the second, although both diamonds are separated by the two remaining slices. Both the Science and the History angles have a separate and detached rectangular addition built into their slice. A science lab, with the latest up-to-date equipment and a history museum, displaying various forms of the town’s records, are located directly below their corresponding bases. The electives, which are purple in color, are scattered throughout these particular slices and are marked by a purple door.
An outdoor quad and an indoor café, located betwixt the four subjects, make up the last two slices that remain of the hexagon and form an inverted diamond; with their apexes kissing in the center of school. The quad is the only one of the slices not enclosed; its frame being shaped by a cement sidewalk. Directly neighboring school grounds is student and staff parking as well as Sub Park, which contains the basketball courts, tennis court and a pool.
Pfiefer and Tyler had trampled through the entire parking lot, before Tyler finally broke the silence; in an interest to see how his friend responded and not necessarily to get an answer.
“M104,” she responded to him quickly, “in the Math Angle.”
Tyler looked upon her suspiciously before deciding it was a sufficient enough response and to not make a fuss about it for now. When the first bell buzzed, Tyler, who by now had relaxed into his paranoia, decided to shift it from her to more pressing matters.
“Can you believe they had the audacity to split us up this semester? I mean, it’s only one class but still…” Tyler ranted, continuing his conversation as if the warning bell only applied to freshman and they walked as long as they could in this manner through the crowded quad before they had to, eventually, part ways.
“See you next period, Ty.” She smiled
“I’ll write you.” He dreamily mocked, but Pfiefer knew he wasn’t kidding and so her smile lingered a little longer than she expected as she headed towards the bright red door of her classroom.
When she arrived, Pfiefer took the seat in the farthest row, on the wall closest to the quad in the 4th seat back. Math was her favorite subject but she found she liked to fantasize while the teacher tried to explain the day’s lecture to those who couldn’t quite grasp the equations as quickly as she did; and a window seat with a view of the quad would be ideal for the next four long months of dumb questions. There are no stupid questions, just stupid people, she remembered an old teacher, Mr. Schulte, said to her one afternoon after class and kept the smile alive.
As the bell finished its final farewell, Pfiefer wasted no more time and let her mind drift away. A 50ish man with salt and pepper hair that was parted down the side and combed over, like a school boy during class pictures, stood up from his chair, grabbing the file from his desk, before walking the middle aisle. He took his place behind the podium, just in front of the two giant whiteboards with CALCULUS scribbled through both boards with blue ink.
Pfiefer tried disregarding the tens of education related posters scattered about the walls; walls you almost wouldn’t know were an off-white color, with their catchy slogans tagging them up and all. But became entranced with one such poster that read: 3.14 is PI.E with 3.14 being mirrored to create the letters in PIE. She thought it clever as her mind began to travel in and out of the room.
Mr. Alveda, she heard, somewhere, as she stared out the window into the glossy green grass of the quad. She wondered what Tyler was doing and assumed he was beginning his letter detailing his precise level of boredom without her. That’s A-L-V-E-D-A, someone in the background spoke. She turned to Jesse Ventura, who was in the next row over and one up and pondered over how cute he had gotten over the summer. First year as a professor here at SubAequeus… the voice interrupted again. Pfiefer wondered if Jesse could be crush-of-the-day material, as she resumed her broken thought.
When Pfiefer reattached her gaze from Jesse back through the large window, she noticed it. Some previous tenant had taken the time to smudge their specific stance across the paned glass that set before her.
B-O-R-E-D. Five letters was all it took to capture her attention, but one letter was all it took to keep it. Through this imperfect O, that some summer-schooler scrawled, probably in no hurry, probably on a day like today, she saw him, the boy from earlier she guessed, and he saw her too; just as the earth boomed.
BANG
Her heart jumped over the puddle, before it raced down the street. So fast she had to consume extra oxygen so that it would pull over and rest, so that her neighbors wouldn’t discover her symptoms; although a neighbor did notice her breathing.
And somehow, as she struggled to find the direction of the sound without actually averting her eyes from his, she gravitated towards him or he gravitated towards her, she couldn’t quite tell which; with those details of him coming together vividly and any other detail left over like the neatly shaven grass that rested in the stillness of the wide quad, faded into him.
His dark black hair, so black it was almost bruised in the sunlight, was the last thing she noticed about him but only because she didn’t want to leave his silver stained eyes behind. And when she discovered the dimples and the two rows of glistening perfection inside of them that he revealed to her when he smiled, her heart resumed its previous course, picking up speed with each second his dimples lingered; until he spoke.
“Are you okay?”
It seemed like such a simple query yet Pfiefer grew increasingly puzzled by every bit of it. First at his question, why wouldn’t she be okay? Math was her favorite subject after all. Next, at the fact she couldn’t hear him. She was so close she could smell the sweet scent of his dark skin, so close that nothing else was visible, yet she was completely deaf. Lastly, and most surprisingly, at the flavors that enveloped every surface of her tongue when he spoke. She understood him perfectly but only when she tasted each sugary syllable that was formed when both of his lips rammed rhythmically.
Just after the last word was absorbed into her tongue, the beautiful boy neared closer, as if to kiss her, but passed her and Pfiefer followed his movements with her eyes; somehow keeping up with the boy who by now was sprinting, although her feet never moved an inch. When the back of his bruised locks veered left, her eyes settled on the spot where she sat, herself, sitting under what looked like the ash tree that stood in the field north of her house, only different. Pfiefer watched herself, and that boy, as if a movie, as the scenes played out before her eyes.
She had seen this tree a thousand and one times. It was their spot, she and Tyler, and although this tree had no P+T carved inside an irregular shaped heart on its trunk, although this tree had deep red leaves, not green, red leaves that set fire to the crispness of the white background behind them, like a devil making angels in the snow, she was certain that this was the ash.
There was no field, no grass, no litter, no definite markers that could indicate her precision, just this white background, a tree with red leaves that glittered from an invisible sun behind it, a pair beneath it as the beautiful boy took his place beside the girl and a dreamer following closely along through sweet and salty syllables silently spoken.
Pfiefer felt his fingers touch her skin when he tucked her twin’s curly strands that frolicked before a red headband, behind her ear. She watched the girl’s red lips part with a smile as he caressed her face. She also felt the tear fall from the girl’s eyes as the question the boy asked, and she tasted earlier, suddenly became apparent, she was crying.
Pfiefer surveyed this girl, decorated in a fitted yellow dress with small red stars that flowed out around her at the hips, who was crying before a boy, who wore nothing but black, and watched as he removed a small glass jar from the heart side pocket of his jacket. He popped the miniature cork that sealed it and pressed the empty bottle to her twin’s cheek, collecting a lone tear. He then recapped the lid and slipped it back into place in the pocket in front of his heart.
“Better?” She tasted him say, her tongue on flavor overload now as the girl reveals a full smile to him.
“Wait.” She tasted again as the boy mimicked his request by placing two flattened palms out in front of the girl’s face. He then began to wave his hands around before her eyes in various combinations.
His right hand eventually lowered to his knee but his left continued its motion for several more seconds before retiring in mid-air taking the form of a fist. The boy, then, held up his index finger between them. One. Middle. Two. Ring. Three. Pinky. Four. Thumb. Five. All fingers, fully erect, lingered in the space that separated the pair.
BANG
“MISS?” The sound boomed into her ears like drums. She instinctively turned towards the voice, instantly erasing any remnants of their time together, her and that beautiful boy, as room 104 groggily begins to refocus.
“Miss? Welcome and thank you for joining us today.” She heard the mean-faced man say, just as she heard the class snicker around her; such a foreign feeling to hear words she thought to herself.
“What is your name miss?”
“Pfiefer.”
“What is the solution Pfiefer?” Mr. Alveda finished smoothly. He savored each second it took for the color to leave the now ghost-faced girl’s cheeks as he awaited her response, secretly trying to mask how giddy he was to get to embarrass an unsuspecting victim so early in the semester.
“…5.” Pfiefer stated dryly, those slim yet manly fingers the only things still fresh in her mind as Mr. Alveda’s face fell with disappointment.
“Very good.” He grumbled and swiftly moved on.
Once his attention had shifted away from her, Pfiefer returned back in the direction of the boy only to find no trace he had been there at all.
“Please come back.” She pleaded, softly yet audibly. Jesse Ventura looking back at her smiling; the wrong dimples.
The bell cries out and everyone flees the scene of the crime, flooding the very spot the ash tree stood and they sat under not too long ago. But Pfiefer remained in her seat, staring intently at the spot his dimples were seen last, until Tyler popped his head in the classroom.
“Hello? Earth to Fife.” He called through the chaos. She looked up at him startled, collected her belongings and slipped out the red door before a distracted Alveda could notice. Together they made their way across the quad to second period with Tyler gabbing on about something she had no interest in at the moment.
When they arrived at the yellow door, Tyler spots a pair of desks, side-by-side, in the middle of the classroom and heads over. Pfiefer was hoping for a window seat again but wasn’t able to luck up as easily this time without separating from Tyler. She knew that wasn’t going to happen, so she followed suit, taking her place beside him, not bothering to keep up with the conversation he was well into by then.
With the professor addressing the class, Tyler takes it upon himself to plop a folded piece of paper on her desk, while Pfiefer took it upon herself to ignore the rest of the history lesson Ms. Smith was giving, and Tyler’s note detailing his precise level of boredom without her and focused, instead, on a note of her own.
She removed a folded sheet from its jean home, unsealed it, and scribbled daydreams-tasting words on the next available line. She refolded its creases and placed both notes into her pocket before allowing her mind to drift away once more, subconsciously scanning the classroom for any available space that could house a beautiful boy and his dimples; until the next bell rang.
For two more class periods, Pfiefer carried on in this way, appropriately nodding and smiling at the right times and in the precise amounts that would keep Tyler off her back while at the same time trying to find a reasonable enough excuse to where she could ditch him for a few moments. Any excuse that would not make him want to tag along; or at the very least cause her to explain.
She had ran through every possible scenario, each one of them ending with Tyler in tears and with the lunch bell ringing, signaling her last chance, Pfiefer swallowed her hesitation, mustered up some courage and began.
“Tyler, I need to talk to my teacher again, get me the usual from the Café and meet me in our spot? I…”
“Sure,” he interrupted, “I need to find Kalaya anyway. See you in a bit.” And with that, Pfiefer exhaled deeply but then booked it across the quad towards the red zone, praying Mr. Alveda hadn’t left for lunch yet. She got there just in time to find him with his key in the door, just about to lock up, and found one form of anxiety slowly being replaced with another. She had spent so much time focusing on the Tyler’s lie that she hadn’t even thought about Mr. Alveda’s. She couldn’t think of one reason that would grant her access to his classroom without him there.
Running out of time, she improvises, “um, Mr. Alveda? Could I speak with you?”
“Actually Pfiefer, I was going to head to the Caf’ and grab a sandwich, it is my lunch period too.” He paused crabbily before reading her expression and continuing with a sigh, “but if you want to wait for me here, I guess that would be alright. Or we could walk and talk?
“YES!” she exclaimed rather loudly before starting over in a lower register, “Yes, thank you sir, I will wait for you right here.”
Alveda unlocked the door and opened it just wide enough for Pfiefer to slip inside. She waited for the door to close behind her and for him to relock it before reclaiming her seat by the window, her heart beating faster than it had when she first saw the boy with no decline in sight and she waited there for many minutes before the frustration festered over.
“It couldn’t have been this easy for nothing,” she thought aloud recalling the anxiety she had to suffer through in order to get to this moment. She stared out of the window, greedily looking for him amongst the crowds of cliques that had formed; knowing he wasn’t out there, because if he had been out there, he would’ve been in here with her.
“Please, oh please.” She said, begging the minute hand of the clock, that rested above the whiteboards, to slow down its course possibly even moving backwards if it had wanted to, before submitting to defeat and thumping her head down on the desk.
BANG
She tasted something, shortly after, and immediately looks up to see herself smiling. It was her name she realized, after the last syllable engulfed her taste buds. The scene was continuing where they left off, with Pfiefer watching this beautiful boy and she share a conversation with no words; and it played out before her, inside this time, as the ash tree absorbed all of the classrooms features into itself.
Pfiefer felt the cool breeze as it rustled the leaves of the tree above them and both Pfiefers caught the shimmer reflecting from something around the boy’s neck while the sun peeked through a hole in the leaves the wind made with its breath. She watched the girl place the item in her hand, a rainbow-colored feather attached to a chain and she felt the softness of the invisible object between her own fingers, silently inquiring about the majestic bird that could’ve produced such a sight.
Both girls became entranced by his expression when his fingers gracefully galloped about the air and Pfiefer knew this was going to be good, since the last time he did so, he showed her the answer to a question that, as far as she could tell, coincided in an alternate universe.
By the time she had figured out the object he had removed from his black jean pocket, the flame had already extended beyond his fingers. He pulled the feather from the thin, flat clasp that dangled at the end of the black chain around his neck with his free hand; it lay in his palm as the tip of the flare from his lighter was held a few centimeters below. All three pairs of eyes filled with the light the feather made as it burst into flames before disintegrating into a pile of rainbow soot within seconds.
“Voila.”
The flavors overtook Pfiefer’s mouth as her twin matches his smile with hers. Then the boy sets the lighter down beside him and uses his free hand to scoop a small mound of earth from the ground between them. He dumps the pile of rainbow dust inside the shallow hole and recovers it again before revealing a premature smile. Pfiefer quickly caught on, beaming with an excitement for each exaggeration witnessed as he rummaged through all of his pockets, matching his facial expression with each pocket that turned up empty, until settling on the one in front of his heart with a devious grin.
Pfiefer’s flattened palms were glued to her desk, a layer of sweat acting as an adhesive between her skin and the laminated wood. Laminated wood that displayed, in various shades of penciling, a funny cartoon, and even one conversation, two students in two different class periods were having. But Pfiefer didn’t know there were markings just beneath her sweaty palms now and Pfiefer couldn’t tell you whether or not they were there earlier in the day either. With her eyes wide and her jaw ajar, the only thing she could tell you about, then or now, pertained to this beautiful boy as she waited for him to do what she already knew was coming; as he removed the tiny bottle from his chest.
He uncorked the top and poured her liquid onto the fresh earth before them, tossing the bottle behind him in dramatic display. A seedling sprouts from the ashes, faster than she could keep up and watches her own eyes fill with wonder when she tasted tada from his lips.
Pfiefer did her best to take it all in, her twin’s expressions, his theatrics, the flavors that held her mouth hostage each time he would speak. She narrowed her focus, to the deep purple seeds, like rounded balls the size of rice that covered the dark green stem that sprouted from the floor of the blank backdrop. He waved his hands around the bud, collecting all of the seeds not once touching the stalk and brought the collection before the girl’s lips as Pfiefer tasted what he wanted her to do next. Following his instruction, Pfiefer blew warm air towards the desk in front of her, at the same time her cosmic twin blowing seeds from his cupped hand to the ground before them.
Pfiefer’s eyebrows kiss, her twin’s eyebrows kiss, and his eyebrows show no affection, as all three of them soak up the spot the seeds lay, simultaneously seeing something they aren’t quite prepared for.
BANG!
“No. No. No. It’s Mr. Alveda.” The real self said aloud after the faintest of voices in the background ripples into a colossal boom. Her eyes never leave the scene, remembering how fast it faded from her earlier in the day, intending to hold on to him, if only a little longer. She resumes watching her fantasmic twin imitate her own emotions through tear stricken eyes. Alarm sets in as the red leaves of the ash turn from devilish red, to their normal color of green to their final shade of dead. Panic takes over when the white backdrop fades to black. Fear takes over the boy’s face, as the scene is ripped apart, a jagged line dividing the once beautiful pair right down the middle; the couple still reaching out to each other when Pfiefer begins to taste the boy’s next words.
BANG!
And then they were gone, the classroom taking its time reappearing, with Pfiefer blinking several times trying to hurry the process along, trying to focus the hazy face that stood before her, to determine what kind of expression it held. Finally when it was revealed, concern was the emotion most prominent confirmed through the fright parading across his pupils.
“Sorry,” Pfiefer said breathily, “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Are you okay?” He asked, passing her one of his napkins after he noticed the beads of perspiration dripping from her temples.
“I am fine.” She lied and resumed her gasping, trying to slow her speeding heart while she headed for the door.
BANG!
“Pfiefer,” he said forcefully, “What was so important you needed to see me?”
With her heart heightened, she managed to eke out the best lie she could. “Um, I just (breath) wanted to (breath) apologize (breath) for my behavior earlier. I didn’t mean to (pant) drift away in your class.” A few seconds elapsed before his leer birthed a verbal response.
“Let me share something with you that my teacher told me at your age. The thing about destiny, Pfiefer, is that it’s not about the person you become, but who you decide to be.” Alveda paused for a little longer than expected before his tone changed. “And you could’ve just told me this before when we were outside my classroom.”
“Sorry sir.” She returned, hoping to soften the block of ice that stood between them. Feeling the temperature drop a few more degrees, she opted to put distance between them instead.
“Good guess by the way.” He shouted to her back. Pfiefer reversed her stance, facing the blizzard head on with confusion; until he clarified. “5, the answer you said in class earlier was correct. Good guess.”
Pfiefer shot Mr. Alveda a half-smile, the best she could do under the circumstances and turned away from the cold once more, putting a solid red door between them this time, wishing she could’ve shot him something else instead.
It wasn’t until there was more than just a red door between them that she remembered it. Destiny. Could it be mere coincidence she thought to herself? The very word she blew into existence was the same word her teacher warned her about. The thing about destiny. Destiny. The innocent phrase haunted her more than she cared to admit especially since that tugging feeling in the pit of her stomach had returned, almost as if it were destined.