The Mountaintop

3

Chapter 3

My mom drove me to school that morning. A wave of anger held tight to her lip and I knew once the dam broke, when...if I made the slightest sound--or even movement--that carefully constructed damn would burst.

We were the only ones in the car that morning. Susan and Bill had woken up early and hiked it out with dad. They were smart about these things. I was not. Hiking out with dad would have made my morning a lot less exotic.

I couldn't say I was sorry though. I wasn't. I had to see her again. Seeing her again made me remember all those years in the woods weren't what psychiatrists said: A dream, an evolution of the mind. Seeing her meant the sun when round and...

I'd never, ever want to forget, damn it. Never want to forget the shape if her face or her middle name or the tips of her elvish ears.

I bit my lip. That action broke her carefully constructed facade.

"Where did you go last night? What the hell did you do?"

I stayed silent, my heart pounding in my chest like a bird flapping it's wings.

There were wet spots on the dashboard where spit had flown. I bit my lip harder.

I'd snuck out the night before. Snuck out in a denim jacket and a good pair of hiking boots. I don't usually sneak out. This had been my first time in over a year. The fourth of September to be specific...

I'd been sneaking out the fourth of September three years now. Today was September fifth. Mom had woken up a zipped-lipped Bill in my comforter this morning.

I looked at my palm. A red mark stretched across the length from pinky to thumb. It still hurt, yet the pain mixed with pleasure as I thought of her smooth, silky skin.

"Mathew... tell me this instant!"

She always screamed and begged for the answers to this question. If she'd look at the hiking boots in my closet--caked in mud, covered in grime, she'd know in an instant.

There was an old trail that started ten, twenty meters from our back porch. It went through the forest and up the Mountain, the land marshy but a relative easy to maneuver. When I'd first moved to Wisconsin I'd been six years old and an explorer. I found the trail while my parents were unloading boxes.

Scouting around I happened upon a tunnel. I went through and came back three days later with scabs over my knees and the searing adrenaline of a boy's first kiss.

We arrived at school with the dreadful silence unresolved. I exited the car with a backpack slung over my shoulder.

A figure stood near a pillar by the entrance. I felt my breath quicken with the sixth sense. The predator sense.

I was a gazelle wandered to close too a lion.

Just like that I remembered what world I was in.

"Where is it?" Spike asked. His hair slicked back with grease, a pair of jeans hung loosely around his hips.

"In my locker." I shuffled my feet together, anxious to have this conversation elsewhere. Away from my peers more specifically.

Spike followed me as I entered the building. The school was abuzz with the talk of loiterers. The kids who came to school early because they didn't have anything worth more than the House of Education.

I wasn't a loiterer.

I was worse than one.

I was the cigarette dealer. I'd end up giving Spike--though the jackass bully he was-- lung cancer a few years after college, not that I'd be dealing anything to him then. When he was an adult I'm sure he'd be purchasing the cigs without my services Although that wouldn't change the fact that I'd started his addiction in the first place.

Because I'd given him his first fucking cigarette.

Spike was a deadbeat. But he didn't deserve that. No one deserved that. If only he hadn't asked...

I opened my locker. "How many do you want?"

Voice low. First thing you learn when dealing these things: Always keep your voice low. I'd been snitched a couple times by goodie-goodies. Luckily I'd gotten my best friend, Zachary Johnson to snatch the goods before the principal started investigating my locker.

"Just a pack, the usual I guess." His harsh demeanor changed, and like an actor changing roles he scuffled his shoes. His arms were clasped behind him and a furrow delved between his brows.

Quieter now, he waited while I searched the hidden sack in my bag, taking a pack of bubblegum out of my backpack.

The bubblegum packaging had been my dads idea. My mom designed the hidden compartment in my backpack. My brother and sister both dealed at their local middle school. I was a senior now, but I could still remember my first deal in seventh grade.

"Give me a ten." Expensive, but it had to be for shipping costs and profit.

His hand shook as he handed it to my outstretched one. I threw him the pack.

"Good doing business with you." I smiled.

As he walked away, a freshmen about Bill's height came rustling forward. He walked fast, but before he disappeared a flash of auburn curls caught my attention.

Her hair on his head...

I'd told her what I did a long time ago, when I could see her everyday with a little jog through the mountain. I told her I sold death and addiction all rolled into one neat little package. Her world was different from ours. They were less mature in mechanics and abstract uses of herbs, she wouldn't have understood if I used terms such as cigarettes or tobacco. She'd been confused, but reassured me despite this that she would always love me despite my flaws. She lived in a medieval world but inhabited by one city, and one royal family.

They were of elvish nature--they were elves. The city and mountain were surrounded by a white mist which none could step beyond.

"I don't understand our world myself." She'd explained to him many years ago. "The history is all rubbish--only leading to dead ends and what not. All I know is the royal family has no say in politics or quarrels in the public. We are puppets, and He controls us as He does everything else." She looked at him with tears in her eyes. "He's the one that restricts movement between your world, and mine."

She'd told me all of this in the cottage we used to meet at--when I'd come for my many visits in the late afternoon. The cabin belonged to her older brother, Henry. She'd declared it hers with the broad exclamation that she used it more often anyway.

All of this rushed through my head with a glimpse of that hair, and some more. The bell rang and I still sat in the hallway, staring after him.

I had only the soft memory of her skin to remember her by, but I'd keep that, because it was better than never believing in the first place.

I'd past the pont of caring about whether she was an illusion a long time ago.