Eerie Jerry

My secret

I walked up to Harriet at the table and I asked her if I could join with her to colour in colouring books with her and she actually agreed. She had two colouring books, so I could use one while she was using hers. The markers and crayons were spread out on the table we were on. I saw a red crayon and used it to colour a picture of a chap walking his dog. I had no plan to stay in the lines, I just coloured and coloured everything red to my heart's content. Harriet looked at me and spoke, "Jeremy, don't use all of the red, you're colouring the whole page red." "But,...I like it..." I just kept colouring the page red, all red, it was my favourite colour and I started another page and started using the red crayon. "Jeremy. You had the red for a long time, I need it now." Harriet interrupted my thoughts while colouring. "I like it." I said to her softly. "Give it back!" she said as she yanked it out of my hands. "Geez, Louise." She started colouring something red in her book and I just felt like that was unfair to just yank my favourite colour out of my hands. I just felt like I needed to say it, "What's your favourite colour?" Harriet looked her colouring book as she spoke, "Purple." I quickly took the purple crayon and marker and ran off with it. I heard the voices telling me where to go and what to do with them. "Her room..." "The window..." I heard them say to me in my head. I went into her room, like they said. I opened her window that was a high rise from the ground and I threw them both out of the window. I quickly shut the window closed and I went back to the table where Harriet sat and coloured. She looked up at me. "What did you do with them?" I had to hide what I did, so I just acted dumb. "What's 'them?'" "My purple crayon and marker, where are they?" I just shrugged. "Where are my purple colours, you stupid, lying fool!?" she raised her voice at me. "Harriet!?" I heard Auntie Daisy shout as she walked into the dining room. "What is going on here? Why are you yelling?" "He did something to my purple marker and crayon and he won't tell me! Where did you put them, liar?! Come on!!" "Hey! Stop! There's no need to raise your voice at him, Harriet! Your father will be home soon and he doesn't want to come home to conflict!" "But, he took my colours and did something with them!" Aunt Daisy looked at me at my eye-level and spoke in a soft tone, "Jeremy, what did you do with them? Tell me the truth, buddy." Her voice was so soft and sweet and I just couldn't let her down, I loved my aunt. "The window..." I said pointing to the hallway. "Where?" It took me some guts and confidence to say it, but I had to come clean to my aunt, I care enough for her to not be disappointed at me. "...Harriet's window..." "Come, show me." I got up and I lead her to Harriet's room and Harriet followed. I went over to the window in her room and I pointed to the outside. "You didn't!?" Harriet yelled at me. She looked at the window and saw the purple crayon and marker outside laying in the grass. "Aaaahh!!! He threw them out!!" Harriet scolded to her mother about me. "Well, come on, let's go get them, not a big deal." Daisy gave Harriet her right hand and walked her out of the room and Harriet gave me an evil mad look underneath her brown and red hair at me before she left the room with Auntie Daisy. They went downstairs and went outside to retrieve Harriet's purple crayon and marker and came back inside. I heard their footsteps from the upstairs, telling me that they were coming towards me. Harriet had the look of fury on her face as she looked at me. "Jeremy, honey," Aunt Daisy spoke to me, "we do not throw anything out the window, okay? That was mean of you." She gets down to my eye level with one knee down. "I want you to tell Harriet you are sorry for what you did." She spoke in that soothing, calming voice I adored and I just had to obey to it. "I'm sorry." I spoke to Harriet. "Good boy. Now, Harriet, what do you say?" Harriet had a gruff tone to her voice. "It's fine." she spoke with her violent dark green eyes staring at mine. "Good. Now, we're going to learn from this, okay? No more throwing out anything from the window, no more fighting, you two are cousins and you just started school again." I always appreciated the soft tone Aunt Daisy spoke to me, it was a lot better than my mum's authoritative tone. She didn't care if she was talking to a child or to a grown-up with her kind of voice. But, she does lighten her pitch when she talks to her friends or her relatives on the phone or at their mansions. What did they have that I didn't? Why does she talk to me differently? Have I done something to her and I didn't know about it? But, Aunt Daisy is sweet and loving to me. She had toys all over the place in her house, even in the bathroom she had Harriet's toys in there. I viewed the handmade drawings Harriet had done on their refrigerator. Most of them were purple and some were report cards with good marks. Harriet had A's and B's in her classes and I saw written in black pen that had to be Aunt Daisy or Uncle Henry's handwriting saying, 'Great job, Harriet! We are proud of you!' I felt a little bit of jealousy reading that caption on her report card. But, maybe if I did well in school, my parents might acknowledge me and write something to me saying they were proud of me. I might not get one from Mum, but maybe by Dad. As I was viewing the wall of fame for Harriet on the fridge, I heard a car pull in, then a car door open and close and lock with a beep. "That's Daddy!" Harriet said with excitement. I knew that meant Uncle Henry is home now. He is like my dad, but so much better and cooler. He does work as a health insurance agent, but he acts very laid-back when he comes home. He works on weekdays from mornings to evenings while Daisy works three days a week as a retirement home receptionist. I would try to tell my father some things troubling me, but he would pretend to listen and does nothing about it. But, not my uncle, I'm never afraid to tell him anything that was troubling to me to his green eyes and red haired face. Henry unlocks the door and walks in as Harriet happily jumps into his arms. "Hello there, my precious!" he remarks as he picks up Harriet and hugs her followed with a big kiss to the cheek. "I heard you're in year two! My little girl is growing up! How did that go?" "It was good!" Harriet replied with a cheerful voice. "Great! Glad you like it, my girl!" He puts Harriet down when he sees me. "And hello there to you, little boy! First year of school!" He picked me up too and gave me a hug. "How was your day, sonny?" I just sighed because I didn't want to bring it up, but maybe he might have some sympathy for me. "Not good." I said to him. "Oh, that's pants. Sorry about that tough day, but it will get better soon." I hope he is right, I don't want to face school if it's going to be like that everyday. He puts me down and takes off his shoes and puts them in the shoe cubby. "Well, kids, Daddy/Uncle is home, how about some dinner?" he asks with kind of a musical tone. "Yes!" Harriet shouts while I just reply with a "Yeah." "Okay, how about some pizza? Daddy's cooking!" Harriet jumps and shouts while I just nod and smile. Uncle Henry does make a good pizza and Aunt Daisy makes a good apple tart. "We better get cooking before bedtime, chaps." He claps his hands once as like some signal of commencement. "Let's cook!" We all scurried into the kitchen and we had to put on our aprons to help out Henry. Henry turned on the oven to 204°C, it had to preheat, so we still had time. Harriet put on her pink apron with blue dots and I put on my dark green apron with white text saying 'Daddy's little cook!' This was Harriet's when she was younger, but they handed it down to me. I didn't mind it because Uncle Henry has been more dad to me than my own father. I put the neck loop over my neck and I tied up the strings into a shoelace knot and tied them in front of me instead of behind me. Harriet saw that and just giggled to me. "You're supposed to tie them behind you." I just shrugged at her. "Is there a law to that?" I rebutted. Harriet opened her mouth to speak, but she stopped and lost her train of thought. "No..." she said. "That's what I thought, put a sock in it." "Hey, hey, no fighting," Uncle Henry said to us. "we're going to make tonight's dinner, so hush." I was really excited to help my uncle, this is the house where I can be a kid and not a housecat. "Okay, kids, get me the crust, pizza sauce, cheese, pepperoni and we'll use the spinach leaves after it's done." Harriet beat me to the punch with the crust, she took out the pre-made crust in their pantry. I went into the refrigerator to get the sauce and I took it out. Uncle Henry saw what I took out and he just laughed. "Jeremy, I said the pizza sauce, buddy." He saw that I took out the barbeque sauce instead of the pizza sauce they desired. Aunt Daisy saw that too and laughed. "Somebody is quite creative!" Harriet just looked with disgust. "Eww, barbeque sauce? That's gross." "It wouldn't be so bad," Uncle Henry said, "but we are having pizza sauce tonight. Sorry kiddo." I had to put back the bottle of barbeque sauce in the fridge and I took out the jar of pizza sauce seasoned with basil leaves. "Okay, let's spread the sauce on our crust." He says as he takes out a big sliver coloured spoon and puts dollops of sauce on the crust and spreads it with the other end of the spoon. He keeps doing it until the crust was completely covered with the seasoned red sauce. "Now, somebody get me the cheese, but don't cut it!" he spoke with a laugh as we all did. I adored his sense of humour, Henry can make anybody laugh even if you were having a rotten-egg day, he is so great with kids. Again, Harriet beat me to it when she took out the bag of shredded white mozzarella cheese. "Good girl." he spoke as he took the bag, opened it up and started spreading the shreds on the sauced crust. "Now, who here wants to get me the pepperoni?" Harriet almost ran to the fridge, but I was standing right next to it before he was done spreading cheese on the crust. I took out the little package of pepperonis and handed it to him. "Good boy!" he said with a high pitch. I felt a shock of eustress when he said that. He called me a good boy! I was really happy somebody called me a good boy. My mum and dad don't say good boy to me, they would just say hi every now and then and tell me not to do something and that would be it. I watched Henry decorate the cheese layer with pepperonis, it looked delicious. "Okay, children, the oven is fully preheated and we can now, bake our pizza!" We cheered with excitement and I jumped up and down with a sense of accomplishment. I haven't felt that since that time I picked out my outfit to a party I thought I was going to. I took off my apron and hung it back up on the hooks mounted in the kitchen and went to the living room to play with Harriet's building blocks in the living room. I built some words with the colourful wooden blocks and as I was doing so in my daydream, another flying white figure appeared in the room. Ugh, not now! Why do they always come when I'm busy? The figure looked at me and spoke. "You can see us, from what I heard." No, not now. Not in front of Uncle Henry. "Jeremy Banks, is it? I know you can see me. You're looking away from me when you saw me." I just had to ignore him, but he kept getting on my nerves. "I have an idea-r, tell your folks you're going to the bathroom and we can talk in there. I really want to speak with you." I sighed and I spoke in a whisper to him. "Fine." I get up to walk to the bathroom and I close the door and lock it. The flying figure comes in with me. "Just who are you and what do you want?" I questioned him. "You have it." he said to me. "What? What is it?" "The gift. The gift to see us." "What are you talking about? Stop wasting my time!" I had to keep my voice low, so nobody would think somebody is in here with me. "You can see ghosts, Jeremy, you have the gift." I just looked at him dumbfounded. "What's a ghost?" "You don't know what a ghost is? Somebody who passed and who is now a ghost or a spirit. Whichever you call it." "Passed? Like a test?" "No, no, child, people who died and turned into a ghost." I had no idea what all of this meant. What does die mean? What does all this mean? "Look, what are you talking about?" "Listen to me, Jeremy, you have a power only you can possess and you cannot let other people know or you'll be in terrible trouble. You must keep this a secret with yourself." I had so much I had to process, but I had no clue what in God's name was going on and this was boggling my brain so much, it was giving me a headache. "Just give me the steps on all this, okay?" "Okay, sonny, you can see us, but in front of other people, you can't talk to us. We were told of a spirit speaker would be born into this world and has no idea to use his power. But, we want to help you, Banks." As I was listening to what he was saying, I heard knocking on the door. "Seriously, Jeremy? I got to go!" Harriet ordered. "I'll be right out!" I yelled to her, but I had to understand what this 'ghost' was telling me. "You have the power to see us, but that is your secret only. Don't tell anyone." "But, what if they-" "Jeremy, come on!" Harriet shouts as she beats on the door. "Okay! Okay! Look, ghost, I have to go now. Couldn't you talk to me when I go home?" I asked him. "Yes, I'll follow you home." I nod to him and I unlock the door and let Harriet in and get out of the bathroom as she uses her turn. There was just so much too process in all this. I felt a mixture of emotions, what should I do and what to think with what I just learnt today. After twenty minutes pass, Henry calls us to put the spinach leaves on the pizza and we all dine on it. The homemade pizza was so good and I could tell it was a heavenly dinner because my amazing uncle, Henry, put his heart and effort into it. The combination of pepperoni and spinach was so divine. After dinner, we got the call from my father and he was coming to pick me up. My life is now pants again and the fun is over.