Letters

Small Porches, Blue Doors, and Miriam

I woke up the next morning to a harsh knocking on my door. Immediately I groaned and rolled over to look at my clock. It was only 8:30, I wasn't late for church so what was wrong?

"Yeah?" I shouted warily. I had managed to get out of any kind of punishment for hitting Jack last night after my dad heard what happened and laughed so hard he couldn't speak, but my mom still hadn't been best pleased with me.

The door opened a crack to reveal my mom who was dressed in a bathrobe, her hair up in a towel, and a phone in hand. Sure enough, she did not look very happy with me. "Zeke, why is it that I just got off the phone with Mrs. Schabel to find that I'm supposed to be driving you and Katherine somewhere after church today?"

I bit back another groan. Shoot. I had forgot to ask her about that last night. "Oh yeah, sorry about that mom. I meant to ask you about that last night." She glared at me and raised an eyebrow. "You remember that biology project Katherine and I are working on together? We found another really good source to interview and we have an address. Could you drive us over there?"

My mom sighed. "Yeah I can drive you over there. It is for school after all."

This made me smile. For some reason I was looking forward to this. Not necessarily because I wanted to talk to this Miriam, but because I might actually be very close to finding Andrés. And just thinking about Katherine made my day brighter. "Thanks mom!"

She smiled reluctantly. "No problem Zeke. Just next time, ask first okay?"

"Sure," I called after her as she shut the door. As soon as she was gone I fell back against the pillows. I could do this.

One shower, three pieces of toast, and two hours later, I was beginning to reconsider that statement. Once I thought about it there were some major holes in my plan. What if Miriam wasn't home? What is she didn't want to talk to us? After all she had no idea who we are or what we wanted, would she really want to let us in the house to talk to her about her dead sister? Why would she think we even cared? Why did I care?

By the time I got to church my head was literally swimming with all the things that could go wrong. It was all I could do to smile when Katherine waved at me. Seeing her did make me happier though. She looked nice again, her light brown hair hung down and straight, and she was wearing a pretty blue patterned dress with leggings and boots. Somehow though underneath that I could see the huntress from last night. Her eye lashes still sparkled as if she hadn't been able to get all of them off and if I closed my eyes I could still see her laughing, silhouetted by the streetlight that sparkled off her silver circlet, and smell her strawberry shampoo.

"Hey," she said, knocking me out of my thoughts. I fought hard not to flush. Why did these keep happening to me?

"Hey," I responded. "Sorry if my mom seemed weird on the phone; I forgot to ask her to drive us to Miriam's last night."

She laughed and I felt my chest warm. "That's okay. I was going to apologize for my mom even calling. I think she still thinks it's weird that we're doing a project together."

I shrugged with a smile. "Oh well. Eventually it won't be weird anymore." This made her smile in response. "Unfortunately, I'm slightly worried about our plan that we have. Or more specifically our lack of one."

Katherine nodded, sucking in a breath and blowing it out. "Yeah I know. Me too. I guess if we get there and something goes wrong we can always leave right?"

By now we were beginning to walk into the church, so I dropped my voice so that I wouldn't get a dirty look from the older church goers. "Yeah I guess you're right. Nothing much we can do right?"