The Dream Trotters

Chapter 15

The humid sun beat down harshly on the concrete sidewalk, trying to incinerate the blacktop with heat.  The ants scuttled between the grass and cracks in the sidewalk, attempting to not be fried on their way to the hill.  But the battle was sorely outnumbered.  Against the black sidewalk, they had no defenses, and their thinly armored bodies shriveled in the heat.   

Miniscule generals rallied their troops, ordering them to march on with the food that they carried.  More ants obeyed, hopping to become victorious, yet most just ended up being crunchy lawn ornaments.  The funniest thing was, the people passing by didn’t notice a thing.

Phillipa added another terrible day to her collection.  She filled back those miserable eight hours into another slot of her “try to forget this” binder, and moved on with her day.  The frustrating thing was, that she had been popular today. Yet it hadn’t felt like she wanted it to.  

Even though she was the center of all attention, she was still self-conscious and scared.  The teenage girl enjoyed walking.  The pounding sound her worn Vans made against the ground was therapeutic.  The more stressed she was, the faster she walked.  On this particular afternoon, her gait was somewhere between a speed walk and a jog, which meant that she was on feeling overload.

Though, what made her go insane was that Finn had followed her home from school.  He rode behind her on his mountain bike, aluminum glinting in the sunlight.  He biked slowly, swerving often to try and not bike past Phillipa.  

Despite her charging speed, she was no match for the gears of his bike.  Every once and a while, he would break the silence with a refrain of practically the same statement.

“What happened to us, it was crazy,” said Finn, for about the nine hundred and ninetieth time that day.  Phillipa wanted to strangle him, or at least retort with some sarcastic, biting comeback.  But she had spent so many conversations with Finn doing just that, and she was tired of it.  So she made an exception, bit back the sarcasm and muttered out something stupid.

“Yah, I guess,” she replied, in a nonchalant manner.  This less than ideal banter continued on for minutes, until they finally approached Finn’s home.  The chocolate paint of Finn’s house soothed down her flustered brain, sending messages to every corner of her body to settle down.

She slowed down her pace, quieting the appearing red in her cheeks.  As she walked by the house of one of Finn’s neighbors, she noticed a man.  She had never seen him before, yet he looked familiar; and not the good kind of familiar.  He was a wiry fellow, clothed in only a ratty striped bathrobe.

Obviously, he was a French fry short of a happy meal, for he sat on his lawn, watering a batch of marbles.  His face was thin, scarred by a half-heartedly shaved beard, grey eyes and a bloated, blotchy nose.  The gangly grandpa approached his mailbox as the two teens approached, a completely normal action.

As they grew nearer, the stranger tripped over the sidewalk, and began to convulse.  Phillipa ran toward the senior.

“Sir, sir, are you okay?”  she asked him variants of this for a couple seconds, until Finn had caught up.  Soon, he stopped shaking.  He also stopped breathing.  Phillipa, using some lifeguard training she had received, started giving him CPR.  Both adolescents crouched over the man, looking for some remnant of life left.  

She pressed his chest over and over, hoping to save him.  Suddenly the old man raised a vial to the faces of Phillipa  until she too fell to the ground.  Soon, Finn joined her.  The man stood up, straightened his bathrobe, and dragged them into his car.

With surprising agility, the man placed the pair into his car, a 1970s olive colored jeep, and drove away. No one noticed, not even the ants.