The Aphrodite War

Chapter Two

Scrrrrratch.

                The sound awoke me. I pushed myself up slowly from the mattress, quietly like an animal of the wilderness waiting to pounce on its prey. I was too exhausted to think of any danger coming my way. Granted, it was approximately 4 o’clock in the morning. My mind wasn’t prepared to think, never mind be afraid.

                Scrrrrratch…

                I suddenly realized I had not the slightest idea what was happening. It frightened me, now that I was awake and alert. I quietly pushed the soft bed sheets off my body and looked around me for a clue. I was either ready to fight back, or ready to run away like a terrified child. I wasn’t quite sure yet.

                The sound echoed through my bedroom once again. My heart stopped as I saw a hand bent like claws scraping at my window. Panic sprinted through my body, my breath shaking and my fingers weak. At this point, though, I was willing to fight it off. However, before I could, I had to know what or who it was.

                I stepped off from my bed as the scratching continued, now accompanied with the whispering of my name. “Symphony…”

                I walked toward the window. My footsteps creaked with every touch, and the level of suspense shot through the roof. I could hardly inhale without wanting to cry, hardly exhale without wanting to scream for help. I reached the window and hesitantly grasped the white bar to open it. One, two… I counted slowly. One, two, three. I pulled the window open.

                “Symphony.”

                My breathing relaxed. “Noah,” I whispered.

                He looked at me and climbed into my bedroom. He fell onto the floor beneath me, then rolled over and stood up again. He dusted off his already dirty clothes. “I thought you died or something,” he said.

                “I thought I was about to die, actually,” I said, rolling my eyes and picking leaves off his raggedy old t-shirt. “How’d you get so messy, now?”

                “Well,” he began. “I was climbing a tree for some medicine leaves. You know, for my dad. Dad is…”

                “Father,” I corrected him. Perhaps I never took pride in royalty, but I always took pride in respect.

                “Dad is sick.”

                I stared at him. I felt my face transforming from a look of anger and confusion, to a look of sorrow and sympathy.  “Sick?” I asked.

                He nodded and turned away, as if trying to hold back tears. He walked over to my closet and reached upwards toward a shelf. He pulled down my box of memories, as I liked to call it. It was really only a bundle of photos that I never bothered to look through. Noah loved to, though.

                He sat on my bed with one leg tucked underneath him. One by one, he looked at the photographs, laughing at the silly ones and making a remorseful face at the unhappy ones. He moved his finger in a way that told me to go closer to him, sitting on the bed beside him. I did just that, glancing over his shoulder at the pictures in his hands.

                “Do you remember this?” He asked, his eyes shimmering in the moonlight. “This was years ago.”

                I grabbed the photo and stared at every small detail. It was when I was eleven years old, and Noah was the same age. We were standing before a brick wall pretending to be butterflies, in honor of his father’s new business. He made butterflies from dust. We had hardly seen butterflies before that.

                I laughed. “We were so stupid,” I said, chuckling. “The bad part is we haven’t really grown up much since then.”

                Noah smiled, then sighed. “I wish Dad could stick around.”

                “What’s wrong, anyway?” I asked, placing one hand gently on his shoulder.

                “We aren’t sure,” he said quietly. “He’s been so weak and lately he’s been sleeping more and more. He’s got a terrible pain in his abdomen and we can’t seem to understand what’s wrong. Even the finest doctors can’t find a thing.”

                “What about the business?”

                “I’m probably going to have to run it on my own,” he said, tears overflowing his eyes.

                He looked at my for a few seconds, then looked away and wiped his tears before they could control him. “I’d better get going,” he said.

                He stood up and cautiously stepped foot out the window. Off he went, without even saying goodbye.

                Now wide awake, I tiptoed down the winding steps outside my bedroom, which led down into the dining room below me. Sick? I repeated to myself. Sick.

                The words formed in my mind and slowly made their way out quietly onto my lips. “I can’t believe he has to run the butterfly business on his own,” I whispered, the words hardly noticeable to anyone other than myself.

                Or, at least, so I thought.

                “Really?”

                The voice echoed through my bones, the single word shooting through me. The voice belonged to Father.

                I acted as if I had expected him to be there, as if I didn’t mind that he was there, waiting for me… as if I didn’t see the fury burning inside his eyes.

                “Yes,” I responded. “He… he has to run the business, most likely.” I avoided saying his name, avoided stirring up any more anger within Father.  It hardly helped anything, though.

                “Noah?” he asked, like he didn’t already know.

                I swallowed nothing before I spoke. “Yes, Noah.”

                He looked down at his feet, his hands elegantly placed behind his back. He kicked at the air gently, sort of swaying from side to side, and from side to side again. He cracked his neck, moved his mouth to the side of his face, and looked up at me. Without saying a thing, he turned around and went back to his bedroom. I turned around to do the same.

                “Well,” a voice said out of the darkness. My heart raced, I was so unbelievably startled. “That was….”

                It was Bella.

                “Terrible,” I said, finishing her sentence before she could. “That was terrible.”

                Bella laughed and walked out into the dim dining room light.

                “He hardly even said anything,” I continued. “He hates Noah. I can barely survive without him, and Father hates him! Do you know what that’s like?”

                “No,” Bella assured me. “I don’t. You’re going to have to tell me.”

                And so I did. I told her about Noah’s father’s illness, I told her about the butterfly business, and I told her about the pain from Father’s hatred toward my closest friend since birth.

                The sorrowful look on her face told me she was concerned. Not for the situation I was in, though.

                More for a situation I hadn’t even known I was a part of.