Wonder Made

One

•••

This story begins in a high school, the small town kind. Where everything smells of farts, sweat, sawdust and shame.

Before the first bell, buses unload their passengers in neat, organized rows. Sneakers and boots, sandals, and, yes, a few slippers, make first contact with the asphalt. Released from the confinement of public school transit, students breathe deeply, relishing the crisp air of an early fall day. Everyone scowls, as this is the natural state of all students, worldwide.

Peneloper Auttsley, designated heroine, stands on the curb, one foot on the sidewalk, one just left of an enormous pothole filled with the roiling water of that day's rainfall. A black car with tinted windows, long in size, though not quite the length of a limousine, pulls to a stop in a fire lane.

Teachers, sandwiched between the four orange cones denoting the school's only smoking zone and who are busy puffing on their morning cigarettes, watch on with glazed, disinterested eyes.

A manservant, also in black, steps out from the car and scuttles like a crab missing several of its legs to the back passenger door. Onlookers hold their breaths. Peneloper waits, curiosity mildly piqued.

The door opens, and viola! Crispen Heavensley, the sole occupant of the house on Mire Hill, makes his debut. 

•Don't Let Him Steal Your Heart Away•

Mr. Heavensley seemed rather regal for the traditional seventeen-year-old. Emerging from the backseat's darkened cavern of plush leather, to excited glees and gasps, he did so with a long-forgotten elegance.

His posture reeked of severity, his limbs, unnaturally long and fully extended. And even though he wore what all teenagers wore: ill-fitting black t-shirts, torn jeans, and dark sneakers, he still managed to convey something else, a something that made him markedly different. 

Perhaps it was the honeyed curls framing his angled face, or the paleness of his skin that made ghosts appear tan by comparison. Maybe it was the odd contraption clipped to his belt loop - that, after several inquiries to the geriatrics in her life, Peneloper discovered was what the generations prior called a 'Walkman' and was much a thing of the past. A pair of thick, foam-covered headphones cradled his neck. 

"He's breathtaking."

This brilliant observation - sarcasm intentional - had been provided by a girl whose name Peneloper hadn't thought to learn. This girl stood on the knoll beside her, fidgeting with her book bag strap, panting hard. Her dark eyes saw Crispen and little else.

Peneloper eyed her classmate with disdain, judging her for forming so quick and violent an attachment for a then-stranger, not that it mattered. The girl continued prattling on, without taking so much as a break to breathe.

"He's breathtaking," she cooed again.

"By god, what a hunk," she said with a smack of her lips, and a lascivious gleam in her eye.

"I'm going to make him mine." The conviction in her words cracked her voice, but by then, her knees had buckled, and she'd plummeted to the ground like wet laundry, falling victim to a Heavensley-related swoon. While she was to be the first, she would not be the last.

Talk of Mr. Heavensley, and little else, took to the halls, his many fantastical deeds discussed to great, and exhaustive, detail. The boys of Heavensley's homeroom talked about how the mysterious new arrival conversed with crows, cooing a beakless version of their language, and exchanging the greatest secrets of the universe.

Seniors, meanwhile, who gathered in dark corners to smoke stolen cigarettes, recounted new tales of magic surrounding Mire Hill. Spun stories circulated about the bolts and electricity that supposedly shot up behind the house at night. Some reconciled this as an incantation or invitation to the dead, the dying, or the demonic. Others chalked it up to out-of-control libidos, over-active imaginations, and the boredom inherent when one lives in a small town.

The girls of the school regarded Heavensley favorably, claiming him a creature of unbelievable beauty, and as such, incapable of the heinous deeds some in their class had accused him of.

These simpering fan girls were the first to fawn over Crispen's black eyes and light skin, though the boys would follow not long after. Swooning for Heavensley proceeded to occur in groups of two or more, where the bounce and buoyancy of Crispen's curls were discussed to great, exhaustive detail.

Peneloper found the town's newest arrival tolerable, but barely. If not for the strange circumstances surrounding his arrival, she would have written him off as just another boy wishing to receive the accolade and favor of her sex by enlisting the help of the overused 'tragic boy vampire' aesthetic.

In the mid-aughts, this trend had sunk its teeth deep into Potter Oaks, and the boys of the town had grown quite stupid: dressing in tattered black frocks, spewing terrible poetry and always looking glib and dull-eyed. Peneloper had hated the look then, and she disliked its seeming re-emergence now. 

However, being of both strong constitution and resolve, Peneloper sought to unravel Crispen's mysteries through rigorous, obsessive observation, enlisting, much against his will, her best friend, Chantham Luric, eldest son, and heir to the Luric fortune – which spanned several commemorative state plates, a stamp collection of twenty overstuffed books, and one delicately made cow-shaped creamer colored beige.

For the next two weeks, Peneloper dragged Chant everywhere Crispen went, while hiding poorly in shadows or concealed in fedoras and oversized trenches, all so as to uncover the truth about the Oaks latest resident. Their investigations resulted in three discoveries about Mr. Heavensley of which there could be no debate.

To start, the most mundane: Mr. Heavensley, a boy brought on the back of a storm, enjoyed the rain. He made it a point to stomp through every puddle, while dancing on the streets belting the lyrics to a 1985 classic–Phil Collins' Sussudio.

Given that he literally flew - and no, this is not one of those misuses so often used for emphasis - into town, at the head of a murder, this first fact becomes little more than cooler side chit-chat.

Second, as Chantham was to inherit one in his aging years, Crispen had a fondness for such ceramic staples as the cow-shaped creamer. The knick-knack had once threatened to overwhelm the shelves of Potter Oaks small corner stores, but since Crispen's arrival, every forgone cow-shaped creamer had found renewed purpose. The boy had bought several himself. And since his admiration for the tacky, knick-knacks had gone viral and permeated every corner of the dark web, the teens of the town had sought them out as well, so much so, that there was no longer a cow-shaped creamer in want of a good home.

Third, and by far the most interesting tidbit of information Peneloper and Chant had uncovered - Crispen was magic. He had to be. What other explanation fit? A boy who flew, who conversed with crows, who had enough money to buy the house on the hill and live alone? No other alternative made sense.

Crispen therefore had to be of the mystical, the thought-to-be-impossible, the occult, the extramundane. But not knowing what specific type of sorcery he was, stoked inside Peneloper a thriving, insatiable curiosity to find out, extinguishing for good, seventeen years of small-town related boredom.

She was certain her days in the Oaks were about to get, at the very least, a bit more interesting.