Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Wishful Thinking ❯ First Encounters ( Chapter 1 )

"WISHFUL THINKING"

CHAPTER ONE

Throughout my entire life, I don't think that I'll ever find someone that I could hate as much as I hated Darien Shields. I hated him so much that I would often lie in bed at night, picturing the many ways I would cheerfully kill him the first chance I had. Most of his imaginary deaths were painful and very bloody. Nothing was too gory for Darien. He deserved worse than anything my imagination could cook up.

For as long as I can remember, Darien had been an integral part of my life. Hardly a day passed that I didn't spend at least an hour or two with him. No matter what I did, I couldn't escape the jerk. The only thing that saved my sanity was the fact that he didn't live anywhere near me-I don't think I could have handled having him sneak up on me while I was walking the dog or taking the trash out at night. He was more than capable of pulling nasty tricks of this sort, and after living in California for so long, I think this would have stopped my heart.

Looking back, it's hard to imagine that I only met him in high school. I feel as if I've always known-and hated-him. He was one of the few constants in my life, as unremitting as my daily chores and as unpleasant as the twice-annual trips to the dentist. He was-and always will be-a part of me. Though my hatred for him was stronger than most of the loves in my small world, I still can't comprehend a life without him. He was many things, but for me, he simply *was*.

Back then, I lived in a medium-sized town in the mid-west. My town was not one of those tiny places where most of the people run around in cowboy hats and big boots, though I have lived in places like that, as well. My city was, however, spread out over vast distances. Most people lived on isolated streets, which were surrounded by nothing but trees, trees, and more trees. Everybody went to the same school, the same bank, and the same grocery store. There were enough people in the city to warrant more than one of each, but there isn't a storeowner in the world who would willingly move to one of the coldest places in the country.

In fact, there was only one thing that I hated more than Darien, and that was the weather in Ohio. I know that winter is technically only supposed to last for six months, but here it went on for an endless seven or eight. Most years, the snow was already falling heavily by the time my birthday rolled around in September, and it didn't let up until March or April. Then, of course, the rains began before the ice had even melted completely.

In the mid-west, rain is an oddity. The question is never, 'Will it rain?', but 'Will it flood?' The skies are dark with black clouds for weeks at a time. When it actually does rain, it's like the God opens the heavens themselves to allow entire waterfalls to cascade over the earth. The rain can be so heavy that it actually hurts.

I used to love thunderstorms, before I moved to Ohio with my family during my freshman year of high school. I'd lived in Utah for a while, where the lightning is as spectacular as a firework show on the fourth of July. When I moved to Ohio, though, I had my first contact with tornadoes.

Tornadoes are probably the scariest things on the planet. I've lived through the Los Angeles riots, muggings, people taking pot shots at me with guns; terrorist attacks in Africa, hurricanes, and forest fires. I've traveled all over the world, faced every kind of threat, but nothing comes close to that swirling maelstrom of wind. The thought of a tornado strike still makes me shake. After I'd lived through a few of them, I began to be afraid of even the simplest rainstorms, thus ruining forever my enjoyment of gloomy weather.

This fear of mine only increased as the seasons passed. During the summers, I spent almost every night in a sleeping bag on the basement floor, waiting for the tornado warning to let up. I never actually slept on those nights, of course. I was simply too terrified. Instead, I would lie awake, trying to control the terrible images running through my mind. Those images, naturally, involved plenty of destruction and suffering.

I tried to control my imagination, I really did. I've lived through so many disasters that one would think I'd adapt to this as easily as I adapted to everything else I've ever endured. I am not, however, prepared to die in a tornado. There's just something awful about knowing I might be killed without warning, possibly even while sleeping contently in my bed. Somehow, though, it's even worse knowing that this unexpected death might come from something as seemingly harmless as wind.

In all honesty, I don't think I would have been quite so terrified had I not had friends and family injured by these horrible things. My cousin's home was once destroyed by a tornado, and she nearly lost an arm when a piece of collapsing roof fell on her in the resulting destruction. I've had neighbors who've had the tops ripped off their homes, and my car was once totaled when a lamppost fell on it during a storm. It didn't help that I'd only exited the vehicle about five minutes previously.

Why, you ask, am I babbling about weather? Well, I wanted to ensure that my readers understand why I got caught so many times in foul situations. The weather plays as much a part of my story as anything else. It affected my life as surely as my own decisions did. The first of these times came shortly after I moved to Ohio.

The night before I was to start at my new school, a tornado struck only a few houses down from mine. I was alone on the top floor of our three-story home, and I'd never heard thunder so loud. We didn't have our televisions hooked up at that point, so we didn't know that a tornado warning had been issued only hours previously. Even if we had, we probably would have dismissed it as unimportant, ignorant valley people that we were. Nevertheless, I didn't need a weather broadcast to tell me just how dangerous the storm was. To my overactive imagination, the thunder could just as easily been created by giants pounding on metal drums. It was so loud that it actually gave me a migraine.

I didn't get any sleep that night. I was already nervous about school starting, but the lack of sleep made me crabbier than I ever would have been. On top of all that, the storm had taken out our electricity, and I couldn't even use a curling iron. Our fridge had also gone out during the night, and everything in the house smelled like rancid milk. Not for the first time, I cursed the day my dad had taken the job that landed us in this godforsaken state.

My dad had a job that required us to move around the country. He wasn't in the military or anything, but I still moved to a different state every two or three years, at least. It was hard for me, but I wouldn't change it now for anything. It made me what I am today.

I was always terribly shy as a child, too wrapped up in my books for social contact. By the time I was nine, I'd read everything I could get my hands on, from Shakespeare and Julian to Dickens and Pico. Needless to say, I wasn't a normal child. When elementary school teachers asked me to write a book report, I'd write a ten-page thesis on novels by Jane Austin and Leo Tolstoy. I read encyclopedias for fun. Rather than interact with other children my age, I would spend my after-school hours in advanced placement programs where small children were required to learn foreign languages like French and German.

I'm actually not proud of this. I was terribly unsocial-quiet, withdrawn. I hardly spoke more than ten words a day, even to my family, and I was far too reticent for my own well-being. Even my closest friends-the few I'd actually made between moves-could not get me to open up. Looking back, I realize that no matter how much knowledge I gained during this period, my lack of social skills was positively dangerous. Education is important, but not at the cost of a stable emotional life. Had I remained as I was, I'd probably be needing serious emotional therapy right about now.

As I said, I was terribly withdrawn. This introversion of mine was probably an effect of spending so much time on airplanes or in cars. I spent far too many hours immobilized in one place, with nothing to do but read. Ten years ago, of course, handheld Nintendo systems were too expensive for careless children, even if I had wanted one, and I had no other outlet or entertainment than my books.

By the time I was fifteen, I'd gone to no less than thirty-three different schools. However, after I'd reached the twenty-fifth school, I'd gotten over my natural shyness. I don't actually know when I changed, but I'm certainly glad I did! This sudden openness was probably yet another side effect of being shunted from place to place. It's hard to remain as I was when I was forced to make a new set of friends every few years. Becoming outgoing was a necessary for my own survival, I suppose.

In retrospect, I realize that this might have turned out differently. I might have become even worse than I'd been, but, thankfully, this did not happen. I opened up, and I've always been grateful for this.

My new openness, of course, was far healthier than my previous tendencies. I could now strike up conversations with complete strangers. I was chummy with almost everybody I knew, but I didn't have many close friends, for all that. I was still unable to let someone into my innermost thoughts and feelings.

When I moved to Ohio, I met the four people who would totally change my outlook on friendship. The first was my friend, Lita. She was a stunning brunette with emerald green eyes-and a heart the size of Texas. I don't think she's ever said a single mean thing in her life. The truly astonishing part was that not only did she not say mean things, but she honestly didn't believe that anyone had a single negative quality. She was a friend to everyone. She even befriended the mentally unstable kids, the ones that nobody else would go near for fear of being knifed or shot just for saying the wrong thing.

I met both Lita and Darien the same morning, on the very first day of school. I'd gotten lost trying to find my first class, of course, so I was already late. When I entered, every eye was riveted on me. Some people were snickering, since my hair always goes wild unless I curl it, and today was even worse than usual. I know that I was pale from lack of sleep, and my eyes tend to cross when I'm angry. Still, some kids looked interested, especially one cute boy with black hair. One very cute boy, I must say- dark hair, tanned face, incredibly blue eyes. He was absolutely gorgeous, and I would have realized this immediately had I not been so cross.

The class was already crowded, as they always are on the first day. I looked in vain for a free chair, but the room was arranged in such a way that I couldn't see any from my vantage point. The room did not have any actual desks, using instead marble counters placed in a rectangle around the center of the room. Each and every one of the marble stools arranged around the counters were occupied.

As I hesitated in the doorway, the teacher pointed in annoyance to a seat on the far corner of the room. I nodded and plonked myself down into it, not bothering to scan the faces of my fellow students as I set my bag on the floor at my feet. As I pulled out a notepad and a pencil, I finally noticed that I was sitting right next to the cute boy. He was staring at me, a slight grin quirking his lips. He nodded to me, but I didn't answer. I was too intent on the words coming from the teacher, and I wasn't in the mood to smile or introduce myself. He must have been offended by my lack of response to him-once again, I had been rather rude-but I didn't care. Darien meant nothing to me, then, and I was still grumpy from that morning's debacle.

Darien was certainly offended. He had always been rather proud of his power over the women in his acquaintance, and he'd never before been rejected so quickly. He'd thought he could charm any girl simply by smiling at her, and they would obediently fall into his waiting, careless arms. I, however, was different. For one thing, I wasn't interested in dating just then, and his insolent stare made me angry. I'd taken an instant-and possibly unjust-dislike to him, and he only confirmed my opinion in the years that followed.

Within a few seconds, our extended feud began. I'd ignored his less than charming overture, and he took one look at me and made some snide comment about my hair. I don't even remember what he said, but I remember being furious. I was beyond civility at that point, anyway, so I automatically kicked him in the shins. I couldn't have helped myself if my life had depended on it, and he certainly deserved whatever I dished out.

Still, my foot must have connected with considerable force. He howled in pain, falling from his stool and earning us both a reprimand from the teacher. I acted innocent, putting on my most adorable face, but I doubt that Mrs. Teshier was fooled. She frowned, though she directed the class back to her lecture without comment.

I cast a smug look at my companion before turning back to the teacher. Darien just glared at me, and he didn't stop glaring for nearly three years. But who knows? Maybe my relationship with Darien wouldn't have begun at all if I hadn't been crabby enough to kick him, or my hair hadn't been awful enough to grab his attention in the first place. Fate is funny like that, sometimes.

As the teacher finally finished her first day lectures, she told us all to gather some supplies from a table in the back of the room. Wanting to get away from the black-haired boy, I immediately headed for the table. I had a choice of paints or chalk. Naturally, I chose chalk. I've always been awful with paint, but I have won some awards for still-life chalk drawings. I figured that I'd better create something decent if I didn't want to get on my teacher's bad side forever.

As I started back towards my desk, chalks in hand, I bumped into a girl with brown hair and a friendly smile. I apologized, though it had been entirely her fault, and started to walk away. She stopped me, moving to block my way and sticking out her hand. I stared at it for a moment, but she continued to offer it to me. After I gave in and finally shook it, she broke into a wide grin and started talking at a mile a minute.

We've been friends ever since. Lita was my lifeline, my sanity. She was the person that helped me become truly normal. Whenever I got too far into my books, it was she who dragged me to the movies. We have a lot in common. She's the second to last child in a family of nine, and I'm the second child in a family of eight. She knows what it's like not to have privacy or a single hour spent in quiet or solitude. She was the one who ultimately introduced me to my other three best friends, Levi and the twins, as well.

I didn't meet Levi at school. I was taking a refresher course in German at that point, and I'd been paired with a girl named Heidi. My German was admittedly weak, since I hadn't spoken more than a few phrases in several years. My German grammar was also atrocious, but Heidi was very patient with me, helping me relearn what I'd long since forgotten. We worked well together, quickly becoming friends. I sometimes went to her home to work on our language projects, and I often stayed overnight with her family when we worked too late into the night. I enjoyed her family immensely, spending many hours with them as the weeks passed. Her parents were wonderful people, caring and open and utterly oblivious to anything their precious children did. Perhaps this lack of awareness came from the fact that they only had two children, both of whom were practically adults. It's lucky for them, perhaps, that neither Heidi nor her younger brother, Levi, could even have imagined doing anything even remotely destructive or harmful.

The first time I met Levi, I thought that he was the biggest clown on the planet. He made corny jokes at the worst of times, and he never did understand the concept of tact. He wasn't serious for a single minute of his life, and he drove me nuts at first. I thought he was rude, immature, and quite possibly stupid.

Eventually, though, I realized that he wasn't an idiot, after all. He was incredibly intelligent, and he wasn't even that immature, really. He simply had such a strong sense of self that he didn't feel the need to impress anybody, and so he didn't try. He acted as he wished to, seeking to please only himself. He never tried to be anything he wasn't, and I slowly learned to value him for this honesty. He was utterly himself, and I will be forever grateful for his friendship.

Levi was a year younger than I, and he didn't yet go to the high school. This didn't stop us from becoming almost instant friends, though. Along with Heidi and Lita, we often hung out together after school. He's become like a brother to me, over the years; we were nearly inseparable, and our relationship was one of mutual benefit. I would help him with his academic projects and organize his endless campaigns for school appointments, and he infected me with a quick-albeit twisted and corny-sense of humor. I introduced him to his first girlfriend, a sweet girl that lived a few blocks from I. He, in turn, introduced me to the twins, his next-door neighbors.

About two months after I'd started school, I'd been spending an afternoon with Levi and Heidi. After a short time, Heidi had abandoned us in favor of track practice, and I was left alone with her brother, whom I had, of course, learned to appreciate by this time.

We hadn't had anything in particular planned for the afternoon, so we ended up spending about two hours just talking. We were sprawled across the center of his bedroom floor, facing opposite directions with our heads nearly touching as we sought patterns in the plaster of his ceiling. Every few moments, Levi or I would point out whatever shape we'd imagined into the ceiling, trying to convince the other that there really was a shape in those particular patches. It was a pointless task, of course, but I reveled in it. I'd just had an incredibly difficult day at school, and I wasn't in the mood to study or even read. I'd gone to Levi's, hoping for a distraction. Somehow, Levi always knew when I needed to do something utterly meaningless, and this was one of those days.

Just as we were becoming bored, I heard a loud thump against the bedroom window. To my complete surprise, two girls climbed through the window and stepped into Levi's room. They acted as though this was the most natural thing in the world, to suddenly enter a guy's bedroom without permission or previous notice. They did not say anything as they entered, simply waving a quick hand in Levi's direction and acknowledging me with an equally brief nod. I stared at them, but Levi simply grinned and returned to his contemplation of the plaster.

I was shocked, of course. I'd read books where girls climbed into guys' windows, but I didn't think that anybody actually acted so. My own parents would have had an instant heart attack if I'd ever even thought of doing something like this. Of course, my parents were extreme in their protectiveness, but I was still appalled. It seemed...indecent, to me.

The two girls immediately joined us on the carpet, and Levi moved over to give them room, talking enthusiastically all the while about his latest election to the school government. I sat up when I realized he was not planning on making any introductions. I stared at the three of them, moving away and not knowing how I should react to this unexpected intrusion. The girls did not notice my curious and shocked gaze, or perhaps they didn't care, because they ignored me completely. I suppose I would have done the same. It can't be pleasant, having a strange girl stare at you as though you've just sprouted tentacles or a third eye.

Eventually, I managed to close my gaping mouth, knowing that I wasn't exactly being polite. I took a good long look at them, thinking that they couldn't possibly be the sisters that Levi had spoken of so often. Still, they could not be anyone else. Levi had not described them in detail, but I was clever enough to put two and two together to come up with five.

They were pretty enough, I suppose, though they were not even remotely like what I'd imagined. For one thing, I'd half-expected identical twins, and they most certainly were not. I would not, in fact, have even taken them to be sisters, had I not already known better.

One of the girls had hair as black as midnight, while the other was blonde, and the eyes of one were green while the other had blue. Of course, that doesn't mean anything these days. One of them could simply have dyed her hair or bought contacts. Still, even their body structures were different. One was very tall and slender, while the other was short, though equally slight. Levi soon confirmed that they were, indeed, the sisters he was so fond of. He was positively gushing, excited that he finally had the opportunity to introduce the three of us to each other. I think he had a crush on the blonde.

I realized that, had they not entered as they did, I would have been overjoyed to make their acquaintance. Levi had spoken of them so often, and with such gusto, that I couldn't help being charmed even before I actually set eyes on them. I brutally shoved my disquiet into the back of my mind, coming forward again as I offered my hand and my name. They immediately broke into wide grins, accepting the friendship I had not even realized I'd offered.

They introduced themselves, and I found that they were twins in personality, at any rate. Both Raye and Mina were happy, carefree girls, extremely friendly and loveable. They were as joyful as I had once been serious, and they lived their lives to the fullest, never looking to the future.

As with Levi and Lita, these two became a permanent part of my circle. I was never without one of my friends, having formed an attachment to them that was almost as strong as those to my family. They became family, in fact, no matter how unlike I was to them.

The twins continued to shock me, however. Like Levi, tact was a foreign concept to them. They said or did whatever was on their minds, but they did so without malice and without any intent but to enjoy themselves. They did whatever they wanted, but they were also blindly supportive of my own actions-they tolerated me far more than I deserved. They were incredible friends, and they enriched my life with their presence.

It wasn't until much later that I would realize that these two wonderful women were related to the blight of my entire existence: Darien, the boy whose shins I'd so unthinkingly kicked. I'll never understand how a family that can produce girls like the twins could also create a walking iceberg like Darien. It was simply too difficult a concept for my mind to grasp. Darien was rude, obnoxious, and totally unapproachable. The twins couldn't have been more different. But, I digress.

Anyway, my circle was now complete. In the following years, I kept these four so close that finding one meant finding us all. We were never apart for long, even when one of us was sick. In fact, our parents eventually realized that the second one of our group fell ill, the other four would inevitably show symptoms. I owe my second bout of chicken pox to Mina, and she owes me for the two weeks she was incapacitated with the mumps. It was a fair trade, I think.