Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Wishful Thinking ❯ Knight in Shining Amor ( Chapter 4 )

CHAPTER FOUR

Darien and I couldn't have been more different, and this was, perhaps, the reason why every interaction between us inevitably became violent. He was nothing like me, calm, emotionless but for his constant anger towards me, serious and reserved. I, on the other hand, was the wild one, the passionate one. I might have been what school children have always called `book-worms', but I was also the only one reckless enough to continue the pranks that, in any other situation, would have been far past the point of ridiculousness.

As I have said, Darien was a stubborn man. Stubborn or not, though, he never had a prayer of beating me. His temperament was too ill suited to this sort of thing. His need for control was too strong, especially when our battles and our pranks were so completely out of control. He couldn't let himself go, even for a moment. I often wondered how he held out for so long. He did not seem capable of the passion needed for a war such as ours.

So, too, was I more qualified for this. I was better at this than he could ever be, and he still didn't know me well enough to predict all of my actions. With four younger brothers, the masters of pranks, I had learned to direct my imagination towards mischief. I have an almost unlimited number of pranks in my mind, and a complete willingness to carry those pranks out. I'd had years of experience with this sort of thing, and, once again, he never stood a chance of defeating me.

I admit that I sunk to his level many times over the course of our acquaintance. Earlier problems aside, I eventually started to toilet paper his house as often as he did mine-without the twins' help, of course-often using rolls saved from his own attacks. I chose to take advantage of the fact that he continuously and rather stupidly provided me with free ammo each time he struck my home, and I was far more ruthless than he could ever be. I hadn't grown up in California for nothing, after all. For Californians, toilet papering has been raised to an art form.

Of course, I didn't stop there. I bribed his sisters into giving me a copy of his car keys, and I'd often break in and steal whatever I found inside-textbooks, backpack, his favorite CD. I didn't really care what I left with, not as long as he knew I'd been there. I just made sure I wasn't around each time he realized that I'd broken into his car yet again. Terrible temper, that boy.

He never said anything to me, though. That, of course, would have been a form of tattling, and we never did that, at least. Our only rule in this war-unspoken though it was-was that we never reported or accused the other of anything. We suffered in silence-at least until we'd thought up ample revenge for whatever act the other had pulled. It was more fun for all of us, that way.

I even covered his precious car in dish soap once. That car of his was the apple of his eye, so to speak, and I wanted to cut him where he'd hurt the most, especially since he'd stolen my backpack right out of my arms only the morning before I revenged myself on his car. I'd spent the entire day looking for it, only to find that he'd kindly dropped it off at my last class. He always was considerate.

I was even more furious than usual after that particular prank. He'd attached a note to the front of my bag, firmly affixed with a bobby pin. I don't remember what he wrote on that slip of paper, but I do know that it had involved `Shortie', his favorite nickname for me. I reiterate that I cannot be held responsible for what I do to people who laugh at my height. He brought that on himself.

So I went a little overboard. I snuck over to his house that evening, carrying a large bag filled to the brim with bottles of liquid soap. I think I might even have grinned a little fiendishly as I proceeded to empty every single one of those bottles over the hood and trunk of his car. I gave the windows a liberal smearing, and I even soaked his antenna. What can I say? He'd really made me angry.

I felt guilty afterwards, though, because I'd heard somewhere that one of the chemicals in the soap destroys paint. I crept back that very night and scrubbed every drop off by hand. I would have felt awful if he'd had to repaint his car because of me. I'm not that terrible a person, after all, that I would be willing to permanently damage something so important to him. I think I'm just lucky that he didn't find out.

In spite of these juvenile pranks, Darien was not always my enemy. There were times when he came through for me as not even my closest friends could have, times when he supported and looked after me. Those times were rare, of course, but they did happen.

I was overtired, that day after I'd soaped down Darien's car. The actual crime had taken half the night, and I'd spent the other half rectifying my sin. I never actually went to bed. As a result, I was something of a zombie the next morning, and I wasn't coherent enough to make the morning bus. I'd been forced to jog to school, and, naturally, I was terribly late-I'm a fully capable jogger now, of course, but I wasn't then. Who would run in a blizzard, after all? I was a good three hours late, and, by the time I finally arrived, I'd missed my first two classes.

This was not the first time I'd missed the bus, of course, though it was the first time I actually lost so great a portion of the school day. I've never been a morning person, and I often had difficulties waking in time-and, consequently, I had even more difficulties getting to school in time for the first bell. I think I received more tardies in my first year than any other student had ever earned during an entire high school career. I was something of a legend, I believe.

I spent countless hours with my vice principal, getting lectures on the importance of punctuality. We even ended up on a first name basis, I spent so much time in his office, getting yelled at. He had my parents on speed-dial, and he and his wife were over for dinner at least once a week-usually so they could discuss whatever it was that I'd done wrong. This day, however, was the last straw in that man's patience, and I think this was the point when even he had to stop laughing at my habits and choose to really punish me.

I was chastised severely, given a rather long and tedious essay to write about the aforementioned values of punctuality and courtesy to others. I was even ordered to spend my free hour-the last hour of the school day-in the library, preparing extensive notes on the subject. Ah, well. Of all the punishments my vice principal might have chosen, this was the easiest-the bookworm thing still held, after all.

Once again, I have to take responsibility for the events of that day. Having a war between Darien and I was one thing, but I should never have allowed our conflicts to spill over into academics. I'd wanted to use that free hour to catch up on my homework for other classes, and I'd wasted the remainder of the morning being lectured about tardiness. Not for the first time, I'd gone too far. Unfortunately, it couldn't be helped. I was stuck in the library for the rest of my afternoon, having lost my study hall to my own impulsiveness and guilt. I can't count the number of times I cursed my better nature that day-my conscience was entirely at fault here! If I hadn't gone back to fix Darien's car, I might have gotten to school on time the next morning.

Stupid Darien with his stupid pranks and his stupid car…

Oh, goody-I had a new mantra.

Even if I had gotten enough sleep the night before, though, I still think something of the sort would have happened. With Ohioan weather being what it was, this event was probably inevitable, though I might also have avoided it for a little while longer. Well, maybe this one instance wouldn't have been so extreme, but it was still fate.

I don't think I like Fate.

So I went to the library, beginning work on the silly paper that, to this day, I still don't believe I actually had to write. It seemed, to me, at least, to be the sort of thing school teachers had once required of students living in the days of hoop skirts and horse-driven carriages. It was, however, effective enough. I think I actually toned down the number of tardies I received, after that. I don't mind writing papers, but this was just nonsense that I was not all that eager to repeat, and I did everything I could to avoid going through this whole affair again.

Of course, the principal was not the only thing conspiring against me. The day had been overcast from the beginning, and everyone at the school seemed unusually sleepy and quiet. There was an almost subdued atmosphere about the school, and this contributed to my own lethargy. I, like Darien, never stood a chance of avoiding what was to come.

The library was far too silent, and I never could have stayed awake. It just wasn't possible for someone like me. My study hall took up the last hour of the day, and I was already dragging by the time I finally arrived. I managed to complete only a handful of paragraphs for my paper before I put my head on the desk and fell completely asleep.

I still don't know how I managed it. I slept through the final bell, through the tumult and chaos of several hundred departing students. Since I had chosen a rather obscure corner of the library, none of the workers or my fellow students had even noticed me, and I was, of course, locked inside long before I even broached the most shallow realms of wakefulness.

I spent a few hours in peace, at any rate. I don't usually remember the specifics of what I dreamt, but I know that, on this occasion, I managed to kill Darien at least a dozen times before I actually awoke. It's a pity, really, that I didn't have more time! I wish I'd been able to have dreams like that every night…though that would probably have made me even more unbalanced than I already was…

Eventually, however, even I must have sensed that my surroundings had become too peaceful. Living, as I did, with such a large family, complete solitude sometimes frightens me-it's always in the quiet times that my brothers cause the most mischief, and its always quiet right before I get yelled at for something.

I came to, groggy and blinking heavily. The library was completely dark, and even the emergency lights were not functioning. I'm also a terrible judge of the passing of time, but even I knew that I'd slept long past the time when I ought to have gone home. I glanced at the clock, frowning as I realized that it was nearly dinnertime. Why hadn't anyone noticed I was here? My mother must be frantic, by now.

I sighed, picturing the wrinkled face of my librarian. The woman was pushing eighty at the very least, and her eyes were barely functioning. She wouldn't have noticed me at all, and everyone else would have been too anxious to get home to care about anyone but themselves. My mother, however, certainly had noticed my absence, and she probably had the cops looking for me already. I needed to get home as quickly as possible.

I stood, quickly gathering my things. The paper, I decided, could be put off until I'd worked things out with my mother. Due to school policy, there weren't any pay phones I might have used to call her, and the office would have been closed long ago. I had also, naturally, missed every bus going anywhere at all, and I'd have little choice but to walk the five miles home. If I were truly lucky, I reasoned, I'd be able to find a phone at one of the houses I passed.

I started to leave the school, first stopping to ensure that the office really had closed. The hallways were empty, every classroom vacated. As far as I could tell, even the janitors had gone home. A few alarm bells trilled in my mind at this, but I chalked my sudden uneasiness down to the creepiness of the empty school and left it at that. How was I to know we were under a storm warning? I've lived everywhere, but I'm still a Californian, and I couldn't possibly have realized that the temperatures were going to drop so drastically. Again, a cold day in L.A. might get to sixty.

Looking back, I definitely would have frozen to death, on the way home-no matter what I thought before I left. This was in December, mind you, though we hadn't had snow for quite some time. I deemed myself perfectly fit to walk home, and, though I knew this would take forever, I also didn't think I had a choice. Without a phone or a car, I didn't have any way of arranging for someone to come and get me. For now, I was stuck.

I set off at a brisk pace, hating the biting cold of the wind. Still, I shrugged this off, as well, simply choosing to pull my feather-down coat more tightly around my shoulders. I was almost warm in that coat, bundled to the chin and with a hood pulled over my head. For once, my small height stood me well, and the coat came almost to my knees.

Once again, however, I'm originally from California. What did I know, then anyway, of cold weather? My idea of winter had always been a little rain or wind. Even in Utah, or any of the other places I'd lived, the snow had never been that serious. Ohio, of course, has always been a different place than the rest. Remember those old cartoons, the ones where the characters fall into ten-foot high snowdrifts? Having lived in Ohio for so many years, I can now say that I've actually done that. Still, I hadn't yet gained those…experiences, and I didn't know what I'd set myself out for.

I began walking, my ignorance firmly intact. The temperatures, I noticed, had already dropped considerably, but I hadn't yet learned enough to reevaluate my ability to make it home in one piece. Had I known then what I learned only after years of life in this miserable state, I would never have bothered to leave at all.

I was able to go a whole whopping half a mile before turning back. I'd started shivering within seconds, but I was stubborn enough to continue. I waited until I started shaking so badly that I could no longer walk, and then turned and hotfooted it back to the school building, cursing Darien all the way.

I was trapped. The school was completely isolated, without even a single house for the next three miles. Most of the doors to the classrooms were locked, and only the cafeteria and the library were open. I snuck back into the building, grateful that the school hadn't yet adopted the idea of locking the doors at night. Living in a town as isolated as ours did have one advantage, I suppose.

Even I, one raised in a state where the temperature never dropped even close to this, knew that, since the cafeteria walls were entirely-and stupidly-made of glass, I would freeze if I waited inside. I retreated, instead, back to the library, where I huddled in a corner, my coat pulled as tightly as possible around me. I don't think I'd ever been so cold in my entire life. My fingers were blue, my teeth chattering so much that I wouldn't have been surprised to chip a tooth, and I'd long since lost all feeling in my legs. I was honestly starting to wonder if I was going to make it out of this.

My mind was getting pretty fuzzy, by this point. Cold does that to you, I hear. I couldn't think straight at all, and I was having a truly hard time just remembering who I was and what I was doing here. How could I have been stupid enough to get trapped in a school at night? What was this, some incredibly bad novel? Of course, by this time, there wasn't much I could do besides sit around and wait for my knight in shining armor to come and rescue me. I certainly wasn't getting home any other way. If it was this cold inside, what must it be like outside? I didn't have a chance in heck of making it home, in this weather.

I was, of course, mostly worried for my mother. Control freak that she was, she'd probably started having panicking several hours ago. I wondered-absently, by this time, as I was too frozen to think straight-if she'd called the cops yet. Maybe, I reasoned, they'd have enough sense to check out the high school before I became Ohio's first human Popsicle.

I fell asleep at some point-or maybe I just passed out altogether. As I already said, my mind wasn't exactly clear at that point, and I still don't know how much time passed before the library doors creaked open and a familiar, dark head poked its way in.

I was told, much later and after I'd warmed up enough to come to my senses, that I didn't even recognize Darien when he came up to me. I was so frozen that I probably wouldn't have recognized my own mother, but, again, I was too far gone to care. I only remember that someone was there with me, wrapping me in the ugliest blanket I'd ever seen.

Ugliness notwithstanding, I immediately felt warmer, but I was still too out of it to care that Darien had scooped me up and carried me out to his car. A blast of cold air hit us as we left the building, and I think I whimpered and tried to curl myself into Darien's chest. His arms tightened around me-I remember that much, at least, mostly because his arms were too tight-and his pace quickened. He practically ran the entire way to the car, throwing the door open and slipping me inside.

At least I was warm. He'd kept the engine on while he was inside fetching me, and the heat was going full blast. He settled me into the front seat with so much care that I started wondering if I was supposed to break or something and had just forgotten to do it, and then darted around to the driver's side and climbed in. The engine roared to life, and then we were off.

Darien never said a word, the entire way to my house, and I couldn't focus on him long enough to read his expression or say anything myself. I kept staring at that hideous blanket, wondering how anyone could possibly allow themselves to own something that looked like a cross between a Spartan quilt and vomit. Finally, though, I mustered enough strength to speak.

I turned to Darien, only to find him already looking at me, expression still unreadable. "Your mom has really bad taste," I told him calmly. Then, pulling the blanket closer around me, I closed my eyes and went to sleep.