New Literature

Here is the second installment of Cinnamon’s story Spiked.

Chapter two

 

The sun beat down on Hailey’s head, and sweat dripped down her back, soaking the tank top she wore underneath her running shirt. Hailey loved the sun. She loved the way it made her skin darken, the constant warmth it had provided for millions of years previously. She loved the way the sky was stained orange and pink, flushed with white clouds, and dotted with indigo in the summer. The sun was all gas, right to the core, burning at 10,000 degrees. It was amazing, Hailey thought to look up at the ball of gas, and realize that with it, earth would be a huge ice ball.

 Hailey ran, little puffs of dust rose in the air, and fell back down underneath her running shoes. The sloping hills of the emerald golf course were to her right, and a dirty canal to her left.  Hailey stopped, and checked the stop watch. She had run three miles in forty minuets. Not bad, Hailey thought. Not bad at all if she was planning to do the Turkey Trot in November….She crossed the trail and sat beneath a willow tree, the long braids of golden and dead leafs resting on her head. She closed her eyes, her mind blank of thoughts.

The sweat that had beaded on her forehead seemed to freeze as the wind swept through the trees. She opened her eyes and her dirty blonde hair blinded her. Even though it was cropped short, the locks of blonde hair always seemed to find a way back into her eye balls. . Hailey eyes were grayish green, her face paler than a sheet of paper with dark circles beneath her eyes.  She sighed, skinned one the braids of leaves. Hailey tore individual leaves in half, threw them down, and eyed them be carried away by the wind.  

Hailey checked her stop watch again; it was ten in the morning, a Saturday in October. Today was one of those days where people stupidly stared at the gleaming sun and said “Wow, can you believe this weather?” Then the person they’re talking to says “No, it’s remarkable.” Hailey hated these kinds of conversations. Every year, no matter what, there was hot days in October, and yet every year, she had this conversation with a least ten of her neighbors.  

She didn’t want to go home, but she had no choice. He would kill her if she wasn’t home by ten thirty. After a few moments of eyes closed and deep breaths, Hailey stood and started what she did best, she ran.

۞۞۞

As Hailey reached the suburbs, she slowed. The houses were all identical, ugly, white and cheap looking. Each house had a bed of colorful flowers, you know, the kind that you can buy at Wal-Mart for ten bucks a pack. Outside each house there was a concrete path that led strait to a tan, shiny door. Hailey hated it here, her only neighbors being old men and women who stunk of litter boxes and flower perfume. Speak of the devil. Hailey thought. An old woman had come around the corner. Her old wrinkled face was pale, with huge glasses and neon red lip stick that stuck to the unattractive dentures. Hailey waved at the old woman uncertainly.

“Hey, I know you!” The old lady said.

Gee, I would think you would, considering I’ve lived here the last FIFTEEN years! Hailey thought.

 She came and patted Hailey awkwardly “Your name is Jean, isn’t it dear? How is your mother?” The old woman asked.

 Hailey, being used to senile women who thought she still had a mother, forced a smiled and said “Fine, thank you.” 

The old woman shook her head up and down, as if to rid her nose of the cat litter box smell.

“Well, Mary, I must be off now!” The old woman giggled and walked off. Hailey raised an eye brow, sighed, and dragged her feet slowly to the house labeled 1114.  

The inside of the house was just like the out side; bleached tan, white and pink, with flowers. But, unlike the out doors, the house has stuffy, hot and had a drowsy feeling about it, like a nursing home.

             Hailey thought her father might have some self dignity, but apparently not….Her room however, was the opposite of the neighborhood. In Hailey’s room, chaos had met its match. Her bed had a bright blue down comforter with green circles and hot pink pillows. Pictures of heavy metal bands, and rock bands covered the walls. Her clothes were strewn all over the floor, and her computer lamp covered in magnets. The ceiling had glow stars stuck to it, ( a permanent consequence to when she had decorated her room in fifth grade. Hailey thought there should be a law that prevented any fifth grader from decorating their rooms with their new obsessions. Hailey shuddered to think about what it would look like now if not she have re-done it when she was thirteen….) Her room was messy, chaotic and disorganized…. But wasn’t that what a teenage girls room was supposed to look like? Full of odds and ends, a look of terror washing over it, the complete opposite of its inhibitor?

Hailey smiled and went down the hall to her bathroom. She shed her sweaty running clothes and was in the shower before the water was hot. That was how Hailey liked to take her showers, first bitter cold, and then scorching. The water ran down her back and her legs, the cold of the water repeatedly washing over her, again and again. Hailey was freezing, and wished she had waited for the water to come hot…. But—ahhhhhhhhh. The water became warmer and warmer, until it was hot enough. She picked up the shampoo bottle and squirted enough shampoo in her hand to bathe an elephant, and lathered her hair. She had to laugh when she saw posted on the bottle, instructions on how to use shampoo. The only person she knew who didn’t know how to use shampoo was her dog, Matty. (Matty had gotten his name because his hair was matted to point of no return to smooth, silky hair.)  Hailey quickly rinsed out all the soap, swore when a glob of it sunk into her left eye, and as usually, sat at the bottom of the shower, hot water spurting at her.

                  Hailey stayed in the shower for a long time, pressed against the bottom of the white plastic bath. She thought of school, and how much she wished she could just curl up and sleep for four years to avoid it. She wished she lived some where else, and maybe that her dad wasn’t such an inattentive father. She wished she had friends, and that she wasn’t such an awkward person. She thought of all her past traumas and her still longing hope of running away. Lastly, she thought of her mom.

Hailey’s dad was the kind of dad who after their wife died they had a strict No-saying-her-name-no picture rules. Nope, Hailey had only one picture of her mom, which she had stolen from a hidden box. (The box had been inside a laundry bag, covered up by old T-shirts and stuffed in a cover on a closet with fiber glass and bathroom rugs).  The picture showed Zoë her blonde hair long and loose, and wearing a spring dress, pale green with a floral design. Though the picture was blurred, Hailey could still trace the hint of a smile. It almost looked like her mom was angry with the picture taker, and wished she was somewhere else, too. There someone else in the picture though. Her arm was wrapped around a woman who must have been a good friend. The woman’s hair was dark, soft and strait. She looked like a person whose parents were from Europe and maybe Afghanistan….. But her eyes. They were large, and dark green with gold highlights, Hailey sometimes would just stare at her yes, and wonder how it was even possible for them to be that mystifying. However, Hailey had found something else n that box as well. A notebook. It did not look remarkable, just thin and dog eared, brown in color. But when Hailey flipped through it, she realized it was all notes. Notes about certain people who had grey skin. The hard thing was that her mother’s notebook was meaningless.  None of the sentences made since at all. The notebook was stupid; every single page in its interior was worthless. But that’s how Hailey remembered her mom. She was weird. She didn’t think right. She was always distracted, muttering nonsense under her breath. She was probably crazy…..or had some kind of mental disability; at least that’s’ what her dad had said.