Your Comic Book Impersonations, Your Wish for Cinders Embers to Keep: Over My Head …
“A woman's not a woman till the pills wear off.”
Vonnegut, Kurt. (1968). “Welcome to the Monkey House.” Welcome to the Monkey House. Delacorte Press.
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A brief, corkscrewing swell of wobbly, shimmering air surrounded Jacob and Emily for just a heartbeat or two, swirling about them like a miniature tornado or an extremely large dust devil – a sinuous and snaky wind with an almost imperceptible scintillating twinkle of energy about it.
And then poof! … it was gone.
“What was that?” asked Emily.
“I … I don't know,” replied Jacob.
The pair were silent for a moment, but nothing else unusual happened. Birds sang, crickets chirped, dogs in the distance barked, and a quite mundane breeze gently wafted through the suburban neighborhood.
“Did that even really happen?” asked Jacob.
“I'm not sure,” answered Emily. “Even if it was just an hallucination, it was pretty weird. I mean we both saw, felt, and heard that … that … rush of whatever.”
Again the pair were silent as both quietly contemplated which scenario seemed less implausible: a folie à deux or a Fortean phenomena localized entirely within the shared personal space of two teenagers.
After several moments of humdrum silence, the duo reached a tacit agreement to table the topic for the time being and return to their prior conversation.
“So, Emily: can you take this Toroid thing and dispose of it for me?” said Jacob. “I can't have my sister Kaitlyn finding it and going nuts about some crazy thing again. Her grasp on reality seems thin at the best of times. Knowing we really found this metal hunk of junk in the yard would probably push her off the deep end.”
“Sure, yeah, of course!” blushed Emily, enthusiastically eager to prove herself to the boy-next-door. She hoped she hadn't seemed too keen, though. Her crush on Jacob was an embarrassing secret. He was one of the popular kids, while she was a geeky, nerdy outsider with a pathetically low sense of self-worth. Though she desperately wished Jacob would ask her out on a date, she knew deep down that he was out of Emily's league.
“Thanks, Em!” replied Jacob cheerily. He handed the Toroid of Transformation over to Emily who accepted it in her hot, sweaty hands. Her eyes were fixed on the ground and she reflexively held her breath as the transfer occurred, hoping Jacob's hands would brush against hers … regrettably they did not.
Story of her sad, loser life.
Just then, Jacob's best friend Michael Jones pulled up in his car.
“Hey Jacob – let's go!” he called, honking the horn.
“Em, I gotta jet,” Jacob told Emily. “Michael and I have plans. Maybe I'll see you later?”
“Uh … yeah, yeah. Matt Brown is coming over and we're gonna play video games and read comic books. Maybe plan a new roleplaying campaign,” said Emily.
It was obvious Jacob wasn't even listening.
“Sounds great. See ya later!” he cried climbing into the car.
As Emily watched her next-door-neighbor, Jacob Johnson drive away from her, she heaved a sad, heavy sigh. Then, starring down at the corroded lump of tarnished bronze metal Jacob had handed her, she walked sullenly back to her own house.
“If only this crazy thing had done something to us with that weird energy whirlwind earlier,” she muttered. “Sometimes I really hate being plain old nerd girl Emily Smith. Maybe if I were a bubbly, blond cheerleader, like my sister Ashley, then maybe Jacob would like me.”