Her Autumn Song, Tremy Woods [books to read this summer .txt] 📗

now was currently staring off into space.

“Oops,” She mouthed. The poor girl had been crushing on a guy, muttering his name over and over again--only to find out it was his brother’s name. Ouch.

“Sorry.” I squeaked, and Enzo chuckled.

“It’s fine,” He reassured me (and Dreidel), “people get us mixed up all the time.” We continued chatting for a while as we all ate our food, and by the end, I found out that Easton was in the same grade as me, and that the twins were only their cousins. Our parents started talking, too. By the time we were finished eating, Dreidel had died and gone to heaven, and I was more acquainted with the Turner family.

So maybe Enzo wasn’t a stoner. But he looked like one. Sometimes. “Hey, did you know that today is our daughter Ama’s birthday, here?” Dad said. Everyone over at the Hunter table looked over at each other, and they all started laughing.

“Seriously? It’s Easton’s birthday too!” Enzo said, giving his brother a noogie. He grumbled, and me being obsessed with birthdays as usual (Enzo’s was in February), my head whipped back over to them.

“What time?” I asked him. Easton shrugged.

“Like, 2? In the morning?” He told us. I jumped up and started cheering. Everyone in the diner looked at me.

“Yes! Oh my god, yes! Yes!” At this point, my happiness had turned back the clock of evolution, and my vocabulary was very limited. I was jumping and screaming, waving my fork around dangerously. Fortunately, we have known Bethany Anne for a long time, and she liked my mom and dad.

Note that I didn’t say anything about me and Dreidel. After I was done, I sat back down, grinning. “I was born at 6. In the morning.” I exclaimed, laughing. Dreidel was frantically trying to explain to the people on the other side of us about my birthday obsession.

“I’m finally younger than someone!” I added in. My sister’s crush stared at me. “Who’s around my age!” I exclaimed. Now they were all looking at me.

“Who is in their junior year!” I explained. At this point, I couldn’t talk normally. After a few minutes of a little more small talk, we all went inside and went our separate ways. But it might as well have been Dreidel’s birthday, because she got Easton’s--sorry, Enzo’s--phone number, and the whole car ride home, our whole family’s thoughts were wrapped up with the Hunter family.

My mom’s was probably: Oh no, oh dear. My daughters have finally met guys who are civilized. They are going to grow up, and get married, and make babies, and then they’ll hate me for not teaching them how to cook. My dad was probably thinking: Ahh, Patrick (Enzo and Easton’s dad) was so funny. We should share jokes sometime.

We all know what Dreidel was thinking about, and there I was, happy that I was born at 6 in the morning. Obviously there was something wrong with me here.

~*~

I got home to the solemn sound of everyone grumbling sleepily. We had been celebrating far too much, Dreidel especially. I hoped that things would go smooth for her as I brushed my teeth, which was just about the most random thing ever to think when you are brushing your crunchy-crunch, but go figure. I liked to do my deepest thinking while whitening up my yellows while others did it in the shower.

I started laughing as I realized how wrong that sounded while the toothpaste was frothing in my mouth. Poor Dreidel didn’t dare disturb me in the bathroom like usual when she walked in on me, so for that night, that blessed night--I was left alone. No sounds of my mom cooing about how perfect me and Dreidel were, or any of my Dad’s bad jokes.

I sat down in bed, the door shut, and I took out a pen and grabbed the journal I had hidden in my guitar case. Yes, I played guitar. No, I wasn't very good with at all. I was one of the wannabes, sadly, but I still liked to strum chords to calm myself, sometimes. I clicked the pen, the journal open, and I began falling into the routine that had always helped me fall asleep.

Five years ago, when I was twelve, growing up, and suffering from growth pains and insomnia, like every other girl, I had had quite a fancy with a boy. His name was Peter Hankshaw, and he had barely even noticed me, save for the times we were the only ones who showed up at band practice (Once upon a time, I had played the flute). Peter had brandished himself with a trumpet, and although he wasn’t the virtuoso like my fantasies had caused me to believe, I remembered how the way he played made me smile. Peter was a nice boy, a daring one, and by the end of the year, he moved away.

And there I was the next year, still unable to sleep, that I got out a journal and wrote a letter to the imaginary Peter whom I never knew. And I did the same thing the day after that, and every single time, like clockwork, I fell asleep onto the lined pages. Four years later, with me being over the hurdle of Peter Hankshaw, I still did the same thing. It didn’t matter who I wrote to anymore, but something about his name was special.

I didn’t write much this time. Like every birthday I had, I asked him when he was born. Today was a day of pondering of who and where the real Peter was. I looked up and outside the window, the stars unusually shining bright for a night where no one slept lightly, or at all. I scribbled something down real quick before I ended my entry for the night.

So I end this entry with a question to you:

Dear Peter Hankshaw, do you still like the stars? You used to tell everyone how we were all stealing the stars from the sky and making them into people, so that we would never have to look up to wish anymore, but have you realized that we envy those people more than anything, and give hate to our icons everyday? Are we really stealing them, or do the lights of our cities steal away the real stars?

Pondering much,

Amabelle Mercedes

The night made me write like a lovesick idiot, but he would never read it, so I didn’t mind. My mind was just filled with weird thoughts, and it was nice to fall asleep to knowing that once upon a time, my life had been this simple.

ii. She's One for the Jerseys

 

A M A B E L L E

 

The morning sun had risen to greet the new day, and there I was, slumbering like a cow. Honestly, I had no other adjective for it considering the way my family liked to video me and the way my jaw moved around in my sleep. It’s freaky, considering that, you know, I’m human, and my jaw does crazy things on my face. The winter break was now over, and the first day returning to school was always the worst. I had about five alarms, not including my family members themselves, and the only thing that could ever wake me up was--nothing. The fact that I woke up each morning was a miracle, honestly. I never quite understood how dysfunctional I could be.

“Amabelle, you have to help me with Enzo today!” Dreidel shouted happily. She threw off my blankets, her laughter annoying me to the point where I decided that having a sister is nothing special. It would be much better if I murdered her and buried her somewhere in the open fields. I groaned, rolling off my bed. Alarm five had not rung yet.

“No.” I told her, trying to hold myself up. She grinned at me.

“But he’s so dreamy.” My older sister with more experience with the English language told me. If you wake me up like that, I expect a 5-paragraph essay full of prose describing him, not one word used by all other girls to describe guys who had long eyelashes.

“He’s dreamy, huh? Well, shut up, I’m dreamier, and I’m your sister. What more do you want?” I yelled, climbing back onto bed. Dreidel had a whole group of giggly and determined girls to help her along her way to ten kids and a successful marriage. She didn’t need me.

“Ama! You stupid little palindrome, get out of bed! Your alarms all stopped working because there’s a power-out, and there's only five minutes left until school starts!” Dreidel said, and just like that, I jumped out of bed ready to take over the world.

Two hours later, I was in Math class with Dreidel and Enzo, and seeing the way Dreidel stared into his eyes (aka the back of his head) made me want to gag. How in the world could someone be so happy while writing and learning about Pre-Cal? I looked down at my warm-up pages, wanting to bawl. This textbook needed to have less math, I swear. What kind of textbook that teaches math actually puts math in it?

I slumped down over, ready to give up on life. My sister was trying to flirt with someone whom we only talked to for a night, and my life was hopeless, filled with nothing but myself messing around at home.

I heard Dreidel laugh near me. “Oh, my sister Amabelle, you know her, right? Yeah, she does nothing but mess around at home.” Hearing her confirmation only made me feel so much worse about myself, and I sat there trying not to stab the textbook.

Which, of course, needed to have less math in it. Less x’s and y’s, too. And every other letter in the freakin’ alphabet. I think the teacher sensed that I was about to cry, because she walked over to me. “Is something wrong?” She asked. I nodded, tears ready to form. I was quite a wuss.

“I’m having some problems,” I told her, and her eyes widened.

“Lady problems?” She asked. What in the world does she mean by lady problems? Gosh, this was everyone’s problem, math should just crawl in a hole and die, for god’s sake!

“Yeah,” I sighed, and in a snap, she ushered me to the nurse’s office, telling me to stay there for as I liked, and after hesitating for half a second, I sprinted down the hallway, all to have my freedom interrupted by bumping into the object of my untimely demise.

“Whoa,” Easton chuckled, “watch yourself, there.” I sat there on my butt, glaring up at him.

“I get a free pass for the whole math period, and now I’ve been interrupted in my moment of freedom by you.” I grumbled. He laughed. It was a low, hoarse kind of laughed that made me think he was the type to smoke. I remained there, sitting just about ten feet away from the torture chamber of Pre-Cal.

“How’d you do it?” He asked.

“I looked like I was crying and then she asked me if I had lady problems, as if math isn’t everyone’s problem, and then she told me to rest.” I informed Easton. The boy burst out laughing, making me question if he was actually older than