Stellar Tomorrow

When they returned from their escapade in Tuphere, Ezzy, Alicia, and Ciaran went to Vale’s house and the three juniors did their homework together. Ezzy and Vale mostly were done with their English things, so it was mostly Algebra II. Alicia went and played with Vale’s younger siblings, Valentina and Valentino, the twins, and Valentine.

“Y’know your room is.. Interesting,” Ciaran commented on Vale’s messy room with pictures plastered on the wall. “What’s with those guys? They all have something in common…..”

“Scythes.” Ezzy spoke, “It’s always been scythes. Every year for Halloween was a different scythe wielder. Magus, the Grim Reaper, even his own random characters. I literally don’t understand your fascination with them, V.’

‘I don’t understand it either.” Vale muttered, folding his arms. “I just really like them. That’s why I picked it.”

“VALE!” His elder sister Valerie’s shout tore him away from his strange fascination.

“I’ll be right back,’ he sighed, getting off his bed and heading out the door to his room.

“How did you guys meet?” Ciaran asked, and a twinge of pain and sadness crossed Ezzy’s face, and she began to recount one of her most painful memories.

- - - - - - -

It was a dreary, rainy day. Ezzy and Alicia were at home, in Colorado. Ezzy was 5, and Alicia was 3. Usually, their parents wouldn’t leave them all alone, especially while they were so young, but they just went down the street to get some groceries and they said they’d be back in around 5 minutes, at 4:26 pm. At 7:30 pm, both girls were glued to the window, waiting for their parents’ red van to pull into the driveway, with dinner and groceries. “Tell me if they get home.” Ezzy said to her sister, who nodded. She walked into the kitchen and made them both some peanut butter sandwiches. They didn’t have a grasp on time, but when she looked at the clock, she knew something was wrong.

When she brought the sandwich to Alicia, she set hers down and called her mom’s cell phone. Then, when there was no answer, she called her dad’s. There was still no response. After they ate, Ezzy told Alicia she could sleep with her tonight. She was scared, very, very scared. Why weren’t they back? Why were they all alone?

When they woke up, Ezzy looked for her parents in house. It was past the time that school would usually start, and the school had called them, but there was no answer. Alicia began to cry, and Ezzy rushed back to the phone and called the police.

“Nine-one-one operator, what’s your emergency?”

“My mom and dad aren’t home! They left yesterday and said they’d be back in 5 minutes, ‘cause they were going to get groceries down the street, but they didn’t come back, and me and my sister are scared!”

“Alright, where is your location?” Ezzy told them her address, and then her name.

Soon, the police arrived, and Ezzy was hugging her sister, crying. She opened the door and the policeman looked down at them.

“Esmerelda?” he spoke quietly, grasping her tiny hand. “We found your parents. They… they were in a car crash. Someone left them there and didn’t call us. They’re… dead. They aren’t coming back anymore. I’m so sorry.”

Ezzy had looked up to him with hope in her eyes, her blonde hair messy from being taken out of a braid when she came home from school, and then being slept on. She fell to her knees and cried harder than she ever had before. If the person who hit them had called, would they have lived? Or were they killed on impact? 

“Do you have any relatives?” he asked.

“A-Aunt Ka-Katie and Uncle Char-arlie,” she sobbed out. Alicia cried too, but she didn’t understand, even though she listened to him. She was a baby. The previous day’s rain had never stopped, had it?

- - - - - - -

“Back. Valerie wanted my opinion on something she was writing. What are you talking about?” Vale leapt back onto his bed and pulled his hair back.

“I asked how you guys met. I’m sorry about your parents,” Ciaran sighed, “If I had known, I wouldn’t have asked.”

“It’s okay.” Ezzy sighed. “It was a long time ago.”

“I’ll tell you my part now.” Vale curled up on his bed. “I was a pretty stupid kid with a twisted mindset, so looking back on this, I feel dumb.”

- - - - - - -

In another place, a little after the day that Ezzy’s world came crashing down on her, it rained in Illinois.

An everyday activity for Vale was going to the local playground, and drawing, maybe playing. He wasn't going to draw in the rain, but he wanted to go play. He had a couple of people he’d play with there. It was better than being in a house where he knew that his sister was dying, could die.

Vale knew many things from a young age. He didn’t cry when he got hurt or when he was sad, no matter how much he wanted to. He wasn’t as important as her, or the babies. Vale didn’t like to bother his parents or sister, because he always told himself that his other siblings were more important. So, he took the love his parents gave him to heart, and their reminders that he was just as important as his siblings were disregarded, because he believed that being the smart one, the unfeeling one was the way to make their lives easier.

He walked to the park, umbrella in hand. He sighed. Vale couldn’t exactly call his playmates friends. They wouldn’t be there today, would they? He looked up at the sky and closed his umbrella as he neared the park. He wanted to let the rain pound on him. The useless one no one ever cared about, that nobody would truly miss because he brought nothing.

‘You’re weird and sad!’ the boys from the park would say. Vale didn’t care. He didn’t want to bother his parents, and if convincing himself that he wasn’t important would let them stop focusing on trying to make him feel like he was important and instead focus on the cancer patient and the newborn twins, he would be fine.

But this mask he wore, it had to crumble down sometimes. He was enduring something no child should have to go through: the potential death of someone, who very well could wither away, watching people pray for them when fate had already decided that that person’s lifespan would end. In the future, he’d look upon this statement as poetic, but now it served as a grim reminder that he could very well lose Valerie. If that happened, what would he have sacrificed his normal mindset and feelings for?

The rain pounded on him as he started running. Running towards the part and finally reaching it, before tripping and landing in the mud, and staring at his mud covered hands. He stood up, caked with mud and looked at the ground. There was a card, one of the Yu-Gi-Oh cards his parents always bought him. It had a scythe on it. Sitting here, covered in mud, he finally realized.

His parents wanted him to know they cared about him. Why were they trying so hard? He was making their life more difficult by pretending he didn’t care about anything. But he did. He didn’t know if Valerie was getting worse or better and he didn’t know what the twins were like. Learning that Valerie had cancer was terrifying, especially when his mother was pregnant. No doubt that his parents had realized that he was closing off, not smiling or talking anymore.

And he cried for the first time in nearly a year, over a scythe card, which was now one of his greatest treasures, for making him realize that while trying not to make his parents’ lives harder, he had done just that by making them worry about him even more than they would have.

“Are you alright?” he heard the call of a voice. It was Katie, his neighbor who would watch him a little while ago. She grasped his hands. “Are you hurt? Is it really bad?”

Vale grabbed the card, shoved it back in his pocket and stood up shakily. He sneezed and shivered. The cold rain and the mud wasn’t good for him.

“Come on, I’ll take you back to my house. Your parents were worried when you didn’t come back, but they had to go to an appointment.” Katie said, wrapping him up in a towel and picking him up and pulling him close. She rubbed circles on his back and carried him to her car.

- - - - - - -

“Valerie’s still alive, so she must have beat cancer. But for you to go through all that…” Ciaran frowned, pulling his knees closer to him. “I went to Tuphere all the time, so I didn’t really miss my dad, and getting all the benefits, living in luxury while you two had to suffer… I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize.” Vale sighed, pulling his blanket on top of him.

“Yeah. We’re stronger from those experiences.” Ezzy smiled at Ciaran. “Let’s continue our story, Vale.”

- - - - - - -

Katie let Vale change and warm up. Ezzy went up to her aunt, Alicia following, curious.

“Who’s that?” She asked. ‘Where did you go?”

Katie ruffled her niece’s hair. “I’m sorry to have left you. I know that can be very painful for you. This is Vale, from next door. You three should become friends. Vale, who’s class are you in at school?”

“Miss Acosta,” Vale said, carefully drinking a cup of hot cocoa that Katie had given him.

“I’m in her class, too.” Ezzy said. “I’m Ezzy.”  She extended a hand.

“Vale.” Vale took it and smiled a little bit. Ezzy smiled too, and so did Alicia.

“I’m Alicia!” She squealed, smiling bright.

Katie smiled too, because the last time she saw both Vale and Ezzy, they hadn’t smiled at all. The pouring rain ceased, and beautiful rainbow extended throughout the sky, as the sun was freed from it’s cloudy prison, brightening up the world again.

- - - - - - -

“Oh, I just realized! That explains where your scythe thing comes from!” Ciaran exclaimed and Vale and Ezzy looked at him. “Y’know, it was one of your prized positions and it was on the day you met your girlfriend!”

The two locked eyes and began to laugh. It was full-blown laughter form Vale, which shocked  Ciaran.

“You… you’re not dating?” Ciaran cocked an eyebrow.

“I like dudes,” Vale managed to say after a brief moment of laughter. “She likes chicks. It wouldn’t work out.”

“Oh.” Ciaran smirked. “I see. But the rest of that, I’m pretty sure is true.”

Vale looked out his window for a moment. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” He got up off of his bed. “It’s dark. You wanna stay over Ez?”

“Yeah, I’ll tell Alicia and run home and get pajamas.” Ezzy got up.

“You’re free to stay too, I suppose.” Vale looked at Ciaran, a mischievous glance in his eye. “We can share the bed.”

“Is that an offer?” Ciaran raised and eyebrow, and Vale snickered.

“I dunno, is it?” he replied, grabbing pajamas and exiting the room to change.

“Alright, I’ll run home and get stuff. Looking forward to it.” Ciaran replied, “Y’know, those eyes really are beautiful. You should stop rolling them.”

Vale’s response was to walk right up to Ciaran, stare at him, then roll his eyes. Then he snickered, and so the raven.

Ciaran made his way home and grabbed his pajamas and told his mom he was staying over at the neighbor’s house.

“Heh, Vale is a totally different person now than when I first met him,” he chuckled, “What a guy, what a guy.”