AJ Andreason
8th August 2004, 08:13 AM
I feel almost to ashamed to come back here. Not only have I not posted in
forever, not only have I not finished on stories mere chapters away from
completion, but worst of all, I have almost totally neglected to read other
people stuff, AND give a review. But I do hope to start changing the
practice a bit. Sorry.
But in this story, which I have picked at and ground down and expanded and
cut and sat on for nearly a year, is at a point where I know that something
is fundamentally missing, and I can't for the life of me tell what it is.
This one-shot (short story, really) IS an original, but it has very definite
anime-ish leanings, a couple of which will be almost instantly recognizable,
and a couple which I hope aren't--at least not right away. I know it's
really kind of a selfish thing to ask, but if I can just get some HINT as to
how to bring it up to the next level, then... it will be worth reading
everything posted and giving reviews for... well... a FAIR NUMBER of them.
Let's not get carried away.
Without further ado:
Clay Fingers
Shawn was a creature of habit. At seven-thirty, sometimes
seven-forty-five, he would sit at his desk, a nice wide, gray one just off
the center of the classroom, stack his books in order of the classes he had
that day under his chair, and draw little pictures of swords until class
started. There would be short, thick dueling blades and long broadswords,
and the gleaming edges of katana and kodachi would pirouette around the
white page. He never drew rapiers, though; he thought the small, needle-like
sword was just too girly.
"Don't you ever get tired of that?"
Shawn blinked and glanced up at his friend, who met his glaze
placidly. Erin's head tilted slightly to one side, a single wave of black
hair tumbling down across her eyes to wave belligerently under her chin.
Shawn said slowly, "I like drawing."
Erin snorted, and fell into the seat of the desk next to his. "That
was a rhetorical question. And anyway, do you remember the assignment for
today?"
Shawn gave her a blank stare.
"Never mind. Forgot who I was talking to." She reached back into her
backpack, a no-nonsense affair with thick straps and scuff marks, and pulled
out a history book that looked a little under the weather. "You're supposed
to read section 12-3. Class starts in seven minutes."
Shawn puffed out an irritated breath and reached carefully across his
desk, taking the textbook with his right hand. "Thank you, Miss News Flash.
Do you do horoscopes, too?"
Erin gave him an ugly smile. "Sure. Scorpio; If you don't get your
butt in gear, you're in for a long day. Working hard now will prevent bad
grades and possible mutilation from a close friend later."
"Touché. This still isn't gonna help me, though." He glared down at
the book, idly flipping the pages. "I don't cram well."
She shrugged. "Deal with it."
"It is so nice to feel the love, Erin."
"You want love, or do you want to pass?"
Shawn opened his mouth to retort, but Mr. Perks ambled into the room
then, taking off his fuzzy yellow hat and tossing his trench coat onto a
chair. "Alright, students," he announced grandly, "let's get started."
"But it's still five minutes before class," someone objected.
"Yes, and there is a lot to cover today, so we'd better get cracking."
There was a general groan until Perks sternly waved fleshy hand, and
the hush fell.
Shawn's mind wandered, unable to keep pace with Mr. Perks' ramblings on 16th
century African wars. His eyes leapt around, gazing through the
poster-plastered walls and ceiling, the dogs playing poker, the Van Goh
reprint, finally tracing lines in the medieval war scene that was hung on
the far wall. Slowly, as if afraid he'd be spotted, he let his eyes wander
to look at Erin, who was writing notes furiously in a small green notebook.
***
He was pretty sure she hadn't noticed. She been too busy talking to see the
awkward way he'd reach over the desk, the little bandage tied tightly to his
hand.
Shawn blinked, and then history class was over. Perks was already
gathering his things and marching into the hall, and the classroom was abuzz
with the chatter of between-class conversation. He glanced down at the wad
of paper in front of him, dismally noting that his subconscious had once
again failed to take any notes. He sighed and put the notebook away.
"Attentive as ever, I see," Erin sighed.
"Hey, don't nag me," Shawn replied, leaning back in his chair and
resting his head on his hands. "I'll do fine when the test comes around. I
always do."
"Yes," Erin said slowly, "and that is precisely the reason the world is
not fair."
He grinned. "Look at it this way; you're a lot prettier than me."
She laughed. "Right. I'll just twinkle my eyes and get into collage."
She shook her head. "See you fifth period."
Shawn nodded. Silently, he watched her go out into the hallway, the navy
and gray of her school uniform waving as she walked briskly around the
corner, and fingered the bandage on his left hand.
***
"You skipped again, didn't you?" Erin said accusingly.
"I'd prefer to call it an 'unauthorized leave of absence.'"
They sat across from each other in the bright light of Shawn's kitchen,
their papers and books spread over the table in a lazy arc, and the finely
polished cupboards and counters cast a yellow gleam. Shawn silently tapped
his thigh under the table with his left hand.
"I'm serious," Erin said, a trickle of worry leaking into her stern
expression. "I looked for you yesterday. You were supposed to meet me."
Shawn felt a tingle of embarrassment. "I-I'm sorry. I guess I just got
distracted."
She shook head. "Don't. Focus. We need to get work done. Now, read the
paragraph at the top here."
Shawn sighed, extending a hand to accept the offered book. His eyes
widened briefly, and he tried to snatch it back at the last second,
accidentally letting the long, stiff black sleeve of his school uniform fall
back from his fingers. Quickly, he snatched the volume and slammed it onto
his desk, jerkily pulling his arm down to hide it behind his seat.
Erin frowned at him, and there was a puzzled look in her eyes.
Shawn began to read the paragraph aloud.
***
The classroom was almost empty now, and Mr. Perks had long since
abandoned them to struggle over a pop quiz. He hadn't even bothered to
collect it at the end of class.
"What's wrong with your hand?"
Shawn started slightly in his chair, and coughed nervously, looking down
at his book. Erin gave him a level stare, a steady scowl she'd perfected
after years of practice.
Erin's frown deepened. "It looked a little... smaller than the other
one."
"How could it be smaller?"
"Hold them both up, and let me decide."
Erin made a grab for his hand, but Shawn stood up suddenly, backed away
and hurried across the classroom and out the door. He cut swiftly across the
hallway and through the teacher's lounge, ducking into the little bathroom
inside that nobody ever used. It was small and clean, but most of all, it
was private.
Slowly, he pulled back his sleeves and held his hands up to the light.
He looked from one to the other, over and over, hoping that somehow he'd
been mistaken. But he saw the same thing that he'd seen in his bathroom at
home. The left one was definitely smaller. It was... thinner, sort of,
somehow more delicate. It didn't look as if it was supposed to fit on his
thick forearm; it belonged to someone else.
Slowly, his gaze traveled up to the dingy mirror, and a pair of worried
eyes met his. Shawn's sandy hair tumbled in short jets over his forehead,
just barely to short to be long, and a sharp line of apprehension ran down
his jaw. Hesitating, he brought his hand to his face, his fingers tracing
over the whispers of whiskers to come, feeling his jawbone's jagged point,
and up near his ear. He frowned, and turned the side of his face toward the
mirror.
A bit of skin on that side felt odd. It was hard, almost like a callous,
only it felt somehow... loose. Like it might peel off any moment and
something... else... would be underneath. He frowned, moved the spot a
little with the end of his finger.
The room became suddenly very dark, and a sudden, horrible,
unexplainable dread surged over him, like he could feel a mountain of black
water roaring over head and he jerked his hand away and staggered until his
back hit the wall. He stood panting at the mirror for a moment, and then
slipped down to the floor, feeling a cold sweat trickle down the small of
his back.
***
Shawn skipped his next class and went straight to lunch. The roar of
students and clatter of trays and the smells of what some dubiously reliable
sources have claimed to be food wafted through the air. The scents and
sounds seemed to be not so much separate pieces so much as one big, noisy,
smelly entity that filled the lunchroom. Shawn sat in a corner of it all,
picking distractedly at his bologna sandwich.
"So, you ready to tell me what's going on?"
Shawn's chair seemed to fly out from under him of its own accord, and he
hit the ground with a crash, momentarily stunned as he tried to stop himself
with a hand and hit his head on the chair. He sat up hastily, making a
frantic grab for the table, but Erin snatched his hand and pulled him to his
feet, making a deft grab at his sandwich before it fell off the narrow
plastic surface.
"H-How do you know where I was?" he asked quickly, scooping the remains
of his lunch together.
Erin gave him a flat stare. "You always sit in the same place."
"Oh."
He started to fall unsteadily back into his chair, realized at the last
second it was on the ground, and set it upright. He sank into it slowly, and
Erin settled next to him, placing one arm stubbornly on the table.
"Let me see," she told him firmly.
"I don't think-" he began, but Erin snatched his arm and slammed it down
on the table, pinning it there with most of her body weight. Shawn struggled
briefly, but after a moment, his defiance deflated with a rush of air. Erin
regarded him narrowly for a moment, and then let off some pressure.
She examined his hand closely. "It is smaller," she exclaimed, and
looked up at him. "It's almost as small as mine!"
"Yeah... I know."
Erin regarded him silently a moment. "Let me see your other hand."
Shrugging, Shawn set his other hand down on the tabletop, and gasped. He
leaned forward, blinking and shaking his head, sure his eyes were playing
tricks on him. The two hands were now matching pairs, delicate and pale and
smooth. And, around his wrist, like the bits of old plaster that were all
that needed to be removed to finish an artwork, were pale flaps of skin. The
jagged edges looked like the remaining bits of a shattered glass window.
The fall... he'd tried to catch himself with his hand. He could half
remember, dreamlike, the sound of something breaking when he hit, a brief
feeling of fresh air...
"Oh, crap," he said.
Shawn stared down at his hands for a long moment, and he could feel Erin
's eyes on him. He knew what she was going to say.
"You should go to a doctor."
"Why?"
"What do you mean, why? You've got to get help! You're-you're-"
"Shrinking?" Shawn cut in sarcastically.
Her gray eyes grew serious, and she gripped a long tendril of hair
between her thumb and forefinger. "What if you die?"
Shawn felt his face grow hot. The silence stretched a long time. He
could see the lines of concern etched into Erin's expression, could almost
taste her worry as she breathed, but despite himself, couldn't bring himself
to care.
"You should at least tell your mom," she said at last, resting her hands
palms down on the table top.
"Maybe," Shawn said slowly. His smile was bitter. "When I see her next,
perhaps." With that he turned back to his sandwich and took a large bite,
eating determinedly as Erin silently stared on.
***
The next morning, Shawn was fingering blindly for his other sock in the
darkness of his room, drowsy thoughts still running in circles over
yesterday. They had talked the rest of the day, off and on. Talking.
Wondering if he had some sort of disease or rare disorder, or if maybe he
was, as Erin had put it, 'going through adolescence backwards.' He had no
idea.
He gave up the search for his clothes and grudgingly flicked the light
on, squinted through the unaccustomed glare, and glanced around for that
sock. It was next to his hand. Sighing, Shawn snatched at it and slipped it
awkwardly onto his foot, his fingers fumbling with their unaccustomed size,
and got up to go find of his shoes. He looked behind his bed, covered in a
checker of gray and blue patched quilts, and beside the bookcase that loomed
next to his dresser. Nothing.
They had decided not to tell anyone. Or rather, Shawn had decided that
they wouldn't tell anyone. In that way, their friendship was very much a
two-way street-when Erin really wanted something, she got it. When Shawn
said something was going a certain way, that's the way it went. They had
decided long ago that that was the way it was going to be. They had made
sure things were... binding. Lasting.
(Why won't you tell? Are you afraid? Why do you hide?) The echo of a
little voice in Shawn's brain seemed to sound remarkably like Erin in a high
temper. He could almost see that black hair waving, flying over one shoulder
as she tossed her head impatiently, and that look of tightly controlled
anger when her lips pinched tightly together and a single hard line formed
between her eyebrows. He shook his head.
He didn't want all the weird looks and people staring at his hands. He
didn't want the attention. He wanted to hide. He'd do anything it took;
start wearing gloves, keep his hands in his pockets, never volunteer in
class-maybe wrap them in bandages and say he'd gotten burned.
Shawn brushed it all aside with a shake of his head, and continued his
search. Frustrated, he leaned out of his bedroom door and shouted "Mom! Have
you seen my..."
Shawn trailed off. He'd forgotten that'd she'd left for work-probably
about an hour ago. If he was lucky, though, and the day at the job service
was slow, he'd get to see her by that evening just before he went to bed.
He sighed again, and wobbled back into his room, opening the closet. His
shoes leered up at him from their rack on the floor, smug in their neatly
stashed cubby. He called them something his mother would have grounded him
for.
Grumbling, he snatched them up and, after a brief struggle, he jammed
the still-tied sneaker onto one foot, and then grabbed the other one and
stomped his foot in hard. It went in easily, and he bashed the bottom of his
toe on the sole, and lost his balance and flopped back onto the bed. Shawn
lay there, frozen. Slowly, he drew his foot out again. It came easily,
fitting smoothly through the small hole at the top. He sat there a long
time, his hand tracing the outline of something on his face.
***
"It's happened to your foot now, hasn't it?" Erin breathed through the
side of her mouth, watching carefully as Mr. Sore outlined some musical
notes on the chalkboard.
Shawn stared up at the ceiling, pretending to be examining some
fascinating samples of lint in the little holes of the suspended tiles.
"...I guess."
She hesitated. "You know, I really think we should-"
"No."
"But-"
"No!"
Mr. Sore spun around and lobbed something at him, and the bit of chalk
exploded into white powder as it bounced off his forehead. He sneezed
loudly, and the class teetered to a halt to stare at him.
"Mr. Brewing. I suppose you know the way to the office? Be a good boy,
and go there now, will you?"
Shawn felt his hackles rise, and his hands, his small hands, tightened
briefly on the black metal bars supporting his desk. With the careful
slowness of a ticking time bomb, he pushed himself to his feet and moved his
thumping, uneven walk out of the classroom, making sure to exaggerate every
step.
"I'll be calling them up to make sure you get there," Sore continued
levelly.
Shawn looked sharply back at the teacher. He knew the man was trying to
provoke him. He knew what would happen if he told the office that. They
would get on him for truancy, and academic insubordination, and make him go
to a counselor's meeting, call out his mom...
Turning quickly, he pounded out of the room and into the hall, doing his
best to ignore his unsteady gait, or the way his right foot kept rubbing up
and down against the side of his shoe. He focused instead on an image of Mr.
Sore's face clenched in his fist, eyes panicky as Shawn threw stick after
stick of chalk into his teeth.
He skidded around a corner, almost losing his balance, and tried to slow
to a jog in the long, polished hallways. With a sudden numbness and a slight
shock, he felt the difference in his feet shift with a sound like breaking
porcelain, and he pitched forward onto the floor, turning to one side at the
last second and letting his left shoulder and arm take most of the impact.
There was another brief numbness and a strange detached feeling, like the
skin on his arm was nothing more than tearing fabric.
Shawn lay there on the floor for a while, fingering the jagged edges of
broken skin through a thin layer of cloth.
***
"Mom!" Shawn said brightly, jumping up from the recliner where his
homework had been spread, and jogged to the door. "You're home early!"
His mother smiled at him. Her yellow hair flicked sideways around her
gray eyes, her red suit rumpled from the day's wear. That smile-tired,
resigned: barely recognizable. She'd worn it every day since the funeral.
Shawn shoved that away and tried to concentrate. "How was work?"
"Hmm? Not bad. Got a man who was blind a decent job today." She half
nodded to herself, and slowly, like it was an enormous effort, propelled
herself across the room, and dropped her things.
"Oh... good.." For a moment, Shawn hesitated, shifting restlessly from
one foot to the other, and stopped suddenly at the very... narrow feeling of
them. Slowly, he felt the small spot on his face, larger now, almost past
his ear, the ear that he tried desperately to ignore the small, effeminate
feel of. He steeled himself.
"We need to talk a bit, Mom."
Slowly, she sank into the plushy recliner and let her arms sag against
the rests. "You just tell me what you need to say. I'll think I'll rest here
a minute..."
Shawn nodded. "I've... I've got something important to tell you, Mom,"
he said slowly. "You see, something really strange is happening to me, and I
was wondering if you could... help me out, I guess. See, Mom, look at my
hands."
He paused, and looked down at her. "Mom?"
Her chest heaved deeply up and down and her head drooped forward, a
slow, quiet snore muffled by her cascading hair. She was completely out.
With an almost inaudible sigh, Shawn crossed the room and drew a blanket out
from the closet, slowly spreading it out over her and tucking it tight.
"Sleep well," he murmured, and trudged out of the room.
***
Seven-forty-five glowed in red letters on the school clock, and Shawn
sagged into his desk, allowing his books to topple to the floor and pulling
the long coat he'd borrowed from his dad's old things tighter around him.
The boy in front of him turned back in his seat to stare at him.
He pointed to Shawn's coat. "What're you wearing that stupid thing for?
It's seventy-five degrees in here."
"Why don't you give up detective work and stick to failing quizzes,
Nelson?" Shawn snapped.
"Jeez, sorry, I was just-" Nelson stopped abruptly and his gaze fixed on
Shawn.
"What're you staring at?" Shawn demanded.
"N-nothing, it's just." the short boy trailed off and turned back in his
seat, looking down very hard at his textbook.
It was then that Shawn started to hear them, the whispers of the people
around him, the curious and the concerned looks that darted from behind
turning heads.
A slow feeling of desperation began to sink into Shawn. What was it?
What had he missed?
Mr. Perks came in, and had half taken off his coat when he stopped dead.
"Mr. Brewing. are you alright?"
Shawn swallowed. "Y-yes. why?"
"Your face-It's."
Shawn's seemed to shoot to his cheek of its own accord, and he felt the
long, hard surface of the callus stretching down across the right side.
"It's fine," Shawn heard his voice say, and wondered briefly where Erin
was. "I just burned myself yesterday."
"Really?" Perks said worriedly. "Are you sure? Do you need to go to the
nurse?"
"No. Everything's fine. I promise." He got out his textbook and began to
read slowly from the chapter.
***
"Come on, Mr. Brewing, put some effort into it!" Ms. Ceral shouted,
banging a long set of gym keys on the thigh of her gray sweat pants,
swinging them from the thick strap that dangled in her fingers. Shawn
glanced back to glare at her, and nearly lost his balance on the muddy flats
that the school claimed was a soccer field. It didn't help that a chill,
steady drizzle was forming yellow and brown puddles in the buttery soil.
"Go, Mr. Brewing! And don't think I haven't marked you down for not
changing out!"
Shawn grunted and looked away, one hand tentatively brushing the uneven feel
of the skin on his arm, like an unfinished clay mold. It didn't... hurt,
exactly, none of this had, but it still felt... odd. Like all his nerves
were jangling.
A sudden tingle down his spine told him that Ms. Ceral was about to fire
out another sharp command, and he ran after the ball, feeling his weight
shifting unsteadily in his shoes. Struggling forward in an unsteady zigzag,
he managed to reach the small cluster of kids battling it out for possession
of the ball, near the center of the field, and shoved his way in close. He
watched warily as the black-checked globe whizzed and ricocheted back and
forth between the boys, black and white spinning. It reminded him of his
father's old air hockey table, which he had built to continue his rivalry
with Erin's dad, Mr. Benson, without having to shovel out seventy-five cents
a game.
It had been long and smooth, with hundreds of tiny, carefully drilled
holes dotting the top to allow the air to flow out, and a small, simple set
of sliding disks set on a pole kept the score. He recalled his father
hunched over it, flicking the puck with an almost negligent tap and sending
it leaping across the board faster than Shawn could follow. He missed where
the small orange disk went every time, mesmerized as it bounced and danced
and clicked in the narrow confines of the table.
Erin seemed to a have an instinct for it, though. She could follow and
counter anything their dads had thrown at her, even if she wasn't very good
at hitting the puck. Shawn's father had joked that maybe they had been
switched at birth-he always complained that he lost because of his weak arm,
the one that he broke his falling off a roof years ago. Mr. Benson always
smiled and coughed, muttering something about a weak head.
Shawn didn't doubt him. His father must have had something weak in his
head to decide to take his friend ice fishing without checking the weather
report first. He must have been damn stupid to try to go for help after the
car had run off the road, knowing he was miles and miles from the nearest
town. It was a bad habit his father had had, thinking he could play the
hero, whatever the circumstances.
"Watch it, Shawn!" someone shouted, and he looked up from his dazed
stupor, his eyes blank and unseeing. The soccer ball spun slowly up through
the boys, wearing down walls of air thickened in the rain. A slow
comprehension drifted into Shawn's brain, and his eyes widened one careful
millimeter at a time, his head jerking backward. His mouth sagged open, and
he tried desperately to bring his arms up, but they felt as rigid as tree
limbs.
There was a sound like pottery being broken and then flung into the air,
allowed to plink onto the ground one pale shard at a time. The tide of
Shawn's horror crashed in on him, and he gasped and curled tightly into a
ball, not daring to touch, not daring to think....
"His face!" someone hissed, and he could feel the burning of every eye
on him, looking on in horror and wonder at something they couldn't even
begin to understand. Shawn curled tighter, trying to bury his face in the
dirt, feeling the smooth cheek and full lips on one side, trying to bury his
soul in the pitted mud. Then he felt a hesitant hand on his shoulder.
"Shawn," Erin's anxious voice said, "are you-"
"No!" he roared; his voice sounded shrill and high-pitched. He yanked
his shoulder away from his friend, threw himself to his feet, and broke into
a run, pouring every last grain of effort he had into running.
This was too much.
She had seen him.
Shawn ran harder, tearing the clay off his body, ripping away the last
remnants on his arm, and stripping off the rest of the crumbling remains on
his face. Shawn clawed at his chest and tore the thin layer of covering it
away, throwing it onto the side of the road, revealing strange flesh that
tingled and rose and fell with his breath and sang with his heartbeat.
There, small feet finally faltered. Shawn collapsed in the roadway, sobbing
and beating the ground with a fist.
***
Erin shivered. The hospital always seemed so lifeless-stark and barren
in its white tiled hallways and pastel walls, coldly indifferent to the
suffering of the people inside. She fidgeted, twisting her fingers and
pulling back her hair behind one ear in the plush, light-purple seat she'd
been directed to by a nurse thirty minutes earlier, brisk and unfeeling as
the rest of this place.
Erin felt more than saw the long shadow fall across her, and she looked
up to see a man with large black glasses and short, stiff black hair looming
over her. A long white lab coat draped to his knees, and the name tag on his
shirt pocket spelled out "Dr. Thomas Johnson" in narrowly typed letters.
"Excuse me, young lady," he said slowly, and his voice had huge gravity
to it, as if the sound of it could make the floor shudder under its weight.
"What are you doing here?"
Erin flushed slightly under his gaze. "I came here with someone. I want
to see how he's doing."
"Who?"
"Shawn Brewing? We came in the ambulance."
The doctor paused mid-nod and looked at her, but his expression didn't
change. "You came with. Shawn in the ambulance? An hour ago?"
"Yes. How is he? What's happening?"
The man paused again and looked down at her, and Erin felt the insides
of her stomach claw at her more and more every second the stone-faced
physician gazed down at her.
"Are you a relation?"
"Close enough," she brushed his question aside. "His mother hasn't even
heard yet-she's away at work."
The doctor looked down his thick glasses at her, a disapproving frown
breaking slightly through his impassive visage, but after another
excruciating pause, he nodded. "Alright, I will be frank with you. I have
never seen anything like it."
A sudden wrench doubled the churning in Erin's stomach. "What?"
"I can't even begin to explain it, this. change that your friend has
gone though. It shouldn't be able to happen."
"Why? What happened to him? What aren't you telling me?" Erin suddenly
realized she was shouting, and clenched her teeth tightly.
She expected a harsh reprimand, but the doctor only stared at her, eyes
glassy behind his square-framed glasses, and the thick lines of his eyebrows
glaring out of his forehead.
"I think you're going to need a drink of water," he said, and led her
away to a little room down the hall, passing long rows of empty doors mile
of whitewashed walls. It was very, very cold.
***
It was seven thirty. Shawn walked slowly into the classroom, each step
careful and tentative, as if the world might shatter, and chose the little
gray desk just off the center of the classroom. The books were placed with
care, in order, under the seat. A pen whirled and spun, drawing pictures of
daggers and katanas and broadswords, dancing at random across a blank page.
Erin stared across her desk, her fingers white as she gripped the front of
her jacket.
"Er... long time no see," she said tightly. "You were a long time in the
hospital. They wouldn't let me see you."
Shawn nodded, grunting slightly in affirmation. There was a pause.
"Is it. different? You know."
Shawn sighed. "Of course. Everything's different." A small smile. "I'm
getting used to my hair, though. I looked ugly how it was, so I let it
grow."
Erin nervously traced a circle on her desk with a finger. She looked up
at the front of the classroom, and then at her desk, and then back at Shawn,
and the piece of paper. Slowly, she said
"Don't you ever get tired of that?"
Shawn paused, and looked up the friend from back to childhood days.
"No," Shawn replied, carefully smoothing her hair back from her pale,
baby-skinned face with one small hand, and adjusting the stiff hem of the
skirt on her new school uniform. Her eyes were large and dark, with blond
lashes and the smallest hint of eyebrows peeking out from under growing
bangs. "I like the idea that some things don't have to change." She bent
down again, her pen tracing the lines of a slender rapier, its point
shinning with a single sparkle of reflected light.
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forever, not only have I not finished on stories mere chapters away from
completion, but worst of all, I have almost totally neglected to read other
people stuff, AND give a review. But I do hope to start changing the
practice a bit. Sorry.
But in this story, which I have picked at and ground down and expanded and
cut and sat on for nearly a year, is at a point where I know that something
is fundamentally missing, and I can't for the life of me tell what it is.
This one-shot (short story, really) IS an original, but it has very definite
anime-ish leanings, a couple of which will be almost instantly recognizable,
and a couple which I hope aren't--at least not right away. I know it's
really kind of a selfish thing to ask, but if I can just get some HINT as to
how to bring it up to the next level, then... it will be worth reading
everything posted and giving reviews for... well... a FAIR NUMBER of them.
Let's not get carried away.
Without further ado:
Clay Fingers
Shawn was a creature of habit. At seven-thirty, sometimes
seven-forty-five, he would sit at his desk, a nice wide, gray one just off
the center of the classroom, stack his books in order of the classes he had
that day under his chair, and draw little pictures of swords until class
started. There would be short, thick dueling blades and long broadswords,
and the gleaming edges of katana and kodachi would pirouette around the
white page. He never drew rapiers, though; he thought the small, needle-like
sword was just too girly.
"Don't you ever get tired of that?"
Shawn blinked and glanced up at his friend, who met his glaze
placidly. Erin's head tilted slightly to one side, a single wave of black
hair tumbling down across her eyes to wave belligerently under her chin.
Shawn said slowly, "I like drawing."
Erin snorted, and fell into the seat of the desk next to his. "That
was a rhetorical question. And anyway, do you remember the assignment for
today?"
Shawn gave her a blank stare.
"Never mind. Forgot who I was talking to." She reached back into her
backpack, a no-nonsense affair with thick straps and scuff marks, and pulled
out a history book that looked a little under the weather. "You're supposed
to read section 12-3. Class starts in seven minutes."
Shawn puffed out an irritated breath and reached carefully across his
desk, taking the textbook with his right hand. "Thank you, Miss News Flash.
Do you do horoscopes, too?"
Erin gave him an ugly smile. "Sure. Scorpio; If you don't get your
butt in gear, you're in for a long day. Working hard now will prevent bad
grades and possible mutilation from a close friend later."
"Touché. This still isn't gonna help me, though." He glared down at
the book, idly flipping the pages. "I don't cram well."
She shrugged. "Deal with it."
"It is so nice to feel the love, Erin."
"You want love, or do you want to pass?"
Shawn opened his mouth to retort, but Mr. Perks ambled into the room
then, taking off his fuzzy yellow hat and tossing his trench coat onto a
chair. "Alright, students," he announced grandly, "let's get started."
"But it's still five minutes before class," someone objected.
"Yes, and there is a lot to cover today, so we'd better get cracking."
There was a general groan until Perks sternly waved fleshy hand, and
the hush fell.
Shawn's mind wandered, unable to keep pace with Mr. Perks' ramblings on 16th
century African wars. His eyes leapt around, gazing through the
poster-plastered walls and ceiling, the dogs playing poker, the Van Goh
reprint, finally tracing lines in the medieval war scene that was hung on
the far wall. Slowly, as if afraid he'd be spotted, he let his eyes wander
to look at Erin, who was writing notes furiously in a small green notebook.
***
He was pretty sure she hadn't noticed. She been too busy talking to see the
awkward way he'd reach over the desk, the little bandage tied tightly to his
hand.
Shawn blinked, and then history class was over. Perks was already
gathering his things and marching into the hall, and the classroom was abuzz
with the chatter of between-class conversation. He glanced down at the wad
of paper in front of him, dismally noting that his subconscious had once
again failed to take any notes. He sighed and put the notebook away.
"Attentive as ever, I see," Erin sighed.
"Hey, don't nag me," Shawn replied, leaning back in his chair and
resting his head on his hands. "I'll do fine when the test comes around. I
always do."
"Yes," Erin said slowly, "and that is precisely the reason the world is
not fair."
He grinned. "Look at it this way; you're a lot prettier than me."
She laughed. "Right. I'll just twinkle my eyes and get into collage."
She shook her head. "See you fifth period."
Shawn nodded. Silently, he watched her go out into the hallway, the navy
and gray of her school uniform waving as she walked briskly around the
corner, and fingered the bandage on his left hand.
***
"You skipped again, didn't you?" Erin said accusingly.
"I'd prefer to call it an 'unauthorized leave of absence.'"
They sat across from each other in the bright light of Shawn's kitchen,
their papers and books spread over the table in a lazy arc, and the finely
polished cupboards and counters cast a yellow gleam. Shawn silently tapped
his thigh under the table with his left hand.
"I'm serious," Erin said, a trickle of worry leaking into her stern
expression. "I looked for you yesterday. You were supposed to meet me."
Shawn felt a tingle of embarrassment. "I-I'm sorry. I guess I just got
distracted."
She shook head. "Don't. Focus. We need to get work done. Now, read the
paragraph at the top here."
Shawn sighed, extending a hand to accept the offered book. His eyes
widened briefly, and he tried to snatch it back at the last second,
accidentally letting the long, stiff black sleeve of his school uniform fall
back from his fingers. Quickly, he snatched the volume and slammed it onto
his desk, jerkily pulling his arm down to hide it behind his seat.
Erin frowned at him, and there was a puzzled look in her eyes.
Shawn began to read the paragraph aloud.
***
The classroom was almost empty now, and Mr. Perks had long since
abandoned them to struggle over a pop quiz. He hadn't even bothered to
collect it at the end of class.
"What's wrong with your hand?"
Shawn started slightly in his chair, and coughed nervously, looking down
at his book. Erin gave him a level stare, a steady scowl she'd perfected
after years of practice.
Erin's frown deepened. "It looked a little... smaller than the other
one."
"How could it be smaller?"
"Hold them both up, and let me decide."
Erin made a grab for his hand, but Shawn stood up suddenly, backed away
and hurried across the classroom and out the door. He cut swiftly across the
hallway and through the teacher's lounge, ducking into the little bathroom
inside that nobody ever used. It was small and clean, but most of all, it
was private.
Slowly, he pulled back his sleeves and held his hands up to the light.
He looked from one to the other, over and over, hoping that somehow he'd
been mistaken. But he saw the same thing that he'd seen in his bathroom at
home. The left one was definitely smaller. It was... thinner, sort of,
somehow more delicate. It didn't look as if it was supposed to fit on his
thick forearm; it belonged to someone else.
Slowly, his gaze traveled up to the dingy mirror, and a pair of worried
eyes met his. Shawn's sandy hair tumbled in short jets over his forehead,
just barely to short to be long, and a sharp line of apprehension ran down
his jaw. Hesitating, he brought his hand to his face, his fingers tracing
over the whispers of whiskers to come, feeling his jawbone's jagged point,
and up near his ear. He frowned, and turned the side of his face toward the
mirror.
A bit of skin on that side felt odd. It was hard, almost like a callous,
only it felt somehow... loose. Like it might peel off any moment and
something... else... would be underneath. He frowned, moved the spot a
little with the end of his finger.
The room became suddenly very dark, and a sudden, horrible,
unexplainable dread surged over him, like he could feel a mountain of black
water roaring over head and he jerked his hand away and staggered until his
back hit the wall. He stood panting at the mirror for a moment, and then
slipped down to the floor, feeling a cold sweat trickle down the small of
his back.
***
Shawn skipped his next class and went straight to lunch. The roar of
students and clatter of trays and the smells of what some dubiously reliable
sources have claimed to be food wafted through the air. The scents and
sounds seemed to be not so much separate pieces so much as one big, noisy,
smelly entity that filled the lunchroom. Shawn sat in a corner of it all,
picking distractedly at his bologna sandwich.
"So, you ready to tell me what's going on?"
Shawn's chair seemed to fly out from under him of its own accord, and he
hit the ground with a crash, momentarily stunned as he tried to stop himself
with a hand and hit his head on the chair. He sat up hastily, making a
frantic grab for the table, but Erin snatched his hand and pulled him to his
feet, making a deft grab at his sandwich before it fell off the narrow
plastic surface.
"H-How do you know where I was?" he asked quickly, scooping the remains
of his lunch together.
Erin gave him a flat stare. "You always sit in the same place."
"Oh."
He started to fall unsteadily back into his chair, realized at the last
second it was on the ground, and set it upright. He sank into it slowly, and
Erin settled next to him, placing one arm stubbornly on the table.
"Let me see," she told him firmly.
"I don't think-" he began, but Erin snatched his arm and slammed it down
on the table, pinning it there with most of her body weight. Shawn struggled
briefly, but after a moment, his defiance deflated with a rush of air. Erin
regarded him narrowly for a moment, and then let off some pressure.
She examined his hand closely. "It is smaller," she exclaimed, and
looked up at him. "It's almost as small as mine!"
"Yeah... I know."
Erin regarded him silently a moment. "Let me see your other hand."
Shrugging, Shawn set his other hand down on the tabletop, and gasped. He
leaned forward, blinking and shaking his head, sure his eyes were playing
tricks on him. The two hands were now matching pairs, delicate and pale and
smooth. And, around his wrist, like the bits of old plaster that were all
that needed to be removed to finish an artwork, were pale flaps of skin. The
jagged edges looked like the remaining bits of a shattered glass window.
The fall... he'd tried to catch himself with his hand. He could half
remember, dreamlike, the sound of something breaking when he hit, a brief
feeling of fresh air...
"Oh, crap," he said.
Shawn stared down at his hands for a long moment, and he could feel Erin
's eyes on him. He knew what she was going to say.
"You should go to a doctor."
"Why?"
"What do you mean, why? You've got to get help! You're-you're-"
"Shrinking?" Shawn cut in sarcastically.
Her gray eyes grew serious, and she gripped a long tendril of hair
between her thumb and forefinger. "What if you die?"
Shawn felt his face grow hot. The silence stretched a long time. He
could see the lines of concern etched into Erin's expression, could almost
taste her worry as she breathed, but despite himself, couldn't bring himself
to care.
"You should at least tell your mom," she said at last, resting her hands
palms down on the table top.
"Maybe," Shawn said slowly. His smile was bitter. "When I see her next,
perhaps." With that he turned back to his sandwich and took a large bite,
eating determinedly as Erin silently stared on.
***
The next morning, Shawn was fingering blindly for his other sock in the
darkness of his room, drowsy thoughts still running in circles over
yesterday. They had talked the rest of the day, off and on. Talking.
Wondering if he had some sort of disease or rare disorder, or if maybe he
was, as Erin had put it, 'going through adolescence backwards.' He had no
idea.
He gave up the search for his clothes and grudgingly flicked the light
on, squinted through the unaccustomed glare, and glanced around for that
sock. It was next to his hand. Sighing, Shawn snatched at it and slipped it
awkwardly onto his foot, his fingers fumbling with their unaccustomed size,
and got up to go find of his shoes. He looked behind his bed, covered in a
checker of gray and blue patched quilts, and beside the bookcase that loomed
next to his dresser. Nothing.
They had decided not to tell anyone. Or rather, Shawn had decided that
they wouldn't tell anyone. In that way, their friendship was very much a
two-way street-when Erin really wanted something, she got it. When Shawn
said something was going a certain way, that's the way it went. They had
decided long ago that that was the way it was going to be. They had made
sure things were... binding. Lasting.
(Why won't you tell? Are you afraid? Why do you hide?) The echo of a
little voice in Shawn's brain seemed to sound remarkably like Erin in a high
temper. He could almost see that black hair waving, flying over one shoulder
as she tossed her head impatiently, and that look of tightly controlled
anger when her lips pinched tightly together and a single hard line formed
between her eyebrows. He shook his head.
He didn't want all the weird looks and people staring at his hands. He
didn't want the attention. He wanted to hide. He'd do anything it took;
start wearing gloves, keep his hands in his pockets, never volunteer in
class-maybe wrap them in bandages and say he'd gotten burned.
Shawn brushed it all aside with a shake of his head, and continued his
search. Frustrated, he leaned out of his bedroom door and shouted "Mom! Have
you seen my..."
Shawn trailed off. He'd forgotten that'd she'd left for work-probably
about an hour ago. If he was lucky, though, and the day at the job service
was slow, he'd get to see her by that evening just before he went to bed.
He sighed again, and wobbled back into his room, opening the closet. His
shoes leered up at him from their rack on the floor, smug in their neatly
stashed cubby. He called them something his mother would have grounded him
for.
Grumbling, he snatched them up and, after a brief struggle, he jammed
the still-tied sneaker onto one foot, and then grabbed the other one and
stomped his foot in hard. It went in easily, and he bashed the bottom of his
toe on the sole, and lost his balance and flopped back onto the bed. Shawn
lay there, frozen. Slowly, he drew his foot out again. It came easily,
fitting smoothly through the small hole at the top. He sat there a long
time, his hand tracing the outline of something on his face.
***
"It's happened to your foot now, hasn't it?" Erin breathed through the
side of her mouth, watching carefully as Mr. Sore outlined some musical
notes on the chalkboard.
Shawn stared up at the ceiling, pretending to be examining some
fascinating samples of lint in the little holes of the suspended tiles.
"...I guess."
She hesitated. "You know, I really think we should-"
"No."
"But-"
"No!"
Mr. Sore spun around and lobbed something at him, and the bit of chalk
exploded into white powder as it bounced off his forehead. He sneezed
loudly, and the class teetered to a halt to stare at him.
"Mr. Brewing. I suppose you know the way to the office? Be a good boy,
and go there now, will you?"
Shawn felt his hackles rise, and his hands, his small hands, tightened
briefly on the black metal bars supporting his desk. With the careful
slowness of a ticking time bomb, he pushed himself to his feet and moved his
thumping, uneven walk out of the classroom, making sure to exaggerate every
step.
"I'll be calling them up to make sure you get there," Sore continued
levelly.
Shawn looked sharply back at the teacher. He knew the man was trying to
provoke him. He knew what would happen if he told the office that. They
would get on him for truancy, and academic insubordination, and make him go
to a counselor's meeting, call out his mom...
Turning quickly, he pounded out of the room and into the hall, doing his
best to ignore his unsteady gait, or the way his right foot kept rubbing up
and down against the side of his shoe. He focused instead on an image of Mr.
Sore's face clenched in his fist, eyes panicky as Shawn threw stick after
stick of chalk into his teeth.
He skidded around a corner, almost losing his balance, and tried to slow
to a jog in the long, polished hallways. With a sudden numbness and a slight
shock, he felt the difference in his feet shift with a sound like breaking
porcelain, and he pitched forward onto the floor, turning to one side at the
last second and letting his left shoulder and arm take most of the impact.
There was another brief numbness and a strange detached feeling, like the
skin on his arm was nothing more than tearing fabric.
Shawn lay there on the floor for a while, fingering the jagged edges of
broken skin through a thin layer of cloth.
***
"Mom!" Shawn said brightly, jumping up from the recliner where his
homework had been spread, and jogged to the door. "You're home early!"
His mother smiled at him. Her yellow hair flicked sideways around her
gray eyes, her red suit rumpled from the day's wear. That smile-tired,
resigned: barely recognizable. She'd worn it every day since the funeral.
Shawn shoved that away and tried to concentrate. "How was work?"
"Hmm? Not bad. Got a man who was blind a decent job today." She half
nodded to herself, and slowly, like it was an enormous effort, propelled
herself across the room, and dropped her things.
"Oh... good.." For a moment, Shawn hesitated, shifting restlessly from
one foot to the other, and stopped suddenly at the very... narrow feeling of
them. Slowly, he felt the small spot on his face, larger now, almost past
his ear, the ear that he tried desperately to ignore the small, effeminate
feel of. He steeled himself.
"We need to talk a bit, Mom."
Slowly, she sank into the plushy recliner and let her arms sag against
the rests. "You just tell me what you need to say. I'll think I'll rest here
a minute..."
Shawn nodded. "I've... I've got something important to tell you, Mom,"
he said slowly. "You see, something really strange is happening to me, and I
was wondering if you could... help me out, I guess. See, Mom, look at my
hands."
He paused, and looked down at her. "Mom?"
Her chest heaved deeply up and down and her head drooped forward, a
slow, quiet snore muffled by her cascading hair. She was completely out.
With an almost inaudible sigh, Shawn crossed the room and drew a blanket out
from the closet, slowly spreading it out over her and tucking it tight.
"Sleep well," he murmured, and trudged out of the room.
***
Seven-forty-five glowed in red letters on the school clock, and Shawn
sagged into his desk, allowing his books to topple to the floor and pulling
the long coat he'd borrowed from his dad's old things tighter around him.
The boy in front of him turned back in his seat to stare at him.
He pointed to Shawn's coat. "What're you wearing that stupid thing for?
It's seventy-five degrees in here."
"Why don't you give up detective work and stick to failing quizzes,
Nelson?" Shawn snapped.
"Jeez, sorry, I was just-" Nelson stopped abruptly and his gaze fixed on
Shawn.
"What're you staring at?" Shawn demanded.
"N-nothing, it's just." the short boy trailed off and turned back in his
seat, looking down very hard at his textbook.
It was then that Shawn started to hear them, the whispers of the people
around him, the curious and the concerned looks that darted from behind
turning heads.
A slow feeling of desperation began to sink into Shawn. What was it?
What had he missed?
Mr. Perks came in, and had half taken off his coat when he stopped dead.
"Mr. Brewing. are you alright?"
Shawn swallowed. "Y-yes. why?"
"Your face-It's."
Shawn's seemed to shoot to his cheek of its own accord, and he felt the
long, hard surface of the callus stretching down across the right side.
"It's fine," Shawn heard his voice say, and wondered briefly where Erin
was. "I just burned myself yesterday."
"Really?" Perks said worriedly. "Are you sure? Do you need to go to the
nurse?"
"No. Everything's fine. I promise." He got out his textbook and began to
read slowly from the chapter.
***
"Come on, Mr. Brewing, put some effort into it!" Ms. Ceral shouted,
banging a long set of gym keys on the thigh of her gray sweat pants,
swinging them from the thick strap that dangled in her fingers. Shawn
glanced back to glare at her, and nearly lost his balance on the muddy flats
that the school claimed was a soccer field. It didn't help that a chill,
steady drizzle was forming yellow and brown puddles in the buttery soil.
"Go, Mr. Brewing! And don't think I haven't marked you down for not
changing out!"
Shawn grunted and looked away, one hand tentatively brushing the uneven feel
of the skin on his arm, like an unfinished clay mold. It didn't... hurt,
exactly, none of this had, but it still felt... odd. Like all his nerves
were jangling.
A sudden tingle down his spine told him that Ms. Ceral was about to fire
out another sharp command, and he ran after the ball, feeling his weight
shifting unsteadily in his shoes. Struggling forward in an unsteady zigzag,
he managed to reach the small cluster of kids battling it out for possession
of the ball, near the center of the field, and shoved his way in close. He
watched warily as the black-checked globe whizzed and ricocheted back and
forth between the boys, black and white spinning. It reminded him of his
father's old air hockey table, which he had built to continue his rivalry
with Erin's dad, Mr. Benson, without having to shovel out seventy-five cents
a game.
It had been long and smooth, with hundreds of tiny, carefully drilled
holes dotting the top to allow the air to flow out, and a small, simple set
of sliding disks set on a pole kept the score. He recalled his father
hunched over it, flicking the puck with an almost negligent tap and sending
it leaping across the board faster than Shawn could follow. He missed where
the small orange disk went every time, mesmerized as it bounced and danced
and clicked in the narrow confines of the table.
Erin seemed to a have an instinct for it, though. She could follow and
counter anything their dads had thrown at her, even if she wasn't very good
at hitting the puck. Shawn's father had joked that maybe they had been
switched at birth-he always complained that he lost because of his weak arm,
the one that he broke his falling off a roof years ago. Mr. Benson always
smiled and coughed, muttering something about a weak head.
Shawn didn't doubt him. His father must have had something weak in his
head to decide to take his friend ice fishing without checking the weather
report first. He must have been damn stupid to try to go for help after the
car had run off the road, knowing he was miles and miles from the nearest
town. It was a bad habit his father had had, thinking he could play the
hero, whatever the circumstances.
"Watch it, Shawn!" someone shouted, and he looked up from his dazed
stupor, his eyes blank and unseeing. The soccer ball spun slowly up through
the boys, wearing down walls of air thickened in the rain. A slow
comprehension drifted into Shawn's brain, and his eyes widened one careful
millimeter at a time, his head jerking backward. His mouth sagged open, and
he tried desperately to bring his arms up, but they felt as rigid as tree
limbs.
There was a sound like pottery being broken and then flung into the air,
allowed to plink onto the ground one pale shard at a time. The tide of
Shawn's horror crashed in on him, and he gasped and curled tightly into a
ball, not daring to touch, not daring to think....
"His face!" someone hissed, and he could feel the burning of every eye
on him, looking on in horror and wonder at something they couldn't even
begin to understand. Shawn curled tighter, trying to bury his face in the
dirt, feeling the smooth cheek and full lips on one side, trying to bury his
soul in the pitted mud. Then he felt a hesitant hand on his shoulder.
"Shawn," Erin's anxious voice said, "are you-"
"No!" he roared; his voice sounded shrill and high-pitched. He yanked
his shoulder away from his friend, threw himself to his feet, and broke into
a run, pouring every last grain of effort he had into running.
This was too much.
She had seen him.
Shawn ran harder, tearing the clay off his body, ripping away the last
remnants on his arm, and stripping off the rest of the crumbling remains on
his face. Shawn clawed at his chest and tore the thin layer of covering it
away, throwing it onto the side of the road, revealing strange flesh that
tingled and rose and fell with his breath and sang with his heartbeat.
There, small feet finally faltered. Shawn collapsed in the roadway, sobbing
and beating the ground with a fist.
***
Erin shivered. The hospital always seemed so lifeless-stark and barren
in its white tiled hallways and pastel walls, coldly indifferent to the
suffering of the people inside. She fidgeted, twisting her fingers and
pulling back her hair behind one ear in the plush, light-purple seat she'd
been directed to by a nurse thirty minutes earlier, brisk and unfeeling as
the rest of this place.
Erin felt more than saw the long shadow fall across her, and she looked
up to see a man with large black glasses and short, stiff black hair looming
over her. A long white lab coat draped to his knees, and the name tag on his
shirt pocket spelled out "Dr. Thomas Johnson" in narrowly typed letters.
"Excuse me, young lady," he said slowly, and his voice had huge gravity
to it, as if the sound of it could make the floor shudder under its weight.
"What are you doing here?"
Erin flushed slightly under his gaze. "I came here with someone. I want
to see how he's doing."
"Who?"
"Shawn Brewing? We came in the ambulance."
The doctor paused mid-nod and looked at her, but his expression didn't
change. "You came with. Shawn in the ambulance? An hour ago?"
"Yes. How is he? What's happening?"
The man paused again and looked down at her, and Erin felt the insides
of her stomach claw at her more and more every second the stone-faced
physician gazed down at her.
"Are you a relation?"
"Close enough," she brushed his question aside. "His mother hasn't even
heard yet-she's away at work."
The doctor looked down his thick glasses at her, a disapproving frown
breaking slightly through his impassive visage, but after another
excruciating pause, he nodded. "Alright, I will be frank with you. I have
never seen anything like it."
A sudden wrench doubled the churning in Erin's stomach. "What?"
"I can't even begin to explain it, this. change that your friend has
gone though. It shouldn't be able to happen."
"Why? What happened to him? What aren't you telling me?" Erin suddenly
realized she was shouting, and clenched her teeth tightly.
She expected a harsh reprimand, but the doctor only stared at her, eyes
glassy behind his square-framed glasses, and the thick lines of his eyebrows
glaring out of his forehead.
"I think you're going to need a drink of water," he said, and led her
away to a little room down the hall, passing long rows of empty doors mile
of whitewashed walls. It was very, very cold.
***
It was seven thirty. Shawn walked slowly into the classroom, each step
careful and tentative, as if the world might shatter, and chose the little
gray desk just off the center of the classroom. The books were placed with
care, in order, under the seat. A pen whirled and spun, drawing pictures of
daggers and katanas and broadswords, dancing at random across a blank page.
Erin stared across her desk, her fingers white as she gripped the front of
her jacket.
"Er... long time no see," she said tightly. "You were a long time in the
hospital. They wouldn't let me see you."
Shawn nodded, grunting slightly in affirmation. There was a pause.
"Is it. different? You know."
Shawn sighed. "Of course. Everything's different." A small smile. "I'm
getting used to my hair, though. I looked ugly how it was, so I let it
grow."
Erin nervously traced a circle on her desk with a finger. She looked up
at the front of the classroom, and then at her desk, and then back at Shawn,
and the piece of paper. Slowly, she said
"Don't you ever get tired of that?"
Shawn paused, and looked up the friend from back to childhood days.
"No," Shawn replied, carefully smoothing her hair back from her pale,
baby-skinned face with one small hand, and adjusting the stiff hem of the
skirt on her new school uniform. Her eyes were large and dark, with blond
lashes and the smallest hint of eyebrows peeking out from under growing
bangs. "I like the idea that some things don't have to change." She bent
down again, her pen tracing the lines of a slender rapier, its point
shinning with a single sparkle of reflected light.
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