That Which is Unexpected Read online

  A few moments later, I felt a tug on the sleeve of my t-shirt so I turned over to look at Cheza, who was holding her pillow to her chest. I caught on a few seconds later so I moved over to make room for her and then turned away from her to go to sleep, but I ended up staying awake until I was sure she was asleep and alright. That night repeated itself as I felt Cheza tug on my sleeve every week to two weeks for the next few years, slowly decreasing in frequency. Cheza started to show more facial expressions, but she still couldn’t speak. She had, however, started to write things down.

  A week before her twelfth birthday, Uncle Eric asked “What do you want for your birthday, Chezarei?”

  Cheza got out her three by five inch aluminum covered notebook, which I had given her as a birthday present the previous year, and wrote ‘I want to go to school with Cole’.

  I was finishing middle school in two weeks, after having turned fourteen a week prior, on April 30th. Since I would be starting high school, normally there is no way Cheza and I would have been able to go to school together, considering that she could start in seventh grade at most.

  Uncle Eric knew this, and he knew that I knew because there was no way I was concealing the sadness in my eyes about crushing this girl’s birthday wish, yet he still said “I think I might be able to arrange that.”

  I watched in horror as Cheza’s face lit up like it did when she watched fireworks, and I pictured the fall from her high that would happen when she eventually discovered the truth. Uncle Eric looked at my horror-stricken face and smiled which immediately made me think that he knew something that I didn’t know, so I remained hopeful. The next night when Uncle Eric said “I’m sorry Chezarei,” I cringed in response.

  “I talked to the school and there isn’t any possible way for you to be admitted at Cole’s school, but if you attend school this year, you can be transferred to his school next year,” Uncle Eric told her.

  Cheza looked downtrodden, wrote “Okay,” then she turned to me and wrote “At least we get to go to school together next year!” The combination of her misguided hope and poorly concealed disappointment caught in my throat, so I just smiled and nodded. Cheza retreated to her room and I became furious at Uncle Eric.

  “Eric,” I started through gritted teeth, leaving off the Uncle part of his name to demonstrate my seriousness. “Would you please explain to me what in the hell you think you are doing!? Lying to her twice when both times you’ve known damn well what the situ—”

  “Do you love her?” Uncle Eric interrupted.

  “—ation is,” I finished. “Of course I love her, she’s my little sister!”

  Uncle Eric smiled at my response. That knowing little smile was really starting to piss me off.

  “Would you go to school with her if you could?” Uncle Eric asked.

  “Absolutely, but it’s impo—”

  “Good,” Uncle Eric interrupted, stood up, and walked over to the hall closet by the front door. “It’s a private school that covers grades seven through twelve. Here’s your new uniform and your class schedule is in the breast pocket.”

  The new uniform that Uncle Eric displayed for me was a beige coat, beige slacks, white dress shirt, and a red plaid tie. I just stared at him for a moment before asking, “Why?”

  “The more disappointing the purposed outcome is, the greater the surprise. All you have to work on is the presentation! Besides, I already bought her a smartphone to match yours,” Uncle Eric told me as he started to walk away.

  “And your sacrifice to her will mean more than anything I could do…” I thought I heard him say as he walked away, and then he stopped. “Oh and by the way, the girl’s uniforms… the skirts…” he said before pointing at mid-thigh.

  “Seriously!?” I asked, suddenly ecstatic about my new transfer.

  “HAHAHAHA NOOOOOOOOPE!” he responded while walking away.

  ‘Well it’s nice to see that he’s having so much fun at my expense!’ I thought.

  I’m not sure how Uncle Eric managed to get us into a private school without any sort of testing, but I assume he made it possible through his connections with the school. That or he just had Tia go and threaten the school’s board.

  It had never been clear to me what Tia did before becoming a maid for the Vaele household, but given her extensive combat training, I think it is safe to say that she was some sort of bear assassin…or at least that’s the only explanation my mind came up with to explain why, every time I’d gone to the zoo with her, the bears are never in sight. And I mean all bears: black, brown, Kodiak, polar, panda and even red pandas which aren’t actually even bears! They’re a type of fox! But obviously they didn’t want to take a chance at being mistaken for their name-sharing cousins, by the bear assassin!

  It was August and time for Cheza’s first day of school. I exited my room to find her already awake and sitting at the kitchen table dressed in her new uniform that included the standard knee-length pleated skirt. Mid-thigh skirts… Pfft! How the hell did I fall for that? The red plaid skirt and tan blazer didn’t exactly suit her 4’9” frame, or her chin-length silver hair. I went into my bathroom for a quick shower and walked out of my room fifteen minutes later. Dressed in my new uniform, I walked toward the kitchen where sweet smell of bacon was waiting.

  Uncle Eric was at the stove cooking bacon, wearing an apron and basketball shorts. He liked to cook breakfast for everyone when he was home. He glanced back at me and winked as I entered the kitchen before turning back to the stove. I sat down and started eating after glancing at Cheza’s barely touched food, and I waited. I counted to nine (while eating three strips of bacon) before I saw Cheza do a double take out of the corner of my eye and heard the sound of wood sliding against tile as she quickly stood up. I looked up at her and gave her my best ‘why, whatever could be the problem, sister dearest?’ expression in response to her shocked face. She responded with a glare before punching my left arm so I stood up, hugged her, and softly said “Surprise!”

  “Whoa, look at the time!” Uncle Eric exclaimed. “You two need to get going or you will be late! Chezarei, grab your English muffin. You can eat it in the car. I won’t have you going to your first day of school on an empty stomach!”

  While Cheza quickly grabbed her muffin, I started towards the plate of bacon. I got about half way before Cheza, muffin protruding from her mouth, grabbed my arm and started pulling me towards the door. I stumbled backwards while fighting against the ninety-pound tractor beam that had me in her grasp. With my hand outstretched towards the plate of bacon, I prayed to the bacon gods that they would magically deliver the bacon into my hands. I stared unblinkingly as two strips magically floated off the plate and started slowly traveling towards me before plummeting to the kitchen floor. All of a sudden, a golden retriever came out of nowhere and scooped up the bacon in his mouth before bolting off while shouting something about not having thumbs. 2

  I blinked several times before realizing that it was just my imagination. Man… Fuck hallucinatory golden retrievers!

  Chapter 7: The Saga of the Pretzel Baroness

  The private school was about thirty minutes away so Sara gave us a ride. Thankfully neither Sara nor Tia wore maid uniforms so we didn’t attract unnecessary attention to ourselves like poor Alicia Snyder, Pretzel Baroness.

  Actually, I had no idea about the Pretzel Baroness thing because I’d never said a full sentence to the girl. That was just the only rich Snyder family I could think of and there is a Snyder factory in Goodyear. I also like the pretzels that her family purportedly makes.

  Actually, I had no idea what her name was, but the large braided loops in her hairstyle did remind me of pretzels and she did have maids in uniform.

  The school was modeled in an H-shape of sorts, and was easy to navigate. Grades seven through nine in the left wing, ten through twelve in the right with classes numbered sequentially from front to back, even numbers on the left and odd numbers on the right. The administrative offices, cafeteria, and gym w
ere in the center of the H and the football, baseball, and grass fields covered the back the school, moving from left to right respectively.

  I walked Cheza to her homeroom class, mainly so I knew where it was, and then I went off to find my own class. I’m not much of a people person so I didn’t really make any friends and just looked forward to my lunch period, which I shared with Cheza because her homeroom teacher’s name was in the same lunch bracket as mine. I wanted to make sure that she was doing alright.

  Four hours later, I went to the cafeteria and looked for Cheza. I heard “Rei, how do you like school so far?” come from my left. I looked over and saw, much to my relief, that she was surrounded by classmates and that (also to my relief) most of them were girls. Not really all that surprising—pretty people tend to be popular. She seemed to be doing just fine and was scrawling down what I assumed were the answers to questions.

  Despite the fact that I was famished, mainly because pretzel girl was sitting in front of me for three of my past four classes, I decided to skip lunch and headed for the grass field instead. Her name wasn’t actually Alicia Snyder, it’s… see what I mean? Not a people person. I’m terrible at remembering people’s names which is a shame because she was really nice and actually cute enough to the point that I would be interested if it weren’t for the fact that seeing her made me hungry and let’s be honest, no relationship can come of that. It will just lead to impotency or some strange fetish that makes me orgasm whenever I see an oven or hand rolled dough and god forbid I ever get cum in her hair. I’d end up driving to the nearest AMC Theater to get a Cinnabon pretzel…because her hair looks like a pretzel and Cinnabon icing looks like jism… Oh, no explanation was necessary? Then that’s my bad.

  The grass field was a deep green and quite soft, which sounds weird until you take into consideration that Phoenix is a desert and water can get expensive. There was a small hill off to the side so I went over to lie down, deciding that I would take a little nap. I enjoyed the smell of fresh cut grass as a nice cool breeze drifted over.

  ‘Tomorrow, I’m totally not wearing the jacket.’ I thought.

  The majority of the other students weren’t either because Phoenix in August is too damn hot to wear a blazer. My peaceful rest was interrupted by the sound of three guys smoking off to my left. I cracked my eyes open and peered over to what looked like two gentlemen and an ogre. He must’ve been a linebacker, or should’ve been considering that the guy was about 6’7”, 250 lbs of not-exactly-fat. I did my best to ignore them for five long minutes, until they started to walk back towards the school.

  “Finally,” I muttered to myself. I could go back to napping before the lunch period was over.

  Or at least that had been the plan.

  For about ten seconds.

  Until I heard ogre yell “WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM, YOU DUMB BITCH?”

  I looked over and I saw Cheza with a slice of pizza stuck to her blazer. I jumped to my feet and started quickly walking over. What was she even doing out here? Less than ten minutes ago, she was ‘chatting’ with her new friends so I slipped out, not wanting to disturb her, without… without getting any lunch. She must have seen me leave without getting any so she decided to bring some to me.

  “YOU SPILL PIZZA ON SOMEONE AND YOU DON’T EVEN SAY ANYTHING!?” Ogre yelled and then he pushed Cheza to the pavement.

  I started running towards them. By the time I saw the blood on palms I was close enough to shout “Hey! What the hell do you think you are doing!?” stopping about ten feet from them.

  “WHO THE HELL ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO BE, DIPSHIT?” Ogre snarled. At that point I was no longer sure if he is actually yelling or if his voice was naturally that loud.

  “I’m her brother, asshole!” I exclaimed. Ogre snarled in response and was about to say something when he smiled.

  Little warning bells went off in my head as the memory of Tia’s voice chimed in and said “When fighting multiple opponents, try not to let them get behind you.”

  Just then, one of the two ‘gentlemen’ put me in a full nelson, or a double shoulder lock, from behind. Ogre took a step towards me and punched me thrice in the stomach before giving a quick nod to his friend, who then dropped me and my face into Ogre’s uppercutting fist.

  When I hit the ground, my nose and lip were already bleeding and I was pretty sure my nose was broken, but at least my ribs didn’t feel too bad. Then the two gentlemen’s feet made contact with my ribs and I discovered the need to re-assess my injuries. They stopped kicking me and I found myself thinking, ‘This is a bit gruesome for a school fight, especially a school that has security cameras everywhere.’

  I looked at the overhanging roof and realized that the reason Ogre and his friends were back here in the first place is because there were no security cameras covering this area. I looked over at Cheza, who was on the ground by the wall, 25 feet away, looking at me with tears running down her face.

  I wanted to make these assholes hurt for making her cry. I rolled over onto my knees, and then I heard it.

  “Say goodnight, big brother,” Ogre said as his foot flew into my face.

  Oh… so I guess he was yelling before.

  ****

  Chapter 8: First Words

  My head is fuzzy. I hear voices to my right and for the love of god, would one of them please turn off whatever is making that constant beep. Off to my left I hear Cheza scream my name.

  “COLE!”

  ****

  Something about hearing the high pitched, almost melodic voice that reminded me of the sound that ice crystals make when shattering on a frozen pond, made me open my eyes. Was that Cheza?

  “OH, SO NOW YOU CAN TALK!?” Ogre was back to screaming again as he started walking toward Cheza.

  ‘Cheza. Cheza spoke, and her first word was my name! This must be how a father feels the first time their daughter says daddy!…or not,’ I thought as I realized that now was not the time to be worrying about this.

  I watched from the sidelines as I pulled myself to my feet, something besides my consciousness compelling my body to move.

  “OF COURSE YOU CAN CRY FOR YOUR BROTHER, BUT YOU CAN’T SPARE ONE LITTLE APOLOGY FOR ME!?”

  I charged at Ogre, who was too busy yelling with his back turned to notice my approach. When I was about five feet from him, I jumped and threw an elbow into the back of his head. While I hit the ground, Ogre easily covered the seven feet to the wall, but he managed to get his right hand out in front of him to try and stop himself. The sickening crack of his arm told me that he succeeded… sort of. Ogre was on his knees cradling his arm as I rolled back onto my feet and cleared the short distance between us. After a knee to the side of his head, I followed him to the ground. I kneeled down on his rib cage, restricting the movement and practically choking him while I repeatedly punched him in the face. At some point, Ogre lost consciousness.

  I heard a new voice saying “I wouldn’t do that, he might accidentally hit you. Besides, that guy is an asshole and it’s really fine by me if your brother kills him. Everything will turn out fine if he does because I’ve got videograffitical…that’s not right… Videophotographical? No… Geographical! Wait, that isn’t right either… Look, I took a video with my phone of that guy beating the shit of your brother so a self-defense plea would totally pass, especially since the two lackey’s are in the video kicking your brother and they’re the only ones that could stand as possible witnesses, but my video and a testimonial as a character witness would totally trump their testimonials.”

  When the new voice said the word videograffitical, I realized that I was consciously moving my body again. I stopped punching Ogre, took my knee off of his chest, and turned on my knees toward the new voice. The blonde guy that the voice belonged to was a little taller than me, but much thinner and without an ounce of muscle on him.

  I saw Cheza standing off to my left, closer to my position than she had been. I took stock of the fact that she had splatters of blood on her right c
heek and on her clothes. The new guy had been looking up at the sky until he finished his little word game and looked down at Cheza. By the time he finished his rant, I couldn’t decide whether he was a confused dumbass, an inarticulate genius, or something else entirely. Judging by Cheza’s expression, she was having trouble deciding as well.

  He finally realized I was looking at him, turned to me, and said, “Hey buddy! How ya doin’?” with his voice rising in pitch at the end of each sentence in a kind of singsong fashion.

  “I’m Jason,” he said while holding his right hand out for me to shake it, and then reconsidered when he looked at my bloodied hand.

  Well he was polite and offered his name so I pointed to myself and said “Cole,” then pointed at Cheza and said “Rei,” single syllable words being all that I could manage through my strained breathing.

  “Alright boys break it… Whoa! What in the hell happened here!? I got reports of a scuffle not a fight club!” said a person off to my left, whom I assumed was a security officer that came around the same corner that Cheza had a few minutes ago. I realized that I could no longer see Cheza and that my vision was blackening rapidly.

  “Why hello Officer! Interesting story. You see, this fine chap right here—” Jason started to say, suddenly talking with an Oxford accent. I chuckled slightly at Jason and then heard wind rush past my ears.

  “And he’s down,” Jason added, his accent back to its normal American level, but muffled. “He probably needs an ambulance,” Jason continued, sounding like he was in a different room as I heard Cheza scream, “COLE!”

  “So does the other guy, but he’s probably a lost cause… don’t worry though! I’ve got videographic evidence that Cole acted in self-defense in case Cole killed him… videographical? Videograffitic? Video—” Jason continued, sounding like an adult from Charlie Brown by the end.

  I heard Cheza’s voice clearly as she screamed, “COLE!”