A Quarrel Called: Stewards Of The Plane Book 1 (2 page)

02. SAM

The Blossom was the same as always: red vinyl booths with
Formica table tops, random neon signs lit up the walls, and a CD jukebox in the
corner. I wasn’t crazy about its retro-diner style, but I had to admit, the
food was good and the portions were big – which helped me stretch my grocery
clerk paycheck a little further since I was still saving to buy a car.

Melody and Tara walked in just as my stomach gave an
embarrassingly loud growl. “You guys took long enough,” I said as the girls
slid into the booth opposite me.

“Tara was communing with a crystal. I had to tow her out of
there by her Rapunzel hair,” said Melody, flashing her white teeth at me. “Cool
Ramones
shirt. Where’d you get it?”

She knew very well where I’d gotten my shirt. “Oh, some
chick gave it to me for my eighteenth birthday.” I took a moment to study her
face – freckles, dark blue eyes, more fierce than Tara’s lighter shade, brown
hair that wasn’t brown in the sun, and a slightly upturned nose that wrinkled
when she laughed. My gut lurched. The Friend Zone sucks.

“You want to see the crystal? Here!” Tara dragged my
attention away by thrusting her newest purchase at me from across the table.

I’m usually a good sport, even though I think Tara tries a
little too hard to get my attention. I don’t want to encourage her, but she’s
Melody’s friend. And ever since I told Melody about my dreams, Tara has found
me even more interesting, like I’m somehow her secret new-age lab partner. I
took the bundle and folded back the tissue paper. It was quartz, I could
clearly see that – geology being my favorite subject – and double-terminated,
which is a little bit rare. But other than that, it looked fairly average to
me. Clear, but not too clear, colorless, shiny. Yep, it was quartz. “Nice,” I
said, as I handed it back.

“No, no, take it out of the wrapping and hold it for a
second. It has a nice little buzz.”

Melody rolled her eyes, and I pretended not to notice as I
gingerly took the crystal from the paper and held it in my hand. It was
decently heavy, being about six inches long, and about an inch and a half in
diameter. I could bludgeon someone with it in an unfair fight, so at least in
that way it was useful. I smirked.

“There! I saw that, you do feel something!”

I looked up at Tara and shook my head. “Sorry doll, but I
was just thinking about how this is heavy enough to smash someone’s brains
in…it might be worth having on you during the zombie apocalypse, though. If you
can’t use it as a weapon, you could build a radio with it.”

“You guys ready to order?”
The waiter
looked down on us from an impossibly tall height.

“Geeze, guy.
How tall are you?” I
asked. But the guy wasn’t paying attention to me. He was busy looking from Tara
to Melody and back to Tara again.

 
Tara giggled. “Um,
I’ll have the hummus. But will you bring me an extra pita? Two isn’t quite
enough.”

“Sure thing,” he said and looked to Melody, who was peering
up at him with an odd expression on her face.

“I’ll have the Thai-fried rice with pork,” she paused. “Do I
know you?” Her eyes darted to his nametag, which was remarkably anonymous with
only the letter ‘G’ on it.

The waiter scribbled down her order.
“Maybe?
I used to live here a long time ago, when I was little.” He turned to me.

I was distracted watching Melody watching our waiter. “Uh,
yeah, bacon double cheeseburger with onion rings.”

“Harry?” Melody says, hesitantly at first.

The waiter’s head jerked to look at her suddenly. “Not
anymore.
Just ‘G.’ now.”
He paused to consider her
face more carefully.

“I do know you!” she exclaimed. “You’re Harry Watkins. You
were in my kindergarten class. We used to be friends.”

Realization dawned on the waiter’s face. “You’re the frog
girl!” he said, suddenly grinning.
“Melody?”

“Yeah!
How funny! I knew you were
familiar.”

There was an awkward pause at the table as Melody and the
waiter smiled and nodded, no one else knowing what to say. I broke the silence,
because I just couldn’t take it anymore. My stomach growled again. “Maybe you
guys could catch up later, after he puts in the order for my cheeseburger and
onion rings?” I sounded like an ass, but I was really hungry and still a little
irked the girls took so long.

Melody grinned, the waiter looked apologetic, and Tara
giggled again. As “Just G.” walked away, Tara’s gaze tracked him. I decided
that I was going to encourage her interest; at least it would give me a break
from all the crystal sensing crap.

I just about inhaled my food while Melody gobbled down her
fried rice and Tara made little swirls in her hummus as she peered idly over
her shoulder at The Blossom’s new waiter.

“You used to know him?” she asked, as transparent as the
quartz she had shown me earlier.

Melody took a long pull at the straw in her water glass
before answering. I loved watching her do that – naturally pink lips pursing,
oh how I could
ki
—

“Yeah.
We sat next to each other in
kindergarten, you know, since we both have ‘W’ last names. I had this crazy
thing about frogs, and a crazy frog hat to match. I guess Harry, I mean G.,
remembers.”

“Well, you’re still crazy,” I said. “Only it’s over useless
crap like AP World History. I mean seriously, Melody.” I paused for effect.
“Whoever needs history for daily life?”

“You mean like the average person needs geology so much
more?”

“
Ssh
,” said Tara. “You know it’s
the only class he can pass.”

I laughed, but secretly that last comment hurt. It wasn’t
that I was stupid or couldn’t pass the other classes. It was that I just didn’t
care. Geology was cool. Rocks don’t change, they don’t lie, and they certainly
don’t talk back. Everyone knows that History is written by the victors and
English is for pussies. The waiter came back just then, which is probably a
good thing, because I had a zinger lined up for Tara, too.

“So where have you been?” Melody asked.

She looked up at G. with curiosity, and I had to admit, that
bothered me a little bit. I wasn’t very good at hiding my feelings, and right
now my feelings felt a lot like jealousy.

“And why do we call you G. instead of Harry?” I interjected.

G. gave a small smile and ducked his extremely tall head for
a second. “Well, I got tired of being compared to either a boy wizard or an
ex-president.
My middle name kind of sucks all by itself, so
I went with G. for short.
My mom hates it, but my dad’s cool with it.”

“I like it,” said Tara. “It’s sort of mysterious. What is it
short for?”

Old
Guard?
I thought. He didn’t look it; tall and brown, tight black
haircut, sure, but he was too soft to be street cool.

“I could tell you,” he said, with a waggle of his eyebrows,
“But then I’d have to kill you.”

Tara giggled. Melody giggled. I tried not to gag.

03. G.

 
“Is that you, G.?”
called my dad from the back room. He was buried under some boxes, trying to
find his office supplies.

I watched him from the doorway, feeling good about my
decision to move in with him. My mom’s new husband was kind of an asshole, and
I felt like I was always in the way there. Mom had never wanted me to come live
with Dad, but when it was obvious that Stanley and I were just never going to
get along, she finally relented. Dad was enthusiastic of course, and strangely,
so was I. “It’s me. I’m just going to take a shower – I’ll be back down in a
few, okay?”

 
“Ah
ha!”
Dad held up a book and came up for some air. “That military history
book you asked me about. I found it. I knew it was in here somewhere.” He gazed
around, bemused by the mess he had made.

I perked up. “Cool. I’ll look at it after dinner. I know I’m
going to have to turn in a
Senior
project this year,
and if I can do something on the Nimitz, that would rock.”

Dad grinned and tossed me the book. “I’ll go make some
hotdogs. They’ll be ready in thirty.”

I threw the book on my bed and turned on the shower. Hot
steam filled up the bathroom but not before I got a chance to see myself in the
mirror – getting free lunch at the diner wasn’t doing me any favors. I was
going to have to do something about that over the summer. As a senior in ROTC,
I had to lead by example, and there was no way I was going to let some freshman
punk at a new school run circles around me in PT. Or any punk, for that matter:
Dion douchebag Dixon.
Won’t miss him at all.
It didn’t
make sense for a guy as big as me to have a bully problem… probably the only
thing that Stanley and I had ever agreed on.

I was looking forward to a fresh start. Melody gave me her
number before she left the cafe, maybe I should call and ask her about her
friend with
the hair
.

Hot dogs were probably the last thing I wanted to eat after
working at The Blossom all day, but I didn’t tell Dad that. He would be
crushed, and besides, they were a monthly tradition.
Dogs on
the grill, chips and guacamole on the side, and
sssh
,
a beer.
I’ll never tell Mom about Dad giving me the occasional
beer—she’d go ballistic. But his theory was if alcohol wasn’t ‘mysterious’,
maybe I wouldn’t be so tempted by it when I was out at parties. If I ever got
invited to any, that is. Maybe that would change this year, hmmm.

“Want to watch a movie after dinner?” I asked him as I
picked up the dirty plates.

“I have to finish this week’s column, but I could probably
squeeze in a movie. What did you have in mind?”

I had perused his Blu-ray library earlier and was amused
that there were hardly any ‘new’ movies in the whole collection. Luckily, we
both liked military flicks and samurai movies, so the choices were easy. “How
about
The
Great Escape
?”

“Too long for tonight.
Let’s watch
that over the weekend. How about
The
Guns of
Navarone
?”

“Sounds good.
I’ll do the dishes if
it will give you a little more time to get your article done.”

“Nonsense.
We’re a team in this
house, and the dishes always go faster with two. Besides, if I don’t help you
put things away, I’ll never find them again.”

I grinned. He wasn’t exaggerating – his house was a
veritable series of piles. He knew what was in each and every one of them, too.
“Deal.”

04. SAM

Her eyes were still
closed as I pulled away from the kiss; I admired the dark lashes against the
scattered freckles on her cheeks. My heart pounded, I had
been
wanting
to kiss her since the sixth grade. I couldn't believe I had
finally done it. I put my left arm over the back of the couch and reached up to
stroke her cheek with my right hand. She looked so serene, a slight smile on
her face, that I was startled when my hand came away sticky and black, like
spider webs oozing with tar.

“What
the?”
I looked from my filthy
hand to her face, still serene.
“Melody!”
I reached
out to shake her shoulder, ignoring the way my skin crawled when I touched her.
“Melody!”
Her eyes didn't open, and the room and the
light began to collapse around us. Her body went limp, slumping forward, her
head falling on my chest and the darkness tightened around us, swallowing us,
choking us. There was a presence in the darkness, slithering up from behind
her. I could smell its acrid stench.

“Orla,” it whispered.

I jerked awake, my breath choked off, a ball of spit hanging
in the back of my throat. I sat up, gasping and coughing, my chest
spasming
-- whether from panic or just the struggle to
breathe was unclear. My senses about me again, I felt around on the nightstand
for my phone and thumbed it awake. The silvery light from its face plate lit
the room, and I looked around, furtively, because I could still feel the
entity's presence, fading though it was. Another moment or two, and it
was
gone. I shivered. I fished around on the floor for
yesterday’s t-shirt and took a look at my phone again -- it said 3:01am. Too
early for a call, so I sent a text.

Another dream about
you, call me
asap
.
Freaked the hell
out.

The light faded from the phone and then turned dark
altogether. I could see out the window now, the summer night struggling to
become dawn. No cars on the street, no one walking about, houses dark except
for the occasional outside light. An adventurous cat strolled along the
sidewalk, stopping to sniff the Thompson's car tire in the driveway. It made me
smile just a little when the cat turned his tail and sprayed the rear quarter
panel as if he were putting a fire out. Nobody liked Mr. Thompson apparently,
not even the cat.

“I got your text,” Melody said as we met on the sidewalk
outside her house when morning came a few hours later. We started walking
briskly in the direction of Smitty's. Ever since she had discovered
French-pressed coffee, she refused to drink what she referred to as “engine degreaser”
at home. Smitty's had French-pressed coffee by the gallon and thereby had
become a nearly mandatory stop on our way to school. Since it was summer, we
only made the trek once or twice a week when Melody walked with me to work.

“Effing creepy,” I said.

Cramming the last of her peanut-butter toast into her mouth,
she said “
Whawa
it
aboush
?”

I reached up to flick the crumbs from the corner of her
mouth, but dropped my hand as soon as I remembered the dream. Not that
different from last night, same hand, same Melody… I shivered. “It was you and
me on the couch at my house and we were, uh, I mean, you were…sleeping.” I
paused, feeling that lurch in my gut again. “Anyways, I tried to wake you, but
when I touched you, there was this black, stringy substance and the darkness
closed in around us. And then there was the thing, the entity. And it whispered
something.”

“Whispered what?” She brushed her mouth with her hands,
capturing the crumbs I had been tempted to brush away before.

“I don't know. It’s not something I’ve ever heard of before.
I think it said ‘Orla.’”

“Weird.”

No shit. I nodded.

“Did you look it up on the Internet?”

“What?”

“That word…what was it?
Orla?”

“No, I don’t have time to look up every weird thing I dream.
I just wanted to tell you, that’s all.”

We suspended the conversation while in line at the coffee
shop, as I had a strict “no weird stuff in public places” policy. But once we
were out on the sidewalk again, drinks in hand, Melody changed subjects, much
to my surprise.

“So I was thinking about having a thing.
Not
a party, because that would imply that I want to impress people, but maybe a
get-together.”

“You mean with people besides you and me and Tara?” I
laughed, because trying to get Melody out to parties had proven impossible thus
far -- she kept saying that she wasn't a “people person.”

“Yeah, I mean, sort of. G. is back in town, and I kind of
feel like I owe it to him a little to introduce him around since we used to be
buds and all. And it would be easier when he starts school if he knows a few
people already.”

Shit. Just G. looked like he might be competition. “So who
were you thinking of inviting? I could ask Colton and Tyler from work. They'd
probably come. Though to be honest, if you're not going to have alcohol, then
you at least need to have girls there, or they won't stay.”

“I was thinking Tara for sure, since she seemed to really
like G. the other day.” She gave me a sidelong glance.
“And
maybe Shelby and Brittney?
I haven't seen them since school let out.”

I nodded, warming to the idea -- Tara did seem to smile an
awful lot whenever Just G. had come to our table. “Cool. I'll bring the game
deck and some games.
Any preferences?”

“I don't know, you know I only play MMORPGs...you pick.”

I grinned at her. “Then you know I'll bring a bunch of First
Person Shooters and all the guys will be gaming and the girls sitting off to
the side.”

She grinned back. “Not if you only bring two controllers.”

And suddenly, we had arrived. I checked my watch. I wasn't
late, but I was pushing it. I looked up to see Melody throw a hand out to
steady herself on the column near the door, her eyes closed as if she felt
faint. “You okay?”

She shook her head as if to brush cobwebs from her hair.
“That was really, really… weird. Like intense.”

“What was?”

She opened her eyes and gave me a peculiar glance. “It was
kind of like déjà vu only stronger. Like a lot stronger. My knees even went
kind of weak.”

“Maybe you should go to the doctor?”

“Maybe,” she said doubtfully, shrugging.

I shrugged back. “I have to go in or I’ll be late. See you
later? If you want me to get a party tray or something from the deli, I can
probably get Deola to give me a discount.”

“That'd be cool!” She smiled, composure regained. “All
grown-up and stuff instead of just pizza. I like it.”

We stood there awkwardly for a moment before she waved and
turned on her heel, and just like that I was standing outside the store by
myself, grinning like an idiot. She wanted to invite Just G.
for Tara
.