Of Noble Chains (The Ventori Fables) (35 page)

It took less than thirty seconds to reach the front, and I had assumed that Anna and I would ride together and Elijah would ride with someone else.  I assumed wrong.

Sitting on the plastic chair I crossed my arms with a huff.  Some best friend she was, leaving me to sit with a commoner.  Waiting in line was a group of them, each one whispering with small glances at me.  Perfect, now I was becoming a spectacle because nobody wanted to sit with me.  Once I started classes I would never leave the safety of the gates, I was certain.

“Pick someone already,” the gruff ride operated ordered and the group shoved one forward.  A tall boy slid his feet on the ground before reluctantly approaching me.  He took a seat next to me, grimacing the whole time; I tried not to care, since I was doing the same.

“Let’s get this over with,” he grumbled, “you aren’t exactly who I wanted to be at the top with.”  I laughed as the ride operator secured the bar in front of us.

“Hey, I don’t want to be here with you either.”  The car behind us erupted with “oohs”.

“Yo Des!” Elijah cheered.  “Better be careful, he looks frisky.”  The boy groaned and covered his eyes, leaning on the side.  I did the same.

While we made our rotation I noticed that my unwanted companion was watching in front of us, gripping the silver bar with his left hand too tightly.  I followed his line of vision to see a couple that he had been with in line, inching closer and closer together. 

“You wanted to be with her, then?” I asked, hoping a bit of conversation would make the ride go faster.  Though I did tend to look down on anyone that I didn’t grow up with, I wasn’t opposed to conversing with them about more normal things.  Talking with them allowed me to get a better perspective of their lives, basically teaching me how to blend in easier.  It was a valuable learning experience for when I graduated.

“What do you care
?” he demanded.  “You’re an EA-er.”

“Guess not,” I mumbled to myself, diminishing any hope of making the ride go by faster.  Turning to see what Anna and Eli were doing I found they were talking and much to my disappointment, looking like the perfect couple.

Eli was tall, with that rugged, quarterback look I always saw in movies.  Anna had the matching head cheerleader thing going on, though both of them had never actually done those sports before.  Nobody within the gates did, it was looked down on by our parents; besides, there weren’t enough of us for any kind of team.

“You wanna be with him?”
The boy next to me smirked, as if we were even.  There was something else in his tone though, that said differently.  As if he wanted me to say “no”.

“Not even.
” I laughed again.  It was the truth, as nice as Eli was, he wasn’t my kind of person.

“Her then?”
His eyebrows raised.  I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms with a shake of the head.  He was nowhere near the mark.

“Wrong again,” I sighed, “I just didn’t want to be with a co--other person.”  Nice save.  The sun beat down on my scalp and made me wish I had brought a hat as we rounded the top of the wheel.  I was beginning to sweat under the heat but my companion seemed fine, almost enjoying the rays like a cat would during a nap.  I was a little jealous, since I had never taken the heat well.

Sitting at the top allowed a small breeze to help cool me down.  And seeing the entire festival wasn’t so bad either.  The tops of the booths weren’t decorated much, but sitting so far above them I saw they were certainly colourful.  All along the main road people ran around, like ants under a magnifying glass; except they weren’t burning alive or anything.  I was the only one doing that, it seemed.

I tried to spot anyone I knew down below, preparing to find a friend for when Anna ditched me.  There was nobody in the crowd though and I accepted my loner fate.  It had happened just about every other year, so why should this one be different?

“Well sorry for bringing your rep down, sweetheart,” he scoffed, “didn’t mean to taint your aura or anything.”

Oh yes, the glorious stereotype of EA.  Anyone not in the school thought that we were these snot-nosed, privileged vampires that dealt with the occult and
magicks.  Well, it was a little close, but we weren’t vampires.  And we didn’t deal with the occult, our specialty lay in rune stones and technically we were descendants of druids.

“Taint my aura?” I mocked.  “You can’t actually think that’s what we do.  I’ll have you know I’m not even a student yet!  And we aren’t at all like you people think we are.”

“Listen to yourself.”  He turned his body towards me and I had to force myself not to notice how muscular he was.  He was probably a sports player.  “‘You people’.  What’s your name, huh?”

“What do you care?”

“Just tell me your name.”

“Don’t do it Des!” Anna called over, craning her neck to see us.  She was not covering her giggling well at all.  “It’s a trap!”

“Shut up!” I called back to her, shaking the chair as I forced by body around too quickly to point at her.  “This is your fault.”  I turned back towards the boy. “My name is Desdemona, if you really want to know.”

“Of course it is,” he covered his eyes as he laughed more, “all you people have weird names.”

“No we don’t!” I ripped my body towards him.  “My name is perfectly normal, it’s from Shakespeare, look it up you uneducated plebeian!”

The boys crush and her companion turned to look down at us while Anna and Eli went quiet in front.  I hadn’t realized I had just yelled my insult at him.  He stared at me, mouth moving up and down, trying to find the words.

“I’m not some plebeian,” he declared rather calmly, “my name is Rayne and just because I’m not some freak who lives in a cage that doesn’t mean I’m uneducated.”

“I don’t live in a cage,” I gasped, “it’s a gated community and you…Rayne is not a normal name!”  Oh yeah, had him there. 

“Uh…Des,” Anna said, approaching our car with Eli, “you can get off now.”

I looked over at her, face red with anger as my heart tried to run a marathon.  The stocky ride operator had lifted our bar and we were free to leave; he didn’t even seem to care that we had started a yelling match.  Okay
, I
had started yelling.  I shot off the seat and walked away, not waiting for her or Eli.

“Thank God,” Rayne mumbled, walking away to wait for his friends; getting a look at them now as I walked by they seemed older.  Either way, my day had officially been ruined by a commoner.

Two hours later I was still fuming over what I was referring to as the Ferris wheel incident.  Anna had sent Eli away and we had gotten cotton candy to help ease my mood.  The sugar helped, but just barely.

“I can’t believe him,” I said, shoving a pink piece of fluff into my mouth.  “
’Sorry, didn’t mean to taint your aura
’.” I mimicked, making my voice deeper.

“Well you did call him a plebeian,” Anna said, picking at her own candy.  “Let’s just forget about it, okay?  Look on the bright side; it’s the Solar Festival and we’re finally going to Eclipse Academy this fall.”  She shoved my shoulder, making me smile.

“Okay,” I agreed.

She was right, I should be happy right now.  Soon enough, I would get to find out what section I was in, which was a huge rite of passage in our families.  Soon, I would get to run home and tell my parents where I had been placed, and get to tell my little sister about how great EA was in person.

In just a couple of weeks the moment we had been preparing for our whole lives was about to happen, the very reason we had been home schooled since birth and the reason we lived within the confine of the gates.

“So do you wanna go shopping some more?” Anna pulled her hair back from the heat, it swished back and forth a few times once let go.  I stuck another piece of cotton candy into my mouth.

“Sure.”  I still needed to find my wind chimes, after all.

Wandering around the festival had proved to help my mood.  I had finally found the perfect set of yellow finch wind chimes to hang out my window, with silver tubes hanging down creating a beautiful noise.  I really liked these birds, since you couldn’t find them anywhere near Eclipse.  Hopefully the other birds that lived in the area wouldn’t run into them though, somehow mistaking the tubes as a feeder of some kind.

Lost in the glow and sound of the chimes I mindlessly followed Anna towards another booth and bumped into someone on the way.

“Sorry,” I said, checking to make sure my chimes were alright.  They were fine, but now a little tangled from the collision.

“I didn’t think you could say that to a plebeian.” I looked up to find Rayne standing there, a grin on his face as if he had just won the battle against me.  I made a disgusted sound, thinking about how this was just my luck.  Although, I didn’t see any of his friends with him this time, but did that make it better?

“Whatever,
commoner
,” I mocked and started walking away again.

“See you later,
sweetheart
.”  I ignored the nickname he had given me, considering it could be worse.  Well, maybe it couldn’t.