The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves (8 page)

Elena’s smile was broad
and her laughter was heartfelt. Her brother might be a pain in the
butt sometimes, but every once and a while, he let her know he
really did listen to her. He made her feel important in those
times. She knew, deep down, she was important to him also. He just
hid it very well.

Typical!

“
Well,” began Elena, “at
school today, we had a new girl show up for our class.”

“
What’s wrong with that?
Did she have buck-teeth or something?” Anthony joked.

Elena couldn’t help but
laugh aloud. “
No!
She didn’t have buck-teeth,” she replied, trying to stifle
her laughter behind the back of her hand. She wanted to be
irritated and mad. She didn’t want to laugh, but she failed,
miserably. Anthony could always make her laugh, especially when she
didn’t want to.

“
Okay, she had one
eye?”

“
No.”

“
She smelled like a
camel?”

“
No, it wasn’t anything
like that. Now stop it!” blurted Elena slightly out of breath, her
small chest heaving from her inability to stop giggling.

“
Well, what’s got your
panties in a bunch?”

“
My
WHAT
?”
exclaimed the little girl, her eyes almost popping out of her
skull.

“
Never mind, go ahead and
tell me,” answered Anthony, shaking his head in resignation for the
second time.

“
Well, we had this new
girl today in class, she came from Scandinavia –.”

“
Her arms must be tired
from all that swimming,” interrupted her brother, laughing himself,
quite proud of his joke.

“
Tony, stop it!” yelled
Elena, her hands balled at her sides. She stomped a foot on the
rug-covered floor.

He merely waved for her to
continue.

“
Anywaaaaay,” began the
girl. “She came from that faraway country and was dressed kinda
weird for school, you know. She wasn’t in uniform. She wore this
funky ribbon-thing around her waist.”

Anthony thought on this
for a bit. “That doesn’t sound all that bad to me. I mean, she come
from across the ocean, so she’s gonna have different ways of doing
things than we do, right?”

“
I guess,” thought the
girl aloud. “Her name is Nixy –.”

“
What kinda name is that?”
It was Anthony’s turn to exclaim.

“
I don’t know…
Scandinavian, maybe. Duh!” was Elena’s snide reply.

“
Whatever. It still sounds
pretty lame to me.”

“
Yeah, most of the kids in
our class were pretty surprised when the teacher told us her name,
but they stayed quiet.” Anthony just nodded as Elena continued.
“She talks different too. You know, she uses words that other kids
don’t use and stuff like that. Plus, she said she lived on top of
the hill.”

Anthony chuckled again at
that. “At the top of what hill?” he asked quickly, in-between
gurgles of laughter and bouts of furious typing upon his the
keyboard of his laptop.

“
On this hill, where we
live,” answered the girl.

“
You mean at the top of
Milbur Drive?”

“
I thought that’s what she
meant at first, but when Mikalah and I asked her what street, she
said that she just lived at the top. You know no street or
anything. That’s what I thought was really weird,” offered Elena,
shrugging, obviously confused by Nixy’s strange answers to
otherwise simple questions.

“
You know what makes that
statement even weirder?” said Anthony leaning forward, his eyes
locking on Elena’s own pair. He was no longer interested in making
her laugh.

“
What?” asked the girl
somewhat tentative to know.

“
There
aren’t
any
houses
at the top of this hill,” was the retort.

Elena didn’t even attempt
to hide her surprise. “I know, so what was she talking about? But,
if she does live up there, then what does she live in?” Elena’s
voice gradually began to squeak as if her vocal cords had
disappeared with each uttered word. She was losing
resonance.

Anthony only
shrugged.

“
Hey, you guys, getting
your homework done?”

“
DAD!” yelled
Elena.

Brother and sister alike
jumped up as if someone had screamed bloody murder. They stared
like idiots at the incredulous expression worn by the father, who
was now half-in and half-out of the room, his hand on the door
jam.

“
What the hell was that
about?” asked their father, a brief chortle escaping through the
side of his mouth. “Did I startle you or something?”

“
Hell yeah,” began
Anthony, “we were just talking and you came in all Rambo and scared
the crap out of us.” He picked up his laptop to put it in his
backpack. It had been lying on the floor beside his
feet.

“
Okay.
Well,
‘do your homework if you want to
live
,’” said their father, his face
twisted in a caricature of that famous actor, right index finger
pointed in their general direction.

“
Dad, that’s Arnold
Schwarzenegger not Rambo,” said Anthony tersely.

Elena laughed and returned
to her pile of exercises.

“
Oh,”
their dad muttered absently scratching his baldhead. Still in
thought, he turned as if to go, and then stopped abruptly. “And
hey, Tony, stay off that damn game until you’re
completely
done with your
homework
and chores
.”

Elena giggled, but kept
her focus on the sheets of paper in front of her.

“
You understand what I’m
talking about, right?” asked her father. “I want it completely done
– not half or almost or anything other than… done-done, you got
it?”

“
Okay, Dad. I got it.”
Anthony typed a few last words on his laptop. Then he logged off
the game and placed the portable computer to the side, pulling out
one of his folders from his backpack and began to organize
himself.

“
Good.” For the second
time, their father made as if to leave, but stopped once more.
“Where’s Mikalah?”

Anthony just shrugged, but
Elena offered, “She said she was going to feed the rabbit before
she started her homework, but that was a long time ago.”

“
Alright,
thanks.”

Elena watched the
retreating figure of her father for a bit, smiling at the big
t-shirt, sweats, and slippers he always wore when he was relaxing
at home. In the not too far distance, she heard him
yell.

“
Mikalah, where are you?
You’ve got other things to do, so stop messing around with that
damn rabbit!”

Silently, Elena hoped her
sister wasn’t lolly-gagging too much.

~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼
}>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

Outside

Thursday, November
18
^th
,
Minutes Before…

Upon arriving at the house
after school, Mikalah was suddenly struck by an errant thought.
Instantly, it made her worry. With all the hustle and bustle at the
end of the weekend and beginning of a new week, they’d forgotten to
feed their pet rabbit, Mr. Patas.

Oh man
, she thought uneasily,
I hope Mr.
Patas is okay! He eats like a pig, so he is probably starving by
now.

As quickly as she could,
she shed her sweater and threw it along with her backpack on the
couch in the living room, adjacent to the foyer. She stood up
straight, rubbing her palms on her navy “uniform” pants as her
brother came into the house behind her. He immediately turned
right, down the hallway, making his way to the office where they
usually did their homework. Elena and their father had brought up
the rear. Her Dad locked the door and engaging the dead bolt as he
passed the threshold of their home.

“
Alright, first order of business is to get your homework done
and
then
we’ll
have some after school snacks,” announced their father as he made
his way down the same hallway as Anthony. He was headed toward the
master suite the back of the house, though. Not the
office.

“
Okay, Dad,” answered
Elena as she dropped her sweater on the same couch as Mikalah. She
looked quizzically at her younger sister. “What’s wrong with you?”
she asked with raised eyebrows.

“
Nothing, you weirdie, I’m
just gonna feed Mr. Patas. I’ll be back with you and Tony in a
minute,” Mikalah replied somewhat testily. She was more than a bit
anxious at the idea their pet rabbit might’ve been starved to
death.

“
What’s the big rush? We
always feed him after homework and snacks,” reasoned Elena. “And
besides, he eats like a cow. We spoil him too much. He could
probably have no food for like a week and still be the same old,
fat Mr. Patas.”

How would you like not
being fed for a week, you jerk?!?
Mikalah
thought, but didn’t voice her opinion.
“Well, I don’t want him to be too hungry, and besides, he
might be out of water,” Mikalah retorted, undeterred from her
initial intentions.
She’s only acting this
way, because she doesn’t have anyone around to impress, the
freakin’ brown-noser!

“
Whatever, dude, just
don’t take too long, because if Dad comes out of his room and you
haven’t started your homework, he’s gonna get mad,” warned Elena
with a snooty shake of her head. She grabbed her backpack and made
to go to the office, after their brother.

Mikalah tilted her head
slightly to the right, shrugging at the same time. “It won’t take
long,” she uttered at Elena’s retreating back.
Little-Miss-Know-it-all!
thought
Mikalah.

She made her way to the
kitchen, down the same hallway, only in the opposite direction as
the rest of her family. There, she went directly to the cabinet to
the left of those underneath the sink. It was where they kept Mr.
Patas’s gourmet-blended pellets, alongside the food for their fish
and their two guinea pigs. As quickly as her small fingers could
negotiate the ponderous bag of feed, she dipped a plastic,
eight-ounce coffee mug into it and pulled forth a full scoop for
the rabbit. Standing, she pivoted to her right and made her way
through the dining room, then through the play room, and finally
through the sliding doors, leading to the back yard. She walked
across the covered patio straight toward the cinder block wall,
marking the end of her family’s property. She strode up to the
habitat of Mr. Patas, nestled against the wall itself. His cage -
built by their father - was actuality a combination of a number of
cages wired and nailed together until they forged a veritable
rabbit complex. Wherein, Mr. Patas could hide or climb or run or
jump. It was constructed to give him as much freedom of movement as
possible.

Presently, Mr. Patas was
in front of the main gate of his personal world of leisurely fun.
He had heard Mikalah come through the sliding doors, bringing what
she imagined he knew as “the magic, golden chalice of sustenance”.
Already, she envisioned he could smell the delicious morsels within
the scared vessel she carried.

Mikalah approached the
cage with a broad smile upon her face as she watched Mr. Patas
caper before the door of his cage, hopping and jumping, back and
forth. He seemed out of his mind with anticipation.
Boy was he EVER hungry!

“
What are you doing,
pretty boy?” asked the girl as she began to fiddle with the latch
locking the cage.

Mr. Patas did a quick turn
of excitement as if to answer:
“I gotta a
have a feast!”

“
You’re being so feisty
today,” observed Mikalah as she managed to get the door open and
began filling the trough, serving as Mr. Patas feeding dish. Mr.
Patas was already nose-deep in the dish, even as she poured. His
quivering, button-like olfactory gland was already covered in the
cascading crumbs and pellet chips. Yet, he didn’t seem to care as
he happily chomped away at his meal.