Coastal City: The Dream Fish Part VII

It’s ze series of boredom! Am I losing my touch? Agh. This one is very short, it’s just around 600 words. And not much stuff happened here. Disappointing… I know. *dies* BTW my editor isn’t done proofreading this. Wow, I have an editor?! I just have a hyper urge to post something… right now. To be edited next time!

Twenty minutes ago.

Even when Coastal City was still rural, walking alone in its dimly-lit streets was unsafe, especially during the winter when people preferred to stay at home. The less the tourists are, the less the witnesses to crime.

But Calais was a local. She knew almost everyone. She firmly repeated to herself that no one would harm her; that she was absolutely invincible in their neighbourhood.

She was wrong.

She reached home, all the lights were out. She felt the insides of her pockets for the keys, but there was nothing in her pockets. Perhaps she left them at Halvar’s hospital room? She couldn’t recall.

She checked the windows to see if she could break into their own house. They were all locked. She could wait outside of their house until her mother came… but all of the sudden, it started to rain heavily.

“Crap!” she lamented.

She ran out to the side of the street with hands tucked in her concave armpits. Not long after, she was waving frantically at a taxi.

Thirteen minutes ago.

She was where she wanted to go. But before she could even check her pockets, it came to her again—there was nothing in them.

“Could you wait, sir? I gotta get some money.” she told the taxi driver hurriedly and the driver nodded kindly.

She ran into Nathan’s house, not even knocking. She approached the door to his room, the only room that seemed to have lights on. She was oblivious to the intensified illumination of the floor in front of the open door. There was only one shadow of a person.

“Hey Nathan, do you have an extra—”

…

Halvar’s phone rang. It was Calais.

“Halvar, you will not believe what I just saw.”

“What did you see?”

Lucie looked down on her bowl. The smell of the noodles was floating in the steam and the vegetables looked like shells in the fine yellow sand of the coast. The chopsticks were metal—she didn’t know how to use them. The bowl was painted black and orange, it seemed to be made out of clay.

Halvar was still talking on the phone. Lucie thought, sometimes he’s just annoying. He seemed to be insensible all time. She imagined him pulling his hair or snatching his phone and throwing it into his bowl but that was it, imagining.

Lucie was his best friend. Of course she was. Nathan, despite being three years Halvar’s junior, thought more maturely than him most of the time. Calais was, well, Calais never was, of course. Calais would never understand him as Lucie would. Lucie was patient. Fragile, but patient. Lucie was timeless, she was infinitely there. Why, when Halvar gets wounded or acts differently, would Nathan or Calais understand? No, Lucie would. Halvar would talk to Lucie. Not them.

“Okay… Yea, yea, I know… Look, I gotta go. Congratulate the scumbag for me, okay? Uh… Same to you.”

Call ended.

“Same to you?”

“What?”

“That’s lame, Halvar.”

“Well, that’s me. Mister Lame.” He then sipped his hot tea.

“Lousy, very lousy. You know, something tells me you’re not even ready for that kind of stuff yet.”

He almost chocked on his tea. He coughed a couple of times and gathered his words. “Have you been talking to Calais?”

“No. Why would I talk to your girlfriend?”

“Oooh… Jealous.”

This time Lucie finally raised her voice on him. “What! You know what? You’re really insensitive sometimes!  I hate you so much!”

Lucie crossed her arms and looked down. Halvar just stared at her.

“I’m sorry.”

She said nothing.

“I think I might not be ready for it, too. Everything happened too fast. I don’t know what happened to me.”

She looked up at him.

Halvar hold up his pinky and said “Uhm, best friends forever again?”

“You’re so gay.” And she wrapped her pinky around his.