Murder Hornet: Chapter Six
Photo byTatiana Tochilova on Unsplash
💡 This story is part of my ongoing series,Murder Hornet, a novel-in-progress unfolding one imperfect chapter at a time.
Chapter VI
“So, it was already close to the very end of the second half–”
“How many halves are there again?”
I gave her a look of disbelief. “Are you kidding me you don’t know how many halves there are in a game?”
She looked at me as if I were speaking Greek.
“On any sport for that matter?”
“Ha ha ha. I’m just messing with you. Chill out, Allen.” Ally said to me while she organized her backpack outside her house.
“Anywho, like I was saying before being rudely interrupted by your sarcastic question, it was towards the end of the second half and the score was tied two-two and in comes Thomas–”
“ Your Thomas?” She didn’t bother looking up as she continued rummaging through her things, but I could tell she was smiling.”
“He’s not my Thomas!”
“Okay Mr. Cranky pants, you may continue.”
“So, Thomas gets on the field wearing number 14–”
“Wait! Is it important for me to remember that he was wearing number 14?”
“Ally, could you please stop interrupting and let me finish the story?”
Ally cleared her throat. “I’m all ears,” she waved me on with one hand as she held the other one to her chest as in an apology.
“The game was tied, and the referee had just added five extra minutes because of a water break–it was so hot–when Thomas picked up the ball from the midfield, got past not one, not two, but three players from the other team. Then he faked to the left, went to the right, and kicked the ball into the net, and the rest as the saying goes, is history.”
“What do you mean, ‘is history’? What’s so amazing about the team winning a lousy game?”
“Ally, do you have any idea how passionate this town is about just any sport?”
“Don’t care.” She shrugged and zipped up her backpack.
“Thomas scored the winning goal. That was it. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. He came off the bench, a complete unknown, and he scored the winning goal for the team.”
“And I should care about this because…” She asked, sounding the last word a tad too long, knowing that it would annoy me.
“For no reason,” I said, exasperated. “I’m just sharing with you what happened at the game last night.”
“Well, some of us have homework, you know? Not everybody can just come and go out of their houses anytime they want. It’s called responsibility.”
“Whatever.”
“So, what does that mean anyway? Where does this all-of-a-sudden interest in soccer come from? Who are you?” She frowned, squinting her eyes with mocked concern.
I blushed three shades darker in the range of tomato red. “I’ve always liked soccer,” I said. “Besides, I was bored last night.”
“You. You were bored?”
“Yes, I was bored, that’s what I said, isn’t it?”
“That is what you said, for sure, but… I just don’t buy it.” She said, tongue-in-cheek.
“Why not? Am I allowed to get bored and watch a game once in a while?”
“Not you. You don’t have any curfews, can go anywhere you want, any time you want,” she counted down with her fingers, “and you don’t care about soccer.”
I threw my hands in the air. “All right, sorry I brought this whole thing up. Obviously, you don’t want to know about my Friday night.”
“Well, to be fair, you already told me everything, so it’s not like I cannot know what you just told me.” She stuck her tongue out.
“Smart ass.”
“Come on, Allen.” Let’s go hang out somewhere else; this place is depressing.”
“You mean your home?”
“What else would I mean, Dumbo? Let’s go to–”
“Gee, let me take a wild guess: Barnes & Noble?” I asked, rolling my eyes.
“Of course, I want to check out if there’s anything new in the horror section.”
“For someone who sleeps with the night light on, you sure read a lot of horror stories.”
She grabbed her keys from the dresser, swung her backpack on to her shoulder and we made our way down the stairs and out through the front door out to the driveway. I hopped on the Vespa, and we started down Martin Luther King.
“That’s not all I read, by the way,” she blurted out after a couple of minutes of silence.
“Whatever happened to the rule of not talking while driving?”
She just harrumphed into her helmet, and we drove for the next five minutes in complete silence, making me smile. It wasn’t always easy to get the last word in with Ally, so I enjoyed the moment in a non-perverse way.
Barnes & Noble wasn’t crowded, and Ally found a book by M. R. James that she hadn’t read yet.
“You do know that you could’ve gotten this book for free at the library, right?”
She looked at me as if I had just told her the dumbest thing ever.
I continued, unfazed. “The library, you know? The place with loads of books where you can get them for free?”
She shook her head. “After all this time… when are you going to understand there are some books that I just have to hold in my hands? This is why I never got a Kindle or any of those digital devices that people carry around with them. There’s more to books than just words and illustrations. There are smells. There’s the weight of a book in your hands, the texture of the pages, the many little things that you encounter stuck between the pages, each an invitation to wonder.”
“That’s gross. You like to touch pages where people put boogers on, and you find their dead skins and hair and stuff?”
“Except for the part about boogers or dead skin, I like to think that someone before me has touched the same pages that I do, and sometimes I like to think that perhaps out there someone felt the same way I do when I read certain passages in a book.”
“That’s not for me,” I claimed. “Give me a Kindle, give me an iPad, and you’ll never hear me complain about anything ever again.”
“You never complain about a thing ever again? Pshah. That day will never come.”
“What are you doing tonight?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
“Well, it is Saturday afternoon, and you know what I like to do on Saturday afternoons.”
“Do you really have to do this?” I try to hide the annoyance from my voice and fail miserably.
“I absolutely do,” she said with a sparkle in her eyes. “Someone must feed and take care of the shelter animals. It’s a cruelty that nobody seems to care about them.”
“And do I have to go too?”
“If you don’t, how will I ever know what happened to Thomas?” she said teasingly.
Disclaimer: Murder Hornet is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or real events is purely coincidental. All content presented here is the intellectual property of the author, Og Maciel, and may not be reproduced, distributed, or shared in any form or by any means without the author’s prior written consent.