Sinner's Halo: Weaver of Snares - Chapter 6

Chapter 6: The Brink

Oh shadow love was quick and clean, life's a well-thumbed machine

I saw you watching from the stairs, you're everyone that ever cared

Oh lordy, oh lordy, you know I need some loving

Move me, touch me

John I'm Only Dancing - David Bowie

   The rest of the week went by in a monotonous normality. The classes were hectic,
 the bells obnoxious, and the food inedible. I only ever saw The Prof in Mind Exorcise,
 which was a blessing; I didn’t  think I would be able to cope with anymore headmaster 
weirdness this week.

    I still had the knot in my stomach. I knew, at least in part, that some of it was the guilt 
from excluding Luke, but rather than telling him so he could go off on us about why we 
shouldn’t go, I just started paying extra attention to him. It also kept me from thinking 
about the other part of my stomach knot that tightened anytime I saw Liv touching 
Asher’s arm, which, now that her date was confirmed, she did quite often.

    So I busied myself with acting as Luke’s coke-cola  dealer - he gave me a few 
bucks at the beginning of the day and I would hit up the nearest vending machine
 to get him his supply of cold soda. We would meet up, I’d pass of a can, and then
 we spent time talking about everything. Luke was easy to talk to. The conversations 
varied in degree of topic and tone, but it was just as engrossing to talk to him about 
paper airplane design as it was to talk about our lit class or one of our favorite video games.
 The coke kept him awake through these chats, both in and out of class. More and more
  he seemed to start nodding off at the slightest thing, only to wake up seconds later - 
sometimes by me, sometimes by something a teacher said, and sometimes on his own. 
It was probably the combination of caffeine and sugar crashes… but he insisted it helped.

   On Thursday we had our first advisee group meeting. The session took place directly 
after first period ended and lasted a total of one sweet, glorious hour. Meetings were held 
in Mr. Will’s office-- in the basement of the history building. Asher and Liv lead me there 
from Algebra.

   The room sat at the end of an unfinished hallway, whose bare, concrete walls swallowed 
any hint of sound in its sepulchral atmosphere. Rust-speckled piping ran along the ceiling, 
down the walls and through the floor into unknown depths. The uneven, grime covered floor
 was well lit by over head lights that cast a harsh yellow light.

    Nice piece or real-estate… I thought to myself. Practically a catacomb.

   After walking for what felt like too long, we reached the end of the hall where 
two entrances were situated: one contained the shapeless mass of a boiler; the other,
 a short door covered in chipping green paint. On it was nailed a hard metal plaque
 inscribed, Mr. William Felis.

   “Welcome to the Brink.” Asher said reaching for a doorknob made of the same 
tarnished metal as the plaque. When he pulled the door, it stuck. Without looking 
he pulled again, and failed.

   “Frick.” He grabbed it with both hands and pulled with all of his might. It didn’t 
budge.

   “Stupid frickin door…” Asher grumbled as the veins in his neck started to bulge
 from pulling the handle so forcefully. He turned as echoing footsteps reverberated
 down the hall. Luke trudged along with his hands in his pockets, still holding the 
coke I had given him at the lunch. When he reached us he raised a tired eyebrow 
at Asher, who was still struggling with the knob. Without a word, he handed me his 
drink and tapped Asher on the shoulder. Asher staggered away from the door, panting
 slightly.

“It’s all yours,” he muttered.

   Luke, staring at Asher in what I can only describe as a bemused way, lay a hand 
lightly on the knob and opened it, with ease, into the office. I didn’t know Asher’s 
cheeks could turn that red, but they did.

    “Unfair. Superhuman strength is an unfair advantage, compared with us fair mortals.
 Maybe I couldn’t pull the door open by I have much more creative uses for my hands.”

   Luke raised his eyebrow higher, stifled a grin and pointed nonchalantly at the door.
 “Asher, it’s marked ‘push’”

   “Oh.” Asher’s face got more red, if possible.

    “I mean, supernatural intellect is just as unfair,” I said, jumping in to fill the gap. 
Asher smiled at me greatfully.

   Shaking his head, Luke walked past us into the classroom. We followed.

“I loosened it for him,” Asher said as he walked past me with a wink.

   The inside of Mr. Felis’s office was far more homey than the outside. A couple big,
 mismatched couches were huddled together cozily in the middle of the room. The walls
 of the room were painted royal blue and a hodge-podge of lamps were plugged in 
everywhere glowing with warm light. And antique desk sat shoved off in a forgotten 
corner, glistening as if it had been freshly oiled. A small stack of lined paper was
 kept in a folder hanging off of it, and, in complete contrast to the rest of the arrangement,
 a dusty thick computer monitor took up almost all the desktop space. I laughed. He was
 still using a Window’s 95. I’d be shocked if it could even connect to the Internet much 
less last a minute without crashing. Oh the days of dial-up.

   Luke, Asher and I weren’t the first ones to arrive; an older girl with black, curly hair 
sat with her legs crossed in a high-backed chair scribbled furiously in an overstuffed 
binder, while Dylan sprawled on the pink couch nearest the door. I thought he was asleep,
 but as i swung the door shut his eyes opened, as if he had been waiting for us. He 
motioned around the room.

“Welcome to the brink of despair. —might I suggest the pink couch? I warmed
 it just for you.” said Dylan, sliding over far enough for one person to sit on the couch.

   “Why thank you” I said, curtsying eloquently before plopping down. “So…” I said, 
looking around the room. “Why the ‘brink of despair’?”

   Dylan shrugged. “s’just what we call it.” He looked over at the girl, still scribbling
 in her notebook, and so did I. No one had introduced us yet. Her dark hair hung in 
loose curls that framed a pale face. Her mere presence emanated an aura of 
etherealness that Liv and I could never hope to imitate.

“Kelly, you gonna say hello or just be anti-social forever?” Luke said, 
hanging up his team jacket on a hook by the door.

The girl looked up.

“Oh?” If I had felt any ingrained jealousy when I’d first seen her it melted away 
with one look into her dewy brown eyes. When she smiled it was so warm it 
coud’ve melted away the Grinch’s cold unfeeling heart in an instant.

“I’m sorry,” she said gently. “I’m Kelly. You must be a new transfer to be 
joining us so late. How do you like the school so far?”

I don’t think of myself as someone who wears her emotions on her sleave,
 but Kelly must’ve seen something in my face because after a few seconds,
 during which I relived the potato incident, Emerson’s puke fest and every day
 of Mind Excorsize so far, she smiled kindly at me.

“That bad?” she asked knowingly. “If it was anything like my first week, it was 
probably a doozy. Can’t have changed that much in the century I’ve been at this 
school.”

“Kelly’s our resident Senior,” explained Dylan, who had watched Kelly like a 
television set since he’d moved over to make room for me. She was that kind 
of pretty you coudn’t help but stare at a little. I couldn’t help noticing Asher was 
transfixed on her as she spoke.

“Do you have another coke?”

I jumped at the voice beside me, startled out of my momentary trance and
 embarrassed to be caught eyeing Kelly. Instead I grabbed the empty bottle
 from Luke’s outstretched hand and traded it with another from my bag. It 
wasn’t the first time he’d asked for another coke - it wasn’t even the first time
 in the last hour -- and it was only second period.

Luke was staring apologetically at Asher and Dylan, raising an eyebrow at 
their not-so-subtle ogling of Kelly. He was kind enough not to point out that 
I’d kind of been ogling her too…

      Luke shook his head as he untwisted the cap on his bottle.

“Hey, Dylan, look alive-” with that he chucked the bottle cap at Dylan and hit 
him square in the head. He looked around sheepishly at his brother, then at me.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was lost in… thought.”

Luke rolled his eyes.

If Kelly noticed her admirers, she didn’t seem to care and gave no indication
 that she even noticed. She was engrossed in writing furiously in the notebook 
on her lap. She closed it suddenly with a loud snap that coincided with the door 
opening and Liv, followed closely by Mr. Will, entering.

At a brisk pace, Mr. Will hurried dover to his desk and set down a stack of papers,
 which promptly fell over the edge and floated to the floor in a disorganized clump, 
before heading towards the Lay-Z-Boy opposited the door. He halted for a moment 
in front of Asher, who was still gazing at Kelly, and, after studying him for a second, 
tapped him on the head lightly with the newspaper.

“Asher, you were doing it again.” said Mr. Will

   Asher grimaced. His face grew a delicate shade of pink.

   “Sorry...” he said, then turned towards Kelly. “Uh, sorry Kelly, didn’t mean to stare.”

    Kelly waved a hand.

    “It happens,” she said. I would’ve felt so self conscious if people stared at me like that
 all the time. Luckily when people stared at me, it was usually because I looked like I’d 
just gotten out of a fight. Usually, I had.

  Mr. Will plopped himself into the lay-Z-boy and peered at us over the top of his folded
 hands. “Well, this is our advisee group, and I’m your advisor. Just in case you missed 
the memo when saw my name on your schedules. Or when I talked to you during the 
day. Or if you didn’t get it when I was your advisor all last year—Jenna, not withstanding.”
  Mr. Will clapped his hands on his knees. “So, does anyone have anything they want to 
talk about or need help with?”

   The following awkward silence lasted about thirty seconds until Asher pulled a laptop 
from his bag and sat down between me and Liv, and put on South Park. Kelly rolled her 
eyes and muttered something about “These kids today…” before rummaging in her 
backpack for a battered copy of Pride and Prejudice.

    We were about halfway through a second episode when the coffee I’d had that 
morning hit me. I excused myself, and tried to locate the nearest bathroom using 
some half assed directions that everyone in the office had cobbled together.
 It took me a few minutes to find, as the nearest restrooms were a floor up and
 down the hall on the opposite wing from the history class. Almost every stall was 
in use but I lucked out and found the farthest one unoccupied. I went in and it took 
almost more effort than it was worth to slide the lock shut. It might as well have been 
a herculean task.

Glancing at the stall wall people had scribbled graffiti all over it. 
 Screw the Rido-Rules, I’ve got Detention: RMoney sux:
 Jazmine’s a dangerous slut. Before I left I pulled a sharpie
 from my pocket and covered the last set of words with the triple moon symbol.
 Slut shaming pissed me off. When I was satisfied with my artwork, I tried to undo
 the latch on the stall but it stuck. I banged on the door but it wouldn’t open, 
and by now the bathroom was empty. Finally, I managed to force the bolt to
 slide over. The door unlocked and opened with an echoing clang. As I was
 washing my hands I noticed some ink from the message about Rido-Rules
 had imprinted itself on my forearm. I did what I could to wash it off and headed
 back to the brink.

     The room looked exactly the same as when I’d left it, except that Asher had 
stretched out a little further on the couch. I made him move his legs over so I
 could plop down beside him. I turned to face our advisor.

    “Mr. Will?” I asked. He glanced up from his computer screen. “What are the Rido-Rules?”
 Everyone looked at me and it exchanged subtle grins.

    “Ah, yes. The infamous rulebook of Professor Manfred Lyre.” Mr. Will leaned back in his 
recliner. “You recieved a mailing at the beginning of term, right?”

    I nodded. I’d tucked the piece of paper in my desk when I’d first opened it and had
 looked it over before school. It made sense that the students and faculty had come 
up with their own term.

    “So Rido-rules… like… ridiculous rules?” I asked.

    “Redonculous rules, if you want to get technical.” supplied Dylan.

    “Oh!” Kelly cut in. “Does everyone have their outfits all picked out for tomorrow?”

    “Crap.” Asher ran a hand through his hair. “I completely forgot that tomorrow was 
Friday the 13th. Good catch.”

    Right. Friday the Thirteenth. The day we all had to wear some lurid color combination 
for school spirit or something.

“Yeah,” Dylan replied. “Glad you told us. I wouldn’t have remembered about the
 whole ‘wear orange and turquoise’ thing. I would have been screwed tomorrow.”

    Liv frowned, screwing her forehead up in concentration.

    “I think you mean orange and puce…” she said. Dylan stopped the TV show still
 playing on the computer to look up the rules on the school website.

      “Aw man. He changed the color on us again. It is puce now.” He paused and
 looked puzzled. He squinted at his laptop screen. “What color is puce anyway?”

   “I think its dark blue”

   “Nah, Luke, it sounds too much like puke –sorry Jenna – it must be green or
 something,” said Asher

   I nodded at him. “Green sounds about right…”

   Luke chuckled under his breath. Shaking his head in exasperation, he said, 
“Guys, puce is a light purple, pinkish brown color.”

    “Ugh…” we all said as a chorus.

    Liv nodded.

    “Orange and Turquiose doesn’t seem so bad now, does it?” She said.  

“I don’t think I even own anything puce,” I said, going through my closet in my head.

   “yes you do.” Interjected Liv. “You have a pinkish brown dress in your closet. 
I put it there.” She gave me a knowing smirk. “Remember that day I asked if I 
could borrow $15 bucks? You’re welcome.”

    “Is that why you gifted me an orange belt and those shoes?” I asked. Suddenly
 a lot of ugly presents she’d given me over the past few months were explained.

    “Well, yeah, though some of those were regifted, if you know what I mean.” 
She indicated the twins with her eyes. Now those two never really had a sense 
of what Liv considered “style.”

   We were still exchanging pointed chuckles when the bell, releasing us to second 
period, rang. In seconds Kelly as out the door, fully packed, with Liv and Dylan not 
far behind. I was still amazed at the speed at which Dylan could sometimes move 
when he was feeling good. He and Liv needed to get to class early so that they 
could look at each others homework. From what I understood, they had an 
arrangement where each one would do half of the homework and trade before they 
handed it in to class. Why neither of them thought to do this through advisee period 
stumped me.

    Asher and I collected our things not long after. I was about to head out the door 
when I saw Asher hesitating, looking back at the couch. Luke hadn’t gathered any 
of his belongings. Seeing our stares, he grinned and motioned us on ahead, citing 
something about needed to talk to Mr. Will alone. Shrugging, I followed Asher out 
the door and down the derelict hallway.

      “So you excited ‘bout the mansion tomorrow?” Asked Asher, breaking the 
silence.

    “Hell yeah!” What could I say? I loved Urban Spelunking. He laughed at my over 
exhuberance. I could feel my cheeks grow a little toasty. Ghost hunting was kind of 
an embarrassing hobby.

      “Do you think we’re going to find anything?” I asked, ignoring my awkwardness.

   Asher shrugged.

“Besides some creaky floorboards? Nah. But if we do, I can fend him off with 
my ninja skills-” Asher straightened himself to his fullest height and puffed out
 his chest.

“As long as you don’t dissappear into a fog and leave us to fend for ourselves.”
 I countered. “Like a real ninja.” He laughed and let himself relax again.

   As we walked up the stairs I heard the click to Mr. Will’s office door. A little bud of 
guilt blossomed at the bottom of my stomach.

“Do you think maybe we should ask Luke if he wants to go with us?” I asked, 
avoiding Asher’s eyes. “It doesn’t feel right leaving him behind…”

Asher shrugged and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “I’m glad.”
 When he noticed me staring at him, he grimace.

“It’s just—well—ok. Luke’s my best friend. Dare I say we share a passionate 
bromance. It’s just…” Asher ran a hand through his hair. “He’s… kindof an attention
 whore… no I take that back;” he laughed and wiggled his eyebrows. “I’m 
an attention whore, but he just happens to be charismatic and girls…” he 
glanced at me for a fraction of a second. “And guys  seem to … I dunno.”

   Asher stopped where he was in the hallway and leaned casually against the wall.
 I stopped too, conscious that we had about six minutes to get across campus. He 
looked at me sheepishly.

   “What’s up Asher?” I had this feeling I couldn’t shake, but I didn’t want to be wrong.

   “It’s nothing.” His smile wavered only slightly.

   “Yes, I completely and totally believe that.” I said, sarcasm dripping.

   “Ok, ok…” He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it, and 
opened it again. “I’ve got this crush… and… whenever Luke is around… He has
 a tendency to be distracting.” Asher kicked at a piece of dirt that had somehow 
made it inside the building. “So, I guess I’m selfish, but I’m glad he isn’t coming.”

    “Crush on who?” I asked. I had two very different people in mind. I knew the 
question was bold, but when he finally answered I had this feeling. A feeling I'd 
experienced before when I told half truths the same way.

    “Liv.” He said it quietly, and he said it without missing a beat.

    “Good choice. Very attractive inside and out. I’d have asked her out if we 
weren’t already platonic bffs.” Asher’s head tilted.

    “You?” I gave him a smirk and a shrug.

    “Yeah.” I let the pause between us hang in the air. “You?”

    Asher didn’t say anything for a second. Then he looked at me seriously.

    “Let’s leave it at just Liv. Right now.”

       “I will. If you ever want to talk about it, the president of the bi/pan club is 
here to listen.” I said. A hint of a smile played on his face.

      “You wont tell anyone, will you?”

      “It’s not my secret.” I said.

We regarded each other in the yellow of the incandescent bulbs of the stairwell.
 Asher looked like he was about to say something more but the second bell blared 
and made us both jump.

   The last I saw of him till lunch was his receding figure as we both bolted
down different sides of a forked walkway as we headed to class.†