Soulmates
11
Resolution
Jaime and Mex
JAIME SENT A TEXT to Mex asking him to meet after practice. It was too cold to wait at his tree, so he selected a bench near the locker rooms as the meeting place. He was still tired from his weekend adventure. The added stress from his friends’ crisis was more than he wanted to deal with. He should have talked to Keira after school and reached out to her from his bench. She was a long way away and then disappeared altogether.
Jaime didn’t worry about it. They were both new at this boyfriend/girlfriend thing and needed to work out when they’d communicate. He hadn’t made a plan with Keira, so she might be anywhere or with anyone. She was really good at hanging out a mental ‘Do not disturb’ sign. It was something Jaime needed to practice and he set his mind to blanking out everything. As soon as the peace settled in on him, so did sleep.
That was where Mex found him after football practice.
“Hey, Zip! Your text sounded urgent. You going to make me watch you sleep?” Juan said.
Jaime’s eyes popped open and he looked at his friend. That had been a deep sleep! He hadn’t even sensed Mex approaching.
“Hey. Busy weekend,” Jaime signed. “Didn’t hear you come up.”
“I want to get over to Lettie’s house as soon as I can,” Juan said. “We’ll have an hour to ourselves before her momma gets home.”
“That’s what I want to talk about,” Jaime signed. “I talked to Cheery. She thinks you’re pressuring her to have sex.”
“And she doesn’t want to,” Juan sighed. “Damn. I didn’t think she’d bring you into it.”
“That’s the problem,” Jaime signed. “She does want to. She’s scared.”
“Man! What’s she scared of? I love her!”
Jaime could see the truth in that statement. He thought Mex was as much in love as Cheery was. At least they had that going for them.
“How important is the church to you?” Jaime asked.
“I go to mass every week. We go together. The priest kind of got after me for having touched Lettie. I don’t tell him about that in confession anymore.”
“That’s one thing that’s bothering Cheery. I mean, what you say in confession is between you and the priest, but she’s afraid she’s sinning.”
“I don’t think either of us really believe that,” he said. “We talk, you know.”
“Good. Has she told you she’s afraid she’ll get pregnant and end up like her mother—a single mom trying to scrape together enough to survive on?”
“No! She’d never have to deal with that! Man, I love her. I would never abandon her. We can use a condom. I don’t mind.”
“Well, you need to deal with those two big issues before you push her into something she isn’t ready for. You’re only seventeen. Try to keep it zipped a little longer until you’re both on the same page,” Jaime signed.
“It’s so difficult! She’s the absolute sexiest girl I’ve ever met. We grew up together. I get crazy if she even looks at another guy and I don’t look at other girls. I know you don’t understand all that about love and stuff, but this is the real deal.”
Jaime’s mind was flooded with images from Mex that featured every sexy thing he’d ever done with Cheery. Jaime had to catch his breath.
“I do understand. I’ve got a girlfriend, you know?” he signed.
“You what?” Mex was taken completely off-guard. “When did you get a girlfriend? You’ve never even been on a date!”
“Keira,” Jaime fingerspelled. Then he used her name sign. “We were out this weekend.”
Juan contemplated the name and the sign and came to a resolution.
“The red-haired girl in our class? We were all in physics together last year? Wow! That’s unreal. Still, you’ve only dated this weekend. You can’t possibly know what’s inside her. I tell you, man, love is like every waking thought and most of your sleeping thoughts are about that person. It’s hard to concentrate in class. I even messed up a play in football practice because she flashed across my mind. I’m just…”
Mex cut himself off in mid-sentence as he thought of something else.
“Geez! A baby! We need to be really careful, don’t we? The Ducks are recruiting me. You know what that means? Full ride to the university. I need to do something quick. I need to make sure Lettie is with me. Shoot, man. I need to get moving. I’ll talk to you later. Good luck with Keira.”
Juan turned and bolted from the school, but Jaime saw that he was headed toward the mall, not toward home. He planned to get an engagement ring for Letitia!
Keira and Rose
Across town, another conversation was taking place.
“Okay. So, you had a great weekend date with this guy. Zip, right? You had a big adventure. I should have known when I saw the news about that guy the police arrested that you were involved somehow. So, you had an intense weekend with this guy. Scare you?” Aunt Rose asked after Keira had told her story.
“A little. It was really overwhelming. Almost like we were sharing the same… um… body, I guess. I mean, we didn’t do anything, you know? Well, we held hands for a couple of minutes. I felt so connected to him. And then seeing him put his arm around that girl after school… I thought he really liked me!” Keira had been sniffling ever since she got to Rose’s house and the tears threatened to break free again.
“And without talking to him or trying to connect like you say you did at the movie, you jumped to the conclusion he was involved with someone else and you ran away,” Rose said.
“I guess.”
“Keira, we’ve talked about jumping to conclusions based on things no one else can see. You’re lucky the adventure with that kidnapper turned out well. I’m sure you’ll be called on to identify him and testify about how you knew he was going to try to snatch that girl. You can’t count on every intuition being spot on. Sometimes, just seeing something isn’t enough. You don’t know what this Zip and the girl were talking about. You don’t know what their relationship is. For all you know, he was comforting her because he’d just told her about you and she was heartbroken. Honey, you have to investigate.”
“It’s… We were so connected. I was happy when I saw him and I know he’s happy when he sees me.» Keira sobbed. “But it was so hard to see him with her and I just knew there was something really… um… sexy passing between them.” She’d been too far away to really hear what was going on, but she had felt the sexual tension being communicated.
“So, are you going to just be miserable and avoid him for the rest of your life? Or are you going to use that joy you have in each other to confront him and find out what’s really going on?”
“I… I’ll talk to him. Do you think I can believe him? I never experienced anything like this before.”
“Only you can answer that. You won’t have anything to believe or disbelieve if you don’t talk,” Rose admonished her.
Keira sniffled as she finished her tea. She hugged Aunt Rose and went home.
Jaime and Keira
In fact, her contact with Jaime was destined to come sooner than expected. When she got home, her parents said a detective from the police department had been by to see her and would come back soon. They wanted to compare her story to Jaime’s.
«Calling Jaime,» she said using as much volume as her inner voice could manage.
«Wow! You got me loud and clear,» Jaime responded. «I wanted to see you after school, but something came up.»
«I could see that,» Keira snapped. «It looked like you and that girl needed some private time.»
«That girl? Oh! Cheery. After I talked to her, I had to hang around school until football practice was over so I could talk to her boyfriend for her.»
«She wanted you to tell him she was breaking up?»
«What? No. She wanted me to talk to him about why she was scared to go all the way. It was kind of funny. Mex was torturing himself and ran off to buy an engagement ring for her. He was knocked off his feet to find out I had a girlfriend!»
«Who?» The response was curt.
«You!… Keira, is something wrong?»
«I saw you hugging her! We can’t even do more than hold hands for a minute and you had your arm around her!»
«I was trying to get a clearer picture of what she was going through! Her thoughts were pretty muddled and I thought the contact would help me sort them out.»
«Can I believe you, Jaime?»
«Believe me? I… I don’t think it would even be possible for me to lie to you about something. You’d know in an instant. You can look inside right now. I’ll come over and you can hold my hand and probe everything I’ve ever thought.»
«No!… Tomorrow. We can hold hands for a minute and you can tell me all about it.»
«It’s pretty intense. She and Mex both had really graphic thoughts about each other.»
«We’ve got other problems tonight. A police detective is on his way to compare my story with yours about how we knew the kidnapper was going to grab that girl.»
«Wow! I just got home and have to get dinner ready. Uh-oh. There’s someone at the door. He’s broadcasting ‘police.’ I need to concentrate on what he wants.»
«Contact me as soon as he’s gone. I want to be sure our stories match.»
«Will do.»
Jaime and the Detective
Jaime had his laptop out and was using his text-to-speech app to talk to the detective. It had taken a few minutes to figure out how to communicate, but the detective was surprisingly patient. His thoughts said he dealt with teens all the time.
“So, you don’t speak at all?” he asked.
“Never have,” Jaime typed.
“So how did you and your girlfriend make a plan to follow the alleged kidnapper so quickly?”
“We both heard him muttering about how he was going to make her scream. I signed to Keira and she went to follow the girl while I followed the guy.”
“You’re pretty good at sign language, huh?”
“I’ve been using it since kindergarten. Keira is newer, but she does pretty good. It’s amazing how much of a conversation we can have without anyone realizing we’re talking to each other.”
“The guy, Alex Rames, claims he never said anything in the theater, but someone was telling him he had to grab the girl… to protect her.”
“I can’t swear I’ve quoted him word for word. Maybe Keira picked up more than I did. But we knew he was going to try to grab her.”
“Okay. The officers at the scene had you send your video to them and I’ve reviewed it. We recorded the video your girlfriend streamed to the 9-1-1 operator. I don’t think there’s any problem with the two of you, though I’m sure the attorneys will want to depose you. You shouldn’t talk about this with anyone—least of all your girlfriend. If they think you colluded on the story, it will damage the testimony.”
“We never thought about that. We told our parents the whole story and talked about it on Sunday. I’m glad you caught the guy,” Jaime typed.
“We’ve linked him to three other missing persons. That girl, Heidi, doesn’t know how lucky she is that you were there. Have a good evening.”
The detective turned to leave just as David got home. They chatted for a few minutes and then the detective left. Jaime apologized for not having dinner ready.
“Let’s go grab a pizza,” David suggested. Jaime quickly agreed.
Jaime quickly contacted Keira before they got to the car and played back the entire conversation with the detective, stressing his warning about collaboration. Then he got in the car with his father.
Keira and the Detective
“He kind of had to shove people out of the way in order to keep Heidi in sight,” Keira said. “Jaime was closer to him, so he might have heard more than I did. I just heard, ‘Make her scream like the others.’ It wasn’t hard to tell who he was talking about because he was looking right at her. Jaime signed to me to follow the girl and he took off after the guy.”
“Did she know you were behind her?”
“I don’t think so, but I’m not sure. It’s not like I follow people a lot. Maybe she knew. I’m pretty sure she saw Jaime cross the street just before she was attacked. You’d have to ask her. She didn’t want to talk to us after she was shoved to the ground. It was all I could do to convince her to just stay where she was until the police got there.”
“Okay. I warned your boyfriend not to talk about this. You will undoubtedly be deposed by the prosecution and the defense if it comes to trial. I can’t overemphasize this. A suspicion of collusion on your testimony could mean he walks scot-free.”
“Yessir. I understand.”
As if those two could keep secrets from each other, the detective thought as he left. They’ll be talking about it before they sleep. Wonder how they do that. We could subpoena their text messages, I suppose.
His train of thought disappeared when he got into his car.
Jaime and Keira
«Are you still mad at me?» Jaime asked as he held Keira’s hand and transferred all the memories of his encounters with Cheery and Mex from the previous day.
They’d stepped behind a dumpster before school to block out the thoughts of the other students arriving. Some of those memories were really graphic as both of the teens had thought about their relationship and what they had done together.
«No,» Keira said. «I’m sorry. When I saw you put your arm around her, it was like someone punched me in the stomach. I couldn’t breathe! I should have come to talk to you right then. I’m sorry.»
«My whole mind is open to you, Red. I give my whole being to you. Does that make sense? I know we’re not ready for some things because we’ve only known each other a week. But it’s all on the table for you. I will never… I could never lie to you.»
«They did have some really sexy thoughts,» Keira giggled.
«I try hard not to think of my friends like that.»
«I’ll bet it’s hard. So was he.»
«I really didn’t mean to plant that in your brain.»
«Well, let’s replace it with something.»
«Big floppy fish?»
«That’ll do for now. I was thinking of ice cream after school.»
«Oh, heck, yeah.»
They quickly pulled their hands away from each other before the conversation became too personally graphic. Nonetheless, the seed had been planted.
Jaime and Keira decided to see an afternoon matinee of an animated feature on Saturday. They spent the entire movie holding hands and after taking a while to just enjoy being in touch and ‘in’ each other, they tuned into the thoughts of those around them.
«Children’s thoughts are so random!» Keira said.
«Only about one in ten is actually involved in the movie. The rest see something and it reminds them of something else and they’re off on their own story,» Jaime said.
«Pretty much like we are!»
«This is really fun. But that poor kid is trying to figure out why her mom keeps sniffling in a funny movie. Her mom brought her to the movie, but her dad… Shit! Her mom’s full of how to tell her daughter that Daddy was killed overseas. Those poor people!»
«I wish there was something we could do to help,» Keira said.
«Red, this is one of those cases where there isn’t anything that can help. We can sympathize and even empathize, but there’s no way to make it better for them. The little girl knows her mommy has been crying and is unhappy, but doesn’t know why. It makes her sad, even when she laughs at the movie. The woman’s lost her husband and her daughter’s daddy. She doesn’t know how to tell her little girl that Daddy will never come home again,» Jaime said.
«Zip, you’re crying.»
«It just reminds me so much of when I lost my mom. I was about the same age and just didn’t understand why she was never coming home.»
«I know I can’t make it better, but lean on me, baby. Let me share your sorrow.»
They ignored the rest of the movie, just sharing the sadness, both of Jaime and of the woman and her daughter.
There were a lot of sympathetic mental kisses that went on between the two of them and they reached out to the mother and daughter with the same, but didn’t know if it really had any effect.
«Third date,» Keira whispered in his mind as he walked her to her door later that evening. «We can kiss then.» They’d had dinner at a little Mexican restaurant after the movie and realized they actually needed a break from the heightened sensations resulting from holding hands. Keira took both his hands in hers and pulled his gloves off when they reached her front porch. They held their bare hands together and just enjoyed the bliss of sinking into each other.
«Isn’t this the third date?» he asked.
«The walk in the park doesn’t count. Nor does tomorrow’s,» she giggled.
«Okay. So next weekend. What about it?»
«That’s when we can kiss. Just a little, until we find out how it’s going to affect us,» she said.
«Wow! It’s going to be a long week,» he sighed.
«Yeah, I know. We’ll have to play a game to make the time go faster.»
«What kind…?»
«I’ll tell you tomorrow. See you then, boyfriend.»
«Yeah,» he smiled. «You definitely will!»
Trayce
On the other side of town, Trayce was having a different problem. She’d begun writing again as her mother sank further into depression after her father’s death. It had been almost a year and her mother hadn’t gone back to work. She had a drink in her hand most of the time. She sat in front of the television, staring blankly until she went to sleep.
Trayce was fighting the depression as well. It was almost as if she’d lost both parents. Her only outlet had been to open the computer and start typing. This fall, she’d managed to enroll in her first ever creative writing class at school and she was more committed to writing as a career than ever.
But the teacher, while giving good advice and exercises, didn’t think much of fan fiction. She cited a play by Tom Stoppard titled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. She said that, like the common cuckoo, Stoppard had chosen to lay his literary eggs in someone else’s nest. Then she went on to cite several other authors who wrote in other people’s universes or even took over series from previous authors, starting with Nancy Drew and working her way into contemporary television series that featured multiple writers for different episodes.
“Excuse me, Ms. Dorn,” Trayce had asked, “but isn’t that exactly what we do when we follow your writing prompts for class?”
That stopped her teacher’s rant about fan fiction short.
“Okay. I was using prompts as a way to get you into the flow of writing, but I see you are far beyond that,” she said sarcastically. “So, your next assignment is to write a short story between 5,000 and 20,000 words in length. It is not to be fan fiction or written in anyone else’s universe, but must be completely original. Let’s find out if you are really ready to become a writer. First draft is due next Friday.”
Trayce could feel the animosity of the other members of her class. No one was happy about the assignment. Including Trayce.
“I really thought she’d just stop knocking fan fic,” she muttered. “Not force us into something else.”
She sat in her room all day Saturday and suddenly had a vague notion for a story. She would write about a woman who just received the news that her husband had died overseas. It was definitely a stretch for Trayce. It wouldn’t be a happy story. How could it be? She’d lost her own father and knew how it hurt. She would write about how the woman received the news and then took her five-year-old daughter to see a funny movie before telling her that Daddy wasn’t coming home again. She could feel the intense emotion of the characters. She just needed to get an effective resolution so it was a story instead of a slice of life.
She opened her laptop and started writing the notes she would need.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
