The Fifth Element

The air was thick with tension as five very angry parents stared at their three very uncomfortable children, as we sat on Emily’s yellow couch. The I’m so happy that you’re alive and don’t worry me like that ever again had evaporated to your social life is so dead. Danny was the lucky one in this situation, even though he was going to be perfectly fine he was still hurt enough for his parents to be sick with worry about him. A dragon had arrived only a couple minutes ago to airlift him to the hospital.

My mom was the first to speak. “Violet Ellen Silver,” I sat up straighter when I heard my full name. It was never a good sign when she used it. “I can’t even stress how disappointed I am in you,” she snapped, and I cringed at her words.

“Miss Silver,” Emily blurted out, “don’t be mad at Violet. She didn’t want to sneak out, but I made her come with me.” Emily gave my mom a pleading look.

My mom relaxed a little and softened her voice as she answered Emily,“No one was making her do anything. She had a choice and she didn’t make a right decision.”

“But...” Emily began.

“Emily just stop!” I yelled, Emily turned to me with a look of surprise, her mouth still opened in mid-sentence. I met her gaze and shook my head. She closed her mouth and slumped forward and didn’t say anything else.

“I’m disappointed in you too Bridget!” The blonde that looked like she was more likely to be Bridget’s sister than her mom spoke up. She was standing next to a man that looked like he could be her own father. If I didn’t know any better I would have said that they were father and daughter instead of husband and wife.

“You told me that you were staying at Tilly’s house so you could organize the fundraiser for the cheer retreat! Well, guess who isn’t going on that now. Are you listening to me!?” She was glaring at her daughter in outrage.

Bridget’s face had turned a sickly white color during the course her mom rant and beads of sweat had begun to dot her forehead. I bet she hadn’t heard a single word.

Bridget stood suddenly and clamped her hand over her mouth. She ran around the couch and towards Emily’s long hallway.

“Third door on the right,” Emily’s mom called after her. Bridget’s mom let out an exasperated sigh and followed her daughter.

I cringed as I heard the sounds of Bridget throwing up the contents of her stomach into the toilet.

On that note, my mom cleared her throat and reached for my wrist and tugged on it. “Well, we better get going.” I stood up reluctantly and let myself be led to the door. She turned back once to give Emily’s mom a closed mouth smile and pulled us out the door without saying another word.

When we were outside my mom looked at me sadly, “I knew I wasn’t cut out to be a parent,” she sighed and slumped her shoulders. “Tell me the real reason that you were in the woods. If it is a boy I need to know if I have to have to put you on the pill.”

“Mom!” I groaned. “We were telling you the truth about sneaking out to hunt for a unicorn. No matter how lame that sounds,” I added. “Honestly do you think I’m a ho?” I swatted my hair away from my face in irritation.

“No, I think that you are just like me. I never thought I would get pregnant at the age of sixteen. Especially not from a one night stand with a guy that I didn’t even know his first name,” she snapped. She clenched her hands into little tiny balls and held them against her sides. She didn’t turn her head to look at me even once.

I stopped walking and looked at the back of my mom’s blonde head as she walked away. “What do you mean by that?” I said quietly. When she didn’t answer me, “What do you mean by that!?” I yelled.

She stopped and I saw her shoulders stiffen. She slowly turned and I saw that her face had a pained expression on it. “Your father didn’t die in a riding accident, or at least I don’t believe he did,” she said and smiled sadly, “When I woke up the next morning after we...you know... he was gone and I haven’t seen him since.”

I stared at her, not believing what I was hearing. My brain was going into overdrive. I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Great, so now I have a whore for a mother,” I spat and turned away from her.

I didn’t even know I had started running until I heard my mom yelling for me to stop. I didn’t stop even when I reached my house, I couldn’t stop, it just felt too good. The way by legs ached and my breath came out in shorts gasps until all I could think about was putting one foot in front of the other. I felt like I could run forever and-

“Oof!” I gasped when I collided with something really solid. I went sprawling backward onto the ground. I looked up to see a very muscular boy glaring at me from over his shoulder. His eyes were an electric blue color that I had never seen on any human before. His hair was coal black and spiked. He was dressed in combat boots, ripped jeans, and a leather jacket.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there,” I said between pants. He held my gaze for a second longer, before turning his head and walking away. Before he was more than five steps away he stopped.

Without looking back he said. “Meet me here in five days. If you don’t, I’ll come find you but I won’t be happy. You don’t want me to be unhappy,” he said and continued on his merry way.

I got up and stumbled backward, my legs felt like Jell-O and that poor old brain of mine was going into overload again. Who the heck was that? Did I do something so horribly wrong in a previous life that I deserved all of this weird stuff? I turned and ran back towards the direction of home.

When I reached my front door I hesitated before lifting my hand up to knock. Before it even touched the door it flew opened and there stood my mom. She didn’t even wait a second before throwing her arms around me and pressing me into her side. At her touch, I burst into tears and cried on her shoulder. When I was done crying she held me away from her and looked me up and down before smiling at me and letting me go.

“Mom I’m...”

She held her finger to my lips and smiled at me gently, and then turned and walked into the house, leaving me standing at the door. I followed her inside.

One inside, I went straight to our bathroom. I felt like I had a layer of dirt on my skin. I walked in and gazed at my reflection in the mirror. My hair was a nest of tangles and my eyes were red and puffy. I really hoped that no one I knew saw me running like a mad person on the side of the road looking like this. Speaking of the road and mad people, who was that guy? Should I go meet him in five days?

“Yeah right!” my common sense snorted, and I agreed with her. How would he possibly know where I lived?

I stripped out of my clothes and got under the warm jets of water. I let out a sigh of content when the warm streams of water trickled over my tense muscles and relaxed them. I shut the water off and reached out and clawed blindly for a towel through the shower curtain.

“Here you go,” I heard a little boy’s voice say, and I felt a towel being pressed into my hand.

“Thank you,” I said accepting the towel and wrapping it around my body. I went to pull back the shower curtain, but some nagging thought in the back of my head stopped me. I didn’t have a little brother, so why was there a little boy in my bathroom? I gulped and with shaking hands pulled back the shower curtain.

There was no one there. I let out a sigh of relief. I looked up at the mirror and gasped. Written on the foggy mirror was the words “Your welcome”, just like one of those classic scary movie moments.

“Okay let’s take this freaking easy,” I said out loud, backing slowly away from the mirror.

When my back touched the door, I flung it open and slammed it shut and went straight to my room.

I crawled under the covers of my bed, still in my towel, and snuggled into their warmth. I dozed off moments later and when I awoke it was dusk. The smell of mash potatoes and meatloaf was in the air. My stomach growled loudly and my mouth began to water. It felt like it had been ages since I had last eaten anything.

I threw on a sweatshirt and a pair of soft pajama pants before going out to the kitchen. My mother was pulling something out of the oven.

“Hi,” I said as I watched her place a textbook perfect meatloaf on the counter. On the kitchen table, there was a bowl of steaming mash potatoes and green beans.

“Hey yourself, are you hungry?” She took off her baking mittens and washed her hands in the sink. She wiped them dry on the front of her gray cardigan.

“Uh hum,” I murmured, taking a seat and shoveling mash potatoes onto the empty plate in front of me. I sprinkled salt and pepper on them before digging in. She placed the meatloaf on the table before sitting down across from me and helping herself.

We sat in awkward silence. It wasn’t until I was reaching for my second helping of meatloaf that my mother spoke up.

“I shouldn’t have told you the truth about your father like that.” She gave me a closed mouth smile. “I’ve just been worried about you lately, you haven’t been acting like yourself, and that sneaking out incident just made me snap.”

I put down my fork and looked across the table at my mother. “I shouldn’t have called you a whore,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay I knew you didn’t mean it.” But I saw her eyes begin to water a bit.

“Could you tell me more about my father?” Whoa, I hadn’t expected those words to come out of my mouth.

My mother looked at me hesitantly. “Well, you look just like him.” I nodded my head for her to continue. “And he saved my life.”

Good thing I didn’t have food in my mouth because I probably would have choked. “What!?” I said loudly.

She got a glazed look in her eyes as she continued. “I was sixteen and was trying to get over the fact that I was a magic dud.”

I nodded my head. I had known my mother was a magic dud since I was little. If you were a magic dud it meant you didn’t have an element, and could only cast simple spells.

“I was really depressed and it didn’t help that the kids at school started making fun of me.” She went on. “I found that with every day that passed I wanted to be less and less with people. I started taking hikes in the woods by myself, even when it became so cold that any exposed skin would turn purple from frostbite. One of those bitter cold days I came across a river. It was one of those monster rivers whose currents are so fast that they never freeze. Well, I was looking at it when I had the thought “Wouldn’t everyone feel sorry for making fun of me when they found my frozen body”, so I jumped in.”

“You tried to commit suicide?!” I cried, horrified.

She nodded her head absently and continued. “It felt like a thousand knives were going into my body the moment I hit the water, and then I felt nothing. The next thing I knew I was in a cabin, under a bunch of furs and your father was sitting next to me. He was so handsome.” She said, a faint smile touching her lips. “Anyways we talked for only a little, then he leaned really close to me and said in a very serious voice. “Life is a precious thing and since you are alive that makes you precious. You don’t throw precious things away,” then he kissed me and the rest was history. When I woke up, he was gone, and I was all alone in the cabin. I waited for him to come back for a long time, but he never did.”

I was quiet for a moment. “I want to find him,” I said, and my mother looked at me, but she didn’t really look that surprised by my words, “If he thinks life is so precious I think that he would like to know that he has a daughter.”

My mother gave me a sympathetic look. “Honey, I’ve already tried. Whoever he was he didn’t go into town and nobody saw him. The trail goes cold from the minute he walked out the cabin’s door and left me.”

“Still I’ll try to find him,” I said, looking up at her determined. “And I promise you I will!”