The Fifth Element

The next morning I got a good surprise for a change, breakfast in bed. My mom had made me my favorite, pancakes with strawberries on them. I savored their warm fluffy goodness as I took bite after bite. If I had to say one thing that my mom excelled at, it would be cooking.

After I had eaten enough pancakes to feed a football team, I took a quick shower and pulled on a t-shirt and a pair of leggings. I threw my damp hair into a messy bun before calling it a day.

My mom was too busy sweeping the kitchen floor to notice me as I cut through it and went into the den, where I spotted the Sunday paper lying on the back of our only couch. I picked it up and began leafing through it. I hadn’t ever read a newspaper, but hey I’m sixteen now so yolo.

I started off with the community section. I skimmed the pages stopping once to read an article about a new playground being built at my old grade school, and again to read a juicy story about one of our council member’s alleged affair with a girl twenty years his junior.

I was about to move on to the world section when a tiny picture of a girl around my age caught my attention. In the picture, she was smiling warmly at whoever was taking the picture and then laughing at something funny they said, before going back to smiling. Below the picture it bold print it said. “Jenny Hightide Still Missing After Five Days.” I frowned; I never like it when something bad happens to someone, especially someone young. I read on.

When I was done reading, I was tempted to throw the entire thing into the fire burning in our small fireplace. How was this not on the front page of the newspaper? Right before Jenny had disappeared seemingly off the face of the earth, five other kids between the ages of 12-17 had vanished into thin air. All the disappearances happened within weeks of each other, he circumstances of their disappearances had something in common; no bodies or any trace of the missing children were found, they were last seen going into the woods alone, and there was an abnormal reading of energy in the air. The most unnerving thing about the whole thing was that Jenny’s disappearance had happened only two miles away from where Emily and I had been stupidly stumbling around the night before.

“Mom,” I called from my seat on the couch.

The sweeping sound coming from the other room stopped. “Yeah?” she answered.

“Hey,” have you read about the disappearances happing around here lately?” I shifted my body until I could see the door to the kitchen. My mom walked though it still holding the broom with a look of curiosity plastered on her face.

“No.” She sat down on the cushion next to me and took the newspaper from my hand. Her frown deepened the more she read. When she was done, she held the paper against her chest. “Stay out of the woods,” she said handing the newspaper back to me.

“That’s easier said than done, in case you haven’t noticed we live in the middle of one,” I said sarcastically putting the newspaper down.

“Well that won’t be such a big problem seeing that you’re grounded,” she looked at me smugly.

I gave her a look of disbelief, “You’re grounding me on my birthday!?”

“No, your grounding starts tomorrow, today is going to be your last day of freedom for a while.” She stood and walked back towards the kitchen. Before she reached it, she turned to me. “Get dress we have an appointment with the element teller at six, and I want to go out to dinner, happy birthday sweetheart, by the way.”

A short time later I stood in front of my closet and looked at my options. I was down to two dresses. The first one was a peach dress with a sweetheart neck and sky blue borders around its edges. The second was a silver dress with a v-line neck. I decided on the silver dress.

When I was done changing, I tried tackling the mess of my hair before finally giving up and pulling it back into a ponytail. When I was done, I walked out of my room to find that my mom was already ready. She was dressed in a pink sparkly dress that came to right above her knees with a deep neckline revealing her impressive cleavage, something that I didn’t inherit from her. Her honey-colored hair fell in waves around her face.

She made a face when she saw me. “You aren’t seriously going to wear that, are you?” she leaned against her bedroom door, which was almost adjacent from mine.

“You’re not seriously going to wear that?” I raised an eyebrow at her then looked down at her dress and then back up to her.

“What, I’m tired of being the responsible parent! I just might find you a daddy tonight,” she winked at me and smirked.

I rolled my eyes. “So what else do you suggest I wear? I’ll bet you a hundred dollars that you won’t like anything in my closet,” I crossed my arms.

“Only cause you wear things that hide that cute little bod of yours.” She brushed past me and smacked my butt playfully.

“Hey,” I said turning around to see what she was doing in my room. She was messing with my curtains and as I watched I heard the crinkle of plastic. From behind my curtains, she pulled out a flowy light purple dress.

Usually, my mom and I’s tastes clashed but she hit this one on the nail.

“I love it!” I gasped, as I walked over to examine it. I took it from her and hugged it against me, before hugging her.

“Yeah, yeah, now get in the dress.” She closed the door and gave me some privacy as I changed into my new dress. When I was done I admired my reflection in my full-length mirror, I liked what I saw. I spun around and watched the fabric float around me in graceful rivers of purple.

“Do you like it?” My mom called from the other side of the door. I walked out of my room and turned around and made the fabric float around me again. My mom grinned. “Well, I like it.”

My stomach grumbled loudly as I waited for the waiter to come back and take my order. We were sitting in the fanciest restaurant that I had been in; the ceiling was made to look like the night sky, and crystal chandelier hung suspended in midair above us. They even had a guy playing the violin, and I was pretty sure that the forks, spoons, and knives were made out of real silver. How my mom was able to afford, this place was beyond me. Still, the service here was slow.

I knew I should have eaten a cinnamon bun or something before I left, but my mom had insisted that I wouldn’t be hungry for dinner if I did. But who could have predicted that shopping could make someone so hungry? After seeing how gorgeous my dress looked on me, she had insisted on going to the charm shop. There she had bought me a purple amulet to match my dress, and as a bonus, the amulet straightened my unruly waves until they were shiny and perfectly straight. Of course, we had to go shoe shopping afterward, because an outfit is never complete without shoes. I eventually picked out a pair of honey-colored high boots, after what had seemed like hundreds of shoes that my mom had stuffed my feet into until my feet felt like there were going to fall off.

“So what are you getting?” I looked up from my menu to my mom. She was spinning the ice around her glass with her straw.

“Umm the clams look good,” I said closing the menu and setting it down in front of me. “What about you?”

“I don’t know if I should get the chicken or...” I didn’t hear what my mom said next because over her shoulder I saw a woman sitting alone at a table. Something about her struck me as being sad, although I couldn’t see her downturned face that was staring into her lap.

“Violet.” My mom waved her hand in front of my face and snapped my attention back to her. I widened my dark purple eyes at her. “Sorry, I was just thinking about how sad that lady looks over there.”

My mom turned around to see where I had been looking. She turned back to me and gave me a questioning look. “There isn’t anyone sitting behind us, Violet.”

I looked back to the table where the lady had just been minutes ago, and sure enough, no one was there.

“I swear there was someone just sitting there.”

“Maybe they left.” My mom said, shrugging her shoulders indifferently. Just then, a tall skinny black haired guy came over to us with a pad of paper. I was pretty sure that he hadn’t been our waiter.

“Hey Caroline, glad you could make it!” he said and smiled down at my mom, but I was positive that he wasn’t looking down at her face.

“Hi Marty, I told you I would come and check out your new place. After seeing all this, I can’t understand why you come into the little troll cave that employs me!” she said looking around the restaurant again. I then knew why she could afford it; Marty was one of her boy toys.

“Well since you finally came in, dinner is on me!” I could see how pleased he was that my mom liked his restaurant. He wore a giant grin on his face. He turned his attention to me, and his smile did not waver. He must not know yet who I was...

“Thank you so much!” She stood and threw her arms around Marty before pulling away.

“This must be your sister, you ladies celebrating anything special tonight?” He said, turning his attention to me.

“She’s my daughter, Violet, and yes she just turned sixteen!” My mom smiled over at me.

Marty’s smile froze on this face, and he looked over at me. I knew the look he was giving me all too well, an are-you-going-to-be-an-obstacle-between-me-and-your-mom look. I guess he decided I wasn’t too big of an obstacle because his voice was still kind when he answered. “Well, congratulations! I don’t know why your mom hasn’t bragged to me yet about having such a beautiful daughter.”

My mom cleared her throat uncomfortably. Yeah, why hasn’t she told Marty about me yet? She must like this guy and was afraid that the kid factor would scare him away.

AN

Holy shit there’s a bat in my house!!! (Opens door and bat flies by. Shuts door really fast and pretend that didn’t just happen.) Kay dad got it, it’s all good(:

“Well, here she is.” She held out her hands and gestured to me. He laughed and excused himself to put our orders in. Twenty minutes later he came out with what was probably the most delicious meal of my life.

Marty only returned to our table when we were just finishing. He and my mom had chatted for a little before she excused us and we left.

After we were back outside under the daytime sky, I turned to her. “Are you and him...” I trailed off.

She laughed nervously at my comment. “I haven’t slept with him, yet.” She added the yet.

That’s not what I was going to ask but okay.

“Don’t worry. He’s a nice guy.”

“Explain why he didn’t know you had a sixteen-year-old daughter until today then?” I said bitterly.

She let out an exasperated sigh. “I didn’t tell him because I wasn’t sure if he was someone I wanted around you.”

“You really kind of like him, don’t you?” I let the realization hit me.

We stopped at the path in front of the restaurant. “Eh kind of, not really. He’s too needy.”

“At least we got a free meal out of it,” I shrugged my shoulders at least we go a free meal out of it.

My mom cupped her hands over her mouth. “TAXI!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. A yellow cab came spiraling out of the sky and came to land right in front of us. I coughed as it sent up a cloud of dust. She yanked open the door and we both got in. Once we had our seat belts fastened she told the driver to take us to the Element teller and up we went into the sky.

We stood in front of the menacing building ten minutes later. “Are you sure we have to go in there?” I asked my mom, she looked as nervous as me. I was sure that it didn’t hold any good memories for her.

“Yeah, we have to.” She put a firm hand on my shoulder and led me up the path.

Beautiful and cold were the two words I would use to describe the Element teller’s office. Everything was white marble with gold trimming, the kind of place that you never could be truly comfortable in unless you were a king. A young girl sitting behind the counter greeted us as we walked in.

“Hi!” She said cheerfully. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Yes, Violet Silver.”

The receptionist looked at a giant book that she had opened on her desk. She ran her finger down it until she found my name. “Here you are,” she chirped, “Go in, he is waiting for you.” She pressed a button and two gold doors behind her opened.

We walked into a room with a dome roof. On it was the symbols for the four elements. I jumped a little when the two gold doors slammed shut with a bang that echoed in the large room. In the center of the room stood an ancient looking man in a blood-red robe holding a crystal ball. He nodded his head over to me when he saw us come in.

“Come here dear and let’s see what your element is.” My mom nudged me and I reluctantly went to stand beside the old man. He shoved the crystal ball into my hands. It buzzed softly, and I almost dropped it in surprise. “Look up at the ceiling,” he commanded quickly and pointed up. I looked up to see the four symbols on the ceiling had started to spin. It made me dizzy as I watched them as they began to spin faster and faster. The ball in my hands began to glow.

“Claim your daughter, one of the mighty four. She stands humbly before you, ready to claim her birthright!” he shouted and held his hand up the ceiling.

The light in the ball went out all the sudden, and the ceiling stopped spinning, nothing happened. I looked at the Element teller confused.

He gave me a sad look. “My dear I’m afraid I don’t have very good news for you.”

My mom burst out crying, and I knew that he didn’t have to tell what that bad news was. Just like my mom, I was a magic dud.