Jasper couldn’t stop thinking about Cody’s eyes. Did he know? Surely, he had to. Was it a secret? Should Jasper say anything to him? Someone else had to have noticed by now. Maybe he should ask instructor Jorgien about it.
Come to think of it, Jasper should have noticed it when they were practicing entity vision in class Wednesday. The fact that no one else did either… was he imagining things in front of the library?
No, there was definitely pink and red in his eyes. It wasn’t normal.
Jasper sighed and stuck his arm in the air for no reason. It was Saturday. Yesterday he had morning class then a double shift at the restaurant he worked at. Thankfully, they let him only work one day a week. Now, he couldn’t get out of bed. And it was already noon.
He couldn’t talk about any of his actual troubles with his roommates. They couldn’t know such a world existed.
The sun filtered through his blinds and wove split patterns on his swirling fingertips, brushes of warmth saying goodbye as quickly as they’d introduced themselves. Just like a lot of men liked to do.
No, we weren’t doing that today. No negative thoughts about the dredges of dating. Jasper shot up and threw his legs off the bed. He was cute. He had the black-hair blue-eyed contrast combo and when he wore a long sleeve that went past his hands, everyone wanted to snuggle with him. At least, that’s what he assumed.
It was better to be confident and delusional than not confident at all. Maybe.
Jasper would get ready and go out today— and he’d be the hottest nerd in the grocery store!
He snuck his crocodile slippers on, the kind that opened and chomped their mouths every step he took, and he went to brush his teeth.
It didn’t take him long to get ready and make a three-minute drive to the grocery store. College towns could be so convenient sometimes. He didn’t have a car, but his roommate Liz let him use hers on Saturdays. She refused to leave the apartment on Saturdays, calling it her ‘the world needs to leave me the fuck alone’ day. That was his Sunday.
He walked in the store, threw his reusable bags into the cart, and went to town. Flavor town!
“Get out of my head Guy Fieri.” Jasper mumbled to himself.
No! Guy Fieri said back in his mind.
Ah, the chaos thoughts were active and joyous today. Jasper’s bickering moral compass had so many decisions to make about lunch meats and peanut butter brands.
He rolled over to the produce aisle. Grocery shopping was a mission. Get in and get out. Scan your eyes across every item and put it in the cart based on pure instinct, but make sure to get everything on the list. And don’t listen to Guy Fieri if the item is too expensive.
He threw in carrots and hummus and peppers— load up on the healthy stuff now and hide the cakes and ice cream and chocolate behind them later.
He grabbed a produce bag and reached for a head of romaine, but he retracted his arm haphazardly.
“MOTHERFUCK!” Jasper shouted and stepped back as a large rhinoceros-type beetle stepped on top of the head of romaine from the backside.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” A creaky old lady voice nearly ran itself into Jasper’s cart.
Jasper pointed at the romaine. “G-giant bug!” Seriously, Jasper did his latest move from Florida all the way to California to get away from these types of things. It was brown with a tan pattern and its horn was, well… maybe an entomologist would call it majestic, but Jasper would call it slender-man’s spiky ding-dong that he didn’t consent to seeing.
The old woman, hunched over her cart, looked around the romaine. “Hardly giant if I can’t see it. Get over yourself, go touch the redwoods or something. They aren’t that far.”
She begrudgingly rolled on by, and Jasper was in disbelief. First of all, ‘go touch the redwoods or something,’ was totally going into his vocab book. Second of all, the beetle was right in front of them.
Unless… “Zut.”
Brown miasma wafted around the beetle, meaning it wasn’t a beetle at all. It turned to face Jasper, two dark purple eyes on him.
Shit. He’d been staring at it too long, and it noticed.
It spread its wings and was about to take flight, but Jasper was already firing an energy shot with his fingers. So what if the soccer mom of three nearby would see him ‘pew-pew-ing’ the lettuce. Maybe her kids would join in.
One shot was all it took to dissipate the beetle, and the entity’s tiny core fell right into the romaine. Which meant Jasper was buying that one.
Surprising, though, the entity must’ve been really weak to be done in by one Jasper shot. Cue gay joke here.
Jasper stuffed the romaine in his cart and carried along his way. This ordeal set him back an entire minute! Or maybe it was forty-eight and a half seconds. Who knows? Time for apples.
He’d have to show instructor Jorgien the core before using it. Freshmen were supposed to call for help and not engage with any entity bigger than, say, an arm.
But smaller than? Free range chicken. They were just more… annoying. Not too dangerous, usually. It just sucked that their cores barely did anything. He managed a few growing up— with parental supervision of course. Most of his classmates had more childhood experience than him, though.
And nothing compared to the high Jasper felt when he used the spider queen’s, err, the ‘Queen of Malice’s’ core. The magic capacity it gave him added a leg up to some of his classmates, but they all had families that helped them get cores over winter break and blah, blah, blah…
Jasper’s family was chaotic, not connected or with resources or abundant experience to share. The playing fields were never even.
Fun fact, Jasper’s parents were both wanted criminals! But that was a story for another time.
For now, he finished getting groceries as Guy Fieri told him what on the shelves had ‘flava’ in his head. And mentally, he prepared for another week at school.
Comments (3)
See all