"Oh, no! That sounded really dumb!" The weird guy blurts, and he slaps a hand over his face, "I'm sorry I had to subject you to that. It sounded better when I practiced in front of the mirror a million times last night. Wait. No, that sounds even more embarrassing! Sorry!"
I pick myself out of the mud while the boy continues to hold an entire conversation with himself complete with karate-chop hand gestures, and slap bits of dirt and twigs off my hands as I rise from the ground, towering over him.
"I'm just a—" The boy stops when he realises that I'm pissed, my face dripping mud, the front of my shirt smeared in a streak of filth. "Big boy," he squeaks out, and he takes a step back, "Really big boy!"
"Are you flipping crazy?" I demand, wiping mud off my shirt, "You can't just sneak up on people like that! Especially not in the middle of the woods! What if I had gun and shot you thinking you were a deer or a thief?"
"Oh, sorry!" The boy, Asa, apologises for the thousandth time, eyes round in astonishment. "I just get really excited when new neighbors show up. You're actually the eighth family to move into the house down the hill. The other ones left in the middle of the night without even saying goodbye! Crazy, right?"
"Was that before or after they met you?" I retort, and then I bend down to pick my earbuds out of the mud. They were supposed to be water resistant, but mud was a whole different story, and it was everywhere. "What are you doing out here anyway?" I ask the weird boy once my initial annoyance wears off, "And why are you dressed so funny?"
"Huh? What's funny about my clothes?" Asa frowns and looks down at his baggy sweater with an owl stitched on the front and baggy jeans. Along with that, his curly hair had tiny yellow flowers woven into braids on either side, as if he spent his days lounging in the woods like a weird little fairy boy. "This is what I wear when I help my parents take care of the owls," the strange boy explains, "They like to bite sometimes, and they're kind of messy."
"Owls?" I reply skeptically, "Are you guys like part of a hippie commune or something?"
"No? At least...I don't think so?" Asa blinks his big dark eyes, his eyelashes so long that I swore he could have taken flight right at that moment. What a weird little dude.
"What do you mean you're not sure? Are you from Mars or--"
"Micha!" I suddenly hear my dad holler from the house, "We're going into town for pizza!"
I turn to look back at the woods where his voice yells from and roll my eyes. "Well, thanks for ruining my earbuds," I say, "Oh. And by the way? Don't bother coming over to my house. We're not staying here more than a few months."
I glance over at him to see his reaction to that, and find the spot where he had stood empty.
"Micha!" Dad yells, "Hurry up! Your brother's starving!"
I look all which ways for the strange boy and find nothing, not even a muddy footprint. The boy had vanished into thin air, like an eerie little forest ghost.
I run back home after that, a little spooked by what I'd seen, but shake it off as soon as our new house comes into view. James and dad are waiting by the car, but they're arguing about something before I get there.
"We've talked about this!" Dad exclaims, "Your mother has her own life in New York with your little brother. We reached an agreement, James. This is how it's going to be."
"I hate this!" James snaps, "I hate it! Why did you have to go and tear everyone apart!?"
I jump back when he sprints past me and storms into the house, the front door slamming shut behind him. A second later, I look over at my dad, who's standing there as stoicly as a statue, his jaw clenched. "Well, I guess it's just you and me," he grits out finally, "Pineapples and ham?"
"Actually," I reply, and I take a step back, "I'm going to go pick out a room and start unpacking my stuff. Even if we're only going to be here a few months."
"Micha! Come on!" Dad shoots me a wounded look, but by then I'm gone, vanishing into the house without another word.
The stained-glass door squeaks open when I push on it; the front pane too foggy to see through. In all the scary movies that I had ever watched, it felt like I was living through the opening scene right now.
Back in New York, we had lived in a small apartment and I had shared a bedroom with my little brother, Robbie. James Dean, the oldest out of all of us, had gotten his own room even if he wasn't interested in dating anyone not even if he were to get hit by a car and die tomorrow. So this place was enormous compared to the place I'd grown up in.
The entryway led right up to a wooden staircase, obscurity beyond that. Upon entry, I notice that everything was covered in pink rose wallpaper, peeling like bandages from the top of the ceilings. "Unbelievable," I whisper to myself, and then I start for the staircase to pick out my room, floorboards creaking under my feet.
Dad had gushed about the house even before we started our little trip, and had been pushing pictures in our faces for weeks leading up to our leaving. "It has a butler's pantry, Micha!" He would exclaim, "There's a carriage house in the back!" But nothing had prepared me for actually stepping inside this creepy old house for the first time.
I start looking for a bedroom and find one of the doors already closed, so I assume that's JD's room and I pass by, looking for something that absolutely says my name. Eventually, I end up finding a room towards the back with a window seat and everything. It faces the weird boy--Asa's house in the distance, but I could only see the top of it and part of the yard with all the trees in the way.
I drop all my stuff with a soft thud and stand there in the doorway for a moment. My old bedroom back home had looked nothing like this. There were places for me to hand my football posters now. A spot for a bed that I didn't have to cram myself into. And despite the moth-eaten curtains and barren waste-land, it was actually pretty okay.
I spend the next hour putting sheets over the old mattress in the corner, dust off the windows and filth-covered builtin bookshelves and even go as far as to sweep the floor.
By the time I'm done, it's already late, and a cool breeze wafts in through the window and into the empty room. Later I would move all my stuff from downstairs and unpack since I had about three boxes that were mine and nothing else given the fact that we moved so much.
"It was built in the eighteen-hundreds."
I turn around when I hear my brother's voice and spot him standing in the doorway, still looking pissed about what had gone down earlier. We didn't really look the same, he was darker than I was and looked more like dad's side of the family, and I was always told I looked like my mother, with her doe eyes and dimples in her cheeks.
"The house," James clarifies when he sees my confused look, "The first family who moved here was in the eighteen-hundreds. Since then, like, five people have died in this place."
"No shit?" I reply, and I throw myself back on the bed and stare up at the cracked sealing. "What about the neighbors?" I question, and Asa's face pops back up in my head, those silly braids and weird outfit sticking to my thoughts like glue.
"What about them?" James replies, and he pushes up his glasses, "They're supposedly some crunchy vegans who rehabilitate owls and that's pretty much all I know. Dad said we're going to have to bring them a casserole and introduce ourselves, but I think it's supposed to be the other way around. Why? Did you meet them yet?"
"I don't know," I reply, and I shrug, "It doesn't matter though, does it? Dad's just going to pack us up in a few months and move us to another town. Why bother making friends with anybody?"
"Don't act like that," James Dean replies, and I hear him go over to the window and look outside at our overgrown front yard, "Maybe this time will be different. Dad's been talking to mom, I think he wants to try to work it out with her."
I cover my face with my hands. We both knew that talking to our mother didn't necessarily mean that she was going to catch a plane down here anytime soon. In fact, I wouldn't have been surprised if dad's talk with her resulted in a stack of divorce papers being sent to our new mailbox.
"Hey," James says, and I look over at him when I hear the surprise in his voice, "There's a weird owl standing on the edge of the roof. Come look at this thing!"
I get up and I go over as quickly as I can, then stand in front of the window and peer out at the roof. Sure enough, there's a smallish owl staring back at us, the back of its head a mottled brown, its face oddly heart shaped with big black eyes like an alien.
"Should we feed it something?" I question, and I look over at James, "Maybe it's hungry."
"No," James laughs, "It's a barn owl, they're really good at hunting, so it should be fine without our help. Besides, people are always talking about not feeding the wildlife. It throws off the ecosystem or something, you know?"
I nod my head, but I continue to watch the owl when it does a funny little hop towards my window. "Kee-yak!" It calls in a raspy voice, and then I see it drop something before flying away in a silent rush of feathers.
"What the hell is that?" James mutters, and he opens the window and reaches out.
I watch him turn to me, then he opens his palm.
There's half a cookie there, a little chewed up by the owl's beak, but mostly whole. The odd thing about it though was that owl's didn't eat cookies, I was pretty sure. So what the heck had this thing been doing carrying it around in his beak?
"Huh," James scoffs a little, "Looks like you actually made a friend, Micha. Whether you like it or not."
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