SHAUNTI [2015 featured story]

Chapter One: Jace and Knox

With his baseball cap swiveled backwards, Jace DeCart sat on the metal bleachers with a can of Coke between his hands.  Looking down at the red cylinder in his hands, he was reminded how ordinary his life was.  He was the perfect picture of a 90’s kid.  He wore loose jeans, black high-top Chuck Taylor’s and an oversized football jersey.  And though Jace would differ in mortified mumbles, he was indeed attractive with his icy blue eyes, chiseled cheekbones and full lips. 

The young women at his high school targeted him at different times during the seasons, hoping to be girlfriend, but he found them only shallow and tiring and avoided them completely.  He was in no hurry for a relationship and he knew why girls dated boys in high school: for appearance and a reason to talk more to their friend girls.

Taking the last gulp from his can, Jace popped the basketball up from in between his feet and began walking down the bleachers.  On his way down, he caught sight of his best friend, Knox Sullivan.  His friend was leaning over the wire fence, talking quite animatedly to a senior track girl.

Smirking, Jace tossed the basketball in the air and caught it in the palm of his hand.  Aiming, he chucked the ball, hitting Knox in the back.  He watched as Knox stumbled into the fence and into the girl’s personal space.  The girl stepped away, her flirtatious smile changed into one of disgust and she slowly joined her passing classmates.  Jace jumped from the bleachers and landed beside his friend.

“She’s not your type,” Jace noted, patting Knox’s bruised back.

Knox pursed his lips and his thick brows twitched in a frown.  “Knock it off.  I like her.” 

Just like Jace, Knox was the young man people didn’t know what he was all about.  He wasn’t brooding or quiet by nature like Jace, but he had aspects of an older adult his peers lacked.  He enjoyed losing himself in dark literature and mulling over the complexity of the human emotions.   And then, contrary of this maturity, Knox would spend his energy wooing women or pranking his teachers and friends.  He was hardly predictable.

Jace shielded his eyes from the low sun as he watched Knox fetch the ball.  Turning away from the sun, Jace leaned against the wire fence with his fingers hooked around the individual wires. “Yeah, but, she’s not the type you’d like or love later, eh?  She’s a bona fide heartbreaker.”

Knox’s face dropped in disappointment.  He bounced the basketball twice before tossing it at Jace.  “How would you know?”

“I watch.”

Such a line both disturbed and fascinated Knox at the same time.  He wasn’t observant unless he found a reason to.  Jace seemed to do it as a hobby. 

“Is it so wrong to enjoy the idea of hooking up with her?”  Knox said as he slipped on his long-sleeve flannel shirt and buttoned it to the top.  Despite the drop in temperature, Knox was active enough to wear something as simple as a T-shirt and flannel button-up.  The Canadian’s cold weather never seemed to bother him. 

Like his father had been, and still was, Knox was a handsome 18-year-old with dark brown eyes, thin, expressive lips, and angular features structured in such a way that when he got older, he would still look twenty years younger.  “Well, what’s up with you?”

Pushing himself from the fence, Jace tossed the ball into the air, caught it on his backhand, and then rolled it forward beneath his palm.  “Nothing much.  Thought I’d shoot a few hoops, unless you wanted to do something different?”

“Yeah, I would actually.  It’s winter break now.”

Jace’s eyes squinted and a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.  He could just smell an idea exuding from his friend like the cologne Knox so generously applied to himself.  In his natural soft voice, Jace asked, “All right, all right.  Clearly, you have an idea.  What is it?  Don’t tell me we’re going skydiving again.  I will never do that again.”