Love and War

Chapter Nineteen: A Boy Could Dream

August 2007

        Holiday Boulstridge

       Today was one of those summer days so impossibly hot that I had to drape my hoodie over my shoulders to keep them from burning. And my hoodie was as black as pitch too, so all it was doing was absorbing the sun’s heat. It was worth it to me; I didn’t like the feel of the sun’s rays scorching my cells.

       “Aren’t you hot?” asked Taylor Jude Tramblay. He was eleven - three years my junior and was going to enter grade seven this September while I was about to enter grade nine. He looked like he enjoyed the summer as he was bronzed to the point where his skin was the colour of peanut butter making his turquoise eyes look startlingly blue and his towhead hair lightened until it was almost white.

       “Nope,” I quipped. “I’m good.” Taylor Jude and I were walking up to the house of the boy that I was currently courting; Kristoff. Taylor Jude wasn’t even my friend, he was Kristoff’s friend who had been ordered by Kristoff to come and escort me over to his house as though I had never been there in the first place.

      “It wouldn’t kill you to get a tan,” Taylor Jude said in such a low voice I knew he was taking a jab at me. I eyed him and he looked straight ahead blinking his nearly transparent lashes at me.

       If other people have the right to tan the hell out of their skin, I think I have a right to stay the pasty white colour I was born.

       “So you really like Kristoff, don’t you?” Taylor Jude said in a smart change of subject. I nodded and Taylor Jude swallowed so hard I could see his Adam’s Apple bobbing. “I never quite understood how a guy could like another guy,” of course this made sense as Taylor Jude was straight.

         “You have a girlfriend don’t you?” I asked Taylor Jude. I had always seen him with the same pretty brown-eyed girl and I assumed that they were dating. When Taylor Jude nodded I continued; “It’s a lot like that. Only it’s better because it’s like being in love with your best friend.”

       Taylor Jude stared at me for what seemed like forever and I could tell that he wanted to say something. He opened his mouth and then closed it. Then he ran his fingers through his over-long bangs and kept on walking. “Kristoff really likes you. A lot. He’s always gushing about you to me.” And guess what Taylor Jude was doing? He was bristling! Rolling his eyes and crossing his arms over his chest.

         “Really? I’m glad,” I smiled. I could see Kristoff’s house coming up in the distance. It was a brown speck of brick and mortar on my left side. Taylor Jude’s house was up ahead, it was salmon coloured with a white garage.

       When we finally reached Kristoff’s house Taylor Jude grabbed my arm and kept pulling me down the street. “Kristoff’s at my house. He said that I should bring you there.”

        Why am I the last to know everything? I mean isn’t this the relationship supposed to be between Kristoff and I, not Kristoff and I with Taylor Jude as a go-between? I rolled my eyes and kept going down the road.

         I could see Kristoff sitting under the tree smiling at me from the distance. His dark hair blew in the thick breeze and his cheeks reddened tinting his pale skin with a flush of colour. Dammit, he was cute. 

          TJ sat down on the left of Kristoff and I sat on the right. I know plenty of people that would protest me dating a seventh grader, we weren’t that far apart. Kristoff was eight times cooler than anyone in my grade.

         “Hi,” Kristoff giggled with a laugh.

         “Hey,” I said. “I was going to come down here and ask you if you wanted to go with me on Friday night.” Taylor Jude’s presence was unnerving, but when I looked into Kristoff’s true-blue eyes and I felt comforted. This was the Kristoff I could talk to for hours. He wasn’t going to judge me just because his friend was there.

        “Of course!” Kristoff cried excitedly. “I mean, yeah totally.” He said trying to look cool and act as though going out with an older boy was something that he did every day. We both laughed good-naturedly with Taylor Jude giggling in the background.

        A flash of black fur darted over the lush green grass of Taylor Jude’s lawn before pouncing on him and batting his shoulder. It was a cat, a slim black cat with bright green eyes. It was the kind of pet I had begged Mother over and over again to let me get but she refused because she hated cats and had a supposed “animal fur allergy” though she regularly wore her chinchilla coats out on the town with Father.

        The cat squirmed its way into Taylor Jude’s lap and then curled up into a little ball. Taylor Jude looked disgusted with the cat and curled his lip at it. “Belzenef get off of me and get back inside!” He hollered at the cat, who simply mewed and snuggled deeper into his legs. “God, Ryan you better come out here and get your stupid cat!” He yelled.

        Enter the most perfect boy I had ever seen in my life. Kristoff looked strangely forced in the light of his boy. He looked pretty much identical to Taylor Jude but there was something starkly different about him. He was tanned like Taylor Jude but his looked lighter and more natural as though he had gotten tanned from merely being outside and not from laying down on a pool chair for hours. He wore his blond hair almost down to his shoulders, and his bangs were so over long he had to shove them to the side of his face to keep them out of his eyes. He wore a worn Guns N’ Roses t-shirt with a pair of black jeans – here’s the kicker – he was completely barefoot.

        He walked over the gravel on his driveway as though he was walking on a soft bed of roses. He flicked his eyes from Taylor Jude and then to Kristoff. Then when his eyes landed on me he had to tear them away. I couldn’t help but blush.

       “Holiday, this is my weird twin brother Ryan. Ryan this is Kristoff’s friend Holiday,” Taylor Jude said, in the typical jeer of a brother. Ryan scooped up Belzenef and then threw her right into Taylor Jude’s face. The cat screeched in protest and Taylor Jude screamed like he was being murdered. Kristoff and Ryan laughed openly while I merely chuckled.

         “Hello Holiday,” Ryan said, in his pleasingly smug voice. He gave me a close lipped smile and then scooped up his cat in his arms nuzzling his cat. I couldn’t take my eyes off of his lips, his sun kissed skin, his hair and his bright turquoise eyes. He was beautiful in a different way than Kristoff and Taylor Jude.

        “Dammit Ryan! Just get out of here!” Taylor Jude screamed. There was a thin, long scratch mark that went straight across his nose. His face was bright red and he glared at his brother with pure unbridled ferocity.

       Ryan simply walked off back over the gravel as though he was walking on a smooth hardwood floor. I watched him walk back into the house and I thought that he was simply one of the coolest guys I had seen in my life. How I would love to date him! I would cast aside Kristoff and take Ryan Tramblay any day.

        Though my life wasn’t one of those movies where the desperate nerdy girl gets the hot guy of her dreams. If I got Kristoff to go out with me on Friday I would be lucky. A boy could dream, couldn’t he?