The Curious One

Kelli's Antics

October 29th, 2019

"I cannot believe that girl!" Freya paced up and down in a row of bookshelves, pausing at times to close her eyes before stomping her foot in frustration and resuming her anxious pacing. "She's so careless, and she's caused us nothing but problems today after we found out about her extracurricular activities."

Freya made a pointed glance at Ella, who sat on the ground against the wall, bookshelves on either side towering over her head. She did not contribute to the conversation. Freya let out an annoyed huff before closing her eyes again, squinting with concentration. Not getting the outcome she wanted, she started pacing again before continuing her appeal.

"It's not entirely clear, but I can tell she will lead to something bad happening soon."

"You always think that, though." I pointed out with a smile.

"But it's true! You know her sense of humor, she probably has this whole mystery situation planned for Halloween." Freya commented with stress evident in her voice. Ella continued to keep to herself, turning a page in her book. Freya had had enough. "Ella, you're the one who invited her to live with us, so do something about her erratic behavior before she exposes us!"

"She will do what she wants to do, Freya. Kelli can learn from her own decisions. Also, she is intelligent and cares about us. She wouldn't do anything that bad." Ella mentioned, not looking up from her stack of thick, old books. The angry young woman let out a sound of frustration before stomping away from her quiet friend. She soon turned to me for support, as usual.

"I'm not so sure about that, Ella. She'll listen to you, then, Luna. She doesn't care about anything I say, and I have a feeling even if Ella did anything it wouldn't matter. You're the one who always stands up for her. She'll listen to you."

Freya's eyes held a hint of desperation and fear, so I immediately obliged. "Okay, I'll go find her, don't worry about it." I headed toward the main exit of the old campus library, but before exiting Freya called me back.

"Be careful, Luna. I have a feeling this situation is going to be different than the others. It's too unclear to know for sure, but I think it's going to be different. You know her . . . situation can get her into serious trouble." Sometimes I felt bad for Freya, always having to worry and hardly being able to relax. Order is her main derision of happiness, though, so it works for her.

"Thanks, Freya." I headed out the library, focusing my mind on the current location of my seventeen-year-old friend.

The sun was beginning to set, and it was already becoming dark shortly after six o'clock. The sky had beautiful ripples of vibrant colors; pink, orange, and purple on the background of a golden yellow. The fluffy clouds further illuminated the beauty of the scene by creating a color-highlighting effect around their edges.

I took the time to sit down on a park bench and try to focus on where Kelli was. As soon as I closed my eyes, images flashed by at a rapid speed. At first, the blurriness and colors of the visions were too disorienting to make any sense what I was seeing. Then, I pictured Kelli in my mind, with her genuine friendly smile and dazzling ice blue eyes and long golden hair. I refused to believe that she was just a bad girl. She was a bit reckless at times but in her heart, I knew she cared. That is why I always was patient with her.

Suddenly, the vision came to me. She was at the House of Blues downtown, a dance club and poetry showcase building downtown. Kelli always did like some music, and she enjoyed a good spoken word piece. It was one way she, an above-average high school popular girl and bookworm, and Ella, a shy hardcore classic English Literature major at college, could connect. I could easily recall hearing their cheerful voices down the hallway chatting about different books. Kelli has had periods of intense reading and then more relaxed reading. She hadn't been doing much of it lately. Conversely, Ella had become more immersed of late than ever. Hopefully, they would pick up their late-night book talks again.

It took me about ten minutes to run to this location. I got a couple of weird looks as I ran through the streets, but it didn't bother me too much. The four of us, we had long ago gotten used to odd looks, and we could pass off what earned the glance easily. We had to.

As I reached the dimly-lit club, the bouncer, a young blonde-haired man with rippling muscles and a strong jaw, was slumped up against the doorframe, staring out into empty space.

"Oh, Kelli." I sighed, looking at the out-of-sorts individual. He'd be fine in an hour or so, only waking up very confused and with quite a headache. Hopefully, he wouldn't get in trouble for dozing off on the job.

I continued on into the building, instantly feeling my stomach twist into knots. I felt bile rising up in my throat, but I repressed it. I had to get over my uneasiness with places like these, if not at least to resolve Kelli's incidents. I had a slight fear of the dark mixed along with not liking being in public alone or trapped in tight spaces. At least the club had somewhat decent lighting and high ceilings, so despite all the people packed into the room, there was at least some comfort in that. There was a blue glow from the overhead lights as well as a soft orange luminescence from chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling. These were the only sources of illumination to keep the place from being in complete darkness. It was brighter whenever they had poetry nights, and there were a lot more tables then. Too bad there wasn't one of those today.

I felt a tug in my mind to turn to the left, where I saw Kelli herself pulling some tall young man through the crowd by the hand. In the darkness, I could not tell who she was with, but a ray of blue lit up her face enough for me to be sure it was her. Our eyes connected for a moment, and her light blue ones seemed to glow with surprise. Regaining her composure she turned her eyes away and continued to pull her companion out of the main room and into a conjoining hallway. I immediately attempted to make my way towards them.

Kelli wouldn't make herself hard to find, and unlike before she obviously wanted me to know what she was doing. That was what worried me.