The Catalina Touch Effect (NaNoWriMo2014)

Chapter One

Pendleton Street was one of the seldom business streets, and this one was mostly taken over by hipsters, fashionistas, and teenage girls with too much money. Myles would see these people walk in every day, say the same thing to him, sit in the same seats out on the deck, have the same friends, etc. It was a never-ending life cycle of boring. Every once in a while he’d see little Amanda Fride walk down the street to her own job, but that was every other Wednesday. She worked at the Natural Whole Foods store a couple buildings down. A few years into high school and she had decided to become a vegetarian, which wasn’t that big of a deal, but it was still a bit strange to Myles.

He’d always been a meat eater, but one of the five people was always trying to scare him into thinking meat was slowly killing him. And that one was a constant bother at family meals. Sitting at their little dining table back in Manchester, his mother and father enjoying the silence for once in a while. The one time where the two kids actually weren’t yelling at each other, or at themselves.

Mr. O’Connor never understood the whole “others” thing, not even when he watched his son freak out over the simplest things. There was a night where Mrs. O’Connor had made meat loaf and he watched while Myles bickered about, eyes staring at his plate. He mumbled one thing, then said another, and then would suddenly be pushed forward and snap back to whoever he saw behind him. To his parents, he was crazy. To himself and his sister he was an actual person with feelings.

They just never were able to see who he was bickering back at. Shaky, the one who loved to make Myles panic, was busy with trying to convince him that the meatloaf was poison and that all meats were poison. Pulling at his beanie and wiping at his nose, he looked like a crackhead and surely acted like one. He’d poke and prod at the meatloaf and shake his head, walk to the other side and rinse and repeat. It made Myles nervous until he’s snap at him and look to his father who had the disappointing look fathers would give to schizophrenic sons: the very disappointed look.

He was so used to it by the time he moved out of the house and into his own place. But the look didn’t stop there, oh no. He got the look from his boss all the time. That stuck up little fat girl with dyed red hair and piercings in every orifice she could possibly pierce. Her tanish-caucasian skin compared to his fair Irish skin had always made him feel like a ghost, but the way he towered over her made him feel a bit in power. Even though he was 5’10”, he was skinny enough to look six foot.

She, however, was 4’6” and very angry at everything. Tattoos peered out from under her sleeves and from around her black collar. The green of the aprons made her brown eyes look black. Missy Sullentrup, the bitch of the block.

 -

“O’Connor!” Missy yelled from the back of the dimming café, “get to work!” Myles jolted awake from his seat on the floor and heard laughter around him. One hushed them and he let out a disgruntled sigh. He slid his fingers under his glasses and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, a long night before hand grabbing away three hours of well needed sleep.

“No one’s here!” Myles snapped back. He opened his eyes to see Divide mocking him. His dirty blond, swoopy hair fell over his bright blue eyes, deepened by reddened bags underneath. A 30 year old looking man with tattoos crawling across his skin that moved with his movements and stubble hugging his jaw that glistened in sunlight with a golden aurora, it was like someone had smeared honey across his face and sat him in a light.

From afar, Divide looked harmless, like a man who never quite grew out of his emo teenage years, but to know Divide was a whole ‘nother story. He was a happy person, a coffee-filled engine tank sliding down a salt lake. But then, a quick snap of the wrist, he’d become everybody's worst nightmare. He’d be the thing children fear at night, the one that made Myles’ skin crawl in agony to hear him scream as if he was trying to tear open his own throat.