The Catalina Touch Effect (NaNoWriMo2014)

Chapter Four

“You’re a real jerk sometimes, ya know?” she asked, then fading away without another word. He sighed, letting his arms fall defeatedly. It didn’t help that Missy was staring angrily at him. He looked away, out the window, to see Eli and Jacob walk into the American Apparel and turn on the lights. Opening shift: 9 AM, Thursday morning. Usually someone else opened on Thursdays, not the Holtmans.

“You’re closing tonight, freak,” Missy growled. Myles nodded, taking off his apron. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” she yelled, walking out from the back and towards him. He gasped, then jumped over the counter with a bound of unbelievable strength. He fell into the tile, Missy taking her fatty time to run around the counter to try and grab him before he scrambled to his feet and ran out of the Starbucks, into the wind, and to his car parked down the street.

Fumbling in the cold without his jacket, Myles shoved the key into the lock and turned it, seeing Bass playing with his beanie in the passenger seat. The green-eyed man looked over to him and frowned, watching Myles pull open the car door with anger driven into his face with a stake and a wooden hammer.

Myles sat down in his seat and shut the door harshly, looking at Bass with tears in his eyes. He put his hands upon the wheel and looked to the brick wall he was parked in front of. A wall with cracks in the bricks, a bit of graffiti still not washed off, and a piece of chewed gum stuck to it. “Myles?” he heard Bass ask worriedly. He instead ignored him and let out a soft whimper, crying into the wheel of his little Mazda 2002.

He drew a couple of quick breaths, settling his hands onto his lap and resting the side of his temple against the wheel to look over at Bass.

“You don’t look alright, Myles,” he sighed, putting a hand onto his shoulder. “Tell me what happened.”

Myles sucked his bottom lip into his teeth and bit down, shutting his eyes and yanking his glasses from his nose, placing them on the dash. He reopened his blurry eyes, feeling the warmth of his tears fall down his cheeks and the cold of the car’s air sting at the sudden heat of his face. He shook a little with every breath, taking a couple of minutes to calm himself down. In. Out. Over and over to settle the breathing.

“I-I messed up,” Myles finally said, afraid of breaking the silence in the car he had created. Breaking it made him cringe and shrink up a bit. Bass nodded, a small smile approaching his face, as if to tell him to go on. “I gave her my number and I… and I ran away.”

Bass nodded against and raised his chin as he removed his hand from Myles’ shoulder. “What did you run away from? Work? Missy?” His questions burned into Myles and made him start to tear-up again, defeated by the wench in the woodfire.

“I’ve had enough, Bass. I can’t stand her anymore.”

“Didn’t you say you’d report her?”

“Yeah, but she said she’d fire me and I can’t lose my job now. Not with you all in my place and needing my help. I mean,” he slowly drifted from his words, losing his train of thought. “I’d have to move in with Jenny.”

“That’s not so bad. It’s better than living on your own with us.”

“But she wants you all gone just as much as Missy does. Maybe even more…”

Now this was becoming a problem. Everybody wanted them gone, but now more than ever. People had always wanted them to disappear from Myles’ head without mercy to how the boy himself felt about the issue. They had no idea he didn’t understand that other people couldn’t see them until 5th grade when it was getting out of hand.

Bass didn’t realize it, either. He thought he was real, an actual human being in the real world, just enable to touch and manipulate things. He thought it had to do with the amount of God-given talent someone was allowed to have, and Myles had a lot. But then he was sat down with Jenny and their mother.

The tired face of their mother, Kennedy O’Connor, stared down at him with bags under her green eyes and blonde hair pulled away from her face into a maid’s bun. Her hands lay on her thighs and Jennifer, a young little 8th grader, big cheese of middle school, was looking away. She was ashamed of telling him. She didn’t want to be there.

“I can’t lose you,” Bass remembered telling Myles that very night, holding him as he sobbed into the man’s chest, soaking his Pokémon tee-shirt with tears. “Never ever.”

“Never ever,” Bass said to the adult Myles, feeling his stomach turn just looking back to then.

“Never ever,” Myles repeated. “Home we go.”

“Don’t wanna be a fool for you, just another player in this game for two,” the cell phone sang, Justin just beaming about. Myles smacked his hand upon his phone, groggy from his mid-morning nap. He slid it open, then put it to his ear.

“Hello?” he groaned. “Who’s this?”

“This is Catalina Touch from Paper Soldiers.” Myles shot up to a sitting position and grabbed this his glasses. “And this?”

“Myles O’Connor, from Starbucks.”

“Ahh,” she sighed. “I thought so.” Flirting? Was this flirting? This was flirting. Or was it? “So, wanna hang out? Or did you give me your number to go on a date?”

“Which ever you’d um… you’d like,” Myles stammered. “I mean, it’s really up to you. Promise.”

“I think we should go out on a date,” she said. Myles felt his face heat up and got a look from the sudden appearance of Bass.

“I’d like that, actually. A lot.” Bass smiled at Myles’ words and sat on the bed with him, looking out the window. “Where to?”

“Paper Soldiers?” she asked. She started laughing and Myles chuckled, but she actually meant it. “Discounts and I’ll pay.”

“Sounds great. Tonight?”

“Seven?”

“Pick you up?”

“Oakton Apartments?”

“See ya then,” he smiled, then heard her hang up. He set his phone down and smiled brightly at Bass. “I just got a date with a pretty girl,” he laughed. He sank back into his sheets and put his glasses back on the bedside table, then set an alarm for two, quickly falling back to sleep.