Chapter 6
Dad's eyebrows raised the slightest bit. Wow. He was obviously surprised. "Really?"
"Yes!" Mom was practically bouncing off the wood walls with... I don't even know what this is called anymore. Excitement just wasn't a strong enough word to describe it. I honestly was starting to doubt that there would ever be words to express:
A.) How I felt at seeing legit emotions on my father's face
B.) Just how scared I was at how enthusiastic my mother was
C.) These weird feelings in my stomach whenever I thought about Freckles
Mom's phone chimed with a text. "Oh! She got my number. I wasn't sure if she actually would contact me." I squinted at her. She seemed worried for some reason. She shook herself and typed in something short. It wasn't long before she got another reply.
She was ecstatic.
I cringed and went up the stairs. We had already had dinner. Mikasa and Eren were on the second floor doing God knows what, and Connie was in Mom and Dad's room until they decided to go to sleep.
Eren looked up from his manga when I got to the top. "What has her so excited?"
I shrugged. "Apparently some old friends that they lost touch with are here too, and they're moving back to town, supposedly down the street from our house."
He raised his eyebrows. "For real?"
"Yeah."
"Have you met any of them?"
Marco's smiling face immediately came to my mind. I felt a sudden urge to keep the rest of my freak-show family from meeting him. "Maybe."
He looked at me expectantly and waved his hands. "And...?"
He's really super nice, and he never stops smiling. I may not have had much time to talk to him, but I know that he would never say anything bad about anybody, and he probably doesn't cuss either. He's got these freckles all over the place, and sometimes it's hard for him to see out of his right eye because of a stroke, but I wouldn't change that about him because, as he said earlier, that's a part of what made him him.
"He's nice."
His look said, Really? "That's it?"
"What book are you reading?" I asked, hoping to distract him. He lifted it off the floor enough for me to read the cover. "Attack on Titan? What's that about?"
"These giant derpy giants called Titans like to eat humans. The humans built a series of three circular walls to hide behind to keep from getting eaten. 100 years after they do that, these two other Titans crash through the first wall, and everybody is either eaten or has to move inside the second wall. Basically, it's about trying to kill the Titans." He furrowed his eyebrows at the book. "But it's kind of creepy 'cause we're in there too."
I cocked my head to the side. "Whaddaya mean?"
He pointed to a person on the cover. It looked just like him. "That's Eren." He flipped around until he found another person and pointed to him. "That's Jean."
Sure enough, it looked like me if I was a cartoon character. "Weird," I muttered.
I sat down next to him, and he showed me Mikasa, Levi, Hanji, and Connie. By then I was more than a little creeped out. I also noticed that the book Mikasa had a red scarf that she never took off. Our Mikasa had a red ribbon necklace with a charm on it that she never took off. Except she got hers from our Grandma Carla on Mom's side.
"That is really super weird. You shouldn't be reading stuff like that," Mikasa said from where she was leaning over the bed to participate in the conversation too.
Eren shrugged. "It's got a good plot, so I think I'll stick with it, but I don't know."
"I think I agree with Mikasa on this one." I patted him on the back. He just went back to reading. I shook my head and crawled up onto my own bed, pondering the insane, coincidental weirdness of the manga book when my phone vibrated in my back pocket.
I pulled it out and checked what it was. It was a simple "hello" text from an unknown number. I was really confused. Sure, I had acquaintances back home, but there was nobody that I was actually close to. I was more of a lone wolf--or horse, as Eren would say.
Oh my God. Now I was making fun of me.
Anyway, I liked to keep to myself, and loners just have to be alone (A/N: I actually really started laughing when I wrote this. I love that commercial).
Um, hi? I replied.
A few second later, I got a reply saying, Oh, sorry. It's Marco.
How did you get my number?
I could almost see him blush. I asked my mom to ask your parents.
They actually gave it to him? Did this mean that he was thinking about me? And why did that make my heart soar? You know what, I'm just going to blame in on the car ride. Yep. The car ride fucked me in the head, and now it is affecting my reactions towards Marco.
I hope thats okay with you? he sent.
That's totally fine, I said instantly. Wow, I sounded eager.
Ha ha. I'm glad.
So I can assume that you made it home okay?
Nope. Texting you from the trunk of some stranger's car. (;
I found myself smiling in spite of myself. Was this normal? I think his smile is so contagious that it went through the phone.
That's nice to know. Get me some saltwater taffy while you're away? :-)
I'll be sure to do that ha ha.
So it went like this for quite a while. Before I knew it, I had to turn the light on my phone down because everybody was going to sleep.
"Who are you texting that has you so... happy?" Mikasa asked. Leave it to her to ask the questions that I didn't know how to answer.
Was I not normally happy? The answer to that was a big, fat, glaring NO. I didn't even know why I was unhappy all the time. Was it just that I unconsciously knew that I could be talking to somebody like this when I was just talking to anybody else around me? Because everybody else was a dull black and white compared to Marco's interesting and saturated color.
"Marco," I answered carefully.
"Who's that?" Eren asked.
"The person that I met today. The son of Mom and Dad's friend."
"Oh."
"Yeah, Connie found him," Mikasa said to Eren. "Grabbed onto his leg like white on rice. Almost fell over too, but Jean held him up, so he wouldn't fall into the lake."
"Really?" Was that awe I detected in his voice? "Wow, Jean, why didn't you tell me this yourself?" he asked in a voice that always accompanies a smirk. Nope. No awe.
"Wasn't that big of a deal," I murmured.
"Turns out he'd had a stroke when he was younger, so now he has trouble balancing, problems with one of his eyes, and gets tired really easily," she continued.
"Woah, cool."
"That isn't cool, Eren," I hissed.
"Jeez, don't get so defensive. I just meant that he sounds like a cool guy. I mean, he seems like somebody that likes to swim--"
"How do you figure that?"
"Marco Polo. Duh."
I rolled my eyes at his stupid logic.
"He got Jean to smile too, so he's probably really nice. Or funny. Or both. And if he's nice and or funny despite his past, then that means that he's probably resilient, optimistic, and strong willed. Especially if he gets tired easily. Do you know how hard it would be to swim like that?"
"Eren, we don't know if he likes to swim yet."
"Whatever. You get my point."
"What was your point exactly?"
I heard the sound of him pulling the sheets up to cover himself up. When he answered, it was so quiet that I could've imagined him saying, "Maybe he's good for you."
* * *
Quick comment: I hope you liked Eren, Jean, and Mikasa reading AoT. I figured it'd be an amusing joke.
Also, at the top is a picture of the lodge.
--Shelby