...it's not even funny. Or is it?
Because she is not crying, exactly?
I think she might actually be ...laughing ...at me?
"Okay yeah, I suppose that would tend to explain a lot of my more questionable fashion choices, huh?" Her wicked smirk returns with a vengeance.
"So what was it that gave me away? Was it my sparkling personality? Or these uber cool blackout shades that I'm forever rocking? Or... I don't know ...something slightly more subtle?" She the wiggle'waves the long white stick in her hand. "Like maybe the big white tap-tap stick in my hand?"
"I'm seriously sorry, I swear I didn't know you were... you know?" I stagger searching for words that will make this all good and find nothing.
"So I know what now?" She tilts her head back and stares down at me thru her nightshades. "Oh, so you're sorry that I'm blazing blind? Or you're just sorry that you didn't know I was blazing blind before you came all the way down here to pick a fight for a blazing blind girl's honor? When you could have just kept zoning out up there at the top of the bleachers, or whatever you were doing?"
"Ah...neither?" I falter searching for some better words, any words at all that will make this cool. "I'm sorry, that I didn't realize that you were ...whatever? Before I opened my stupid mouth and said, 'Oh Holy Hell, you're blazing blind'. Like maybe you needed someone to point this out to you, just in case you forgot?"
"Hmmm, an oddly decent answer." She slowly rocks back and forth. "So you're almost quick on your feet for a tough guy. Which means you're probably not as slow as you sound, Mr. Nobody."
"Ah ...thanks? I think?" I reply cautiously, still trying to buy time to regain my balance back.
"So does Mr. Nobody have any other names? Like maybe those one might find on ...oh let's see ...two official pieces of identification?"
"Dare...ren Dean?" I stumble through my own name like a mental patient.
"Well greetings and salutations, Dare'ren Dean. As you might have heard earlier they call me Batgirl." She intones huskily, and then burst out a low chortle. But when I don't reciprocate in kind she quickly slows her roll. "And I'm the only one laughing at my own joke ...yet again."
"Welcome to my world," I grumble under my breath because this whole scene with the Strange Girl has gone seriously sideways on me.
"Okay, let's try this again. I'm Maybe Grimm." She cautiously extends her left hand out to me at an oblique angle to shake. "Not Maybe, like in a possible probability, but...May...Bee. Two words, like the month and the buzzing bug that stings."
"Nice to meet you, May...Bee?" I repeat cautiously. I uncurl my fist from the socket and hesitantly take her slender hand in mine, which she instantly clasps tightly as if her life depended on it.
My first tactile impression of her hand is like everything else about this girl, a study in strange. While her elfinine hand is small and slight, there is a tensile strength to it. Albeit, with some rough calluses in odd places that one wouldn't expect to feel from a typical girl's hand. I can only assume that the thick calluses around the webbing between her thumb and index finger are from swinging her Shaolin walking stick around. But the spider web of scars I see skittering across her knuckles and over the back of her hands remain a mystery to me.
I hesitantly try to break the contact with her, not wishing to be any more insensitive than I have already been with all my "wait and see" comments. But then she does something strange, she catches my fingers with both her hands and leans down and slowly breaths over my skin. She doesn't sniff or smell at me, but rather slowly inhales the air over my hand, like perfume.
"Well, at least you don't smoke anything obvious, so that's something I suppose." She seems satisfied enough to relax slightly, but she still doesn't release my fingers. Instead, she traps them with both her warm hands and holds me captive in her cold embrace.
"Don't smoke. Hate the stench, always have." I reply positively.
"But you do smell somewhat bleachy?" She rocks her head to the side. "But not bleach, something lighter like ...chlorine? You were in a pool recently?" The nightshades peer up at me for confirmation of her olfactory deductions.
"Yeah, I'm a lifeguard at the Annex pool. I help teach swimming to..." I almost say the handicapped kids. But somehow I am thinking that won't go over well with my present company, so I opt for the slightly safer term. "...the Special Olympic kids."
"O'?" She intones. And that one elongated syllable from her seems to resonate out profoundly like a sacred Buddhist Om.
"So May Bee, do you like need any help? Like getting off the bleachers and back to whence you came or whatever?" I ask awkwardly trying to extract my hand from hers because her warm hands are starting to burn me a little. So I am thinking maybe that's why she has kept my hand for this uncomfortably long. That she might require my help getting back to wherever she wandered in from. Thankfully she must sense my uncomfortableness with her familiarity because she finally releases my fingers.
"Ah ...like no bro." She exaggerates my accent almost perfectly. "Like I totally got up here on my ownsome. So like yeah, I think I can like ...you know bro ...like get down off the third bench step thing all by my alonesomeness? And then like ...get back from wherever whence I came from ...or whatever?"
"Okay, cool." I drone back dryly. Mostly because it's pretty clear to me that she is mocking me hard now.
"Besides, I don't need to leave just yet. My sinister sister will come to find me sooner or later. Whenever the three remaining brain cells in her head get tired of fighting over who's the blondest of them all. But don't tell her I told you this, okay?" She drops her voice conspiratorially.
"But I think all the peroxide they use to keep her super shiny is causing some thinking problems." She taps the side of her skull and leans slightly back into a smug shrug. "So speaking of dam bramage ...are the Freaks back with their big-city urban gang yet?"
"Naw, not so much." I look back around at the empty grass fields before me and see that the Three Amigos are long gone. Probably back to where ever they go to lay low and lick their wounds. Not that I got the chance to inflict any, but still wounded pride counts, I suppose?
"So tell me something, Lifeguard Darren?" She quirks a sly smirk down at me. "What's a tough-guy-nobody like you doing just hanging out on the burner bleachers anyways?"
"I was trying to..." get my Zen on? Which now sounds even lamer in my own head. "...to just stay cool?"
"Oh, I think you just might have succeeded in that endeavor, Mr. Tough Guy." She smiles wryly behind the Vader shades with a vengeance. "So not to be all judgey or anything, but you're not really from around here, are you?"
"I'm from Sunset, the beach, not the break." I reply proudly, like this would make any sense at all to an outlander, let alone a girl like Maybe.
"Sorry, never heard of it." She shrugs me off. "So pray tell where is this magic realm whence people speak in strange tongues, and jump into fights with freaks with wild abandon for no apparent reason. Like in relation to where we are currently?"
"Ah...South of LA, north of San'D, off the 405 freeways at the O.C. county line by the sea?" And yes, even I am impressed by my level of sensitivity, as I just gave a blind girl standard Socalese driving directions to the beach.
"I see. Well, I suppose all that certainly explains the different accent." She retorts dryly to my very driving directions, but then to my surprise, she suddenly lights up like a bonfire on the Fourth of July. "Hey wait a sec, that's not by Disneyland by any chance, is it?"
"Yeah." I sigh sadly. From a manic and mayhem to the Mouse Brigade in less than two minutes flat has got to be a new record in the annals of a stranger in a strange land, even for me. "I live west of the Tragic Kingdom to the ocean by fifteen miles, give or take."
"Mmmm, Magic Kingdom/Tragic Kingdom? Cute wordplay, I think that one's a keeper." May mugs in appreciation. "But seriously now, what's Lifeguard from Disneyland Beach doing teaching swimming to the Specials at the Annex? Are you working on your summer break from college? Or working off that community service for something you're really super sorry for? And swear up and down on a stack that you will never do that again?"
"College? Hardly." I snort in retort. "I'm still in high school, or I will be when school starts back up. I'm just here staying for the summer with my grandparents, living the dream in San Fallcon. Doing the lifeguard thing is just a temporary summer job for some extra cash, until I can get back home."
"Huh? You sound older to me than high school." May frowns. "But that might be a regional dialect accent thing. Or you're secretly a three-pack a day smoker, when you're not guarding the lives of old ladies and babies, and picking fights with the local freak troop."
"Ah...no. Like I said, I've always hated the stench of smoke." Which is true, just not the true truth as to why my voice is slightly gravelly. I can thank the Neo-Nazi skinhead kid who kicked me in the throat two years ago in the yard fights at Seaside high school for that ...the second to last time I almost died.
"So whaz the what'z then, Lifeguard Dare'ren?" She mimics my accent playfully. "So when you're not at Bikini Beach, you just wander aimlessly from fray to fray, with little or no thought on the matter? Kinda like Kane in Kung Fu? Just walking the earth looking for large groups of freaky kids to get tough on or teach to swim? While using new and exciting curse words, and then get really confused when they run away from you in terror?"
In as much as I hate to admit this, it was all true. Every single thing she just said about me was true truth. This strange enigma of a girl had stripped me down to the core in less than three minutes of meeting her, leaving me feeling more than a little unsettled. Even without the benefit of actually laying eyes on me, I have the strangest sense that this strange girl is somehow seeing into what little is left of my scorched soul ...and found something very entertaining to play with.
"Okay, you got me. The mystery of me is now solved." I shrug her off, and then immediately realize there's just no point to the gesture anymore. "But you also glossed over the whole looking for the Death by Misadventure thing for my tombstone that I've been going in for. They say it's just a phase I'm going through? But I don't know, something about it just feels so right?"
Thankfully I can see that I've amused her again on some level, so of course, I push my luck a little. "Honestly, I've always thought that misadventure had such a mysterious flavor to it. It's not quite stupidity ...but still has that rare quality of 'Dammit! I should have known better, if I just took a second and thought that through'. But like the Buddhist say...Oh well, better luck next time."
"Well, I suppose that's an oddly noble truth in its own wyrd way." She smirks contritely. "So you do this kind of thing a lot, huh? The whole leap before looking thing, that all the kids go in for?"
"Truth be told, it happens more than I'd like to admit." I freely agree. "But for the record, I wasn't actually thinking too much when I walked down here. I was just...ya know...naw not."
"I know naw not?" She frowns slightly at my lame after-action report on my almost fight to the death that apparently was not. By her silent reaction, I see I might have wounded her unintentionally somehow. Even in the brief moments that we have shared, there is something about this strange girl that I want to see her smile again.
"Yeah, you know the whole not thinking thing? It's all the rage with the kids these days, we call it droning. You know, just in case you were wondering all the what's what."
"Wondering all the what's what?" The slow smile returns as does the rapier wit. "Oooo I do like the sound of that. Do you mind if I keep it in my witty repartee for our next gang fight?"
"Naw not, your coo'cool," I reply starting to enjoy the exchange.
It's been a long while since I could talk normally to someone, without feeling self-conscious of my foreignness in this strange land. And I have to admit watching Maybe learn new words, accents and cadences is impressive, not to mention highly entertaining its own way.
"Cool'coo, and another gem to steal." May laughs and grabs air and pulls it back into her pocket, not unlike a captured blow kiss. The gesture strikes me as amazingly endearing and slightly eerie at the same time, as I have yet to learn about her echolocation tricks. "Well aren't you just a fount of funny bunnies? I am getting the sense that you're a very different kind of cat, aren't you Lifeguard Dare'ren? Wait, you're not one of those wounded strays looking for a new home by any chance are you?"
"Yeah, I suppose I am different from other kids around San Fallcon."
"I'll say." May laughs easily. "For starters, no one over the age of eighty-five says San Fallcon, like Fal'cone. For the rest of non-senior denizens of, it's pronounced Falcon like the bird. Or if you're younger then say, I don't know Moses? We call it San Fall. But that's just for the town of San Fall, for everything else around that's not the town, it's the VOD."
"The Void?"
"Valley of Death, or as the cool kids like to call it VD. Where all your dreams go to die, a very slow and agonizing death." She snorts derisively. "Try to think of San Fall as where the Grapes of Wrath went to become Raisins of Retirement, surrounded by all the lovely old hillside vineyards. Which is not unsurprisingly the local lingo is for all the old folks around here, The Raisins of Wrath. Cause trust me, the blazing Raisins are an angry bunch of sour grapes, for sure."
"Seriously." A statement I can finally agree with regarding the hell that is San Fall. After all, it's certainly where all my summer beach dreams went to die among the dry vines.
Our odd eclectic conversation is finally interrupted when a prima ballerina princess fairy on a rampage, who rounds the front of the bleachers starts charging straight at us screaming, "May'may!" at the top of her little lungs.
"By any chance is that a small slightly anorexic looking blonde barbette dressed like a super sparkling fairy princess leo'tard? With the blonde pulled up all the way into a severe bun horn thing, on top of her very pointy and possible malformed head?"
"Yeah, everything you just said, but the pointy malformed head sounds about right." I easily agree, because her description of the charging Fairy Princess from hell is spot on. Complete with glinting glitter sparkles on her skin scintillating in the sunlight.
"So it would seem that my sinister sister has finally found me at long last." May drones dryly. "Just when things were starting to get interesting again. How so very..."
"Gawd dammit! May'May are you okay?" The prima ballerina seethes to a grinding halt on the grass just below the terrace steps.
"Apparently I'm better than just okay. I'm in fact the coo'cool. So who knew? What about you, April's fool? Are you cool too, fool?" May retorts with a wicked grin.
"Seriously May'May, what the freaking hell?" The Ballerina snaps back on the attack. "I thought you were supposed to wait for me outside of your class until I got out of mine?"
"And yet here you are?" May pulls out an old bulky antique pocket watch, which she pops open and then slides her thumb deftly over the face. "Oh, and only slightly over an hour late this time? So what ...you're just now walking out of your ballet class?"
May snaps the timepiece closed, and there is an odd underlying interplay between the two sisters that I don't quite catch on with.
"Seriously Ape'Ape, did you at least get the license plate number of the nice man in the van with the candy this time? Or are we gonna have to file yet another stranger danger police report with no further description other than: The nice old man in the van gave me candy to come with him and play his strange tickle me games..." May adds deadpan "...yet again?"
"O' May'may you're just sooo funny, I almost forgot to laugh." She rolls her eyes up like a knockout punch and then proceeds to laugh about the fakest laugh I think I have ever heard in my life. The fake laugh of the Fairy Princess truly makes all the other fake laughs feel proud that they at least tried to keep it real.
"Oh and hello there." The demonic ballerina stops mid-mini-meltdown and suddenly acts as if she's noticed me for the first time standing there three feet away. "And who's our little friend, May'May?"
"Lifeguard Darren, meet my little sinister sister, April." May gives the barest nods to where her sister is still standing ballerina'ish. "Tantrum in a bleach bottle meet Lifeguard Darren, he apparently works here."
"Okay yeah, I think I've seen you around the pool before." The little Lolita bites her lower lip seductively while looking me up and down almost hungrily. Truthfully, there is something about May's sinister sister that instantly sets my teeth on edge. Like I already feel the onset of an allergic reaction to her childish charms. "Right, you're that one lifeguard guy who supposably teaches all the retarded kids swimming or something, right?"
"Supposably, something like that," I agree evenly. "But we don't call them retards, they don't seem to care for the term much. They seem to prefer "Special", so we try to respect that."
May's sinister sister blinks up at me as if she's not quite sure whether if I've just insulted her or not. And even if, whether I still might be worth hooking up with? But only if I don't stupidly speak up anymore.
"O'?" She seductively mouths the vowel at me. I note that while she has the same "O" habit as her sister, with April it comes off as just not nice. Far more dismissive rather than interested, as in "Oh really...how nice that you think the retards have real people feelings to hurt."
"Well, isn't that just the sweetest thing you've ever heard, May'May?" She beams brightly.
"Sickeningly sweet, Ape'Ape." May intones dryly. "Not unlike the saccharine skin suit personality, you're apparently wearing today."
"Well okay then, on that note." April recovers quickly from the insult. "I'm so sorry, but you'll have to excuse my sister, she's not normally like this. Usually, she just takes a swing at me with her big stick." April drops her voice slightly conspiratorially, apparently another habit the sisters seem to share. "So it must be super close that time of the moon. You know how it is ...girl things?"
"So on that even sadder note, I am sure that the Momster is defiantly waiting for us in the parking lot by now." May waves away towards what I can only assume is the Momster in question. "And you know how much mommy just loves to wait while you chat up random strangers."
It's becoming increasingly clear to me that the cruel interplay between the sisters is clearly not a new phenomenon. Rather a tried and true tactic in an ongoing war of wills.
"I'm not the one who decided to play hide and seek again, am I?" April snaps back on the attack.
"This is true." May abruptly stands up and for the first time I see how truly diminutive she is. At just slightly over five feet tall, her blind chick stick seems to tower over her. And even a step up from me in the stands, we are still practically eye to eye.
Of course, she proves herself absolutely right that she can manage her way without any of my help, as easily she navigates the steps down the grass to stand directly in front of me. Up close I am a full head taller than she is and almost twice her size, as her bulky black sweatshirt does little to hide the thin wisp of a girl underneath.
"Well, Lifeguard Darren what can I say that hasn't already been said? It's certainly been real, and it's almost been fun, but I can't say it's been real fun. You know?" May quirks her final smirk up at the sun. "So I guess I won't be seeing ya around after all then, huh tough guy? So good luck getting back to Bikini Beach in one piece bro."
"Agreed." I drone back. "And thanks again for the local lingo lesson May...Bee. I will most definitely stop using that San Fall'con thing I was trying to get going, and just roll with the San Fall like all the cool kids do."
"Oh, I don't know Lifeguard Darren, somehow San Fallcon suits you. Maybe you should keep for a while and see what you think in a week or two?" She smirks wickedly. "You never know bro, it might make a comeback in these parts, I hear retro is in these days. Anyways, come on Fool take your eyes off the prize, it's time to take your special sister back to the clutches of the Momster as fast as possible. Chop chop sweety, time is money."
"Nice to meet you, maybe we'll run into you again sometime, Lifeguard Darren." May's sinister sister lies sweetly.
"Yeah, maybe." I lie right back.
When May says 'Lifeguard Darren' it sounds like a sardonic nickname. But when her sinister sister says it, it sounds more like a rank and title. Just another prize to be won and hung up on her boneyard wall, with all the rest of her "Love Me" trophies. And even though April is little more than a child at the moment? I get the distinct impression that she is already highly adept at using her little Lolita sexuality as a lever with guys to her advantage.
"Come on dummy, it's time to lead the blind." May quips wryly and starts marching down the grass path at an uneven gait. Her sister takes one last calculating look at me and takes May's extended arm and glides along with May towards the exit.
It's pretty apparent to me, the sisters are clearly not the closest, nor kindest sisters I've ever met in my life. I can't help but note how in tune they are in their strange symbiotic sway. How deftly April effortlessly guides around her sister's slightly truncated gait over the uneven turf with steady, but yet slightly aloof support. While I do not know much about "the dumb leading the blind". April makes guiding her sister look like a smooth flowing dance with the precise coordination of a dervish. The phrase that immediately comes to mind is, "with gracile style and ease did the strange sisters dance away from me that day".
I continue to watch the strange sister's touching dance down to the exit out, when May suddenly stops, whips back around and barks back at me.
"Hey Lifeguard Darren, word of advice tough guy! San Fall sucks dude ...so get the hell out while you can bro!"
And my parting shot back to her?
"Thanks Maybe, not soon enough!"
Yeah, Karma just loves it when you make plans. Which is right about the time the first shiver attaches itself to my spine, and the tremors travel down into what's left of my soul.