Their romance was born not with a bang, whimper, or groping -- as was the fashion -- but with whispered debates about the Brothers Grimm. Shane felt that society would be improved if children read the original, terrifying stories. There weren't always happy endings, she cautioned, and children would do well to know that bad things could happen to them, that witches and wolves were desperate to steal them should they be disobedient or foolish. Eliot thought the world was okay without children being baked and eaten on every other page. Shane, in retort, insisted that the Little Mermaid should be sea foam. He pointed out that she wasn't one of the Brothers Grimm; that she was Has Christian Andersen's and Mary Magdalene was likely her literary antecedent. She kissed him hard in concession.
Their romance was born not with a bang, whimper, or groping -- as was the fashion -- but with whispered debates about the Brothers Grimm. Shane felt that society would be improved if children read the original, terrifying stories. There weren't always happy endings and children would do well to know that bad things could happen to them, that witches and wolves were desperate to steal them should they be disobedient or foolish. Eliot thought the world was okay without children being baked and eaten on every other page. Shane, in retort, insisted that the Little Mermaid should be sea foam. He pointed out that she wasn't one of the Brothers Grimm; that she was Has Christian Andersen's and Mary Magdalene was likely her literary antecedent. She kissed him hard in concession, his known reward whenever his impressed her with his intellect.
During the days, Shane would still cloister herself in some nook of the library collection, waiting for him to find her reading a dog-eared and footnoted personal copy of Franny and Zooey or a book on ikebana. Daily they played this patient game of hide-and-seek as Eliot restored order to the chaos. They both agreed that it little behooved them to make a show to their affection in public -- they were reticent to call what they had "love" because, as Shane explained, "it hardly made sense to use that word anymore." She wasn't wholly sure what she meant when she told him this as she had been devouring the Hemingway section that week. It sounded good and poetical, so she felt it was likely applicable in some way she could not define. Often she found herself thinking the most startling things, many of which turned out to be at least mostly true. Eliot didn't see much of a cause in disagreeing, having too long experienced his mother calling any surging of hormones (maternal or erogenous) love. He was certain that what Shane and he shared transcended the bounds of the endocrine system, though he wasn't displeased with its occasional interjections. Nor, it should be stated, was she.
They had been seeing one another every weekday for nearly a month before they realized their routine. They would share usually-but-not-always chaste pecks during their languorous game, make out inasmuch was possible in a coffeehouse during his lunch break while sharing the same chair, have a quick meal at the diner after he got out of work, and argue over literature on the walk home. Eliot paid for these meals, as Shane ate barely enough to sustain herself and preferred to take her portion from his plate; she was a cheap date who was saving her babysitting money for some far off college experience. The schedule of their days suited them both, since Eliot's friends were scattered around the country waiting for classes to begin again and Shane's friends were not the sort of people she much fancied having meet her new boyfriend. All the same, she liked very much any thought involving the phrase "new boyfriend."
When last she lolled this phrase around in her head -- considerably less enthusiastically -- the boy in question was a nebbish, bespectacled creature half a foot shorter and three years older than she. A cousin of one of her childhood playmates, Peter appeared in her life right around the time that she decided that it was about time to leave Narnia, pick up a suitable sundress from the wardrobe, and experiment with boys in the most literal sense. He had shown obvious, though embarrassingly awkward, interest in her and how her sundress clung to her barely apparent curves. She swayed him with throaty and rote words, having read that such an intonation was supposed to drive grown men to distraction, and plied him with empty kisses. Her middling interest in him over the course of five weeks helped to give him a backbone, which promptly exercised by leaving her for not being attractive enough to suit his new persona. Shane's pride was bruised but her heart, as it had no part in her experiment, was innocent. She had learned how to attract men should she want and could file that knowledge away next to invertebrate taxonomy. The sundress could be decommissioned for a brighter day.
Shane knew in her heart, which beat like a thunderstorm, that Eliot was no experiment. She didn't think in terms of hoarse whispers or hems above the knee with him, didn't and couldn't predict how he would react to her honest affection. He seemed to have all the appropriate musculature she innately felt necessary and desirable in… whatever Eliot might be to her. She didn't like terms like "soulmates," as predestination took all the fun out of discovering things on one's own. She did not think he would don a leather jacket out of nowhere like Peter had, though she was pleased to discover how the thought of Eliot in a leather jacket warmed her cheeks and other areas best not mentioned in polite company.
The coquettishly warm days of July vacated for their August neighbors, Shane and Eliot varying their schedules only to visit the lake Friday afternoons for a swim. It was secluded from passersby and, though it had been the winking secret spot of teenagers since Shane's grandparents were old enough to sneak around, it was currently out of vogue. The teenagers in Shane's town cared less for romantic seclusion, much preferring the outright molestation of the solitary dance club in the adjoining town that catered to people in high school or, for the more brazen souls who had less to lose, the one bar that was lax on checking IDs. Everyone knew everyone else's business, so the bouncers were well aware who could be admitted without endangering the liquor license.
As Shane lied by the lakeside, her head in Eliot's lap, she asked, "What do you get out of working at the library?"
"Pennies over minimum wage and groupies." His eyes felt far away from Shane, sorting through the clouds overhead for a glint of sunlight.
"I beg your pardon!"
He returned to her and smirked. "What did you think you were?"
Shane sat up and gave her best attempt at aggravation, but fell short of a child's pout. "Mildly offended, but answer the question for real."
"I guess I like giving order to the chaos."
Relaxing back onto his lap she said wistfully, "That's kind of noble."
"Plus, I have CDO."
"What's that?"
"It's like obsessive compulsive disorder, only it's alphabetical."
Shane groaned and pushed him, relaxing again on his lap.
Smoothing back her hair to kiss her forehead, he cooed, "What are you up to this weekend?"
"We never spend time together on the weekend, El," she responded, delighted. She was certainly not averse to spending more time with him instead of the podlings she babysat. He was a little saturnine at times, but she had sincere hope that they would continue dating once he returned to college and, though she would be mortified to admit it to anyone, when she joined him there upon graduation. She couldn't deny the attraction of a brooding artist. With a pang of guilt, she continued, "but next week I am going on vacation with my family. You knew that. Why are you asking?"
He turned his head away from her to look at the wind ripple the surface of the lake. The circling ripples intersected and collapsed. "Oh, it's really no big deal. I was just going to have a party at my house and some of my friends from college were going to be there. I wanted them to meet my girlfriend. You know." From his tone, it did not sound like it was no big deal. In fact, he sounded as though he had just seen The Pokey Little Puppy meet the business end of The Little Engine That Could. "It's going to be a sort of 'goodbye to summer' party."
"I would love to go and you know it," she reprimanded him with a kiss. "I'll be back next Sunday night and you had better tell me all about the party then, or I shall be forced to be very cross with you, Mr. Kaspar." She over-dramatized for effect, but this felt suspiciously like their first fight. She had never known him to be passive-aggressive, so she shrugged it off because he pouted in such a cute way. Shane suspected that she was weak against Eliot's extended bottom lip, but she would have to examine in much greater detail to be sure. Samples might have to be taken. For science.
During the week leading up to their respective trip and party, Shane tried to make her future absence up to Eliot. At first he sulked, but by Wednesday he was happier than Shane ever remembered seeing him. He also had begun to cheat at their game of hide-and-seek, making considerably less of an effort to pretend finding Shane was legitimate work.
"I'll be quitting the library soon enough," he reasoned to her when she suggested he try to do more actual work and less obvious osculation, "so I don't see why I should. I've got to build up a supply of Shane in my blood for when you are gone. You wouldn't want me to go through Shane withdrawal, would you? I hear it's horrible. Cold sweats. Babies crawling on the ceiling. Explosive blinking. Hair where there was no hair before."
She restrained an escaping giggle and kissed his cheek, which was slightly stubbly. "We could go a week without seeing one another," she assured him without believing it herself. Shane lied to herself a lot, but she made a habit of never believing it.
"True, but I always have the option of seeing you. That makes all the difference."
Shane could not argue the familiar tug within her that agreed wholly with this point. Being in a car hundreds of miles away from Eliot was a world different from being across town from him should her lips note his lack. Her lips realize this and began craving his, particularly the bottom one.
Ten minutes before the library's closing on Friday, Eliot found her sitting cross-legged in the Social Problems section. He pulled her up eagerly by one arm and knocking over half a shelf of books in the effort. At these fallen books, he only smirked and shrugged. They would be someone else's problem now.
"I have a going away present for you," he smiled, his hands theatrically hidden behind his back.
Shane grinned twice as broadly as he did. She so enjoyed surprise presents, or imagined she would if she could rely upon them coming regularly. "What is it?"
He pulled a ring off of his pinky and handed it to her. She slid it on, finding that it only fit on her middle finger. She balled her hand into a fist and relaxed it, as though trying to imprint the ring on her skin or vice versa. It was a large, silver ankh. The ring made her fingers look long and slender, though this may also be credited to the fact that her fingers are quite long and slender. The ring looked like it belonged on her middle finger only slightly more it did on Eliot's pinky. The ring was his most prized possessions, though he did not pay attention to any of the metaphysical attachments of the symbol. To him, it had been a fortuitous find when he accidentally knocked a hole in the wall of his dorm room while fencing with a mop against his roommate. The ring was inside the hole and, as he did not get charged for fixing the wall, was plainly lucky.
"To remember me by," Eliot added unnecessarily, pushing shaggy hair from his forehead. He did that often. It made Shane want to push him to the floor and ravish him with kisses. More so than usual.
She didn't think that she was likely to have trouble remembering him on her trip, but she conceded to accept it with a warm and lingering kiss that was interrupted with a phlegmatic clearing of throat by the termagant for whom Eliot would cease to work in a matter of minutes.
He didn't walk her home that night because he said he had to get supplies ready for the party. Balloons did not inflate themselves, at least not cheaply. It had been so long since Shane had walked home alone that the route seemed alien. The late setting sun cast her shadow as a long, gaunt creature on the street before her and she wished that the streetlights would flicker on to banish it back to Neverland. She twisted the ankh around her finger like a rosary until she was safely in her room.
We Shadows is a serialized novel being written by Xen, also known as Thomm Quackenbush. It didn't happen to you, your best friend, or his cousin. Why? Because it didn't happen. All persons, living, dead, undead, or unliving are purely coincidental. Any real persons are used fictiously. What you are about to read is not a news broadcast. No portion of this book may be distributed without the expressed written consent of Xen. Feel free to rope your friends into reading it, though. Do it or I start shooting PuppyOrphans.
