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Chapter Three: Disasters Are Truly MiraclesA/N: I did something SO stupid the night before last, I was making spaghetti at like 11 o'clock, and listening to Jay Lenno, and I was using metal tongs to get the noodles out of the pot. The water was heating the metal tongs, making it really hot already, when I decided to be an idiot and turn my end of the tongs down, letting the boiling water rush over my hand. Amazingly, I did this about three times in a row, and I didn't drop any noodles on the floor! I learned from an incident of microwavable top ramen back in 3rd grade, not to stick my hand under cold water after burning myself. So luckily, my hand doesn't hurt a bit.
I realize no one's reading this... but oh well. It's fun to write and that's all that matters (except it IS nice to get a review every once in a while). Cough.
Happy reading!
Mercedes
~*~
Tuesday morning, Sylvie couldn't maneuver very well, but she fixed herself two cups of Hot-Chocolate-Bang! and was suddenly spouting gibberish as usual. Liz did her best to disregard her friend's behavior, and concentrate on her new copy of National Geographic, but Sylvie was just a tad too bouncy and spilled Hot-Chocolate-Bang! all over Liz's pajama bottoms.
"SYLVIE!"
"Sorry!"
"You're a hex!" Liz yelled. Sylvie handed her a towel, and Liz began mopping the brown liquid out of the Rainbow Bright girl and her pony, muttering obscenities under her breath. Sylvie took this as a subtle hint that she needed to calm down... and also get Liz to ease up on her, save herself from glares during lunch.
"So ... how's Basil? Did you go see a movie or ... what?" Sylvie wasn't really interested in Liz's love life, but it usually got her talking.
"Oh ... we rented this Bjork movie. It was really good." She smiled, not going into detail.
"What movie?" Sylvie was sure Liz nor Basil had actually watched it.
"Umm ... I think it was called Dancer In The Dark."
"What was it about?"
"It was a musical, about Bjork ... well, her character." She responded airily.
"You didn't watch it did you?" Liz began to open her mouth but she cut her off. "I didn't think so! What's that old song by Shaggy? Sex-Machine?"
"So, who's Kaylie's boyfriend?" Liz asked, changing the subject whilst blushing fervently.
Sylvie shrugged, "She won't tell me, she's being really secretive for some reason ..."
Liz laughed, "Maybe she's dating a super-hero, like Clark Kent or whatever his name was ... Superman y'know?"
"Ooh! I met Batman yesterday! But, um, Kaylie calls her boyfriend 'Jack' instead of his real name, I swear she's dating Leonardo DiCaprio."
"Wait... back up a second. You met Batman?" Liz asked confused.
"Sorta, I was walking down the street and this guy rammed into me ... like he didn't have eyes or something. He knocked my backpack on the ground and helped me pick my shitt up. Batman. No eyes, but helps humanity."
"Was he wearing a rubber suit that defined his perfectly-chiseled features?" Liz asked dreamily.
"No, he was wearing glasses though."
"Ooh, he must read a lot! Did you get his name?"
Sylvie shrugged, "His name was ... something with an 'E' ... like Eddie or Ethan or Eunice."
"Eunice?! That's a girl's name! That's old fashioned too ... They named their daughters that back when Muriel was popular!"
"Well I don't remember! I didn't think to stash it in my long-term memory!"
"Oh well ..." Liz sighed. "It doesn't really matter anyway."
They went about their morning, Sylvie muttered about not doing her homework and having to do it at the break of dawn. She mainly brought this up to counter once more about how irresponsible she truly was, Liz just smiled and pointed out that on account of her actually getting up at that time of night in order to do her homework that was due seven hours later, made it pretty clear that Sylvie was getting responsible.
"LIAR!" Sylvie had hollered, quite distressed by Liz's assumptions. The one thing that separates a child from an adult is responsibility, deep down, Sylvie was afraid of this. Pretty much like the 'Lost Boys' of Never Never Land, and Peter Pan -- Tinkerbells, evil pirates, pixie dust, and crocodiles... the only rule being 'Never Grow Up'. Why grow up? Why not stay young and beautiful, wrinkle-less, and ageless -- frozen still. Timeless. If she'd had the money, she may have considered cryogenically freezing herself -- but she would have whimped out at the last minute anyhow. Besides being afraid, Sylvie absolutely HATED being cold, she was warm blooded and did not care to be frozen.
The boy behind Sylvie in math class had a brace on his knee, and was forced to use crutches. Her English professor, Mrs. Hickey (she was often ridiculed behind her back for her name), had decided to read Sylvie's paper on Fransisco Pizzaro overtaking the Incan, aloud for an example -- over-pronouncing every misspelled word, and pointing out various mistakes in front of the entire class. She was sure this was an act against human rights, and uncivilized behavior, but when she tried to convince Liz of this, all she got in response was a 'hmm', or a 'fun'.
"You're thinking about Basil aren't you!?" Sylvie accused; though Liz only smiled, tilted her head, and giggled dreamily. Disgusted, Sylvie excused herself from lunch and hurried off to wait for her next class, pulling out an old copy of 'Daughter of Fortune' by Isabel Allende to pass the time. Interestingly enough, Sylvie had read the book before it had been shoved into the limelight of Oprah's Book Club; which Sylvie was positive of only being a tool for the feeble-minded to expand their horizons, and set down the wild-west-historical-romance novels. "I bet the authors don't get paid HALF as much as Oprah does for that little stamp on the cover," Sylvie had once said. "I bet she gets royalties for it!" Because of this, any book she happened to pick up with an 'Oprah's Book Club' stamp on it, she would put down and find an "unsoiled" version. Not that she didn't like Oprah, heck, the woman was brilliant! But on account of the world being so entranced with her, she decided to rebel against Miss Winfrey. Not violently, but not exactly following Gandhi's path of starvation...
"Sylvie?"
She looked up from her book and saw a familiar face, limping on his crutches. "Jamie?"
He laughed, "Yeah, hi."
She smiled, an awkward, frightened smile. "Hi..."
"Could you help me tie my shoe? I can't bend down..." He looked embarrassed by his request, but Sylvie took sympathy on him, and scooted over towards his foot. The thought of sitting in the middle of a college hallway, just before people were about to head back to class, never acurred to Sylvie as being potentially dangerous. Later, Sylvie wondered if all danger was really fear for the better.
A tremor of shoes whirred through Sylvie's ears. One pair standing out, as it ran hurriedly in her direction -- eventually tripping on her seated figure, and landing remotely on top of her.
She looked up and what did she see?
Well certainly not Jamie, nor the brace on his knee!
A pair of blue eyes, locked with hers, like small whirlpools;
framed by black rimmed glasses, his hair curled like bobbin spools.
Once again, Batman managed to cause some damage--
Jamie was sprawled on the floor, as peers rushed to find some bandage!
"YOU!" Sylvie said after the moment ceased to be enchanting.
"Sylvia?" Elijah asked uncertainly.
"No. Sylvia is my mother's name. I'm Sylvie."
"Oh... I was close though," he smiled down at her, hence the odd landing; then shifted off of her, standing up Elijah offered his hand to Sylvie, who took it gratefully.
"Thanks," she said absentmindedly, he smiled in return. "So... how long have you gone to-"
"I don't... I'm visiting, and now I'm lost."
She giggled, 'lost? What is he, a puppy?' Elijah gave Sylvie a curious look, his eyebrows perked together. 'Aah! He's a fricken dog! There go my shoes...'
"What's so funny?" Sylvie was struck with a mental image of him chasing a tennis ball across a vast green soccer field; tripping over his legs and sliding across the mud holes that were spread erratically across the field.
"Um, nothing. Just the thought of... someone being lost," she tried to laugh realistically, but it was obviously forced. "It's just rather amusing, is all..."
"Oh," he laughed embarrassedly. "So, um. How are you? Nothing broke in your backpack I hope..."
"Hmm?" Her mind had wandered once more, as it often did. "Oh! No, I didn't have anything fragile in there... unless you include pencils."
"I feel bad for pencils..." he blurted. "I mean, no one appreciates them anymore. We bite them, we break them, we sharpen them -- and are we ever considerate about how they like to be treated? No. We're cruel, inhumane-"
"Pencils don't have feelings, Elijah. Don't feel bad for the pencils, they're just manufactured tree limbs -- it should be the trees you're concerned about. We need those in order to survive, otherwise our entire ecosystem will faulter and wither away like somebody with cancer. Actually, we kind of are like the cancer of earth." Sylvie said thoughtfully.
"Hmm, I never looked at it that way..." A moment passed, where both stood entranced with their thoughts of how destructful mankind truly was. However it wasn't too long, and Elijah's voice broke the silence. "But I suppose you're right."
"But then, you're right too... in a way. Since if we treat pencils badly, what else are we going to chew on? Or drum against our desks?" Sylvie pointed out.
"Exactly, it's the principal that counts. Pencils, are just a metaphor of how we treat our surroundings." Elijah laughed suddenly, "My god! I didn't know pencils could be so enlightening!"
"Me neither! But then, appearances are always deceiving." She preached the overused line, unaware of the debate that Elijah would pose on account of it.
"Always? What about disasters? Are those deceiving of their true meaning?"
"Well... in a way, they can be for the better. Take war for example. At first it may sound terrible and heartbreaking -- but aside from all those men who fought, and died bravely, that's less money their families have to spend on feeding, clothing, housing, and less energy they have to spend thinking about what to do with them. Now that's aside from the feelings of loss, and suffering. But on a whole, that's one less person littering the earth."
"Maybe... but what if they were some naturalist prodigy? That, because they died, couldn't turn humanity around into thinking about where to leave an empty pop can."
"On a wall." Sylvie answered. "That way, a homeless person can recycle it for you, and you're helping humanity, since they get the five cents. So, really that's not even littering."
"Well you just have the answers to everything, don't you?!" Elijah teased.
"Yes. Yes, I do." She answered pompously.
A door opened behind them and a gray haired man poked his head out, "Miss Castro will you be joining us anytime soon?"
"Erm. Yes, sorry." Her professor descended back into the room, "It was nice to talk to you again... see ya." She was on the other side of the doorway when Elijah stopped her.
"Wait!" She looked at him, silently asking 'what?' "How do I get to room two-five-oh?"
"Miss Castro..." his voice was gruff and deep. "Are you coming to class or not? If not, please close the door."
Her eyes switched from the Neanderthal and the lost puppy; which was more appealing? Puppy! No contest. She closed the door and began walking down the hall, Elijah followed hurriedly.
"You junkie..." he commented, "skipping classes so you can play with boys."
Sylvie scoffed, "You're not a boy! You're a super-hero, remember?"
"That's right... a bumbling mass that semi-resembles Batman."
"Damn straight."
The winding campus of Long Beach City College, would have easily made someone lost... a puppy would have been mauled by barely-past-teenagers cooing and playing with it's floppy ears. Never living to see the other end of the campus. Sylvie imagined puppy-Elijah crying in a corner, crusty mud crumbling off his coat, and girls force feeding him crunchy tuna.
'Sylvie you don't even LIKE dogs!' She screamed to herself, 'but he's not REALLY a puppy... he just reminds me of one.' Of course he does.
They arrived at the right building finally, and found room 250 right by the door, which opened suddenly and a rush of people came pouring out of it. Elijah and Sylvie were pressed against the wall, waiting for everyone to pass, when she watched him jump in front of a girl and wrap his arms around her.
"Elijah! What are you doing here?!"
"I came to see you!" He exclaimed happily.
"KAYLIE?!" Sylvie's jaw dropped, and Kaylie turned three shades redder.
"Sylvie?!" She cried, surprised and scared.
"Hey, you two know each other?" Elijah chirped with a smile.
Sylvie pointed at Elijah but her eyes were stuck on Kaylie, "Is he... your..." she was unable to finish her sentence. "The actor?" She asked instead.
"Yeah... he's him." Kaylie said quietly.
She gulped, "Oh."
"So... Batman has a real identity..." Liz mused that night after Sylvie had spilled everything that had happened. Sylvie sat on Liz's bed stressing about her life, as Liz sifted through her closet, searching for something to wear that Friday, for once they were actually invited somewhere and the thought that Basil could be there made all the difference. "That's really seven degrees of separation..."
"I KNOW!" Sylvie whined, "What to do, what to do! Kaylie won't tell him what happened, we already went over that, and I have no way of contacting him unless I go through her address book..." She looked at Liz hopefully. "We could do it."
"Sylvie, no. That's a bad idea."
"It would be so simple! We could just pick the lock to her front door... sneak in when she's at work, and WAMMO!" She hit her fist into her palm in emphasis. "We'd have his name, number, address, city, state, zip-"
"And you plan to sabotage their relationship?" Liz inquired.
"Yes. No. Maybe. I haven't figured that out yet." Sylvie sighed. "But when I do, you will be proud of me Liz, you truly will!"
Liz groaned, "Will I..? Sylv', you need to be practical, not just acting on impulse all the time. That doesn't solve anything, it only makes things worse. In which case... I can't help you."
"Of course you can. I'll blackmail you."
"SYLVIE! Breaking and entering is a CRIME! And this isn't serious talk is it?"
"Yes. It's serious. IT'S KAYLIE!" She fell back onto the bed dramatically. "Batman can't have Poison Ivy, she's mine."
"And who are you?"
"Catwoman. And you're my sidekick!"
"No... I'm Batman's sidekick, Batgirl." Liz's words made Sylvie whine even more.
"LIZ! NO! He's the BAD guy! You're supposed to be on MY side!" Liz walked over to the bed and grabbed a pillow, hitting it in Sylvie's face. "You can be Harley, the clown chick, you always said her outfit was cool!" Sylvie tried, once the pillow had been removed.
"No."
"Nazi."
