Gia & Erik
Gia remembers the day, though it was long ago, that Erik and his family moved into the house next to her family’s. They weren’t exactly estates, though they came close with extensive lawns and “wooded features”, so if Gia hadn’t been out in the rose garden that was separated from his yard by a high hedge and the truck hauling in some of their belongings hadn’t had a slipping muffler that loudly announced its approach she might not have immediately met him.
But she was. It did. And with a five-year-old’s curiosity she’d run through the hedge, up to the truck, and met the apprehensive eyes of Erik as he peered out the window of the vehicle at his new home with a big old smile and a ‘hey, how are ya?’.
Even if she hadn’t taken that initiative, she liked to think they’d have met really soon after because some things were just meant to be together. Peanut butter and jelly. Mac and cheese. Bacon and eggs. Gia and Erik. Were those things good all on their own? Sure. Sure. I mean, yes? Gia guessed. But for sure she knew they were better together.
Her stomach growls. She should have come up with that list when she wasn’t hungry! Oh well.
Gia and Erik were inseparable after that first meeting. Or so it felt to her when she was five. She slept at his house. He slept at hers. They played in his yard and hers. They explored their woods. They had at least a hundred favorite spots in their shared world, but the gazebo at the far corner of her rose garden was their special place. Their castle. Their pirate ship. Their bake shop for the one mes when Gia was eight and she became certain she’d be the best baker ever given the chance. And when they reached their teen years, and didn’t play as much, it was the place they sat for horas talking about the stars and the people they met whose behavior they didn’t get or got too much and about the future. And just about everything.
The scent of roses, rising in the dark of night, became locked in Gia’s mind with those conversations. Alone in the dark surrounded by rose bushes releasing their beautiful scents, they could have been the only ones in the world that was both as close as their whispers and as deep as the endless night sky.
There wasn’t a subject they didn’t talk about. The ease with which they rubbed against each other, each buffing the other to a bright shine, could only be expressed as magical. Or maybe even Magickal! It was just that right it felt like an external hand dictated their friendship.
When they got to Upper Levels they went to separate private schools. Erik to an all-boys; Gia to an all-girls. You’d think maybe they’d drift apart. Teens did. Less in common. Less time to shore up their bonds against the inevitable slippage of changing minds and interests and the distractions of attraction which could really take up the entirety of a person’s mind when you were young and such things were new and shiny and full of excitement so you couldn’t think of much else except the object of your affections. Who knew, maybe even when they weren’t young! Gia still caught her mom and dad staring into each other’s eyes sometimes and by their expression it was super clear the rest of the world fell away in those moments, leaving them the only ones in the universe for each other.
Erik and she had never ventured down that path together. That would have been – Gia wrinkled her nose – for lack of a better way to describe it somehow elicit. Even kinda incestuous. Ew. Just no.
She had her boyfriends. Even for a rare wonderful season she had a girlfriend. A soft smile lifts the corners of her mouth as the thought of that time floods her mind with happy chemicals. But when those relationships fell apart sooner or later Erik is always there.
He had his girlfriends. Never a boyfriend but clearly Gia wasn’t much for boundaries and if that was ever what he wanted she’d be there to tell him it was wonderful. But no matter how many others they added to their lives, fleeting or more sustained, they had each other. First. Most. Best friends. Forever.
That was until a few mes ago. It started slowly. Just a bit of coldness. A bit of a sense of loosening to their connection. Nothing was new that Gia could think of. She doesn’t have a new love. Nor does he. He’s looking forward to going to school and she’s secured an apprenticeship at the florist that supplies her family’s parties with floral arrangements. Erik talks about becoming an architect, with emphasis on creating buildings that meld with their landscapes and gardens – vast or small – designed to coalesce into a whole. He’s joked that he’ll fill the external world with life and she’ll do the same for the interior.
Gia presses a hand to her chest and sighs. Those were good dreams. Dreams she clings to as she feels the little whispers of chill forming in the spaces between she and Erik. Spaces that started as inches and slowly grew to be feet and then yards and then it was like the size of her yard and his yard, where they’d spent so many amazing days, formed the gap between them.
Erik never says a thing. Not a thing! He doesn’t acknowledge the distance growing between them and if Gia eludes to it he scoffs. He’d never scoffed at her before. He wasn’t a scoffer!
Gia lifts her hand to play with the charm necklace around her neck. It’s a heavy chain. Gold. With large links. From three of the links hang charms. One was a crystalline rose. Another a daisy, each petal a different colored precious stone. Next to it was a tulip made of rose gold that gleamed pink when the light hit from the side.
The rose was the largest and as the first charm Erik gave her, when they weren’t more than eleven, it held the biggest place in her heart. He gave it to her the dia the first rose she spliced with her Grammy’s help bloomed. The charm was a reminder of her first big triumph. It was everything.
The tulip he gave her after she came down with a horrible fever in the middle of the Summer when she was twelve and had to stay inside for several mes, missing the best part of the blooming. He told her if she couldn’t go to the garden he could bring a bit of it to her. It was pretty mature for a boy of twelve to say. She’d always thought his dad had maybe prompted him a bit. Or his mom. Definitely likely his mom. Still, whoever’s words they’d been Erik had been the one to say them.
The daisy was from the first dia at her new school; the first dia they were truly parted. He said the 5 colored petals represented each of the five dias when they’d be apart; he at his school, she at hers before they got to spend two together. At fourteen he was becoming much slicker. Those words she was pretty sure were his own!
The necklace was her prized possession; the physical representation of their connection and the anos they shared. She treasured it more than the double strand of pearls her parents gave her on graduation from her private school. More than the car her Grampy gifted her on her sixteenth. And she did love that car. It was pink. A two-seater coupe. With beige leather interior. And a convertible roof! It was her in vehicular form. But she did not love it as much as she loved Erik.
As a friend! Not in that way! Geez.
Today was the dia. The dia she was going to confront Erik about the distance growing between them. The dia she was going to ask him what she had done wrong. Why didn’t he care for her any more?
No. She sniffs then blinks back a tear. Or two. Be positive, Gia! But also don’t be ‘that girl’! Because if she asks Erik those things – in a way less hysterical way! – and he looks at her like she’s nuts it will break her open.
No. She firms her chin. That isn’t going to happen. Not an option. Nope.
This was probably all a big misunderstanding. Hormones. Anxiety about how her life was changing making her see their friendship changing too.
That’s all it was! Positivity, Gia!
Holding tight to the thought, Gia walks over to the hedge separating her rose garden from Erik’s manicured lawn. She pushes through the hedge gate their parents put in long ago, laughingly saying it made more sense than having them run through the hedge over and over until a path was worn thin in the greenery. Gia draws in the scent of roses as she steps from her garden to his lawn, drawing strength and determination in along with the scent.
The scent of roses was the scent of hers and Erik’s relationship, the scent of nights cementing their friendship in a gazebo under a starry sky and laying their hearts bare to each other. It was only apropos she draws a big breath of it in as she forges forward to cultivate their – possibly – withering connection.
Roots of rose bushes growing side-by-side intertwining. That was the image she’d hold strong in the forefront of her mind. Roots of rose bushes intertwined.
She strides across the lawn. Approaches the front door. Knocks. Erik’s mom opens the door a few mikros later.
“Hi, Mrs. Whistler. Is Erik in?”
“Hi, Gia. He’s in the garage working on his bike.”
“Oh. Thanks. I’m just going to–” Gia waves vaguely in the direction of the garage
Mrs. Whistler nods and smiles. “I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you.”
“Will he?” That just slips out. Gia fingers her necklace.
Mrs. Whistler’s smile dims. Her expression clouds but then clears, like a beam of sunshine on a swathe of grass. She lifts her chin. “He will.”
Gia needed to believe that. “Thanks again!”
She turns and hurries towards the garage. Her feet trip over each other a little in her haste. Oof. Slow down, Gia! You don’t want to be out of breath for this!
Her fingers close on the chain of her necklace as she takes several steadying breaths, then she squares her shoulders and points her chin towards the garage.
The big double barn doors to the side are open. She approaches them with newfound determination and strides inside. Only to come to a halt as she sees the empty space. There’s Mr. Whistler’s prize roadster, parked alongside Mrs. Whistler’s ostentatious but still more sensible SUV. Next to that is Erik’s coupe. And next to that his bike lies on its side.
Weird. Was he working on something in the undercarriage? She walks over to right it and almost slips in a pool of water on the floor. That very much should not be there. She frowns and pokes a finger into it then raises it to her nose. There’s no scent. She doesn’t think it’s gas. But she doesn’t know enough about mechanics to be absolutely sure.
Erik would never leave his bike in such disrepair. His dad helped him restore it. They spent horas on top of horas over the course of several anos working on it. It was special to him. He might have changed recently – if he really had and she wasn’t all hormonal and stuff – but he’d never change enough to treat this bike badly.
Head cocked, Gia makes her way around the cars. Walks their exterior. Even stoops down to see if Erik is scooted under one of them for some reason. No. Nope. And no. No Erik.
She walks to the back of the garage and up the stairs to the garage’s attic. It’s as it’s been before when she and Erik used to play up there. Neat shelves of books and knickknacks and bottles from when Mrs. Whistler went through her canning-phase as she’d called it. Boxes pressed up under the slanting eaves. No Erik.
Gia plants her hands on her hips. Her mouth forms a pout. Could Mrs. Whistler have been wrong about where Erik was?
She heads back down the stairs. At the bottom she sees some paper sticking out from the lowest step. It was out of place. Mr. Whistler, and Erik by extension, kept a very neat garage. Nothing out of place. Witness the shelves in the attic and the tools fastened to tackboard on the side wall.
Stooping she picks up the papers. She and Erik’s names catch her attention at the top of the first page. Underlined. Like they were demanding she read them.
Huh.
Is it nosy if her name is there? The thought flits through her mind even as her gaze scans the line under their names.
“Gia remembers the day, though it was long ago, that Erik and his family moved into the house next to her family’s.”
She stops reading. Her eyes go wide as she rereads the line, her lips moving like that will make them change. Or not change. Or make sense. She blinks. A lot. She blinks an awful lot. Until her eyes are a bit dry. Then she reads the line again.
Her vision blurs a little, going in and out with the rhythm of her pulse. The words smear but she can still read them
“Gia remembers the day, though it was long ago, that Erik and his family moved into the house next to her family’s. They weren’t exactly estates, though they came close with extensive lawns and “wooded features”, so if Gia hadn’t been out in the rose garden that was separated from his yard by a high hedge and the truck hauling in some of their belongings hadn’t had a slipping muffler that loudly announced its approach she might not have immediately met him.”
A shiver skitters down her spine. How?
She blinks. Once. twice. Looks down at the papers in her shaking hands. How is exactly what she was thinking before she came here in these pages? How?!
What kind of creepy stalker Magick is this? Shit like this is why some Nulls feared Magickers!
Heart in her throat she looks around. She wants to move but her feet feel frozen in place. So instead she pivots her head. Left to right. Right to left. The feeling of eyes on her intensifies but she can see no one. Just garage walls and vehicles and empty air. She parts her lips and pulls in short breaths. Her head feels a little light.
From behind her comes a voice, “Gia?”
She tries to whip around as the hairs on the back of her neck stand on edge. But her feet won’t move. Her feet won’t move!
“Help! Someone help me!”
“Gia?” The voice calls from near Mr. Whistler’s car this time. The word is a little slurred so the ‘i’ in the middle sounds strange.
Once more she tries to move, whether towards the sound or to run from the garage like demons chased her. And once more her feet will not move.
She jerks around as best she can with one hand out, one still clutching the pages, eyes wide as she searches the empty garage. When something brushes the back of her neck she releases all pretense at calm and screams.
Enter The Woods 