Love-Love || OLD DRAFT

eight - seven

“See? What’d I tell you? Ice cream is the solution to everything,” Aspen said cheerfully as he skipped beside me.

“I’m not a hundred percent sold yet,” I replied just to annoy him. I was sold. The ice cream did help – or maybe it wasn’t the ice cream, I thought looking at the boy next to me. He was still in his stupid tennis shorts. ‘It declares to the world I’m a tennis player,’ he had said.

‘Yes, because that keeps the thugs away,’ I had replied in a serious voice.

Aspen had shrugged. ‘Thugs are afraid of me.’

I had nodded for his sake. ‘Of course.’

‘Except maybe one.’

‘...okay.’

“Does your ice cream even taste good?” I asked. “It’s just vanilla!”

“Hey,” he cried. “Vanilla is the essence. It’s the water of flavours.” He puffed his chest out with pride.

“That’d make sense, except that water doesn’t have a taste.”

Aspen pouted. “Why would you –” A sharp ringing cut him in midsentence. The both of us looked around to find that the phone in the nearest phone booth was ringing.

We ignored it and kept walking through, what I like to call, the afternoon crowd.

“I forgot what we were saying,” Aspen admitted.

I took my time licking my activated charcoal Nutella ice cream, and then said, “I was saying vanilla is lame and you were –” A sharp shrill ring cut through the air again. There was another phone booth on our left that was ringing this time.

“Okay, that’s not weird at all,” Aspen exclaimed.

I had a bad feeling in my gut which I gulped down. “Coincidence,” I said in a voice that I hoped was nonchalant and carried forward.

Turned out – it wasn’t a coincidence.

As we walked along, the ringing of the phones in the public telephone booths kept following. When it happened for the fourth time, Aspen stopped and walked towards the booth. Or at least, tried to.

“What’re you doing?” I asked, stepping in front of him to stop him.

He looked at me like going to pick up a mysterious phone call was the most normal thing ever. “I’m just going to check what’s up.”

“Are you crazy?” I cried. “In horror movies, this is how people die.”

“Well then, it’s a good thing we’re not in a horror movie.” He tried to walk past me and towards the creepy phone booth but I stopped him again.

“Stay here. I’ll go check it out,” I said.

Aspen raised a brow. “What happened to ‘in a horror movie, this is how people die’?”

I held out my ice cream for him to hold. “If I die, you can have my ice cream and come to terms with what real flavours are.” I caught his free hand and let him hold the cone – anything to keep him from going near the clearly-suspicious phone.

“Whatever you say, my handsome knight in shining armour,” I heard Aspen say dryly as I left him there and jogged up to the phone booth. My eyes scanned it for any traces of explosives, and once I was sure there was nothing amiss, I stepped in and put the receiver to my ear.

“You’ve been avoiding our calls, Gravel,” the man on the other end said in a sing-song voice.

I felt my throat go dry. I didn’t say anything.

“It seems you’ve forgotten your job,” he continued. “Maybe you’re having too much fun these days –”

“What do you want?” I growled.

The man laughed. “Whoa, watch that tone, boy. What we want is what we’ve always wanted. Or have you forgotten? Maybe you need a little reminder?” The playful tone vanished and he hissed, “We’re not playing games here, boy. You’ve gone against us and you will pay. We’ve sent you something, something you’ll like, something that’ll jog your memory regarding what we can do if you don’t finish the jo –” I slammed the receiver back on the phone and took a step back, shaking with rage. The concrete was starting to crack at my feet.

I took a few deep breaths and stepped out of the phone booth.

“So...?” Aspen asked as I walked back to him.

“Nothing. It was a maintenance check,” I lied easily, my mind swirling with a hundred thoughts.

How could They have known? How could They have known who Gravel was without the mask? Or maybe They had always known?

I whipped around, eyes scanning our surroundings – the buildings, the cars, the streets. There were a hundred places from where they could be watching me, watching my every move. I was a fool to underestimate Them. After all, They were the ones who –

“Earth to Ridge,” Aspen said, shaking his vanilla ice cream in front of my face.

I shook my head. “Uh, sorry. I just –”

The phone in my pocket vibrated and I felt my heartbeat triple. I was done with phone calls for the day.

I pulled it out to see one single message glowing on the screen – Don’t be late for my birthday party. I have something special planned. ;)

“Ridge,” Aspen’s voice kept me anchored to reality, “you’re acting really str –”

A gigantic explosion rocked through the air, breaking him off and pulling me out of my daze. Ahead of us, around two blocks away, a tall building was on fire and smoke was starting to coil its way upwards.

“My mother is in there,” Aspen breathed next to me. Before I could comprehend what was happening, he broke into a run, straight towards the burning building.

“Aspen, NO,” I cried just as another explosion rocked the city.