Of Stones and Stars
Chapter 4: New Twists on Old Routines
When the morning came I woke up a few minutes before the alarm had been set to go off. I turned the thing off so that I wouldn’t have to hear it in a little bit. I stretched, yawned, and rolled out of bed.
I dressed quickly, loading my pockets with everything including the mystical stones, and made my way downstairs where mom had a fresh pot of coffee brewing.
“Good morning,” she said to me.
“Is it?” I asked, my tone far colder than I had intended.
“Ouch,” she responded, “Wake up on the wrong side of the bed?”
She left the kitchen without another word and I quickly devoured my bowl of cereal before slipping my shoes on and walking out the door.
The air was relatively warm outside, but otherwise unremarkable. As I made my way to school, unhindered by tugs and pulls from somewhere inside; I thought about the peculiarity of the stones.
Sentient stones? Had I truly lost my mind? If someone had told me about finding strange stones that talked to them in their sleep and made them smarter, I would have laughed in their face. But there I was listening to the plans of stones who spoke to me in the night; committing myself to their agendas. It was ludicrous no matter how I thought about it, but there I was doing exactly that.
When I arrived at school I sat through the announcements, rising only for the pledge (which I did not recite). My teacher started the class by welcoming me back, which was odd; given the hatred he had regarded me with on Monday. He announced to the class that, thanks to my efforts, there would be no homework for the month. He then asked me how the problem was solved, and I explained it to him.
After that first class, as I was walking down the hall, my shoulder bumped into someone. Really, it was someone else who had bumped into me, but I wasn’t aware of it at the moment.
“Watch where the fuck you’re going, ass wipe,” said a familiar male voice.
I turned around to see the arch nemesis of all non-jocks in the school; Mark Freely; better known as Bull. He stood nearly six feet tall, and had a completely shaved head. In the NFL, there are linebackers who are built the way that Mark was built. He was broad shouldered and thick with muscles.
Any other day I would have apologized and kept walking, hoping to escape the encounter with my life. But not then, not there in the hall with all those eyes upon me.
I stopped walking and turned around to face the giant of a man. My voice was calm and cold and laced with malice as I spoke. “I was watching where I was going. Why don’t you do the same?”
All conversations and movement in the hall stopped. The masses sensed violence, and they were eager spectators.
“What the hell did you just say?” Mark asked.
“I think you heard me,” I responded.
“That’s it, fuck head,” he said, dropping the textbook that had been in his hand to the ground. I slipped the backpack from me shoulders and kicked it to the wall.
“Say your prayers,” he said.
“Are we just going to talk or is something going to happen?” I asked, again cold and cynical.
He charged at me like he was going to tackle me to the ground and I just stood there; waiting for the right moment. He growled as he charged, like some sort of rabid beast freshly released from its cage.
At the last moment I stepped aside, shoved him along, and extended a foot. With the added momentum of my shove and the interference of my foot, Bull tripped and fell straight into the ground; his body landing with a loud thud.
I stood waiting for him to get up. I knew the fight hadn’t ended yet. He got slowly to his feet and turned around to face me, his eyes sending of beacons of hatred my way.
“I don’t suggest charging at me this time,” I said with a smile that sent him into an even deeper rage.
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” he said. I laughed.
He came in at me, slower this time. He tried to use his reach advantage, swinging his massive fists at me, but I dodged each attack as though I had gone through extensive battle training. His heavy hands whooshed past my ears as I side stepped, ducked, and dodged his blows. With each missed punch he became more enraged. And all the while, I had remained calm.
Eventually I tired of the game, and waited for a jab to come. When it did, I stepped to the side, pivoted on one foot, and spun in at him with an elbow to the throat. He stumbled back several paces, his back hitting the lockers as he gripped at his throat and made pathetic little choking and gurgling noises.
The fight was over; I could see it in his eyes. I laughed again and walked over to my backpack, bending down to pick it up.
The crowd parted for me as I exited the scene.
*********************************************
I was in the middle of History class when I received an invitation to the principal’s office. Someone must have squealed about the altercation between Bull and me.
Principal Kelly had both of us in his office together and I half expected Bull to try and continue the fight in there, but he didn’t. There was a big red mark on Bulls throat from where I had hit him, and I took some satisfaction in that.
Principal Kelly spoke to us at length as to what happened. I mentioned Mark’s constant bullying and rudeness. I mentioned the intentional bump in the hall. Mark denied it all, naturally, claiming that I was just jealous of his popularity and accomplishments in sports.
We never reached a middle ground in our story of what had happened. Not that it would have mattered if we had; we were both suspended from school for three days.
He called both Bull’s and my parents and we waited for them to show. Mark’s father showed up first, whacked him on the back of the head, called him an idiot, and led him out of this office chewing his ear out the whole way. I barely managed to stifle my laughter at the scene.
The silence in the office was deafening as I waited for my mother to arrive. I’ve never been in trouble at school, and one would think that I would have been nervous about this, but I wasn’t. The blue stone kept me calm; I could sense it.
“I’ve never had any trouble out of you before, Andrew; and I hope we don’t have to do anything like this again.” Kelly said to me.
“Well,” I said with that cynical voice that came to me since my acquirement of the black stone; “I can’t make any promises.”
The principal seemed taken aback by my response. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not going to stand idly by while some mongoloid attempts to beat on me. I will defend myself.” He didn’t really know what to say to that, so we sat in silence for a while longer.
In the silence I thought about the changes in my personality. I attributed the cynicism and aggression to the black stone, but there was more to it than that. My vocabulary seemed to have increased as well. Prior to that moment I don’t think I’d ever used the term “mongoloid” in my life. I mean, I knew the term, but I’d never actually managed to work it into a sentence.
Logic prevailed in that moment and I realized that there was more to the changes in my personality than just what the black stone had done. I should have noticed the added intellect sooner, but I didn’t. The blue stone was implementing aspects of itself on me as well.
Soon my mother arrived, spoke briefly with the principal and ushered me out of the school and to the car outside. She didn’t speak a word to me on the ride home; there was nothing but cold silence. Arriving at the house, she pulled into the drive and threw the car in park; shutting off the engine.
“What the hell has gotten into you lately, Andy?” She asked. “Yesterday you skipped school. Today… You got into a fight?!”
“Mom,” I said; “He attacked me. I had to defend myself.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what to do with you, Andy; I really don’t. You go straight up to your room and don’t touch the television. When you’re father comes home you can explain to him what happened.”
“So what you’re saying is,” I said slowly and calmly, “in the future, if some two hundred-fifty pound linebacker starts swinging at me, I should take the punches and allow him to continue beating me until he either stops or I lose consciousness?”
My mother didn’t respond at first, just sat there staring at me with contempt. “Get in the damn house,” she said at last.
I complied, getting out of the car and making my way through the yard and up the porch steps. I walked into the house and went straight up the stairs to my room. I heard my mother slam the door shut behind her.
I glanced at the digital clock that sat on the little table beside my bed. It was only 11:00 and my father wouldn’t be home for several hours.
As I pulled the stones from my pocket I thought of my mothers directions to not “touch the television” and laughed a bit to myself. I spent a moment watching the television since the day I discovered the first stone. They were far more interesting than ant television programming could ever be.
I set the stones down on my mattress several inches apart from one another. I stared at them for a while, keeping my distance so as not to be completely absorbed by their depths. The glow of their lights pulsated weekly, almost as though they were asleep and the pulsation was little more than their breath.
It is impossible to note just how uniquely brilliant the colors of the stones were; it was almost as though the color blue and the color black were cheaply copied from the hues imbued in these stones.
As I stood there, it became increasingly difficult to simply stare at the stones. My hands longed to hold them; my body ached for their touch. The longer I stood there resisting their pulls, the emptier I began to feel inside. It was the most desperate of feelings.
It was undoubtedly inevitable, but I couldn’t help but feel somewhat disappointed in myself as I reached out for and took hold of the stones. I held them lovingly, like a small child clinging to the finger of his parent. Mixed with the love there was also a hint of desperation as I thought about going without them for even a moment again.
I slipped them back into my pocket where they could radiate their pain and cold through the fabric and into my body. They offered the most comforting sensations that I have ever experienced.
Time passed by unnoticed as I sat and waited for my dad to come home and speak to me of the incident that took place at school this morning. I guess I sort of zoned out as the hours whizzed by because it seemed as though I had merely blinked when I heard a knock at my door and my father entered the room to sit down on the bed beside me.
“Hi, Andy,” He said with a forced smile.
“Hey dad,” I returned.
“So you got in a fight at school?” He asked.
“I did,” I confirmed.
He nodded a bit, thinking about it; and took a deep breath before speaking. “Don’t leave your room for the next week except to go to school whenever your suspension ends,” he said. He stood up and began to walk out of the room.
“But dad,” I said, “I didn’t start the fight, the guy attacked me. He’s a bully. He was looking for a fight.”
“And you gave him one,” my father said, stopping to turn around and face me.
“Was I not supposed to defend myself? Was I supposed to allow him to just pummel me to the ground? What was I supposed to do?”
He took another deep breath before answering. “I don’t know what else you could have done in the situation. You can’t just let people push you around, so I’m glad you defended yourself, but…”
“But what?” I interjected. “I did what I had to do. It wasn’t malicious or spiteful; it wasn’t planned… I reacted in the only way that I could.”
“But this isn’t the first problem you’ve brought to the table recently,” my father continued with an even tone. “Yesterday you skipped school, today you got into a fight.”
“Dad” I said, but he raised a hand to silence me.
“Enough,” he responded. “I don’t want to hear your argument because it’s not going to change anything. The grounding stands.”
“Dad” I said again.
“I said I don’t want to hear it, Andy.” He said. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, but you need to fix it. I’ll call you down when dinner is ready.” Then he turned around and walked out of my room, closing the door none-too gently on his way out.
Normally, a speech like that would have been devastating; but not now, not now that I had my stones to comfort me. That I would never have heard a speech like that if not for the stones hadn’t occurred to me then.
***************************************************************
From the moment I was alone in my room once more, time became meaningless again. It seemed like a heartbeat had elapsed before my father called me down for dinner.
My mouth was too bitter to properly taste the food that my mother had prepared. The whole atmosphere at the table that evening had an uncomfortable edge to it. No one spoke save for Lizzie who went about everything blissfully ignorant.
When I had scraped the last morsel of food from my plate I stood up and walked it to the sink before making my way silently up the stairs to my room, the whole time I could feel my mother and fathers eyes boring holes into me the whole while.
Once I had returned to my room I fell backwards onto my mattress, my eyes fixated on the ceiling. I lay there for an indeterminable amount of time, just staring up without blinking, and thinking about the last few days.
My parents just didn’t seem to understand the divine purpose for which I was selected. How could they, really? I hadn’t told them anything about it.
The problem, of course, was that I couldn’t say anything to them about it. They wouldn’t understand, they would think I’d lost my mind and send me to doctors. Maybe they’d send me away to s a psych ward. The doctors and wards I could deal with; what I couldn’t risk was the inevitable consequence of telling them about the stones.
They would take the stones away from me. I could never allow that to happen.
The weight of this seemed to suddenly crush in on me then and I was quickly struck with a deep depression. I cried silently and the tears seemed to fuel a mounting anger within me that I didn’t think I was capable of.
The anger soon led to fatigue and at some point I fell asleep.
The stones were once again stars in the sky, but this time I could see hints of the other stars they had mentioned in previous nights. The colors of the new stars seemed just beyond my ability to make out. The black and blue stars spoke to me of their lost brothers at last, no more cold shoulders because of my inquiries.
It seemed that the previous night they were too distraught over their absent kin to be reminded of them. Tonight, they accepted that in order for me to help them, I needed to know.
They showed me glimpses of the other stars; let me feel the faintest imprints of their beings so that I could almost understand them. They showed me the past, when they were united on the crown of silver. They showed the men who wore the crown and the civilizations that bowed before them.
Not only would I rule humanity, they said; humanity would worship me. I would end the world wars and rule over the masses for the rest of my days. All of my hopes and dreams would come to fruition the moment I reunited the stones.
They told me everything I needed to know that night, a thousand secrets that I can never repeat.
When the morning came I woke up a few minutes before the alarm had been set to go off. I turned the thing off so that I wouldn’t have to hear it in a little bit. I stretched, yawned, and rolled out of bed.
I dressed quickly, loading my pockets with everything including the mystical stones, and made my way downstairs where mom had a fresh pot of coffee brewing.
“Good morning,” she said to me.
“Is it?” I asked, my tone far colder than I had intended.
“Ouch,” she responded, “Wake up on the wrong side of the bed?”
She left the kitchen without another word and I quickly devoured my bowl of cereal before slipping my shoes on and walking out the door.
The air was relatively warm outside, but otherwise unremarkable. As I made my way to school, unhindered by tugs and pulls from somewhere inside; I thought about the peculiarity of the stones.
Sentient stones? Had I truly lost my mind? If someone had told me about finding strange stones that talked to them in their sleep and made them smarter, I would have laughed in their face. But there I was listening to the plans of stones who spoke to me in the night; committing myself to their agendas. It was ludicrous no matter how I thought about it, but there I was doing exactly that.
When I arrived at school I sat through the announcements, rising only for the pledge (which I did not recite). My teacher started the class by welcoming me back, which was odd; given the hatred he had regarded me with on Monday. He announced to the class that, thanks to my efforts, there would be no homework for the month. He then asked me how the problem was solved, and I explained it to him.
After that first class, as I was walking down the hall, my shoulder bumped into someone. Really, it was someone else who had bumped into me, but I wasn’t aware of it at the moment.
“Watch where the fuck you’re going, ass wipe,” said a familiar male voice.
I turned around to see the arch nemesis of all non-jocks in the school; Mark Freely; better known as Bull. He stood nearly six feet tall, and had a completely shaved head. In the NFL, there are linebackers who are built the way that Mark was built. He was broad shouldered and thick with muscles.
Any other day I would have apologized and kept walking, hoping to escape the encounter with my life. But not then, not there in the hall with all those eyes upon me.
I stopped walking and turned around to face the giant of a man. My voice was calm and cold and laced with malice as I spoke. “I was watching where I was going. Why don’t you do the same?”
All conversations and movement in the hall stopped. The masses sensed violence, and they were eager spectators.
“What the hell did you just say?” Mark asked.
“I think you heard me,” I responded.
“That’s it, fuck head,” he said, dropping the textbook that had been in his hand to the ground. I slipped the backpack from me shoulders and kicked it to the wall.
“Say your prayers,” he said.
“Are we just going to talk or is something going to happen?” I asked, again cold and cynical.
He charged at me like he was going to tackle me to the ground and I just stood there; waiting for the right moment. He growled as he charged, like some sort of rabid beast freshly released from its cage.
At the last moment I stepped aside, shoved him along, and extended a foot. With the added momentum of my shove and the interference of my foot, Bull tripped and fell straight into the ground; his body landing with a loud thud.
I stood waiting for him to get up. I knew the fight hadn’t ended yet. He got slowly to his feet and turned around to face me, his eyes sending of beacons of hatred my way.
“I don’t suggest charging at me this time,” I said with a smile that sent him into an even deeper rage.
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” he said. I laughed.
He came in at me, slower this time. He tried to use his reach advantage, swinging his massive fists at me, but I dodged each attack as though I had gone through extensive battle training. His heavy hands whooshed past my ears as I side stepped, ducked, and dodged his blows. With each missed punch he became more enraged. And all the while, I had remained calm.
Eventually I tired of the game, and waited for a jab to come. When it did, I stepped to the side, pivoted on one foot, and spun in at him with an elbow to the throat. He stumbled back several paces, his back hitting the lockers as he gripped at his throat and made pathetic little choking and gurgling noises.
The fight was over; I could see it in his eyes. I laughed again and walked over to my backpack, bending down to pick it up.
The crowd parted for me as I exited the scene.
*********************************************
I was in the middle of History class when I received an invitation to the principal’s office. Someone must have squealed about the altercation between Bull and me.
Principal Kelly had both of us in his office together and I half expected Bull to try and continue the fight in there, but he didn’t. There was a big red mark on Bulls throat from where I had hit him, and I took some satisfaction in that.
Principal Kelly spoke to us at length as to what happened. I mentioned Mark’s constant bullying and rudeness. I mentioned the intentional bump in the hall. Mark denied it all, naturally, claiming that I was just jealous of his popularity and accomplishments in sports.
We never reached a middle ground in our story of what had happened. Not that it would have mattered if we had; we were both suspended from school for three days.
He called both Bull’s and my parents and we waited for them to show. Mark’s father showed up first, whacked him on the back of the head, called him an idiot, and led him out of this office chewing his ear out the whole way. I barely managed to stifle my laughter at the scene.
The silence in the office was deafening as I waited for my mother to arrive. I’ve never been in trouble at school, and one would think that I would have been nervous about this, but I wasn’t. The blue stone kept me calm; I could sense it.
“I’ve never had any trouble out of you before, Andrew; and I hope we don’t have to do anything like this again.” Kelly said to me.
“Well,” I said with that cynical voice that came to me since my acquirement of the black stone; “I can’t make any promises.”
The principal seemed taken aback by my response. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not going to stand idly by while some mongoloid attempts to beat on me. I will defend myself.” He didn’t really know what to say to that, so we sat in silence for a while longer.
In the silence I thought about the changes in my personality. I attributed the cynicism and aggression to the black stone, but there was more to it than that. My vocabulary seemed to have increased as well. Prior to that moment I don’t think I’d ever used the term “mongoloid” in my life. I mean, I knew the term, but I’d never actually managed to work it into a sentence.
Logic prevailed in that moment and I realized that there was more to the changes in my personality than just what the black stone had done. I should have noticed the added intellect sooner, but I didn’t. The blue stone was implementing aspects of itself on me as well.
Soon my mother arrived, spoke briefly with the principal and ushered me out of the school and to the car outside. She didn’t speak a word to me on the ride home; there was nothing but cold silence. Arriving at the house, she pulled into the drive and threw the car in park; shutting off the engine.
“What the hell has gotten into you lately, Andy?” She asked. “Yesterday you skipped school. Today… You got into a fight?!”
“Mom,” I said; “He attacked me. I had to defend myself.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what to do with you, Andy; I really don’t. You go straight up to your room and don’t touch the television. When you’re father comes home you can explain to him what happened.”
“So what you’re saying is,” I said slowly and calmly, “in the future, if some two hundred-fifty pound linebacker starts swinging at me, I should take the punches and allow him to continue beating me until he either stops or I lose consciousness?”
My mother didn’t respond at first, just sat there staring at me with contempt. “Get in the damn house,” she said at last.
I complied, getting out of the car and making my way through the yard and up the porch steps. I walked into the house and went straight up the stairs to my room. I heard my mother slam the door shut behind her.
I glanced at the digital clock that sat on the little table beside my bed. It was only 11:00 and my father wouldn’t be home for several hours.
As I pulled the stones from my pocket I thought of my mothers directions to not “touch the television” and laughed a bit to myself. I spent a moment watching the television since the day I discovered the first stone. They were far more interesting than ant television programming could ever be.
I set the stones down on my mattress several inches apart from one another. I stared at them for a while, keeping my distance so as not to be completely absorbed by their depths. The glow of their lights pulsated weekly, almost as though they were asleep and the pulsation was little more than their breath.
It is impossible to note just how uniquely brilliant the colors of the stones were; it was almost as though the color blue and the color black were cheaply copied from the hues imbued in these stones.
As I stood there, it became increasingly difficult to simply stare at the stones. My hands longed to hold them; my body ached for their touch. The longer I stood there resisting their pulls, the emptier I began to feel inside. It was the most desperate of feelings.
It was undoubtedly inevitable, but I couldn’t help but feel somewhat disappointed in myself as I reached out for and took hold of the stones. I held them lovingly, like a small child clinging to the finger of his parent. Mixed with the love there was also a hint of desperation as I thought about going without them for even a moment again.
I slipped them back into my pocket where they could radiate their pain and cold through the fabric and into my body. They offered the most comforting sensations that I have ever experienced.
Time passed by unnoticed as I sat and waited for my dad to come home and speak to me of the incident that took place at school this morning. I guess I sort of zoned out as the hours whizzed by because it seemed as though I had merely blinked when I heard a knock at my door and my father entered the room to sit down on the bed beside me.
“Hi, Andy,” He said with a forced smile.
“Hey dad,” I returned.
“So you got in a fight at school?” He asked.
“I did,” I confirmed.
He nodded a bit, thinking about it; and took a deep breath before speaking. “Don’t leave your room for the next week except to go to school whenever your suspension ends,” he said. He stood up and began to walk out of the room.
“But dad,” I said, “I didn’t start the fight, the guy attacked me. He’s a bully. He was looking for a fight.”
“And you gave him one,” my father said, stopping to turn around and face me.
“Was I not supposed to defend myself? Was I supposed to allow him to just pummel me to the ground? What was I supposed to do?”
He took another deep breath before answering. “I don’t know what else you could have done in the situation. You can’t just let people push you around, so I’m glad you defended yourself, but…”
“But what?” I interjected. “I did what I had to do. It wasn’t malicious or spiteful; it wasn’t planned… I reacted in the only way that I could.”
“But this isn’t the first problem you’ve brought to the table recently,” my father continued with an even tone. “Yesterday you skipped school, today you got into a fight.”
“Dad” I said, but he raised a hand to silence me.
“Enough,” he responded. “I don’t want to hear your argument because it’s not going to change anything. The grounding stands.”
“Dad” I said again.
“I said I don’t want to hear it, Andy.” He said. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, but you need to fix it. I’ll call you down when dinner is ready.” Then he turned around and walked out of my room, closing the door none-too gently on his way out.
Normally, a speech like that would have been devastating; but not now, not now that I had my stones to comfort me. That I would never have heard a speech like that if not for the stones hadn’t occurred to me then.
***************************************************************
From the moment I was alone in my room once more, time became meaningless again. It seemed like a heartbeat had elapsed before my father called me down for dinner.
My mouth was too bitter to properly taste the food that my mother had prepared. The whole atmosphere at the table that evening had an uncomfortable edge to it. No one spoke save for Lizzie who went about everything blissfully ignorant.
When I had scraped the last morsel of food from my plate I stood up and walked it to the sink before making my way silently up the stairs to my room, the whole time I could feel my mother and fathers eyes boring holes into me the whole while.
Once I had returned to my room I fell backwards onto my mattress, my eyes fixated on the ceiling. I lay there for an indeterminable amount of time, just staring up without blinking, and thinking about the last few days.
My parents just didn’t seem to understand the divine purpose for which I was selected. How could they, really? I hadn’t told them anything about it.
The problem, of course, was that I couldn’t say anything to them about it. They wouldn’t understand, they would think I’d lost my mind and send me to doctors. Maybe they’d send me away to s a psych ward. The doctors and wards I could deal with; what I couldn’t risk was the inevitable consequence of telling them about the stones.
They would take the stones away from me. I could never allow that to happen.
The weight of this seemed to suddenly crush in on me then and I was quickly struck with a deep depression. I cried silently and the tears seemed to fuel a mounting anger within me that I didn’t think I was capable of.
The anger soon led to fatigue and at some point I fell asleep.
The stones were once again stars in the sky, but this time I could see hints of the other stars they had mentioned in previous nights. The colors of the new stars seemed just beyond my ability to make out. The black and blue stars spoke to me of their lost brothers at last, no more cold shoulders because of my inquiries.
It seemed that the previous night they were too distraught over their absent kin to be reminded of them. Tonight, they accepted that in order for me to help them, I needed to know.
They showed me glimpses of the other stars; let me feel the faintest imprints of their beings so that I could almost understand them. They showed me the past, when they were united on the crown of silver. They showed the men who wore the crown and the civilizations that bowed before them.
Not only would I rule humanity, they said; humanity would worship me. I would end the world wars and rule over the masses for the rest of my days. All of my hopes and dreams would come to fruition the moment I reunited the stones.
They told me everything I needed to know that night, a thousand secrets that I can never repeat.
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