Cody

Great! This is just what I need!

My mind is still reeling from what happened to make me act and feel like a character in some weird-ass romantic fantasy. I found the girl I thought I'd hallucinated and disappeared down a rabbit hole with her.

Glitch is even more vibrant and beautiful now that I'm not doped up and in more pain than my body can handle. Being trapped in line with Jasper Townsend is not where I want to be right now. I need a moment to clear my mind.

I want to go dunk my head in the ponies' water trough to rid my brain of all the corny shit that is currently swirling around up there. I don't want to stand here next to him, aware of him glaring at me. Actually, Jasper's presence probably is the equivalent of getting my head dunked in the ponies' water trough.

I'm good at ignoring people. I have been told in the past that I might actually be a gold medallist in the sport. That might be true, but I think Jasper might be a gold medallist in not-giving-a-shit, and I'm irritated, so...

"What?!" I bark.

"Nothing," he huffs, but he is still glaring at me, and Noah is chuckling softly on my other side. Apparently, he is finding our irritation with each other amusing. I've changed my mind; I don't like the guy anymore.

"How do you know Glitch?" Jasper finally wants to know, narrowing his dark eyes to increase the intensity of his glare. Girls might find this kind of look smouldering; I find it friggin' annoying.

"I don't, really." I do, but it's not brain knowledge, it's something else, and there's no way in hell I'm going to spew a load of weird garbage about souls and hearts and hallucinations, especially not to this asshole. I could've pointed out that she's my neighbour, that would've made sense... I'm not good at making sense right now. Besides, that is not what he's really asking; he already knows that.

"Why do you have her top?" he wants to know, suavely running his fingers through the dark brown hair flopping over his forehead. I don't think he is trying his shampoo add manoeuvre on me to be flirty or seductive; he just has that air about him. Always had it. He has that whole strong, healthy farm boy thing going for him that makes all the cows in the vicinity run to him with milking pails clutched to their hearts.

It probably makes the bulls see red. I sure am seeing red.

When we were younger and still friends, the guy used to be startled rather than pleased when girls lined up to gaze into his eyes. In the last couple of years, he might've begun to understand the appeal, and chances are that he is now using it to his advantage, but I doubt it. As arrogant and obnoxious as the guy can be, he has always been completely oblivious to the effect he has on girls.

His conquests are mostly accidental rather than planned.

"She left it under my head," I tell him. 

Yeah, I'm making it worse. I don't care. Noah is openly laughing now, and I poke him in the ribs to remind him that though my right leg is letting me down big time, my arms are still fine, and I can use them well... as long as he stays within punching range. If he moves around, I'm pretty much screwed. Maybe it's better if people didn't know that.

I return Jasper's glare with a big, scary one of my own, and what I see on his face makes me wonder if his interest in Glitch is perhaps more than just one where he wants what he cannot have. Do I care? 

My head is killing me, and I'm not a girl; staring into Jasper's eyes is not giving me any fun thrills. I turn to face the brides gathered at the other side of the town square instead, my eyes searching for and finding Glitch. I feel my smile returning when I see her standing between her cousins, gazing across the great divide, smiling when she sees me looking at her.

My fingers absently stray to the colourful silk wrapped around my left wrist, and I raise my hand slightly to wave at her, showing her that her veil is still in place. The subtle fragrance of Lily of the Valley wafting in the air gently unties the knots that have been forming in my gut.

"Don't play with her," I hear Jasper grumble and am about to join him in another glaring contest when a trumpet tries to play a bugle call, but mostly just sounds like a cat fighting with its own tail, and the people around me groan in protest, covering their ears.

Apparently, the disorderly crowds of brides and grooms flanking the town square look organised enough for the people in control because the dying cat solo is calling Joseph Caldwell to the centre of the square, where the two flagpoles are towering from a low stone platform. 

The eight sides of the platform are decorated with plaques containing a short history of the town. When I say short, I really mean it. The town doesn't have much of a general history; some farmers arrived, they started to farm, a town happened... the end... or rather, the beginning. 

There's also a bit about some ghost that found its rest here, resulting in the name, but I've long ago stopped asking people to explain that one to me. Nobody seems to be too sure what that was about.

All the stories that built the true history of Phantom's Rest are very personal and would fill the entire square with plaques if they were to be written down and mounted here.

Joseph's team - a boy and a girl from the junior grades of the school, running from first grade through to 12 - trails behind him, each solemnly carrying a folded flag. Well, the girl is doing it pretty solemnly, walking in some kind of weird straight-legged funeral march, leaning her upper body over backwards at an awkward angle. The boy is kicking his feet out in a sloppy version of the girl's march, but he is too busy digging something from his nose to remember the proper weird-ass posture this extremely important moment seems to require.

I bite my lip not to laugh out loud and can hear Jasper snort on my one side and Noah snigger on my other, which makes the urge to laugh so much worse.

"Attention!" Humphrey Richards shouts from the stage when the flag team is in place. I've lost count of the number of times I've wanted to grab his mic and launch it into space. It's too loud, and my head is pounding again. It started its incessant throbbing the moment I let go of Glitch's hand and moved to the opposite side of the square from her. It became an entire orchestra the moment I became aware of Jasper's presence next to me. I don't even know when he arrived.

Apparently, that burst of noise from Humphrey was an order because everybody jumps to attention in some form or another. There is clearly no standard here. Some have their hands folded, some have one hand on their hearts, and others have their shoulders back, their arms straight at their sides and their hands balled into fists. I really don't feel like doing any of that. I'm just standing more or less straight, with my injured leg slightly bent. Cannot do much about that.

I have another physio session next week. Hell Hour, that's what I call it, but each time it's over, I can straighten my leg a little bit more. My knee is slowly returning to normal. Very slowly, but I've been assured that it will heal completely. I'm constantly told that I just need to be patient. If only the mess in my head was that easy to fix. I don't think patience is of much help there; besides, I don't have any.

My attention is drifting, my eyes mostly glued to Glitch floating in and out of focus on the other side of the square. It baffles me how different I feel when I look at her. It's like having an out-of-body experience. A pleasant one, making me feel light and free and... happy. At least, I think it's happiness I'm feeling; not sure what that feels like anymore.

I become aware of low mutterings going on around me, and returning to reality; I realise that Joseph is having issues getting the second of the flags to rise. The school flag, handed to him by the little girl, went up and unfurled at the top of the pole without a hitch, as far as I know... I wasn't paying attention. I can see it flapping happily in the breeze, though.

The town flag is not cooperating. Joseph had some issues during practice yesterday too, and once he struggles, he gets nervous, and then it is all but game over. I promised to be there for him today, so I'm forced to limp over there, hating being the focal point of attention. 

It feels like forever before I reach him, noting with empathy how red his neck and ears are turning. "Everything's fine, Joe," I whisper, smiling what I hope comes across as an encouraging smile before I inspect the problem. He was supposed to make a clove hitch with the bottom section of the rope. It is basically just two small circles on top of each other, but he'd somehow managed to tangle them and cannot get the wooden toggle attached to the flag through the loops.

I untangle the rope and form the hitch for him, encouraging him to take over before I take the flag from the restless little boy to give Joseph a better chance at handling the rope and toggle. Holding the folded town flag in my hands, I'm suddenly recalling disturbing memories of the boy picking his nose while he was carrying it. I pinch my lips together in an effort not to gag, forcing myself not to think about slimy streaks and other fun things on the cloth transferring to my hands.

Joseph's trembling fingers finally get the toggle through, and I hand the flag back to snot-boy to hold it after Joseph successfully makes a sweet bend knot with the rope through the flag's loop. When he finally pulls on the ropes, and the flag starts to rise to the top of the pole, I turn away to go back to my place, stopping when Joseph makes a strangled, terrified sound behind me.

Oh, great! Now what?!

The flag is stuck a little more than halfway up the pole, and even when I return to Joseph and gently pluck on the rope, it is not budging at all. It is well and truly stuck, and I vaguely wonder if it ran into a fat booger that glued it in place. Not likely, but this is Weirdville, and anything is possible here.

I gaze up at the flag, trying to think of a plan to get to it. If my knee wasn't buggered, I would've climbed the pole and freed the thing, but there's no way I'll get up there now. We could bring the flag back down, but if the problem is up there, bringing it down is not going to help.

"Can you go up there?" I ask Joseph, and he gives me a look as if I asked him to sprout some wings. I'm about to explain what I mean when a blur of movement catches my eye, and I hear the pole clang and vibrate as the rope musically slaps against it. Jasper is nimbly crawling up the pole.

Yeah, I'm envious. Not because he is being cheered and oohed and ah-ed over, but because he is able to climb like the demented monkey he is, and I'm not.

I wonder if I'll ever be able to move like that again. 

Lately, I feel trapped inside this sluggish body. It's becoming more and more frustrating as I'm gradually waking up from the stupor I'd been in for the last few months. I sometimes long for the sweet oblivion of that daze to take me again. Reality mostly just sucks.

I watch Jasper get rid of the obstacle, a twig that got hooked on the fibres of the rope, as far as I can tell, and when he gives us a thumbs up, I gently pull on the rope and once again hand the task over to Joseph when the flag smoothly begins to slide upwards. I'm relieved when I return to my spot in the groom section with more success this time. The crowds are cheering loudly, happy to get on with the show finally.

Jasper arrives a second after me, and together we join in applauding Joseph's success at raising the flag when he salutes and turns to lead his team in a march away from the poles. I am glad to see him beaming, proud of his achievement. I'm also glad to see the little boy still digging in his nose. It gives me some hope that whatever fun stuff he has up there didn't make it onto the flag and then onto me.

Mission accomplished! Joseph and his team had their moment in the spotlight, Jasper got to uphold his role as the town hero, and I get to return to the obscurity I crave.

When the band bursts into song under Humphrey's instructions and starts their descent down the broad steps leading from the front of the stage, I realise that the microphone is not the only thing I want to launch into space.

~~~