Hello Daddy, Hello Mom,
I'm your ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb.
Hello world, I'm your wild girl.
I'm your ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb.

The Runaways ~ Cherry Bomb

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Clang clang clang, crash bang...BOOM!

I awake with a sudden start and immediately reach for the ol' ancestral baseball bat to start slaying my demons. But instead of battling my demons, I merely heave up out of bed and stumble down into the bathroom to start my morning. This sort of start to the day is sadly an all too common occurrence in the House of the Blazing Raisins, no thanks to the Irish Antichrist's eternal war with the Chinese kitchen demons. Her infernal war on silence has gotten to the point that I am actually almost used to this daily battle. 

Once into the bathroom, I strip down, turn on the shower, lean in to touch water...and water freezing cold. I seriously have to pee now, but instead, I hold my hand in the water and wait for warm. And I wait ...and wait ...and waiting ...and waited and still no warm water. 

Blaze me! The hot water heater must be jacked up again! So no shower before school. Blazing awesome sauce!

So with no hot shower to be had, I start to mull over my limited options. I figure if I can skate to school fast enough, maybe I can grab a quick shower in the gym lockers before homeroom? But one glance at my dive watch and no such luck. After waiting for water, I have barely enough time to grab something to eat and skate up the three streets to Hell. At this rate, I'll be lucky to make it to May before the late bells, and study buddies again. Whatever. 

So I do what I need to do in the bathroom, brush over my teeth, then slap on some extra deodorant for good measure. Pull on my jeans, grab an almost clean T-shirt out of the hamper, then stuff some clean clothes in my bag to change into after I shower in PE.

I wraith past the Irish Antichrist in the kitchen, exchange our standard morning farewell and go to Hell. Grab some coffee and couple pieces of soul charred toast on the way out the door. After a hard charge up the hill to Hell, I give a nod in passing at the Tower of Doom and hit the halls of Hell. Sliding down the long central hall to C-22, I slip right past the evil little gnome and I drop into my spot just as the final bells go off.

"Good morning, May?"I slide into my seat breathlessly.

"Cutting it a little close today, aren't we, Mr. Devil?" She smirks back, snapping her pocket watch closed.

"Oh yeah." I assure her of my heresy.

"Oh, and you ran all the way to school, didn't you?" She sniffs at me and crinkles her nose up. "And you didn't shower again, did you?"

"Naw not, the blazing hot water heater went on the fritz again this morning." I sigh and try to stink a little less. "But Aces swears for sure this is the last time. It's either getting fixed right this time, or we're putting in a new one on Saturday. So hopefully this will be the last time I show up fuming just for you."

"Hope is good..." May intones dryly. "...but soap is better."

"I swear to you, I will shower after PE and before lunch. Even if I have to stay the extra ten minutes to do it. So we will not have another moment, in which you inch as far away as you can down the lunch benches. All in order to get away from the bad boy smell."

"Well, I guess I can bear it until the bell." She sighs sarcastically.

"To wit, I brought you a present. If you would be so kind as to hold out your hand, please?" May immediately acquiesces to my request, and I gently place in her palm a tube of Cheery Cherry goodness.

"Hmmm." She slowly rolls the tube round in her fingers, and then hesitantly takes in a sniff of the sweet scent. "Cherry?"

"O'yeah," I reply positively.

"So let me see if I understand this right? Your present is cherry lip gloss? Not unlike the kind that my future stripper sister wears constantly?" She tilts her head inquisitively in my general direction. "So what? You stole April's lip gloss and then gave it to me as a gift?"

"That's so..." May drifts into the absurd. "...help me out here, Dare. Because I am getting an odd sense, that this is your strange way of telling me you've been having a hookup fantasy with the black hole of Fall'cutta?"

"Not in this lifetime." I snort hard. "I'd rather carve out my..." I immediately stop short of stupidly saying something incredibly insensitive.

"You'd rather do what now, exactly?" May scowls out from behind her shades.

"I'd rather not say, the horrible thing that almost came out of my mouth?" And do just about anything short of murder, than consort with that foul beast you call your Sinister Sister.

"Speak Devil, how bad can it be?" May intones regally, in a tone that commands me to total truth. 

"Okay, May have it your way." I sigh, and take a deep breath and prepare myself for a very long apology. 

"What I was going to say was... I'd rather carve my eyes out with a spoon like ol' Oedipus did. But then I stopped short for obvious reasons. Cause I never really understood that whole thing with Oedipus, until right now."  This foul thought oddly makes me wonder how my mother is doing in rehab. Which is really disturbing if you knew the sad story of Oedipus Rex. "But some things are just not meant to be endured or joked about, even in mythology."

May falls completely silent and frowns down at the tube of Cherry Chapstick in her hand, while I hold my breath waiting for her to react.

"I know that on behalf of Darksiders everywhere, I should be seriously offended right now? That you would take the darkness so lightly." She sighs deeply. "But somehow ...and maybe it's just because it's my sinister sister in the mix on this? I'm having a really difficult time raising the requisite amount of righteous indignation up for a full mayhem moment. So I suggest you start explaining this gift, before this dark side girl goes all mayhem on you, with her handy-dandy big boy smacking stick."

"Okay, first of all, it's Triple Cherry Berry Crush chapstick." I start justifying my existence as fast as possible. "And no, I did not swipe it off Someone's Sinister Stripper Sister. I actually bought it especially for you."

"I thought that if you put it on, then you'd have cherry to smell, which you like. Instead of the aforementioned bad boy B.O, which you have expressed a prior aversion to, on more than one occasion. And as the general rule of human scents go, if I can smell it? Then it's probably three times stronger for everyone else. Ergo, the whole triple Cherry Berry Crush thing, instead of just the standard solo Cheery Cherry."

"Oh, and it's chapstic'ish, not stripper glossy." I point out unhelpfully. "You know, just in case you wanted to ensure that no one would ever mistake you for a Cheerio. Da ta?"

May rocks her crown to the side while she thinks thru explanation for a lot longer than is good for me. After several long heartbeats pass, she finally uncaps the Triple Cherry Berry Crush and breathes in a long scent.

"Hmmm... oddly thoughtful, sweet, solution orientated, yet optional and not too totally controlling? So an A for effort, but an F for execution." She smiles slowly. "All in all, not too bad, even for a slow surfer boy from Sunset Beach. But I don't think I have to explain to you that bringing up Oedipus Rex into any dark conversation is just asking for some serious faux pas trouble, right?"

"Absolutely not," I assure her of my own stupidity. "And for the record, I'll take those marks with a smile, and just consider myself lucky to have barely avoided the epic fail."

"Well, it's not completely your fault I suppose." May sighs. "As I didn't really respect the whole 'Oh god, please let me stop talking, before I put my very stinky foot into my big dumb boy mouth' pregnant pause thing. So we will upgrade you from an F to D for the Daring boy. Nicely played, Mr. Devil."

"Thank you Maybe, you really are too kind." I finally let go of the breath I've been holding.

"And speaking of pregnant pauses in April's future employment on the poles of the nation's fourth finest airport dance cabarets and establishments of ill repute." May smirks savagely. "You might want to just ignore her today if you happen to run into her?"

"Why? He foolishly inquires with an air of disinterest." I muse back for her amusement.

"Well, if you must know, it's not the obvious headed right into the oldest profession issues we usually have with her," May sighs wistfully. "Let's just say that something has come up that has her all ...shall we say, a little edgier than usual?"

"Edgier than usual, so boy be extra nicer than normal? Got it." I affirm the command. "Not that I care at all about the other side of the Grimm sisterly dynamic. But are you too also edgier than normal as well? Or is this just an only a be extra nice to Ape'ape day?"

"Mmmm..."  May ponders for a just a moment. "Let just say it's more of an, it's just way too complicated to explain in the time it takes the announcements to drone us out. So let's just table the rest of talking time for lunch shall we?"

"Then say no more, and consider it tabled and on the agenda for lunchtime," I assure her. "Which of course will be after my most thorough showering after gym class."

"Oh, yes please." May is now inhaling the Cherry Bomb like a fume fiend on a super glue bender. I can tell she is being extra considerate to my offensive special scent, as she applies the lip balm. She smacks her lips thrice to test the taste.

"So other than an abnormally edgy April is everything else cool with you?" I push my luck, fishing for any indication of her contempt with my gift...or with me.

"Just relax, tough guy you're doing fine." She sighs shaking her head. "Just be yourself, with just a little more emphasis on the tough, and little less on the guy. At least until lunch, then you can get all Mr. Man. But only after you shower, please?"

"I swear to the sea, it will be." I agree easily.

There's a break in the morning announcements, and the all to the familiar deep drone of the school president asks us to stand at attention for the morning swearing. So I push up for the pledge of patriotism, hovering slightly over May as she rises up from her desk. Until we are both standing slightly eschew to the rest of the flock.

The stirring string of swear words is almost at an end, when I feel May's deft fingers slide up my shoulder and around the back of my neck. As I turn inquisitively into to her, she rises up into me, balancing precariously on her tippy toes.

"Hey sailor, want a taste?" She smirks wickedly and then pulls me right into her puckered pouty lips for a quick clean kiss.

To be honest, as far as kisses go, it wasn't a passionate kiss by any means. It was really much more of a frivolous fancy of a kiss. The sort of kiss that goes smack, not sultry. No tongues have longingly sought each other out in mouths full of desperate desire. No souls have joined, that were not joined before, in the bursting effervescing passion at first twining. But rather the sort of quickish kiss shared briefly between a lord and his lady before the business of the day begins. In fact, the most memorable thing about the quick kiss was the taste of cherries on her soft warm lips...and of course what happened next.

Because uninvited into our private moment, enters in the source of constant disapproval of all things good, decent and heartwarming. For once more, Or'sir has creeped up behind me, like a little evil woodland elf on a mission to snatch a foundling from its crib. To wit, Or'sir and I are about to have us a little thing that Aces likes to call "a defining moment in our relationship".

"That is enough of that." The creepy little man pounces right into our personal space and proceeds to pronounce proudly.

"Detention Dean; talking during announcements, after being warned against...yet again. And disruption of class; inappropriate contact with another student, inappropriate kissing." He smirks dropping the neon blood orange slip on my desk with his practiced theatrical flourish.

"And detention Grimm, for the same ...as Mr. Dean?" Or'sir suddenly falters his delivery.

As the midgety little man seems suddenly unsure what the protocol is for giving a blind girl detention. It's pretty obvious that he can't just spin the neon blood orange slip at her with his usual flamboyant flourish. As the whole flamboyant flourish thing would be completely lost on her ...because she is blazing blind!

"Just give it here." I take her ticket from the vile little creature, adding it to my own nonchalantly. "And if it's all the same to you, I'll do them both. So win-win for everyone."

"Oh no, you don't!" May snaps laughing, reaching out at me with her clutchy claws. "Gimme, gimme, gimme ...give me!"

So without bothering to check too closely, I inadvertently hand her my own detention slip by accident. After which May claps her hands three times in gleeful exuberance, radiantly beaming like's she won the grand prize on a game show.

"So tell us what's she's won, Don Pardo!" May announces in her best game show host voice, and proudly holds up her detention to display to the entire class. "A detention for two at the beautiful San Fall Hills High Other Library. But wait there's more!" 

Then she begins to sing the haunting taunting song of childhood past. "I got my first dee-ten-shun! I got my first dee-ten-shun! I'm going to dee-ten-shun ...for kissing mah boy'friend. I kissed my boy'friend...because I love him? And now I'm going to dee-ten-shun. Where I'm gonna kiss mah boyfriend...in dee'ten'shun! Yeah, baby! Go hard, live large, party hard ...I'm so sexy'cool!"

And with that song sung, the entire classroom of predators has dropped into a deathly still state of shock and awe. As the absolute surreality of this moment is way far too afield from what is "really happening" for them to actually comprehend what they've just witnessed with their own eyes. To wit, their fellow classmate is happily singing her victory song, literally taunting them over receiving a detention? 

Even though in all fairness this is May's first "real" detention in her entire scholastic career to date. For May has been given warnings before. She has timeouts handed down from time to time. She's received poor citizenship marks on past report cards. She has even been sent to offices, both Main and Nurse's, through the hard years of elementary school. But never before today has she had a chance to enter the realm of the scholastic penal system ...at least not through the front door. 

So for May, this seems like an epic victory of equality, and a clear milestone moment for her to mark with a song. For me it's the usual drill, Or'sir is being a pretentious little prick, just because he can be. But even so, I still can't help chortling my ass off, witnessing an entire flocking class of predators cock their heads to the side in clear consternation. All desperately trying to shake off the confusion on their faces, as they watch on as the blind girl sings her eerie victory song. The whole thing is hands down blazing priceless, and almost worthy of the price of admission to watch this shit storm unfold right in front of my eyes.

Out of the corner of my eye, I can sense the predators are now shaking their collective heads in clear disdain, but oddly not directed at May or even at me. Because all that unhappy is directed straight at where it rightfully belongs ...right at Or'sir. Then as predatory packs are wont to do when confused, they bristle up preparing for an attack. As one the pack swings their predatory glares right into the pompous little freak of androgyny standing beside me. Intoning the one question on their collective hive minds... 

"What kind of flocking monster would give detention to a blind girl ...just for a kissing her boyfiend!?!" Which was right about when sheet started to get real.

Backside Note: Okay, yeah ...I admit the whole 'Kissing mah boyfriend' song was probably a bit much, even for May? But I still loved it nonetheless, and I still love that song to this very day. And every now and then, for many years to come, I still catch myself unconsciously humming it while doing the dishes, from time to time.