Chapter Three

Chapter Three

As Kiho got older, she stopped throwing so many tantrums. She was still far from a compliant child, but she was no longer purely spoiled. It was partially because of Damon, who no longer stood for her manipulation, and partially because of Lexie, because she was so good. Kiho always felt bad about doing something bad as soon as she saw Lexie.
Nothing, however, would convince Kiho to be social.
“Come on. Ki-ki!” Lexie cajoled. “It’s only a dance, and you have to go. Damon will ask you. It’s not like he has a girlfriend, anyway.”
“Hey!” Damon called from the other room. “I can hear you two, even if I’m not in eyesight! It just so happens that all the girls in my school want to go with me, but I reserved the honor for Kiho alone.”
“That means he couldn’t find a date.” The two girls giggled. Kiho turned serious again.
“I’m not going. I don’t care how good this dress looks. I’m not going!”
Lexie and Damon had decided that Kiho was going to the local high school dance. It wasn’t anything special, just a once a month party for the school, but Lexie had been invited, and she wanted Kiho to go.
“Kiho! If you don’t go, I won’t have a single girl to talk to about my date in the ladies room! I won’t know anyone.”
“That is a blatant lie. You know tons of girls from there. You’re the most popular 15 year old in the universe.” Kiho wasn’t bitter. She didn’t really want to have any other friends.
“Well, we’ll see what you think after you try on the dress. Hurry up and come out of the dressing shade thing.” Kiho stepped out.
Her dress wasn’t anything special, really. It was strapless, and black. It had a slit up to the calf on the left side, and looked gorgeous with her black hair. She looked in the mirror. Tomboy Kiho was transformed.
Kiho usually wore black clothes, and baggy cargos everywhere. She liked the way it looked on her, and she hated dressed. But she was stunned into silence by this outfit.
“You have to go. You have to make all the girls there think that Damon is something really good to get a girl like you to go with him. Consider it a public service. Please?” Damon entered.
“That’s it, you’ve got to come now. I can’t take my eyes off you. If you turn me down my heart will be broken forever and ever amen.” Damon rattled all this off as if it were scripted. Kiho laughed.
“All right, I’ll go. Pick me up at Lexie’s house.” She looked at Lexie. “What day is this thing, again?”
“Next Friday. And I’ll have to do your hair, and stuff like that. You’re incapable of doing it yourself, of course.”
“Of course,” Kiho and Damon chorused, and grinned.
The next day, they all went to the park. They only walked past, at first, but then Kiho looked longingly, and Damon sighed. Lexie’s eyes sparkled.
“Let’s go!” There were no arguments from either one.
“Race you to the slide!” Kiho called, and they ran, pell-mell up to the little play set. Damon nearly got stuck trying to squeeze through the tube slide, and Lexie could touch the ground when she used the monkey bars, even when she bent her legs. They raced around in circles until they were out of breath. Two mothers with several toddlers looked at them suspiciously. Lexie blushed.
“Let’s go,” Kiho said. “We don’t want to knock over the ankle biters on accident.” She smiled at the little kids, and they smiled back. Kiho still had a dangerous little kid smile. When she smiled, you never knew what she was going to do next. Probably because of that, little children adored her, and she always had babysitting jobs. She usually went double with Lexie. Lexie was popular with kids, too. She was also, unlike Kiho, popular with the adults. “Lexie’s more responsible,” they said, “And she’s also more careful with the children.” Lexie was very careful with children. Kiho was most certainly not.
They left the park, and went into Lexie’s back yard. They continued wordlessly on to their old hide out. Damon pulled up a garbage can¸ Lexie took the kiddy table, and Kiho sat on a stump.
“It’s time.” Damon said. “We never talked about that old guy. The one who blessed Lexie. We need to. Now.” Neither Kiho nor Lexie were surprised. They’d somehow known this was coming.
“What’s to talk about?” Kiho said, just because she was Kiho, not because she didn’t want to talk.
“I should think you would say the opposite. A man came and blessed our friend for rescuing him from you. I should think you’d be curious as to what he really was. He might have been some wacko! He might have been-“
“He might have been exactly what he seemed to be,” Lexie cut in quietly.
“And that was?” Damon looked at her coldly. He thought she was teasing him.
“I’m serious, Damon. I think he was… I think he was a god. Possibly a minor god.” She blurted it out all at once. She waited for them to laugh. They didn’t.
“Do you, do you really?” Damon asked, shocked.
“Well, yes,” Lexie said decidedly, and looked at Kiho, whom she expected to tease her mercilessly. She was surprised. Kiho wasn’t getting ready to tease her. Kiho was pale, and Kiho was never pale.
“What is it, Kiho?” Lexie was worried. Was she choking?
“That’s just what I’ve been thinking, too,” she said weakly. “And I thought I was completely insane.”
“Well, there’s a reason for that, isn’t there.” Damon looked knowing.
“What’s that?”
“You are. You’re stark raving mad. I love you anyway, but there it is. There are no gods and goddesses. Everyone knows that, all but some few crazies far from here. No one we know. No one sane.”
“I am perfectly sane, thank you very much,” Kiho said chilly. “Who was the crazy that brought us here in the first place? Not me, that’s for sure. We didn’t plan this.”
”You came along!”
“Not that we knew what you were planning. You could have been coming here to kill us, for all we knew!”
“Kill you? Why would I even waste my time? You’re a ghoul anyway.”
“A ghoul, am I? Well, I don’t suppose you know that you’re a-“
“Cut it out, guys.” Long years, and Lexie was still mothering them. Oh well, it was a living, anyway. Actually, it wasn’t. It might kill her, one of these fine days. “What do you think it, he, was?”
“I think he was some sort of mutant. There’s plenty of chance, and-“
“Plenty? Slim, I’d say. Where’d he come from? No mutant factories around these parts.”
“Shows what you know, smarty, mutants don’t come from any factories. They come from-“
“Oh, now he’d going to tell us about the birds and the bees, isn’t he?”
“Gah! Can you two even talk without fighting?” They both looked at her.
“No.” They said at the same time.
“Just wondering.” Lexie was tired already.
“Okay, you two. I’m going to talk now. I don’t know if I really got blessed that day, nothing seems to have changed at all, so maybe it was just a prank. Why did you want to talk about it, anyway?”
It’s just that we haven’t said anything about it, and I haven’t told anyone. Have you?” Kiho shook her head. Lexie said, “I told Aunt Zelda, but that’s it.” Her friends understood. You could Tell Aunt Zelda anything, and they all often did.
“I was just wondering what you thought.” Damon finished.
“I think we should forget all about it.” Kiho didn’t like to think about that week for reasons plain to everyone. She’d tried to kill Damon, and manipulated Lexie.
“I agree,” Lexie said. Damon looked skeptical, but nodded anyway. They all went their separate ways back home.