Jewel: The Beginning

CHAPTER 7: The Message & Discussion

We jumped from the noise, and Irie squeaked. We looked at which window it could be, being that we had two windows, one with a window seat built in under it. We looked at different ones. The window seat was the one I looked at. We heard the tapping noise again. I get up and walk to the window I was looking at, which was the closest to me. I draw the curtains and see something bizarre to me. I see a hand knocking with a knuckle, but it was paper shaped as a knocking hand.

“Irie!” I call, “over here. Come! Look!”

She gets off her bed and walks to my window. She sees the paper and laughs twice, “Open the window. I bet’s for you.” I look at her strangely. She explained, “It’s not for me. Everyone who writes me has theirs in a dove shape. Apparently, Brayden has decided to do a different form for you.”

“You guys don’t use owls?”

“Psh, Jewels…our world is a lot like Harry Potter, but not that much. It’s more like the flying memos in those books used at the Ministry.” Nodding my head in comprehension, I open the window quickly after it knocks its knuckle against the window, not wanting to wake everyone else. It was well after midnight by now. As soon as the window opened, the paper flew in the room and was floating in the air next to me, away from Irie. I turn to it as she closes the window some. The cool air felt nice, so she went to open the other one as I read who it’s for and who it’s from. She was right. On the outside, it said:

To: Jewel Talbot

From: Brayden Kamali

He has pretty good writing for a boy. I go to my bed and lean towards my light, and open the letter. Irina sits on her bed, expecting me to read it out loud-loud. I decided to, knowing she’d read when I was asleep if I refused. I wish she respected my privacy. I read it through to myself without saying a word. Well, I might as well have her hear it, I’ll need her help.

Dear Jewel,

I know that we just met, and you don’t know terribly much about me, so I hope Irie will fill you in about me as much as possible. She doesn’t need to do that right away, though.

Robert and I just got to the wizard’s hotel we’re staying at nearby the city. I'm writing to you now because I want to get together tomorrow and get to know each other more. I think this will help you out…for what we discussed under your Willow.

Please write back immediately. Please also give a time in your letter and I will be at your house to pick you up then…no matter what time. Have Irie send it off for you, she knows what to do.

Love,

Brayden

PS: Sorry if I woke you and Irie up.

I finished reading the letter. I could tell without looking that Irie had a grin on her face. It was emanating from her like the sun. I went to my desk and grabbed a pen and paper. I addressed the letter, flipped it over, and wrote:

Dear Brayden,

You didn’t wake us up. In all honesty, anytime is fine, but obviously, you wanted a definitive time. How about 10 tomorrow? You might want to convince Robert to be with Irie tomorrow. Who knows what she will do…I bet she feels very much like a match-maker. Ha-ha…

Love,

Jewel

I read over the letter to make sure I included everything, hoping Irie doesn’t read it before she sends it off. “I’m done, Irie,” I say quietly. She walks over, wand in hand, and mutters words I didn’t understand, waving it once. It forms into a Labrador dog and increases in size as forming. Then my Labrador-letter runs out the window into the night. “Well,” Irina yawns, “we best be off to bed, well, you should. Someone has a date tomorrow!” We turn off our lights, whispering good night to each other.

I woke up at 8 am, and ate breakfast with Abbey, Glenn, and Astro. Irina was showering in our bathroom, and Pearl was still sleeping. Irina was all ready when she got down the stairs at 9 am. I saw the time and raced up the stairs. I hadn’t even thought of what to wear today. I spent a half hour deciding what to wear before giving up. Since I didn’t know what we were doing, I grabbed my army green canvas pants that had a draw-string on the sides, making them able to become Capris. I grabbed a cute top and ran to the shower before anyone else could claim the bathroom.

I barely got out and had my makeup on when I heard a knock at the door. I hear Abbey get the door and hear Robert’s voice, then Brayden’s. I quickly go to my room, leave the door open from being in a hurry, grab a hoodie, my wallet, cell phone, and slip on some flip-flops. I hear someone walking up the steps. I stand near the doorway, stop, flip my head down, and shake my wet hair up and down. As I bring my head back up, flipping my hair, I hear my hair whip something. I look and see Brayden. He gives a look of shock and then laughs.

“I’m sorry,” I nervously laugh. He walks to me, puts his arm around my neck, kisses my forehead, and whispers, “It’s alright. Ready?” I hold my finger up, telling him to wait a second. I dash to the bathroom to grab a hair tie and my spray some coconut perfume on, and walk back to him as I put the hair tie on my wrist. He reaches for my right hand, I grab it, and we walk down the stairs.

Glenn, at the foot of the stairs, notices us holding hands and raises an eyebrow. “Brayden asked to take me out for the day, Glenn,” I explained. He still was eyeing us, so I said to help the cause, “I’ll call every couple of hours, okay?” He nods and says, “not too late, Jewelie, okay?”

I nod my head, and we walk out the front door, waving goodbye to everyone. We walk outside, and I see no vehicle. Remembering about apparition in Harry Potter, I was hoping we weren’t going to be doing that. He should know I can only handle so much magic. “Brayden?” I question.

“Oh, don’t worry. I have my motorcycle on the other side of the house.” Oh snap. I’m not dressed right for that. But I don’t want to go back to change either. We reach the bike, seeing that it looks like a bumblebee. He looks at me for a second and sees the dilemma with my outfit. “Hold on a sec,” he says, “I think I can fix that. Here, put the jacket and helmet on, and I’ll fix your pants and shoes.” As I put the jacket on, I see him kneel down. I wanted to see what he was going to do, curious, so I wasn’t ready to put on the helmet yet. He grabs the hem of a pant leg, rubs it for a second, and becomes form-fitting leather pants. He rubbed my feet, where a strap was on my flip-flops, and they became leather boots.

He gets up from kneeling and takes another assessment of me. He gives me a quick kiss and then says, “There we go. We don’t want to have the chance of you scraping yourself up.” I put the helmet on, trying to cover me blushing as he puts his jacket and helmet on. He gets on the bike. I take a deep breath, nervous for my first ride, and then get on. As soon as I got a good hold around his torso, he raced out of the neighborhood and out of the city onto the interstate.

I hadn’t been out of the city terribly much, so I had a hard time trying to figure out where we were headed. So I just moved my head to the side, lying against his back, facing toward the west—looking at the mountains. I sighed as I scooted up and got a better grab around him. I was relaxing being there—zooming on the interstate, looking at the beautiful view of the mountains. Everything was beautiful, bright, sunny, and green; green was an unusual color to have, even in the summer, this green at least. Then there was the fact that I was with Brayden. I didn’t still fully know how my life would or would not involve him, but I know that I needed to figure this out soon.

We eventually get into a small town, and he rides up to a small family park. He parks the bike. I slowly release him and put my hands on his shoulder as I get off to stabilize myself. Once I make sure I’m balanced, I let go and step away so he could get off. I take my helmet off as he starts getting off. I set the helmet on the ground and comb my fingers through my hair, looking toward the park. When I’m done, I look back at him and see that Brayden is off the bike. His helmet is off, and he is staring at me, mesmerized.

“What?” I asked, confused.

He walks around the bike, grabs my helmet from the ground, puts it on the motorcycle, and grabs a box off the bike. He then has his right hand reaching out for me, I hesitate and then grab it, knowing that he was feeling the pressure of my ring against his hand like I did of his yesterday. He pulls me in closer, kisses the top of my head, smelling my minty shampooed hair as he leans his head down so I can hear him whisper, “You look so beautiful, Jewel It just took my breath away.” I blush as he starts pulling me toward the park, and we start walking down the sidewalk.

We walked on the path in the sunlight, enjoying the beautiful day. After a short time, he points to a tree with some good shade, saying, “Want to sit? I brought some lunch.” I nodded and looked around, noticing how secluded we were from other people

We walk to the tree, and I lean against it standing for a moment, “Here,” he said, pulling a blanket from the box, “put this over your legs and feet, and I’ll change your clothes back.” I did what he said, and he rubbed the boots and pants again, and when I removed the blanket, it was back to normal. I had to admit, that was pretty cool. Since I had the blanket, I laid it on the ground, setting it up like a picnic. I thought the picnic would be something totally over-done with all his magic, but he just backed a normal lunch, sandwiches, chips, potato salad, and soda. We didn’t talk, just laid against the tree trunk and ate, enjoying each other’s company.

After we were done, and all but the blanket was put away, he sat facing me as I was still against the tree, holding my left hand with his right. He started to speak when I put my finger up to shush him for a second, “Sorry,” I apologized, “I need to call Glenn real quick.” I grabbed my cell out from my hoodie and called him, “Glenn? It’s Jewel. Yeah, we’re fine. We’re just at a park chillin and had lunch…okay, I will. Talk to you later. Bye.” I hang and put my cell back in my hoodie while saying, “Glenn and Abbey want us to be home at seven for dinner. But I bet you can stay a while after that if you want.” He just nods his head. I look at the pictures on my phone until he talks, unsure what to say or do. I pass pictures of me and Irie from the other day, and then see a picture of…

“Jewel,” he starts, struggling to find words, holding my left hand with both of his looking down at my ring. I look up from my phone as he continues, “look. I…I know you don’t know much about me but…I feel like I have to have a….a heart to heart. I feel like I don’t know what…what to expect or be expected to without knowing what’s going on in that mind of yours. And I expect you have the same for me too.” He looked up at me when he was finished.

“Brayden…,” I start, trying to find the right words as I put my phone in my hoodie, “I…I don’t fully understand how I feel about you. It’s not that I don’t like you. It’s just…I’m not as sure about things as you were yesterday, especially with these rings. Irie told me when she asked about your ring, and that she told you about how I had the other. But…I wonder if you were only ever waiting for the person with the ring to come in your life, or you ever were looking otherwise.” I after all, have trust issues with magic.

He looks down, as if ashamed for a second before he could answer, “Jewel, you….you know how people have in their head all the things they want from their ‘special someone’?” I nodded my head, and then he continued, “Well...Jewels... I never found a girl with that I had in mind until you. I was looking for the longest time…and then…then I thought I was setting my standards too high, so I decided to eliminate some things and continued searching at school, but I didn’t find the right person. Then, that day, Irie asked about my ring, and she told me you had the other, I figured I should know more about you.

“So, I was anticipating meeting you. But from what Irie and the twins were saying, I got the impression that you would be avoiding anything dealing with magic as much as possible. But when we graduated, and Irie said she was having that party, I knew that I had to come.” He paused for a second and then said in a lower voice, “Jewel, when I saw you yesterday, I felt as if nothing else existed but you. Just seeing you triggered something in me, something I have been waiting for; the need of being with you, not just the want. But I knew I still needed to know you more and get you to be interested in getting to know me. So, I just tried to be myself. Trust me; it’s hard trying to be yourself when trying to impress a pretty girl like you.” I blushed for a moment, as he smirked and continued, “I was watching you that day and I was seeing what I have been looking for; not from the things I eliminated, but from the start. Then I gave you that candy, and then you went under that tree. When you didn’t come out, I thought that I’d go apologize—thinking that I upset you, besides running away from Irie.” He was laughing in his eyes, grinning as he said that. I just gave him a smirk.

“But,” he continued, “When you turned around, you just looked like you wanted to be alone. I figured that sometimes it’s nice to have others there, too, while being ‘alone’. Then I mention…your mom and dad. Man, I thought I had screwed it up. I really didn’t want to hurt you. I somehow cared about you too much, even though I hurt you. As you were crying, I was trying to come up with a way of apologizing. I was thinking of how it seemed you were looking at me, like you liked me. So, to me, a kiss seemed to be a good way. When you didn’t do anything after the first kiss, I thought that you were too shocked to enforce continuing, so I continued it, feeling some sort of spark after the first one.

“It killed me when you said ‘no’. I didn’t understand why. Then, when you were explaining…I felt like dying. But I was trying to figure out a way around it.

“Jewel…honey…I want to know what you’ve decided, what you decided from my suggestion. I know I said you have time, but…I need to know. If you don’t want me here and now, I want to know so I can’t cause any more pain.”