Young Writers Society

Part III of the Lyric Trilogy

A Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes

Picture yourself in a boat on a river,

With tangerine trees and marmalade skies

Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,

A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

- Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, The Beatles

Jezebel turned the corner, and kept running, it didn’t matter that her legs strained because of disuse or that shards of pain attacked her side. Crystalline tears slipped from dark blue eyes and smothered her cheeks and parted lips. When at last she stopped, she collapsed the grass beneath her. In her madness her tapered fingers ripped at emerald pikes of grass, and she rocked in time to silent sobs.

That’s how Michael found her, curled in the grass arms wrapped around her knees, tears drying on her cheeks.

“Jezy…” Her name came out tentatively, for he knew her temper and didn’t want to provoke it.

But when she didn’t respond, he knelt beside her in the grass, enveloping her in his embrace.

“Michael?” She whispered hopefully.

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

Shaking herself out of her trance, Jezebel looked up at him frowning slightly.

“Come on, you don’t want to catch cold here in the wet.” He gestured to the dew laden park around them.

Gracefully getting to his feet, Michael offered her a hand.

For awhile they walked in comfortable silence, before Jezebel lashed out.

“I can’t believe her.”

Michael didn’t even bother responding, he knew this to be the beginning of a Jezebel Rant.

“I just, don’t know what to say, she, she, she can’t be in love with him. He’s uggg…he’s so…I just can’t believe her. What was she thinking when she said yes, god my mother never thinks.”

Jezebel had stop during the outburst and Michael turned back watching as she brushed a long blonde curl out of her face. Her lips pouted at him and the tears sparkled in the corner of her eyes.

“Jezy do you just not like Tyler or is it your afraid she won’t love you anymore, now that she’s got him?”

----------------------------------------------------

Jezebel stood on the rickety front steps of the house, convincing herself that the best thing to do was to go inside.

Yes, she told herself, I have to go inside sometime and apologize.

Jezebel hated apologizing almost as much as she hated cabbage soup, because that meant she had done something wrong and at heart Jezebel was a perfectionist. She supposed living with a single mother had done that to her. But there also was another reason she didn’t want to cross the threshold, Tyler was still there, his blue truck was still parked outside. Jezebel had never had a father figure in her life, and wasn’t planning on accepting one now.

We’ve done just fine the last sixteen years.

She felt great animosity towards Tyler for budging into their two person family, now it was to be three, an odd number, and Jezebel felt very uneasy at the feeling.

Mom has had boyfriends before, but not like this, not like Tyler, and she has never even talked about marriage before.

Jezebel scowled as she remembered her mother’s words, “Tyler asked me, hon, he asked me to marry him, and I said yes.”

They had always discussed big life events together before finally deciding on them, and this time she felt left out, forgotten. She knew the marriage proposal was inevitable but Jezebel just thought, hoped really that they could have at least discussed it. But no, her mother’s words were final; she and Tyler were getting married. But Michael was right she didn’t hate or even dislike Tyler, he was a great guy and even greater for her mom, but they had been a two person family for so long, his addition meant that her mom could place all her energy on him.

On second thoughts that’s just silly!

Finally having enough courage, Jezebel walked through the door, snaked her way into the living room, to where Tyler and her mom were seated on the rust colored couch.

Lifting her eyes to meet both her mothers blue and Tyler’s brown she spoke, “I don’t have to call you dad, do I?”