Because it’s nano, you get a flashback! and if things don’t pick up there won’t only be zombies but there may be…..um….aliens! whoooopppeeee!
ooops…forgot current word count: 23623
Flashback
Phoebe and David. David and Phoebe. For four years during high school their names and been entwined. During Freshman year they had the same advisor, Ms. Leroy, art teacher. Phoebe dwelled within herself and David was a clown. He decided it was his mission to make Phoebe giggle as often and as loudly as possible. With his guidance, she did.
It was hard not to fall for David. He was cute in the way that funny, smart, geeky guys are cute with cherubic cheeks and bright eyes and always ready with a laugh. Maybe he wasn’t super fit or super skinny. He was super wonderful. He remembered every date and even made a few up. “The day Phoebe and I first ate rocky road ice cream together” or “the day Phoebe sang to a Lady Gaga song.”
They went to college together. At their college graduation party on the beach at Pleasant Point Cove where they had spent so many wonderful times, he proposed. He had a sapphire ring surrounded by little emeralds. He said “This is you. It’s the ocean and the sky and everything in between.”
It was so beautiful and what he said was so beautiful that she cried. He hugged her and told her that he would love her forever and she said that she felt the same. She looked into his amber brown eyes and then kissed his lips.
She didn’t see him for two days, which was odd. They saw each other every day.
On the third day, he came to Aunt Philo’s house, and he looked disoriented.
“What’s wrong?” Phoebe asked.
His forehead was beaded with perspiration. He shook his head. “I don’t know. Phoebe, I have to ask for the ring back.”
At first, she thought he was joking. David was a joker. She laughed, but then saw he was still serious.
“I don’t understand.”
“I think I’m in love with someone else.”
He glanced around behind him. It struck her as strange. She touched his arm gently, but he jerked it back and glanced at her hand as if it were painful, forbidden, scary.
“David? What’s going on?”
“I’d like the ring back.”
There was something in his voice that finally unnerved her. She had known him for nine years. She knew him almost as well as she knew anyone in her own family, sometimes better.
She asked him if he wanted to come in but he shook his head and just looked at her hand at the ring. It felt like something, maybe that frog everyone spoke of, had just lodged itself in her throat. She slowly removed the ring that she loved.
“Can we talk?” she asked as she held out the ring to him.
“There’s nothing to talk about. I’m not in love with you anymore.” He turned and walked away without looking back.
Her adorable, stocky David walking away, breaking her heart. She watched him walk to his rusty old Toyota that he had had since he learned to drive. He got into the driver’s seat and drove off without ever looking at her.
She cried for hours. It all felt so unreal. Surreal. David. The David that she had known since they were lowly high school freshman. The David who had made her smile and laugh, who had been the first boy for her in so many ways.
Three days later he showed up again. His face was clearer but he wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“All of those things you said about your family,” he began.
She barely felt able to speak. She was so glad to see him, but it was obvious that his heart wasn’t into being there. That he was there for something else other than what the spark in her wanted him to be there for.
“What things?” she asked with a raspy voice.
“The witchy things.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Did you use any of that on me?”
Phoebe sighed and rolled her eyes. “No. Of course I didn’t. I explained to you that using magic for personal gain makes things go bad.”
“Your cousin said you did.”
“My cousin? Serena?”
“Yes. Serena. She said you made me fall in love with you.”
Phoebe laughed. “You’re kidding. And you believed that?”
“Yes. But I’m not sure.”
“Why? Because you remember freshman year? You remember The Grapes of Wrath and algebra and us studying together? You remember me saying little magic things during all of that?”
“No. I mean I remember The Grapes of Wrath and all of that, but I don’t remember you doing magic.”
“Because there was none.”
“She told me.”
“David, why would you believe her over me? You’ve known her for, what, seven weeks?”
His brow furrowed and his lips moved over the words “seven weeks.”
“It feels longer,” he said.
“Why are you here, David?”
“I don’t know anymore. I felt mad at you for using magic on me.”
“But I didn’t.”
“I’ve accepted a job in Seattle,” he said.
She shrugged. She shrugged not because she didn’t care or because it meant nothing. She shrugged because most of her had already let him go as hard as it had been to accept. She loved him. She would always love him. The first you loved always occupied a special place in your heart and he had hers. If he turned around and said it was all a mistake, she would take him back. But everything felt wrong. He was gone and she knew that. She didn’t need to read a mind or test an aura. His eyes told her everything his words couldn’t.
“I love you,” she said through tears. “I’m probably going to always love you.”
He looked at her then. For a moment she thought she saw his face clear, that she saw the David she loved with his sparkling, laughing eyes, but then it was gone, and cloudiness took over.
“Thanks,” he said, inadequately. “I hope you have a great life.”
end of 16.1