Violet Ink by Ramisa R (good books for high schoolers .TXT) 📕

Chapter One

“Can I have my ticket now?”

My eyes flicker up at a preteen boy with unkempt hair. A red balloon is tied to his wrist quite firmly –I suspect his mother?– which brings me to the next question: why does his mother want to tie a balloon so tightly to the poor boy’s wrist? 

This is definitely a mystery. My hand reaches for my glittery notebook and pen. I scribble down the word “balloon” and “mystery” next to it. I snap it shut. 

“Sorry, what’d you want again?”

“A ticket, please, Miss.”

Miss? My mind begins travelling in all different directions. Why “Miss”? Perhaps a teacher at school forces the young lad to title her? Could a divorced mother be added to the equation? I study his weary eyes. 

Yes, definitely. His parents have separated, his mother’s afraid of losing custody and therefore ties a red wiring around his wrist.

But why would any mother, especially one who cares so much about their son’s whereabouts, tie a balloon to his wrist? I already have my answer –losing custody and all– but the puzzle just doesn’t fit. Something’s missing.

I study the boy closer. He shifts back a little, unsettled. Yes. Unknowingly, I’ve performed a test on him: he’s scared of females. He’s always been. Why? Because there’s something wrong with his mother. This mother, who’s so scared of losing her son, and is willing to do anything to keep him by her side.

Anything.

My mouth lets out a gasp. The boy pales. He knows. We both know what’s really going on. His mother is a serial killer. That red balloon is a cheap yet effective way of keeping tabs on him. She will follow him, hunt him down and smother him.

The young boy clears his throat. “Can I please have my ticket?”

“Kid, you’ve gotta escape.” 

“What?”

I lower my voice. “I… I know. It’s okay. Your secret’s safe with me.”

“What secre–” He stops mid-sentence. “Never mind. Can I please have my ticket? Please?”

“Look, you’ve got to run.”

“I said please!”

“You’re not safe here. She’s watching you. She’ll always be watching you.”

He blocks me out completely. Instead, he turns to the girl next to me. “Can I have a ticket for the rollercoaster, please?”

The girl happens to be my best friend, Lilah. She flashes her vibrant colours-of-the-rainbow braces and hands him one. I swear he sighs in relief after snatching the ticket. 

Before entering the rollercoaster line, he turns around. And, like any other pre-adolescent boy, shoots a dirty look at me. I stick my tongue out, but he’s already turned his back. Boys. They never truly grow up. 

Lilah sighs and turns to me, suddenly looking ten years older. The perfect posture she balances from years of country-ballet -a very unusual modern dance initiated by her parents, involving pointe toes and trained cows to moo at the right places. They thought it'd catch on. It never did. Thank God.

Her ageing doesn’t match her colourful skirt and the fluoro-pink hoop earrings which almost reach her shoulders. “You’ve gotta stop freaking costumers out.” To demonstrate her point, she ties her neon shoe laces, striped with black to resemble a zebra. I almost shield my eyes from the blinding colour. 

“Well, pardon me for making their miserable lives more interesting.”

“Interesting? Tessa, anything without blood and gore is boring in your books.” She’s bristled by my “How’s that abnormal?” look. “In some countries, that’s considered the first sign of mental illness. That's why it's abnormal."

“Gee, I’m glad Australia’s not one of them.”

She’s defeated. Just then, her mobile rings. From her slightly curled lip, I can tell it's her brother Cameron. He begins every phone-call with a ridiculously disgusting mental image. I answered Lilah's cell while she refilled a popcorn bucket once, and Cameron injected a picture of maggots squirming through his scabs. "Cheap disinfectant," he called it.

Rest assured, I vomited my lunch with his detailed imagery. Simultaneously, I recognised how I long for a brother like that. Why can't I have a brother?

She ends the phone-call with her face still twisted. The next customer she serves responds rather distantly, assuming the disgusted expression is directed towards them. This redhead teenager continues flattening her hair as she walks toward the humongous line. Was it her hair? Was it the way her nose is bent 0.00000005 milimeters to the left? I almost snort in laughter.

The next round of customers are particularly difficult. I wouldn't know this in detail, as I sit on the compact velvet sofa, scribbling bits of inspiration in my notebook. Disgust, repulsion, horrifying deaths from rollercoasters. Between each customer, Lilah reserves a special second just to shoot me a dirty look. I pretend not to notice. 

Surprisingly, the line clears up quite quickly. On the overhead speakers, discounts were announced on another rollercoaster, and the frugal locals --because let's face it, tourists avoid this dump like toe-fungus-- head there like packs of sheep. 

Lilah's huge grin disappears the minute her last customer disappears. It forms into a scowl instead, as she taps her feet with folded arms. I sigh and hand over my notebook, a sign my full attention is on her. She sometimes reads through them. 

After inhaling a huge mouthful of air, Lilah inquires, “Do you really think your stories are true?” She brushes her fingers over the cover, with violet skulls and contradicting baby rabbits suck onto them.

I snort. “Never. They’re the figment of my own imagination. But when I’m finding little ‘clues,’ it’s fun to think they might, y’know, happen.”

“You want that poor boy’s mother to be a murderer?”

“...Those aren't my exact words.”

“You’re unbelievable.” 

Nevertheless, she fights a smile.

Unfortunately, that much-deserved break turned out to be short-lived. After finding they've been deceived (they increased the original price to twelve dollars and the customers had to pay the previous full-price) they returned with a huff. And a mob of tricked customers are never a pleasant sight. 

"I know we don't really talk much. We should really improve that. So I'll start: you're on your own, pal." I pat her on the head like she's a labrador. Unfortunately, I'm not the one to walk away. 

When the next customer arrives, Lilah shoves her bony elbow straight into my ribs, pushing me aside. The slender, freckled boy doesn’t get the chance to meet me –or receive a possible insight into his past and future. He'll never know of the darkness that probably, hopefully isn't true. I glare at my best friend. She disregards me, focusing on the customer and nothing else. 

It’s after the third person I realise my shift has ended three hours earlier. Lilah is handling both her and my customers, yet seems to be working faster. It's as if she's purposely trying to get rid of them so I never greet them. I pout. She's so mean.

A could-be-accurate insight into every human being’s personality, life and future can’t waste that much time, can it?

The question basically answers itself.

Slumped in my seat, I whirl around three times in the revolving chair. Then it just gets boring. So I fish the exposed notebook from her bag, and find myself facing a huge decision: the velvet sofa or the revolving chair? One false move can alter my life forever. 

I quickly scribble that down. A wrong move having greater consequences than ever dreamed of. It's definitely the beginnings of a new short story. 

My eyes avert to Lilah’s crowd, customers, fans –all of them grasp tickets from her, slam a quick smile and race towards the ride. How lucky they are, avoiding me. Perhaps I should get a knife, smother it with red food colouring, and give them something to worry about. I ponder this. How would the food colouring stick to the knife? Something so watery will just… drip off. It’ll lose the effect. 

No, what I really need is to mix cornflour in the solution. I snap my fingers. That’s it. It’ll be a gooey, slimy mixture at the end of a knife. It will be what I chase people after, especially when they fail to recognise my authority. 

A maniacal laugh overtakes me. Lilah ever-so-slightly distances herself away without turning, her smile in a mangle as she serves more customers. Our differences, I think, is the reason the friendship between us still exists. Or else it’d be long gone, like that rollercoaster gliding through enormous waves of water.

More people arrive, more people ignore me. It’s like I have an invisible cloak. Unfortunately, though, when I remove it, nobody will bow down to me. I’ll just be another face in another crowd. Or behind the counter. 

The next customer arrives. “Uh, hi. Can I have a ticket?”

“Sure!” Lilah replies, eyes sparkling. “I’ll just–”

I seize this opportunity to swoop the newspaper out of the man’s hands. He removes the shades that he thinks looks “so cool” but just appears creepy. Then I make a face at the scarlet sunburn around his eyes, like he fried his eyeballs this morning for breakfast. Would it be rude to suggest he place them back on? 

“Hey!” he shouts, indignantly. “I paid a good dollar for that!”

Lilah’s eyes twitch, her smile looking more forced. “One second, please.”

She leaps to where I am, behind the counter, and pins my shoulders down. I’m sitting in the leather chair. And, for the first time ever, I don’t attempt to escape from her freakish strength. Instead, my eyes fix on the headline of the newspaper.

While Lilah’s giving me a lecture, about how my father won’t fire me ‘cause I’m his daughter, but she’s a goner. Then she gets teary-eyed, blubbering about two bratty boys next door –the ones she’ll have to babysit if she gets fired.

I’m barely listening. “Look at this.” I jab a finger at the headline, “TEENAGE GIRL MYSTERIOUSLY DIES ON CRUMBLING MOUNTAIN.”

She takes the newspaper. “Police are investigating the case of a 16-year-old female found on the waters surrounding Ayers Rock,” she reads aloud. “According to witness and the Rocky Tours owner, Mrs Dubose, ‘The mountain just crumbled down. I’ve never seen anything like this before.’”

Lilah’s eyes scan over the picture accompanying the news article. Her frown deepens, examining a picture of a female hunched over a giant rock surrounded by water. Dressed in winter clothes, her body is fixed on the surface, as if trying to avoid any falls. 

“This sounds so familiar,” she says, her fingers brushing over the picture. “But I don’t know where from.” Her eyes scan the article one more time, scratching her hair as she tries to pinpoint the exact encounter with this de ja vu. 

My heart is pounding. Surely this is a dream. Or maybe I'm overreacting. Yes, I must be. The truth is way too bland so I fantasied this into something more real. Lilah always babbles on about my extensive imagination and scolds me for not recognizing reality. This is exactly the kind of thing she meant. I sigh, a little relieved. 

"Nope, I don't know where it's from," Lilah says with a frown, glancing one last time before absentmindedly handing it to me. "It's so weird, because I've seen this. I've heard this. I've tasted this. But, ugh, where from?" She shrugs, then continues her shift. Lilah registers the shades-man's credit-card. 

Back to my desk at the reception, where the man glares at me, I reach for my notebook. I don’t cast him a single glance. With trembling fingers, I scuffle through the pages until I find it. My breath gets stuck in my throat. Although my blood-pressure is already high, it must’ve increased a million times more now.

Whatever relief I got before, it's no longer there. A pink woolen scarf, blue overalls and a purple beanie --three things of many mutually common between my fictional story and the news-article. Not to mention the small dimple in her left cheek, something I made up on the whim, but accuses me in the picture of her high-school graduation. She fits the description. 

White spots. I’m seeing