To everyone else, Erin was known as nothing more than simply “the skeleton girl”. To me, however, she was my world. My solar system lived in her bones, asteroids soaring through constellations of ribs, planets orbiting around the curves of her hipbones, and her heart the center of it all, the brightest sun in the cosmos.
But the sun is a star, and all stars die.
A short fiction piece I wrote under the read more--Works a bit better if you're familiar with the characters, hehe, but it's still readable if you're not!!! ^^;
Man, I need to work on my rushed endings...
I’m beginning to think that Erin will never grasp the concept of cards.
Granted, I’m no world-renowned card geek, but you’d think after the twenty-seventh time, you’d be able to identify a jack from a king, as well as when the heck to use either royal properly. But I can’t blame her. In her other aspect of current work, she’s doing great.
Well, maybe a little too great.
“Kid Flash! Quicksand! Shark Bait! Pepper!” her lips are a never-ending waterfall of nonsense. Each term is caught by three sets of slightly fatigued ears and three pairs of beyond confused eyes.
“…What?” Dominic finally breaks through her infinite string of randomness. “Erin, those names don’t even have anything to do with me!”
Erin responds with a look that’s half-pout, half-deep-thought. “Well, I couldn’t help it. You’ve turned down everything else we’ve all said…”
“I still vote Domino,” I pipe up, slamming down a 10 onto the small mound of cards below me.
“No!” Dominic refuses for perhaps the fortieth time in the last five minutes. Then again, that’s probably the fortieth time I’ve suggested Domino in the last five minutes. After all, the kid’s name is Dominic Domininguez? Domingo? Dom…Dominguez. Whatever. Domino would just be too perfect. “Cato, Domino is not going to be my nickname!”
“Hey, since when do you get to dictate your nickname?” I ask, watching out of the corner of my eye as Erin fumbles around with her cards in plain sight. “You were the one who asked us to help you come up with one. I mean, you arranged this whole thing just to get appointed a nickname out of your own decision. I mean, who does that?”
“I do,” Domininguez responds immediately, and Tom sets down an ace next to him. “And I have the right to deny any of the names you come up with if I don’t think they’re swag-tastic enough.”
“You have the right to remain silent,” I retaliate, setting down a king—Wait, no, a jack. Geez, look at me, I’m turning into Erin.
And speaking of Erin, she’s pretty much totally abandoned the game. Her tiny hands wind through the plethora of pins swallowing her school lanyard, and she absentmindedly begins twirling some kind of little green snail pin near the bottom, succeeding in snagging just a few wisps of her chocolate brown ponytail.
“Erin, your move,” I nudge her delicate frame slightly, and her head jerks up with a tiny, “huh?”. She then realizes what I’m trying to tell her, and quickly picks up the scattered cards she’s placed face-down on the picnic table, taking a second to flip about half of them over. After a moment of observation, she lays down a seven, and then goes back to her absentminded perusing of the school lunchyard. I don’t know what she expects to find, as it’s after school hours and pretty much everyone has gone home, save for the occasional unfortunate straggler. Oh, yeah, and us. Dominic was sure of that.
“Tom, you got anything?” Dominic asks the tall boy sitting across from Erin, who readjusts his glasses slightly. Tom shakes his head.
“I…um…I’m afraid I’m not exceedingly creative…” he says quietly, setting down his card. Erin goes to set hers down, realizes it’s not her turn, and then happily returns to scanning the non-existent crowd.
“Come on, man!” Dominic urges him. “You’re plenty creative. Granted, you’re no swag-king of excellency like me when it comes to—”
“It’s, er, excellence,” Tom corrects him timidly, but the curly-haired moron isn’t even listening.
“That’s what my name needs to be!” he gestures in the air, as if illustrating a neon sign before him. “‘The Swag-King of Excellency’. I love it!”
“News flash, smart one,” I whack him in the head with the cards in my hand. “Your nickname can’t be longer than your actual name.”
Dominic shoots me a glare as he rubs his head, then smirks at me and my handful of cards. “I saw your five in there.”
I respond by plucking one from his hand and slipping it into mine, much to his contempt.
“Should it be something to do with…um…your heritage?” Tom asks. “You are Hispanic, after all.”
“That is racist,” Dominic grins, attempting a ghetto snap. “Besides, I bet half the people at this school wouldn’t even be able to pronounce it. It needs to be something cool, like…” he looks at his cards, then goes back to gesturing his marquee signs. “Ace…or…Spades Slick…or…um—”
“Plucky!” Erin yelps, and I jolt as her hand nearly gives me a concussion. I’m narrowly able to swoop down and catch her as she plummets backwards from the bench, flailing her arms and kicking her legs with the biggest grin on her face. “Plucky!!!”
“What, is that like, code for ‘I’m dying’ or something???” I ask, twisting awkwardly to support the now horizontal teen spazzing in my arms. “What’s going on?”
She shoots a finger out to her left, and I look in that direction to spot some unsuspecting junior walking by in a shirt adorned with some kind of green duck. An innocent victim, more like; Erin’s totally losing it over here.
“That’s Plucky Duck, from Tiny Toon Adventures!” she squeals, shooting upwards and nearly sending me tumbling off the bench myself. I pull myself up and somehow manage to save my cards as she bounces up and down, beaming at Dominic. “And that should be your nickname! Plucky!!! It’s so cute!”
I chuckle, shooting a mischievous grin at the “swag-tastic” Mexican sitting across from me. “Plucky. Catchy.”
Dominic turns into Erin, swinging his arms wildly in an X. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! I am not going to be named after a duck!!! Let alone one named Plucky!!!”
“Could be worse,” I shrug. “Daffy suits you well.”
“Shut up, Cato!”
Erin giggles, then lets out a tiny quack. Dominic is not amused.
“Come on, guys!” he rubs his face, exasperated. “What part of swag-tastic do you not get?”
Swag-tastic my ass. I slam down my deck of cards with a chuckle, wondering why the hell I’m still here in the first place. “You know what? I’ve got the perfect nickname for you. Nickname. Short, sweet, original, and just dripping ‘swag-tasm’. We done here? Ok, good.” I stand up, hoisting my backpack over my shoulder. Dominic stares at me with a gaping mouth.
“W-Wait, what? You’re not leaving, are you???”
“Yes, O’ royal swag-king,” I smirk, helping Erin up from her seat. “Contrary to popular belief, your servant does have a life. And part of that involves walking this fair maiden home before her parents kill her.”
Erin smiles, then looks at her phone. “Oh, man, yeah, it is getting late…”
Dominic still looks like a kid who just watched his puppy get hit by a humane society van. “B-But…Nickname?! Are you serious? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! That doesn’t even make sense!”
“Sounds like it suits you well,” I shrug.
Dominic glances at Tom, who is already rising to his feet as well. “Wait, where are you going?”
“I—I have tutoring to accomplish tonight…” he responds. “I need to be punctual, and I really didn’t realize how late it was getting…”
Dominic shakes his head, shooting shocked brown eyes at all of us. “B—But, my nickname!”
“It’s Nickname now!” Erin smiles. “And I like it!”
“Not you, too, chica!” he whines with that notorious title he appoints every girl. “Don’t let him screw you up in the head!”
Erin takes her head in her hands and twists it slightly, giggling. “My head is perfectly fine!” She flounces over to him, then hugs him tight. “But we really do need to go! See you tomorrow, ok?”
“B—But—”
She’s already skipping away as I walk over to him, smirking as I muss up the curls of his hair. “Yeah. See you later, Nickname.”
Dominic groans and tries to object again, but I’m already following the tiny-framed girl twirling towards the exit of the school. I look back just in time to see him look at his cards and fling them peevishly into the stack, then look at me and shout, “Nickname?! Really?!”
Yes, Nickname, I think, giving him a casual yet smug wave as we turn the corner. I don’t know what he’s getting so worked about. Joke’ll be over by tomorrow, I’m sure. And if it’s not…Well…
Sure suits him a heck of a lot better than “Swag-king of Excellency”.
