Breaking Deluce Read online

  Breaking Deluce

  Breaking Deluce

  Part 1

  Midpoint

  Breaking Deluce

  By Chad Campbell

  Cover by Leonardo Ariza

  Breaking Deluce

  Chad Campbell

  Copyright© 2012 Chad Campbell

  Digital Edition

  Part 1

  A book in hand, Mona Deluce stepped into the bright morning air and smiled. She looked left as the school bus came to a stop right in front of her house. The driver waved and she waved right back, letting him know she wouldn’t be taking the bus. It was like this every day—the mile and a half walk might be too much for most people, but it was exactly what Mona loved. She raised her book to read as she walked, but the wind kicked up, whipping her chocolate brown hair all over and making it impossible to see. “Oh, it’s going to be one of those days, is it?” she asked herself ruefully.

  Luckily, Mona knew all about the legendary Ellensburg wind and she was prepared. She set her book and her backpack down, but it was clear after only a glance into her clean and neatly packed bag that what she was looking for wasn’t there. It must be in my car.

  Mona closed her bag and threw it over her shoulder as she walked up to her car. The dark blue Cabrio sat right in front of her house. Her parents had bought it for her seventeenth birthday. She was pretty sure they weren’t happy that she rarely drove it, but that wasn’t going to stop her from walking. She opened her door and sitting on the passenger seat was her headband. It was very plain and white; it never really stood out, and that was just the way she liked it. She grabbed it and adjusted her hair, but never looked in the mirror to make sure it was straight—after locking the car, she went straight back to her book and started her slow trek to school.

  Before Mona knew it, she had finished her book and was standing in the middle of her school. She shook her head until the mental fog around her dissipated and was just reaching for her phone to check the time when she heard someone calling her name—“Mona! Yo, earth to Mona!”

  Mona turned. Standing behind her was her lab partner, whose name escaped her at the moment. “Hey, how’s it going,” she asked, beginning to rack her brains.

  “Well, I was just wondering what you were doing tonight. A bunch of us were going camping up in the hills and I wanted to see if you wanted to join us,” he said.

  Oh yeah, his name is Chris.

  “Thanks for the invite Chris, but the SATs are coming up and I need a perfect 2400. I am not doing anything until I take that test,” she explained.

  “Well, if you change your mind, you should have my number.”

  Mona thought it was unlikely she would—she hadn’t been lying about those scores—but she smiled her assent before waving goodbye.

  When Mona got to her first class, she was surprised to find there was already someone else there; she was used to being the first to arrive. The boy stood up to introduce himself. Mona looked up and couldn’t believe how big this kid was; he must have been at least a foot taller than she was, and at five-seven, she wasn’t a short girl. “Hi, I’m Jason. It’s my first day today,” he said.

  “Mona. Nice to meet you,” she replied.

  Mona grabbed the chair behind him. She sat down and pulled her science book out of her bag. The world around her ceased to exist as she started reading; she always liked to be one step ahead.

  Jason sat back down. He tried to turn and talk to Mona, but she looked a million miles away. He smiled as he turned back around.

  They sat in silence as the class slowly began filling up. By the time the bell rang, the only person missing was the teacher, who came running in a few minutes later. “Sorry I’m late class. The principal stopped me to tell me that we were having two new students today,” he said breathlessly. For the new kids, I’m Mr. Johnson.”

  Mr. Johnson sat down at his desk as he slowly got organized for class. When he realized how long it was going to take him to get ready, he looked up and said, “While I get ready for class, will the two new kids stand up, introduce yourselves, and tell everyone something about yourself?”

  Jason took his cue first and stood up next to his desk. “Hey everyone, I’m Jason Franks, my father and I just moved here. I don’t really have much going on yet, so that’s it, I guess.”

  The class fell silent as they waited for the other new kid to introduce himself. “Now, where’s the other new boy?” Mr. Johnson asked. “Where’s Damon Jager?”

  “I’m right here,” Damon replied.

  The kids all turned in surprise, as no one had noticed him sitting in the back. “Well, would you like to tell us something about yourself?” Mr. Johnson asked.

  “Sure. I’m Damon. I don’t want to be here and I highly doubt I will be here by next week.”

  “Hmm, well… that’s interesting, Damon... Anyway, class, let’s start the learning process.”

  Mona pulled her head from the book she was reading and looked back to see who had spoken so brazenly. In the back sat someone who appeared more man than boy. His icy blue eyes shot right through her as he looked at her; his brown hair was messy and looked intentionally unkempt. He was wearing dark blue jeans and a dark brown leather coat with a black t-shirt. For the first time in her life, Mona found herself desiring a boy.

  Mona realized she was staring and returned to her book, embarrassed that he probably noticed her. “Mona!” Mr. Johnson barked. “Pay attention.”

  “Yes Mr. Johnson,” Mona said as she put her book down and slid down in her seat, feeling her face turn red. She tried to compose herself as Mr. Johnson went on teaching. She felt compelled to look back at Damon, but she fought it with every urge. She couldn’t date now, she knew better—not if she expected to make something of herself.

  “Okay class, since it’s Friday, it’s time to play a game for extra credit. It’s an oral trivia game. The first person with their hand up who answers the question correctly will get ten extra credit points. If you answer incorrectly, you’ll lose ten points, so don’t just raise your hand to guess,” Mr. Johnson explained. “Okay, first question: how many phases are there in meiosis one?”

  Mona thought for a second and was about to shoot her hand up when Jason’s rose up in front of her. “Yes, new kid, are you sure you want to try?” Mr. Johnson asked as he looked at his clipboard. “It’s Jason, correct?”

  “Yes, sir. There are four phases of meiosis, and they are prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase,” Jason replied.

  “Very nicely done, it looks like you are going to do quite well in this class.”

  Jason smiled at the compliment while Mona gave him a glare. It was usually she who answered all of the extra credit quiz questions, and here was the first time all year that she had missed one. Mr. Johnson continued to ask questions and every time Jason’s hand shot up before hers; sometimes his hand was up before the question was even finished being asked. Her face was starting to turn an angry shade of red. She tried to calm down but every time Jason beat her to a question it only made it worse. Finally she had seen enough. Before Mr. Johnson had even finished a quarter of the question she raised her hand. “Yes Mona? You know the answer already?” Mr. Johnson asked.

  Mona stared forward at the teacher clueless. She didn’t even know what the first part of the question was. She just sat there as the entire classroom began to get very quiet and then she finally answered, “No, I have no clue.”

  “Very well, then I shall actually finish the question,” Mr. Johnson teased.

  Mona’s face was now a new shade of red and she didn’t know when it was going to end. The bell rang and she slowly unglued herself from deep in her chair. She didn’t know which was worse, the horrible embarrassment she suffered in front of the
new guy Damon, or that she suffered in front the other new guy Jason, who stole every extra credit question from under her and made her feel stupid.

  By the time Mona was out of her chair and had gathered her things, the entire class had left. She was about to leave when Mr. Johnson spoke. “It looks like you are going to have to step your game up if you want to stay number one in your class.”

  Mona looked at him, shook her head, and walked out of the classroom.

  Mona spent the walk to her next class in one of her famous thinking fogs. As she entered the locker room, she gathered that she was late, since the entire locker room was empty. She quickly changed her clothes and headed to the gym floor, only to arrive to the sound of the gym teacher, Mr. Affholter, explaining the day’s activity. She tried to sneak in unnoticed, but Mr. Affholter didn’t miss much and he certainly didn’t miss Mona slowly joining the group. “Ahem!” Mr. Affholter coughed to let her know he had seen her.

  “Now where was I? Oh yeah, today we will be doing fitness testing. Most of you will remember we did this at the beginning of the year. Now we will do it again to compare how you’ve grown over the year. For you two new kids...”

  Mona tuned out his voice after she heard two new kids. Were Damon and Jason in this class too? Her eyes darted around the gym but she was unable to locate them. She felt a shadowy presence behind her sending a slight chill up her spine. When she was about to turn around and see who it was, the presence spoke: “How many tests are there?”

  There was no mistaking Jason’s voice as it already annoyed Mona to the core. She hasn’t even known the guy an hour and already she hated him. She side-stepped away with a look of disgust on her face as she wanted nothing to do with him. Mr. Affholter shot her another look and she realized he had been speaking this entire time without hearing a word of it. “... Now everyone get into your groups and head to your stations,” Mr. Affholter finished.

  Mona stood there, dumbfounded—she had no clue which group she was in. If only I hadn’t been so busy in my own world! She wandered forward, hoping if she looked lost enough that people in her group would call to her.

  “Mona! Over here!” someone yelled.

  Mona was scanning the gym, trying to find who was calling her name, when she spotted two blond girls waving at her from across the room. She slowly walked towards them, and they smiled as she approached. The shorter blonde she recognized as Becca; though they weren’t friends, they’d been classmates since elementary school. “Hey Becca,” Mona said as she looked at the taller blonde girl that she didn’t know. “What’s your friend’s name? I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  “Wow Mona, that’s cold. You don’t remember Vanessa? She’s only gone to school with us since elementary school,” Becca scolded.

  Mona looked at Vanessa again as a hazy fog clouded her mind. She tried to shake it off, but that only caused a splitting headache. The pain caused her to fall to one knee, a voice spoke into her mind, “Vanessa...”

  The voice was almost hypnotic. It was like some outside force was trying to control her. Visions and images that felt real were flashing vividly in her head, though she knew at the back of her mind that they weren’t—she was standing here, in the gym of Ellensburg High. She continued to fight the invasion of her mind, but suddenly, the images stopped, along with the pain, and she rose back to her feet. “I’m sorry, guys, I was just kidding. It was a bad joke,” she lied. “So what are we doing at this station?”

  The girls snickered for a bit before Becca finally read from a sheet of paper she’d been holding. “It says we have two minutes to do as many push-ups as possible. One of us is supposed to time while the other two do push-ups and then we switch.”

  “How many did you two do last time?” Mona asked.

  The girls giggled and Vanessa replied, “4.”

  “6,” Becca added.

  “Oh my god, you are such a man!” Vanessa teased.

  “Am not!”

  Becca slapped Vanessa on the arm and they started bickering back and forth. Vanessa stopped and looked at Mona. “What about you Mona?” she asked.

  “Around 20,” Mona replied.

  “Okay Becca, I take it back. You aren’t a man, Mona is.”

  The blondes started to giggle again. Mona just stood there annoyed. “Let’s just do this,” Mona chided. “You two go first.”

  Mona grabbed the stopwatch while two blondes go into push up position. “Go,” Mona said she as she clicked the timer.

  The two blondes sat there in push up position, as if they were playing a game of chicken to see who could go last. After thirty seconds or so had passed, Becca was the first to cave. She started doing push-ups very slowly, and Vanessa started shortly after. It was clear that they weren’t trying very hard and after two minutes had passed Mona called, “Time.”

  The girls collapsed as if it had been a hard workout.

  After a minute of rest they rose to their feet. “Okay Mona, your turn,” Vanessa teased as she grabbed the stopwatch from Mona’s hand. “Ready... Go!”

  Mona wasn’t ready, but she quickly dropped to the ground and started doing push-ups. While she wasn’t the most athletic or even very coordinated, she did believe in “practice makes perfect.” After ten years of doing push-ups in P.E. class, she had gotten pretty good at them. She was lost in focus and was surprised when she registered Vanessa’s voice interrupting her reverie—“Time.”

  When Mona rose to her feet she noticed Damon across the gym. Her face turned a little pink as the feelings from earlier returned, and her heart started beating a little faster. He looked back at her across the gym and she realized she was staring again, so she quickly turned and followed the blondes to the next station.

  When they got to the next station, Becca read aloud from the sheet of paper with the instructions on it, “It says we are supposed to sit against the wall for five minutes, using our legs to hold us up.” She grabbed the stopwatch and the three girls lined up against the wall. “And here we go,” Becca said she clicked the timer.

  The three girls sat in silence while the timer slowly clicked away. Mona’s mind began to slip away in thought. Before she realized it, and entirely without meaning to, she found she was looking at Damon. She hadn’t noticed before, but he had been paired up with Jason. She watched as the two boys competed at the different stations. Damon seemed to be driven to beat Jason. Every time Damon beat Jason, it ate at Jason and he started stepping his game up. To the boys it was like the world around them had ceased to exist. They were locked in a battle of wills, both refusing to yield.

  A hand suddenly obstructed Mona’s view as Vanessa snapped her fingers. “Hey, we’re done. Geeze Mona, crush much,” Vanessa teased. “Come on, we have to climb the rope now.”

  Mona followed Becca and Vanessa to the ropes. The two blondes went first as they stepped up to the rope and grabbed on. Mona’s eyes followed the girls as they climbed; she couldn’t believe how high the ropes went. They stretched to the ceiling of the gym which had to be at least fifty feet high if not higher. Becca slowly climbed until she was three-quarters of the way up, then things became difficult for her. Every time she tried to pull herself up further, she would slip back down. She finally gave up and began to climb slowly down. Meanwhile, Vanessa had made it to the top and was already sliding back down the rope. When she got to the bottom, she hopped off and looked at Mona with a devilish grin. “Your turn,” she said.

  Mona grabbed the rope and looked at Vanessa, who just stared back at her. It gave her an uneasy feeling but Mona ignored it and started to climb the rope. Every time she pulled herself higher, she heard the rope groan, but she pushed on. When she reached the top, she quickly saw why the rope was making noises. The top of the rope was partially frayed, as if someone had cut into it from both sides. She watched as the final strands started snapping in half. When she tried to slide down the rope, it broke. Mona barely had time to scream. With her eyes closed, she waited for the pain to come.

 
Damon was watching Mona as he did the wall sit. He had seen her staring at him but had no clue why. When the rope snapped, he leapt into action without thinking, sprinting towards the falling girl. As he ran he noticed the blue safety net had been moved. If the girl landed, she was going to land on the unforgiving hardwood. He jumped forward as he reached out for her, then. cradled her against his torso as her limp body fell into his arms. His momentum carried them onto the blue mat with a loud thud.

  Damon laid Mona out, making sure to keep neck straight as he checked her for injuries. Slowly, she opened her beautiful brown eyes, only to find that he was staring back into them. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Mona was about to answer when Mr. Affholter shouted, “What’s all this commotion out here? What are you all standing around for?”

  It was at that moment that Mona and Damon realized everyone in class was staring at them and what had just happened. Not for the first time that day Mona again felt her face burn with embarrassment as Mr. Affholter saw what everyone was looking at and hurried across the gym. He reached down and grabbed the rope, examining the frayed end of it as he asked, “What happened? Is everyone okay?”

  Mona sat up to answer him. “I was climbing the rope and when I got to the top, it snapped. I shut my eyes when I fell and the next thing I knew I was opening them to everyone staring at me.”

  “How do you feel? How did the safety net get this far away?” Mr. Affholter asked.

  “I feel a little woozy and I have no clue how the safety mat got moved. It was under the rope when I started climbing.”

  “The how did you end up on the mat?”

  “I did that, sir. I saw her falling, saw the mat was gone, and I knew if she hit the floor she could die. I ran and dove as I caught her. My momentum carried us onto the mat,” Damon explained.

  “Well, are you okay?” Mr. Affholter asked.

  “I feel fine,” Damon said, standing up to reveal both of his knees were completely skinned and bloody.