At Night's End Read online

  "AAGH"

  "HOLY BANANAS!!"

  Our simultaneous screaming woke up the girls and caused a fit of laughter from just outside the window. We decided to creep over the window to peak out, knowing we would find the guys right outside. Micah was leaning on the house and Henry on the ground with tears in their eyes from laughing at our expense.

  "What the heck guys?" Ever tried to sound mean, but her mean voice was so funny that it sent the guys into another fit of laughter along with me, Darcy and Denver. Whenever Ever tried to sound mean she sounded really squeaky like a mouse dying. She had a soft smooth voice normally anyways, so when it got high and squeaky it became comical.

  "Classes starts Monday yah?" Henry asked between fits of laughter. Henry did really well not using his first language most of the time, but when he did it was too cute and usually due to strong emotions, such as the laughter fit he was having currently. Henry's country mixed with Dutch English accent never got old.

  "Yeah, well, school for Denver and Darcy and classes for me and Ever. Why?" I responded, not understanding the question.

  "Big plans for the weekend?" Micah asked half amused with his eyebrow raised, mocking our slumber party. When he made eye contact with Ever, he winked causing her to nod and blush.

  "Ever, speechless? Quick, someone grab a camera!" Denver's comment only intensified the crimson that was spreading across Ever's face and neck. Ever stuck her tongue out at Denver, which just made Denver smile sardonically.

  Darcy interrupted just as I was about to respond, "Let's go to bed Denver, you have practice early in the morning."

  Denver had made the cheerleading squad again, and since school started Monday, practice for them started tomorrow, so they would be ready for the back to school pep rally. As they left, I heard Ever finally start to talk to the guys through the window.

  "So what's up? Did y’all just come here to scare us or do you have a plan?" She had lowered the tone of her voice trying to sound nonchalant and casual. I smirked, Ever had quite an array of personalities when it called for it. We blame her mother.

  "We thought about starting a bon fire out by the guest house, we came to see if y’all want to join us?" Henry asked, and smiled shyly. Gosh he really was very cute, if only Dad didn't have his rules.

  "Um, yeah I think we'll be good." I said to Ever. "I mean Dad's in the lab and you know he'll be there for hours, and Denver and Darce aren't going to rat us out." I shrugged to say it was her decision, and before my shoulders returned to their normal position she was climbing out the window grinning a cheshire grin. I couldn't help but smile back at her. As soon as she was out, I was slipping out right behind her, with Henry's hand held out towards me to help me. I almost sighed out loud at how sweet and thoughtful he was without even putting extra effort in.

  "Thanks" I shyly say while trying to stand back up. I glance up at him, and he's blushing too. Once after I touched him on his arm during practice, he blushed. I had asked why and he explained that back at his home, men and women didn't touch casually unless they were related or married. When I began to apologize, he stopped me, saying it was okay. He explained that he was trying to learn how to react appropriately in the “English” society, but that some things are deeply embedded and will take time. I only nodded unsure of how else to respond.

  "My pleasure, McCaid." he blushed even more severe when he said my name. I looked around and noticed that Micah and Ever had already started off towards the guest house laughing and talking freely. At times like these, I wished I had the same confidence around guys as Ever. I slid my eyes sideways from them over to Henry. He was watching them as well with a thoughtful look on his face.

  “It’s a beautiful night out isn’t it? I tried to come up with some topic that would make up both feel a little more comfortable about being alone, not in a teacher/student situation.

  While waiting for him to answer, I was looking up, noticing how beautiful the sky was at that moment, it's dark and you can see all the stars twinkling. It was peaceful and calming. Right at day’s end when the sun was setting the sky had the oranges, blues, pinks, and purple that were so pretty that you could only stare until they were gone and the moon was the only thing in the sky before the stars became visible. I must have been smiling without realizing, because I'm caught off guard by Henry's question.

  "Why are you smiling?" He was smiling too. Cheeks red and eyes lowered, he responded "I like it when you smile."

  "I... uh.. I was just thinking how much I love the moon and the stars. I find them peaceful and beautiful. Sometimes at night when I can't sleep I'll wake Ever and we go lie on a blanket in the yard and stare at the stars talking about the future and our dreams." I only halfway notice that I’m rambling. Partly because I was happy to hear he likes my smile, and partially because I suddenly got very nervous.

  "I’m sure glad there’s going to be food at the bonfire.” I giggle and look at him strangely. "Sorry, I did hear what you said about the moon and stars. It’s just the rumbling in my stomach seemed to be pretty persistent and the comment just slipped out.” I grinned at him and he continued to speak. “So what kind of things do you dream of for you future?" Henry pauses for a minute, and then apologizes hastily. "I'm sorry, that's not an appropriate question. Please don't feel obligated to answer."

  "No, it's okay." I smile reassuringly. "Sometimes we dream that all our training will just make us awesome adults that never ever need the variety of skills we have, and sometimes, about regular teenage girl stuff." I'm almost whispering, and I'm definitely can feel the heat creeping across my face as I say the last part of my sentence.

  "Oh, well I hope for all of our sakes, that we never have to put to use the skills you all have either. I'd prefer to not have some catastrophic event that would require that." Henry spoke with an assuring and strong voice.

  Goodness his accent could make anything sound definite. We walked for a while in silence before being interrupted by the loud, unmistakable laughter of one Miss Ever Mae Clemont. Looking towards the fire, I could see her sitting on a log doubled over laughing about something, and Micah was just chuckling and shaking his head. The guest house was about a football field’s length away from the main house. They had the fire going already towards the back of the guest house by the woods. I always thought that the guest house was placed in a prettier spot than the main house, but Dad liked having the view on all sides of the main house.

  "What's so funny?" We were just reaching the circle of logs set up around the fire. I had to find out what the answer, because I could be certain that if it made Ever laugh that hard, then I would find it funny as well. Ever looked up at me with tears streaming, took a breath, tried to start talking and lost it all over again. Her intense laughing was soon contagious.

  "She has lost her mind." Micah stated. He tried to sound incredulous, but the softness of his voice gave way to the feelings he had towards Ever. Both of the guys were made fully aware of Dad’s rules and out of respect followed them to a T. However, I would place money that if it weren’t for the rule, then Micah would for sure ask Ever out on a date.

  “We knew that but that doesn't answer what's so funny." I said through giggles. Ever had one of those deep guttural laughs that would soon fall silent leaving her body shaking and tears coming out as evidence that she was laughing. I have a problem with finding someone laughing, funnier than whatever initially got them starts a lot of the times, so I was already laughing before the story started.

  "Micah…." Ever gasped between words, "…Micah was telling about a time when he was in basic training, and a buddy seen a snake." Ever finally got out the point, but it was so fast and in one breath that it was hard to catch. After finishing the very non descriptive situation, she burst into a fit of laughter again, while I just shook my head.

  "I'm not really sure why that's so funny, but it must've been the way Micah told it. He has a way of making spilled milk sound funny." Henry sounded almost jealous, but I knew it was more rever
ence for Micah. Henry had confided to me on several occasions his immense amount of respect for Micah and all that he had went through during his time in the military. Henry had said that even though their upbringings were so different, they had become fast friends since living in the guest house together. Because of this, they generally hung out together during their free time as well. Being close in age and living so far away from the town must’ve been a factor as well, but you could tell it was an honest friendship, and not one built out of circumstances only.

  "I could retell it, if you two would like to hear the story?" Micah shrugged.

  Henry and I both nodded in agreement, and I realized as Micah ran through the story for us, why Ever was laughing so much. Micah was very animated, changing voices and making faces and just keeping all of us enraptured throughout the story. Even though Ever had already heard it she still laughed and gasped in surprise in all the right places. As I was listening, I watched Ever and Micah interact. Little touches there, soft smiles here. It was definitely fun to watch my best friend fall for a guy. I sneaked peaks peripherally at Henry too, when I could. He was enjoying the story as much as Ever. It was a funny story, and by the time he got to his friend screaming, running and jumping into the arms of the Sergeant I was laughing so hard I snorted, which caused the rest of the group laugh even harder.

  "Cute McCaid. I've never heard you snort before" Henry said.

  Blushing seemed to be the most prominent thing we shared. I looked at Ever and her smile widened and she winked conspiratorially at me. Henry hasn't ever said those type of comments before, and definitely not in front of Micah or Ever. Ever saved me from further embarrassment by suggesting that we start on the hot dogs and marsh mellows which was met by agreeing noises from all of us. As we ate, I was aware of the sound of the crickets, frogs and owls. I noticed the trees, the sky, the fire and the sound of mutual friendship. Even though we all had freedom to leave and go out from the house, the four of us, plus Darcy were the only ones that we each could talk to about the eccentricities of my dad. When the eating was over, and we were all just sitting around the fire, Ever brought up to the guys the new moat Dad plans on building.

  "Have you heard the latest? We're getting a moat." Ever made it sound like the coolest thing. I just rolled my eyes and the guys groaned. Both came into the jobs with an inkling that Dad was crazy, but as their times here continued they began to fully understand just exactly what and who they were working for on a daily basis. Micah and Henry have chosen to stay, so while I know they're having fun, I think they know if something ever did happen they were living in probably the safest place in the world.

  "A moat? Like an actual moat?" Micah asked.

  For someone, who was an employee who could leave whenever, he stuck around even as Dad continued to get weirder, which only made me like him more. Not many could tolerate having Dad as a boss, especially one that had rules for you to follow if you lived with him.

  "Yes, like an actual moat, well really it'll be a deep ditch around the thirty acres of open land, and house, halfway into the wooded area. It'll be concrete, and is supposed to be able to fill up completely in less than five minutes in an emergency. I'm not sure about all the details, but you can ask Dad sometime, and I'm sure he'll be happy to explain it." I was positive that both Micah and Henry would be asking, because they liked to make sure they knew as much as possible about everything involving the house. They wanted to make sure they knew how to operate all the things on the property and they were getting almost as knowledgeable as Dad. It wasn’t necessarily so much that they believed everything Dad told them was going to happen, but more because it was every boy's dream to live in this situation, with all these cool high tech toys at their disposal.

  "A moat, huh...I'm surprised he hasn't built a retractable fence around the whole property yet." And as these words left Micah's mouth, I knew exactly what Ever would be doing tomorrow because of saw the light in her eyes as she started calculating the benefits of a retractable fence.

  She would be going to my Dad to start discussing the fence. While in theory if Zombies or whatever else ever did attack, I'm sure having a fence around the property would come in handy, but in reality it would only lead to increased whispers around town. I usually can handle the whispers, but I'm not sure what would happen when the moat was started, let alone if a fence was put it too. I looked up at Ever and could see the wheels turning even more. I just happened to look at my watch and noticed it was almost two am, "Oh Crap, Ever, we need to be getting back, fast!" I jumped up and nearly knocked Henry off the log.

  "Let's go, I'm sorry guys we can help clean up in the morning, but Dad does bed check in thirty minutes, we need to book it." Ever explained over her shoulder as we were headed towards the house.

  "See you in the morning." We heard from both Henry and Micah as we were running.

  We reached the house in less than five minutes, and were climbing in the window when we heard Dad clear his throat. I got through the window first and stood up waiting for Ever to get in too. I was hoping that Dad hadn't noticed the smell of bon fire, and that we could get away with saying we were watching for shooting stars, but when I looked at Ever's face and saw a smudge of soot, I knew we were finished.

  "And just where were you two girls?" Dad's few rules being broken was usually the only time he was mad at anyone or about anything. I could see in his face he was upset, but worried too. I know the rules are for protection, so I know that his fear fueled him to be even more upset.

  "We were with Micah and Henry at a bon fire by their house. They wanted to celebrate our first semester of college with us." Ever was always straight forward with Dad. Not because she liked to rustle his feathers, but because she respected him, and didn't want him to one day decide that she could not her live here with us. Dad would never throw Ever out of the house for anything, just like he wouldn't us, heck he'd probably adopt her if he could, but telling Ever that didn't change her tactics.

  "Girls!" Dad’s tone was one of warning but not anger. "You know what the rules are, and yet your still went out?" He always give us time to answer and/or explain in order to properly dole out punishment. Even before my mom got sick he was diplomatic in our punishments. I remember sneaking down after being sent to my room one time and hearing my parents talk about wanting to raise us to always know why we did something, why we were being punished, and to be independent in making the decisions as well as accepting the consequences.

  "Dad, we weren't doing anything bad. I promise."

  "Yeah, we were just sitting around the bon fire, eating and telling stories."

  "And we didn't leave the property, and we weren't alone with them." We stopped because while honestly was the best with Dad, too much information never was, he had a lot of anxiety about us being alone in the woods ever, even though that was why he was training us, but he stills sees us as little girls.

  "Okay, I'm going to talk to the guys, and if they have the same story, you're only grounded for one week, but if their stories are different it's a month, do you understand?" He was stern but some of his playfulness was back. Dad never liked to ground us, it usually meant more work for him, because he assigned us tasks that we had to complete, and usually those tasked had to be directed or instructed by him. Neither of us argued with the grounding even though we were about to start college. We were not yet eighteen and we still lived with him so we took the grounding as given. Besides arguing would only further the punishment, while he was diplomatic in the beginning, he was not open to discussing the punishments after they were given.

  "Yes sir"

  "Yes sir"

  We both spoke in unison, then each of us kissed Dad on the cheek and ran upstairs to my bedroom before he could say anything else. Ever has her own bedroom, but on the weekends we like to pretend she's staying the night so we sleep in my room. Once we got to my room, and the door was closed, we broke out into side splitting laughter which appeared to be the theme of the night. Mostly fro
m nervousness, but some of it was because we knew we wouldn't have a very long grounding. Both of us didn't mind a week of grounding, because we still got to learn new things with the tasks that Dad assigned to us. Last time we were grounded, Darcy was grounded too. We all decided to go out exploring in the woods, but didn't tell Dad, so by the time we got home he was in a tizzy. We were grounded for 3 weeks that time, and had to do extra training. Since it was the summer he had other tasks such as collecting fire wood, and branches for us too. We learned how to make fire without matches, which plants were poisonous, which were edible, and how to make traps for animals. We spent two out of the three weeks in wilderness training. Dad thought this was punishment, but we had a lot of fun. As we were collecting ourselves back together, we started discussing possibilities. We both decided we would probably be assisting in the building of the moat. Before we could even discuss what the guys would say to Dad we had fallen asleep on my bed still in our clothes.

  CHAPTER 4

  We woke up about noon time the next day, knowing that our fate awaited us. We decided it was best to shower, get dressed quickly and head down to face Dad. Our rooms, including Dad's take up the entire top floor of the house. There are 5 bedrooms, one for each of us, and one for a guest. Ever and I share a bathroom, Darcy and the guest room share a bathroom, and Dad has his own bathroom. I went to Darcy's room to shower, because she and Denver were long gone to practice. Darcy doesn't cheer, but she goes and hangs out, because she helps plan the dances and stunts. Mine and Ever's bathroom is black and pink, with pictures of various French landmarks, such as the Louvre, and the Eiffel Tower. Darcy's bathroom is blue with yellow ducks everywhere. She wants to redecorate because she says it too childish, but we haven't gotten around it yet. Showering in there, with the ducks watching me, I can understand why she wants to change the room.