Story A Day Cafe: 2014-09-07

Catching Smoke: Ch. 11

Her name is Lydia.

She was Colin’s recruiter.

She wasn’t supposed to be, of course. The same rule that female recruiters only recruit other females still applied, but an exception had been made for Colin. At the time, Lydia was on vacation in Brazil at just the precise moment Colin scammed his way into taking a trip there for his eighteenth birthday.

Colin thought it was love; Lydia knew it was only a job. They hadn’t spoken since.

Until now.

“You’re on a job?” Lydia says through her teeth as she drives them into the city.

Emmalee is sitting in the backseat staring out the window, not speaking, and Colin is in the passenger seat, smirking. Lydia has been reduced to the designation of driver. It’s a job Colin would have labeled beneath her.

“You’re not?” Colin asks, and Lydia glares at him for a moment.

“It was an accident.” She says.

“What?”

“Don’t act like you haven’t heard. Why else would you be here, gloating?”

“I’m not here to gloat. I’m here to recruit.”

“Here? Of all places? Give me a break, Colin. I’m not an idiot.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

Emmalee leans forward in her seat, and Colin turns his head to look at her.

“What are you two talking about? Or am I still not allowed to know the answers?” Emmalee asks.

“Go to sleep.” Colin says. “You haven’t slept in almost twenty four hours.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ll answer your questions after you sleep.”

“Is that a promise? Can I have that in writing?”

“She’s sassy. I like her.” Lydia says.

“I’m not being sassy. I’m being serious.” Emmalee says. “So, Colin, is that a promise?”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.” Colin says, sighing.

He didn’t want Emmalee to know his name. Lydia was going to pay for this. He didn’t think she meant to give away his identification, but he wouldn’t put it past her. He knew better than to trust her. Why did Emmalee have to come here?

This recruit better be worth it.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

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author: kayla mathys

Five Points for Love

Five people, a star, and a song.

I’ve never been a very religious person.

At least that’s what I’ll tell you if you ever ask. I spent the majority of my childhood at church functions; church group every Thursday, Sunday school on the weekends, church camp every summer, and occasionally I’d attend the youth groups my Mormon neighborhood friends would invite me to.

But I was never religious.

Religion is defined as the belief and worship of a supernatural, all-powerful being. I didn’t like to believe in something I couldn’t see or hear or touch yet had all this unseen power over me. Who was this invisible being to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do? Be? Say? Who was anyone to tell me how to live my life?

I was born a rebel. I carved my own path. God or no God.

But as much as I tried to fight it, my religion was there. It was there every time I stepped outside on a Saturday morning to the smell of fresh cut grass and the feelings of the wind in the trees. It was there every time I went for a swim in the creek, a body of water not made by man. It was there every time I woke up from a dream and turned it into a story. It was there every night, as I prayed and cried for the ones I loved.

It was even on my trampoline.

My family had a trampoline in the backyard that my friends and I would use to practice our cheer routines. None of us were cheerleaders, but I had been in gymnastics for several years and knew how to create a routine to a song. We’d practice flips and dances and shouts and lifts over and over and over. I was quite the evil dictator about it. The routine had to be perfect, masterful or else my wrath would be enacted.

There were five of us. Five friends with a passion for amateur cheerleading and Avril Lavigne songs. I don’t know how the four of them put up with me, but they did. Together, we practiced cheer routines, dictatorship, and friendship.

We even practiced religion.

I don’t know whose idea it was. I don’t even remember why we did it or when. But I remember the day we all discovered how to turn ourselves into a star. I remember we laid ourselves out in a circle on the trampoline, and pressed our feet together. We joined hands and looked up at the sky.

And then we began to sing.

We raised our voices to the heavens, and we sang to love with love. Thinking about it now, it seems so random, but it didn’t feel that way. In that moment of worship to some unseen force, I never felt more connected, more natural, more alive.

So maybe I wasn’t a religious person in the traditional sense. Maybe I was meant to break the rules. Maybe I couldn’t believe in a being whose love was conditional, only given to those who obeyed a strict set of laws written by man.

But I believe in love. I believe in the feeling of connecting, to friends, to nature, to the experiences of emotion. I believe in the stars within us and above us. The ones we make with the joining of hands and feet on a trampoline as well as the ones we sing to when we look up at the sky.

That is my religion.

Love.

Sunday, September 07, 2014

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Catching Smoke: Ch. 11

Five Points for Love

Five people, a star, and a song.

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