cross my stars | clarissa/danny

[alliswell]

D A N I E L   E Z E K I E L   T U R N E R


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Well, look who I ran into, crowed Coincidence.

Please, flirted Fate. This was meant to be.

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The night was illuminated.

Amongst the black painted skies were stars and the beaming neon sign of B&C Café. Something about the eleven o'clock air clung with days work and the cologne of one night owl in particular...

Danny's day had ended like it always had when he spent twelve hours in the same vicinity as his father—either overwhelmingly relieved that he was gone or overcome with dread he'd have to repeat the same process tomorrow.

Nonetheless, the curly haired boy on West Willis Street. found his comfort in a walk, and more importantly, a cup of coffee.

There were only a couple of ears that could noticed the ringing of the doorbell. One belonging to a bum, collecting the last of his muffin and hanging it over his mouth in anticipating hunger. The other belonged to a girl behind the counter, counting the bills. And if anyone else sat at the tables of the late night café, they were either about to leave or have a very long night ahead of them. Whether or not Danny was anticipating a long night, he was destined for one.

The squeaking of his shoes were merely a background noise to the subtle saxophone tunes playing above him, however, it only stood as a distraction for the wandering mind he was managing to maintain.

He found the counter quickly, discovering the lady once there was now faded into the back of the café along with his midnight thoughts. He wavered for a moment, considering this as a moment to alter his decision, but he never changed it. Danny's come to B&C café ever since he started AP classes in the fall and a strict cup of black coffee is always what ended up meeting his lips.

At this moment on the spectrum, the only thing meeting was his hand on the golden bell resting on the counter. He couldn't recall a time they weren't there to help him recover from a late days work or like tonight, a late days argument. However, the bells ring clung into the air and into his mind.

[maggie]

                                             C L A R I S S A   K E N N E D Y                                       

















walk with me to the end
stare with me into the abyss

Swish. Swish. Swish.

Clarissa dragged the dollar bill over the keyboard of the register again and again, listening to the sound it made every time the bill picked up speed.

Swish. Swish. Swish.

She was supposed to be counting out the change, but her mind was stuck on that sound—swish.

Ding. That was the bell over the door. Now here is what Clarissa was supposed to say when a customer came in and strolled up to the counter:

Hi, welcome to Bean & Co. What can I get started for you this evening?

But instead, Clarissa kept her eyes on the bill. Swish, swish. A few other sounds managed to make their way to her ears—the low chatter of a pair of exhausted train operators; a girl's high laugh from outside, probably Eileen, who had left with their other shift partner to smoke; the crinkle of the pastry bag of that homeless man who had paid entirely in quarters—but Clarissa tuned them all out, especially the sound of the footsteps up to the counter.

It was not a good day for Clarissa. If Kiki were here, she would have called it a blank day. Mom had them too, because of the Morphling; days where your mind wasn't quite right, either clouded or fractured or just not completely there.

Ding. The bell of the counter rang. Clarissa did not look up.

If one of the other waitresses were here, they would have kicked Clarissa under the table, or snapped their fingers in front of her face—no, they would have assigned her to waiting tables, because that's what she was best at on her blank days. But the other waitresses were gone. The graveyard shift patrons were mostly the late-night transportation workers, and they didn't care if their service was with a smile so long as the eggs were plenty and the coffee was strong enough to make your hair stand. Eileen and Delphi had left for the back, promising to only take a few minutes to finish their cigarettes, but those few minutes had stretched out into a half an hour. Clarissa hadn't noticed, and neither had anyone else. Other than the patrons scattered sparsely around the diner, the only other person on the premise was Ena; the one-handed cook who had been at B&C for almost thirty years now, who was undoubtedly bored out of her mind, hunched on her stool in the kitchen over a copy of the Sunday crossword puzzles.

The pregnant pause after the ding, the customer's unsure sigh, these were Clarissa's cues. Say something. Her eyes were still set intensely on that dollar bill. Look, it was so soft. Oil from hundreds of hands had worn down the crisp edges of the paper, leaving it limp in Clarissa's fingertips.

Say something.

Look, there was a little tear. It kept getting caught under one of the keys.

You have to say something.

Tug, tug, tug. The tear got a little wider.

Clarissa. You have a job.

A full corner of the dollar ripped off, fluttering to the floor, and that's when Clarissa finally looked up.

Oh, Danny.

She knew the boy with the thin mouth giving her an agitated look over the counter: his name was Daniel Turner, and he had eyes that were green like the corner of the dollar now settled by the toe of Clarissa's sandal.

"Hi," Clarissa said.

Not Hi, welcome to Bean & Co., what can I get started for—not that. Hi. A weak, one-noted nightingale gave Daniel Turner a fragile Hi, and then, after a pause, with a shudder, fell to the ground and died.

Clarissa smiled.

[alliswell]

D A N I E L   E Z E K I E L   T U R N E R


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Well, look who I ran into, crowed Coincidence.

Please, flirted Fate. This was meant to be.

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Danny's head hung like the moon in the sky when those confining words left her lips.

His initial reaction was to answer the way he always had—his order followed with a thank you and a have a good night as they were always quick to assist him. However, he stood there, his hair hanging with the days sweat clung to its tips.
Hi?

He looked up, and for a moment he was in a dream—her hair was silky and straight down her back. The days work didn't put the slightest of dents into the mane framing her face. And her skin was porcelain, as if the sun was an enemy. She had this frantic tick with her fingers when he first arrived, and slowly it was weaving in and out until her hands laid restlessly on the register.

She looked like a girl he'd seen in a dream, because he couldn't forget the face of a girl like her. Maybe that's why it dangled like bate in the back of his mind and when he saw her, it's just snapped.

Biology II H. Sophomore year. Professor Barns assigned lab partners and he was fortunate to be hers. He didn't see it as a blessing at the time. That's when her craziness was at a peak and her tick concerned him when she had the scalpel.
And he would've dug his own grave had anyone known that when she looked up from their experiment and through her goggles, he found himself looking beyond her iris' and into her soul. It was a beautiful soul. Crazy, but nonetheless beautiful.

"Hello." He finally muffled from behind the leather collar on his jacket. The distant sound of a crinkled paper woke him from his temporary slumber and he continued,
"Black coffee—please."