Chapter 5 : Weirdos

Vaughn

We walked back to the ranch in comfortable silence. My dream was still bugging me. Chelsea said she was a freak but surely she doesn't mean she's a freak because she has powers? No of course not. Chelsea's just the rancher. Not some weird sorceress.

We reached her farm and she looked around.

"Shoot. I need to harvest my turnips. Won't be a second!"

She ran up to her crops and began pulling them. The sun was boiling down on us both. Chelsea kept pulling and pulling and I could see she wasn't making any progress. As pretty as her face is, I can tell she isn't very strong.

"Chelsea, are you sure you can harvest them?"

She looked up with determination burning in her eyes. "Yeah! Well, I think so..."

I sighed. "Move."

She moved away, puzzled. I pulled up my sleeves and pulled the turnips out of the ground. The whole time, I could feel her staring at me. When I pulled the 9th one out, I turned to look at her. She seemed to be talking to herself, muttering and shaking her head. She sighed and looked at me.

"Why have you got hair on your arms?"

"What?" What kind of question is that?

"Um... everyone does."

"O-oh..." I saw her pulling down her sleeves. I shot her a questioning look but she ignored it.

"W-well, do you want to come inside? I can get you a drink. I have pink lemonade!" Her eyes brightened at the sound of this drink.

"Um, what's pink lemonade?"

Her eyes widened in shock and she stared at me. Had I said something wrong?

"You've never had pink lemonade before?" I shook my head.

"Well, come on and I'll get ya some!"

She skipped inside, humming some song I didn't reconize. Did this girl ever stop singing? The weird thing was that she always had a different song. She didn't get just one song in her head and then keep repeating it (*cough!*Julia*cough!*)

Her house was quaint. She only had one room which she had her bed in, a kitchen, a table and a sofa. But the thing that shocked me was the amount of instuments lying around. There was a flute, guitar, keyboard, cello, bass, a freakin' harp, one of those windpipe things, even an ocarina!

"Is there any instrument you can't play?"

"I haven't learned the bag-pipes yet. They're hard." I tried to find amusment in her voice but it was deadly serious.

She walked over with two glasses of a pink fizzy drink. "It's lovely." She gave me one and looked at me expectantly. I took a small sip of the drink. It was actually really nice. It was fizzy and made my tongue tingle.

"It's...good." Good? It's delicious!

She smiled. "Told you so!" She then drank her's in one swift motion. She walked over to the sink and put the glass in.

"Do you play all these instruments?" I asked her, after putting my glass in the sink as well.

"Mhm. My favourites are the piano, flute and ocarina." She walked over to her keyboard and turned it on. She then played a song. Again, I didn't reconize it. It was kinda sad, the song. Sounded like something that would play in a sad scene in a movie. After she finished, her eyes clouded over like she was remembering something.

"Chelsea?"

"I used to play that song all the time. I call it 'Karma'," Her expression was hard to read and her eyes looked dead."I called it that because whenever I did something bad, karma would always come around and made sure something bad happened to me. I was banned to my room one day because I had pushed a child out of a tree. Then I had slipped and fell out of the tree as well. My arm was broken but nobody noticed. I was playing my piano and I came up with this song. It was so sad and it sounded like the person who was playing it knew what 'being punished' was. So whenever karma punished me, I would play this song to let god know that I knew that I had been punished..." I saw a tear fall but she wiped it away quickly. "S-sorry..."

She wiped away a few more tears before regaining her normal, unemotional face. She looked up and smiled slightly.

"D-do you w-want to g-go outside?" The stuttering was back...again.

"Chelsea, you don't have to stutter. I admit, I was taken aback by your sudden change yesterday but I don't mind it. It feels nice to have someone who doesn't cower in fear around me."

She sighed. "You're right. I just thought the feisty Chelsea might make you not want to talk to me again. And right now, nobody else wants to talk to me."

I nodded and smirked slightly. "Yeah, they all think you're a total nutcase."

She returned the smirk. "Good. I don't need them bothering me."

I couldn't help but think how alike we were. We bothed liked animals and we both didn't really like other people's company but we both showed in different ways. I was cold and glared at anyone who came near me. She was just weird, and made people think twice before approaching her.

"Do you want to go outside? I know you prefer the sun then the rain." She was smirking again. I could hear it in her voice. She walked over to the door and held it open. She tilted her head, indicating me to go out. I walked outside. She was right about the sun. It was roasting outside. I looked at my watch. It was 10:30.

"Can't wait to get away from the island?" She appeared in front of me.

"You kidding? I can't wait! I'm stuck here with some weird kid who hums and talks to herself."

"Oh yeah? Consider my feelings. I'm here with an anti-social grump of a cowboy, with silver hair." She laughed and then sighed.

"We're both weirdos, aren't we?"

I nodded. "Yep."

She smiled and looked at the sky. She looked at me. "You cloud-watch?" I snorted. "Heck, no!" She raised an eyebrow. "Well, guess what cowboy? I invited you here, you're in my house, you do what I say!" "Or, what?" She smiled, michevously. "Or, I'll take your hat." I groaned. She had me. I was not taking my hat off.

Chelsea walked over to a patch of grass and lay down. I lay down next to her and gazed at the sky.

"Hey, can I ask you a question?" She turned to look at me. It's lucky we weren't right next to one another or our noses might have been touching. I nodded to her.

"What do some of the older townsfolk think of me?"

I couldn't help but smirk at her question. Taro had come in to the shop on Monday and he was talking about how the new rancher was a weird girl. Mirabelle had come down and they got into a discussion about her. Her face and eyes came up quite a bit. I told her this.

"Ha! I'm getting quite the reputation, huh?"

"Doesn't it bother you? That they're all jumping to conculsions about how weird you are, without getting to know you first."

She shrugged. "They're people. It's what people do. They jump and judge people. That's why I like animals. They don't ignore you because you dress differently or talk to yourself. They don't care, just as long as you care for them, they're loyal to you."

Her speech summed up exactly why I liked animals too. I had pretty much the same reason. Actually, exactly the same reason.

"Oh!" She suddenly exclaimed.

"What?"

"I remember why I left Meadow Island!"

"You mean you didn't remember?"

"No, I didn't remember going home."

"So why did you go home?"

She scowled. "Sabrina. She came and started talking to you. She called me a thing and you snapped at her and told her I had a name. Then she...kissed you." She made a face like a five year old. "Are you two dating?"

I scowled at her comment. "I don't want to be but yes. I have tried to break up with her numerous times but her reaction is always, and I quote 'Oh Vaughnie, you're so funny!'. I don't think I can take it for much longer."

"Don't you like her?"

"I do but not like that. We don't have much in common at all and she turns into a violent bitch when she sees anyone that might 'take me away from her'."

I heard Chelsea sigh. "I was hoping I might be friends with her but I don't think she likes me after seeing me talking with you."

We were silent for a while longer. I was just staring at the sky not paying attention to anything. I don't think Chelsea was either.

After an hour I think I fell asleep. I woke up to the sound of an instrument playing. Do you need to even ask who it was? I opened my eyes and saw Chelsea playing her ocarina. I could tell she was playing a lullaby. I sat up and stretched.

"Oh, awake are ya?"

Chelsea walked over and picked up my hat before plonking on my head.

"How long have I been asleep?"

She shrugged. "Dunno. But you'd want to hurry. It's half two now."

"Shit!" I ran into her house and grabbed my suitcase. I then ran back out and headed towards Sprout Island. "Hey! Wait up!" I turned and saw Chelsea running towards me.

When we reached the beach, we just stared into the sea. I saw the boat coming towards us.

"Um... Vaughn?"

I turned and looked at Chelsea. "Yeah?"

"Um, a-are we friends?"

I looked at her. I could tell she was being hopeful. I sighed and gave her a small smile.

"Guess we are."

She broke into a huge grin. "Okay! See you next week...friend!" She laughed and ran back to her ranch waving to me.

I smiled for real for the first time in years and then the boat came.

Yay! By the by Chelsea was playing 'Karma' from the visual novel 'Ever17'. Look it up on youtube! Peace! :)