It's a Love Thing (6 page)

She had me running twenty minutes a
day to strengthen my core, as she put it. I had no idea what that
meant but she promised it would help my ape posture. Ape posture?
Whatever. I smiled and agreed, like I had a choice with her
pointing that wicked wand at me.

"Last week we just had my feet
tortured, remember, and they were a little sore?" The mani-pedi was
the most painful think I'd ever lived through. Why would anyone
ever want one, let alone pay for it?

Tink waved her wand and a towel
appeared in front of me, along with a bottle of water. I greedily
drank the water and headed inside to cool off. Even though we ran
late in the evening, July was still July. I jumped in the shower
and washed the sweat and grime off me. "This feels good," I
mumbled, as the chilly water cascaded over my skin, cooling me
down. Why I ever hated showers, I'd never know. Nothing refreshed
me quite like they did.

I got out and dress quickly. Tink was
going through my yearbook to find me a potential date and I wanted
input.

"What about Cami Miron? She's cute,
and she's a cheerleader."

"Right. And she dates Jeremy Shane,
captain of the football team. Next." I plopped, gently, onto the
bed next to her. She had the yearbook spread open, turning the
pages with her wand. Repeatedly, she'd stop on a page, crawl up it,
look at a picture, shake her head, and crawl back off.

"Cindy Davidson. She has a friendly
smile. She's editor of the school newspaper, and she's going to be
this year's senior class secretary." She pointed to Cindy's picture
with her wand. A stream of light fell over the photo and lit it
up.

"I know her. She's very nice," I
smiled. "Except she's six-two and I'm five-ten."

"That's not a huge difference," she
said, unsurely.

"I'm not going to ask her out,
Tink."

"Okay. We'll keep looking."

She turned the page and pointed to the
second row, third picture in of Elise Delyser. That in and of
itself wouldn't have been so bad, but the bold red heart I'd drawn
around her picture was.

"Her," Tink declared brightly. "You
can go out with her."

"No." I turned the page. Tink turned
it back. "No." I again turned the page. Tink turned it back, and
did some magical mumdo jumbo with her wand so I couldn't go to any
other page.

"Why not? Have you ever spoken to
her?"

"Yes. She's in my computer science
class. She's nice, but she doesn’t know I like her and I'd like to
keep it that way." In the past whenever a girl found out I liked
her, it killed the relationship. I learned my lesson the hard
way.

"Pete, you already like her so this
will be easier than a random girl from your class. I'll help you.
I'll sit on your shoulder and tell you what to say. You'll be so
cool and in control, she won't know what hit her." As usual, with
Tink's excitement came her glow. I caught myself smiling, but not
soon enough.

"I saw that. You want to do
this."

I let her have her delusion for now.
"I'll think about it."

She nodded. "Good. Now, we need to
work on your manners."

"I haven’t farted in front of you all
week," I pointed out.

"True, but the fact that you said that
word proves my point. And we don't say fa . . . that word, we say
toot," she folded her arms proudly, as if her stupid word for fart
was a good thing.

"Tink, I can all but
guarantee you that if I use the word
toot
at school, I'll get my
tooting
butt kicked."
Unbelievable. Faery world must be way different than
here.

"Hmm. I forgot about the juvenile
behavior of teenage boys. Okay, how about fluffed?"

I threw my head back and
laughed. "How about, 'Here's a baseball bat, guys, beat the
fluff
out of me,'
because, again, that's what will happen."

"You humans are a very violent bunch.
What about expulsion?" she offered next.

"Excuse my expulsion? How about excuse
my fart?"

"Breaking wind?"

"Fart."

"Passing gas?"

"Fart."

"You are being difficult, Pete
Pancerella."

Oh no, she used my last name. That
meant the wand was coming out. Time to compromise. "Okay, Tink. How
about I don't expel gas around girls then it won't
matter?"

"You can do that?"

"For crying out loud, Tink. You act
like I'm a farting machine! I did it once in front of you on the
first day. Are you going to punish me forever?"

"Twice, actually. I heard you slip one
out during your mani-pedi."

Dang it! I thought I slipped that one
past little radar ears.

"Actually, your gas problems are not
what I wanted to discuss. I meant we need to work on the way you
eat."

"What is wrong with the way I eat?"
Seriously, did she think I did anything right?

"You hover over your food, you don't
use utensils half the time, and you make poor food choices." I
rolled my eyes as she lectured me about eating more fruits and
veggies, sitting up straight at the table, and if I must eat French
fries, I should use a fork. I didn’t have the heart, or the guts,
to tell her that wasn't going to happen. I'd get my butt kicked for
that faster than if I said fluffed.

I fell asleep somewhere after whole
grains and didn't wake until she covered me with a blanket.
"Thanks, Tink, good night. I promise not to toot in front of you
tomorrow."

"Good night, son. I'm grateful you'll
hold in your gas around me, but tell me, who's Tink?"

"Mom." I sat up, blinking to adjust my
eyes. "Sorry, crazy dream," I laughed.

"I wanted to thank you for all you've
been doing around here lately. It's difficult to keep up on
everything. It's nice to have help."

"Sure, mom, no problem. We're a team,
right?"

She smiled. Her eyes got
all wet.
Oh, man, please do not start
crying.
I yawned and lay back, pulling the
blanket to my face. She stood, kissing me on top of my
head.

"Yes. We're a team. Good night, son. I
love you."

"Love you too, mom." I yawned again
for effect. I heard her sniffling as she left. Poor dad would have
to deal with her tears.

*****

It’d been six weeks since
Tink came into my life. Some days I wondered if Tink ran a boot
camp in a former life. She'd taught me, or retaught me, a bunch of
useful junk. Of course, she called them useful lessons. Whatever.
My parents had taught me most of the
useful lessons
before, but somehow
she got them to stick. She probably used her wand. It certainly had
enough power.

I'd grown to enjoy having Tink around.
She wasn't so bad, really. She had a good sense of humor, most of
the time. Some days my stomach muscles ached from laughing so much.
And I enjoyed talking with her. She listened well. In fact, I don't
remember a girl, besides my mother, who ever listened to what I had
to say.

She could be bossy and dogmatic, but
I'd learned to ignore her when she got that way. She picked up on
it quickly too. "I'm being bossy again, aren’t I," she'd say. Then
she'd change her tone and we'd continue working.

The only two things I struggled with
still were video games and Spongy Crèmes. Tink took the power cord
away and I hadn't played my games in over three weeks. She insisted
we finish reading the books on the book list and until we did, no
video games.

And she forbade me from eating Spongy
Crèmes, insisting we needed to cleanse my body of all the
impurities I'd dumped into it over the years.

I also hated it when she
said
we
because
clearly she meant
me.

Today would be
exceptionally difficult. Because of all the extra work I'd been
doing around the house, my parents surprised me with a new video
game as a thank you.
Laser Wars 2: Revenge
of Simon Crawford
, but with no power cord,
I couldn't play it. I tucked it in my dresser so not be
reminded.

"Hi, Pete." Tink appeared as I closed
the drawer. She looked strange. Her usual glow appeared more like a
dim light. Instead of one of her flowy gowns, she had on feet
pajamas with little crocodiles on them.

"I can't help you today, Pete. I have
a terrible cold." She sneezed and sparks shot out of her
wand.

"Sure. No problem. We were
going to do a run and weed my parent's garden."
She even had me saying we
. "I can
still do it."

"I'm really sorry. I took some
faerbiotics so I should be better tomorrow." She blew her nose into
a sparkly tissue. I decided that Faeries had an affinity to things
that sparkle.

"Is that anything like
antibiotic?"

"Yes, only it's for faeries, of
course. I'll be here extra early tomorrow." Before I could protest
her idea of an early start time, she disappeared.

I dressed in some shorts and a t-shirt
before heading to the garden. I worked until eleven-thirty when the
heat became unbearable. I drank a couple glasses of iced herbal tea
and took a tepid shower to help cool down.

Then I sat in the living room staring
at the walls, bored out of my mind. Having no desire to read, I
thought about going for my run, but that'd have to wait until it
cooled off after dinner. I didn't realize just how much my days and
evenings were filled with video games until now.

My mom left a box of dishes out so I
decided to take them downstairs for her. I slid them onto a top
shelf in the corner of the storage room. As I turned to leave, my
old gaming system caught my eye.

"I thought dad tossed this." I lifted
the lid and pulled out the console. It was huge compared to the new
model.

I remembered what dad said
when I told him I needed to upgrade my system. "Why couldn't they
just build it right the first time? Can you imagine the uproar if I
had to tell clients we were digging up their loved ones because we
needed to upgrade their casket?"
Gotta
love my dad and his naiveté'.

I set the console back in the box,
knocking the power cord out as I did. And yes, without a second
thought, I grabbed the power cord and ran upstairs, praying it fit
my new system.

It did. It had to be a sign from God
that He meant for me to play my new game today.

No. Don't do this. Tink
will be very upset with you,
I lectured
myself, and added,
but if she doesn’t find
out, she can't get mad.

I plugged in the 765 Macro Laser
Pistol into the charging unit. It lit up with a familiar hum. A hum
I dearly missed. While it charged, I went downstairs and made
myself some lunch: a green salad with left over grilled chicken.
Tink would be proud, of the salad anyway. She probably wouldn't be
too happy about the box of Spongy Crèmes I found while hunting down
the salad dressing.

I slipped the box under my arm, picked
up my salad along with a fork, and ran upstairs. I ate the entire
salad before eating any of the Spongy Crèmes. I fell asleep
sometime after the sky went dark with the laser gun still in my
hand, and didn't wake until a bolt of lightning zapped me in the
chest.

I jumped, knocking a half-eaten Spongy
Crème off my stomach and onto the floor. Tink floated before me
with her tiny arms crossed, tapping her foot in mid-air.

"Tink, let me explain."

"Explain? Explain this." She pointed
her wand at a poor defenseless Spongy Crème. It exploded,
disappearing in a puff of smoke.

"And explain this," she repeated and
demolished another Spongy. She gave the remaining Spongy's the same
treatment.

"Come on, Tink. Don't you think you're
overreacting a little?"

"Overreacting? I've spent the last
several weeks teaching you how to exercise and eat properly, how to
behave and not fart in front of a g—" Her hands slapped over her
mouth and her eyes flew open wide as she dropped the
f-bomb.

"You said 'fart'," I pointed out
needlessly. I loved watching her cringe when I said it. "Tink said
fart. Tink said fart." I hopped around playfully as I said the word
over and over.

Big mistake. Somehow, I forgot about
her stupid little wand. She zapped me repeatedly as I tried in vain
to duck behind furniture.

"Enough!" I jumped out from behind my
dresser and stood firmly in front of her. "I've done everything
you've asked of me, and never have you complimented me. Never have
you pointed out how much I've improved. It's always, 'Tomorrow we
need to work on this or that,' but never 'Good job today, Pete.' If
I want to take a day off every once in a while and eat a few Spongy
Crèmes and play a few video games, I've earned that right, Tink. It
doesn’t mean I've fallen off the wagon and will revert to my former
geeky self. It just means I love these things and I want to indulge
in them," I said, adding, "in moderation."