Blue

Blue
an illustrated novel

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Chapter 1 continued Bedtime for Blue, More Dreams

The peanut had a point. A very meaningless point but one which made total sense to a peanut and when that peanut is seventy-five feet tall, that is good enough. The other "regulars" in Blue's nightmare cast of characters included the yeti, the clown, Chunk, Glurp and the Light Wizards.

The yeti was always moping around. He would lumber through any number of dreams, passing right between Blue and any fun he might be having or person he might be interested in spending time with. During one particularly wonderful dream, Blue was finally talking with Angelina, a very lovely young girl in Blue's fourth grade class. She was everything Blue loved about fourth grade. She ran like the wind, sang like a bird, caught flies with her bare hands then let them go because she wouldn't hurt them. Angelina made up jokes that were actually funny. She didn't just recite jokes she read from a joke book or overheard from an older brother, like Matthew Burger always did. She made them up herself. She remembered everything she read, could perform complex math problems in her head and knew where almost everything in the world was, like cool buildings, countries, states, capitals, natural wonders and best of all, amusement parks. Blue could never speak to her in real life. He was too shy. The one time he tried, a bird unloaded on him from a tree above his head just as he uttered her name. She had only just looked at him when the mess hit. Blue reached his hand up to feel for what had hit him and there across all of his fingers the payload was smeared. Angelina looked on, stunned but empathetic with her fingers pressed slightly against her own mouth, silencing a gasp so laden with pity it made Blue blush and run. In this particular dream, however, Angelina was smiling at Blue with admiration. In this particular dream, Blue had heard the bird move in the branches above his head. In this particular dream, Blue stepped directly sidewards just as the payload dropped. Without even looking, he raised one foot up, like a crane in the water, letting the splash of excrement splatter the exact spot where that foot had been a fraction of a second earlier. He froze in that position long enough to show how perfectly he had timed the whole event, then strode toward Angelina with an uncharacteristic suavity that captivated even her. Blue moved in close, Angelina's breath became shallow, expectant, she wanted to talk to him, to Blue! Suddenly, a large limosine pulled up directly adjacent to the sidewalk where Blue approached Angelina. The back door flew open and out rolled a yeti. As he rolled, his head struck the concrete directly between them. Blue and Angelina looked down in awe. The seven foot tall creature turned and looked up at them, slowly moving, repositioning himself, preparing to stand. He did so with great effort. He turned toward Angelina, his belly to her face, and moaned. She gazed up at him with sadness. His butt was right about chest high to Blue who leaned around the yeti's massive girth to steal a look at Angelina. She too, leaned to look at Blue. At this, the yeti fell to the ground, sitting cross-legged between them and began to cry. He promptly tugged at Blue, forcing the boy to look more closely at his skinned knee. It is very hard to tell that a yeti's knee is skinned so the yeti made sure that Blue saw the skinned knee by pulling Blue down hard enough and close enough that Blue skinned his own knee, elbows and chin in the maneuver.

Blue pried himself up to his knees and looked up to Angelina, who had vanished. This is how it usually went with the yeti. What happens for the next five hours or so is that Blue spends all of his time trying to comfort the yeti, generally to no avail, since the yeti is implacable. On this night, the yeti forced Blue to hug him and sing him to sleep on the bench just feet away from the place where Blue was going to talk to Angelina. The very bench where Blue thought he might steal his first kiss.

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