Samuel Faze

• Anita Grassy, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2009

I stared towards the sky. Not even flinching as the rain began to fall onto my new dress. I could hear the older people all talking inside, but I was in my own world as the heavens opened and the rain came tumbling down.
It was the approaching footsteps that made me turn around. The rain, if possible, fell down harder, and my soaking wet hair stuck to my face and neck.
“You’ll catch your death out here,” the youthful boy said to me, offering me an umbrella.
“Thanks,” I replied stepping underneath it.
He guided me until we arrived inside. For some strange reason, every woman in the room swarmed towards me as soon as I stepped into the room. I may have been soaking wet, but who really cares? I liked it that way. Just me and the world. No distractions whatsoever.
All the women seemed to be talking about that boy.
“I heard his father was a pirate,” one woman said.
“No,” another woman replied. “He was a rich man. When he died he gave everything to his son.”
I peeked a glance past them at the boy. That was probably a bad idea. His green eyes stared at me adoringly and lovingly.
I pushed past the ladies who looked affronted at having been snuffed that way. I grabbed his hand and took him outside.
We didn’t have an umbrella this time, but he didn’t seem to mind the rain either.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“It’s dangerous for both of us if I tell you.”
We both stood there facing each other for a few moments before he spoke.
“Do you care, Jayne?” he murmured.
“Do I care that what?”
“Do you care if I’m a pirate?”
I stared at his eyes and saw my brown ones reflected in his green ones.
“No.”
We stood in the rain for a long time before he took my hand and we ran to the harbour.
As I stood next to him with my hair blowing in the wind and my dress floating around my bare feet, I felt for the first time in my life. Truly alive.
>>><<<
Two days later
“Jayne, I’m not that easy to scratch. Give me your best shot,” the boy said.
“Hey,” I retaliated. “You may think your tough, but as you said yourself, I have natural pirate reflexes.”
“Just shut up and swing.”
I swung.
He defended each parry and thrust I attacked with. The boy tried to get in a few shots of his own, but remember, pirate reflexes.
I was having the time of my life, but as they say. All good things come to an end. And come to an end it did.
The pirates who attacked us were ruthless. Apparently the boy owed them a lot of gold, and they were just taking back what was there’s’. Plus a few extra lives.
My parents always said that pirates get what they give. In the few days that I was aboard that pirate ship, I found quite a lot of treasure. But I now learnt that pirates didn’t always have happy lives. The boy was taken from me. I don’t know if he survived or not. But I knew it in my heart.
He was gone. When you truly love someone, you know these things. He was never coming back for me. His green teasing eyes would never look at me again. I would never see his face again.
I asked the crew to take me back home. My family welcomed me back with open arms. I couldn’t hold a funeral for the youthful boy. He was a pirate, a scoundrel.
And I didn’t even know his name.
>>><<<
I was walking along the beach remembering my lost love when it happened. The wind blew from God knows where, and it was carrying a name. The only name that could reach into my despairing heart now.
Samuel Faze.