and leaned on the railing while she enjoyed her delicious masterpiece.
The moon was full that night, it stood out in all its silver splendor against the inky sky. Kennedy sighed as a cool breeze blew through her chocolate hair. Her body shivered involuntarily in response.
It was beginning to get chilly despite the incredible heat they had experienced during the day. She looked up at the stars and couldn’t help but wonder at their magnificence. It was truly a beautiful sight.
The loud roaring of car engine coming down the street shocked her out of her musings. She looked down in time to see a black American muscle car – that she would later learn to identify by the inscription on its rear as a nineteen sixty eight Dodge Charger – pulling into the neighboring driveway.
She chuckled to herself as she tried to imagine Mr. Nieves, their former neighbor, stepping out of the monster car, his bald head probably gleaming as much as its shiny rims. But, she knew that would never happen, Mr. Nieves would never be caught within ten feet of any car that looked like that. The machine was as loud as its appearance was imposing, simply beautiful.
She watched as out surfaced the most gorgeous being that she had ever laid eyes upon. Suddenly, the stars that had so captured her attention moments ago paled in comparison.
The man was tall, with a lean, slightly muscular built. He wore an army green tee shirt and a pair of faded jeans that adjusted wonderfully to his frame and to her dismay, he looked up as if he could feel her eyes on him.
She froze, her eyes wide.
Kennedy was mortified at having been caught staring at the dark haired stranger.
A few seconds went by, she started to feel silly. Still, she couldn’t tear her eyes from him. She finally glanced away when her traitorous hand came up – almost as if by its own accord – in greeting.
She stared at it horrified.
When she dared to look back at the handsome man, it was only to watch him simply dismiss her gesture and go into his house without giving her a second glance.
Her cheeks burned with embarrassment and she was grateful that there hadn’t been anyone else around to bear witness to her shame.
It seemed that her mother’s abilities for reading people where way off, their new neighbor was as rude as he was attractive.
2. Up For Breakfast
“Wait!” Kennedy gasped.
She shot up on her bed. Her forehead glistened with cold sweat, the result of another one of her smoky dreams. Her limbs trembled with the remnants of her suffering and a slight feeling of loss lingered at the back of her mind.
She’d been having that dream for days now.
The sadness that echoed within her, even after she'd woken up, made her think of it as a nightmare. She could never get to the shadowy figure in time and the identity of the mysterious man was never revealed to her.
She peeled the matted hair from the back of her neck, turned the pillow onto its other side and laid down again.
Maybe she could force her subconscious to pick up where the dream had left off if she went back to sleep right a way. Perhaps there was more to it than she remembered or she always woke up to soon.
Either way, after a few failed attempts to fall asleep, she sat up and buried her head in her shaky hands. Kennedy hummed to herself. It was a thing, something that she did whenever she tried to gather her wits.
Her throat felt dry. It was becoming an issue with her, always feeling thirsty. She decided to get up and go downstairs to drink some water.
She peeked into her parent’s bedroom on the way to see if her father had arrived and was met by the lone outline of her mother’s resting figure under the covers. Her father had taken another one of his sabbaticals.
She got her water and was on her way up from the kitchen when she heard a faint thumping sound coming from the direction of her father’s study.
She stared pointedly at the closed door and noticed that there was no light coming from under it. That meant that the room should be empty.
Being the coward that she was, Kennedy surprised even herself when she moved to check it out. Her mind swam with reasons behind the possible sources of the noise. Nothing that she could have imagined would have come close to what she found in reality.
She opened the door and immediately hit the light switch. Her eyes stung as they adjusted to the sudden brightness. But, she still managed to spot a small cloud of black smoke as it made its exit through the cracks of one of the room’s windows.
She was petrified. Her thoughts ran back to her recurring dream and the thick black substance that filled them. It was so similar to what she’d just seen.
The remaining dark mist floated away rapidly. Kennedy stared dumbly after it.
What did she do?
Telling her mother was not an option.
Lauren would just make fun of her.
The only person that would give a rat's ass about her hallucinations wasn't home yet. She spent another couple of minutes staring stupidly at the now vacant space and decided to officially declare herself delusional.
Kennedy valiantly walked closer to the window, if only to prove her own imagination wrong.
As expected, there was nothing there except a little dust, a yellow-ish, funky smelling bit of dust. She brushed it with the tip of her fingers and brought them to her nose.
“Ugh!” The stuff was nasty, it smelled like eggs gone bad.
Her dad needed to clean that room.
She glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner and saw that it read a quarter past three in the morning. The dream’s effect on her subconscious had been stronger than she had previously thought.
'Yeah, that's totally it.' A voice in the back of her head nagged.
Kennedy shook her head without giving herself any more time to properly analyze the strange events. She wiped her fingers on her pajamas and made a hasty retreat to her bedroom where she planned on diving under the covers and staying there until the sun shone high in the sky.
As it always happens, that morning welcomed Kennedy to an empty house and her plans of sleeping in were disrupted by a wave of insomnia.
Her mother had already left and she was still worried about her father. His absence normally wouldn’t bother her. If it hadn’t been for that mysterious call, she wouldn’t have thought a thing of it.
However, her mother’s concerned behavior during dinner bugged her a bit. Most of the times that Steven Riser disappeared, Teresa would go on with her life as if the fact that her husband left for days on end and then returned, sometimes beaten and bruised with no explanation, was the most normal thing in the world.
Somehow, Kennedy knew that this time was different.
Something felt wrong.
As she made her way downstairs, she was greeted by silence and the delicious smell of – if memory served her correctly – chocolate chip pancakes. Her mom had gotten up early and had fixed her breakfast before she left for work.
Either Teresa Martín-Riser was hands down the best and most loving mother on the planet or she felt guilty for keeping Kennedy in the dark. Whatever the reason, the smell was too enticing for her to dwell on it.
The newspaper was already unrolled and left to rest on the counter besides the pancakes. The words, “Local College Professor Still Missing”, stood out in bold red letters from the heading of its front page. She glanced at the photograph of a stern-looking man underneath the title.
It was depressing to see how people kept disappearing on that small island. It made her fearful of her own father’s whereabouts. She would go to the police if he didn’t contact them in a week.
Kennedy shoved those thoughts aside and flipped open the newspaper, going straight to the horoscope. She didn’t like to read or see the news, someone was always missing or found dead somewhere.
She found the page that she'd been looking for and went over the different signs with her index finger until her eyes stopped on her own.
“Cancer: Unexpected changes are coming your way. Embrace them. Don't try to control the events that take place around you. A little change can be a good thing. Your lucky numbers are–”
She stopped reading and closed the paper ignoring what she’d read. Why did she insist on reading that crap every morning? It wasn't like anything it told her ever did happen.
Kennedy put the paper aside and went to pick out a few pancakes from the fairly large pile in front of her.
She was in the middle of savoring a syrupy bite of pancake when the sound of a lawn mower distracted her. It came from the rude neighbor’s house.
She knew that she shouldn’t care what the guy did on his own property, especially after his impolite dismissal of her greeting the previous night, but curiosity got the best of her and she couldn’t help to take a look at him from the kitchen window.
He was mowing the grass of his backyard, dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a gray tee shirt. Kennedy wondered if he had been raised in some scorching desert, it was probably over ninety degrees outside. She felt hot just by looking at him. Although, maybe it wasn't just because of the heat.
She turned to the black kitty on the kitchen wall. Its eyes and tail moved in time with the passing seconds and the clock in its tummy told her that it was only seven thirty in the morning and already he was almost done with his yard work.
She looked back outside to see that he had stopped what he had been doing and looked around, again, as if sensing her eyes on him. She immediately ducked under the kitchen sink and crawled to finish