changing fate installment 1

This is a story I started writing last year. I hate it but a certain friend (Kamali) will kill me if I don't post it so she can read. I kind of value my life so here it is,

CHANGING FATE

Prologue

Caylix stood there coffee in one hand, green spiral notebook (with pen shoved in the bindings) in the other. She looked around at the other fourteen students who stood in the obnoxiously clean, bright, white room, each one looking more awkward then the next. Their eyes shifted from each other, to the black and white clock, which read some ungodly hour, to the professor.
Somewhere in the distance Lix heard a buzzer along with some grunting, through the small rectangular window she saw a mass of orange jumpsuits. She sighed, what had she gotten herself into. She backed away from the door as a uniformed arm opened it. The unsmiling crowd shuffled in and stood opposite Caylix and the other college students.

Caylix's red hair singled her out in the crowd of black and brown haired people, but there was one thing, jailed or not, that everyone had in common, they were all...young.....too young, in her opinion. She pouted her rose-colored lips and her eyebrows scrunched her freckled forehead, these kids should being in college, what were they doing in a maximum security prison in New York.

Professor Gann slowly but confidently ambled over to someone Lix only assumed could be the prison warden. The two spoke quickly, judging by the furious movements over their mouths, and quietly. Soon enough the pair separated and went to their respective groups.

“Well then guys and gals, what's going to happen is this, Warden Gerber over there is going to read a name of a prisoner of his list and I will read a name off of mine, you two will then become best friends. You're job is to listen to them, be their friends, they're all around your age so it should not be so hard. Visit them once a week at least and try to visit on or around the holidays, most of these guys don't have family to visit them so you're gonna take that place. It's only October so there are plenty of holidays coming up to celebrate, now I'll talk to everyone more once we get back to the University, right now I'm wasting time,” He said as he walked back over to the officer.

They both pulled out clipboards and scrolled down it with a finger, if the atmosphere wasn't so creepy and silent and eerie for lack of a better term, Caylix would have laughed. The was an intake of breath from everyone in the room as the first pair was called. The red head leaned against the wall one of the joys of having a last name starting with W was that you always had time to kill when it came to things like partners.

Caylix stopped her humming and tuned back in around the Ts waiting to hear her name, and about thirty seconds later, it was called. “Caylix Wiliston,” at the same time as the warden barked “Cain Rutherford.”

Her head snapped up as she looked for the inmate that responded to that name, it couldn't be her Cain. Her Cain was, well......not him. As her eyes finally stopped at the boy who had his arm raised at the elbow and his shaved head pointed down toward his ratty, tattering sneakers, her heart stopped. Her Cain, was there.

Head down and eyes on the floor, she dragged herself over to her new, 'best friend'. It was going to be a long semester, that was for sure.


Chapter 1

Cain snorted, just his luck. He had lived in the city for about three years now, two of which he had been in this prison, and the first human contact he got that wasn't a fellow inmate or staffer was the one person who actually knew him. He followed the rest of the inmates as they left the waiting room and went into a room that was normally for lawyers. On this occasion however, it was set up with fourteen smaller tables with two chairs at each. There were already two guards by the doors when the crowd entered the Plexiglas walled room.

Cain decided the gods actually hated him, he had always thought it was just a mutual dislike thing going on, but if there was any god who liked him they would have prevented this travesty from occurring. Travesty, yes travesty he wasn't stupid he knew what the word travesty meant. Anyway he needed to focus on the matters at hand. He took a seat at a table in the middle of the room, plopping himself down heavily in the ice-cold uncomfortable folding chair and slouching, his body giving of the ultimate sense of apathy. He didn't even look to see if Caylix was following, she would be, he knew it.

No sooner had he finished that thought he heard the scraping on metal on linoleum and a soft sigh as a pair of freckled hands appeared on the table in his line of vision. He looked up smirking, taking in the girl for the first time. Her haircut was short and jagged, making it look constantly windswept, her eyes were the same emerald green he remembered from all those years ago. She definitely had grown up though, she looked good, he wasn't going to lie.

“So,” Cain began lacing his fingers together and resting them behind his head, the smirk never leaving his face.

“So,” Caylix said staring at the boy a questioning look on her face as she tried to determine what happened to the boy. Eventually, she sighed in defeat, “What happened to you Cain? Last time I saw you was the end of high school 3 years ago.....”

That was all Cain needed to hear, his mind was off. Thinking of the first time he had met Lix. He had been six and it was the summer before kindergarten. He remembered it was a hot day because he had been running around in his power rangers swimsuit, chasing his older brother Alex, through the sprinkler. Cain loved summer, he was always fond of warm weather, ever since he was a baby or so his parents said.

The big white truck that shadowed the brothers was an unusual sight one Belladonna Avenue and Cain remembered watching in fascination as the sixteen-wheeled contraption pulled into the drive across the street from him. It was old man Schuler's house, but he had gone into a home a few months ago and the house had been empty ever since. A small blue car followed the truck and parked on the side of the road, out stepped a man in a suit, a mother wearing a similar suit in white and pink and a little redheaded girl in a frilly green dress that matched her eyes.

She looked like one of those dolls that Cain saw the girls play with a preschool, except she was somehow, better. She seemed to glow like she was some kind of star or something. Mesmerized, Cain made his way to start across the street and talk to the girl, after all Mom always told him to make new friends. He had one foot off the curb when he felt his brother pull him back.

“You're not allowed to cross the street Cain,” Alex said, playing the protective older brother, as always. Cain responded by pouting, which lead Alex to get their mother.

“Cain.....Cain....are you there, earth to Cain Rutherford,” the melodic voice snapping him out of his flashbacks.


Chapter 2

“Wha?” Cain said shaking his head in an attempt to get the memory out of his mind, but ultimately failing.

“I said,” Caylix began as she put her notebook and camera down on the plastic table, “What happened to you? I mean I knew you were in trouble but I never knew it was this bad.”

“Well....” The boy began with a sigh and a mysterious look, like he was trying to remember.

Caylix remembered, she remembered everything, including the first day they met. They had moved from The Hamptons down into New Jersey because father had wanted a change. She had been wearing one of her favorite dresses: a heavy forest green babydoll with white lace trim and collars.

She had gotten out of the car and looked around, the grass was so green it almost matched her dress, it was very hot and sunny where ever they were. She looked around and across the street there were two boys playing in the sprinkler. One of the boys was staring at her, so she quickly ran and hid behind her mother, hoping that when she peered around he would be gone.

When Caylix peered around her mother she found she was right, sort of. The boy had obviously left but he came back with mother in hand. So she retreated once more.

The mothers talked pleasantly, relating over their children and this little small town and while the were clucking like hens the boy had broken away from his mother. He was now grabbing Caylix's hand “Hi I'm Cain and that's my brother Alex over there in the sprinkler, I'll take you to meet him,” the rambling young boy said as he began pulling her toward his front yard.

Caylix pulled her arm out of the boy's grasp remaining silent as she went back to her mother, glaring at the boy the whole time.

“Hello Lixy? Wake up, I asked why you were here on a Saturday as oppose to out doing what sensational college students normally partake in,” Cain said his smug smile growing as he talked to the girl.

Caylix groaned and glared, “I told you never to call me that. I'm here as a project for my sociology class and yes this is for a grade so please even though it's hard for you, try not to be a jerk. I need this course to graduate.”

Cain kept his lax demeanor, for someone in prison he sure seemed like he was having a good time, “Whatever you say babycakes, so we done here yet?”


Chapter 3

“Honestly do you ever pay attention Cain,” Caylix said. “I'm going to be here at least once a week maybe more. If you didn't care about this then why did you sign up for the program? This is a serious..”

“Three years and you still haven't stopped nagging. Was there ever a day in your life where you actually had fun,” Cain asked.

“Yes,” Caylix said stubbornly, “The first day of school.”

“God you are such a nerd,” the boy snarled.

“Not because of school, do you even remember that day?”

“Yes that was the day our mothers planned our wedding and future because we walked to school holding hands.”

“Really, that's all you remember,” Caylix said eying him, genuinely curious.

“Nothing else happened,” Cain said plainly. He saw the girl's mouth open, no doubt to disagree with what he said, but as she did a buzzer sounded causing the girl to jump and Cain to laugh.

A voice sounded out over the speaker system, “We're going to call that a day guys, please get your inmates name and basic information and plan your next visit. Then report to the waiting room so we can stop for breakfast,” the voice instructed.

The girl across the table sighed, “Alright Cain, when do you have visiting hours,” she asked pulling her pen out from behind her ear.

“Whenever you're here, I'm here Lixy,” he said a confident smile playing at his features, “just call me and I'll be there. I'm sure you can fill out the rest of my information with your eyes closed. Later doll,” he said getting up from the table and going to talk to the guards who smiled as he approached.

After a few minutes he chanced a look back at and saw the girl flabbergasted and frozen in place, he couldn't help but laugh. He turned back to the guard and explained the situation to them,
they in turn laughed appreciatively finding the same humor in the situation as Cain had.

He waited as the the groups filed out, and as Caylix passed him, a look of determined hatred on her face and he arched an eyebrow at the guards a mischievous smirk on his face as he smacked the girl's butt, “Later toots.”

Caylix turned back to him mouth agape as she left in a huff.

“Couldn't help it,” he said to the guards as he left the room and went out to smoke, smiling to himself quite satisfied with the events of the early morning.