peace is for the boring OPEN

[Riley Murray]

Riley Murray was the kind of person who wouldn’t let walls or anything else for that matter contain her. Therefore, it was no surprise that she was often found outside. You name the day and she’d be there. Boiling hot summer after noon? She’s sitting under a nice shady tree sweat free. A day filled with rain and hail? Riley’s out there dancing and laughing. What about the winter you might ask? Just ask Mrs. Murray who threw a fit after Riley ran outside barefoot in the middle of January and got a cold for weeks. Today was no exception.

The weather was one of a placid short. The sun was shining, although not to brightly. The wind was blowing ever so lightly occasionally causing Riley’s untamable hair to fly all over the place. All was right and Riley was sitting outside on the ledge of the koi pond, with her bad on the ground next to her and her bare feet dangling in the water frequently swishing whenever a large fish got too close for comfort.

The peace and quiet however was too good to be true, particularly because Riley loathed when things were just so. The peace became boring and the silence became deafening, a combination she rather disliked. Unable to take it any longer without turning to fidgeting, Riley smiled and pulled out her ipod from her satchel. It was her life, and therefore, Riley was very paranoid about it getting wet and breaking. However, desperate times called for desperate measures, and this was clearly one of those times. Turning it on to shuffle, Riley placed her head phones in her ears and couldn’t help but smile at how much better it already was.

[Piper Crumin]

Piper hated the coming autumn. She couldn't really spend much of her time running outside anymore, because the sweat paired with the frost and chill made her immune system quiver with fear.

Even now she pulled some bright red gloves on her smallish hands. That paired with her navy blue pea coat she felt kind of like a sailor. Her hair was slightly wind-blown, but held down by a red beanie that matched her scarlet gloves. Not that it would do much- Piper had already been getting a tickling sensation in the back of her throat, which foretold of an upcoming sore throat, which usually meant a lot worse for Piper.

Despite some minor inconveniences, she was really quite content. Never in a million years would Piper, the world's most cynical girl, ever think that she could be happy away from her father. Her boots stomped on the yellowing grass as she made her way through the grounds of the school. She had always liked the pond, even though it was hardly likely that there would still be some semi-aquatic birds there at this time of year. Piper liked to sit and listen to the silence and do nothing. It was totally out of character for her, and most people would think that something was wrong with her when she did it, but she really didn't mind just being still. She didn't mind being part of the scenery.

Carefully carrying her hot chocolate in a bright blue thermos, and a small blanket tucked away in her dependable brown bag, Piper's mind wasn't really on the pond. She hummed a tune which she didn't know the words to and came a few few to the edge of the water. Its surface was barely quivering, and a few flashes of color betrayed the fish below the slightly murky surface. She put her hot chocolate on a fairly flat rock and shook out her blanket to sit on. As she collapsed on it her eye caught sight of a pretty blond girl with sitting at a kitty-corner to Piper. She couldn't believe she hadn't seen the other girl at first, but then Piper laughed internally at herself. The brunette knew that she was absent-minded a lot, and not seeing someone there was something that everyone did once in awhile.

Piper took a sip of her hot drink and waved at the other girl. Her lips parted from the wintery liquid and she smiled.

"Hello there," she said, pulling her legs up so she sat crossed-legged.

[Riley Murray]

Even at the best of times, Riley wasn’t the most observant of people, tending to do more talking then listening or at other times to active and busy to even bother paying attention. Listening to her ipod however only served to make things worse because Riley, a music fanatic, had a habbit of getting into the music, tuning out the outside world completely, and turning her focus completely on the music itself. Each strum of a guitar, stoke of a key board, bang on the drum, and belt of lyrics were heard clean and clear in Riley’s mind. It was like her ipod was on FM and everything else was on AM. A person can’t have both at the same time, and that’s exactly how it was with Riley.

Therefore, because she had a tendency to get lost in the music and lose focus of the outside world, Riley became unobservant and easy to surprise. So too it was today. One moment it was just her, the pond, and her music. The next it was, the pond, a girl introducing herself, and her interrupted music. How typical, Riley thought. Just as she was getting really into music ready to burst into song, something always had to come and interrupt.

Looking up from the pond, Riley smiled at the new girl and said politely, “Hey!” Despite her previous politeness, Riley couldn’t help but stare and analyze the girl, her curiosity getting the better of her. Outside with a blanket and a cheerful bright blue thermos probably filled with a warm drink, this girl was clearly on the cold side and contrasted well with Riley who was anything but cold her bare feet in the chilly water, allowing the bottom of her jeans to soak. Riley doubted for good reason that the girl would go for getting wet at all.

“It’s really amazing out here isn’t it?” Riley said in hopes of starting a conversation, despite already assuming the answer. The pond was a place most couldn’t help but like. It was just too pretty and serene not to like, and that was something Riley was sure she and the girl had in common.

[Piper Crumin]

Piper's eyes adverted to the little electronic in the other girl's hand. Piper didn't understand the way most teenage girls lived off of music. She couldn't understand why they needed someone to sing to them all the time. Maybe it was the fact that she never had a mother to rock her to sleep and hum her a melody, maybe it was the fact that Piper firmly believed that she needed no one to sing to her when she had her own song. She felt the beat in her chest when she ran and she heard the flutes as wind blew past her ears, so she needed no more music than that. Sometimes it was a quiet song, sometimes so loud it swelled up into her chest and her ears and her entire body was pumping with the melody.

So putting the music that wasn't made from her own actions into her ears seemed useless. It was like listening to someone else talk about their experiences without going out and having her own. It was beyond Piper and how she could understand things. She didn't like the outlandish music that always filled the air and how she was supposed to relate to the women who sang when they had no idea what she was going through.

Piper smiled at the bright-eyed blond despite herself. She took a big gulp of the hot liquid, letting it roar down her throat and made sure she would feel every breath because of the bit of burn that remained inside her. "Yeah." she croaked as the hot chocolate finished sliding down into her stomach. She screwed the top back on her drink, and ran one of her gloved hands through her hair nonchalantly, looking back toward the pond, near the other girl's feet, where ripples were being born and growing up rapidly. She looked back towards the stranger's shiny bright eyes. "I really like it here; it's my favorite spot on campus." She smiled, her vision glazing over for a minute. The pond reminded her of Crumin's house upon a hill. There was a pretty pond behind the house there; where ducks and assorted fish swam. It was pretty. Beautiful, even. And Piper missed it. A lot.

Her vision came back, focusing in on the blond's face. "I'm Piper, by the way!" she called, grinning awkwardly.