Vicus, Villam, and Arbusto
Kashi had to pull the phone away from her ear at the decibels Sierra’s voice had reached. She didn't know her speaker could make such a sound.
“Calm down Sierra, everyone else is asleep!” Kashi spoke in hushed tones. She hadn’t been away from home for long but sleeping in her old room again felt so strange. She stared at the pale pink walls and her butterfly curtains from when she was young... even the white dresser, vanity and nightstand seemed foreign.
Sierra’s voice was something that Kashi would never feel estranged from. “Kashi I’m so jealous! You actually kissed him?”
Warmth spread over Kashi’s face as she put the phone back up to her ear. “Say it a little louder so my dad can hear.” She hissed sarcastically. “Yes, I did. We went for a walk in the fields after that. We kissed again a few more times, too.” Her mind replayed the way his fingers unbraided her hair as they kissed, running his hands through the unbound locks.
“I called it, and you know it!” Sierra said, not lowering her voice at all.
Kashi readjusted herself against the pillows as she slid under the pink comforter. “Yeah, yeah, I know.” Kashi tugged on her loose dark hair that flooded the pillow where she laid her head. She never left it down. But the way Carr’s hands had run through it… She didn’t want to tie it back up. “You always do have an eye for this stuff.”
Kashi wondered if she looked out the window, she’d see the faraway light beaming from Sierra’s face. She could practically hear it over the phone. “Of course I do. I’m just glad you actually let it happen this time. Remember that summer with Nathan when you could’ve—”
“Yes, I remember very well, but I was sixteen!” Kashi protested, remembering that horrible moment when he tried to kiss her, and she instead laughed and the kiss… it didn’t happen the way it should’ve. “Please stop bringing that up!”
Sierra’s laughter was too contagious for Kashi to be upset any longer than a moment. “Don’t worry Kashi, I only use it to embarrass you. Nobody knows about it except us, Nathan and whoever he told." Considering how embarrassed he had looked, Nathan probably hadn’t told many people, if any at all.
“Oh, so what I really wanted to tell you was about what I found out concerning those letters and such.” Kashi said, peering at the envelope sticking just slightly out of her bag.
“No, Kashi, I wanted to hear more about the evening with Carr!” Sierra whined, but Kashi continued to talk anyway, relating the events.
“We need to find out more about Jeremy Hughes. He was even at my eighth birthday party, though only for a little while. He and my dad had a conversation after which he dropped a present off for me and left. The next time I saw him, he was with my uncle just a few weeks ago taking a tour of the land.” Kashi shook her head. “I can’t figure out what’s going on Sierra. But I have a suspicion that whatever schemes my dad and uncle were in originally are about to resurface.”
Her friend was actually silent for once. Kashi stared at the ceiling that was twinged with a rse hue from her pink lampshades. She hadn’t redecorated her room since she was little. Her stepmom and she had done it together. Kashi wasn’t sure she’d be able to redecorate the little room even if she wanted to. It reminded her of her stepmom.
“Sierra?”
“I just looked him up Kashi.” Sierra said from the other line. “He owns a business in the middle of Chicago. It is some sort of insurance company, I think. It is sort of unclear.”
Kashi’s brow furrowed. “What’s the name of the company?” Kashi asked, pulling her laptop from her bag.
She typed in Vicus, Villam, and Arbusto and opened the website to see a beautifully designed page. It appeared to be a legitimate business. She scanned over the blue and white webpage. There were pictures of a sprawling modern office in a skyscraper as well as some farms they worked with. Quotes, maps, agents… But this wasn’t the insurance company her father used for his business. He was part of some local group.
“Is there anything else about Jeremy Hughs? None of this is incriminating or has anything to do with the envelope and letters at all.” Kashi continued to search the website for anything; she heard Sierra’s keys clacking through the other end of the phone.
“There’s honestly not much about him.” Sierra said. “I found a website that has his times from high school track. He graduated from an ivy league college… You’re right though Kashi. Strange that he’s working with your uncle.”
After a few more fruitless minutes of searching, Kashi shut her laptop with a heavy sigh. “We should pick this back up in the morning. I’ll ask Carr tomorrow if he found anything.”
“Kashi!” Sierra chided. “I cannot believe you asked him about your investigation after you two made out!”
“Quiet Sierra! The walls are paper thin in this house. And in my defense, we were back under that gross porch light my dad won’t replace. The mood had died anyway.”
That greenish glass light that buzzed incessantly had killed the romance. It didn’t even light the porch well because of the hundreds of beetle shadows both moving and stationary that hid the shafts of ugly light. The color was not flattering for either of them. It made the chipped blue porch look as gray as the weathered wood below. Kashi had gotten one too many splinters on this porch since she was young.
Carr scuffed the toe of his work boots against it, pulling up a sliver of the wood as if in emphasis. “You find anything else today?” He asked Kashi when she told him that she knew Jeremy Hughes.
“No. I just know he was working with them before I was born, and he’s resurfaced in the town again.”
As Kashi thought over the conversation she’d had with Carr earlier, an idea came to mind. “Sierra, why don’t we ask people in town about him? I know that whatever was happening then was widely disapproved of. Let’s find out more through them!”
“We’ll have to be careful, so we don’t alert your dad or your uncle, and especially not Hughes. But I think that there have got to be people who know something about the secretive business deal.” Kashi picked at the dirt under one of her nails as Sierra then changed the conversation back to her and Carr. It made Kashi smile. It was good to see that some people never changed.
“Well, did you talk about the kisses afterwards Kashi?”
“I mean,” Kashi thought back to the moments that had taken place a few hours before, “Not really. After he tripped in a hole and fell over, we both used it as a way out of that conversation.” Kashi chuckled.
Carr had been nervously clearing his throat and looking back at Kashi then away. He wasn’t looking where he was going, his foot plunged into a hole. With a string of curses, he crashed to the ground, earning a face full of grass.
“At least it's just dirt. It could’ve been horse refuse,” Kashi joked when he finally stood, spitting grass out of his mouth. He did not appreciate that comment, Kashi chuckled. “I didn’t think a well weathered ranch-hand would be so clumsy.”
“Yeah, yeah, all the jokes. I hope you know when you take a trip I will tease you mercilessly.” He flicked her nose.
“If I take a trip.” She responded, rubbing her nose with a scowl.
Sierra’s voice raised itself over the phone as she pestered Kashi about talking to Carr. “You can’t just kiss someone and expect it to be normal the next time you see him.”
Kashi shrugged to herself. Maybe.