First Writings

The patch of stubble pricked the blooming young man's fingertips.

"Agh." He winced. Then, gently, massaged it up and down.

While Jacob caressed his chin in front of his phone screen like an acne-ridden wallflower, it rang the Mission Impossible theme, lighting up and supplanting his reflection with a jumping clock.

He jumped back, then relaxed. "Thanks, alarm." Shutting it off with a sigh, the teen suddenly sat forward and flatly turned his attention to the papers on his desk. "Drat. I should probably get this done."

A few seconds passed. His gaze inevitably wandered to his window, which was accosted with gales, and where the winds outside were making quite the ruckus.

"Pretty white out." His chair creaked as he leaned backward.

The riot outside wasn't a blizzard -- not yet. But the snow was coming down rapidly and the sky was a grey blanket. Wasn't exactly picnic material.

Amid his mumble, he drew his hand from his desk, causing something to fall to the carpet. He bent down to pick it up, grabbing the book finger to finger.

"Oh." Flipping it to its back, then front, then back again, he muttered, as if not sure 'how' sure he should be, "The Drawbook."

After a locomotive eyelid, he re-examined it, carefully.

It wasn't a dream.

The next moment, he had it open, looking at the words floating inside Aunt Helena's circle. Sure enough, it was there. The same rendition of a circle. The same name. The same spontaneous words floating in it. It was real. Just like he remembered. Removing his hand from his forehead, he turned the page.

Shaking his head meant nothing as he grabbed his pencil, because in the next minute he wrote down a new name on the empty page, with a clean (enough) circle below it.

Jacob watched as words began to simmer into existence, under his new subject, which read 'Madeline Renoit'.

He stroked his chin, the mild prickle not that much of a bother. Under a curious drawl he began reading off the page.

"Hugs with friends. Eye contact. Casual conversation." Jacob leaned forward. "Going to the movies. Camping. So vague. But kinda weirdly specific in the same time." He shook his head as he fiddled with the corner of the sheet. "And all so innocent."

Makes sense, he reflected. Madeline was always the 'good girl'.

In spite of himself he snorted.

Good girl.

What did ethics have to do with it?

"Jakey!"

The teen's brow twitched. Prying the door open, he directed his voice downstairs, "What?" Then added, "And don't call me that!"

A knowing snicker drew out a sigh. Fell right into that one. "Yeeah, whatever you say, pacifier... anyway, Mom's making pancakes so if you don't come down Maddy's gonna eat 'em all."

"Maddy, huh?" Jacob slid back into his chair after Cameron's footseps from below thudded away. He realized he wasn't just sitting. He was staring at the book, open to Madeline's 'circle'.

A reference, if the info on the front was to be believed, to all the things she permitted, tolerated, found morally reasonable.

Oh what the heck. Just one little thing. Surely that wouldn't hurt anything, right?

Thinking of his teacher's stern, no-nonsense brow glaring down at him, Jacob shucked away all reservations. He pulled his chair to the desk, stretching his neck a little as he looked at the circle of words. It looked back at him, as if waiting to be given something to do.

Here goes.

With a final breath, he wrote down,

"Doing cousin Jacob's homework."

And just as he was about to leave it there, he felt his heart pounding when he found his pencil kept on writing, moving down a space. Just one other thing. For testing's sake.

"Dirty jokes."

There we go.

Jacob bit a lip. That was it. The one other thing. Completely worth trying, and besides, something everyone could probably laugh over later, wind through their hair. Just an innocent little test.

A stray breeze screeched against the window, causing Jacob to sit up.

But why stop there? The teen hung his head over the drawbok again, staring into the seemingly swirling circle below him. He made his decision. Remember, he reminded himself, it's... it's just for a test!

Looking back down, he nodded then wrote,

"Kissing cousins on lips."

Pause.

"...with tongue."

He squeezed his pencil tightly. Madeline's sugary cute face drifted into his mind like a schizophrenic giggle. Maybe... maybe just one more wouldn't hurt...

His pencil snuck back into the circle. Jacob felt a dry dollop hanker down his throat as he scribbled across it.

"Being nake--"

"Jacob Freeman Bay! Are you awake or aren't you?"

"Crap." He knew that honey-toned voice anywhere, authoritarian one included. Looking back at the page, he saw the words seemingly fall inside it and shamble around with the others, slowly careening through the space. It was like a 22nd-century screensaver.

He was also surprised at where he was originally going to go with those... those.. 'notions.' He shook his head. What was he trying to do exactly? See how far he could push the boundaries? Whatever. Folding the book closed, Jacob threw it into the desk's top drawer and hurdled out of the room and down the stairs. "I'm here! I'm here."

"Good." Aunt Helena was waiting for him at the foot of the stairwell. She was wrapped in a purple sweater and tight white trousers, capped off with a pair of slick teal socks, her typically coy brow raised to inscrutable effect. "Because your pancakes were 'bout to go cold."

After following Aunt Helena into the dining room, he was greeted to the sight of spacious flooring and a classic wood table perfect for large assemblies. No food, or cousins, for that matter, though. Nevertheless, he spent a few seconds taking in the sight. It had been a while since he was last here. He could still remember being little enough to sprawl his arms across about 7 inches worth of table when he was younger, and seeing all the adults laughing around him.

"In here!" Aunt Helena's voice echoed from the kitchen. Going around the table and past the archway, he found her and her daughters collected inside. A more practical round table sat by the entrance. Drifting upward, his gaze spotted the window above the countertop, glistening with snow.

"So it's true we're not going today, Mom?"

"Sorry, honey." The woman soaped up a plate as she talked, face still forward. "The weather's supposedly bent on making going out of any kind a hazard for the rest of the day. And I'd rather not risk being **** to huddle up in the middle of the road because a glob of snow's got it clogged up again. But, you know, there's always tomorrow." She left the sink to grab a towel from the table and rubbed her daughter's shoulder. "I already told your Uncle Jed, so we're all on the same page. Managed to get a signal earlier this morning, thank god."

An audible sigh left Cameron's lips as she dropped her chin against her jacket-covered arms, muttering something about cabin fever while her mother's work continued under the faucet.

For the majority of the conversation, however, Jacob had been zoned out. His eyes were on Madeline, who had swallowed down her last bite of breakfast. While slicing his pancake stack into chunks, he watched her chug a glass of milk and cleared his throat.

"So, Madeline..."

The girl looked up from her mug. When she reached the peak of the mug tilt, she set it down and rubbed her mouth with her knuckle-reaching sleeve. She frowned and looked down at her arm.

A gulp suddenly snaked down Jacob's throat. It was interesting. He hadn't noticed how cute she was before. Especially with the innocuous way she seemed to go about things. He began to wonder, to conjecture, what else he could possibly explore with the book -- what sides of his cousin he could discover. See.

Make.

Jacob quickly checked himself. Whoa, whoa, whoa. What was this feeling?

Dude! he assured himself, or at least attempted to, you're just testing things! That's all. A test!

"Sorry Jake." His attention was seized back to Madeline as she blinked at him, unsuspecting smile under her nose. A bit of morning lethargy still tugged at her eyes, which she rubbed. "What's up?"

For some reason, instead of speaking, the words seemed to freeze at the boy's throat and not come out.

"Cameron." Aunt Helena was one step out of the kitchen, stopping at the entryway. "Can you help me move the wood from the basement?"

The specified girl spoke from her arm. "Why can't you ask Jacob?"

"He's still eating. Come on, young lady, get off your butt."

Pushing back her chair with a loud foot on the floor, Cameron marched to her mom's side, which Jacob saw as an opportune moment to tease er.

"Don't get your panties in a bunch, cuz." Cameron looked sharply at Jacob after his remark and scoffed.

"Don't worry Jacob, you won't have any panties trying to come near you for at least 24 hours, which I'm sure would be a relief for you."

When the two left the kitchen, Jacob called out, "If you're not going to close your legs at least get a mop!"

With just Jacob and Madeline at the table, the girl broke into a slight giggle.

"That was..." The girl covered her mouth with a hand, another giggle stifled. This nearly elicited another one of his own from her table-crossed cousin. Someone had the laughs today. "... kinda funny. What you just said."

"It's true," Jacob smirked. Then he collected himself. Remembering what he had been trying to do earlier he took a breath. "By the way, Maddy. I, uh. I still have my homework up there and since we all know why my mom made sure to remind me to do it in the first week I got here instead of procrastinating again, I was wondering..."

Madeline looked at Jacob and blinked. "You want me to do your homework for you again?"

Jacob swallowed a chunk of pancakes. "...can you?"

The girl shrugged. "Sure."

"Really?" Jacob willed himself to remain composed. "But Aunt Helena said..."

Madeline stood up, taking her plate to the sink. "It's okay. It's not like she needs to know. What are cousins for, right?"

It was only as Jacob was gulping at how Madeline, for the first time he could recall, casually stated her willingness to disobey her mom behind her back, did he remember to swallow his inserted pancake.

He stuck his fork in another batch.

No, it wasn't just disobeying. She just prioritized him over her. She agreed to help him, her cousin... over something trivially unnecessary yet equipped with reasonable consequence if uncovered. It didn't make sense for her to allow herself to do that, because she had never shown herself to be that way until now. That was the takeaway here.

Which meant only one thing.

"It worked," murmured Jacob. He looked up at his quiet, still seemingly ordinary cousin girl. "Did it?"

fshh, went the faucet water, as the squeak of the chair against the floor was drowned in the sound of it splashing against Madeline's empty plate.

Jacob looked over Madeline's behind. From her cute head of hair to her tight, if gratuitously covered, butt, to her dainty feet. And, just as he took a step forward, pushing his hand off the table and approaching Madeline's rooted body, and then another, and another step, he felt his hands move towards her, around her hip, and prepare to swivel her around.