Saturday, July 4, 2009

Peanut butter power (a snippet from my novel)
The next morning Arana woke early, went downstairs and found Korbo at the kitchen table, watching Zech run about in a panic. “He overslept,” he explained to her as her brother whimpered and ran upstairs to frantically get dressed.

Wordlessly she walked to the pantry, pulled out a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. “Can you go into the fridge and hand me the jar of peach jam?” she asked Korbo, who quietly complied. “Thank you,” she said, opening the jar of peanut butter and slathering the bread.

“No problem,” he replied nonchalantly, and began to cover the surface of the white bread with a thin layer of jam.

Contrasting his modest spread, Arana was laying on the peanut butter so thickly that it was the same thickness of the bread. “Arana?” he queried, and she looked at him, indicating for him to ask with her eyes. “Don’t you think you have too much peanut butter?”

“No,” she replied flippantly. “I like peanut butter.”

Korbo persisted. “Isn’t that sandwich for your brother?”

For a moment Arana was quiet, before she slowly picked up the piece of peanut butter drowned bread and said in a calm voice, “You shall not mock the power of the peanut butter.” With that, she firmly stuck the slice of bread to his cheek, peanut butter acting as the glue.

Entirely stunned, Korbo was dead silent as he dipped his hand in the jar of peanut butter. “Power of the peanut butter, huh?” he asked, smearing the peanut butter across her face.

“Indeed,” she retorted, dabbing some on his nose.

“I am afraid I will have to challenge it’s authority,” he said in diplomatic tones, rubbing it along the bridge of her nose and on her forehead. In an act of daring, he ran his peanut butter coated hand along a single strand of her gold hair.

Eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring, Arana hissed, “It’s war.” Getting two handfuls of peanut butter, she rubbed it forcefully through his hair. Mouth in a perfect ‘O’ shape, Korbo stared at her in awe. Satisfied with her revenge, Arana wiped the extra peanut butter off her hands. “You have a bit of peanut butter in your hair,” she commented, grossly understating the fact. No longer black, his hair was simply peanut butter colored now.

As Korbo opened his mouth to retort, her mother walked in the kitchen, busied with her purse. Looking up, she dropped her purse with a shriek. “What did you two do?!” she wailed.

Like most humans, Korbo was susceptible to laughing at precisely the wrong moment. Doubled over, he fell into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. Arana’s mouth twitched upwards as she fought the urge to join him.

“I fail to see the humor in this,” her mother hissed.

“Fail to see the humor in what?” her father asked from the hallway, entering as he fiddled with his tie. Stopping as if he had been shot, he stared at his daughter and her friend, faces slathered in peanut butter. Smiling so broadly that Arana thought his face would split in half, he chuckled.

“Erik!” her mother cried. “How can you just laugh?”

“Oh, don’t be like that Danielle. They’re just kids,” he said soothingly to her irate mother. Turning to them, he addressed them with a faint smile, “Go get cleaned up. In fact, why don’t you just spray the peanut butter out of your hair outside? I don’t know if the shower can take that much peanut butter.”

While her brother left the house with her mother, Arana stood outside, gently hosing out Korbo’s hair, occasionally taken by a fit of giggling at the sight of Korbo, head drenched as he tried vainly to scrub the peanut butter out. It took them a little over a half hour to do so, but they didn’t mind too terribly much.


Yes, this is the typical relationship between Korbo and Arana. They're both very odd sorts of people, but it's mostly because Arana's very intense about the oddest of things. Like peanut butter. Luckily, Korbo adores the people who are out there.....
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