Post by reasonably_crazy on Nov 20, 2006 2:15:56 GMT -5
Let me say, first and foremost, that it is very very very very very very bad. Let me say secondly that I've given up right where it gets intersting, and I apologize. Let me say thirdly... um... I'm sorry?
Reminder: Very bad!
Every school has one. The ‘perfect girl.’ The one truly genuine human. The girl everyone loves; she’s friends with everyone, not shallowly, but honestly. Her grades are excellent, and she’s beautiful, not ‘hot’ or ‘sexy.’ She seems to lead a charmed life- her sweet nature sugaring her existence. She’s the one that the fashion-slave divas are desperately jealous of; the one they want to hate but can’t.
Every high school has one. At Sunrise high school, her name was Caylee Roberts.
Near the end of her senior year, Caylee frequently began feeling ill. She began suffering drastic mood swings, started gaining weight. Her mother grimly recognized the signs, suspected the worst, and insisted that Caylee take a pregnancy test. Caylee was appalled that her mother would think this of her- she had never had a boyfriend by her own choosing, and that her mom could suspect her of sexual activity would have been laughable if I hadn’t been so insulting. Her mother pestered, jabbed, shouted, and guilted until Caylee, stung, agreed to take the test to finally prove her mother wrong and turn the tables of guilt around.
The test came back positive.
That was enough for Caylee’s parents. Disgusted by their daughter’s actions, shocked by the fact that she lied about it, they ejected her from their home, sending after her the weight of knowing that she had blemished her entire family’s virtue. Utterly bewildered and dismayed, Caylee took refuge at a friend’s house. She bought three more pregnancy tests, each a different brand. None of them told her what she wanted to hear: that there had been a terrible, cosmic mistake. Caylee was undeniably pregnant.
She couldn’t bring herself to leave her friend’s bedroom for a week, but the image of a plummeting Grade Point Average finally drove her back to school- where rumors had grown beyond hope of ever curbing them. Everyone wanted to know who had gotten the oh-so-perfect Caylee pregnant. A large handful of jealous girls were rejoicing in the knowledge that Caylee was actually human like them, and gleefully slaughtered her name behind her back. A number of boys had come forward, humbly professing that she was actually carrying his child.
Caylee did what she could, trying to explain that she had never been with anyone that way at all, and had never been in a position where she could have been raped. This merely made her open for more derision; Caylee was so perfect, was the popular joke, that she had become the next Virgin Mary, and this was the second coming of Christ through divine conception.
Caylee stopped going to school after that, and Sunrise high’s girl that had everything suddenly and dramatically had nothing at all.
Her name, Caylee decided, was Bethany Roberts. Many of Caylee’s friends had advised that she have an abortion, but Caylee couldn’t bring herself to do it. She didn’t know anything about the person inside her, and if anything that made it- her, she discovered- all the more impossible to get rid of without haunting her conscience. And even if it didn’t phase her, who would pay for the operation? Most of her family was extremely religious, and this sinful act was enough for most of them to cut her off entirely. One uncle, who knew what it was like to be in hard times as he was constantly in them himself, sent her fifty dollars when he could spare them, which was every few months. It was hardly enough to carry her through, but it was something.
Caylee went from job to job, nobody really wanting to hire a pregnant woman for long. She finally got a steady job at a private retail clothes shop, scraped enough money together for a small apartment, and despaired over the upcoming hospital bill.
The semi-dreaded 9 months came nearly a month too early. The doctor informed her as they took her weak, pale, but so beautiful! baby girl out of Caylee’s arms that they would do all they could to save her Bethany. As she lay in the hospital bed, 19 broken years old and weeping uncontrollably, a nurse held her hand and told her a donor by name of Neil Marshall had stepped in to cover all hospital costs. Caylee never found out who Neil Marshall was. Bethany did.
“Bethany, who is he?” Angela pleaded, wrapping her arms around her knees and planting herself more firmly in the middle of her roommate’s bed.
Bethany tossed her jacket in the vague direction of the closet and dumped her purse unceremoniously onto her nightstand. “He’s nobody,” she said firmly. “Now move. you’re on my bed and I, personally, want a nap.”
“Beeeeeeeth,” Angela whined. “How long has this thing been going on?”
“There is no ‘thing!’”
“I’ve never seen a more obvious ‘thing’ in my life!” Angela insisted. She lay out comfortably on the cloud-spotted comforter. “He likes you,” she taunted.
Bethany gazed at her best friend flatly. “You’re still on my bed.”
“Bethany, focus, this is important!” Angela’s gold curls quivered with indignance. “When a guy takes the effort to actually show up at one’s place of employment, it is a sign of major interest!”
“I’m majorly interested in a nap.” Bethany pulled her own dark curls out of the tight bun and let them snake their way down her back. “We have nothing further to discuss.”
Angela set her jaw, grabbed Beth’s stuffed bunny, and held it in a headlock. “His name, age, how you met him and when, or the bunny gets it.”
Bethany sighed and sat on he corner of her bed. “His name is James, he’s twenty, and I met him in my photography class at the start of the term. Now give me Desmond.”
Angela gaped as her friend since fifth grade snatched Desmond the bunny from the grasp of death. “You’ve been friends with a guy that beautiful for this long and you never told me? How come you aren’t going out?”
“You are sick in the head, you know that?” Beth pushed a somewhat unresisting Angela aside and spread out on it herself. “Don’t talk to me. I had work right after math class, and those are two bad things that are worse when combined.”
Angela sat sullenly on the edge of the bed. “Oh, stop being so whiny; you’ve had worse. You’re just trying to avoid me.” Beth ignored her. Angela refused to be ignored. She again stretched out as luxuriously as she could manage next to her. “I know why you’re being so closed on the subject. You’re afraid you might like him back. Big bad Beth might like a boy! Oh, the humanity of it all!”
“I’m not that big, and I’m not that bad, either.” This was muffled by the pillow Beth had buried her face into.
“You think he’s preeetty, you think you liiiike him,” Angela sang. She jabbed her roommate in the ribs for good measure on the word ‘like.’
Angela’s head was met quickly and suddenly with Desmond’s tail.
“Now that was uncalled for,” Angela sniffed.
Beth raised her head from the pillow and looked at her directly. “What is it that you want?”
Angela looked at her mournfully. “I’m bored.”
“How very terrible for you.”
“Beeeeeeth,” Angela wailed, “we haven’t done anything in forever! It’s just school and work and school and work and work and school.”
Beth raised an eyebrow. “Creative sentence.”
“Thanks. Now let’s go do something!”
“And what would you suggest?”
Angela sat up. “Let’s go down to the waterfront and see all the people in their Halloween costumes for the festival,” she said brightly.
Beth grimaced and rolled away, but Angela caught her shoulder and pulled her friend back. “Oh, come on. I know Halloween’s not your favorite- and yes, I know it’s for a good reason,” she added quickly in response to her roommate’s dry look, “but you could use the walk in the fresh air- and you have to admit that some of those costumes are pretty dang funny.”
Despite herself, Beth grinned wryly. After a pause she said, “Only if you buy the hot chocolate.”
“Only if we buy it where you work so we get the employee discount,” Angela countered.
Beth eyed her blonde friend suspiciously. “All right,” she finally relented, hefting herself off the bed and reaching for her jacket, still crumpled in a heap. “Let’s go, then.”
Angela literally squealed in excitement and darted from the room. By the time Beth had motivated herself all the way to the door, Angela had taken the opportunity to get creative with some eyeliner and glitter.
Beth sighed and grabbed her scarf from the peg hook near the door. “I really don’t know why I’m friends with you.”
Angie grinned. "That's all right. I do."
Angela had been right; the walk in the crisp autumn air was far more refreshing than the nap that had been so tempting. The air was clean and cold and brought life to Beth’s usually pale cheeks, and watching red-gold leaves dance, swirl and crunch was mesmerizing and relaxing. People of all ages were dressed outrageously for the Fall Festival that was running that weekend; a nun, a ninja, and Bill Clinton were drinking something that had to have been alcoholic by the fountain, a Cherokee Indian was having an avid conversation with a faerie, and a trio of witches was cackling madly while following various small children until angry parents shouted at them.
Angela’s blue eyes sparkled nearly as brightly as the glitter on her cheeks as she drank in the scene. Beth took the opportunity to pull out her moderately expensive camera; Halloween may have dark connotations, but she could still get some interesting shots for her photography class to compare with James…
Beth had to grin, and was incredibly glad that her best friend couldn’t read her thoughts. Mentioning that particular boy would have set Angela off on Beth’s ‘stagnant,’ as she had called it, romantic life all over again.
For an hour and a half the two friends wandered up and down the streets, one gleefully striking up conversation with everyone she ran into, the other one staying relatively silent, despite the rumor that a picture is worth a thousand words.
Then a man dressed as the grim reaper walked in front of them as he left a shop.
Beth instantly froze, her camera clutched tightly in her lifeless fingers. Her dark green eyes couldn’t leave him as the man dressed as death himself nonchalantly held his bag full of purchases in one hand and crossed the street.
“Beth?” started Angela uncertainly, until she saw what had caught her attention. Beth stared, horribly transfixed. “Bethany,” Angela said gently but firmly. “It’s Halloween. It’s a guy in a costume on his way to a party. That’s all it is.”
“I know.” Beth said, but it didn’t sound like Beth to either of them. She was still staring glassily after him.
“Bethany, look at me.” Angela took hold of her friend’s chin with her slender fingers and turned the woman’s head to break the spell. “It’s Halloween,” Angela said again. “It’s a guy in a costume. He’s on his way to a party. That’s all it is.”
“That’s all it is,” Beth repeated. She forced herself to blink and attempted a brave smile. “Right. That’s all it is.”
“That’s all it is.” Angela smiled encouragingly and brought back her bubbly tone. “Now I vote that it’s definitely time to go home, watch a scary movie, and make good use of all that Chex Mix and apple cider I bought.”
Beth smirked. “I knew I kept you around for a reason.”
Despite Angela’s uncanny ability to lighten up any situation, during the walk home Beth remained distracted by how she had been affected by the costumed man. It wasn’t fair that this had haunted her since her mother’s death. Was there truly any such thing as “getting over it?”
“I’m sorry about- back there,” Beth muttered to Angela, shamefaced.
“Oh, look at you,” Angela half-scolded. “That was perfectly understandable. Now you’re just being silly.”
“That was eleven years ago, Angie! Why does it still- I mean, do planes bother you because of what happened to your mom when you were in elementary school?”
“No,” Angela answered honestly. “Statistically, airplanes are still the safest way to travel.”
“I wish the same rule applied with the Grim Reaper. ‘Going by Scythe is thirty percent safer than taking the Styx boat,’ or something.”
They both laughed, but Beth suspected that Angela didn’t actually get it, and Beth didn’t really think it was funny anyway. Speaking of not funny…
“Oh, sick, there’s another one. Honestly, who wears a Grim Reaper costume in to a hospital?” The Grim Reaper on the local hospital stairs stopped and turned to face her. Beth froze again, self-conscious and trying to keep control of herself.
“Where?” Angela asked, looking around. “I don’t see him.”
“Right there, on the stairs,” Beth directed, wishing he would stop staring.
Angela glanced at her friend in concern. “There’s nobody there, Beth.”
“What are you talking about? He’s right in front of us,” Beth insisted, but uncertainly. She found herself drawn by the Reaper’s gaze.
I didn’t kill your mother, Bethany.
Beth gasped and staggered back. Seemingly nonplussed, the Grim Reaper turned and entered the hospital. Terrified and pain-filled tears clouded her vision, and Beth ran, leaving her shocked friend behind.
Reminder... VERY BAD!
Reminder: Very bad!
Every school has one. The ‘perfect girl.’ The one truly genuine human. The girl everyone loves; she’s friends with everyone, not shallowly, but honestly. Her grades are excellent, and she’s beautiful, not ‘hot’ or ‘sexy.’ She seems to lead a charmed life- her sweet nature sugaring her existence. She’s the one that the fashion-slave divas are desperately jealous of; the one they want to hate but can’t.
Every high school has one. At Sunrise high school, her name was Caylee Roberts.
Near the end of her senior year, Caylee frequently began feeling ill. She began suffering drastic mood swings, started gaining weight. Her mother grimly recognized the signs, suspected the worst, and insisted that Caylee take a pregnancy test. Caylee was appalled that her mother would think this of her- she had never had a boyfriend by her own choosing, and that her mom could suspect her of sexual activity would have been laughable if I hadn’t been so insulting. Her mother pestered, jabbed, shouted, and guilted until Caylee, stung, agreed to take the test to finally prove her mother wrong and turn the tables of guilt around.
The test came back positive.
That was enough for Caylee’s parents. Disgusted by their daughter’s actions, shocked by the fact that she lied about it, they ejected her from their home, sending after her the weight of knowing that she had blemished her entire family’s virtue. Utterly bewildered and dismayed, Caylee took refuge at a friend’s house. She bought three more pregnancy tests, each a different brand. None of them told her what she wanted to hear: that there had been a terrible, cosmic mistake. Caylee was undeniably pregnant.
She couldn’t bring herself to leave her friend’s bedroom for a week, but the image of a plummeting Grade Point Average finally drove her back to school- where rumors had grown beyond hope of ever curbing them. Everyone wanted to know who had gotten the oh-so-perfect Caylee pregnant. A large handful of jealous girls were rejoicing in the knowledge that Caylee was actually human like them, and gleefully slaughtered her name behind her back. A number of boys had come forward, humbly professing that she was actually carrying his child.
Caylee did what she could, trying to explain that she had never been with anyone that way at all, and had never been in a position where she could have been raped. This merely made her open for more derision; Caylee was so perfect, was the popular joke, that she had become the next Virgin Mary, and this was the second coming of Christ through divine conception.
Caylee stopped going to school after that, and Sunrise high’s girl that had everything suddenly and dramatically had nothing at all.
Her name, Caylee decided, was Bethany Roberts. Many of Caylee’s friends had advised that she have an abortion, but Caylee couldn’t bring herself to do it. She didn’t know anything about the person inside her, and if anything that made it- her, she discovered- all the more impossible to get rid of without haunting her conscience. And even if it didn’t phase her, who would pay for the operation? Most of her family was extremely religious, and this sinful act was enough for most of them to cut her off entirely. One uncle, who knew what it was like to be in hard times as he was constantly in them himself, sent her fifty dollars when he could spare them, which was every few months. It was hardly enough to carry her through, but it was something.
Caylee went from job to job, nobody really wanting to hire a pregnant woman for long. She finally got a steady job at a private retail clothes shop, scraped enough money together for a small apartment, and despaired over the upcoming hospital bill.
The semi-dreaded 9 months came nearly a month too early. The doctor informed her as they took her weak, pale, but so beautiful! baby girl out of Caylee’s arms that they would do all they could to save her Bethany. As she lay in the hospital bed, 19 broken years old and weeping uncontrollably, a nurse held her hand and told her a donor by name of Neil Marshall had stepped in to cover all hospital costs. Caylee never found out who Neil Marshall was. Bethany did.
“Bethany, who is he?” Angela pleaded, wrapping her arms around her knees and planting herself more firmly in the middle of her roommate’s bed.
Bethany tossed her jacket in the vague direction of the closet and dumped her purse unceremoniously onto her nightstand. “He’s nobody,” she said firmly. “Now move. you’re on my bed and I, personally, want a nap.”
“Beeeeeeeth,” Angela whined. “How long has this thing been going on?”
“There is no ‘thing!’”
“I’ve never seen a more obvious ‘thing’ in my life!” Angela insisted. She lay out comfortably on the cloud-spotted comforter. “He likes you,” she taunted.
Bethany gazed at her best friend flatly. “You’re still on my bed.”
“Bethany, focus, this is important!” Angela’s gold curls quivered with indignance. “When a guy takes the effort to actually show up at one’s place of employment, it is a sign of major interest!”
“I’m majorly interested in a nap.” Bethany pulled her own dark curls out of the tight bun and let them snake their way down her back. “We have nothing further to discuss.”
Angela set her jaw, grabbed Beth’s stuffed bunny, and held it in a headlock. “His name, age, how you met him and when, or the bunny gets it.”
Bethany sighed and sat on he corner of her bed. “His name is James, he’s twenty, and I met him in my photography class at the start of the term. Now give me Desmond.”
Angela gaped as her friend since fifth grade snatched Desmond the bunny from the grasp of death. “You’ve been friends with a guy that beautiful for this long and you never told me? How come you aren’t going out?”
“You are sick in the head, you know that?” Beth pushed a somewhat unresisting Angela aside and spread out on it herself. “Don’t talk to me. I had work right after math class, and those are two bad things that are worse when combined.”
Angela sat sullenly on the edge of the bed. “Oh, stop being so whiny; you’ve had worse. You’re just trying to avoid me.” Beth ignored her. Angela refused to be ignored. She again stretched out as luxuriously as she could manage next to her. “I know why you’re being so closed on the subject. You’re afraid you might like him back. Big bad Beth might like a boy! Oh, the humanity of it all!”
“I’m not that big, and I’m not that bad, either.” This was muffled by the pillow Beth had buried her face into.
“You think he’s preeetty, you think you liiiike him,” Angela sang. She jabbed her roommate in the ribs for good measure on the word ‘like.’
Angela’s head was met quickly and suddenly with Desmond’s tail.
“Now that was uncalled for,” Angela sniffed.
Beth raised her head from the pillow and looked at her directly. “What is it that you want?”
Angela looked at her mournfully. “I’m bored.”
“How very terrible for you.”
“Beeeeeeth,” Angela wailed, “we haven’t done anything in forever! It’s just school and work and school and work and work and school.”
Beth raised an eyebrow. “Creative sentence.”
“Thanks. Now let’s go do something!”
“And what would you suggest?”
Angela sat up. “Let’s go down to the waterfront and see all the people in their Halloween costumes for the festival,” she said brightly.
Beth grimaced and rolled away, but Angela caught her shoulder and pulled her friend back. “Oh, come on. I know Halloween’s not your favorite- and yes, I know it’s for a good reason,” she added quickly in response to her roommate’s dry look, “but you could use the walk in the fresh air- and you have to admit that some of those costumes are pretty dang funny.”
Despite herself, Beth grinned wryly. After a pause she said, “Only if you buy the hot chocolate.”
“Only if we buy it where you work so we get the employee discount,” Angela countered.
Beth eyed her blonde friend suspiciously. “All right,” she finally relented, hefting herself off the bed and reaching for her jacket, still crumpled in a heap. “Let’s go, then.”
Angela literally squealed in excitement and darted from the room. By the time Beth had motivated herself all the way to the door, Angela had taken the opportunity to get creative with some eyeliner and glitter.
Beth sighed and grabbed her scarf from the peg hook near the door. “I really don’t know why I’m friends with you.”
Angie grinned. "That's all right. I do."
Angela had been right; the walk in the crisp autumn air was far more refreshing than the nap that had been so tempting. The air was clean and cold and brought life to Beth’s usually pale cheeks, and watching red-gold leaves dance, swirl and crunch was mesmerizing and relaxing. People of all ages were dressed outrageously for the Fall Festival that was running that weekend; a nun, a ninja, and Bill Clinton were drinking something that had to have been alcoholic by the fountain, a Cherokee Indian was having an avid conversation with a faerie, and a trio of witches was cackling madly while following various small children until angry parents shouted at them.
Angela’s blue eyes sparkled nearly as brightly as the glitter on her cheeks as she drank in the scene. Beth took the opportunity to pull out her moderately expensive camera; Halloween may have dark connotations, but she could still get some interesting shots for her photography class to compare with James…
Beth had to grin, and was incredibly glad that her best friend couldn’t read her thoughts. Mentioning that particular boy would have set Angela off on Beth’s ‘stagnant,’ as she had called it, romantic life all over again.
For an hour and a half the two friends wandered up and down the streets, one gleefully striking up conversation with everyone she ran into, the other one staying relatively silent, despite the rumor that a picture is worth a thousand words.
Then a man dressed as the grim reaper walked in front of them as he left a shop.
Beth instantly froze, her camera clutched tightly in her lifeless fingers. Her dark green eyes couldn’t leave him as the man dressed as death himself nonchalantly held his bag full of purchases in one hand and crossed the street.
“Beth?” started Angela uncertainly, until she saw what had caught her attention. Beth stared, horribly transfixed. “Bethany,” Angela said gently but firmly. “It’s Halloween. It’s a guy in a costume on his way to a party. That’s all it is.”
“I know.” Beth said, but it didn’t sound like Beth to either of them. She was still staring glassily after him.
“Bethany, look at me.” Angela took hold of her friend’s chin with her slender fingers and turned the woman’s head to break the spell. “It’s Halloween,” Angela said again. “It’s a guy in a costume. He’s on his way to a party. That’s all it is.”
“That’s all it is,” Beth repeated. She forced herself to blink and attempted a brave smile. “Right. That’s all it is.”
“That’s all it is.” Angela smiled encouragingly and brought back her bubbly tone. “Now I vote that it’s definitely time to go home, watch a scary movie, and make good use of all that Chex Mix and apple cider I bought.”
Beth smirked. “I knew I kept you around for a reason.”
Despite Angela’s uncanny ability to lighten up any situation, during the walk home Beth remained distracted by how she had been affected by the costumed man. It wasn’t fair that this had haunted her since her mother’s death. Was there truly any such thing as “getting over it?”
“I’m sorry about- back there,” Beth muttered to Angela, shamefaced.
“Oh, look at you,” Angela half-scolded. “That was perfectly understandable. Now you’re just being silly.”
“That was eleven years ago, Angie! Why does it still- I mean, do planes bother you because of what happened to your mom when you were in elementary school?”
“No,” Angela answered honestly. “Statistically, airplanes are still the safest way to travel.”
“I wish the same rule applied with the Grim Reaper. ‘Going by Scythe is thirty percent safer than taking the Styx boat,’ or something.”
They both laughed, but Beth suspected that Angela didn’t actually get it, and Beth didn’t really think it was funny anyway. Speaking of not funny…
“Oh, sick, there’s another one. Honestly, who wears a Grim Reaper costume in to a hospital?” The Grim Reaper on the local hospital stairs stopped and turned to face her. Beth froze again, self-conscious and trying to keep control of herself.
“Where?” Angela asked, looking around. “I don’t see him.”
“Right there, on the stairs,” Beth directed, wishing he would stop staring.
Angela glanced at her friend in concern. “There’s nobody there, Beth.”
“What are you talking about? He’s right in front of us,” Beth insisted, but uncertainly. She found herself drawn by the Reaper’s gaze.
I didn’t kill your mother, Bethany.
Beth gasped and staggered back. Seemingly nonplussed, the Grim Reaper turned and entered the hospital. Terrified and pain-filled tears clouded her vision, and Beth ran, leaving her shocked friend behind.
Reminder... VERY BAD!
