without further ado

iii. saint laurent

dedicated to dynny 'cause she's super dooper nice and has pretty hair c;

et si tu dors seul ce soir

parmi leurs pleurs d’aurore

-saint laurent

♫

chapter three

it seemed as if, after the week of drinking too much water, the sky decided to empty its bladder onto the town of bryn east. it was ridiculously humid and gross and susan couldn't help but continuously brush her arm as if the weather was a pesky fly. it was horrible really.

because it was the weekend susan was locked indoors with her air conditioner on and a good book in her hands. she couldn't help but wonder how her friends did it, staring at a screen as if their lives were dependent on it. it confused her. she was half way through page ninety three (when bridget was looking down at the river and thinking about picnics) when she heard the pitter patter of the rain stop. she had gone onto page one hundred and three (bridget was now on a picnic next to the said river) when her mum called.

"susan, the rain's finally stopped, maybe you could walk lucy now... please?"

when her mum asked so nicely susan found it particularly hard to refuse her request. or maybe it was that her mum had to clean, not only, her shirt and jacket but also shoes from tomato sauce. they had gone to wilbert's delicious diner where she had somehow gotten all her, and everyone else's, clothes covered in tomato sauce. it wasn't her fault the sauce bottle was jammed. plus her mum already had her both hands full with her two brothers and lucy was starting to get restless. a restless lucy meant a-lot-of-clean-up lucy.

"fine. i'll be out in a few."

she quickly grabbed her favourite bookmark, a cheery 'don't be afraid, just believe' mark 5:36, and inserted it in between her book's pages. susan dearly loved her bookmarks, she was a collector. there were harry potter ones, the hunger games ones, troll face ones, religious ones, doctor who ones, bird shaped ones, donut patterned ones. any bookmark someone had she probably had too. then, she picked up her ipod, a classic one mind you, from her bedside table, her bulky headphones, her toque and went to grab lucy's old, frayed leash. susan whistled and patted her thighs, "come on boy," gesturing for lucy to come, "good boy! who's a good boy? you're a good boy!" lucy was, in fact, a boy. everyone had just thought he was a girl. really, what kind of boy-dog looked so feminine?

anyway. walking lucy. susan inserted the bright orange headphones over her ears, connected the leash to lucy's cute, studded collar and shouted to the house about her departure. she was off. her ipod was on shuffle (there were no such things as playlists for her) and started walking down the damp pee stained roads. the sweet instrumental of coeur de pirate's saint laurent trickled through her eardrums before reaching her head.

'il est trois heures moins quart...'

as the french singer continued on her journey of love and saint laurent-s susan couldn't help but skip down mulberry st. in pure elation, lucy using his pent up energy to run beside her. maybe it was lucy, the song or maybe even the feel and smell of the air after two days of continuous rain but she didn't care. susan laughed at nothing in particular as she skipped, her and lucy’s skipping could easily have beaten dorothy and toto's pace and was so bouncy that they had a large chance to winning the best skippers award.

‘…je t'attends, boulevard saint-laurent…’

the pair must have looked quite a sight. they were crossing the intersection for mulberry st. and sandlar ave. when suddenly, beep.