New Beginnings

Love is in the Air?

"Great. A prissy rich bitch." Alice thought to herself.

"Hello, you must be Alice Smith I presume?" The woman questioned.

"Who wants to know?" She replied as she leaned against the door.

"Sorry, allow me to introduce myself." She pulls out her hand and steps closer to Alice, already making her uncomfortable. "I'm Penelope Blossom, owner of Blossom Maple farms."

Alice ignored the request to shake Penelope's hand and instead pulled out her cigarettes and placed one in her mouth before lighting it.

Penelope awkwardly took her hand back as she lit the cigarette and exhaled deeply, letting out the smoke from her lungs.

"I understand you're new in town and your daughters have just started at Riverdale High?" She rhetorically asks.

Alice rolled her eyes at the fact that gossip spread so quickly through this town. "Wow nothing gets past you." She joked

"I'm head of the parent teacher association at the school, otherwise know as the PTA."

"The PT what?" Alice asks confused. She had honestly never heard of such a thing.

"We facilitate parental participation in a school." Penelope explains

"Oh, right." Whatever the fuck that means. She thinks to herself

"Anyway, as you're new to town and to the school, I figured it might interest you to join. We're always looking for new recruits." She digs through her purse and pulls out a leaflet, handing it to Alice. She assumes the sad and desperate poorly dressed women who all look ten years older than they are on the cover are members of the schools PTA. Alice bared her teeth at the start.

Penelope notices Alice looking skeptical about it all. "So basically what we intend on doing this semester at Riverdale high is-"

"Huh?! What was that Betty?! Tyler's fallen down?! Oh my God!" Alice exaggerates before throwing her cigarette out. "I'm really sorry but it sounds like I'm needed." Alice lies trying to desperately get out of the situation.

"Uhm, well at least say you'll think about it." Penelope says with a wide smile on her face as Alice slowly shuts the door.

"Will do!" Alice said with faux excitement before shutting the door completely.

She rolled her eyes before going back into the kitchen to see Polly there with a bowl of cereal.

"Who was it?" The teen asks with a mouthful of Cheerios.

"Some ginger asking me about your schools PTA or some shit." Alice says looking through the leaflet once more.

"I mean, look at these sad ass skanks. Pray I never end up like that." Alice says showing Polly the women on the front cover. Polly laughs in response.

"Don't worry about that. These women are dutiful housewives who bake for a living, trust me, you'll never be that." Polly jokes.

She leaves the leaflet on the kitchen table and goes upstairs to shower.

•••

Alice turns up at the Wyrm to find nobody at the bar. She assumes FP is in the back and makes her to the counter.

She's stopped when she hears the sounds of two girls, one of them being her younger co worker Toni and the other voice not being recognised but she seems to be crying.

"I just so sick of this bullshit, I couldn't take it anymore. I hate her." The crying girl told her

"You don't mean that, she's still your mum." Toni says trying to diffuse whatever the situation is at hand.