DISCO NIGHTS !
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FEMINIST LITERATURE
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"M?" DELANEY'S FAINT voice chimed in from the telephone, consequently drawing Maeve's attention back to it. "Hello? You still there?"
"I have to go, Del, I'll call you back later." Maeve quickly answered and hung up the phone. As soon as she did so, the girl stood up, approaching the door with cold, narrowed eyes directed straight at Jess.
"Cut your conversation short just for me?" Jess' eyebrows quirked upwards.
"No, I just needed to take a quick intermission to tell you to stay out of my room." Maeve flashed him a sarcastic smirk.
"Maeve." Marjorie interjected, widening her eyes from her position as a, quite pronounced, hint. "It wouldn't hurt to show him around, maybe you can bond over music, or whatever you kids like these days."
"Oh, yeah, I'm sure we can 'bond' over our mutual love of The Cure." Maeve cocked her head to the side, calculating eyes studying Jess' smug face.
Suddenly an overwhelming feeling of dread washed over Maeve—it was all too familiar whenever she was around Jess. The urge to prove that she wasn't a boring, stereotypical 'teenage girl' who loved frills, ballet, and anything fluffy, which Jess somehow managed to formulate the assumption that she was that girl.
Sure, she didn't mind some of those typical girly stereotypes, however, she knew that Jess, for certain, had a set-in-stone ideal about her that, in her mind, was entirely untrue. Maeve Davis certainly had duality, and she was determined to prove it.
So, in an effort to exceed Jess' expectations of her, Maeve just plastered on a smile, to both Marjorie and Jess' surprise. "Why don't you come in, Jewel? Maybe you can take a look around my book and record collections, write some of them down."
Maeve expected Jess to simply give up, drop the act, or even make a sardonic quip over her 'Heroes and Villains' book reference, though his response entirely surprised her. "Sure," he answered as he simply stepped past her and into her room. "I won't have to write anything down, though, I can guarantee you won't have anything I'll like."
Maeve's complacent smile fell as she just met her grandmother's faux-sympathetic eyes, the woman cluelessly shrugging as she sent Maeve a 'good luck' look and headed straight towards the living room, not wanting to disturb the two.
Rolling her eyes in exasperation, Maeve just blew out a long breath, the girl then turning around and putting her hands on her hips as she reluctantly walked back into her room.
She was well aware that her behaviour was childish, and at this point, she didn't care. Jess Mariano was in her room, rummaging through her things—figuratively, of course, however the idea of him being in her room and surveying her furniture at all still angered Maeve greatly—, and essentially learning all there was to learn about the girl through her interests.
When she found Jess slowly scanning her large timber bookshelf that previously belonged to her grandfather, intent eyes gradually sliding between each book that was neatly positioned beside one another, Maeve raised her eyebrows, arms crossing over her chest defensively. "It's not a museum."
At the curt interruption, Jess' head turned to face her, examining eyes then wandering around the rest of her sizeable room to land on her extensive vinyl and CD collections behind her, a record player propped beside them on a separate desk.
Maeve casted her attention to the collections as Jess approached them, taking a moment to flip through the vinyls and CD's, most of which he really liked. If he was stunned in the slightest, he certainly concealed it well.
Jess' eyebrows creased inwards at the surprising arrangement and he spoke up, the boy still flipping through the vast collections as he didn't expect to actually agree with the quality of her music taste. "Why are these arranged by name?"
Maeve just offhandedly scoffed. "Well, I'm not going to arrange them by genre, that's stupid."
This response seemed to prompt a mix of confusion and minor offence from the boy, and he turned his head to look at her, frown deepening at the flippant words.
At the look, Maeve's contradictory expression faded into one of realisation. "You arrange them by genre, don't you?"
Jess had fully turned to face her now. "What's wrong with arranging them by genre?"
"You're insane." Maeve shook her head disapprovingly. "I'm being serious, by the way, you're nuts."
Jess mockingly put a hand to his chest as he began to make his way to her door. "My fragile heart."
Maeve scoffed. "You'll live."
Before Jess could leave her room, Maeve assumed he had suddenly remembered something, as he pulled a mixtape out of his jacket pocket.
Maeve's eyebrows quirked up as her eyes flickered down to his hand. "A mixtape?"
"Yeah, you clearly need more of a variety." Jess shrugged, throwing the tape so it landed on her bed.
"I thought the mixtape thing was a one and done." Maeve's eyebrows furrowed in confusion, not expecting the action at all. "Just to prove that I have taste. Which, I clearly do."
Ignoring Maeve's blind confidence, Jess just gestured to his mixtape with a nod of his head. "Listen to that and let me know if you still like Spiderbait."
Maeve couldn't prevent the visible shock that appeared on her face at the words. She did not expect him to actually listen to it, let alone all the way through. Maeve couldn't even register that he had clearly insulted her music taste—what else was new?—and all she could focus on was her own surprise. The following words slipped past her lips before she could stop them from doing so. "You actually listened to it?"
"A few songs." Jess nonchalantly shrugged. "Mainly to prove that you don't have taste. I'm right, by the way."
Maeve rolled her eyes at the jest as she began to approached him. "Just hurry up and fix whatever needs to be fixed so you can leave my house as soon as possible."
"Believe me, there's nothing I'd like more." At her movements, Jess just began to walk out of her room, Maeve stopping at the door and holding onto it, preparing to close it as soon as he left.
As Jess turned to glance at her room one more time, Maeve just shot him a sneering grin, slightly tilted her head, and closed the door without another word, leaving Jess to just blow out an exhausted breath, turn around, and head towards the kitchen to fix the cupboards.
•
A light knocking on Maeve's bedroom door pulled Maeve from her focus, which was previously devoted to the book she was currently reading; 'Mary Barton' by Elizabeth Gaskell.
Occasionally, the faint sounds of Marjorie and Jess' muffled voices blocked by Maeve's bedroom door, with Marjorie's more frequent words remaining more upbeat than any of Jess' monosyllabic ones, would ring out from the kitchen, though Maeve was too engrossed in her novel that she failed to notice them, and consequently, the time rapidly passing by.
Maeve's bedroom door was suddenly pushed open, the action finally drawing the girl's attention out from the page she was on.
At the doorframe, Jess stood, leaning his shoulder comfortably against it with his arms crossed, eyes faux-curiously flickering down to the book she was reading. "No 'Dracula' today, princess?"
Maeve dog eared the page she was on and closed the book, simply plastering on a self-assured smirk as she refused to submit to his teasing and chose to ignore the infuriating nickname, as usual. "I thought I'd switch up the tone. Since I talked out every possible 'Dracula' plot point with Flynn, why reread it when I could read a plethora of other books?"
She knew that Jess was well aware of her habit in, not only reading as a whole, but bringing her favourite books, or the ones she was engrossed in at that current point in time, into work to read, either during a particularly momentary lull in the number of customers, or on her breaks.
Jess pushed off the doorframe, arms still crossed as he gestured to the mixtape that was still in its earlier position on her bed, untouched. "You must've been way too into your intellectual escapade through Manchester to even look at it, but did you listen to the tape?"
Again, Maeve couldn't prevent the surprise from becoming visible across her face at the revealing nature of the words. "You read Elizabeth Gaskell?"
"I've read Elizabeth Gaskell." Jess corrected, his eyebrows creasing inwards at the sudden question. "One book. Past tense."
Maeve snorted. "You read feminist literature."
Jess felt himself grow slightly annoyed at how Maeve had now created something to hold over him—not that feminist literature was a bad thing, he didn't mind it occasionally, though the source was Maeve; the last person he needed to hold something over him—and his tone shifted into one of even further exasperation at the words, which were beginning to sound like more accusation-esque than Maeve intended them to be. "I've read feminist literature."
"Stop saying 'I've read', just admit defeat, Mariano." Maeve grinned, letting out an entertained chuckle as she placed the book on the bed beside her, crossing her arms over her chest amusedly. "You're not the broody boy you always pretend to be, and you know what? That's fine, but don't be surprised if I sign you up for therapy tomorrow, because I did not expect you and Elizabeth Gaskell to get along so well."
"Whatever." Jess just looked away, shaking his head in mild irritation as he turned around and began to leave her house, and thus, providing Maeve with a satisfying win.
•
AUTHOR'S NOTE
picture maeve's room as nancy's in stranger things, just with (obviously) more modern decorations, and a lot more books and records 🫶
© voidvaleska