The next morning, the damage of my mother’s spider discovery still laid strewn about, making it look like the house had been broken into and torn apart, but she acted like it was all supposed to look like a Dali painting. She made my brother and I breakfast before we set off for our standardized testing in his car delivered with the moving truck, which right about now felt like a gift from the gods. For three days we repeated the process, bypassing our mother’s carless destruction, eating organic eggs, nearly dying on icy roads, gauging our eyes out with the erasers on our number two pencils; rinse, lather, repeat.
After three days, the school deemed us good enough to start.
They called the house and told our mother that we were to report to school the next morning at a refreshing time of seven thirty, a whole thirty minute start time later than our high school in the FL, but not enough to appease my brother, who went and pouted on the couch at the mere mention of seven o’clock. When my mother wagged her finger at him and reminded him that he was still going to have to drive me to school, he went ballistic.
“She’s a little shit!” he objected to our mother, pointing at me wildly. “She nearly killed us both this morning. When I was driving she totally reached over and grabbed the wheel and tried to send us into traffic.”
“Did not!” I cried. “He was on his cell phone! It was either wrap around a tree or veer into traffic!”
Our mother considered that for a moment. “That’s a doozy,” she finally replied, looking to my brother. “Try not to kill your sister tomorrow, okay?”
His mouth popped open, but his objection did not make it out. He gaped at her for a long moment before she shrugged at him and pranced out of the room like a gazelle—or what a gazelle probably would look like if they didn’t trip over the door lip and fall straight into the couch. He and I watched our mother as she popped up like nothing happened and kept right on going, nothing having the ability to stop her.
He blinked, still looking after her for a moment, before he snapped his mouth shut and turned to give me the stink eye. “I’m only taking you because Mom and Dad probably wouldn’t feed me if he didn’t.”
He was probably right, but my only reply was a nod and a shrug, like I couldn’t care less. Actually, I thought it would probably cause me more pleasure to watch him be punished, but I knew I wasn’t that sadistic.
Or was I?
I pursed my lips at him for a moment before I smirked to myself and made my way to the stairs, humming to myself as I passed by the progression of mine and Felton’s lives leading the way in picture form up the stairs. I remembered a time where we used to get along, and it was almost comical now. Once upon a time, I used to admire my brother. But that was before I learned what IQs were, and that my brother’s was less than the common squirrel’s. That was before my brother was supposed to be walking me home but he shoved me into an alligator-infested lake. That was before he told me that he would hang out with me, but girls had cooties and his friends thought I was weird.
I sometimes had sneaking suspicions that Felton still believed I had cooties, but that was a story for another time.
I made it to my closed door and sighed—the door had been giving me trouble, to say the least. I closed it the first night we stayed in the house only to discover myself locked inside of it the next morning, the door absolutely refusing to move, its hinges locked like a colt’s knees. After three hours of my mom screaming on the other side of the door (“OH MY GOD VINNIE DO SOMETHING SHE’S GOING TO DIE!”), I eventually figured out that my door thought that it was guarding something precious, because to open it I had to knock three times and say “Eggplant” before it swung open with ease, so easily I barely had to touch the handle. If this was someone else’s life, these events would probably be strange and unpredictable, but I expected absolutely nothing less.
I knocked three times, said “Eggplant”, and wiggled the doorknob.
It opened soundlessly, and revealed the disheartened eyes of a certain homicidal tabby.
“What’s wrong, kitty?” I asked Watson, and he mewed discontentedly, his face showing sass that I guess could have been a scowl. I grinned. “Did Dad lock you in here again?”
Watson glared at me for a moment before slipping out into the hallway and scampering off soundlessly, on a mission.
I rolled my eyes and turned to my room, still overrun with boxes but now showing a little piece of me through it all. My bookshelf sat on the wall beside the window with titles of all sorts of science-fiction and dystopian titles, and posters from Star Trek movies and superheroes of all kinds were plastered over the walls. My Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn poster signed by Leonard Nimoy was positioned next to The Hunger Games’ movie poster, and The Dark Knight poster with Heath Ledger on it next to that. My room looked like ComicCon vomited. And I loved it.
My bed was posted in the opposite corner from my bookcase, resting against the wall bordering Felton’s room, which I knew I was going to learn to regret but couldn’t bring myself to care enough to move a bed the weight of seventeen elephants because of it. I kept the room the light purple I found in it, since it kind of matched my purple sheets and the white curtains hung over my windows. Overall, my room was looking pretty snazzy, but it wasn’t quite looking like home yet.
I wandered over to my stereo nestled in the corner, chancing a glance over my shoulder like someone was going to be standing there and watching me. I turned the volume all the way up and pressed play before scrambling to the door and kicking it shut. I stood in the middle of the room, waiting for the music.
Lady Gaga came on, and I danced like Quinton trying to dislodge Watson from his pant leg.
“Can’t read my, can’t read my, no you can’t read my POKER FAAACE!” I cried, flailing and jumping and using the entire room to my advantage. I could hear Felton already pounding on the wall and yelling to get me to turn it off, but all I did was cross to the stereo and turn it up louder to drown him out, the music so loud it shook the window but I didn’t even care. I twisted and did the moonwalk, getting into it as I laughed at myself and did the most ridiculous of things. I pulled some moves from a past dance class in hip-hop when I was ten before I pulled off a back flip, straightening up with my back straight and my hands held up high, a big grin on my face.
My eyes met Quinton’s, but he was the only one laughing.
He was nearly doubled over with his hands gripping his sides, watching me from a window in his house that was only slightly obscured by the bare branches of the tree between it, just enough that he could see me completely through my very open blinds. He looked like he had been watching me for at least a minute due to the tears rolling down his face from the force of his laughter, but it took me a moment to realize that he had totally been creeping on me.
I stared at him for a moment in complete horror as he went into hysterics.
Then I dropped down to the floor so quickly that my body couldn’t even react to catch myself in time, and my face had a very harsh introduction with the floor.
There was hardly a way possible for me to explain my thoughts at the moment without waving my arms senselessly and screaming gibberish while I foamed at the mouth. Little to no other way. But I could feel the horror, the embarrassment, all of those terrible emotions gripping my stomach and twisting it painfully, making my skin heat up as my face felt like it was about to burst.
I army crawled to the window and yanked the blinds closed, only inching back up onto my feet when I was hundreds of percents sure that my neighbor could no longer see me. I slapped my hands to my face, trying to wake me up.
Damn. Stone cold awake.
Somehow, with the speed of a zombie, I moved to the stereo, clicking the volume off when I really wanted to run to the bathroom so I could throw up. All over the place.
There was a bang on my wall, one last punch from my darling brother, before he yelled:
“Finally! You turned off that racket!”
I glared at the wall but, of course, he couldn’t see me.
“Oh, and Lee?” he yelled, and I could hear the smirk in his voice. “The neighbor can see you.”
~*~
Day one of school. Day one of this new, extravagant, unpredictable me.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t have the time of my life with this new assignment of mine, and I wasn’t going to be admitting anything like that anytime soon. I spent the greater part of last night picking out the perfect outfit to take my mind off of my utter humiliation, and I didn’t go to sleep until I was sure that this was going to be the perfect entrance, the perfect start for my school year at Waltham.
I got dressed, looked in the mirror, and deemed myself perfect.
I walked into the kitchen, and Felton choked on his cereal.
“No,” he said, and then he yelled, “NO. MOM!”
“What?” she snapped, sticking her head out of the living room. When she saw me, she did a double take. “Holy contrasting colors. Are you acting out because of the move? Do we need to go to counseling again?”
“I’m not acting out, Mom,” I told her slowly, grimacing at the thought of returning to a counselor’s office against my will for not the first time. I would rather rip my nails out. With pliers. “Just trust me on this, okay? I’m not rebelling.”
“Like hell you’re not!” she screeched, looking worried, maybe even a little panicked. “Vinnie!” she yelled into the house frantically. “Hurry! Your daughter is having an identity crisis!”
My father stomped into the room, scowling. His eyes fell on me, and he blinked. “You look like a nightwalker.”
“Dad!” I objected.
“What?” he demanded, narrowing his eyes. “You kind of do. If you tilt your head a little bit.”
I sent him a venomous glare before I turned back to my mother, who was looking at me through her hands like she was looking down at my dead body. “Mom, chill, it’s alright. I like it.”
“Everyone stop!” Felton yelled loud enough that we jumped and turned toward him in surprise. He was standing up with his arms raised, trying to quiet us. When we finally turned our attention to him, his arms fell back down to his sides. “I don’t think we’ve covered the serious matter of this discussion yet—I sure as hell am not going to be seen with this . . . this thing.”
“Well we don’t want her,” my father barked, turning his squinty eyes to my brother. “You’ll be taking her or you’ll be picking up the pieces of your windshield with your bare hands, you little shit.”
Felton glared at my father, but if there was one person with no willpower in this family, it was my brother. He didn’t wear the pants—he wore pink capris and drove a Prius.
Still glaring at the man who claimed to be related to us, Felton sat back down in his seat and started shoving Cocoa Puffs into his mouth at an alarming rate, glaring down into the chocolate milk in his bowl.
I crossed my arms over my chest and tilted my hip, giving the full flair of my outfit. “You guys don’t need to worry about me. I’m just trying to make a statement.”
“If that statement is, I need to be institutionalized, then you’ve done wonders,” my father told me, and then walked out. “You raised her!” he yelled back to my mother. “You deal with her!”
My mother shot a glare to the door he walked out of before she turned back to me, grimacing a little bit. “So everything is going to be okay?” she asked me disbelievingly as she looked me up and down one more and grimaced again. I beamed at her, feeling something wicked dancing like gumdrops across my eyes.
“I promise,” I purred, and then smirked. “They’ll never know what hit them.”
She looked at me for a moment, and once that moment ended a smirk of her own started to pull at the corners of her lips. She reached out and spun me around, grinning when she saw the full effect of the skirt, and then she tilted her head back and full on belly-laughed.
“You’re my girl,” she assured me, taking a step closer so that she could kiss me on the forehead. She took a handful of steps away from me and started to turn before she snapped back at me, grinning because she couldn’t help it. “Do me a favor, though?” she asked me.
I shrugged, and then nodded.
She was still grinning as she told me, “Show ’em who’s boss.”
~*~
Felton escaped the car as soon as he possibly could so that there was a possibility of absolutely no one seeing him with me, and I let him. I couldn’t care less about his embarrassment, but I humored him, not wanting to break it to him that everyone would sooner or later realize that we were both new on the same day, and we were more than likely going to be related. I watched as he retreated into the nearly foreign school, my eyes catching on the students lingering outside of the building, this big ball of nervousness knotted in my stomach painfully as I looked at them. I took a deep breath.
It was now, or it was never. And never have I ever, nor will I ever, turn down a dare.
Aubrey dared me.
So I opened the door, put up with the arctic air stinging against my skin, and I skipped out into the parking lot.
Like I was in a movie, everything froze. The kids turned to look at me with wide eyes. Animals all over the tri-state area shifted to glance in my direction. Everything suddenly went completely still as everything centered around me for just a moment, a moment enough to make the nervousness feel like it’s going to swallow me whole.
And then it was over. But not really.
I walked to the building, swinging my hips to bring full attention to my light pink tutu, a circumference of two feet around, the purple and aqua polka dotted leggings underneath bringing out the effect. I wore clogs in my feet, light tan, and they made a loud sound with every step I took, solidly planting me on the ground. An AC/DC shirt, demolished at the collar so that it was wide enough to fall over one shoulder and teased at my purple bra strap, hung off of my body, contrasting wildly with the girly lower body. The top layer of my hair was pulled into a ponytail at the very top point of my head, sticking up awkwardly, and the bottom layer was teased, as brown as my eyes and curled and sticking out in multiple directions. I flicked it over my shoulder as I stared them down, sure that they couldn’t look away as I swayed my hips to call for attention. To add the icing on the cake, I smirked, the bright red lipstick like blood against my pale complexion.
I threw open the door to the school, and the hallway
went
silent.
I cocked my hip and tilted my head curiously at the group of staring students, more and more of them turning to look at me from all up the whole of the hallway. Gaze after gaze, eye after eye, all turned to me, unable to look away.
I giggled a little, and the sound echoed for miles.
“Soooo,” I started, beaming. “Where exactly is this front office?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
VOILA!
THE ANIMAL IN ITS NATURAL HABITAT!
A lot of you have been wondering, and a lot of you have been waiting, but here it is! The first unveiling of the new, dared Lena Mallory.
And let me tell you . . . The school day has not even begun yet ;D
Thank you all for your feedback for this story! It means worlds’ worth of butterflies to me.
Just in case you were wondering about anything that sounded kind of strange, today I: got two hours total of sleep, went to school, fell down a landing of crowded stairs, and blew my pipes in a Carnegie Hall rehearsal (human speak; blew my pipes = sang so much that I have a sore throat and might lose my voice). Today has been so crazy.
I’m going to go eat stuff. A lot of stuff. Unhealthy stuff.
Pictured is the “little shit”, Felton lol Say hi, Mr. Pettyfer!
x Riley