let's play this game called when you catch fire.
Two links: " once escorted," a different take on why equal marriage is a feminist issue; Australia is attempting to harmonize their accessible parking, with probable shitty results for people with disabilities.
A self-recrimination: WHY OH WHY DID I NEVER MAKE THE "MY FANDOM IS ITS OWN BNF" ICON. Gawd. If I did it now, it'd just be stupid.
And an unfinished story, just like I promised!
One way or the other (or neither, or both)
Shannon | 2644 words | PG13 for language and girl-kissing
Disclaimer: If there even is such a person as Shannon Stumph, I seriously doubt she ever drummed for Fall Out Boy.
Notes: heyginger read this before the dream sequences were added and said it was pretty good (thanks, dude). Uh. Shannon is "always-was-a-girl!Patrick", btw. In case that doesn't become painfully obvious. Also, lastly, This Is Not (Entirely) Autobiographical. It just feels like it, omg.
*
The first time Pete brings it up, Shannon is sitting behind her kit during a lull in practise, drinking some water, squinting doubtfully across the room at Joe trying to replace a string on his guitar.
"You should sing," Pete says, standing over her in that weird proprietary way he has, and she frowns and leans away from him.
"No, fuck you," she says. "You're gonna break it--" she calls at Joe, just as the metal strand snaps and curls in on itself defensively.
Pete and TJ laugh and Shannon shakes her head and Joe mutters, "Shut up."
"No, seriously," Pete says, "you should totally be the singer."
"I'm not Phil Collins," Shannon says.
"Phil Collins has a better rack," TJ says. He looks around at the rest of them when no one responds.
After practise, Pete gives TJ a ride home, and after that, TJ doesn't show up for practise on Thursday.
Over fries, after TJ's second no-show, Shannon asks Pete curiously, "Did you murder him? Because now we're short a singer and a guitarist."
"Dude, he insulted your rack," Pete says seriously. "That is totally a capital offence."
Shannon stares at him. "It--you--don't call them my rack," she says finally, hunching her shoulders defensively.
"Guns?" Pete says.
"Shut up."
"Jugs!" Pete shouts triumphantly, pointing a fry at her across the table.
"I'll kill you, really," Shannon says darkly.
"You could," Pete says, nodding. "But then you'd be short a singer, a guitarist, and a bass player. And a best friend. And you'd be in jail."
"It'd be worth it," Shannon says, because it totally would.
"You don't call them 'girls,' do you? 'Cause that's kind of boring."
Shannon squirts ketchup all over his inquisitively smirking face and ugly t-shirt.
At home, later, much later, when it's dark outside and it feels like she's the only person left alive in Glenview, she stands in front of the upstairs bathroom mirror in her pajama pants and stretched-out David Bowie t-shirt. She pulls the shirt tight with one hand at her back, twisting the cotton around her fist. Her breasts are small, but she's small, so they look a little big, and they're kind of lopsided. The t-shirt outlines the soft paunch of her belly too; the depression of her navel, the wide curve of her hips. She meets her eyes in the mirror and frowns at herself.
"What the fuck is wrong with calling them 'breasts'?" she whispers. "Seriously." She pokes her stomach and acknowledges one more time that it's not baby fat. Sixteen-year-olds don't have baby fat. "Ugh, shut up, Shannon." She lets the shirt go, watches her torso fall into obscurity again--just a couple of bumps distorting Bowie's mullet.
[Anna invites Shannon to a party Shannon doesn't really want to go to.]
Shannon knocks her sneakers together and shrugs. "I kind of--there's a really good line-up at the Civic. We could go to that?"
Anna looks up at the ceiling. "You're always bugging me because I don't invite you to stuff with my--with my other friends, and now you'd rather go to a show with a bunch of crappy high school bands? Becky said she wants you to come, Shan. Seriously." She looks back over at Shannon and smiles that exasperated smile; that "you big dork, don't you get it?" smile; that "you know you can never say no to me" smile.
"Whatever," Shannon says, shaking her head. She blinks at her Purple Rain poster as Anna sits up and hooks her arm around Shannon's neck and kisses her on the cheek, loudly.
"Whatever is right," Anna says.
Pete brings a guy named Neil to practise the next afternoon. Neil is carrying a brand new case with a second-hand Strat in it. Shannon stares dubiously at his back while they play a few songs--Lifetime, Green Day, Zeppelin--and decides he's not a bad singer, or a bad guitarist. Joe comes and plays in front of her at the end of "Black Dog" and she shrugs up at him. He rolls his eyes and shakes his head.
"So when you guys start writing, that'll be it?" Neil asks afterwards, sitting on Shannon's mom's old couch with his guitar between his legs. "Like, that'll be your style? Pop punk classic rock?"
"Pop clunk," Joe says, opening a bag of Cheetos.
"Pop crock," Pete says, and Joe nods seriously at him.
"Do you write?" Shannon asks Neil.
"Uh, well," he says, shrugging and kind of smiling at her. "Everybody writes lyrics, right?"
Shannon hopes her left eye didn't actually twitch. "Pete's not gonna--"
"I'm kind of over writing all the stuff," Pete says, sprawling in a rickety papasan. "We were hoping to get a singer who could write the songs."
"Prop clock," Joe muses. "Plop cock." Pete laughs at that one, and Joe salutes him with a Cheeto.
"No, yeah," Neil says to Shannon, leaning forward, tilting his head at her, still kind of smiling. "I write, I totally do."
"Okay then," Shannon says stiffly, looking over at Pete.
He shrugs and pulls his phone from his pocket. "I have an Arma thing, so are we good?" he asks no one in particular.
"Yeah, yeah," Joe says. "Neil's gonna be a spectacular plop cock vocalist." He offers Neil the Cheetos and Neil graciously takes one.
"Yeah, okay," Shannon says, because if they don't have somebody singing, somebody producing original material, Pete's going to get bored and break Joe's heart by leaving the band, and Shannon--well. Shannon will probably wheedle her way back into the school band and try to forget the last three months ever happened.
[Arma show, Jeanae?]
Shannon has the vague feeling she and Jeanae are supposed to be friends--Pete certainly thinks so, and Jeanae keeps making abortive overtures and playacting the role--but the truth is, they just don't fucking like each other. Shannon's never understood why you wouldn't want to actually be in a band, rather than just date them, and she's pretty sure Jeanae thinks Shannon and Pete are secretly fucking. Or want to be. Neither of which are true. Not for Shannon, anyway; she's not going to fucking ask Pete about it. It's really best to just not think think about those kinds of things.
She's had half a cooler and she's sitting in Becky Moore's basement, in a circle with seven or eight other kids from school. It's a Saturday night and she would so rather be at a show or even at home, but here she is, because Anna wanted her to go. Anna is two kids to her right, sitting on her heels like she's going to jump up and leave at any minute.
Some guy whose name Shannon doesn't remember--some jock who's never in class--spins the empty wine bottle, and it points at her. She barely conceals the expression of wide-eyed disgust she wants to let out, and crawls just out of her spot to meet the boy. His wet lips against her dry ones, his sweaty hands clasping her shoulders like he's expecting more than a chaste peck. She pulls back and ignores the rolling eyes and shaking heads around her. Yeah, she's a killjoy. She's boring. She looks pointedly at Anna, who shrugs and looks displeased.
This is why Shannon never has girl friends.
"Spin the bottle," the boy sitting beside her says impatiently, and Shannon leans out into the circle again and spins the slightly greasy bottle. It wobbles and rolls as it spins, and points squarely at Anna.
"Next boy to the left," Sarah Lang says across the circle. Shannon feels the boy beside her lean away as she meets Anna's eyes, embarrassed.
"Um, no, whatever," Anna says, and gives a forced laugh. Shannon's throat goes dry. She feels her body moving her, over and out around the boy and girl between them, wide eyes and small mouths and crossed legs in jeans. Anna is there, steadying herself with one hand on the green carpet of Becky Moore's basement, and Shannon breathes in hard just before they meet. Anna's other hand touches her shoulder and Anna's eyes flick across the circle--Shannon looks where she's looking and sees the dumb jock, Brett something, that's his name, staring at Anna, at Anna's mouth.
Shannon presses her closed mouth against Anna's, a little harder than maybe she should, and then sits back in her place. Anna spins the bottle and gets Nick from their chemistry class and kisses him with tongue, and Shannon sits and watches with burning eyes and wants to be anywhere else. Anywhere at all.
Anna follows her out the front door ten minutes or an hour later and catches her by the arm, almost sending her skidding and sprawling on the Moores' dew-damp flagstone path.
"What?" Shannon asks, nearly shouting, yanking her arm free.
Anna stumbles back and squints her eyes at Shannon. "What's your problem?" she spits.
Shannon shakes her head and waves her hands and walks backwards a couple of steps, widening the distance between them. She's afraid of opening her mouth, afraid of bursting into tears, but she forces out, "Nothing, no problem, I'm just going home."
Anna rolls her eyes and waves her hands too. "You're such a--" she bites her lip, bites off the word Shannon can hear anyway--freak. "Fine," Anna says. "Fine, go. Go home, Shannon." She points towards the street, past Shannon's shoulder, the lines of her arm and mouth dismissive.
Shannon clenches her teeth and her fists and goes, silently, turning before Anna can see the tears leaking, telling herself she was going anyway, it's not like she's following Anna's orders or something.
When she gets home, she doesn't even stop to take off her Vans, just burrows under her blankets and pulls a pillow over her head and squeezes her eyes shut to keep from crying herself to sleep.
She dreams that she's writing words in the margins of a math assignment: where can I go when I want you around but I can't stand to be around you? "Go home"--"go to hell" is all I thought. Pete starts reading out the answers to the assignment, sitting on her teacher's desk, textbook open in his lap. All the other kids in the class snicker at him behind their hands or stare at him, but Shannon is too worried about making sure she finishes the questions before he gives out all the answers. She wants to get this right; she wants to do it herself.
"The last answer is: go home, Shannon," Pete says, and snaps the book closed. He stares at her; the kid in front of her turns around to stare too, and it's Joe, and he shakes his head sadly.
"You're gonna wreck my band, Shannon," he says. "What's your problem?"
She shakes her head back. "I don't have a--"
"Then sing," Joe says, throwing his hands up. "What's the big deal?"
"I don't want to," she says, but her voice is weak.
"I need you," Pete says from the front of the class. She blinks up at him and it would be so, so easy to just do what they want.
Her throat is closing. "But I don't need you," she whispers.
All thirty kids in the class laugh, loudly, in unison. Pete joins in, clasping his hands over his stomach, nearly falling off the desk.
"I don't!" she tries to yell, but nothing comes out. She pounds her desk with her fists and then punches Joe in his laughing face.
She wakes up to her mom knocking at the door and calling her name gently.
"--it's ten o'clock, hon," her mom says through the door.
"I'm up," she croaks, clears her throat, and tries again, "I'm awake, Mom."
"Okay," her mom says.
She rolls over and looks at the bright green rectangle in the middle of her dark green curtains: the day outside is sunny and beautiful and somewhere out in it, Anna is--being Anna, probably hungover, probably still tasting Brett's beery spit. Shannon puts her arm over her eyes and wills herself to sleep for another hour.
She dreams that she's walking down an impossibly long corridor at school; every step brings her closer to Anna and Brett making out against the lockers at the end of the hall; her arms are full of books and she's carrying a guitar case and her glasses are smudged and she can't see very well, but she can't stop to put anything down or adjust her grip. She's going to be late for class--every one of them.
Anna breaks away from Brett and leans toward Shannon, hand outstretched, palm up. Shannon says, helplessly, "I'm late for class," and the bell rings.
Her eyes snap open at the blood-curdling ring of the phone downstairs, barely muffled by the floor. She closes her eyes again when the ringing stops and she hears footsteps on the stairs, down the hall, outside her room. Her mom's soft knock again.
"It's Pete, sweetheart," her mom says.
Shannon thunks her head into her pillow a few times, and then flops out of bed. She opens the door and takes the phone, giving her mom a tired smile.
"You slept in your clothes?" her mom says, frowning, eyes on Shannon's feet.
"Um," Shannon says, reflexively moving her toes in her shoes. "No, um, I'm just dressed already." She squeezes her smile a little brighter and puts the phone to her ear, closing the door.
"Hey," she says into the phone, and the street noise she can hear on the other end of the call.
"Yo," Pete says, voice raised. "Yo, I have bad news about Neil."
Pete wraps her up in his arms and the quilt. "You like Anna, right?" he asks, in a resigned, knowing voice.
She coughs a little through her tears, surprised. "What? Not really. I don't know." She sniffles into his shoulder. "It's just--I just. Thought it was one thing, you know? And it was really, really not that thing. And I just--fuck, he's such an asshole."
Pete laughs, low, and hugs her tighter. "I'm sorry, dude."
"Whatever," Shannon whispers, wiping her face with the cuffs of her hoodie. They sit for a while, strains of The Pretenders leaking throughout the room.
[...introspective craaaaap...]
"You know, hey," Pete says. "You know what would make you feel better?"
Oh, god. "What?" Shannon asks, sniffing deeply and grimacing at the rattle of snot in her sinuses.
Pete bumps her a little and says, "Sing me a song."
Shannon elbows him in the ribs and says, "Fuck you. I wish you guys would fucking drop it."
[This is just a related drabble; the story would've ended before this point. Bleh.]
"Just--if you want me to write the fucking song, just leave me alone and let me write the fucking song," she yells on her third day as a singer-songwriter.
"Fuck you, Jesus Christ," Pete snaps back. "Remind me next time not to show up for practise during the princess's period."
Joe laughs, but stops with a choked gasp when Shannon turns and glares at him. "Um," he says. "Sorry?"
"Fuck you both," Shannon says. "It's not my fucking period, you're just fucking assholes." She stomps up the stairs out of the basement and slams the door at the top closed behind her. She pounds the sides of her fists into the walls of the hallway and kicks the bathroom door open--hot, stinging tears finally leaking from her eyes. She sits down hard on the toilet and leans her head against the roll of toilet paper on the wall, staring at her blurry reflection in the mirror over the sink.
*
A self-recrimination: WHY OH WHY DID I NEVER MAKE THE "MY FANDOM IS ITS OWN BNF" ICON. Gawd. If I did it now, it'd just be stupid.
And an unfinished story, just like I promised!
One way or the other (or neither, or both)
Shannon | 2644 words | PG13 for language and girl-kissing
Disclaimer: If there even is such a person as Shannon Stumph, I seriously doubt she ever drummed for Fall Out Boy.
Notes: heyginger read this before the dream sequences were added and said it was pretty good (thanks, dude). Uh. Shannon is "always-was-a-girl!Patrick", btw. In case that doesn't become painfully obvious. Also, lastly, This Is Not (Entirely) Autobiographical. It just feels like it, omg.
*
The first time Pete brings it up, Shannon is sitting behind her kit during a lull in practise, drinking some water, squinting doubtfully across the room at Joe trying to replace a string on his guitar.
"You should sing," Pete says, standing over her in that weird proprietary way he has, and she frowns and leans away from him.
"No, fuck you," she says. "You're gonna break it--" she calls at Joe, just as the metal strand snaps and curls in on itself defensively.
Pete and TJ laugh and Shannon shakes her head and Joe mutters, "Shut up."
"No, seriously," Pete says, "you should totally be the singer."
"I'm not Phil Collins," Shannon says.
"Phil Collins has a better rack," TJ says. He looks around at the rest of them when no one responds.
After practise, Pete gives TJ a ride home, and after that, TJ doesn't show up for practise on Thursday.
Over fries, after TJ's second no-show, Shannon asks Pete curiously, "Did you murder him? Because now we're short a singer and a guitarist."
"Dude, he insulted your rack," Pete says seriously. "That is totally a capital offence."
Shannon stares at him. "It--you--don't call them my rack," she says finally, hunching her shoulders defensively.
"Guns?" Pete says.
"Shut up."
"Jugs!" Pete shouts triumphantly, pointing a fry at her across the table.
"I'll kill you, really," Shannon says darkly.
"You could," Pete says, nodding. "But then you'd be short a singer, a guitarist, and a bass player. And a best friend. And you'd be in jail."
"It'd be worth it," Shannon says, because it totally would.
"You don't call them 'girls,' do you? 'Cause that's kind of boring."
Shannon squirts ketchup all over his inquisitively smirking face and ugly t-shirt.
At home, later, much later, when it's dark outside and it feels like she's the only person left alive in Glenview, she stands in front of the upstairs bathroom mirror in her pajama pants and stretched-out David Bowie t-shirt. She pulls the shirt tight with one hand at her back, twisting the cotton around her fist. Her breasts are small, but she's small, so they look a little big, and they're kind of lopsided. The t-shirt outlines the soft paunch of her belly too; the depression of her navel, the wide curve of her hips. She meets her eyes in the mirror and frowns at herself.
"What the fuck is wrong with calling them 'breasts'?" she whispers. "Seriously." She pokes her stomach and acknowledges one more time that it's not baby fat. Sixteen-year-olds don't have baby fat. "Ugh, shut up, Shannon." She lets the shirt go, watches her torso fall into obscurity again--just a couple of bumps distorting Bowie's mullet.
[Anna invites Shannon to a party Shannon doesn't really want to go to.]
Shannon knocks her sneakers together and shrugs. "I kind of--there's a really good line-up at the Civic. We could go to that?"
Anna looks up at the ceiling. "You're always bugging me because I don't invite you to stuff with my--with my other friends, and now you'd rather go to a show with a bunch of crappy high school bands? Becky said she wants you to come, Shan. Seriously." She looks back over at Shannon and smiles that exasperated smile; that "you big dork, don't you get it?" smile; that "you know you can never say no to me" smile.
"Whatever," Shannon says, shaking her head. She blinks at her Purple Rain poster as Anna sits up and hooks her arm around Shannon's neck and kisses her on the cheek, loudly.
"Whatever is right," Anna says.
Pete brings a guy named Neil to practise the next afternoon. Neil is carrying a brand new case with a second-hand Strat in it. Shannon stares dubiously at his back while they play a few songs--Lifetime, Green Day, Zeppelin--and decides he's not a bad singer, or a bad guitarist. Joe comes and plays in front of her at the end of "Black Dog" and she shrugs up at him. He rolls his eyes and shakes his head.
"So when you guys start writing, that'll be it?" Neil asks afterwards, sitting on Shannon's mom's old couch with his guitar between his legs. "Like, that'll be your style? Pop punk classic rock?"
"Pop clunk," Joe says, opening a bag of Cheetos.
"Pop crock," Pete says, and Joe nods seriously at him.
"Do you write?" Shannon asks Neil.
"Uh, well," he says, shrugging and kind of smiling at her. "Everybody writes lyrics, right?"
Shannon hopes her left eye didn't actually twitch. "Pete's not gonna--"
"I'm kind of over writing all the stuff," Pete says, sprawling in a rickety papasan. "We were hoping to get a singer who could write the songs."
"Prop clock," Joe muses. "Plop cock." Pete laughs at that one, and Joe salutes him with a Cheeto.
"No, yeah," Neil says to Shannon, leaning forward, tilting his head at her, still kind of smiling. "I write, I totally do."
"Okay then," Shannon says stiffly, looking over at Pete.
He shrugs and pulls his phone from his pocket. "I have an Arma thing, so are we good?" he asks no one in particular.
"Yeah, yeah," Joe says. "Neil's gonna be a spectacular plop cock vocalist." He offers Neil the Cheetos and Neil graciously takes one.
"Yeah, okay," Shannon says, because if they don't have somebody singing, somebody producing original material, Pete's going to get bored and break Joe's heart by leaving the band, and Shannon--well. Shannon will probably wheedle her way back into the school band and try to forget the last three months ever happened.
[Arma show, Jeanae?]
Shannon has the vague feeling she and Jeanae are supposed to be friends--Pete certainly thinks so, and Jeanae keeps making abortive overtures and playacting the role--but the truth is, they just don't fucking like each other. Shannon's never understood why you wouldn't want to actually be in a band, rather than just date them, and she's pretty sure Jeanae thinks Shannon and Pete are secretly fucking. Or want to be. Neither of which are true. Not for Shannon, anyway; she's not going to fucking ask Pete about it. It's really best to just not think think about those kinds of things.
She's had half a cooler and she's sitting in Becky Moore's basement, in a circle with seven or eight other kids from school. It's a Saturday night and she would so rather be at a show or even at home, but here she is, because Anna wanted her to go. Anna is two kids to her right, sitting on her heels like she's going to jump up and leave at any minute.
Some guy whose name Shannon doesn't remember--some jock who's never in class--spins the empty wine bottle, and it points at her. She barely conceals the expression of wide-eyed disgust she wants to let out, and crawls just out of her spot to meet the boy. His wet lips against her dry ones, his sweaty hands clasping her shoulders like he's expecting more than a chaste peck. She pulls back and ignores the rolling eyes and shaking heads around her. Yeah, she's a killjoy. She's boring. She looks pointedly at Anna, who shrugs and looks displeased.
This is why Shannon never has girl friends.
"Spin the bottle," the boy sitting beside her says impatiently, and Shannon leans out into the circle again and spins the slightly greasy bottle. It wobbles and rolls as it spins, and points squarely at Anna.
"Next boy to the left," Sarah Lang says across the circle. Shannon feels the boy beside her lean away as she meets Anna's eyes, embarrassed.
"Um, no, whatever," Anna says, and gives a forced laugh. Shannon's throat goes dry. She feels her body moving her, over and out around the boy and girl between them, wide eyes and small mouths and crossed legs in jeans. Anna is there, steadying herself with one hand on the green carpet of Becky Moore's basement, and Shannon breathes in hard just before they meet. Anna's other hand touches her shoulder and Anna's eyes flick across the circle--Shannon looks where she's looking and sees the dumb jock, Brett something, that's his name, staring at Anna, at Anna's mouth.
Shannon presses her closed mouth against Anna's, a little harder than maybe she should, and then sits back in her place. Anna spins the bottle and gets Nick from their chemistry class and kisses him with tongue, and Shannon sits and watches with burning eyes and wants to be anywhere else. Anywhere at all.
Anna follows her out the front door ten minutes or an hour later and catches her by the arm, almost sending her skidding and sprawling on the Moores' dew-damp flagstone path.
"What?" Shannon asks, nearly shouting, yanking her arm free.
Anna stumbles back and squints her eyes at Shannon. "What's your problem?" she spits.
Shannon shakes her head and waves her hands and walks backwards a couple of steps, widening the distance between them. She's afraid of opening her mouth, afraid of bursting into tears, but she forces out, "Nothing, no problem, I'm just going home."
Anna rolls her eyes and waves her hands too. "You're such a--" she bites her lip, bites off the word Shannon can hear anyway--freak. "Fine," Anna says. "Fine, go. Go home, Shannon." She points towards the street, past Shannon's shoulder, the lines of her arm and mouth dismissive.
Shannon clenches her teeth and her fists and goes, silently, turning before Anna can see the tears leaking, telling herself she was going anyway, it's not like she's following Anna's orders or something.
When she gets home, she doesn't even stop to take off her Vans, just burrows under her blankets and pulls a pillow over her head and squeezes her eyes shut to keep from crying herself to sleep.
She dreams that she's writing words in the margins of a math assignment: where can I go when I want you around but I can't stand to be around you? "Go home"--"go to hell" is all I thought. Pete starts reading out the answers to the assignment, sitting on her teacher's desk, textbook open in his lap. All the other kids in the class snicker at him behind their hands or stare at him, but Shannon is too worried about making sure she finishes the questions before he gives out all the answers. She wants to get this right; she wants to do it herself.
"The last answer is: go home, Shannon," Pete says, and snaps the book closed. He stares at her; the kid in front of her turns around to stare too, and it's Joe, and he shakes his head sadly.
"You're gonna wreck my band, Shannon," he says. "What's your problem?"
She shakes her head back. "I don't have a--"
"Then sing," Joe says, throwing his hands up. "What's the big deal?"
"I don't want to," she says, but her voice is weak.
"I need you," Pete says from the front of the class. She blinks up at him and it would be so, so easy to just do what they want.
Her throat is closing. "But I don't need you," she whispers.
All thirty kids in the class laugh, loudly, in unison. Pete joins in, clasping his hands over his stomach, nearly falling off the desk.
"I don't!" she tries to yell, but nothing comes out. She pounds her desk with her fists and then punches Joe in his laughing face.
She wakes up to her mom knocking at the door and calling her name gently.
"--it's ten o'clock, hon," her mom says through the door.
"I'm up," she croaks, clears her throat, and tries again, "I'm awake, Mom."
"Okay," her mom says.
She rolls over and looks at the bright green rectangle in the middle of her dark green curtains: the day outside is sunny and beautiful and somewhere out in it, Anna is--being Anna, probably hungover, probably still tasting Brett's beery spit. Shannon puts her arm over her eyes and wills herself to sleep for another hour.
She dreams that she's walking down an impossibly long corridor at school; every step brings her closer to Anna and Brett making out against the lockers at the end of the hall; her arms are full of books and she's carrying a guitar case and her glasses are smudged and she can't see very well, but she can't stop to put anything down or adjust her grip. She's going to be late for class--every one of them.
Anna breaks away from Brett and leans toward Shannon, hand outstretched, palm up. Shannon says, helplessly, "I'm late for class," and the bell rings.
Her eyes snap open at the blood-curdling ring of the phone downstairs, barely muffled by the floor. She closes her eyes again when the ringing stops and she hears footsteps on the stairs, down the hall, outside her room. Her mom's soft knock again.
"It's Pete, sweetheart," her mom says.
Shannon thunks her head into her pillow a few times, and then flops out of bed. She opens the door and takes the phone, giving her mom a tired smile.
"You slept in your clothes?" her mom says, frowning, eyes on Shannon's feet.
"Um," Shannon says, reflexively moving her toes in her shoes. "No, um, I'm just dressed already." She squeezes her smile a little brighter and puts the phone to her ear, closing the door.
"Hey," she says into the phone, and the street noise she can hear on the other end of the call.
"Yo," Pete says, voice raised. "Yo, I have bad news about Neil."
Pete wraps her up in his arms and the quilt. "You like Anna, right?" he asks, in a resigned, knowing voice.
She coughs a little through her tears, surprised. "What? Not really. I don't know." She sniffles into his shoulder. "It's just--I just. Thought it was one thing, you know? And it was really, really not that thing. And I just--fuck, he's such an asshole."
Pete laughs, low, and hugs her tighter. "I'm sorry, dude."
"Whatever," Shannon whispers, wiping her face with the cuffs of her hoodie. They sit for a while, strains of The Pretenders leaking throughout the room.
[...introspective craaaaap...]
"You know, hey," Pete says. "You know what would make you feel better?"
Oh, god. "What?" Shannon asks, sniffing deeply and grimacing at the rattle of snot in her sinuses.
Pete bumps her a little and says, "Sing me a song."
Shannon elbows him in the ribs and says, "Fuck you. I wish you guys would fucking drop it."
[This is just a related drabble; the story would've ended before this point. Bleh.]
"Just--if you want me to write the fucking song, just leave me alone and let me write the fucking song," she yells on her third day as a singer-songwriter.
"Fuck you, Jesus Christ," Pete snaps back. "Remind me next time not to show up for practise during the princess's period."
Joe laughs, but stops with a choked gasp when Shannon turns and glares at him. "Um," he says. "Sorry?"
"Fuck you both," Shannon says. "It's not my fucking period, you're just fucking assholes." She stomps up the stairs out of the basement and slams the door at the top closed behind her. She pounds the sides of her fists into the walls of the hallway and kicks the bathroom door open--hot, stinging tears finally leaking from her eyes. She sits down hard on the toilet and leans her head against the roll of toilet paper on the wall, staring at her blurry reflection in the mirror over the sink.
*