Fanfiction: "you are not a robot"
“Laura!”
Audrey glanced up from her homework to where her brother was sitting. He was rocking back and forth in his chair, still dressed in that stupid headdress. He hadn’t taken it off since they’d gotten back from the funeral.
“Laura” he said insistently, rocking hard enough that the chair dragged back and forth across the floor. She turned back to her book. Her mother had dragged him in a few minutes earlier- “Watch him, will you?-” before stalking off to do god only knew what. Pop pills, probably. It was all she seemed to do these days. Audrey was fine with watching her brother to make sure he didn’t hurt himself, but beyond that, there wasn’t much she could do. Three years of Dr. Jacoby’s head-shrinking hadn’t made a dent; she didn’t think she could manage it any time soon.
She turned back to her homework. English; questions on the fourth act of Hamlet.
1. What is the significance of the flowers Ophelia carries?
2. Why might Gertrude have hoped for Hamlet to marry Ophelia? Does this relate to her feelings towards marriage? What does this tell us about the position of women in Elizabethan society?
3. Laertes blames Hamlet for his sister’s madness. Is he right? What might have driven Ophelia mad?
She’d liked Macbeth better. It had a better plot, and the speeches were more fun to read aloud. There wasn’t much for the girls in class in this play, unless they wanted to act crazy. Audrey did enough of that already without Shakespeare’s help.
She tried to act like Lady Macbeth, but some days she felt more like Ophelia. Did it matter? They both ended up dead.
“Laura.” Johnny moaned again. Audrey gritted her teeth. Laura had been a Lady Macbeth dressed up like- what? Juliet? And she’d ended up like Ophelia. Ophelia wrapped in plastic sheeting.
“Laura, Laura, Laura.” She rubbed her forehead with a free hand, feeling a headache growing behind her right eye. Laura had read Juliet’s part, back when they studied it in tenth grade. She’d been good at it, too. Too bad she’d died before she got a chance to read Ophelia.
So where did that leave her? Pompous father, check; older brother, check. Except her father didn’t even bother pretending to care, and her brother wouldn’t notice if she fucked half the town, Prince of Denmark or no. Ophelia had it lucky. At least she wasn’t in the shadow of a girl no one knew and everyone loved.
“Laura.”
“Laura!” She slammed her pencil down hard enough that it bounced. “Why is it always Laura with you? I’m still here, in case you hadn’t noticed!”
He looked at her, confused, and she slumped down in her chair. He hadn’t understood a word she’d said. Probably he’d only looked up because he’d heard Laura’s name. She sighed and picked the pencil up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”
He’d stopped listening already, and resumed rocking back and forth in his chair. “Laura.” he said again.
“Uh-huh.” said Audrey
* * * *
“You never loved him, and that’s why he’s like this.”
“You little bitch. It’s all your fault.”
After that fight, Audrey went looking for their old family photo albums, trying to find some photographic evidence of what her mother had said. The pictures were kept in a cabinet in her father’s study- locked away, like his good liquor, but she managed to steal the key easily. She snuck in one afternoon, and spread the albums out across the floor when she was sure that her father was out on business and her mother was sleeping.
She had to search through the oldest albums for them, but they were there- pictures of Johnny as chubby baby, a grinning toddler, a grade-schooler on his bike. There was even one of him with her as a baby, looking equal parts frightened and in awe of the tiny thing sitting in his lap. When she turned the page, it was like jumping five years ahead in time. There she was, dressed up for her first day of school; no Johnny. She turned the page again. The photos were growing further apart in years with every turn, until they were nothing but yearly Christmas pictures, with everyone posed in front of the fireplace like a Norman Rockwell painting, smiles stretched so far they began to look like grimaces. Johnny was in those, but with the vacant look in his eyes that had been there as long as she could remember and her father’s hand tight on his arm, making sure he didn’t do anything to ruin the photo. She closed the album.
The next one was even more sparsely filled- mostly pictures of her father with various important guests, gladhanding investors and shaking hands with dignitaries. There was a clipping from a newspaper article of a few years back, where some critic had come to visit and review their hotel. Apparently it had been to his liking.
When she turned the page again, her hand stilled for a moment. There were more photos here, but they weren’t of the family; they were of Laura. There she was sandwiched between Leland and her father; there she was at the banquet her father had held last year. Audrey’s hand shook as she fingered the photos. She’d known that non-family members sometimes showed up in their pictures, but seeing her dead classmate’s face staring out of her family photo album was personal in a way that the investor pictures weren’t. It was like watching someone else walking through her life.
There was an empty space on the last page of the album, but the faded lines of paper showed where a picture had been. She knew which one it was- the picture of her and Laura from last January. The last time she’d seen it, it had been sitting on her father’s desk. She wasn’t sure where he’d put it after that. Maybe it was sitting on his bedside table.
Feeling sick, she put the albums back and crept out of the room.
* * * *
They’d set up a little memorial for her at the school, in front of the glass case where her picture was still on display. Audrey walked past it every day on her way to homeroom. People had left piles of flowers, old pictures- even a few crosses. Audrey hadn’t left anything there. She hadn’t known the other girl well enough, and besides, it seemed pointless. Leaving the stuff on her grave she could understand, but in the hallway? It wasn’t like the image of Laura that sat behind the glass case could see any of it. That version of Laura had frozen a long time ago, probably before the shutter had clicked down and fixed her image in place.
The Monday after she went through the photo albums, she paused in front of the glass case on her way to English class. The flowers had already started to wilt and turn brown, and the petals had begun to fall off. The school janitor had cleared them out of the way over the weekend, sweeping them into little piles in the corner. It was a sad sight- the drooping bouquets, the abandoned teddy bears, and Laura’s eerily still face presiding above it all, like an idol over a shrine. Audrey shivered and walked a little faster.
They were doing Laertes’s return that day; Act 4, Scene 5. Mike was reading his part, stumbling gracelessly through the language while the members of the class who weren’t reading yawned and fidgeted, eyeing the clock on the wall.
O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt,
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!
By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight,
Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
O heavens! is't possible, a young maid's wits
Should be as moral as an old man's life?
Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.
“Audrey?” The teacher called her name, and she glanced up from the pictures she’d been doodling in the margins of her notebook. “Would you read Ophelia’s part, please?”
She looked down at the book in front of her. “What, sing it?”
A tight-lipped smile from the teacher. “If you like.”
With a sigh, Audrey set her notebook aside. “They bore him barefaced on the bier,
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny;
And in his grave rain'd many a tear-
Fare you well, my dove!”
Now half her classmates were gawking. She ignored them. Mike managed to shut his jaw long enough to read his next line. “H-Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge, it could not move thus.”
She had a slight smile on her face, which probably unnerved her classmates- and teacher, who was staring at her as well- even further. “You must sing a-down a-down, an you call him a-down-a. O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward, that stole his master's daughter.”
The bell rang just then, and a sigh (of relief?) went up from the class, who immediately began to shove their books into their backpacks and made a beeline for the door. Audrey was getting ready to leave when she noticed the teacher opening her mouth to ask her something. Hastily, she stuffed the rest of her belonging in her bag and hurried out the door.
As she passed Laura’s shrine, she slowed down again. There was nothing new there; nobody had dropped anything for her since the initial rush of grief. Audrey glanced down at the papers in her hand, where she’d scribbled down bits of the scene they’d been reading. Larded with sweet flowers which bewept to the grave did go with true-love showers. They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but we know now what we may be.
Impulsively, she dropped the sheets of paper down on the shrine at her feet, where they drifted like oversized snowflakes. Other students passing by were jostling her, but she stayed in place, watching the papers settle on the floor. One floated too close to her foot, and she kicked it over to the bottom of the glass case that held Laura’s picture. Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, and therefore I forbid my tears.
With a slight roll of her shoulders, she walked on.
* * * *
She knew where to find Johnny; even now, weeks after Laura was dead and gone, he’d come out to shoot at his painted buffalo. She had come out to watch them sometimes, perched on a rock a few feet away while Laura read stories and laughed with her brother. She didn’t think he’d ever noticed her then. Her parents couldn’t understand why he kept coming out here when Laura was long gone and Jacoby came on different days, but watching him point the arrow again and again, she thought she had an idea.
She hadn’t been able to find Peter Pan- probably it had been Laura’s. Instead, she clutched a frayed copy of Little Red Riding Hood that she’d found stuffed in the back of her bookcase. It wasn’t Laura’s story, but then, she wasn’t Laura.
“Johnny.” she called. He didn’t hear her over the water, so she edged closer, glad she’d worn her flats instead of heels. “Johnny? I’ve got something to read to you.”
He turned around then. He still had that ridiculous thing on his head, and she wanted to reach out and snatch it off. Instead, she tightened her grip on the book. “Would you like to hear it?”
He squinted at her. “What?”
It was just a word, but it was more than he’d said to her in years. She held the book out. “Little Red Riding Hood. You want me to read it?”
His squint narrowed, and for a moment she thought he didn’t understand what he was saying. But then he turned around and sat down on the rock, the beginnings of a smile starting on his face. “Yes.” Almost as an afterthought, he added “Please.”
She sat down and started to read.
* * * *
(“It’s not your fault, you know.” Jacoby told her. “Your mother was wrong. A fall didn’t cause this.”
She smiled vaguely at him and walked away. Maybe she had, maybe she hadn’t; it didn’t matter so much anymore.)
Audrey glanced up from her homework to where her brother was sitting. He was rocking back and forth in his chair, still dressed in that stupid headdress. He hadn’t taken it off since they’d gotten back from the funeral.
“Laura” he said insistently, rocking hard enough that the chair dragged back and forth across the floor. She turned back to her book. Her mother had dragged him in a few minutes earlier- “Watch him, will you?-” before stalking off to do god only knew what. Pop pills, probably. It was all she seemed to do these days. Audrey was fine with watching her brother to make sure he didn’t hurt himself, but beyond that, there wasn’t much she could do. Three years of Dr. Jacoby’s head-shrinking hadn’t made a dent; she didn’t think she could manage it any time soon.
She turned back to her homework. English; questions on the fourth act of Hamlet.
1. What is the significance of the flowers Ophelia carries?
2. Why might Gertrude have hoped for Hamlet to marry Ophelia? Does this relate to her feelings towards marriage? What does this tell us about the position of women in Elizabethan society?
3. Laertes blames Hamlet for his sister’s madness. Is he right? What might have driven Ophelia mad?
She’d liked Macbeth better. It had a better plot, and the speeches were more fun to read aloud. There wasn’t much for the girls in class in this play, unless they wanted to act crazy. Audrey did enough of that already without Shakespeare’s help.
She tried to act like Lady Macbeth, but some days she felt more like Ophelia. Did it matter? They both ended up dead.
“Laura.” Johnny moaned again. Audrey gritted her teeth. Laura had been a Lady Macbeth dressed up like- what? Juliet? And she’d ended up like Ophelia. Ophelia wrapped in plastic sheeting.
“Laura, Laura, Laura.” She rubbed her forehead with a free hand, feeling a headache growing behind her right eye. Laura had read Juliet’s part, back when they studied it in tenth grade. She’d been good at it, too. Too bad she’d died before she got a chance to read Ophelia.
So where did that leave her? Pompous father, check; older brother, check. Except her father didn’t even bother pretending to care, and her brother wouldn’t notice if she fucked half the town, Prince of Denmark or no. Ophelia had it lucky. At least she wasn’t in the shadow of a girl no one knew and everyone loved.
“Laura.”
“Laura!” She slammed her pencil down hard enough that it bounced. “Why is it always Laura with you? I’m still here, in case you hadn’t noticed!”
He looked at her, confused, and she slumped down in her chair. He hadn’t understood a word she’d said. Probably he’d only looked up because he’d heard Laura’s name. She sighed and picked the pencil up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”
He’d stopped listening already, and resumed rocking back and forth in his chair. “Laura.” he said again.
“Uh-huh.” said Audrey
* * * *
“You never loved him, and that’s why he’s like this.”
“You little bitch. It’s all your fault.”
After that fight, Audrey went looking for their old family photo albums, trying to find some photographic evidence of what her mother had said. The pictures were kept in a cabinet in her father’s study- locked away, like his good liquor, but she managed to steal the key easily. She snuck in one afternoon, and spread the albums out across the floor when she was sure that her father was out on business and her mother was sleeping.
She had to search through the oldest albums for them, but they were there- pictures of Johnny as chubby baby, a grinning toddler, a grade-schooler on his bike. There was even one of him with her as a baby, looking equal parts frightened and in awe of the tiny thing sitting in his lap. When she turned the page, it was like jumping five years ahead in time. There she was, dressed up for her first day of school; no Johnny. She turned the page again. The photos were growing further apart in years with every turn, until they were nothing but yearly Christmas pictures, with everyone posed in front of the fireplace like a Norman Rockwell painting, smiles stretched so far they began to look like grimaces. Johnny was in those, but with the vacant look in his eyes that had been there as long as she could remember and her father’s hand tight on his arm, making sure he didn’t do anything to ruin the photo. She closed the album.
The next one was even more sparsely filled- mostly pictures of her father with various important guests, gladhanding investors and shaking hands with dignitaries. There was a clipping from a newspaper article of a few years back, where some critic had come to visit and review their hotel. Apparently it had been to his liking.
When she turned the page again, her hand stilled for a moment. There were more photos here, but they weren’t of the family; they were of Laura. There she was sandwiched between Leland and her father; there she was at the banquet her father had held last year. Audrey’s hand shook as she fingered the photos. She’d known that non-family members sometimes showed up in their pictures, but seeing her dead classmate’s face staring out of her family photo album was personal in a way that the investor pictures weren’t. It was like watching someone else walking through her life.
There was an empty space on the last page of the album, but the faded lines of paper showed where a picture had been. She knew which one it was- the picture of her and Laura from last January. The last time she’d seen it, it had been sitting on her father’s desk. She wasn’t sure where he’d put it after that. Maybe it was sitting on his bedside table.
Feeling sick, she put the albums back and crept out of the room.
* * * *
They’d set up a little memorial for her at the school, in front of the glass case where her picture was still on display. Audrey walked past it every day on her way to homeroom. People had left piles of flowers, old pictures- even a few crosses. Audrey hadn’t left anything there. She hadn’t known the other girl well enough, and besides, it seemed pointless. Leaving the stuff on her grave she could understand, but in the hallway? It wasn’t like the image of Laura that sat behind the glass case could see any of it. That version of Laura had frozen a long time ago, probably before the shutter had clicked down and fixed her image in place.
The Monday after she went through the photo albums, she paused in front of the glass case on her way to English class. The flowers had already started to wilt and turn brown, and the petals had begun to fall off. The school janitor had cleared them out of the way over the weekend, sweeping them into little piles in the corner. It was a sad sight- the drooping bouquets, the abandoned teddy bears, and Laura’s eerily still face presiding above it all, like an idol over a shrine. Audrey shivered and walked a little faster.
They were doing Laertes’s return that day; Act 4, Scene 5. Mike was reading his part, stumbling gracelessly through the language while the members of the class who weren’t reading yawned and fidgeted, eyeing the clock on the wall.
O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt,
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!
By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight,
Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
O heavens! is't possible, a young maid's wits
Should be as moral as an old man's life?
Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.
“Audrey?” The teacher called her name, and she glanced up from the pictures she’d been doodling in the margins of her notebook. “Would you read Ophelia’s part, please?”
She looked down at the book in front of her. “What, sing it?”
A tight-lipped smile from the teacher. “If you like.”
With a sigh, Audrey set her notebook aside. “They bore him barefaced on the bier,
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny;
And in his grave rain'd many a tear-
Fare you well, my dove!”
Now half her classmates were gawking. She ignored them. Mike managed to shut his jaw long enough to read his next line. “H-Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge, it could not move thus.”
She had a slight smile on her face, which probably unnerved her classmates- and teacher, who was staring at her as well- even further. “You must sing a-down a-down, an you call him a-down-a. O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward, that stole his master's daughter.”
The bell rang just then, and a sigh (of relief?) went up from the class, who immediately began to shove their books into their backpacks and made a beeline for the door. Audrey was getting ready to leave when she noticed the teacher opening her mouth to ask her something. Hastily, she stuffed the rest of her belonging in her bag and hurried out the door.
As she passed Laura’s shrine, she slowed down again. There was nothing new there; nobody had dropped anything for her since the initial rush of grief. Audrey glanced down at the papers in her hand, where she’d scribbled down bits of the scene they’d been reading. Larded with sweet flowers which bewept to the grave did go with true-love showers. They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but we know now what we may be.
Impulsively, she dropped the sheets of paper down on the shrine at her feet, where they drifted like oversized snowflakes. Other students passing by were jostling her, but she stayed in place, watching the papers settle on the floor. One floated too close to her foot, and she kicked it over to the bottom of the glass case that held Laura’s picture. Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, and therefore I forbid my tears.
With a slight roll of her shoulders, she walked on.
* * * *
She knew where to find Johnny; even now, weeks after Laura was dead and gone, he’d come out to shoot at his painted buffalo. She had come out to watch them sometimes, perched on a rock a few feet away while Laura read stories and laughed with her brother. She didn’t think he’d ever noticed her then. Her parents couldn’t understand why he kept coming out here when Laura was long gone and Jacoby came on different days, but watching him point the arrow again and again, she thought she had an idea.
She hadn’t been able to find Peter Pan- probably it had been Laura’s. Instead, she clutched a frayed copy of Little Red Riding Hood that she’d found stuffed in the back of her bookcase. It wasn’t Laura’s story, but then, she wasn’t Laura.
“Johnny.” she called. He didn’t hear her over the water, so she edged closer, glad she’d worn her flats instead of heels. “Johnny? I’ve got something to read to you.”
He turned around then. He still had that ridiculous thing on his head, and she wanted to reach out and snatch it off. Instead, she tightened her grip on the book. “Would you like to hear it?”
He squinted at her. “What?”
It was just a word, but it was more than he’d said to her in years. She held the book out. “Little Red Riding Hood. You want me to read it?”
His squint narrowed, and for a moment she thought he didn’t understand what he was saying. But then he turned around and sat down on the rock, the beginnings of a smile starting on his face. “Yes.” Almost as an afterthought, he added “Please.”
She sat down and started to read.
* * * *
(“It’s not your fault, you know.” Jacoby told her. “Your mother was wrong. A fall didn’t cause this.”
She smiled vaguely at him and walked away. Maybe she had, maybe she hadn’t; it didn’t matter so much anymore.)