After wrestling with her Astronomy notes-- literally-- for half an hour, Parker finally tricked them into her closet, and shut the door. Great. Just great.

She scowled at the orchids, who were trying to sing That's Amore but kept getting confused, and decided to distract herself ( Read more... )

Parker was a little shocked to return to her room and the orchids and find them-- harmonizing.

Blue mooooooon
We saw you standing, alooooooone....

Okay, that was just spooky.

While unpacking, she called Seely and made a date for Wednesday, and then dropped a message for Xander. It was going to be fun to talk about those messages with him ( Read more... )

Parker answered the phone shortly around one o'clock. This was a mistake.

It was now two o'clock. And her father wasn't even starting to wind down.

( Because emotional abuse and manipulation is never fun if it's you. )

After Caritas, Parker went back to her room, changed into pajamas, and started working on new T-shirt and poster designs, as well as listening to the tape of the night's performance. When the phone rang, she was too distracted to think to check the Caller I.D.

Mistake. "Parker."

( Hello, Parker. Sydney here. )

Parker was staring at the phone, willing it to ring. If Jarod called her, she didn't have to call him. And that would make her less pissed off, and less the injured party.

Ring, damn you.

( What Parker's been up to for the last week and a half. Band, comfort of variously injured friends, torment of people, shopping. )

After drinking with Tyler and Pippi, and plying Zack with various unhealthy substances at Caritas, Parker came back to her room and for once, got to bed fairly early.

Not early enough to make the wake-up from the alarm Zack gave her anything less than still horrendous, though ( Read more... )

Parker re-read the red notebook she retrieved from the Sin, stumped. Then she went online to look up more information. The boy, Casey Michaels, lived in Pittsburgh. His dad was a construction worker, his mom had been a schoolteacher, and Casey was in the 5th grade.

And there was nothing else.

She glared at her computer monitor, thinking.

Parker made it back to her room more by Braille and radar than anything else. After a long, hot shower, and slathering lotion on her feet, she curled up on her bed with Esme. It wasn't like the hallucinations or dreams could hurt her, or even seemed to want to. She just really wasn't enjoying them.

( The phone rang. )

Anyone passing by could have heard this, if they'd stopped at the open door ( Read more... )

Parker is talking on the phone ( Read more... )