Fic: Dysphemism (For lisew from your Secret Santa)
Title: Dysphemism
Fandom: Profiler
Character: Frances Malone
Word Count: 3,576
Rating: R
Summary: Being a little weak had always been one of her problems.
Warnings: Hard core angst, naughty language, self-loathing and violence, disturbing thoughts on life on the streets, an unflattering portrait of Janet Malone as a mother, and a general lack of humorous hijinx.
Notes: For lisew. Happy Holidays from your Secret Santa! Many thanks to empty_marrow for betaing.
01. so fuck you, fuck you, fuck you and all you didn't do
By her second week in Atlanta, Frances wanted to go home to Baltimore. This had nothing to do with wanting to see her mother again, but rather wanting the freedom her mother gave her to fuck up her life as she saw fit. She didn't realize how much she took the little things for granted until she had to start living with her father and she couldn't have them anymore.
There was something strangely comforting about sitting at the kitchen table at two in the morning eating Doritos and drinking watermelon-flavored vodka while playing five card draw and chit-chatting with your mother's boyfriend of the moment. Especially since her mother had an unerring tendency to pick boyfriends that were less than ten years older than Frances herself was.
Marilyn Manson is all shock-rock, the latest in line, Bobby Something-or-Another had argued as he glanced down at his cards and grimaced. Bobby Something-or-Another was not the best poker player of the lot, Frances determined after the first hand. She almost felt sorry for the poor sucker since she had been a better liar at age three than he was at twenty-seven. Even you have to admit that the music doesn't measure up to the hype.
Maybe not, Frances had agreed and gave nothing of her two-pair hand away as she tossed another five in the middle of the table, increasing her obvious winnings to thirty bucks off this hand. But it's still better than the pop shit on the radio lately.
If that's your only standard, sweetheart, we're going to have to teach you more about the indie scene.
Three weeks and a breakup with her mother later, after introducing her to a band called The Devil Wears Plaid and a lead singer calling himself Damien Storm, Bobby Something-or-Another became Bobby LeDeux, the good friend who'd taken on her musical education and the supervision of her involvement with 'men who are NOT good enough for you'.
At twenty-seven, Bobby LeDeux had become more of her father than her real father was.
~
She hadn't seen or heard from her father in five years until the night her mother came down to the jail to inform her that he was on his way down to deal with her, since Frances, I've had enough of this shit from you and it's your father's turn to deal with you now. She did not, however, think he knew that the catalyst behind her mother calling him was that she found out that Frances was planning to leave for California with Bobby LeDeux and Damien Storm, who'd enlisted her to sing in his new band, Magma (We're hotter than lava, babydoll!).
Really, she thinks her mother would have been rather eager to get rid of her that way if it had been anyone but Bobby LeDeux she was planning to go with.
Even before her parents divorced, Frances couldn't remember her father being around much after she turned eight or so. Her mother was fond of telling her and Ariana just before the divorce, Your father's job is more important to him than any of us are.
For a long time, Frances had interpreted that as, You should have been better.
She's less than surprised that his big 'let's talk about everything and have a fresh start' speech was put off in favor of his job. The fucking FBI was always more important than she was when she was little, why should that have changed any now?
The dumb thing, though, was that she hoped it had.
~
John Grant kind of reminded Frances of Bobby LeDeux in that attractive, older guy who didn't buy her line of bullshit but helped her anyway kind of way. She wanted to believe that maybe John could be her Atlanta Bobby LeDeux, since Bobby LeDeux was in L.A. and talking to him on a cell phone wasn't nearly as helpful as it would have been to have him there with his arm around her shoulders telling her that everything would work out fine and she should stop worrying so much.
So when she discovered that her father was apparently sick of her after less than a month, and he was planning to dump her off on a boarding school since her mother undoubtedly wouldn't take her back -- she pictured it kind of like a cartoon; You take her! No, you take her! I had her for nine years! -- Frances went to John's place.
Yeah, so okay, seeing him shirtless lifted her mood a bit. She was only human.
The thing was, Bobby LeDeux had taught her long ago that men who were good looking were always going to either want something from her or want something they needed to use her to get. Never trust a pretty face, sweetheart, Bobby LeDeux had told her after the bassist for Damn the Man! Save the Empire! asked her out for drinks. Especially one where you can't tell right away what he's after from you.
Bobby LeDeux's advice had never failed her.
Really, she should have been thinking more when John offered to help her if she needed it. She should have considered why the hell he would be interested in helping her at all, but she had been so blinded by her hope of finding an Atlanta Bobby LeDeux that she didn't want to see anything else.
Of course, God decided to pull the wool off her eyes in one quick movement.
Push came to shove, and John was calling her father to take her back home -- You take her! No, you take her! She's not MY daughter! -- and keep her annoying pleas for help away from him.
It was her own fault. She should have known better than to trust a pretty face.
~
She didn't know why she took the gun.
Maybe somewhere in her head, she knew that if it was just her leaving, her father would just say, 'We'll discuss it when I get home from work, Frances.' And then leave for three days on some case that was more important than she was.
He couldn't leave without his gun. He'd have to come find her first.
Of course, she should have known that his only priority would be finding the damn gun and not asking her why she was running away. Where's the gun, Frances? (I have to get to work. It's more important than dealing with you is.)
I found the brochure.
And he just kept ransacking the room looking for his god damn gun, because that was much more important than the fact she'd discovered he never wanted her in the first place and was shipping her off to some boarding school to get rid of her. And she remembered her mother's words as she packed for Atlanta and they were screaming at each other.
I got news for you: nobody's nominating you for mother of the year either!
He resents you. You just wait, Frances, within a month he'll be trying to get rid of you because you're in the way of his job! You were an accident, and deep down he always wished you had never happened so that he never had to get married and he could've stayed at his precious FBI twenty-four hours a day!
God, she hated it when her mother was right.
~
It all happened so fast that, looking back, she couldn't really distinguish what went wrong. One second she was begging him to at least send her back to her mother instead of shipping her away, and the next she turned and there was a noise so god damn loud she thought she was deaf for an instant and the look on her father's face as his shirt started turning red...
And then time went agonizingly slow.
She could hear someone pounding on the door, and slowly came to realize that it was the sound of her heart in her ears as her father collapsed to the ground, and the gun was burning her hand, and oh god she'd shot him.
Walking to the phone felt like that time when she was six and she'd tried to run at the bottom of the YMCA pool in the deep end, and in the muddled haze of her mind, she tried to think who to call. Call for help. But they'll say you did it on purpose and send you away.
She didn't realize until halfway through the phone call that the sobbing, hysterical voice was her own.
~
The very first person she called -- after Luc Fontaine, of course, who'd agreed to hide her temporarily while she tried to figure out what the fuck to do -- was Bobby LeDeux, because Bobby LeDeux was the only person she trusted aside from herself at the moment, and even her trust in herself was on shaky ground.
Bobby, I need help. I did something, but I didn't mean to. I swear to god I didn't mean to.
Calm down, sweetheart. Take a deep breath.
She'd leaned against the side of the pay phone booth, wondering why Bobby LeDeux couldn't have been her father, because if he was her father, none of this shit would have ever happened and she'd probably be living a happy, well-adjusted life in California right then.
And then she wanted to curse herself, because god, how could she be wishing she'd had a different father when she may have just killed the one she did have?
The story spilled out from her lips in a rush, and she must have said she didn't mean to do it another dozen times in the interim, and when she finished, Bobby LeDeux was quiet on the other end of the line for a long moment. Finally, he said, Well, kid, you sure don't do things half-assed, do you?
She couldn't help it. She'd started crying all over again.
Even as Bobby tried to soothe her from across the country, she knew with sheer clarity that her life had just ended and there was no fucking way anything was ever going to be normal again.
02. i said bleed it, bleed it, bleed it, there's nothing in you
As far back as she could remember, Frances dreamt in color so vivid and bright it almost hurt to see. Even when she was dreaming about something ordinary like walking down the hallway at school, the drab gray of the lockers and dingy off-white of the tile floor became gleaming silver and glowing white like there were tiny lights embedded in the colors.
Now she had nightmares of blood an unreal shade of red covering her hands, and no matter how hard she tried, she could never scrub them clean. She watched that same red spread over father's chest as he fell to the ground over and over, and no matter how many times she dreamt it, the scene never changed.
She woke up from one nightmare to find herself living another.
~
During her brief flirtation with goth, Frances remembered reading a poem about life and death that said hell was all in a person's head, and each person's hell was different based on their worst fears.
Frances's hell seemed to be all about being alone.
She didn't try to change it. She knew she deserved hell.
The strange thing was, she'd rather live hell on the streets fucking guys for favors than live hell in a cage somewhere. She figured that made her a little weak, not being able to face up to the harshest punishment for what she'd done.
Being a little weak had always been one of her problems.
~
Living on very little food for days at a time was nothing new to Frances.
For no other reason than sheer morbid curiosity, she'd had a habit of starving herself since she was fourteen. She wasn't anorexic, she told Bobby LeDeux when he found out about it and threatened to have her mother hospitalize her. She just wanted to know how long she could stand that gnawing, all-consuming pain in her stomach without giving in.
It was never about losing weight. It was just about being strong.
That's pretty fucked up, Frances, Bobby LeDeux had told her, and she knew he was serious because he called her Frances instead of 'sweetheart' or 'baby' or 'kid'. She could read his genuine concern in his eyes because he was a bad fucking liar and couldn't keep anything out of his face. And she felt that little pang in her heart again because this guy who didn't have any reason in the world to care about her was more concerned about her than her own parents were. Like you need to be in therapy level fucked up. Next thing you'll be telling me you cut yourself.
He had not been at all pleased to learn that she'd tried that, too.
~
She considered calling her father another form of punishment, something she absolutely did not want to do, but forced herself to do anyway. Really, what the hell could she possibly say to him that would make any difference? She'd fucking shot him.
But some tiny little part of her still wanted to hear his voice.
In the same vein, she didn't call Bobby LeDeux because Bobby LeDeux was comfort and safety and all the things she didn't deserve since she was supposed to be living hell for what she'd done.
The only person she'd called regularly that she considered neither punishment nor solace was her little sister, because even with her life such a complete and total mess, she couldn't bear the idea that Ariana would be worried about her. She called at least every other day, always when their mother was supposed to be at work, and assured her sister that she was still alive and she was fine.
Even though she wasn't sure she was either, to be perfectly honest.
She'd never bothered to tell Ariana not to say anything about her calls. She doubted Ariana would even speak to their father if he did want to ask her questions, and even if she did, she wouldn't be saying anything remotely cooperative.
It's like I have Frances and Frances Junior, their mother had said in exasperation just before Frances left, when Ariana responded to a demand to clean her room with a resounding, "Fuck off, Mom."
Ariana had just grinned at Frances, I kinda like being Frances-fucking-Junior.
~
After the first couple of weeks, the days started to melt into each other in a routine. A completely fucked-up routine, but a routine, nonetheless. Sleep a couple hours wherever she could. Get up. Find some random guy willing to help her out for the night in exchange for things she preferred not to actively think about.
She'd known from the start that she wouldn't be able to run forever. She'd known that sooner or later somebody would find her; she'd just figured it would be the cops since her father would be too busy with his precious job to really look for her.
You fucking shot him and you're criticizing him for not wanting to find you?
And then she turned around and he was there pleading with her to come home and he sounded so sincere that she wanted to believe him, and she knew even though she didn't, he was going to make her go anyway.
She knew better than to hope he'd keep his promise and get her out of this.
But deep-down, she almost wanted to.
~
03. i said leave it, leave it, leave it, it's nothing anyway
When Frances was five, her father said she was like a miniature version of her mother.
She still hadn't forgiven him for it.
The thing was, Frances was a lot like her mother and she damn well knew it. She'd inherited her mother's innate talent for being able to get under a person's skin and find the barbs that would cut the deepest. This talent was mostly used, by both the people who harbored it, against her father.
Really, she was trying so damn hard to be good now. She tried not to let herself say the sarcastic, cutting things that came to mind when she was angry. She didn't sneak out to go partying with her friends, and she came home on time every fucking night like a good girl.
Which made it all the worse when Detective Handleman pulled her out of class and told her that she'd better cooperate unless she wanted to spend the next twenty years in a prison cell. And she'd agreed because she just couldn't go to prison, even if she did probably deserve it.
And being a little weak was her problem again.
~
For as long as she could remember, Frances had always been a damn good liar. She'd thought about being an actress for a while since she was able to fool everybody into believing whatever she wanted them to, except for Bobby LeDeux and her sister, who both seemed to be able to see through the roles she played.
Her father, on the other hand, fell for the role every time.
She was not surprised she'd fooled him into believing she was sleeping with John Grant. She'd delivered a fucking beautiful performance considering she wanted to throw up because of what she was doing, but she'd never even flinched, never gave the slightest clue she didn't believe one-hundred percent what she was telling him.
The keys just clinched it for him.
She figured since she was already back to 'bad child' in his mind, she may as well cut third period and take some time to herself. Third period passed into fourth period, and by halfway through fifth period, she figured, why bother going back to school for just an hour?
Her father had been too busy at work to notice, anyway.
~
The first time her act fell apart halfway through, she had been completely unprepared for it. One minute she was doing fine playing the bad child, and then her father had started with his wanting to protect her speech, and god, she'd wanted so bad to believe it that her mask dropped.
Before she realized it, she had been spilling everything to him.
And then she was crying. And he was promising her that it was okay, everything was going to be okay.
Funny thing was, this time, she almost believed him.
~
Frances had never been too good at apologies. Mostly because the world was out to screw her one way or the other, so why bother saying she was sorry when in the end fate was going to make sure she got knocked down a peg anyway?
Saying that to John Grant probably wasn't the best way to start an apology, though.
Look, the point is, I'm sorry. Okay? I wouldn't have lied to my dad about you if he had threatened me with just about anything else, but he threatened me with prison and I just couldn't... I'm sorry, okay?
Okay, John had told her, but she could tell he was only saying it because he felt like he had to, and the sooner he got rid of her, the better as far as he was concerned.
She told herself it didn't hurt her feelings. She really wasn't in a place to take it personally considering what she'd almost caused.
But it kind of did.
~
The last time she saw her father smile at her with pride, she was twelve and had been chosen to read her essay on the reasons to say to no to drugs at a district-wide awards ceremony.
It was a little odd, a little twilight-zone, to see him doing it again.
She hadn't expected to actually get the scholarship when she applied for it. Writing had always been one of her strengths, and it was the one she'd actually put effort into developing since Bobby LeDeux had read a few of her poems and told her she should be writing song lyrics for the best bands in the area with that kind of talent.
But she still figured that her application essay would end up buried under other essays from girls who hadn't shot their fathers and were barely making the GPA to graduate on time. Essays from better girls, which wouldn't be hard to find since she was probably one of the worst and there wasn't much out there that could top her last year in the bad department.
Getting the scholarship was a little like winning the lottery. It took her a few hours to convince herself that it had actually happened and it wasn't just some big joke on her. And weirdly enough, after calling Bobby LeDeux with the good news, she was actually eager to go see her father and tell him.
When she told him, he smiled at her like he did when she won the spelling bee or when she read her essay in front of the whole school-district. He smiled at her like he was proud of her. But then he brought up how the probation wouldn't let her leave, and she found herself asking again, Can't you fix it?
And this time, she found herself believing him when he said he would.
Fandom: Profiler
Character: Frances Malone
Word Count: 3,576
Rating: R
Summary: Being a little weak had always been one of her problems.
Warnings: Hard core angst, naughty language, self-loathing and violence, disturbing thoughts on life on the streets, an unflattering portrait of Janet Malone as a mother, and a general lack of humorous hijinx.
Notes: For lisew. Happy Holidays from your Secret Santa! Many thanks to empty_marrow for betaing.
01. so fuck you, fuck you, fuck you and all you didn't do
By her second week in Atlanta, Frances wanted to go home to Baltimore. This had nothing to do with wanting to see her mother again, but rather wanting the freedom her mother gave her to fuck up her life as she saw fit. She didn't realize how much she took the little things for granted until she had to start living with her father and she couldn't have them anymore.
There was something strangely comforting about sitting at the kitchen table at two in the morning eating Doritos and drinking watermelon-flavored vodka while playing five card draw and chit-chatting with your mother's boyfriend of the moment. Especially since her mother had an unerring tendency to pick boyfriends that were less than ten years older than Frances herself was.
Marilyn Manson is all shock-rock, the latest in line, Bobby Something-or-Another had argued as he glanced down at his cards and grimaced. Bobby Something-or-Another was not the best poker player of the lot, Frances determined after the first hand. She almost felt sorry for the poor sucker since she had been a better liar at age three than he was at twenty-seven. Even you have to admit that the music doesn't measure up to the hype.
Maybe not, Frances had agreed and gave nothing of her two-pair hand away as she tossed another five in the middle of the table, increasing her obvious winnings to thirty bucks off this hand. But it's still better than the pop shit on the radio lately.
If that's your only standard, sweetheart, we're going to have to teach you more about the indie scene.
Three weeks and a breakup with her mother later, after introducing her to a band called The Devil Wears Plaid and a lead singer calling himself Damien Storm, Bobby Something-or-Another became Bobby LeDeux, the good friend who'd taken on her musical education and the supervision of her involvement with 'men who are NOT good enough for you'.
At twenty-seven, Bobby LeDeux had become more of her father than her real father was.
~
She hadn't seen or heard from her father in five years until the night her mother came down to the jail to inform her that he was on his way down to deal with her, since Frances, I've had enough of this shit from you and it's your father's turn to deal with you now. She did not, however, think he knew that the catalyst behind her mother calling him was that she found out that Frances was planning to leave for California with Bobby LeDeux and Damien Storm, who'd enlisted her to sing in his new band, Magma (We're hotter than lava, babydoll!).
Really, she thinks her mother would have been rather eager to get rid of her that way if it had been anyone but Bobby LeDeux she was planning to go with.
Even before her parents divorced, Frances couldn't remember her father being around much after she turned eight or so. Her mother was fond of telling her and Ariana just before the divorce, Your father's job is more important to him than any of us are.
For a long time, Frances had interpreted that as, You should have been better.
She's less than surprised that his big 'let's talk about everything and have a fresh start' speech was put off in favor of his job. The fucking FBI was always more important than she was when she was little, why should that have changed any now?
The dumb thing, though, was that she hoped it had.
~
John Grant kind of reminded Frances of Bobby LeDeux in that attractive, older guy who didn't buy her line of bullshit but helped her anyway kind of way. She wanted to believe that maybe John could be her Atlanta Bobby LeDeux, since Bobby LeDeux was in L.A. and talking to him on a cell phone wasn't nearly as helpful as it would have been to have him there with his arm around her shoulders telling her that everything would work out fine and she should stop worrying so much.
So when she discovered that her father was apparently sick of her after less than a month, and he was planning to dump her off on a boarding school since her mother undoubtedly wouldn't take her back -- she pictured it kind of like a cartoon; You take her! No, you take her! I had her for nine years! -- Frances went to John's place.
Yeah, so okay, seeing him shirtless lifted her mood a bit. She was only human.
The thing was, Bobby LeDeux had taught her long ago that men who were good looking were always going to either want something from her or want something they needed to use her to get. Never trust a pretty face, sweetheart, Bobby LeDeux had told her after the bassist for Damn the Man! Save the Empire! asked her out for drinks. Especially one where you can't tell right away what he's after from you.
Bobby LeDeux's advice had never failed her.
Really, she should have been thinking more when John offered to help her if she needed it. She should have considered why the hell he would be interested in helping her at all, but she had been so blinded by her hope of finding an Atlanta Bobby LeDeux that she didn't want to see anything else.
Of course, God decided to pull the wool off her eyes in one quick movement.
Push came to shove, and John was calling her father to take her back home -- You take her! No, you take her! She's not MY daughter! -- and keep her annoying pleas for help away from him.
It was her own fault. She should have known better than to trust a pretty face.
~
She didn't know why she took the gun.
Maybe somewhere in her head, she knew that if it was just her leaving, her father would just say, 'We'll discuss it when I get home from work, Frances.' And then leave for three days on some case that was more important than she was.
He couldn't leave without his gun. He'd have to come find her first.
Of course, she should have known that his only priority would be finding the damn gun and not asking her why she was running away. Where's the gun, Frances? (I have to get to work. It's more important than dealing with you is.)
I found the brochure.
And he just kept ransacking the room looking for his god damn gun, because that was much more important than the fact she'd discovered he never wanted her in the first place and was shipping her off to some boarding school to get rid of her. And she remembered her mother's words as she packed for Atlanta and they were screaming at each other.
I got news for you: nobody's nominating you for mother of the year either!
He resents you. You just wait, Frances, within a month he'll be trying to get rid of you because you're in the way of his job! You were an accident, and deep down he always wished you had never happened so that he never had to get married and he could've stayed at his precious FBI twenty-four hours a day!
God, she hated it when her mother was right.
~
It all happened so fast that, looking back, she couldn't really distinguish what went wrong. One second she was begging him to at least send her back to her mother instead of shipping her away, and the next she turned and there was a noise so god damn loud she thought she was deaf for an instant and the look on her father's face as his shirt started turning red...
And then time went agonizingly slow.
She could hear someone pounding on the door, and slowly came to realize that it was the sound of her heart in her ears as her father collapsed to the ground, and the gun was burning her hand, and oh god she'd shot him.
Walking to the phone felt like that time when she was six and she'd tried to run at the bottom of the YMCA pool in the deep end, and in the muddled haze of her mind, she tried to think who to call. Call for help. But they'll say you did it on purpose and send you away.
She didn't realize until halfway through the phone call that the sobbing, hysterical voice was her own.
~
The very first person she called -- after Luc Fontaine, of course, who'd agreed to hide her temporarily while she tried to figure out what the fuck to do -- was Bobby LeDeux, because Bobby LeDeux was the only person she trusted aside from herself at the moment, and even her trust in herself was on shaky ground.
Bobby, I need help. I did something, but I didn't mean to. I swear to god I didn't mean to.
Calm down, sweetheart. Take a deep breath.
She'd leaned against the side of the pay phone booth, wondering why Bobby LeDeux couldn't have been her father, because if he was her father, none of this shit would have ever happened and she'd probably be living a happy, well-adjusted life in California right then.
And then she wanted to curse herself, because god, how could she be wishing she'd had a different father when she may have just killed the one she did have?
The story spilled out from her lips in a rush, and she must have said she didn't mean to do it another dozen times in the interim, and when she finished, Bobby LeDeux was quiet on the other end of the line for a long moment. Finally, he said, Well, kid, you sure don't do things half-assed, do you?
She couldn't help it. She'd started crying all over again.
Even as Bobby tried to soothe her from across the country, she knew with sheer clarity that her life had just ended and there was no fucking way anything was ever going to be normal again.
02. i said bleed it, bleed it, bleed it, there's nothing in you
As far back as she could remember, Frances dreamt in color so vivid and bright it almost hurt to see. Even when she was dreaming about something ordinary like walking down the hallway at school, the drab gray of the lockers and dingy off-white of the tile floor became gleaming silver and glowing white like there were tiny lights embedded in the colors.
Now she had nightmares of blood an unreal shade of red covering her hands, and no matter how hard she tried, she could never scrub them clean. She watched that same red spread over father's chest as he fell to the ground over and over, and no matter how many times she dreamt it, the scene never changed.
She woke up from one nightmare to find herself living another.
~
During her brief flirtation with goth, Frances remembered reading a poem about life and death that said hell was all in a person's head, and each person's hell was different based on their worst fears.
Frances's hell seemed to be all about being alone.
She didn't try to change it. She knew she deserved hell.
The strange thing was, she'd rather live hell on the streets fucking guys for favors than live hell in a cage somewhere. She figured that made her a little weak, not being able to face up to the harshest punishment for what she'd done.
Being a little weak had always been one of her problems.
~
Living on very little food for days at a time was nothing new to Frances.
For no other reason than sheer morbid curiosity, she'd had a habit of starving herself since she was fourteen. She wasn't anorexic, she told Bobby LeDeux when he found out about it and threatened to have her mother hospitalize her. She just wanted to know how long she could stand that gnawing, all-consuming pain in her stomach without giving in.
It was never about losing weight. It was just about being strong.
That's pretty fucked up, Frances, Bobby LeDeux had told her, and she knew he was serious because he called her Frances instead of 'sweetheart' or 'baby' or 'kid'. She could read his genuine concern in his eyes because he was a bad fucking liar and couldn't keep anything out of his face. And she felt that little pang in her heart again because this guy who didn't have any reason in the world to care about her was more concerned about her than her own parents were. Like you need to be in therapy level fucked up. Next thing you'll be telling me you cut yourself.
He had not been at all pleased to learn that she'd tried that, too.
~
She considered calling her father another form of punishment, something she absolutely did not want to do, but forced herself to do anyway. Really, what the hell could she possibly say to him that would make any difference? She'd fucking shot him.
But some tiny little part of her still wanted to hear his voice.
In the same vein, she didn't call Bobby LeDeux because Bobby LeDeux was comfort and safety and all the things she didn't deserve since she was supposed to be living hell for what she'd done.
The only person she'd called regularly that she considered neither punishment nor solace was her little sister, because even with her life such a complete and total mess, she couldn't bear the idea that Ariana would be worried about her. She called at least every other day, always when their mother was supposed to be at work, and assured her sister that she was still alive and she was fine.
Even though she wasn't sure she was either, to be perfectly honest.
She'd never bothered to tell Ariana not to say anything about her calls. She doubted Ariana would even speak to their father if he did want to ask her questions, and even if she did, she wouldn't be saying anything remotely cooperative.
It's like I have Frances and Frances Junior, their mother had said in exasperation just before Frances left, when Ariana responded to a demand to clean her room with a resounding, "Fuck off, Mom."
Ariana had just grinned at Frances, I kinda like being Frances-fucking-Junior.
~
After the first couple of weeks, the days started to melt into each other in a routine. A completely fucked-up routine, but a routine, nonetheless. Sleep a couple hours wherever she could. Get up. Find some random guy willing to help her out for the night in exchange for things she preferred not to actively think about.
She'd known from the start that she wouldn't be able to run forever. She'd known that sooner or later somebody would find her; she'd just figured it would be the cops since her father would be too busy with his precious job to really look for her.
You fucking shot him and you're criticizing him for not wanting to find you?
And then she turned around and he was there pleading with her to come home and he sounded so sincere that she wanted to believe him, and she knew even though she didn't, he was going to make her go anyway.
She knew better than to hope he'd keep his promise and get her out of this.
But deep-down, she almost wanted to.
~
03. i said leave it, leave it, leave it, it's nothing anyway
When Frances was five, her father said she was like a miniature version of her mother.
She still hadn't forgiven him for it.
The thing was, Frances was a lot like her mother and she damn well knew it. She'd inherited her mother's innate talent for being able to get under a person's skin and find the barbs that would cut the deepest. This talent was mostly used, by both the people who harbored it, against her father.
Really, she was trying so damn hard to be good now. She tried not to let herself say the sarcastic, cutting things that came to mind when she was angry. She didn't sneak out to go partying with her friends, and she came home on time every fucking night like a good girl.
Which made it all the worse when Detective Handleman pulled her out of class and told her that she'd better cooperate unless she wanted to spend the next twenty years in a prison cell. And she'd agreed because she just couldn't go to prison, even if she did probably deserve it.
And being a little weak was her problem again.
~
For as long as she could remember, Frances had always been a damn good liar. She'd thought about being an actress for a while since she was able to fool everybody into believing whatever she wanted them to, except for Bobby LeDeux and her sister, who both seemed to be able to see through the roles she played.
Her father, on the other hand, fell for the role every time.
She was not surprised she'd fooled him into believing she was sleeping with John Grant. She'd delivered a fucking beautiful performance considering she wanted to throw up because of what she was doing, but she'd never even flinched, never gave the slightest clue she didn't believe one-hundred percent what she was telling him.
The keys just clinched it for him.
She figured since she was already back to 'bad child' in his mind, she may as well cut third period and take some time to herself. Third period passed into fourth period, and by halfway through fifth period, she figured, why bother going back to school for just an hour?
Her father had been too busy at work to notice, anyway.
~
The first time her act fell apart halfway through, she had been completely unprepared for it. One minute she was doing fine playing the bad child, and then her father had started with his wanting to protect her speech, and god, she'd wanted so bad to believe it that her mask dropped.
Before she realized it, she had been spilling everything to him.
And then she was crying. And he was promising her that it was okay, everything was going to be okay.
Funny thing was, this time, she almost believed him.
~
Frances had never been too good at apologies. Mostly because the world was out to screw her one way or the other, so why bother saying she was sorry when in the end fate was going to make sure she got knocked down a peg anyway?
Saying that to John Grant probably wasn't the best way to start an apology, though.
Look, the point is, I'm sorry. Okay? I wouldn't have lied to my dad about you if he had threatened me with just about anything else, but he threatened me with prison and I just couldn't... I'm sorry, okay?
Okay, John had told her, but she could tell he was only saying it because he felt like he had to, and the sooner he got rid of her, the better as far as he was concerned.
She told herself it didn't hurt her feelings. She really wasn't in a place to take it personally considering what she'd almost caused.
But it kind of did.
~
The last time she saw her father smile at her with pride, she was twelve and had been chosen to read her essay on the reasons to say to no to drugs at a district-wide awards ceremony.
It was a little odd, a little twilight-zone, to see him doing it again.
She hadn't expected to actually get the scholarship when she applied for it. Writing had always been one of her strengths, and it was the one she'd actually put effort into developing since Bobby LeDeux had read a few of her poems and told her she should be writing song lyrics for the best bands in the area with that kind of talent.
But she still figured that her application essay would end up buried under other essays from girls who hadn't shot their fathers and were barely making the GPA to graduate on time. Essays from better girls, which wouldn't be hard to find since she was probably one of the worst and there wasn't much out there that could top her last year in the bad department.
Getting the scholarship was a little like winning the lottery. It took her a few hours to convince herself that it had actually happened and it wasn't just some big joke on her. And weirdly enough, after calling Bobby LeDeux with the good news, she was actually eager to go see her father and tell him.
When she told him, he smiled at her like he did when she won the spelling bee or when she read her essay in front of the whole school-district. He smiled at her like he was proud of her. But then he brought up how the probation wouldn't let her leave, and she found herself asking again, Can't you fix it?
And this time, she found herself believing him when he said he would.