man, i like sullen girls...
Hi, new friends and old friends. *waves* It's nice to have you all around, y'know? If you want, there's an intro post here, if you're interested. Feel free to comment on said intro post despite the fact that it's from ages ago, and ask questions or tell me I've got odd taste in books or comics or whatever. I can take it. Or tell me that we have something in common so we can ramble about it at length. (This goes for old friends, too, okay? I feel I don't ramble enough with you people.)
Also, I was trying to get myself to write something (didn't work, for the record, but I'm soldiering on) and I found this original fic and, well, I kind of like it? Even though I have no idea where it's going, and it's just about a friendship. I say "just" because it doesn't seem very creative at all, does it? It's my aim to be able to write teenage fiction that is a) plausible, especially in dialogue, and b) doesn't suck. By which I mean that it avoids the usual cliches and the characters feel like real people, not stereotypes.
Lyric and Trip are complete opposites, but they are closer than two peas in a pod, as Lyric’s mother is fond of saying. Trip’s mother doesn’t say anything when they visit her in the cemetery and lie over her grave - which is entirely understandable - but Trip thinks she’d probably say something along the lines of ‘You two are so close it’s unnatural.’ Which is certainly not as cutesy as Lyric’s mother, but is also very true. Where Lyric is round and soft, motherly, Trip is all hard, sharp edges, seemingly always angry. Lyric comes from a trailer park and has always been a bit of a flower child (her parents almost named her Sunrise) whereas Trip lives in a big house and her father is never around. Lyric is tan and freckled, days spent in the sun, whereas Trip is pale and gaunt, her insomnia taking over her appearance.
Their lives together are made up of moments, the ways that they meet and learn and love over time; chronicles of a friendship between two people who are so confused and disjointed that their story could only be the same way. Lyric and Trip met in summer, on a muggy day when the dust was everywhere and Lyric was walking barefoot along the train tracks, feet burning on the metal. She didn’t know how long she walked for, but suddenly Trip was there, sitting on an old ratty paisley couch and biting her nails. And that’s the first thing that Lyric noticed about Trip - the nail biting - along with the fact that she had her nails painted black, and there were all these little flakes swirling through the air as she chewed off the polish.
“Does it ever make you sick?” Lyric asked, because she is just so impulsive sometimes, and there it was: the first thing she ever said to Trip.
“Nah,” Trip said, shaking her head and looking deadly serious for a moment before grinning. “Never.” She spat out a couple flakes from her mouth, liquid seeping into the dust at her feet, and then she wiped her hands on her black skirt. When she stood up, Lyric noticed how tall Trip was; she was quietly cataloguing everything about Trip, because Trip was different and interesting and Lyric is an observer by nature anyways. Lyric didn’t want the second thing she ever said to Trip to be ‘You’re tall,’ so she kept her mouth shut. “Aren’t your feet hot?” Trip asked, cocking her head to the side a little and smirking at her.
“Yes,” Lyric replied. “No.”
And Trip just nodded like it made perfect sense, and Lyric realized that it didn’t matter if she said something stupid, because there’d be plenty of time to say deep, profound things later. “You’re pretty tall,” she said, tilting her head to mirror Trip’s. When Trip didn’t answer at first, just grinned back at her, Lyric thought for a second. “But it could just be the boots.”
Trip had the most awesome boots Lyric had ever seen, and she never noticed shoes, because she never wore them. They were big, black boots that laced up past her knees and it looked as if Trip could stomp on the whole world if she wanted to. “A bit of both,” Trip replied. “It’s pretty hot, huh?”
“Yeah,” Lyric replied. “But if you’re only capable of discussing the temperature, then I don’t know if this is going to be particularly stimulating conversation.” Lyric had surprised herself, talking to Trip for the first time. She wasn’t usually so bold, so blunt, so rude. Her mother would have been suitably ashamed.
But Trip only laughed. “If you’re only capable of talking about me and my fashion choices, I’m not so certain I want to talk to you either.”
“Well,” Lyric said, trying to look serious and come up with a better topic of conversation. “Fair enough.”
“Do you want to sit, or walk?” Trip asked, gesturing down the tracks in the direction Lyric had been walking.
“Too hot to sit,” Lyric replied, talking a cautious step on the track.
“Too hot to walk,” Trip retorted, and Lyric gave a shrug in response. Lyric isn’t quite sure how they spent the rest of the afternoon, because it’s gotten fuzzy in her mind (as good memories often do), mixed with all the memories she has of Trip for the rest of that summer. Hot summer days spent walking through the dust, talking about everything and anything, trying not to think about school starting again in September.
September came in a flurry of school supplies, in long days looking through office supply stores and picking out whatever it was the school said they needed.
“We are not getting the Peter Pan pencil case,” Trip chastises Lyric as she holds up the pink-and-green case.
“We are not getting anything,” Lyric replies, but puts it back anyways. “Spider-man, then?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Trip says, and pulls out an all-black pencil case with a small brand name in the corner. Lyric gives her a questioning look. “We’ll scratch it out,” Trip assures her. It will never cease to amaze Trip just how well they know each other, after only one summer and so many meaningless conversations in the summer haze.
“We need two pencil cases anyways,” Lyric says, and tucks the Spider-man pencil case into her basket. “Get the black one, and we’ll get one of those silver markers to write on it with.”
“You have enough money for this?”
“No, but you do,” Lyric replies with a grin, and turns into the next aisle, presumably to find the marker. Trip sighs, rolls her eyes at no one; her father is rich, and Lyric’s mother isn’t, and Trip is going to pay for school supplies. She wants to help Lyric, and she knows that even something as stupid as paying for two pencil cases makes Lyric all happy inside, so she’s going to do it. Trip’s already picking at the label on the corner of the pencil case as she follows Lyric around to the next aisle.
“Do you like shopping for these things?” Trip demands, noting the silver pen nestled on top of the Spider-man pencil case in Lyric’s basket.
Lyric shrugs, grabs a package of blue and black pens. “Do we need more than this?”
“No,” Trip says, and puts a pack of pencils into the basket. She eyes the label of the pen package carefully. “Thirty-two should be enough.”
“Yeah,” Lyric says, placing them with the marker. Trip looks away from the geometry sets to note a bright smile on Lyric’s face.
“You’re pretty weird, you know?”
“Yeah,” Lyric replies, grinning, and then grabs her arm. “Notebooks?”
“All right,” Trip sighs again, but allows herself to be pulled along just the same.
*****
It’s three weeks into school, cold air whipping around them as they walk aimlessly through the streets, neither particularly willing to head home.
“Chicken?” Trip asks, breaking a silence they’ve held for the twenty minute walk away from school.
Lyric nods. “Again.”
“Chicken’s not bad,” Trip shrugs, even though she knows it is and it’s a stupid thing to say.
“No,” Lyric sighs, sticking her hands in the deep pockets of her dress resignedly. “Not really bad. At least I’m eating.”
“Don’t give me the poor starving children in Africa speech again,” Trip scoffs, and Lyric grins at her.
“’Kay. I’ll spare you.”
“Thank goodness,” Trip breathes. “Off the subject of chicken…”
“Hungry?” Lyric asks, stops long enough for Trip to adjust her fishnets.
“Always,” Trip nods.
“We could stop in at that coffee shop before you catch the bus home. Maybe.” Lyric looks ahead, seemingly deep in thought. “Homework?”
“Nothing I can’t blow off,” Trip shrugs, and catches the disapproving look from Lyric. “We’re only three weeks in - none of it’s really important.”
“It’s all important,” Lyric chastises, but her heart’s not really in it. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go get some food; maybe a hot chocolate.” She changes route, heads up a hill towards the main streets and that coffee shop they both love.
Trip follows her, loving the smell of autumn and the crunch of leaves under her feet.
***
It’s not long after that, when all the trees are bare but they’re not quite into winter yet, they fight for the first time. It’s a moment that will always stand out in Lyric’s mind, because it was the first time they didn’t have an easy give-and-take, and intuitive feeling about the other’s thoughts and wishes. It starts out simply enough, quietly, a regular discussion that just happens to push buttons.
“I feel like I’m always playing the Cameron to your Ferris,” Lyric brings up one day as they rake leaves in Trip’s front lawn. It’s sprawling, large, and there are gardeners to do it, but they’ve both decided it’s a quintessential part of childhood they both missed out on, and should probably experience at least once.
“You’re not that cool,” Trip responds automatically, and then thinks about it for a second. “Neither am I.”
“No, maybe not,” Lyric agrees, grabbing a handful of leaves and piling them into a bag. “But personality types. You’re the front-runner, the personality. I’m the follower, easily swayed, a quiet personality.”
“Quiet yet unexpected,” Trip corrects. “But I don’t know if that’s true. Sometimes you’ve got…Sometimes you’re more self-aware than I am. Sometimes I play the Cameron to your Ferris.”
“Not around other people,” Lyric retorts, and Trip can hear the irritation in her voice, but she doesn’t know why.
“What’s wrong?” Trip asks, stopping the methodical raking and looking over at Lyric. She’s working fast, steadily, face set. She looks so cold and mean when she’s trying not to show her feelings, and it completely contrasts with the way she looks so soft and full of life with the sun coming through the trees and shining off her hair.
“I just…We don’t fit in. And that’s okay, mostly, but sometimes you fit in just because you don’t, really, but I’m not out there enough to fit in through…Being uncool,” Lyric attempts to explain, rushing out her words and continuing her work. She’s frustrated, Trip can tell; she can’t find the words and it drives her insane to not be able to articulate her feelings.
“Okay…” Trip says, confused, trying to work out why a discussion about an 80s movie turned them onto this.
“Sometimes I really hate it, just not fitting in, and only having you, and then you fit in with all sorts of people who think you’re cool just because you don’t try to fit in. And I don’t try to fit in either, but it’s like I’m not not trying hard enough…So I don’t get noticed. I’m just that weird chick who no one really notices or cares about.”
“You draw less attention,” Trip replies with a shrug, “It’s a good thing.” She realizes instantly it was the wrong thing to say, that nonchalance is not what Lyric is searching for.
Lyric stops working, drops the pile of leaves she was holding, and then throws them at Trip. “It’s not a good thing. And you wouldn’t know, because you always draw attention.”
Lyric leaves, walks home, presumably, even though they live far, far apart. Trip stands in the leaves for a while, leaves the job to be finished by the gardeners, and thinks about Lyric. Trip may be the dominant personality to everyone else, but Lyric is the stable rock in their friendship. And Trip can’t find a 80s movie analogy to match that for about a week - because Ferris and Cameron just don’t work for them - but when she does she finds Lyric and tells her.
“So, okay, sometimes I’m Ferris,” Trip says, sitting down beside her at lunch one day. A week of having barely anyone to talk to has made this moment all the more important. “Sorry.”
“Yeah,” Lyric says. “It’s okay. I get it. Cameron and Ferris worked so well together anyways because they were so different, and played off each other so well.”
“Exactly,” Trip replies, tries not to let it show that she’s incredibly excited that Lyric understands that she is just being her, and not trying to take the spotlight, ever. Lyric offers her an almond, and they begin a discussion about work and the people they go to school with and their parents, and it’s like nothing ever happened.
******
“I dislike teenagers,” Lyric says one day, sitting at lunch and picking at her carrot sticks.
“That’s a bit hypocritical of you,” Trip replies, opening a pack of M&Ms and offering them to Lyric.
Lyric only ever takes the brown ones. “It’s not hypocritical, really. I mean, by definition I hate myself, yeah, but you know that’s not the point.” She abandons her carrot sticks in favour of chocolate which is, in Trip’s opinion, the right course of action.
“Yeah, I know,” Trip replies, shakes the bag a little. She looks up and out at the field where different groups are seated, taking advantage of the good weather. “They suck. We suck.”
Lyric nods. “Lying, backstabbing, gossiping, flirting, despicable human beings.”
“Sore point?” Trip smirks, and Lyric glares at her.
“I am sick of all of them, and how selfish they are. All the time.” Lyric reaches for the bag again, and dumps them all out into her skirt. Then she picks through them, pulling out all the brown ones. She flashes Trip a smile. “It’s just easier this way.”
Trip nods, grabs a red one as Lyric sorts the piles. “My only goal for high school is to escape unscathed.”
“And after that?” Lyric looks up, curious, because they’ve never really discussed The Future before, and here it is.
Trip shrugs, grins, rolls her eyes all at once. “Take over the world, of course.”
“Of course,” Lyric nods, and dumps Trip’s pile on her black skirt.
“Seriously,” Trip says, eyes wide. “I will rule the world.”
“Horrifying thought,” Lyric supplies, and Trip grins.
“Crazy that they say these are the best years of our lives,” Trip responds, letting her gaze wander over her classmates again. Skaters, stoners, stoner-skaters, art students, punks, preps, party preps, straight-A preps, jocks, nerds, geeks, theatre people, theatre people who are still popular, emos, people who base their opinions of others solely on music choices, slutty girls, players, popular girls who might be nice if only they weren’t popular…
Lyric snorts. “Best years…Right. I’m not buying it.”
“Just make it through unscathed,” Trip says. “That’s all we have to do. After that, things get better.”
“Stay gold, is what you’re saying?” Lyric asks, throws it out there, and Trip grins at her.
“Stay gold, Ponyboy,” Trip nods, and Lyric laughs.
“They almost ruined it for me when we had to study it in English,” Lyric says, finishes the last of her M&Ms.
“But then you watched Emilio Estevez all young-looking in it, and the world was well again?”
“Obviously.”
“Obviously.”
All the usual apologies for not keeping up with my flist, and all the usual love just because you're you.
Also, I was trying to get myself to write something (didn't work, for the record, but I'm soldiering on) and I found this original fic and, well, I kind of like it? Even though I have no idea where it's going, and it's just about a friendship. I say "just" because it doesn't seem very creative at all, does it? It's my aim to be able to write teenage fiction that is a) plausible, especially in dialogue, and b) doesn't suck. By which I mean that it avoids the usual cliches and the characters feel like real people, not stereotypes.
Lyric and Trip are complete opposites, but they are closer than two peas in a pod, as Lyric’s mother is fond of saying. Trip’s mother doesn’t say anything when they visit her in the cemetery and lie over her grave - which is entirely understandable - but Trip thinks she’d probably say something along the lines of ‘You two are so close it’s unnatural.’ Which is certainly not as cutesy as Lyric’s mother, but is also very true. Where Lyric is round and soft, motherly, Trip is all hard, sharp edges, seemingly always angry. Lyric comes from a trailer park and has always been a bit of a flower child (her parents almost named her Sunrise) whereas Trip lives in a big house and her father is never around. Lyric is tan and freckled, days spent in the sun, whereas Trip is pale and gaunt, her insomnia taking over her appearance.
Their lives together are made up of moments, the ways that they meet and learn and love over time; chronicles of a friendship between two people who are so confused and disjointed that their story could only be the same way. Lyric and Trip met in summer, on a muggy day when the dust was everywhere and Lyric was walking barefoot along the train tracks, feet burning on the metal. She didn’t know how long she walked for, but suddenly Trip was there, sitting on an old ratty paisley couch and biting her nails. And that’s the first thing that Lyric noticed about Trip - the nail biting - along with the fact that she had her nails painted black, and there were all these little flakes swirling through the air as she chewed off the polish.
“Does it ever make you sick?” Lyric asked, because she is just so impulsive sometimes, and there it was: the first thing she ever said to Trip.
“Nah,” Trip said, shaking her head and looking deadly serious for a moment before grinning. “Never.” She spat out a couple flakes from her mouth, liquid seeping into the dust at her feet, and then she wiped her hands on her black skirt. When she stood up, Lyric noticed how tall Trip was; she was quietly cataloguing everything about Trip, because Trip was different and interesting and Lyric is an observer by nature anyways. Lyric didn’t want the second thing she ever said to Trip to be ‘You’re tall,’ so she kept her mouth shut. “Aren’t your feet hot?” Trip asked, cocking her head to the side a little and smirking at her.
“Yes,” Lyric replied. “No.”
And Trip just nodded like it made perfect sense, and Lyric realized that it didn’t matter if she said something stupid, because there’d be plenty of time to say deep, profound things later. “You’re pretty tall,” she said, tilting her head to mirror Trip’s. When Trip didn’t answer at first, just grinned back at her, Lyric thought for a second. “But it could just be the boots.”
Trip had the most awesome boots Lyric had ever seen, and she never noticed shoes, because she never wore them. They were big, black boots that laced up past her knees and it looked as if Trip could stomp on the whole world if she wanted to. “A bit of both,” Trip replied. “It’s pretty hot, huh?”
“Yeah,” Lyric replied. “But if you’re only capable of discussing the temperature, then I don’t know if this is going to be particularly stimulating conversation.” Lyric had surprised herself, talking to Trip for the first time. She wasn’t usually so bold, so blunt, so rude. Her mother would have been suitably ashamed.
But Trip only laughed. “If you’re only capable of talking about me and my fashion choices, I’m not so certain I want to talk to you either.”
“Well,” Lyric said, trying to look serious and come up with a better topic of conversation. “Fair enough.”
“Do you want to sit, or walk?” Trip asked, gesturing down the tracks in the direction Lyric had been walking.
“Too hot to sit,” Lyric replied, talking a cautious step on the track.
“Too hot to walk,” Trip retorted, and Lyric gave a shrug in response. Lyric isn’t quite sure how they spent the rest of the afternoon, because it’s gotten fuzzy in her mind (as good memories often do), mixed with all the memories she has of Trip for the rest of that summer. Hot summer days spent walking through the dust, talking about everything and anything, trying not to think about school starting again in September.
September came in a flurry of school supplies, in long days looking through office supply stores and picking out whatever it was the school said they needed.
“We are not getting the Peter Pan pencil case,” Trip chastises Lyric as she holds up the pink-and-green case.
“We are not getting anything,” Lyric replies, but puts it back anyways. “Spider-man, then?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Trip says, and pulls out an all-black pencil case with a small brand name in the corner. Lyric gives her a questioning look. “We’ll scratch it out,” Trip assures her. It will never cease to amaze Trip just how well they know each other, after only one summer and so many meaningless conversations in the summer haze.
“We need two pencil cases anyways,” Lyric says, and tucks the Spider-man pencil case into her basket. “Get the black one, and we’ll get one of those silver markers to write on it with.”
“You have enough money for this?”
“No, but you do,” Lyric replies with a grin, and turns into the next aisle, presumably to find the marker. Trip sighs, rolls her eyes at no one; her father is rich, and Lyric’s mother isn’t, and Trip is going to pay for school supplies. She wants to help Lyric, and she knows that even something as stupid as paying for two pencil cases makes Lyric all happy inside, so she’s going to do it. Trip’s already picking at the label on the corner of the pencil case as she follows Lyric around to the next aisle.
“Do you like shopping for these things?” Trip demands, noting the silver pen nestled on top of the Spider-man pencil case in Lyric’s basket.
Lyric shrugs, grabs a package of blue and black pens. “Do we need more than this?”
“No,” Trip says, and puts a pack of pencils into the basket. She eyes the label of the pen package carefully. “Thirty-two should be enough.”
“Yeah,” Lyric says, placing them with the marker. Trip looks away from the geometry sets to note a bright smile on Lyric’s face.
“You’re pretty weird, you know?”
“Yeah,” Lyric replies, grinning, and then grabs her arm. “Notebooks?”
“All right,” Trip sighs again, but allows herself to be pulled along just the same.
*****
It’s three weeks into school, cold air whipping around them as they walk aimlessly through the streets, neither particularly willing to head home.
“Chicken?” Trip asks, breaking a silence they’ve held for the twenty minute walk away from school.
Lyric nods. “Again.”
“Chicken’s not bad,” Trip shrugs, even though she knows it is and it’s a stupid thing to say.
“No,” Lyric sighs, sticking her hands in the deep pockets of her dress resignedly. “Not really bad. At least I’m eating.”
“Don’t give me the poor starving children in Africa speech again,” Trip scoffs, and Lyric grins at her.
“’Kay. I’ll spare you.”
“Thank goodness,” Trip breathes. “Off the subject of chicken…”
“Hungry?” Lyric asks, stops long enough for Trip to adjust her fishnets.
“Always,” Trip nods.
“We could stop in at that coffee shop before you catch the bus home. Maybe.” Lyric looks ahead, seemingly deep in thought. “Homework?”
“Nothing I can’t blow off,” Trip shrugs, and catches the disapproving look from Lyric. “We’re only three weeks in - none of it’s really important.”
“It’s all important,” Lyric chastises, but her heart’s not really in it. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go get some food; maybe a hot chocolate.” She changes route, heads up a hill towards the main streets and that coffee shop they both love.
Trip follows her, loving the smell of autumn and the crunch of leaves under her feet.
***
It’s not long after that, when all the trees are bare but they’re not quite into winter yet, they fight for the first time. It’s a moment that will always stand out in Lyric’s mind, because it was the first time they didn’t have an easy give-and-take, and intuitive feeling about the other’s thoughts and wishes. It starts out simply enough, quietly, a regular discussion that just happens to push buttons.
“I feel like I’m always playing the Cameron to your Ferris,” Lyric brings up one day as they rake leaves in Trip’s front lawn. It’s sprawling, large, and there are gardeners to do it, but they’ve both decided it’s a quintessential part of childhood they both missed out on, and should probably experience at least once.
“You’re not that cool,” Trip responds automatically, and then thinks about it for a second. “Neither am I.”
“No, maybe not,” Lyric agrees, grabbing a handful of leaves and piling them into a bag. “But personality types. You’re the front-runner, the personality. I’m the follower, easily swayed, a quiet personality.”
“Quiet yet unexpected,” Trip corrects. “But I don’t know if that’s true. Sometimes you’ve got…Sometimes you’re more self-aware than I am. Sometimes I play the Cameron to your Ferris.”
“Not around other people,” Lyric retorts, and Trip can hear the irritation in her voice, but she doesn’t know why.
“What’s wrong?” Trip asks, stopping the methodical raking and looking over at Lyric. She’s working fast, steadily, face set. She looks so cold and mean when she’s trying not to show her feelings, and it completely contrasts with the way she looks so soft and full of life with the sun coming through the trees and shining off her hair.
“I just…We don’t fit in. And that’s okay, mostly, but sometimes you fit in just because you don’t, really, but I’m not out there enough to fit in through…Being uncool,” Lyric attempts to explain, rushing out her words and continuing her work. She’s frustrated, Trip can tell; she can’t find the words and it drives her insane to not be able to articulate her feelings.
“Okay…” Trip says, confused, trying to work out why a discussion about an 80s movie turned them onto this.
“Sometimes I really hate it, just not fitting in, and only having you, and then you fit in with all sorts of people who think you’re cool just because you don’t try to fit in. And I don’t try to fit in either, but it’s like I’m not not trying hard enough…So I don’t get noticed. I’m just that weird chick who no one really notices or cares about.”
“You draw less attention,” Trip replies with a shrug, “It’s a good thing.” She realizes instantly it was the wrong thing to say, that nonchalance is not what Lyric is searching for.
Lyric stops working, drops the pile of leaves she was holding, and then throws them at Trip. “It’s not a good thing. And you wouldn’t know, because you always draw attention.”
Lyric leaves, walks home, presumably, even though they live far, far apart. Trip stands in the leaves for a while, leaves the job to be finished by the gardeners, and thinks about Lyric. Trip may be the dominant personality to everyone else, but Lyric is the stable rock in their friendship. And Trip can’t find a 80s movie analogy to match that for about a week - because Ferris and Cameron just don’t work for them - but when she does she finds Lyric and tells her.
“So, okay, sometimes I’m Ferris,” Trip says, sitting down beside her at lunch one day. A week of having barely anyone to talk to has made this moment all the more important. “Sorry.”
“Yeah,” Lyric says. “It’s okay. I get it. Cameron and Ferris worked so well together anyways because they were so different, and played off each other so well.”
“Exactly,” Trip replies, tries not to let it show that she’s incredibly excited that Lyric understands that she is just being her, and not trying to take the spotlight, ever. Lyric offers her an almond, and they begin a discussion about work and the people they go to school with and their parents, and it’s like nothing ever happened.
******
“I dislike teenagers,” Lyric says one day, sitting at lunch and picking at her carrot sticks.
“That’s a bit hypocritical of you,” Trip replies, opening a pack of M&Ms and offering them to Lyric.
Lyric only ever takes the brown ones. “It’s not hypocritical, really. I mean, by definition I hate myself, yeah, but you know that’s not the point.” She abandons her carrot sticks in favour of chocolate which is, in Trip’s opinion, the right course of action.
“Yeah, I know,” Trip replies, shakes the bag a little. She looks up and out at the field where different groups are seated, taking advantage of the good weather. “They suck. We suck.”
Lyric nods. “Lying, backstabbing, gossiping, flirting, despicable human beings.”
“Sore point?” Trip smirks, and Lyric glares at her.
“I am sick of all of them, and how selfish they are. All the time.” Lyric reaches for the bag again, and dumps them all out into her skirt. Then she picks through them, pulling out all the brown ones. She flashes Trip a smile. “It’s just easier this way.”
Trip nods, grabs a red one as Lyric sorts the piles. “My only goal for high school is to escape unscathed.”
“And after that?” Lyric looks up, curious, because they’ve never really discussed The Future before, and here it is.
Trip shrugs, grins, rolls her eyes all at once. “Take over the world, of course.”
“Of course,” Lyric nods, and dumps Trip’s pile on her black skirt.
“Seriously,” Trip says, eyes wide. “I will rule the world.”
“Horrifying thought,” Lyric supplies, and Trip grins.
“Crazy that they say these are the best years of our lives,” Trip responds, letting her gaze wander over her classmates again. Skaters, stoners, stoner-skaters, art students, punks, preps, party preps, straight-A preps, jocks, nerds, geeks, theatre people, theatre people who are still popular, emos, people who base their opinions of others solely on music choices, slutty girls, players, popular girls who might be nice if only they weren’t popular…
Lyric snorts. “Best years…Right. I’m not buying it.”
“Just make it through unscathed,” Trip says. “That’s all we have to do. After that, things get better.”
“Stay gold, is what you’re saying?” Lyric asks, throws it out there, and Trip grins at her.
“Stay gold, Ponyboy,” Trip nods, and Lyric laughs.
“They almost ruined it for me when we had to study it in English,” Lyric says, finishes the last of her M&Ms.
“But then you watched Emilio Estevez all young-looking in it, and the world was well again?”
“Obviously.”
“Obviously.”
All the usual apologies for not keeping up with my flist, and all the usual love just because you're you.