AN: This started out as an original story, but a friend told me I should change the character names and make it a Spashley fic. She was probably kidding, but I thought it was a good idea. Anyway, just tell me what you think.
Penny for Her Thoughts
It starts tonight at midnight. She was never much of a daytime person, so I'm waiting. Waiting, because she never could. She could never wait around for happiness. She decided to chase after it, but she went about it in the wrong way.
It is the first of November. Last night was Halloween. Last night was the night my best friend killed herself.
I know what you're thinking. Oh, poor kid. Right? Right, well I don't need your pity yet because it hasn't exactly hit me. I mean, I saw her. I saw her in that bathtub the same time that her sister did. I should've reacted the same way that her sister did. But I couldn't—I just couldn't bring myself to cry for a girl I didn't know anymore.
The memorial starts tonight at midnight. Be there.
-
Once, back in junior high, she saved my life. That was before we really cared about each other as anything more than fellow human beings. It might be a funny story to tell, if I didn't have a scar on my forearm from her claw-like fingernails, and if she hadn't died last night. But it's not like you see the scar, and it's not like you knew her before she died, so I'll tell it anyway, and I hope you laugh.
Please laugh.
We were having one of those awful pep rallies in the gym, and of course, back then, she was on the cheerleading squad, and I was in pep band. Much to my misfortune, I played the tuba. I really should have been paying closer attention to that huge chunk of brass, but really, what could happen to a tuba? You should probably ask Brittney Jenkins that question. She is the one who knocked my tuba over, after all, which sent me running in a frantic haze down the bleachers, which led to me falling down the bleachers, which led to a dogpile of band geek, tuba, and cheerleaders on the gym floor.
Guess who broke my fall?
Needless to say, Spencer Carlin didn't exactly love me back then, and I have two fishhook shaped scars on my arm to prove it. In the dogpile, she claimed to be suffocating, and she claimed it was my fault. So she clawed her way out. That's how Spencer always dealt with things. Clawed her way out.
-
Obviously this book is already screwed up, because I'm having to tell Spencer's story instead of my own, and I started with what should've been the ending. Anyway, I'm just warning you now. Don't expect a happy ending from this book, but don't expect a sad one. Don't expect tragedy, don't expect comic relief. Well, maybe you should expect a little bit of that last one. But my point is that I don't know what to expect from this book. Neither should you.
I guess it's also pretty screwed up that I'm expecting you to care that Spencer killed herself, but you know nothing about her other than the fact that she should probably trim her fingernails. So you want to know about her?
Here it goes.
-
She dyed her hair once a month. Every third Monday of the month, she dyed her hair and cut it in a different style. Always. That was the only thing she ever did like clockwork. Clockwork wasn't for Spencer. Not that it was for me, either. I wasn't thrilled about living the same life everyday—but remember, this isn't about me.
Spencer.
She was five feet, four inches tall. She was skinny. She was one of those girls whose bones poked out because of the lack of meat attached, but she was also one of the girls who everybody wanted to be. To be honest, even I wanted to be Spencer Allyn Carlin at some point in time. A very small point in time, but a point all the same.
She wore knee-length cargo shorts a lot, with big pockets and Velcro, and she got away with the school's usually strict "no tank tops" dress code. That wasn't the only rule she broke, but I'm trying to make you like her, not be scared of her, so I'll keep a few things to myself for a while. Just for a little while though. Don't lose your patience just yet.
Like I said, Spencer used to be a cheerleader, but that ended in ninth grade when the school got rid of the cheerleading program. Most of the former cheerleaders stopped participating in athletics altogether and got fat and started partying. Spencer joined the dance team, the volleyball team, the color guard, and the chess team. But she was already into partying, so not much changed there. She played the piano, too, but I was the only one besides her parents and her teacher who ever knew that. And she liked to fly kites. Climb trees. Run through cotton fields when nobody was around. Yeah, she was crazy.
That's what they're going to think now, anyway.
-
Spencer and I knew each other for a while before we considered each other friends. She moved to my town in fifth grade, and everybody knew her. But I generally wasn't friends with the people at my school. I had a lot of friends from the next town over, Mountain Home, from my softball team, and I really wasn't interested in talking to anyone else. It's probably a good thing that Spencer decided to become a bigger part of my life when she did, because I quit softball shortly after that and was left with no other friends.
For freshman year, I was the art teacher's aide in fourth period Drawing I, which Spencer ended up taking, much to her displeasure. I really didn't do much as the aide, other than wash paint brushes and do inventory on supplies every once in a while. So Montgomery, the art teacher, had me help out some students who would've failed otherwise. Spencer was one of those students, but she didn't really care.
On one of the first days in class, I sat beside her at one of the big black drawing tables and asked if she needed help with the still life she was working on. She said yes, of course, so I did my best to help. I tried telling her that she was drawing what she knew instead of what she saw, which is why her picture of a bowl full of apples looked more like a poorly drawn cartoon rather than what it was. But Spencer wasn't an artist, and she didn't claim to be, so I tried not to hold her accountable for the fact that the sketch in front of us was absolutely terrible. She was staring at the paper for longer than it should take to realize how bad it was, but I really didn't know what to say to bring her out of her daze. So I tried using my artistic charm and sketched out a penny on a scrap of paper.
"Penny for your thoughts?" I asked, making her jump and glance my way.
"Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about how much I hate this class." She laughed and started sketching again. "I don't even have any friends in here."
When I was silent, she apologized quickly. "Sorry. I've never talked to you much before. I didn't know if you'd consider us friends or not."
"No." I pressed my tongue against the roof of my mouth and made a clicking noise. "No, I wouldn't."
"But we could be, right?"
"Yeah, I'm sure we could be."
"Good. Now, how about you turn me into da Vinci or Picasso or someone equally brilliant in art?"
"I might be able to manage Andy Warhol, if you get a sex change." I smiled and hoped she knew who Andy Warhol was.
She didn't. Oh God, she had no clue who Andy Warhol was. I couldn't help but laugh. Poor girl. Before we could make much progress, the bell rang. I stood to leave, not really planning on saying goodbye, but she grabbed my arm to stop me.
"Well, Ashley, if we're going to be best friends, we're going to have to exchange phone numbers."
Best friends? I was pretty sure I had never signed up for that, but I gave her my number anyway.
That was my first mistake, if I ever made one. I'm not sure if I ever did.
