Disclaimer: It should be noted that this document is a work of fanfiction and therefore any recognizable characters, events, ect. do not belong to me.
Song: She's a Rainbow by The Rolling Stones
Like A Rolling Stone
Chapter One: She's a Rainbow
She comes in colors ev'rywhere
…
She's like a rainbow
Coming, colors in the air
Oh, everywhere
She comes in colors
The year is 1965; it starts and ends on a Friday. Music is purchased on vinyl in old record stores with worn booths where people rock out behind shaded windows, perched on cracked leather chairs. All the boys in grammar school pass around the football in their front yards and swear that they'll grow up to be just like Joe Namath, the richest rookie in pro-football history at the time. The mini skirt makes its way across the English seas to the US; it is the fashion statement for girls of the sixties. Across more treacherous oceans the conflict in Vietnam worsens while within the town of Tulsa Oklahoma the self proclaimed Socs and Greasers wage their own war.
She comes in colors ev'rywhere;
She combs her hair
She's like a rainbow
Coming, colors in the air
Oh, everywhere
She comes in colors
A girl rides down a busted strip of road that divides the North and Southside, tempting fate. Her hand hangs out the open window, sun-lightened brunette hair catching in the wind drift, the Rolling Stone's Heart of Stone playing on the radio. She doesn't wear one of those mini skirts that are oh-so popular for the time; though, she has plenty in her drawers at home. She wears a worn pair of jeans shorts, the ends fraying, a dark dyed cotton tank-top tucked into them where they sit high on her hips. A Levi's logo marks the cut-off's brand; a few seems are torn from the label so that the bottom corner twists upward.
Have you seen her dressed in blue?
See the sky in front of you
And her face is like a sail
Speck of white so fair and pale
Have you seen a lady fairer?
She comes in colors ev'rywhere
The sky is the color of just before sunset, a heavy blue like letting go. It contrasts deeply with the stark neon chrome of the open sign that hums in the Dingo's front window. A group of teens stands in an empty parking spot outside the front door, smoke twisting upward from the blunt ends of their cigarettes. The girl can smell it as the wind creases through her front window; she tilts her head back and lets the musty air gather in her lungs.
The car moves heavily, the seat pulled far from the foot pedals so that she must perch on the edge and brake with a stiff knee. The rearview mirror shows only the sky, and the way pink and orange seep into the sunset; either of her side mirrors reflect only cracked concrete and equally broken adolescent bodies passing by. The crowd of teens dressed all in jean and leather scatter as the girl in the car with the debatable view maneuvers the machine forward and into the some-what open spot. One boy leans forward from his safety on the curb, palm slamming down on the hood of the car. The girl slams her own palm down upon the center of the steering wheel, the horn blaring steady and loud—much as the brunette herself may be described—and turning heads. Girls like her often make a habit of such things.
She combs her hair
She's like a rainbow
Coming, colors in the air
Oh, everywhere
She comes in colors
Fingers raking through the bangs of her hair, she locks the door of the car, but leaves the windows down. A smooth body, deceptively whole among the shattered teens, sifts through the broken pieces toward the steady and loud brunette girl that makes a habit of turning heads.
Her friend does too.
"Angie, Doll," the brunette drawls, keys dangling in her hands and making ugly music in the air.
"What the fuck did I tell about calling me Angie, Ruby?" The brunette girl—Ruby—tosses her head back in a laugh, that same hair catching in the wind and spinning around her shoulders like the turmoil that clouts these times.
Angela Shepard is a sharp girl with spikes for heels at the backs of her shoes. She is every contradiction, all red lips and black hair like Snow White but with none of the innocence. The color of her nail polish is gunmetal gray, the same dull sheen as the weapon that the officers pack when they wield their injustice.
Have you seen her all in gold?
Like a queen in days of old
She shoots her colors all around
Like a sunset going down
Have you seen a lady fairer?
She comes in colors ev'rywhere
"Jack let you drive his car," Angela raises her eyebrow—narrow and sharp as the rest of her face—and Ruby cannot tell if the other girl is impressed or shocked. Perhaps both.
"Yeah," Ruby leans back against the vehicle as the sunset falls apart and scatters the last of its bloody light across the golden paint job, and Ruby, too, blends in with this mosaic of liquid gold and strewn jewels, "Steve had fixed it up at the DX so I brought it on down." She shrugs but there are more words resting upon the tension of her shoulders. They are words neither girl reads into; that's simply not something you do on this side of town.
A whistle cuts through the air, on time with the dawn of the first star in the descending twilight. He carries the night with him on a dark leather jacket—Jack Fonder—the light of the stars skirting around his eyes to keep his lashes dark, a brim upon the abyss. He smirks like the devil and kisses like one too.
Ruby sighs over these empty kisses, her lips reddened and true to her name. Jack's hand skims over the bare skin of Ruby's shoulder, eyes looking past her. They always do. "You didn't scratch the paint job didya' babe?" His eyes reflect in the windowpane, so dark they are almost black.
"Nah," she hooks an arm behind his neck, hand gripping the back collar of his leather jacket as the other dips into the front pocket of his jeans, "Stevie and I took real good care of it." She procures a little white box full of lung cancer and sins, pulls out a stick, and lights death herself off Saint Agnes' coin that hangs on a chain around Jack Fonder's neck, much like the girl.
"Good," Jack, runs a hand smoothly through his greased hair, leather slidding just as slick below his wrist to show the tattoo on the inside of his forearm. "I'm hittin' the drags this weekend." His finger warps the strap of Ruby's tank top, skimming below fabric and upon sun hot skin that holds the after glow of careless summer days. "I know how you like it when I got fast," he murmurs, too loud, still, dirty things to say in a crowd. Ruby's lashes flutter, like a butterfly on the wind.
She combs her hair
She's like a rainbow
Coming, colors in the air
Oh, everywhere
"Sure thing, hon'." Ruby takes a long drag from her cigarette, words a long sigh that carries her freedom on its breath, and uses her spare hand to pull on the length of brown that hangs by her ears, strands of dragging golden hair. Their bodies press closer together by her pull, jean on jean, and cotton were it strains.
"Mmm," Angela hums long and low in the back of her throat, "Virginia's gonna be there." Jack tosses his head back, taking in all of Angela: the talon nails and strip of bare skin between skirt and crop top. Instantaneously, the couple's closeness falls away.
"Yeah," Ruby says, dropping the ashy end of her fag and smothering the final drags with the toe of her shoe, white little things that show stains easy. Angela never keeps white clothes for that very reason; she's not quite sure how Ruby keeps them clean. "But Jane'll be there too and she digs okay."
"Yeah, alright."
"Besides, Stevie's racin'." Ruby smiles with a fleeting look that comes natural to her, slow movements that take longer to build than they do to pass. Her eyes are wide, a rim of brown like caramel whisky before they darken. They hold a gamble in them as though she's rocking the die in her hand.
"What, and you think your brother wants you there taggin' along?" Angela crosses her arms, chest heaving outward in a show of affliction or maybe just attention; it's an act she has learned gains the boy's eyes.
Ruby smirks lazily; it is as if she isn't really meaning to but can't find it in herself to regret the action. "Well shoot, Angi, just because your brothers don't want you hangin' around…"
"I just know where I ought to be and where I ain't."
"Shut up," Jack says, his words sharp but the lines of his face curving in gentle slops, a solid line across his jaw, and a wallop where his nose had been broken, one twice, three times. "Shepard just don't want ya whoring around with his boys."
Angela raises a finger, the metallic fire of her nails glinting in the muggy light of the Dingo's storefront. She'll pull the trigger, too; Angie has the guts to do it. She's a Shepard. "What the hell do you think you're saying, Fonder?" Her teeth are bared, white, crooked in the back, and as sharp as a shark's. You can see the pulse beneath the sweet skin at her neckline, throbbing heart covered in dripping perfume.
Jack crosses his arms behind his head where he and Ruby have disentangled, his sleeve dipping at dangerous levels once again, and revealing the perilous black glint of his tattoo. And when he grins it is disquieting and holds none of the hazy good nature as the girl with the heart of gold and the dice in her hands did. "I think you know exactly what I'm sayin'."
But when the abyss speaks—words of territory, and depthless fire—there is no way to know what is sincere. None of it may be. This is the simple answer we wish for but never the one we receive. And doubt is potent, an oppressive musk that asphyxiates the lungs with black powder and tears.
Ruby laughs, her nose crinkling under the pressure of such an undertaking, a stifling tension that leaves all others unaware, even herself. "You're always wanted here, Angie, Doll."
"The fuck did I tell you about callin' me Angie?" Angela narrows her eyes, blue things that retain the light even after it has passed.
Ruby puckers her lips, head tilting to the side. The look is innocent. She is a child. "I think you fucking told me to stop." The curse sounds guiltless as it passes her lips, a dagger coated in honey, and the sweetness lingers on her tongue long enough for Jack Fonder to swipe it away.
"I think you owe me a shake." Angela sways her hips, movements stirring the stagnant air. When she pulls open the door to the Dingo, metal and slick with teenage sweat and midsummer's night's precipitation, a blast of cool air curls their toes.
Jack grasps Ruby's hip, a sharp squeeze against her side through denim. "Grab me a soda, wouldya babe?" He follows Angela to a booth and moves with his own swagger, no swaying hips but a strut all the same.
"Jane," Ruby greets the girl at the counter: long torso, and wide hips, a curtain of lengthy blonde hair that curled under the acid treatment she gave it. She wears the uniform of a pink dress and a dirty apron, the bow had come undone so that it clings to her body only by the loop around her neck, gaping pocket full of napkins and straws.
Ruby taps the counter with the short end of her nail, clicking noise against the cheap plastic counter, sticky with soda and poor pickup lines. "Two shakes—strawberry and vanilla, and a coke."
"I can do that," Jane gives a tired grin, the smile that has only her heart and none of the hope. The smile of a girl who has lost more than she has gained. Ruby's just not quite sure what her cost is.
"That'll be a dollar twenty-five please." Ruby dishes out the cash, copper pennies catching the yellow light of the eatery and mixing with the silver color of the quarters and dimes. They roll together, from the warm pocket and comfort of blue lint to the plastic container of the cash register, a fast exchange.
White and pink and brown, she holds each color in her hand. The soda fizzling, she can feel the carbonation at the back of her throat without tasting it. The shakes are so thick that they do not even slosh with her movements across the room. And the girl with the three colors in her hands moves with an almost skip. It is as though she is stepping through a field of flowers rather than a sullied room with heavy teen bodies and heavy teen fears. The colors of the diner clash, black and dirty white, the sweet pink of the strawberry shake, and the sheen of red vinyl. And Ruby moves through this all, a blur of her own colors, an overflow of careless thought, a rainbow of rapid blush, a rushing of blood through veins. One may only hope that she does not lose her shine.
She comes in colors
She's like a rainbow
Coming, colors in the air
Oh, everywhere
She comes in colors