SUMMARY: "I'm your only female friend," she said with a giggle that made her eyes squint to almost a slit… But she was right …as she always was… She was his only female friend, and, without competition, she was the prettiest.
WEIRDO BLABBS: I was so caught up with school work that I couldn't work on my Fairy Tail Fanfiction and the rest of my writing (and my life—I blame procrastination). Recently, I've been so inspired by Meet the Robinsons and by Franny and Cornelius' love story that I just had to write a story for them (I am sorry, Gray and Lucy). Coincidentally, Jason Mraz's 'Prettiest Friend' caught my oh-so-sensitive ears and I was like, "That would have been so Cornelius, had they made a movie of his and Franny's love story." And so, here you have it. ENOUGH CHIT-CHAT! Go on to the FLUFF!
IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED THE MOVIE: Meet the Robinsons is a 2007 by Disney. It's a really great story of hard work and if you haven't watched the movie yet, I suggest you do. If you don't you'll be missing a huge chunk of your Disney life!
DISCLAIMER: Alas, I could not pay Disney enough cash to buy rights to Meet the Robinson…
MY PRETTIEST FRIEND
Chapter One: This is What I Look Like Today
Lewis watched, disinterested, at all of the teens that passed him by, some girls even making more-or-less quick glances at him. Their glances were easy to read, too. All his years spent in his brown spectacles and spiky, anti-gravity blonde hair with matching white shirt under a blue sweater vest, red pants and brown shoes made him capable of categorizing glances into two: (a) a glance of ridicule because he obviously gave out the air of science geek, and (b) a glance of curiosity and query at how his five-or-so-inch hair could stand up without any product—a wonder indeed. A third category had been added a few years back when his Memory Scanner invention was covered for the local paper: the look of utter amazement at the kid who'd been dubbed a one-in-a-million science prodigy.
He sighed and grabbed a Party Planet cap hesitantly and wore it to cover his hair. Glasses and sweater vests did very little on women, let alone spiky anti-gravity hair. Since when he started caring about women, though, he couldn't remember. When he was twelve, he saw them as just homo sapiens all the same, feminine counterparts of males to fulfil the law of balance. But now, at nineteen, Cornelius Robinson was fully aware that women were like equations every genius wanted to solve: so complex, so intriguing, so—
"Cornelius! Oh, Cornelius!"
So loud, he thought, chuckling. The high-pitched voice that of his mother's registered in the young inventor's eardrums and he immediately spun from whence it came.
To his right, from the direction that led to the Midtown University Genetics Laboratory, came his mother, Dr. Lucille Krunklehorn-Robinson, with black curls bouncing as she walked towards him in a tip-toe fashion. His adopted mother had been requested to speak in a lecture about heredity and genes there at Midtown University. Being the gracious woman that she is, Dr. Krunklehorn obliged and she even took Lewis with her to give him a tidbit of how it looked to be a college student in your teens since when the boy went to college, he was still twelve and even graduated university at an early age of fourteen.
He didn't want to come at first but then Lewis had nothing better to do since he had reached a sort of inventor's block. He had left his laboratory that morning to accompany his mother and to let the problem incubate in his genius of a brain to eventually find a solution later.
"Hey, mom…" he greeted. He offered to take the small box she was carrying from her and put it inside the car behind him. "How'd the lecture go?"
"Oh, it's fine," she said and even waved her hand in the air as she laughed. She made a quick comment about his hat before continuing, "It's strange, though, that as technology progresses, people's minds seem to regress."
"Ah, kids weren't too quick to listen to your lectures," he concluded and opened the passenger seat for his mother. He chuckled a manly chuckle; time sure had changed the way he sounded, taking away the feminine voice and replacing it with a deep baritone, "Were they freshmen?"
His mother nodded. "Hey, guess who I found?"
"Who?"
Lucille stepped aside and from behind her came a petite girl with raven black hair that had been tied to a neat pigtail but with bangs that were strangely pointing upward as if defying gravity—just like Lewis'. She was wearing a Midtown University shirt and a black skirt that fell by her knees with fashionable grace. She stepped closer to Lewis in her black doll shoes and waved her free hand at him, her other hand clutching a binder.
"Hi, Lewis!"
"Franny!" the boy genius exclaimed, trying hard not to let too much excitement out; he even thought hard whether or not to hug her. In the end, he decided as fast as lightning that he shouldn't. He forgot that she went to Midtown University. "It's good to see you!"
"It's good to see you, too!" Franny greeted back and smacked palms with him as they used to do when they still saw each other frequently—and that was a long time ago. "You're wearing a hat with a pink and white unicorn… over your hair…"
"Uh… yeah…" he answered sheepishly. "I like wearing hats…"
"You're lying, I can tell…" she said, "When we were kids, you didn't like wearing things over your smart head." Franny smiled and brought her binder close to her chest. "How long has it been?"
"I don't know… Around six years, I think?" he said and did a mental calculation. He never really finished grade school and his parents didn't bother sending him to high school. College doors were opened for him right after he started making a name for himself.
Franny sighed. "Yeah… After you left Joyce Williams, I rarely saw you…" She paused, let the reminiscing linger for a while and then continued. "How're things going with the inventing?"
"Great! InventCo has been very generous to me," he explained. "And Frankie and the frogs?"
This time, the girl sighed rather sadly but with a smile, "Not working too well. I tried the operant conditioning but they ended up with bloated stomachs… I can't seem to get them to sing a proper tone that actually existed on the piano…"
This was a good time to laugh and comfort her, and that was exactly what Lewis did. "Well, like I always say… Keep moving forward! Just tell me if I can help you in any way…" The teen scratched the back of his neck unconsciously and his eyes sparkled with a bashful glint.
"Thanks, I'll keep you posted," she smiled simply… beautifully, in fact. Then, Franny's smile turned into a giggle. "I can't take you seriously with that hat."
Now, why does that sound familiar? Lewis smiled, "Oh? Why not?"
"I'm not used to it, I guess," she said. "I don't even know why you'd want to cover your hair, Lewis."
"It gives away my inventor identity," he joked, "My hair being anti-gravity and all that… It's… weird, don't you think?"
Franny scoffed, "Oh, puh-lease. You don't have to worry about what people say about how you look!"
This time, Lewis scoffed. "Easy for you to say… I mean, you're a girl…"
"Who also has anti-gravity ebony locks!" she laughed and emphasized. "My point is… You look great with your hair so… don't try to hide it…"
Franny took the hat of carefully and lousily tried to fix his hair. "See?" she said shyly, their gazes locking, "I like it better this way."
And Lewis now pondered when she started to look less like a girl and more like a woman. Sure, she had her manly mannerisms and demeanour but her feminine beauty seemed to overpower the man in her. Her pretty brown eyes batted their eyelids at Lewis and the smile she'd worn with her naturally pink lips was just…
"Wow…" Dang! It took him a moment too long to realize he had just said that out loud. A blush rose from his gut to the tip of his ears and covered the space of his teenage cheeks.
Franny jerked in surprise, too, and a slight blush adorned her cheeks as well. The hand she'd kept in his hair immediately shot right back down to clutch her binder. "What do you mean, 'wow'?"
"I mean… Er…" Boy genius was tongue-tied as he usually was with beautiful dames. "Just that I was thinking… You just might be the nicest female friend I have…" His shyness could not be hidden by the bold front he'd tried to conjure. In fact, the bold front was not working and Franny smiled as she looked at him with suspicious eyes.
"I'm your only female friend," she said with a giggle that made her eyes squint to almost a slit. The girl gave him a hearty pat on the shoulder using only around fifty percent of her strength (were she to use a hundred percent of it, Lewis will suffer a bruised arm).
"That's not true," he argued lovingly. "I'm friends with Mildred and Lizzy and Sarah and Joanne…"
"Yes, of course you are, boy genius," she said rolling her eyes, "Of course you are…"
But she was right, though, as she always was. He'd named names of girls but they weren't exactly his 'friends'. Mildred was, as far as he knew, his second mother, or one he somewhere close to being an aunt, after taking care of him for more than twelve years. Lizzy was not someone he'd considered a friend just yet; he doesn't remember a conversation with her that didn't included threats of violence, virus and voodoo. Sarah and Joanne were names he'd randomly said… which brought him back to Franny. She was his only female friend, and, without competition, she was the nicest (and prettiest).
"So, um… Do you still have classes after this?" Lewis asked to get the air clear of any awkward moment that threatened to start.
"Oh… um… I took a music course so yeah… At three," Franny replied and gestured to the street clock that read one-thirty-eight in the afternoon.
"That's cool," he commented. "Uhm… But it's still early… Do you… want to maybe grab a snack with me? Or…"
Franny giggled at the offer. "I'd love to, Lewis—"
"Great! Let's—"
"But you know, your mother is up asleep again," the girl motioned and cocked her head to Lewis' mother's direction. Lucille had fallen asleep while standing up again; she'd been awake for ten days straight now and Lewis was wondering whether or not his mother's caffeine patch actually worked for her or maybe her tolerance was increasing to a terribly high level.
Lewis blushed and tried hard not to cover both eyes (and spectacles) with his now huge nineteen-year-old hands like he were still twelve. He just laughed sheepishly and replied, "Right… Sorry… Maybe we can do that another day…"
"Mm-hmm," Franny smiled. "See you later, Lewis…"
Lewis looked back at her whilst he let his mother in on the passenger seat of the car, successfully seating her and strapping the seatbelt on without waking her up. "Yeah, I'd like that…"
The raven-haired girl started to walk away but her brown eyes never left his blue ones. The way she walked backwards was as graceful as if she were dancing and the blond inventor was practically awe-struck looking at her.
Franny Framagucci, eighteen, a freshman at Midtown University. She knew karate and made it her life's mission to teach frogs how to sing.
She was Cornelius Robinson's friend.
And she was his prettiest friend.
WEIRDO BLABBS: Weeeeeeell? What do you guys think? I'm thinking of catching a few lines of the song (still not mine) and turning them into chapter titles. I don't know, though, how long this FanFic will take… Hope I can get back to writing 'Starstuck!' soon. Thank you for reading and I hope you leave reviews and comments!
