Welcome to an entirely new AU Clique-verse. This story takes place in the fictional town of Westchester, Texas, which is about an hour outside of Houston, Texas. This Texan Massie is a green-eyed beauty and has a russet-furred boxer named Bean as opposed to a little black pug.
Ignore your qualms. Come read and review.
(This is a repost of a story I originally wrote in July of 2009, but modified and expanded upon for maximum quality.)
The moon wasn't quite high enough in the sky yet, and the sun hadn't fully set. The heavens were a shade of blue that sixteen-year-old Massie Block could never quite find in real life. Stars had not completely peppered the sky yet, but she could spot a few. Any structure that pressed against the scenic twilight had been shadowed black by the disappearing sun.
It was nice to know that this time of day looked the same in White Plains, New York as it did back home.
"A Coca-Cola, as per your request, Miss Block," Skye Hamilton's raspy, Miley Cyrus-esque voice teased. Massie lifted her emerald green eyes to Skye's Tiffany blue gaze and gladly took the Coke. It came, as Massie disappointedly noticed, in a plastic bottle with a plastic cap, not the glass-bottled kind she knew well.
"So," Skye began as she lowered herself into a padded lawn chair, clad in a teal Snuggie. "What brings you to White Plains, Massie?"
"You know that," Massie sighed, rolling her bright eyes. "Your dad hired my dad and it required us to pack up and move out here."
"No, silly," Skye sighed, a bit exasperated. "What's your story?"
"My story?" Massie repeated, her carefully plucked brows scrunching together in confusion.
"It's in your eyes, Massie. I know just as well as you do that you do not want to be here."
"Of course I want to be here, Skye! I haven't seen you since I was ten!"
Skye slammed down her Coke—diet, of course. "What's his name?"
Massie gave her old friend a small smile and pulled her down-filled Abercrombie jacket tighter around her shoulders.
"It's not a getting away story, but a wanting-to-come-back story. And it starts on cul-de-sac on Carolayne Drive in Westchester, Texas when I dumped mud down Derrick Harrington's best pair of shorts when I found out that he was trying to kiss Olivia Ryan in the bushes."
Massie paused, reached into the pocket of her teeny-tiny blue and white plaid shorts and pulled out a real Coke bottle cap—the red metal kind with loopy white script on the top. The kind you had to pull off with a bottle opener, therefore causing a small dent in the little piece of metal. Skye carefully plucked it out of Massie's tanned fingers.
"We had gotten 'married' the week before: he liked me, I liked him, our moms were book club buddies, blah blah blah. But the moment I found out that there was another girl in the picture, I ditched him, and we've been worst enemies ever since. When there were carnivals at the local elementary schools, he wouldn't just crack confetti eggs on my head; he'd throw the shards at me and cut up my legs and arms. When we played Capture the Flag at recess, I wouldn't just snatch the flag from him, I'd tackle him and pummel his face into the dirt. We were in a fierce competition and we didn't even know why.
"I think the worst was when he found out that Chris Plovert—you saw him on Facebook, right?—and I started going out in 8th grade. He asked me out over Gmail. It wasn't the classiest way to do it, but I was positively ecstatic. Derrick, however…"
Massie turned toward the light and flipped her side bangs (she'd kept them even though Dylan Marvil had proclaimed them as "so 2007") away from her upper forehead. A jagged, one-inch scar rested near her hairline.
"He said it was an accident, but it's kind of hard to 'accidentally' hit somebody in the face with a badminton racket. I forgave him in time. Well, actually, I think I hit him in the nose with my locker door. Anyway, Chris never did. And he never will.
"The story ends at a Save the Waves benefit I held in the Westin Galleria ballroom in Houston, Texas. It was something stupid I had to do for National Charity League, but everyone loves an excuse to get into the society pages in Paper City instead of just a little write-up in the Houston Chronicle. Chris told me something that he was sworn to secrecy on, but I can never quite keep a secret. I went and spilled my merlot all over Derrick's good dress pants and told him that we needed to talk, and we needed to talk now."
"Well?" Skye prompted Massie. "What was the secret? And what did Derrick say?"
Massie held out her palm. Skye dropped the bottle cap back into her waiting hands.
"I suppose there's a little more you should know about my story before we go into that. You see, Westchester, Texas may only have three thousand people living within its limits, but we're just as dramatic as any private school in Houston or White Plains. After all, we're in closer confines than y'all are."