character/pairing: Rachel Elizabeth Dare.
prompts- Fake Smiles, High-Pitched Laughter, Television, Streetlights.
for- Fayy. (: [P r o m i s e Me That] Hope I did your prompts justice. ^^
word count-1,149 words.
thanks- App, [rainingtearsofchocolate] for beta-ing! :D
Woot! First PJO fic. I hope it wasn't too cliché or anything. And I know the summary and title are kind of ugh. I would really appreciate some feedback on this, so review? I have cookies… :D
Life of Lies
By: Snowstorm xD
((aged eight))
"Rachel, darling, make sure you're on your perfect behaviour when Mr. Jameson and his wife come over, all right?" Mrs. Dare reminded her daughter, as she checked that Rachel was in the lacy, floral dress she'd bought for this particular occasion. Rachel didn't look happy wearing it, but was eager to please her parents anyway.
"Yes, mum," Rachel mumbled, tugging on the hem of her dress self-consciously. She looked like a joke, but her parents seemed to find this attire necessary, so she hadn't protested like she'd wanted – a decision she was now regretting.
Think of Mum, Rachel told herself sternly, think of Dad.
Still, she didn't see why it wasn't okay for her to attend the dinner in just a t-shirt and jeans. It was just a dinner anyway. What if she spilled food onto herself? What if anyone spilled food onto themselves? Then their fancy clothing would be ruined. On second thought, Rachel would rather ruin this dress than her other clothes.
"Rachel, would you brush your hair? Honestly, it looks like a disaster… You need a new haircut. And God knows how you got that red hair, it's much too bright…" Mrs. Dare checked her watch. "Oh, the time! Goodness, better hurry up. They'll be here in ten minutes. Seven o'clock sharp." With that, she flounced out of the room.
Rachel now bit her lip, tugging on her red hair. She had always thought that her red hair fitted her. Maybe it wasn't as pretty as her mother's glossy, brown hair, but Rachel couldn't imagine herself with hair like that. Pulling her brush from under her bed, she began running it along her scalp quickly until she'd removed all the tangles. Sighing, she stood and walked to the door of her bedroom.
The doorbell sounded.
Taking a deep breath, Rachel braced herself for an evening of fake smiles and boring business conversations.
((aged ten))
"I must compliment the carpeting of your mansion. Quite tasteful. The curtains are magnificent. However, I must comment on the chandeliers… They look a little, how do I say this…?"
Rachel slipped down in her seat, not wanting to see the same scene that awaited her so many times each year. Her mother sent her a reprimanding look, making Rachel sit up straighter, staring down at her lap in shame.
Rachel's father, who had been taking the compliments casually until now, flashed his visitor a wide smile that would have fooled Rachel if she hadn't been watching him give fake smiles her whole life. "Oh, yes, those chandeliers." He mentioned them as if they weren't worth thousands of dollars, and took a sip of his expensive red wine. "Well, I had planned on replacing them with something modern, but…"
"They're antiques, see," Mrs. Dare chimed in helpfully. "Passed down generations. It's said they were featured in many castles years ago. We can't seem to let go of them."
"Oh, I see." The visitor, Mr. Roseburg, gave a smile similar to Rachel's parents'. "Antiques… How interesting." The tone could have been interpreted as mocking if they'd listened a bit more closely.
But they didn't, to avoid confrontations and unsigned business contracts.
The conversation topic soon moved on, and the table was roaring with laughter. Her mother, in an attempt to look feminine, had covered her mouth with a napkin as her high-pitched screech of laughter showed how funny she thought the joke just told was. Rachel knew better.
Sighing, Rachel spooned down some of her elegant dish into her mouth, despite not knowing what it could be. Bad idea. The dish, which consisted of hot, spicy spoonfuls of vegetables, soon made her choke. Rachel managed to reach for her glass and, in quite an unladylike manner, gulp down some water.
By now, she'd managed to receive two extremely disapproving glares from her parents and an amused one from Mr. Roseburg, who immediately turned the attention to her. "What do you wish to be when you grow up?"
"She'll be studying in business, of course," Mr. Dare injected, and Rachel nodded distractedly, her face still red with embarrassment from the choking incident.
Secretly, she wanted to be an artist, but that wasn't something her parents would be proud of, no, so she guessed she'd be sticking around the fake smilers and high pitched laughers for a little while.
((aged twelve))
"May I be excused?" Rachel asked politely, like she'd been trained to do for years. Her glass of water was now empty, as was her plate. Under the table, her fingers were crossed as she wished to get away from the boring business talk.
"Oh, I suppose…" Mrs. Dare started hesitantly as she glanced at her daughter's finished dinner, then at her own, hardly touched one. Rachel had taken advantage of the fact that her parents seemed to talk on and on with their visitor instead of eating, which was what dinner was really for.
"I need to do my homework," Rachel said, knowing that that would do the trick.
"Oh, of course then," Mr. Dare agreed heartily. "Go on."
Standing up and starting to gather the dirty cutlery, she was stopped by her father. "Don't be silly, Rachel," he said. "Patricia will clean that up for you. Now go on."
Reluctantly, Rachel left them and trudged up to the bedroom, but not before hearing her father proclaim how dedicated his daughter was to her schoolwork. She wished she hadn't, because then it wouldn't seem like she was letting her father shape a non-existent daughter out of her lies.
When she reached the bedroom, Rachel collapsed on her bed, wrapping herself in sheets. Grabbing aimlessly under the covers, she managed to find the remote for her television and switched it on to see a drama. The actors and actresses all seemed carelessly beautiful and genuine as they acted out the scene.
Her parents could be actors, she mused. And all their business partners. It wasn't as if they didn't act enough, anyway. Wasn't it the same, save they weren't being paid for it? Maybe they could earn more money being in the acting world, and money was all they cared for, anyway.
Staring longingly at her big, bedroom window that showed the outside world lit up by the many bright streetlights, she wished she could be out there instead. Maybe she could run away. Maybe she could start a new life. Maybe she could become an artist, like she always wanted.
Maybe, was the only thought in her mind as she pulled the covers over her head and fell asleep.
(That night, she dreams of running away under the strings of streetlights and freeing herself from this monotonous world.)
[It's the best part of her life until she wakes up and realizes it's not real and she might as well stop hoping, because dreams never come true, no, not ever.]
(She keeps hoping anyway.)