Horton Heard a What?
Disclaimer: The characters depicted in this story are owned by the guy who thought them up. This is a different guy than the one writing the story, as she is not a guy at all, but a chick.
Summary: Nancy and Nenene meet to discuss that one subject that hangs perpetually suspended above both their heads, the Yomiko-Issue. Things go slightly awry when they are blessed with a visitor...
"You know what else I hate?" Nenene demanded, slamming her hand down on the table and nearly upsetting two mugs of steaming hot coffee. "SHE – NEVER – QUITS – READING!"
"Well, sometimes she does," Nancy pointed out, reaching for a cookie. "When she's finished with her book, and she needs to get a new one! Sometimes she reads it again on the way to the bookshelf to get a new book, but sometimes she doesn't read the whole way there."
Nenene glared.
"That doesn't count. And just so you know, 'when she's sleeping' doesn't count, either."
"Yomiko doesn't stop reading for things like sleep!" Nancy scoffed, stirring a sugar cube into her coffee. "Usually, she falls asleep while she's reading. And I think she can see the book clearly in her dreams, too."
"I wouldn't put it past her," Nenene muttered, rubbing her forehead wearily. Then she straightened up and leaned forward over the table. "You know, I spent five years working on this book, praying that she would come back and read it. I poured my heart and soul into writing something that she would love and respect, and she would've been happy if I'd handed her Horton Hears a Who."
"I liked that one," Nancy announced happily. "He hears a Who! It's much better than that one where they hopped on Pop – that was mean. Poor Pop!"
Nenene stared at her for a long moment, rather floored. Then...
"Just...here. Have another cookie," she ordered, shoving the plate of sweets towards the older girl.
"You know what I hate about Yomiko," said Nancy, returning the plate to Nenene. "Nothing! She's wonderful! Yaay for Yomiko!"
"You're kidding," Nenene said flatly.
"Yeah," Nancy admitted with an impish wink. Then she grew serious. "She just won't stop...reading!"
"I know how that is," Nenene said sympathetically.
"I always had to do all the cooking, and all the cleaning, and all of the laundry, because she was too busy reading! Do you know what that's like?"
Nenene frowned.
"No, not really," she admitted.
"Uh...I do," Anita said snippily as she happened into the room.
"Oh, hush, Anita dear," Michelle chided gently, hurrying her past with a hand on her shoulder. "Let's not interrupt their blind date."
Anita nodded, and then froze, frowned, and looked up at Michelle, bewildered.
"Uh...what?"
"I'm not asking, either," Michelle confided, leaning down close to Anita. "What Nenene does is her own business."
"It's not really a date," Nenene said, annoyed, resting her chin on one fist. "We're just having coffee."
Michelle put up a hand to stop her.
"Nenene, we are not here to judge you. We're just here to do your laundry, and cooking, and cleaning, and scare away door-to-door salesmen, and rescue you if you get kidnapped – which seems to happen an inordinately high number of times in the average week—"
"Yeah, okay, thanks," Nenene interrupted hurriedly. "Don't you have laundry to do?"
"No, actually, we finished it all," Michelle chirped proudly.
With an exasperated noise, Nenene picked up her cup of coffee and dumped it down the front of her jacket. Then she shrugged out of it and tossed it to Michelle.
"There. Now you have some more."
"So, in other words," Nancy surmised as the two left, Michelle smiling and Anita grumbling, "they know what it's like, but you don't."
Nenene smiled wearily.
"No, but I do know what it's like to spend an hour and a half looking for her underneath all the piles of books in her apartment."
"Yeah, I remember some days that I thought for sure she went out to buy food and forgot to come back," Nancy said, eyes growing dreamy at the memories. "I would wait by the door with a special book for her when she came back, and then she would just pop out of the pile of books in the middle of the room, and tell me she'd been asleep!"
"You think that was bad, try looking for her in her apartment sometime. The whole thing is a pile of books. She could be anywhere. I had to watch where I stepped."
"That must have been awful," Nancy said, shaking her head sympathetically. "I'd be too scared to move."
"Oh, it was," Nenene told her sadly. "And the other thing that drove me nuts? That glasses thing! You know, when they would start to slide down her nose a little, so she'd look down and close her eyes and push them back up?"
"I know what you mean! I think that's really cute!"
"So do I!" Nenene exclaimed. "That's the point! She knows it's cute, and she's using it manipulate us! But you know what was worse? She just won't stop reading!"
"Are we still talking about that?" Nancy asked a little exasperatedly, reaching for her coffee.
"It's a big one!"
"Maybe I just don't notice it, because it's all I can remember. It seems normal to me!"
"Yeah, it's starting to seem normal to me, too," Nenene sighed, gesturing to the piles of books left at various intervals around her apartment by Michelle, Maggie, and Anita. "And it scares the Hell out of me."
"Do you know what drives me crazy?" Nancy began.
"The reading all the time?" Nenene suggested after a long slurp of coffee.
Nancy started to reply, and then stopped and frowned.
"No, that's you," she replied, slightly annoyed. "I get that sense, anyway."
"Okay, what drives you crazy?"
"Well, I guess it's kind of like the fact that she reads all the time, but not really. It's more like, sometimes it seems like books are all she needs, you know?"
Nenene stared blankly. Nancy made a vague gesture.
"You know!"
Nenene continued to stare blankly. Nancy drooped slightly.
"You...don't know."
Nenene shook her head as close to apologetically as physically possible for Nenene to get.
"Sorry."
"Well...you know; after reading a book, she'll go smoke a cigarette? And she's a non-smoker?"
"No, I still don't know," Nenene confessed, shrugging.
"I do," a male voice proclaimed flatly from the side of the table to Nenene's left.
"Well, okay," Nancy said carefully. "But who are you?"
"Oh, you're Yomiko's boyfriend, aren't you?" Nenene asked thoughtfully, peering closely at the dark-haired, bespectacled spectre.
"Ex-boyfriend," he replied a little nervously as Nancy glared fiercely at him. "Ex-everything, actually. Being dead does that."
"Yeah, about that," Nenene said, frowning. "Last I heard, you were alive, in a form so horrible, Yomiko flipped out, burned down a library, and WOULDN'T CALL ME BACK FOR FIVE YEARS!"
"I was kept alive in a form that would make anyone prefer death," Donny sighed. "Those bastards with the British Library Special Operations unit kept me alive. In a jar."
"A jar," Nenene repeated flatly. "In other words, ghost is a step up."
"Several steps up," Donny corrected. "I was finally blessed with the end of my life when Joker sent his little tea-fetching girl – Wanda, Winnie, something like that – to tidy up in the room that held me and my jar. And the wall socket that powered whatever was keeping what was left of me alive. It was a horrible existence, staring at a seafoam-coloured wall, all day, every day, and recalling all the things I had forgotten to do before I died. So when the tea-girl arrived, I mustered up all my strength, and shouted 'BOO!' just as she was stepping over my power cable. She jumped a foot in the air, completely missed it, and then somehow managed to trip over it by landing. Thankfully. And because it was fricking funny to watch her slip and land on her head, I got to die laughing."
"Is that why you have such a pleasant smile all the time?" Nancy asked curiously.
"Actually, no," he replied, smiling pleasantly. "I just can't get rid of it. I've tried everything: plastic surgery, elastic bands, masking tape...But it won't go away."
Nancy tried to pat his hand sympathetically, only to end up comforting the table.
"Have you ever tried thinking sad thoughts?"
Donny stared blankly for a minute. Then, resolutely, he turned back to Nenene.
"So, in other words, to answer your question, yes, I do know what it's like."
Nenene frowned.
"What was my question again?"
Donny thought carefully, and then looked up.
"I don't remember."
"Actually, I think it was my question," Nancy pointed out.
The dark-haired man sighed, and attempted to prop his elbows up on the table. After ending up doubled over several times, he gave up.
"I know you two think you have it bad," he said. "But let me ask you this: do you know what it's like to have her try to kill you?"
Both girls considered this.
"Yes," Nancy replied.
"Not so much," Nenene replied.
"Do you know what it's like to have her succeed?" Donny asked, his pleasant smile growing slightly strained.
"No," Nancy replied.
"Do I even have to answer that one?" Nenene asked.
"And finally, do you know why she tried to kill me?"
"Um...she was being tricked by an evil madman?" Nancy guessed.
"You were looking a little too long at another girl?" Nenene suggested, hiding a smile.
"You spilled something on one of her books?"
"You lost one of her books?"
"No, no, no, and no," Donny replied flatly. "The deep, dark secret; the big mystery of my death and what drove her to it: Joker promised her a book."
"That sounds like Yomiko," Nenene shrugged.
"Yeah," Nancy agreed, somewhere between sadly and fondly.
"Do you know what the book was?" Donny asked. "It wasn't a good book; it was Horton Hears a Who."
"I liked that one!" Nancy declared brightly. "He hears a Who!"
"We know," Nenene said grimly.
"If it had been Yurtle the Turtle, I might have understood," he continued brokenly.
"That's a good one," Nenene agreed, folding her arms and leaning back in her chair. "Undoubtedly his best work."
"Yurtle is good," Nancy nodded. "But I felt a little sorry for him in the end."
"And it all came for nothing," Donny continued, pointedly ignoring both, "because the book was destroyed in the battle!"
"Ouch," said Nenene sympathetically. "Hey, you want some coffee?"
"Oh, sure," Donny said with the most pleasant sarcasm Nenene had ever heard. "Why don't you just pour a little over me and see what happens?"
The author glared.
"Yeah, yeah, okay, ghost, I get it. I forgot, okay?"
"Lucky you."
"So, I won't ask why Joker had you killed – just seems like something he'd do when he's bored – but I've gotta ask: why did he keep you alive in the jar?"
"He says it was to hold me over her, in order to keep her easily controlled, but the truth is, I had an overdue library book," Donny replied sheepishly. "Maybe that's the unfinished business that has trapped my tortured ghost here."
"Well, where did you leave it?" Nenene asked briskly.
Nancy, picking up on her line of reasoning, and with vague ideas of eliminating what competition they could floating through her mind, continued.
"Yeah! We could find it and return it for you."
"Would you?" Donny looked genuinely touched. "That would be wonderful, actually. You might have a hell of a time finding somewhere to return it to, what with the building being destroyed and all the staff either arrested or mysteriously disappearing and chasing puppies, but—"
"We'll do what we can," Nenene broke in.
"Thank-you, Miss Sumiregawa," Donny said fervently. "I think I left it..." He trailed off, his expression growing horrified. "...in Yomiko's apartment. Oh, dear God."
Nenene and Nancy both stared incredulously for a long moment. Then Nancy gave an adorably sadistic laugh, and Nenene folded her arms and glared at the spectre.
"Alright, forget it, Jar-boy. You're on your own. Finding a specific book in Yomiko's apartment is like finding a word in a dictionary where all the pages are in random order."
"It's not that bad," Nancy protested. "I'm sure she knows where everything is!"
Nenene lifted an eyebrow.
"We're talking about the woman who goes out and buys a new copy whenever she wants to reread something. Do you think she just does it because she likes having forty-three copies of the same book?"
Nancy considered this carefully for a moment. She looked back at Nenene.
"Yes."
Before Nenene and Donny could do more than exchange pained looks in response to this, the door clicked softly open.
For a moment, there was silence in the Nenene's living room as the three seated around the table exchanged bewildered and slightly awkward glances with this newcomer.
"Nenene," Yomiko greeted, slightly surprised. "And Nancy."
Then, as her eyes lit on the third figure, not so much seated as sort of hovering above his chair, they widened in astonishment.
"Donny!"
"Hello, Yomiko," he greeted, his perpetually pleasant smile growing sad. "It's good to see you again. Too bad I had to die to manage it, but..."
Yomiko looked crestfallen.
"So, you really are dead now?"
"Yeah," Donny replied with a slight shrug. "No thanks to Joker's tea-girl."
"She tripped over the power cable, then?"
Donny nodded. Yomiko sighed, then brightened a little.
"Oh, speaking of that, I've returned that overdue book you had. I gave it to Wendy when I found her in a bookstore, looking for something on dog-training."
"You've returned it? Oh, thank-you, Yomiko."
"She said not to bother with the overdue fine."
"That's good."
"It is; the fine was about the price of a very nice car."
Donny shook his head with a vaguely irritated sigh.
"Their overdue fines are ridiculous."
Yomiko nodded sympathetically.
"Villains, you know. And you did have it out for about eight years..."
"Alright, Yomiko, we've all been talking about it," Nenene broke in, apparently resenting the way she had been apparently so neatly and sweetly brushed aside from this conversation, "and we've decided that a few things have to change."
Yomiko blinked adorably, and then made her way to the unoccupied side of the table, and sat down.
"Er, what do you mean, Nenene?"
"We're all getting a little annoyed by a few things, and it's about time that you hear it!" the brunette replied severely, nevertheless pouring her friend a cup of coffee and loading up a spare dessert plate with several cookies and sliding both across the table towards her. "For example. YOU – NEVER – QUIT – READING!"
"That's Nenene's," Nancy informed Yomiko helpfully. "I think it would be nice if you could do some of the cooking and cleaning sometime."
"Er, alright," Yomiko agreed hesitantly, before turning to meet Donny's glare.
"Horton Hears a Who!" he exclaimed, his smile vanishing entirely for the first time.
"I-I liked that one," Yomiko said helplessly. "He hears a Who!"
"Is that all you have to say for yourself!" Nenene demanded, slamming her hand down on the table again, and nearly propelling herself to her feet.
Apparently, it was; Yomiko looked helplessly from Nenene to Nancy to Donny, and back again, only to be met with three decidedly annoyed looks. Finally, she looked down and readjusted her glasses, which had begun to slip.
And with that, as though by magic, Nancy's annoyed expression melted into one of complete adoration.
"I can't stay angry with you, Yomiko!" she announced, scrambling from her seat to enfold Yomiko in a comforting hug.
"Neither can I," Donny agreed, shaking his head in exasperated fondness, nevertheless with his beamingly pleasant smile back in full force. "Er, pretend I'm hugging you too, alright, Yomiko? The ghost thing, you know..."
Nenene's glare hardened as she took in the scene. These two might be gullible idiots where this woman was concerned, but she was not.
She would deal with this later.
But for now...
"Move," she rather uselessly commanded the ghost of Donny as she joined the group-hug.
And all was sunshine again.
End Notes: Alright, the ending here is really abrupt, to the point that it barely ends at all. But is that not the way it is in real life? How often do we get a good, conclusive, strongly-written ending that wraps everything up?
Yes, this is my cheap excuse. The simple truth, however, is that I was utterly, utterly lost for an ending. :P