Disclaimer: I don't own the character, locations or situations associated with the TV show Kim Possible. Disney owns all of that so I make no money for using their property. I do this strictly for fun and to play around with my favorite cartoon pals.
Authors Note: This story takes place early in our character's senior year of high school. I was surfing around You Tube, another thing I don't own, listening to different albums from The Who, Emerson Lake and Palmer, and Phil Collins. (Among a slew of others too numerous to mention.) Phil's song, I Don't Care Anymore caught my imagination and this story was born. I don't own the song, either, so I gain nothing except your praise or scorn. Enjoy. I did while writing this in less than a day.
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I Don't Care Anymore
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"And that's why you're such a loser, Stoppable," Bonnie Rockwaller huffed as she ended a three minute long rave against the blond boy standing in front of her in the gym. (Surrounded by the other girls of the cheer squad, no less.) The Middleton Mad Dog Mascot had come in one beat too soon during practicing one of their more complex cheers and slobbered banana cream all over the floor where they were running and jumping about, ruining the whole routine. That sent Bonnie off on one of her more venomous tirades.
Bonnie smugly folded her arms under her breasts with a snide, satisfied smile on her puss, pleased with her long-winded but oh so precise assessment of the secondary bane of her existence. Sure her family, especially her sisters, always gave her grief, but Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable proved to be a bigger pain to Bonnie Rockwaller's little kingdom at Middleton High School, thus the two who gave her no end of grief and Kim ranked number one.
By the look of sheer astonishment on his face, Bonnie thought she'd thoroughly demoralized Ron with her tirade.
But she soon found out, she was wrong.
Ron's demeanor suddenly went neutral as his chin slumped to his chest for only a few seconds. When his head rose again to face her, there was an unreadable expression there, something that confused the teal-eyed brunette since she'd never seen it before. It almost looked like Ron was... defiant, or something.
"Bonnie..." Ron stated with an air of assurance that no one had heard in his voice before; all except maybe his girlfriend, Kim Possible. "I'm sorry to burst your bubble but I don't care anymore. You say I'm a slob? Well, I guess I could be one considering that I don't dress up to your standards and I'm a little messy when I eat. You don't like my casual attitude? Well, that's your opinion and you're welcome to it. After all, this is American where we can all speak our mind and tell anyone and everyone exactly how we feel. That's what I usually do.
"But I don't care what you think. If it makes you feel better tearing me down like you've always done, then I guess I'm okay with it since it makes you feel better about yourself. If you need to tear me down just to build yourself up, so be it.
"But I don't care anymore." Ron moved up to get in Bonnie's face and started to scream/sing an old Phil Collins tune, mimicking the forcefulness of the 80's pop star during one of his concerts.
"Well you can tell everyone I'm a down disgrace
Drag my name all over the place - I don't care anymore.
You can tell everybody 'bout the state I'm in
You won't catch me crying 'cos I just can't win -
I don't care anymore
I don't care anymore
I don't care what you say
I don't play the same games you play.
'Cos I've been talking to the people that you call your friends
and it seems to me there's a means to an end - they don't care anymore.
And as for me I can sit here and bide my time
I got nothing to lose if I speak my mind -
I don't care anymore
I don't care no more.
I don't care what you say - we never played by the same rules anyway.
I won't be there anymore
get out of my way - let me by
I got better things to do with my time.
I don't care anymore
I don't care anymore
I don't care anymore
I don't care anymore.
Well I don't care now what you say
'cos everyday I'm feeling fine with myself.
And I don't care now what you say
hey I'll do alright by myself 'cos I know.
'Cos I remember all the times I tried so hard
And you laughed in my face 'cos you held all the card.
I don't care anymore.
And I really ain't bothered what you think of me
'cos all I want of you is just ta let me be.
I don't care anymore
d'you hear I don't care no more.
I don't care what you say - I never did believe you much anyway.
I won't be there no more
so get out of my way - let me by
I got better things to do with my time
I don't care anymore.
D'you hear I don't care anymore
I don't care no more.
You listening I don't care no more
no more.
You know I don't care anymore
don't care no more
no more!"
Bonnie was simply floored. Stoppable had never stood up to her before. He would always take her put-downs with a wane, sheepish, embarrassed smile and slink away with his tail between his legs.
But what was worse was that the other girls of the cheer squad suddenly broke out in loud raucous cheer, applauding Stoppable's outburst.
And he was hamming it up.
"Thank you, thank you," the blond boy grandly bowed in mock acceptance with a cheesy, s**t-eaters grin plastered on his mug. I'll be here all year... that is unless KP and I get a mission or something so then we'll have ta leave... but only for a day at most, but you know what I mean. I won't be leaving soon until it's time to move onto college next year... if I can find a college willing to take me."
"Ron," Kim tried to break her boyfriend out of his rambling, random spiel as she clapped along with the rest of the squad. (minus Bonnie) "You're being random again." It might have sounded like a put-down but the smiling laughter in her emerald eyes spoke only of amusement at his antics.
Bonnie, on the other hand, was beyond floored at what was going on. The squad was egging him on and Tara, her closest friend and confidant, looked like she wanted to jump Ron's bones right here in the middle of the gym. The platinum blond was cheering the loudest and Bonnie had only seen that sexual hunger in Tara's sky blue eyes once before when she'd started going out with her hunk-of-a-boyfriend at the beginning of the semester. (Not that Tara would try to rape Ron, considering Kim was his girlfriend and could wipe the floor with the entire football team all at once without breaking a sweat.)
"Stoppable, you... you..." Bonnie flustered, unable to come up with a retort after Ron spoke/sang is mind.
Irate and embarrassed beyond anything she'd ever experienced before, Bonnie turned to stomp out of the gym in a hasty retreat to regroup and attack when she'd come up with something. Unfortunately she stepped in a huge puddle of banana cream and slipped, landing on her backside in the smear of white goo.
Uggggggh!" Bonnie angrily screamed as she stood and tried to wipe the gunk off of her arms, legs and butt. The only thing she could do is continue out of the gym, occasionally slipping a bit on the cream still stuck to the bottom of her sneakers.
"Well," Kim shrugged in happy resignation, "I guess practice is over. I'll see you all tomorrow." With that, she turned to her boyfriend and gave him a passionate kiss on the lips. (Probably for standing up to Bonnie, but the squad had seen Kim's demonstrative PDA'ing her boyfriend once or twice before so they weren't positive.)
Tara hesitated only for a moment before she chased after Bonnie (avoiding the slippery floor,) finding her in the corner of the shower room still dressed for practice and curled up in a corner, crying.
"Bonnie?" Tara almost whispered, not wanting to startle her girl friend too much. "Are you okay?"
"No, I'm not," Bonnie growled, shed her shoes and socks, tossed the socks toward the doorway and twisted on the water for the shower head. She shoved the soles of her shoes under the water, rubbing and scrubbing them to supposedly get the banana cream off of the soles. "Stoppable just humiliated me and I gotta come up with some way to retaliate." She tossed the shoes over to where her socks were and stepped bodily under the shower to rinse off her skirt, still wearing it. "I just don't know what I can do to totally humiliate him now."
"Why do you need to humiliate him?" Tara queried as she took off her shoes and socks before she stripped out of the rest of her uniform, tossing it all out the door so it wouldn't get wet.
"He just humiliated me," Bonnie angrily growled. "That calls for a massive retaliation if I want to keep my place at the top of the Food Chain." Satisfied that her uniform was fairly clear of the banana cream from the mishap in the gym, she stripped out of her clothes, threw them down at her feet and started to take her after-practice shower.
"What's so important about being the top of the Food Chain," Liz asked as she entered the tiled room and handed Bonnie's shower kit to the brunette.
"Yeah, I never understood the concept," Crystal said as she followed the redhead in and gave Tara her shower kit. Jessica, Hope and Marcella entered the showers and also voiced their confusion about the system that ruled the school.
"What's to explain?" Bonnie asked in slight irritation since the girls had been in school for almost four years now and they still didn't know what was going on around them. She squirted a dollop of shampoo into the palm of her hand and started to work it into her short brown hair. "My parents have always told me to be the best and that means I have to be better than everybody else."
"I guess that's why some people call you Queen Bonnie," Hope said as she lathered up her dark skin with some body gel. "You think this school is your little kingdom and everybody else is just your subjects."
"Not everybody," Bonnie said before she ducked under the shower head for a second to wet her brown hair a little more. "I do have my court... you guys."
"Would that make Ron your Jester?" Tara giggled and quickly backed away from her friend who took a playful (or maybe irritated) swipe at her. "And would Kim be your Man-At-Arms?"
"Now you're just being blond," Bonnie snapped at her platinum blond friend. "No. They're merely peasants who don't matter at all to me."
"What would that make the teachers?" Jessica asked, trying to defuse the tension now in the showers as she rinsed off the soap from her alabaster skin. "Would they be your advisers?"
Bonnie completely ignored the blond girl with freckles as she questioned, warily peering out the doorway to the locker room, "Where is Kim and the loser, anyway?"
"They're cleaning the floor right now," Liz answered, soaping up her legs. "You know how Kim likes to leave the gym floor cleaner than when we get here."
"Good," Bonnie huffed. "That's exactly where Kim should be; cleaning up after practice."
"Bonnie," Tara warned her girlfriend. "That's not a very nice thing to say. We should all take care of the gym floor so no one slips and falls after we're done using it."
"Haven't you been listening, Tara?" Bonnie queried before she ducked under the shower spray again for a few seconds to rinse out her hair. She quickly emerged, slicked back her wet hair and continued. "The peasants like Kim and Ron should do that kind of menial work. Not us."
"You really do think this school is your own private little kingdom, don't you?" Marcella incredulously asked.
"Of course," Bonnie nonchalantly answered as she started lathering up her chest and stomach with her body gel. "When you're the best, you rule."
"But you're not the best, Bonnie," Hope reminded the teal-eyed brunette. "Kim is better than you are at cheer and she gets better grades than you do. She was also faster than you were when we all were on the swim team a few years ago."
"All that doesn't matter," Bonnie snapped back at the dark skinned girl with a mole near the corner of her mouth. "I rule this school and the Food Chain that controls it."
"So we live in a monarchy?" Jessica asked in confusion from under the spray of her shower as she washed the soup off her body. "I thought monarchies went out of style in the last decade? At least that's what Mr. Barkin said in history class."
"No, there are at least forty monarchies in the world nowadays," Bonnie spouted. "Canada is a prime example."
"I don't think you can call Canada a true monarchy," Jessica retorted. "Or any of the other monarch-type countries, for that matter. Canada is part of the British empire, but they have their own parliament, like the rest of the monarchies around the world. There are a few dictatorships, but they wouldn't have a ruling court like a monarchy does."
"That means the Food Chain is an out-of-date system, too," Tara said, a little upset with the whole system that'd always put a wedge between her and her closest girl friend. Bonnie had spent too much time plotting and planning on how to keep on top of the damnedable system over the years, completely ignoring or blowing her off at times. "I think you should give the whole thing up and concentrate more on your friends."
Bonnie was stunned for the second time in only a half hour. Was she wrong to follow an antiquated system that her sisters had followed and preached to her? Did the real world, outside of high school, operate under a different system than the Food Chain? Surely there was a hierarchy in the business world. There were the regular workers and then there was a boss. That was a kind of Food Chain, wasn't it?
Bonnie had been thinking about majoring in business when she entered college so she had done some studying on the subject. The boss depended on the people under him or her to do the work and the peons... er, workers, might balk if the boss was too strict or demeaning to his underlings. That was a business fact. People usually don't produce as well when they're mistreated. Normally if the boss comes down hard on someone, the underling would resent it and only do the minimum needed to retain his or her position.
Did that bit of information translate to her situation?
She could see where it might. If she was harsh with a fellow student, that student would resent it and not help her out on one of the committees she was on, or maybe even turn other students against her.
Bonnie suddenly realized that she really didn't have that many friends. Sure, she had her posse, but they really weren't her friends. They hung out with her at school but they never accompanied her to the Middleton Mall or went to grab a bit to eat after school let out. Tara was a friend, her only friend, that she did anything with like that.
Bonnie had heard kids in the hallways call her a Queen B and she knew the moniker didn't refer to either her name or the insect. It referred to the five letter word that rhymed with witch.
But Bonnie also knew that her sisters couldn't be totally wrong, could they?
Then it suddenly dawned on the brunette that her sisters could be wrong. The only boyfriends that they talked about were the ones who were snooty and so stuck up that they wouldn't date anybody that couldn't further their careers, or at least put out for them first.
Brick Flagg was now history, having moved on to college finally after five or six years in high school, and she'd only hooked up with him because he would help her reach the top of the Food Chain. Of course Brink just had to have something in return. The biweekly make out sessions in the back seat of his car always ended with him being totally satisfied and her unfulfilled. She'd lost her virginity to him so she could get to the top of the Food Chain.
What did that make her? A whore for selling out like that? Someone just as bad as her sisters?
"Bonnie?"
A voice startled the brunette out of her revelry. She quickly glanced around the shower room and saw she and Tara were the only two left.
"Are you okay, Bonnie?" Tara shakily asked. The platinum blond looked a little frightened.
"I'm fine, T," Bonnie answered, quickly turned off her shower and gathered her kit and uniform.
"You zoned out there for a few minutes and I was concerned," Tara nervously laughed, still worried about her friend. Bonnie would never zone out like that unless something was terribly wrong.
"I was just thinking," Bonnie nonchalantly responded as she grabbed a couple of the school towels and headed over to her locker. "Let's get dressed quickly and go out to see if K and Ron need a hand cleaning up."
The suggestion was so out there that Tara dropped her towels and kit and simply stared at the naked, teal-eyed brunette.
"What?" Bonnie questioned when she saw her girl friend frozen in place and staring at her with open mouth.
"Well," Tara quickly recovered, picked up her things and moved over to her locker next to Bonnie. "Just a few minutes ago you said that sort of work was beneath you. Now you wanna help?"
Just then, Kim came crashing through the door to the gym and swiftly changed into her mission clothes as she yelled over her shoulder, "Forget about a shower, Ron. We need to get going now."
"Right, KP," came the blond boy's fading answer as the door closed.
"Where are you off to this time?" Tara asked, her conversation with Bonnie shoved aside for the normal routine of Kim dashing off to who-knows-where on a mission.
"Drakken has some whacked plan brewing in the Gulf of Mexico," Kim answered as she slid on her black slacks with the purple stripe running down the side.
"Oh, him again," Tara tittered as she finished drying her body and started to get dressed. "Did you get the gym floor cleaned up?"
"The banana cream spots are taken care of," Kim said as she donned her purple, short sleeved shirt, "but we didn't get a chance to sweep the floor." She swiftly tied her shoelaces and grabbed her backpack before heading for the door.
"We'll get it," Bonnie hollered to the fast moving redhead.
That brought Kim to a screeching halt with the gym door open. She quickly turned to the brunette, letting the door shut and begged, "You will? Since when do you do any menial work, Bonnie? Or are you expecting something in return? Maybe the top spot on the pyramid during the next game?"
"No, nothing like that," Bonnie nonchalantly answered as she slipped on her red, A-line dress and fluffed out her hair in the back. "I just think some changes should be made around here. You have too much on your plate what with school, cheerleading, committees and going on your missions. Someone should help out occasionally."
"KP, let's move it," Ron hollered while pounding on the door. "I don't want to take on Shego and Drakken alone."
"Shego! Blech!" the three girls heard Rufus react through the door.
"Well, thanks, Bonnie," Kim tentatively said as she reached for the doorknob again. "Do you know where the dry mops are?"
"We'll find them, K," Bonnie huffed as she waved Kim out the door. "Go on and stop that Dragon guy."
"It's Drakken," Kim said with a sly smile as she opened the door and headed out. "And thanks again." The redhead was a blur as she exited the locker room and disappeared from sight before the door fully closed.
Bonnie turned to her platinum blond girlfriend and said, "And to answer your question, T, I was thinking in the shower that the Food Chain may have run its course. That's why I want to start helping K out."
"Oh, okay," Tara said with a sly smile. She had a fairly good idea just why her friend had changed her tune. The conversation in the showers should've started Bonnie thinking about the wrongness of the Food Chain. The campaign she'd planned out with the other girls of the cheer squad, minus Kim, was meant to be a long, drawn out one with many hints and arguments to dissuade Bonnie from following the system. She was surprised that Bonnie caved in so soon, but was pleased with the outcome nevertheless.
Tara shoved her shower supplies into her locker, shut the door and spun the combination dial as she asked, "Do you know where the dry mops are kept?"
"We'll find them," Bonnie laughed as she locked her locker and headed for the door. "If not, we'll find Barkin and ask. Come on."
Bonnie was feeling extremely good about herself as she and Tara walked over to a supply closet in one corner of the gym where she thought the mops were. She was also thinking about a guy who wasn't at the top of the Food Chain, but was intelligent and kinda cute.
Now that the Food Chain was about to fall, there were a lot more guys eligible to take over Brick Flagg's position as her boyfriend.