There Exists a Melody
by in the jungle dances
a/n: this is a holiday fic for emza (iloveyou). happy holidays! (title from the hellogoodbye song "i was it on your keyboard.")
prompts: the jonas brothers, "that awkward moment when," leopard-spotted boxers, and dancing on the streets.
rated k+ and disclaimed.
Massie Block has eyes that scream.
And there's something else elapsed past the wet, cynical ocher— these crafted, ardent ambitions, for she thoroughly longs for a friend.
.
Kendra is convinced that her daughter is ill.
The mental kind? Massie poses, feeling twine numbness in her vertebrae.
Kendra furnishes her glistening crust— the kind procured from craggy paper and prickle injections— with a bitter smile; it's a yes.
.
Kendra induces Massie into throwing a party— she hopes it treats her. Her daughter is like paper, toujours, and has glass skin that is lucid across her features. Massie's much too alone.
Kendra swears her wax skin and her rampant eyes are entirely due to the inclusive deficiency of a single friend.
The party invitations are pressed cream, and shaped with ivory streamers. Kendra calls it Massie Block's Holiday Bash.
.
Dylan Marvil's forehead lines with grooves. "You're throwing a party?"
She's a very pretty, as insufferable social butterflies go. Dylan likes pink, the Jonas Brothers, and lace sweaters, and has cascades of vivid red spirals.
Massie compels herself to smile, but it attests to be exceedingly grueling. When she blinks, her eyelashes are wet.
Come if you can, she tries to say. Bye.
She heeds their looping murmurs as she paces to class. They're impressed with the sophistication of the cards, surely.
Then she hears something else. It's 'That awkward moment when she thinks we'd ever go.'
Chiming laughter resounds in her cold paper ears.
.
Massie runs.
Frost congregates on the slant of her ebony eyelashes and she excavates her serrated fingernails into her feathery winter coat.
The next thing she knows, Massie's run off campus and her slight legs are tracking through the rubbish of the deserted waste yard behind the school.
She snivels like a deluge— soiled moisture gleaming on her cheeks, against her parafiltrum, dribbling through her pale fingers when she takes a stab to mop herself dry.
"Hey you!" Someone exclaims. Massie won't turn.
She can sense him nearby; can smell the bouquet of perspiring boy and something else, like firewood. Massie also discerns the dramatic gold that peers from the lip of his jeans— leopard-spotted boxers. He proffers a tissue from a pair of giant hands. "Massie Block, is that you?"
That he knows her name is enough; she takes the tissue.
.
Derrick is nice to her. He's picked up things, he says, like how her mother is illustrious and that apparently Massie derides everyone.
Gawkily, she blots her nose and affirms that it isn't true (with the omission of Dylan Marvil, maybe, because Massie thinks she's foul).
She hands him an invitation.
"It's pretty," he remarks benevolently. "Like your eyes."
He's vanished before she can assimilate the words.
.
Kendra embellishes the house with vibrant lights and an enormous Christmas tree that leaches rich and pampered. Everything smells like a garden, apart from the almond-crusted salmon, which smells ghastly.
Massie has fled from the icon of a paper schoolgirl tonight— her head of coffee is thick with scent, knotted with red ribbons, and her great tawny eyes are ablaze —and Kendra beams.
It's four o'clock in the afternoon, and they wait.
.
At four-thirty, Massie is sitting with a hooked spine, but Kendra is wholly unruffled and bats her substantial collection of false eyelashes as she dispenses bubbly into her flute.
"It's called being fashionably late, darling," Kendra declares with a manner of poise.
But then it's six o'clock and the salmon is cold (and no one is there).
.
Massie has to cling to herself when she cries. It bothers her that he isn't there to hand her a tissue; she can't imagine why she minds.
.
Derrick attains her the following day at school and seizes her brittle china arm to spin her around.
"I wasn't feeling well yesterday," he explicates vigilantly, kindly setting a hand on her gaunt shoulder. "I'm sure the party was great, though."
He sports expressive eyebrows and animated hands— Massie realizes he isn't teasing. No, it was awful, she mutters dismally, toying with the threadbare ends of her scarf.
"But 'course it wasn't; you're oodles of fun." He preaches in such a genial way, Massie can't abide to tell the truth.
He removes his big mitt from its perch on her shoulder and avows he'll make it up to her.
.
They go dancing in the streets.
(Needless to say, Kendra is euphoric.)
It was his idea, beneath the blush of the town, a transferable radio shrill in holiday tunes. Her forehead handles Derrick's; they don't really know each other, but it's all right.
He kisses her full on the mouth (smelling like pine and tasting just as fiery) and he grips her paper fingers like he cares.
But then, her fingers aren't really paper anymore.
a/n: er, hopefully it was all right? reviews are the greatest, and i would really appreciate some concrit, or your universal thoughts…or like, whatever. happy holidays!
-cap'n han solo (a.k.a hanza to my emza)